“I won’t,” Elise said.
“I’ll give you a lift home,” Caro said, appearing at McBride’s side. “Leave it to me, sir.”
Elise waited until her boss had disappeared down the corridor before picking up the folders and her bag.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s go to the scene. I need to fix the layout in my head.”
“Hang on! Didn’t you hear McBride?”
“He said I shouldn’t be in the building and I won’t be.”
* * *
—
The door to Tall Trees had been wedged open to allow the parade of white-suited Scenes of Crime Officers easy access. Elise put on her own suit, pulling the hood over her head and zipping it up to her throat, and looked round. She realized she looked the same as everyone else for the first time in months, and smiled.
It was way too hot for extra layers and she felt a bit heady. Inside the house, years of damp cooled her core like an ice challenge and she shivered.
Caro rustled in behind her. “Come on, boss, let’s get down there while the lights are still up.”
Caro led them into the cellar and Elise looked up through the hatch to where she’d stood with her shirt over her nose three days earlier. There were numbered evidence markers on the floor showing where Charlie’s body had lain and a deep black stain from body fluids seeping into the dirt floor.
“He was on his left side, knees drawn up and arms by his side. The open injury to his head was on the right side, two inches behind his ear. The ear and scalp were badly torn during the assault. We’re looking for some sort of heavy tool.”
“Did Charlie die here?” Elise looked into the shadows cast by the police lights.
“Not yet confirmed but we’re pretty sure this is where he was hit with the weapon—we’ve found bone fragments from his skull and a small amount of blood. He’d also been in another room. Come through.”
Caro led her back down the corridor to a tiled room lit with more arc lights. “It used to be the scullery. And there’s been an attempt to clean it—we’ve found bleach and scouring powder on some of the surfaces but it wasn’t a very thorough job. No blood has been found in here but the SOCOs detected traces of bodily fluids—possibly urine—in the grouting between the tiles in that corner. Money on it being Charlie’s.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Only his. Whoever was down here with him must have been wearing gloves.”
I can’t see Pauline Perry wielding the bleach and Marigolds, Elise thought, and had a sudden memory of Pauline throwing away the bowl of foul-smelling water. Had she been cleaning up?
“Pauline was in the house with a blue plastic washing-up bowl on Monday when I got here,” she said.
“Was it one of these?” Caro said as she consulted photographs on her phone.
Elise looked at the screen. There was a blue bowl lined up with several buckets outside the caravan.
“That could be it.”
While Caro went off to retrieve and bag it, Elise looked round the scullery. It made her heart sink to think of anyone spending their last moments in here with just a stinking hole in the floor.
“What was he doing down here,” she said as Caro reappeared, “if Charlie had been in the house since Friday? It’s freezing and damp, got no phone signal, and there’s no furniture. He can’t have slept in here. He had dozens of rooms to choose from—if I was hiding, this would be the last place I’d pick.”
“Yeah, it’s like a cell,” Caro said.
“It is.” Elise had been turning the idea over and over in her mind since walking into the room. “But Aoife says he wasn’t tied up.”
“And the door doesn’t have a lock. We searched the house on day one but didn’t find anything significant. DI Ward was convinced Charlie was hiding in here, ran into the cellar, had his heart attack, and was hit in frustration by the pursuer.”
Elise looked round the room again. “Maybe. Do you remember Pauline said she never went upstairs in the big house when she was being questioned—and then got all defensive. I think we should search the house again. Top to bottom.”
“Right.”
Elise could hear the edge in her sergeant’s voice as she organized the new search and wondered how she would cope with changing horses midway through a case.
“Boss, up here.” Caro’s voice echoed down through the floors above. Elise was panting by the time she reached the top of the house.
“Okay, we’ve found a door we missed first time,” Caro said, cutting her off at the landing. “It’s at the end of the attic. No handle—so that explains the screwdriver—the door’s wallpapered to match the walls and there was a bookcase in front of it. Not making excuses, just saying. I’ll have whoever cocked up.”