Текст книги "The Blood Whisperer"

Автор книги: Zoë Sharp

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The uncanny abilities of London crime-scene specialist Kelly Jacks to coax evidence from the most unpromising of crime scenes once earned her the nickname of The Blood Whisperer.

Then six years ago all that changed.

Kelly woke next to the butchered body of a man, the knife in her hands and no memory of what happened.

She trusted the evidence would prove her innocent.

It didn’t.

Now released after serving her sentence for involuntary manslaughter, Kelly must try to piece her life back together. Shunned by former colleagues and friends, the only work she can get is for the crime-scene cleaning firm run by her former mentor.

But old habits die hard. And when her instincts tell her things are not as they appear at the scene of a routine suicide, she can’t help but ask questions that somebody does not want answered.

Plunged into the nightmare of being branded a killer once again, Kelly is soon fleeing from the police, Russian thugs and a local gangster. Betrayed at every turn, she is fast running out of options.

But Kelly acquired a whole new set of skills on the inside. Now street-smart and wary, can she use everything she’s learned to evade capture and stay alive long enough to clear her name?

Praise for Zoë Sharp:

“The Blood Whisperer is a cracking, compulsive read: once you've read the electrifying first few pages, you’ll probably develop intense feelings of annoyance towards anyone or anything that takes you away from it and the wonderful, gutsy, spiky heroine. I loved every word of this brilliant, mind-twisting thriller and even yelped out loud at one of the genius twists.” Bestselling crime author, Elizabeth Haynes

“Scarily good.” Lee Child

“Zoë Sharp is one of the brightest of the new generation of British crime writers.” Stephen Booth

“Zoë Sharp is a master at writing thoughtful action thrillers.” Meg Gardiner

“If you don't like Zoë Sharp there's something wrong with you. Go and live in a cave and get the hell out of my gene pool! There are few writers who go right to the top of my TBR pile—Zoë Sharp is one of them.” Stuart MacBride

“Zoë Sharp is going to be a superstar.” Jon Jordan, Crimespree magazine

THE

BLOOD WHISPERER Zoë Sharp

For Derek and Jill

who've helped to keep it all together

and

Sarah and Tim

who've been there since the beginning

www.ZoeSharp.com

Cover design by www.NuDesign.co

Murderati Ink [ZACE Ltd]

Copyright © Zoë Sharp 2013

THE

BLOOD WHISPERER

Prologue

She wakes to the smell of blood.

It saturates the air to lie metallic across her tongue—so fresh-spilt it has not had time to spoil.

She knows the scent well enough to be calm and yet also terrified. It is not that she is squeamish but the implications are clear to her.

What the hell is happening here? And where is here?

She gradually returns to herself, realises she is lying face down on a hard surface. Her whole body feels gripped by the aftermath of a fever. Her head is turned slightly to the side, legs splayed as if to mimic running and arms twisted behind her. The position is awkward, like she dropped in mid-stride or was flung there. She flexes her wrists half expecting to find them bound but she is not restrained.

She takes a moment to examine if this makes things better or worse.

The answer doesn’t come readily.

In fact nothing comes readily, neither awareness nor memory.

Mentally she fumbles backwards for her last clean recollection. It remains blurrily beyond reach.

That alone is enough to start the panic forming a bubble in her chest. It compresses her heart, squeezing her lungs against her ribcage so she can hardly breathe.

She forces her eyes open.

From this perspective the room has tipped sideways. It seems familiar but she doesn’t recognise it. Maybe the bloody pool seeping across the boards towards her has something to do with that.

The encroaching tide jolts her out of lethargy. Her adrenal gland fires a staccato burst into her system and she flinches from the shock of it, tries to roll away. Instead she flops raggedly onto her back, gasping. It’s a start but not much of one.

Her eyes slide closed again and she discovers her limbs are not yet her own. They refuse to know her, fighting every attempt to control them. She growls in frustration-laced fury.

And all the time the smell of the room overloads her senses. She has the educated palate of a connoisseur. Underneath the sharp tang of blood she detects the lingering slurry of fear.

The kind of fear humans embrace when there is nothing else left to them.

Her own fear motivates her eyes to reopen. They do so with reluctance akin to peeling a limpet from a tidal rock.

The room is still there. She’d been hoping to blame some kind of waking nightmare but this is real.

Far too real.

A crowd of images jostle her, elbowing for supremacy. She grasps the analytical part of her brain by its scruff and shakes it into concentration. Sluggishly she notes the blood pool leads away from her.

She lies still for a moment and monitors her own body as the extremities slowly come back online. She aches right down to the roots of her hair as if from a beating but as far as she can tell there’s no specific damage.

So the blood isn’t mine.

Of course it isn’t hers, she reasons. She can recite the facts as well as anyone—that the human body holds between three-point-five and five-point-five litres. A loss in excess of forty per cent is almost invariably fatal and experience has shown her exactly what that kind of exsanguination looks like.

To have this amount of blood let must surely mean . . .

Her heart leaps into her throat and bounces there.

With a grunt of outright effort she makes it up onto one elbow. The room sways and distorts alarmingly before it steadies.

Progress, of a sort.

What she sees next is not progress of any sort.

The body is no more than two metres away. Blood haloes around it and edges ever closer as if seeking a living host. It leaches from a dozen ragged slits in clothing and skin.

The face is turned towards her, features bisected by a diagonal slash from cheekbone to chin. The lips are peeled back in the parody of a sneer.

Even in death the eyes are flatly accusing.

In the past she has seen the aftermath of violence too many times to count, but this? This finally overbalances her. She scuttles backwards instinctively from the sight of it, a moan of horror and despair escaping her.

Pure visceral emotion rises along with bile. She feels her stomach give a lurching heave and she reaches to cover her mouth—an instant reflex to avoid contaminating the scene.

It is only then she realises she is clutching something in her right hand so tightly her fingers are locked around it.

She pulls back, staring dumbly. It takes a long time for her to register she is holding a knife.

The blade catches the light and gleams darkly wicked.

It is blooded to the depths.

And so is she.

1

Tyrone wasn’t fazed by death. But as he shouldered open the door the only thing on his mind was getting the job done and getting out of there fast.

It wasn’t as though he couldn’t hack it—he could wade through gore as well as anybody. It was just something about this job was freaking him out.

He bent to put down the plastic gallon-drum of chemical enzyme cleaner onto the bathroom floor. As he did so he felt the back seams of his disposable Tyvek oversuit start to rip like they always did.

They were supposed to be one-size-fits-all but that didn’t take account of the fact he was six-foot-plus and well into his sports. He’d shot up while he was still at school and now at nineteen he’d finally grown into his shoulders. It looked good but didn’t help him find an oversuit that fit.

Still, at least they didn’t have to wear masks for this one.

Tyrone inhaled cautiously just to be sure. The only smell was a kind of sticky sweetness with only a hint of sour at the back of it, like emptying the kitchen bin in the flat for his mum only just before what was in it went bad.

That was the upside of gunshot suicides. They made so much noise they were found quick and there wasn’t time for decomp to set in. The quiet ones—where nana died in her bed and was left to seep into the mattress for weeks before her loving family even began to wonder—now they were bad news.

He straightened and took in the bathroom.

Man, this place is huge.

He glanced to where Kelly Jacks stood across the other side of the room. She was far enough away that if he stretched out his arms all the way he still wouldn’t be able to touch her.

Kelly’s suit didn’t fit any better than his. She always had to roll up the cuffs and the ends of the legs and the crinkly material ballooned round her narrow waist. On just about anyone else it would have looked like some kind of clown. Funny thing was, he thought Kelly looked great whatever she wore.

Tyrone opened his mouth ready to make a snappy remark, a joke. But something about the way she stood there, staring at the place where it all went down, had the words dying on him.

“I know that look. What’s up Kel?”

He moved across, careful not to slip on the Italian tile. The boss made them wear plastic booties for work. Tyrone thought it made him look a right prat but he’d soon found that trying to scrub God-knows-what out of the treads of his boots at the end of the day was far worse.

Small hard lumps crunched under his feet. He didn’t have to look to know they were fragments of bone and teeth. When he’d first started this job he’d been surprised at the distance stuff travelled from this kind of head wound. Man, how those suckers could bounce on a hard surface like this.

But at least the tile meant not too much was wedged into the walls. Brain sludge set like cement and scraping it off fancy wallpaper was a right pain.

Kelly raised her head but she didn’t really see him. A frown carved twin dents between her eyebrows.

She only just came up to Tyrone’s chin and he’d felt like a big brother since they’d been teamed up, even though at forty she was old enough to be his mum. Hell, the way some of the girls round home get themselves knocked up soon as they hit puberty, she could have been a grandma by now.

Not that you’d know how old Kelly was, not really, with that short choppy haircut, clear skin and the little diamond stud through the left-hand side of her nose. Amazing she looked so fit what with all she’d been through.

“What’s up?” he asked again.

Kelly shook her head, murmured, “There’s something not right here.”

Tyrone peered over her shoulder down into the blood-swilled bathtub with the exploded hole in the tiles at one end and the cast-off spray across the snazzy window blinds. There was something so careful about it made him shiver.

“Well she puts on her best gear, climbs into the empty bath with one of her old man’s rifles and blows her brains out, yeah?” he said trying to nudge Kelly out of introspection. “’Course there’s something ‘not right’ about that.”

Kelly shook her head and for once didn’t lighten up. Every now and again she could be like that—all quiet. Like she folded in on herself.

It bothered him at first. He’d worried it might be something he’d done or said, but in the end he’d accepted that prison made people go that way. He’d seen enough of it to know.

Tyrone wasn’t sure what Kelly had been inside for and it wasn’t something he would ask. But she knew stuff about the scenes they were sent to that she shouldn’t—couldn’t—know unless she’d worked right there up alongside death all close and personal.

Tyrone didn’t think he had an overactive imagination but sometimes Kelly freaked him out just a little too.

“It’s the blood,” she said now, almost to herself. “There’s something not right with the position of the blood.”

Tyrone bit back the comment about how maybe that was because blood was supposed to be worn on the insides of a body. Besides, he always tried to look beyond the mess to what was underneath it. Their job was to put things back the way they were before—to wipe out not just the mess but the memory.

He and Kelly had done jobs where they’d had to rip out skirting boards because of what had leaked behind them, scrub textured ceilings, take down light fittings. And they bantered while they worked. It was the only way to deal. But this was the first time he’d heard her so unsure about anything.

It worried him.

He looked at the bath trying to see it through those cool brandy coloured eyes. Like the bathroom the tub itself was huge—big enough for a family to stretch out in easily—with fancy whirlpool fittings and real gold taps. The tub was sunk into a raised platform by the pair of tall plain glass windows where you could just lie back and enjoy the view. No need for coy frosting when the nearest neighbour was a mile away.

So much luxury and yet this Veronica Lytton chick had still wanted to end it all in a way that was all drama and real messy, he thought. A way guaranteed to cause maximum grief to her family.

Man, that was cold.

Tyrone shook his head. This woman had the kind of up-there lifestyle he knew a black kid from Tower Hamlets was never going to live this side of legal. Maybe that’s what was making him so uneasy—the feeling that the likes of him didn’t ought to be here.

The bathroom in the housing association flat he shared with his mum and younger brother and sister was about the same size as the walk-in shower in this place. At home the pedestal sink overhung the loo cistern on one side and the half-length bath on the other. Getting fixed to go out in the mornings was a battle of wits and wills and elbows between the four of them. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have so much space, all to yourself.

Bloody miserable, if Mrs Lytton was anything to go by.

“Look, if Plod wasn’t satisfied it was suicide they would never have let this Lytton guy call us in, yeah?” he tried, aware that time was getting on and they were not.

“Hmm,” Kelly said, distracted. “Still, I’m going to give the boss a call—maybe even send him the ‘before’ pix and see what he makes of them.”

She stepped back, stripping off the blue nitrile gloves and making for the door with that loose-limbed yet compact stride. The one he always thought made her seem like a long distance runner.

“Kel—” Tyrone protested. She stopped, glanced over her shoulder as she pulled off her booties. Tyrone spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t get it. We done gunshot suicides before. What’s so different about this one?”

“I’ll be back in a couple of minutes,” she said flashing a rare smile. “Until then . . . see if you can work it out.”

2

By the time she’d got hold of Ray McCarron, sent over the pictures and waited for his opinion, twenty-five minutes had gone past. It was quite a trek back to the bathroom on the upper floor from the van parked in the courtyard to the rear of the house—the tradesman’s entrance. Nobody wanted a big white Mercedes Sprinter bearing the name McCarron Specialist Cleaning Services parked smack outside the front door.

May as well issue open invitations to gawp.

Kelly was halfway up the sweeping staircase when she heard raised voices from above. She increased her pace, jogging the last flight and hurrying along the plush corridor to the master suite. The house was cool inside but the van was parked in the sun and she’d stripped her oversuit halfway off while she talked to Ray, tying the arms around her waist. She was aware that she didn’t exactly present a picture of authority but it would have to do.

Just before the final corner she paused, took a steadying breath. Relatives and friends of the violently deceased were often emotionally erratic. Suicides had the worst effect on them. They needed to lash out at somebody and the cleaners were the people eradicating that last link with the dead.

By definition McCarron’s team moved fast and the messier the tragedy the more he charged for making all visible signs of it go away, which in itself could cause bitter resentment. What it was to offer a service that was wanted least when it was needed most.

Usually Kelly was good at spotting confrontations early enough to divert or avoid them but sometimes she was glad of Tyrone’s bulky presence on the job.

This time Tyrone was the one taking flak. He hovered awkwardly in the doorway to the suite, head ducked as if to protect his ears against the verbal blows.

Not that the man with him looked set to get physical. Kelly read anger in the tight lines of his body, yes but not that dangerous boiling rage. She willed herself to relax knowing calm reason was the best form of attack.

“Can I help you?” she called aiming her voice low and pleasant.

Both men twisted in her direction. Kelly kept her body language neutral as she closed the distance between them.

The quick relief in Tyrone’s expression would have been comical in other circumstances but Kelly’s eyes were on the newcomer.

She’d initially thought he must be a member of staff. The comfortably middle-aged housekeeper had let them in. She showed them as far as the right corridor before she fled but a property this size needed more than one domestic to keep it in shape. It would be no surprise if the Lyttons employed a major-domo—the kind who’d get shirty on his employer’s behalf for a job running behind.

The man turned. She caught the way his suit moulded across his back, the fabric draping casually back into place and she didn’t need to spot the exclusive watch and handmade shoes to know she was dealing with serious money.

Uh-oh.

He stood with feet braced apart but arms folded in an unconscious contradiction of gestures that piqued Kelly’s interest.

“You must be Mr Lytton.” She held out her hand so that good manners compelled him to uncoil long enough to respond, turning his upper body away from Tyrone as he did so. The man nodded as he treated her to a fleeting handshake. She said, “We apologise for any distress caused by the delay.”

He studied her for a moment without speaking. There was a compressed energy to him that was not simply anger but also contained more than a trace of shock. It made her suddenly very wary.

“I was just explaining ’bout the blood Kel,” Tyrone put in nervously over Lytton’s shoulder. “I didn’t see it right off but then I spotted it, yeah? The bit you said—”

“It’s all right Tyrone,” Kelly said softly, her eyes still on the client. Lytton had dark hair a little on the long side, styled but not too fancy, a strong nose and eyes the colour of old Welsh slate—dark grey with a hint of green. “I’ve just spoken to the boss. Wait in the van would you?”

Tyrone hesitated. “You sure?”

A brief smile flickered across Kelly’s face. “I’m sure.”

Reassured, he loped off along the corridor with his oversuit rustling as he went. The man watched his hasty exit with an expression that was now hard to discern. Kelly wondered about her earlier conclusions. Had she been wrong about the shock?

“Bit young for this kind of job isn’t he?” he demanded as if Kelly had a say in it. His accent was not the cut-glass she’d expected. So he probably made his money rather than inherited it. She stifled an inward groan. Sometimes with self-made men it was nice of them to take the blame for what they’d made of themselves.

“Tyrone’s a good worker,” she said. “Very competent.”

“I’ve no doubt but is this—” he jerked his head towards the doorway, “—the sort of thing a kid his age ought to see on a regular basis?”

Kelly put her head on one side. Hmm is that a social conscience I detect?

“He makes good wages. They help support his family. And some of us don’t have the luxury of being shielded from the harsh realities of life Mr Lytton,” she murmured. “Tyrone saw his first OD while he was still in primary school.”

A muscle clenched in the side of his jaw. “And that makes either of you experts at distinguishing suicide from . . . something else does it?”

Kelly felt the jolt of his words go through her but she’d taught herself not to let her emotions show outside her skin. Learned it in a hard place where any sign of weakness got you beaten or killed.

So she merely raised an eyebrow at the hesitation and didn’t pursue it. “It wasn’t our call to make,” she said instead which was the truth—as far as it went. “My boss has told us to hold fire until he’s double-checked certain disparities in the scene with the investigating officer. Until then everything needs to stay as it is. I’m sorry.”

He sighed, a thin hiss of pure exasperation. “The police told me as far as they’re concerned the case is closed. She killed herself. End of story,” he threw out. “And believe me, they looked hard.”

Not hard enough. Kelly shrugged and dug a business card out of her back pocket, held it out. The cards held the firm’s name and contact details but no personal information. “You’re welcome to speak to Mr McCarron directly if you like.”

He took the proffered card and fingered it for a moment but made no moves towards a phone. His next words surprised her. If the look on his face was anything to go by they surprised him too.

“Show me.”

She arched an eyebrow.

He gave a shrug of frustration. “You must have seen it first,” he said. “The kid—Tyrone? He mentioned something about the blood.”

Kelly hesitated. Ray insisted that they were efficient, professional, neat and respectful at all times but she’d never encountered this kind of morbid curiosity from the deceased’s nearest and dearest before.

“The blood spatter is inconsistent,” Kelly said at last, keeping her tone neutral.

“Inconsistent,” Lytton repeated flatly. “What does that mean?”

All Kelly’s instincts warned her not to get into details. She’d said too much already. If there was the slightest chance the case might be reopened she needed to stay as far away from it as possible. To say anything else was self-destructive madness.

Kelly shifted her stance. “I’m sorry but I can’t say more,” she said. “It’s not my call. Until I’ve had absolute confirmation we can’t disturb the scene.”

“Can’t or won’t?” His eyes narrowed on her face, the scrutiny uncomfortable. She’d met people before with eyes like these. Mostly the wrong sort of people in the wrong sort of places. It had rarely ended well.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, “but I’m afraid you need to speak with—”

His step forwards was enough to cut her off in mid-sentence.

“No,” he said quietly, “I believe the person I need to speak with is you.” His head tilted a little as he looked down into her face. “You suspect I had something to do with it? I wasn’t even in the country when Veronica died.”

Kelly felt the angry intensity, the urgency behind his words. It mattered to him that she believe him but she didn’t know why. She suppressed a shiver and hated it. Not the shiver itself but the reason behind it.

“We’re not accusing you of anything Mr Lytton,” she said carefully. She was suddenly aware that she was alone with the guy in part of a house big enough so that a scream from one wing could hardly be heard in another. And she’d stupidly sent her back-up well out of earshot in a misguided attempt to protect him.

He stepped back abruptly and Kelly tensed in automatic response but he swung away from her, staring down into a pit of his own making.

“I did not kill my wife,” he said quietly. “I had no desire to do so and no need.”

He glanced back at Kelly’s expressionless face but she gave him nothing in return. He gave a brief nod as if he’d expected that and turned away.

She let him make it almost to the doorway then said, “How much do you know about high-velocity gunshot wounds?”

He turned back, stuffed his hands casually into the pockets of those well cut trousers.

“I hunt,” he said shortly. “Mate of mine has to cull the local deer population every now and again or they strip his plantation. He doesn’t always choose his marksmen . . . wisely. So yes, I’ve seen what the odd wild shot can do.”

Kelly recalled, perhaps too late, that it was one of the man’s own hunting rifles his wife had apparently chosen for her demise. Or someone else had chosen for her.

Damn. Ah well too late now.

“Then you’ll know there’s always blowback spatter from the entry wound and forward spatter—projected spray and debris—from the exit.” Her voice matched his own, cool and dispassionate.

“But?”

She hesitated again. Ah well, in for a penny.

“You’d better see for yourself,” she said and moved over to the bathtub.

He joined her with only fractional reluctance. Kelly wondered if she thought more or less of him for that.

Side by side they stared down into the carnage left by violent death, smeared by the paramedics and the forensics teams that followed. What remained was somehow damaged, dirty and sad.

“How can you see anything inconsistent through all that?”

“Because I know what to look for.” She crouched careful not to touch anything and used a pen as a pointer. “Void patterns in the spatter confirm the position of the . . . of your wife at the time of the shooting,” she said choosing her words with great care.

“You can refer to Veronica as ‘the victim’. The police certainly did damn well often enough,” he said tightly. “I won’t bite.”

Kelly gave a faint smile, recognising the grim humour for what it was. “You can see here the back spatter from the entry wound. It’s very fine, almost a mist, travelling in the opposite direction to the bullet.”

“And you can tell that how, exactly?”

Kelly rose, reached for her camera and flicked through the stored images. “Look at this one,” she said. “You can see it’s teardrop-shaped—rounded at one end and with a streak at the other. The streak always points in the direction of travel. See?”

She zoomed in and tilted the camera screen towards him without thinking. He stepped in close to look and Kelly suddenly felt crowded, hot, trapped. Her fight or flight response tried to kick in. She had to stamp on it firmly before she either belted him or ran. Or both.

“So, the opposite of something like a comet tail?”

“Exactly. As the droplet hits a hard surface the back edge holds its form while the front edge breaks into what looks like a tail. It’s how we can fix the directionality of the spatter.”

Lytton straightened without apparently realising how near he’d been to serious injury. He was frowning.

“And you think there’s some problem with that directionality?”

“It’s possible.”

“Look just spit it out will you?”

Kelly took a breath and said in her best evidence-giving voice, “I observed an additional void pattern on the side of the bathtub in this area here.”

Lytton leaned over the bath holding his tie flat to his chest with one hand to prevent it dangling.

“I don’t see this void you’re talking about.”

“You won’t,” Kelly said. “It would appear to have been filled in.”

“Filled in.” Again that dead flat sceptical delivery. Again the command: “Show me.”

Kelly indicated with the pen. His face stayed expressionless.

“I can’t see any difference.”

“It appears correct at first glance but when you look closer you can see the directionality is actually totally opposite,” she allowed. “My guess would be someone dipped into the spilt blood and flicked it across the void to cover it. If it wasn’t for the difficulty of flicking it upwards instead of down I might not have spotted it.”

For maybe ten long seconds he said nothing. Then he stepped back as if to distance himself from her.

“That’s it?” he demanded. “That’s the reason you’ve put this whole job on hold? A tiny patch of blood sprayed so fine you can hardly make it out with the naked eye, when I’ve had half of Thames Valley and the Met crawling all over this place for days? And that’s all you have?”

His hands twitched in a gesture of frustration or despair. Kelly refused to cringe in the face of his anger. She kept her head up, aware she came barely to his chin.

“Once this is gone it’s gone,” she said indicating the bloodied bathtub. “I just need to be absolutely sure I’m doing the right thing.”

Lytton snorted. “Yeah of course you do.” He passed a tired hand across his face. “I . . . apologise. I’m sure you can appreciate that I’m anxious to get this over with—try to put it behind me.”

“Of course. Just as I’m sure you can appreciate that we have to work strictly by the book.”

He tensed, mouth flattening. For a moment she saw the swim of mixed emotions in his face, his eyes. Instead of the sorrow she’d been expecting there was only anger and confusion and a fleeting trace of something Kelly recognised as guilt.

Whatever else had been part of Veronica Lytton’s life she considered, that didn’t include a happy marriage.

She forced a smile to soften the blow and put a placating hand on his arm. “I’m very sorry for your loss Mr Lytton but I can’t ignore what the evidence is telling me.”

Lytton withdrew his arm fast, almost jerky as if he felt tainted by her touch. He was at the doorway before he delivered his Parthian shot with unknowing but deadly accuracy:

“This evidence you set such store by—suppose what it’s telling you is wrong?”