Blood Evidence Read online

  Ram leaned forward in his chair towards her. “We have to be open with you about how it looks, Miss Walters. You say he handed himself in to police, but then was gone by the time you arrived to look for him. It does seem as though your attentions might not be wanted.”

  “Fine,” Miss Walters said, undergoing a valiant effort to pull herself together. “It may be that things are as you say. Maybe he’s fallen out of love with me and doesn’t know how to say it. But I still need you to find him.”

  “And what if he doesn’t want to talk to you, even when we do find him?” Ram pressed.

  “Then at least I’ll know,” Miss Walters said. She took a deep breath, dabbed at her eyes again, and drew an envelope out of a small black handbag. “I’m willing to pay your hiring fee upfront.”

  She threw the envelope, which bulged promisingly, onto the coffee table. Ram and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. I took the envelope, counted it, and nodded. It was all there.

  “So long as you understand the risk of an unhappy ending, Miss Walters,” Ram said.

  “Adelaide, please,” she said. “We’re not stuck in Victorian England.”

  Ram’s mouth quirked at the edges. I could tell he was trying not to smile. Why did this woman have to be so charming as well as beautiful? That simply wasn’t fair.

  “So, take us through everything from the beginning. In as much detail as you can, please, Adelaide,” he said.

  She took another deep breath, looked up at the right-hand corner of our ceiling, and began.

  “Ray went out for the night with his friends. They have these… they call them ‘boys’ nights’. No girlfriends or wives allowed. Normally I go out with my friends at the same time, you know, so we can both make a night of it. But it was a weeknight and I didn’t feel up to it, so I stayed at home.

  “Normally I expect him back late – past midnight, certainly. He’ll come back happy, a bit drunk, and he’ll stumble into bed, and the next morning I’ll hear about all the fun they had. Now and then he’ll be a bit later. They’ll have got into something – ended up walking around with a kebab, or gone back to someone’s house for more drinks. Anyway, I try not to worry too much. If he doesn’t get home or get in touch, I tell myself he’s just letting loose and he’ll be fine.”

  Adelaide paused, and looked down at her manicured hands. She took a few tries, opening and closing her mouth soundlessly, before continuing. Her voice was strained. “I thought it was just another of those times. I told myself I was being silly, that he was allowed to go out and have fun and that he was with his friends. They would look after him.

  “When he didn’t arrive home the next morning, I called him, but it went straight to his recorded message. By lunchtime I was worried. Really worried, I mean. I found Ray’s best friend’s number in my phone and called him. He was surprised to hear from me. Especially to hear about the night out they’d supposedly been on the night before.”

  “He hadn’t been invited?” I asked.

  “There hadn’t been a night out,” Adelaide clarified. “Once I told him how worried I was, he did the rounds, called everyone he knew. I called Ray’s work, spoke to a number of his colleagues. Then his parents, his brother – everyone I could think of. By the end of the day, I realised he hadn’t been out drinking at all. It had all been a lie.

  “My thoughts obviously went to the next conclusion: that he was having an affair. He must have been with another woman.”

  “Did you discover anything that made you think this was the case?” Ram asked.

  “No,” she sighed. “I dug as much as I could. I know it’s only been a week, but I haven’t been at work. I’ve hardly slept. I’ve been calling everyone I could think of, getting others to pitch in as well. I walked around, watched his work, his parents’ house, everything. No one saw anything suspicious, heard him talking about anything. I don’t believe he was having an affair.

  “His car is still in our garage. His clothes are in our wardrobe. The police said his cards hadn’t been used, and he didn’t take much money with him. His laptop is still at home. Everything. There are things he would come back home for if he had just decided to live somewhere else, you know?”

  I looked up from my notes. “Tell us about Kent,” I said.

  Adelaide studied her fist clutched around a tissue, then our floor, as if she was searching for something there. “I don’t know what there is to tell,” she said. “As far as I know, he’s never even been to Kent before. When the police said he’d called and said he was there, I thought it was a joke. A teenager playing a prank. But then they said he’d formally identified himself and presented them with proof of his identity.”

  I turned this over in my mind. “What kind of proof?”

  “He showed them his driving license. The picture matched his face, so they called me to tell me that he’d been taken off the missing persons list.”

  “Do you have a picture of him?” Ram asked.

  Adelaide nodded, scrambling to unlock her phone. “I’ll send some over to your email.”

  “As recent as possible, please,” Ram told her. “A clear shot of his face, and one of his whole body as well, if you can.”

  She sniffed, nodding as she scrolled through her gallery to pick out the right shots.

  “We could do with the details of the police officers you’ve spoken to, as well,” I said. “And Ray’s phone number so that we can try and reach him ourselves.”

  “I’ll send you everything,” she confirmed, starting to type on the phone’s screen.

  I exchanged a glance with Ram, and nodded at him.

  “That’s all we need for now,” he said, getting up from his chair. “We’ll begin our investigations right away and update you whenever we learn anything new.”

  Adelaide stood, tucking her phone back into her handbag and gracefully clasping it in front of her. “Thank you,” she said, making sure that her eyes fell on both of us in turn. I nodded in response.

  Ram walked her to the door. Just before she reached it, she turned and looked at us both again. “Bring Ray home to me,” she said. “Please. I know he wants to come home. Just find him.”

  Then she turned, and was gone down the hallway.

  3 – Ram

  Cracking on with a case is always good exercise. For the mind first, for the body later. Well, I mean, I’d rather head off down to Kent and start knocking on doors. But Will has a certain process, and since it’s brought us good results on more than one occasion, I’ve come to respect it.

  We start with the questions that we need to answer. Then we answer them, slowly and methodically. It’s simple, really. But actually getting the answers is, more often than not, far from straightforward.

  “First thoughts?” Will says.

  “Well, I can only see a few possibilities,” I say, sitting next to him on the sofa and hooking one of my legs over the arm. “He’s left her for another woman. He’s left her because he doesn’t want to marry her and he’s a coward. He’s having a mental breakdown. Or someone’s threatened him into getting the hell out of Dodge.”

  Will ponders it for a few seconds, his head tilted on one side like a bird. Scrawny neck and all. “I can’t think of anything else either. I mean, there could be other mental-related possibilities. Like schizophrenia or manic depression or early-onset dementia or-”

  “Or other mental illnesses, yes,” I say, cutting him off before he goes into one of his lists. “So we’re agreed then. Best case scenario for Adelaide is either mental issues or threats, because those we can maybe work with.”

  “We?” Will frowns. “We aren’t going to work with anything. We just find him. That’s it. The rest is up to her.”

  “You’re normally so civic-minded,” I sigh. I’m curious. She was a pretty attractive woman. He didn’t fall for her charms? “I would have thought I would be the one restraining you, not the other way around.”

  He gives me an odd look. “What do you mean?”

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p; “Well, I’m not her target market, you know? And I would hazard a guess that she’s managed to convince a lot of men to be at her beck and call.”

  Will grunts. “If you’re talking about her looks, you went fairly starry-eyed yourself.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I protest.

  Will makes a face which I presume is supposed to resemble mine. “Oh, Adelaide, however can we be at thine service?” he says, in a mockingly sweet tone.

  I reach over and throw a cushion at him. Given the small distance between us, it does not make a for very impressive hit, but at least it lands on target.

  “I was just trying to do Customer Service Face. You know, convince her to hire us. Anyway, it worked.”

  Will picks up the envelope of cash from the table and checks it again. “You know she’s put a full month’s retainer in here?”

  “Guess we’d better solve it in a month then,” I say, then give him a grin. “Or stretch it out to two if she seems interested in paying again.”

  “You’re the worst,” Will says. “Look, we’d better get started. I’m going to dig into Ray’s social media profiles. How about you?”

  “I’m taking a shower,” I say. “After that I’ll call the police, speak to whoever was on the case. Get their view on it. But first, definitely shower.”

  “Excellent. I do tend to work better in environments that aren’t quite so… odorous.”

  I regret throwing the cushion at him earlier. It means I now have no weapons at hand.

  I head for my bathroom, thinking over the morning’s events. I kind of only have myself to blame, but getting stuck in the Stepford house was less than ideal.

  I can’t help but go over it all again in my head as I lather up the soap, washing off last night’s disgrace. I had told myself this wasn’t going to happen anymore. Will and I had a serious talk – or, Will had a serious talk which I was forced to listen to – after we caught the Highgate Strangler.

  He lectured me for a long time about the dangers of anonymous sex, and how it wasn’t really ever anonymous after all, and all the people I’d hurt with my loose ways. It was the kind of conversation that made me roll my eyes so much my skull hurt. Still, he’d had some good points.

  They were points that I had never really addressed in myself. He was right about the risk. There was a guy in the papers a few years back who deliberately infected men with HIV by piercing his condoms with a pin. That could have happened to me any number of times since we came back from San Francisco.

  Of course, it all comes back to San Francisco.

  To the one thing I’ve been trying so hard to forget.

  But there’s only so long I can hide from the guilt and forget who I am by burying myself in someone else. Especially when I don’t even particularly get to know who that someone else is. And there’s only so long I can live like this before it does some kind of harm that I can’t get back from.

  I want to make connections. I do. I want to have that thing with someone, that magical excitement of the new that you get when you start dating for the first time. It’s not like I haven’t dated before. I remember what it was like.

  And yet, I never seem to meet anyone that feels like they could improve my life. Sometimes I think I have everything I need already.

  Except for the guilt burning a hole right through me every time I’m motionless long enough for my thoughts to drift back to it.

  I push the shower tap angrily, switching it right over to the cold side, as far as it will go. I gasp out loud as the cold water hits me, freezing my head immediately. There. That should do it. There’s nothing like a little numbness to stop you from dwelling on the things you shouldn’t.

  And if the face of a dead man, thousands of miles away, floats before my eyes, then another jet of freezing water will remove it.

  Four – Will

  “I think we should go down to this hotel,” I said.

  “In Kent?” Ram said, screwing up his face.

  “It’s not even that far away,” I said, pointing to the map I had open on my laptop screen. “An hour by train to the nearest station, and then we can just get a taxi to the hotel.”

  “What kind of hotel is it?” Ram asked. I could hear the doubt in his voice. Straight away, I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

  I mentally sighed, trying to think of a way to pitch it that he wouldn’t want to run a mile from. “It’s a country house,” I said. “The owners converted it into a hotel for financial reasons. It’s got a bit of history. Apparently, Charles Dickens used to stay there.”

  Ram rolled his eyes. “Is that supposed to impress us? We live in London. I’ve drunk in the same pubs as Charles Dickens so many times I ought to be sprouting Victorian novels every time I take piss.”

  He really does have a way of setting up a mental image.

  “It’s quite small, only six rooms,” I pressed on. “They do weddings from time to time, but I checked and this weekend is free. There’s a small bar and restaurant, and the grounds are quite large – lots of nature and scenery, and some animals.”

  “How rustic,” Ram said. I could hear the scorn in his voice. “Well, if they only have six rooms we’ll struggle to get booked in, I imagine. Never mind.”

  “Except,” I said, mentally steeling myself. “I managed to book a room this morning.”

  Ram stared at me.

  “Well, you were in the shower,” I said. “I had to make the decision on my own. I called and there was only one room left.”

  I waited while Ram thought it over. I could see everything ticking over in his mind.

  “So we’re sharing a room?” he said.

  Ah, there it was. “Yes,” I admitted. “Look, there wasn’t any other option. They’re fully booked otherwise.”

  “And dare I ask about the bed situation?”

  “It’s a double. But it’s a hotel, so it’s likely just two single beds pushed together. We can separate them and have our own space.”

  Ram gave me a dubious look. “You better not snore,” he said.

  I returned his gaze with mock offense. “I don’t snore,” I said. “I’m Korean.”

  “Riiiight.”

  I obviously wasn’t convincing anyone.

  To be honest, it had been a long time since I had slept in the same room as someone else. It wasn’t as though I had anyone to tell me whether I snored or not.

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. “Anyway, there’s no time to debate it now. We’ve got to go. Check-in has already started, and I want to be there before tonight.”

  Ram’s face was not a pretty picture. I knew he was trying to come up with an excuse not to go. The fact that he couldn’t think of one was only putting him in a worse mood.

  Finally, he muttered something under his breath and went to go pack. I didn’t feel brave enough to ask what he had said. Probably something I wouldn’t find very flattering.

  Within the space of an hour, I’d managed to wrangle him – plus a big duffel bag for each of us – onto a train leaving London. He stared miserably out of the window the whole journey, glaring at Canary Wharf and the Shard as we passed them. As if it was their fault that he was leaving the city.

  I took advantage of the long journey and took my laptop out, setting it up on the small table between our two seats. The WiFi on the train was a godsend. I went through my emails, deleting a large amount of junk and spam.

  There was one I’d been avoiding for a while. An email from my publisher. I opened it at last, knowing I couldn’t put it off for too long.

  Hi B.J.,

  I’ve attached your royalty statement for the previous month here. Payment will be sent to your account as per normal schedule.

  We need to push you again on the deadline for book four. As you can see, we’re finally seeing an upswing in sales across the series. We don’t want to let this momentum drop – our marketing efforts are only effective if you’re putting out new material on a regular basis. We’re suggesting a deadline for the draf
t manuscript of the end of this month. Please confirm if you can make this.

  I sighed, looking out of the window with my own melancholy gaze. Getting it done by the end of the month… it would be a struggle. Everything moved so fast in this world. Since bookings for Serial Investigations London had gone up after our mention in the press, I hadn’t had much spare time to write.

  I wasn’t even halfway through the next B.J. Wong novel, and now here we were going off to Kent. Unless this was a very short case indeed, the outlook wasn’t good. I closed the email, figuring I could put it off for at least one more day.

  I typed out a few scenes as we moved into the countryside, seeing more fields between the clustering of houses. The stations grew smaller and more isolated, the platforms less populated.

  “We will shortly be arriving at Sevenoaks,” the robotic PA told me.

  I scrambled to put my laptop back into its case and gather my bags. I was wondering why Ram wasn’t getting his things together when I realised he was asleep, his head lolling to the side against the window.

  “Wake up,” I told him, shaking him gently.

  He opened his eyes, squinting at me with a look of accusation.

  “This is our stop,” I explained.

  Ram grunted, and rubbed a hand over his face. “Fine,” he said. He stood and stretched, his hands high above his head in the aisle. The bottom of his black t-shirt rode up, exposing a small sliver of skin above the top of his jeans. I looked away.

  The train slid to a stop, and Ram gracefully swayed in time with the lurching motion. I waited until it was over to stand up and move towards the door. We emerged onto the platform, the chilly air feeling refreshing after the stifled environment of the train.

  “Where now?” Ram asked, looking in both directions.

  “Car park,” I said, nodding towards a sign indicating the right way to go. “We’ll pick up a taxi there.”

  We filed along behind a surprising number of people. It must have been a popular commuter town. By the time we reached the car park, the last waiting taxi was just pulling away. Ram swore colourfully and leaned up against the wall, throwing his bag to the floor.