Blood Evidence Read online

  “Julius and… Will, wasn’t it,” he says, almost to himself as he peers at the book close in to his face.

  “That’s right,” I say encouragingly. I’m trying to be nice, but this guy is really fucking slow. I don’t think he should be running a business anymore, honestly. At least not front of house.

  He makes a mark in the book and then puts it back, nodding. From beside it he pulls out a familiar key.

  We’re almost all the way to the foot of the stairs before his voice interrupts us.

  “Which of you is the lady?” he asks.

  “I’m sorry?” I turn, giving him a questioning look. I didn’t really just hear that, did I…?

  “I’m just curious which of you chaps is the, well, chap, and which is the lady,” he says. I’m past offended and working my way towards something else when he fixes us both with a twinkling pair of eyes. “So that I know which one of you is always right. And which to bring the bill to.”

  “I’m always right,” Will speaks up.

  Which I’m glad of, because I’m pretty sure I have redefined the dictionary definition of speechless.

  Richard chuckles to himself and turns away. There’s old-fashioned, and then there’s him.

  We head up the stairs, to the same room we stayed in just a couple of nights ago. At the door, I give Will a searching gaze, trying to figure out without asking if he saw that exchange the way I did.

  “What?” he says, looking me back directly in the face. “I didn’t want to be the one to get the bill.”

  I can’t help a chuckle escaping my lips as I unlock the door.

  “I think our first stop should be that guest book,” Will says.

  I close the door carefully behind him to stop our voices from carrying so much. “You want to swipe it?”

  “I won’t take it,” he says. “That would be too suspicious. But I’ll take some photos of the information so we can contact the other guests.”

  “You know this is illegal and unethical as all fuck, right?” I grin.

  “Oh, yes.” Will nods seriously.

  I laugh out loud and throw my bag down on the bed. “Alright. You do the deed, I’ll stand watch. I’ll yell something about a leak in the ceiling if I see anyone coming.”

  “Works for me,” Will says, throwing his bag down and getting his phone out. He sets up the camera with a few taps, then nods at me.

  I watch him go down the stairs. He scratches his head before descending, then again when pausing at the bottom to look around. There’s no sign of Richard. From my vantage point I can see everything except the entrance to the bar. Will does the sensible thing and orients himself in that direction as he pulls the book out from its cubbyhole.

  There’s something just wild about watching Will break the law. He’s such a straight-laced kind of guy. He takes the law seriously. I mean, as we all do. But I doubt he’s ever so much as shoplifted a chocolate bar hidden on the inside of his school blazer in order to impress his friends as a pre-teen.

  If the police ask, that’s not a real-life fucking example.

  It makes my fingers and toes tingle to watch him casually but meticulously flip to the relevant pages and photograph them. By the time he puts the book back, having got away with the whole thing, I want to whoop in celebration.

  Of course, that would be inappropriate and might indeed draw direct attention to our misdeeds, so I don’t.

  “Here we go,” he says, coming back into our room and flipping through the shots on his phone. “I have everyone’s details. It looks like a few of them are coming back to check in again anyway. Just like us.”

  “Just like us,” I say.

  Will narrows his eyes and looks at me. “Wait a second,” he says. “We still have just the one bed. Why didn’t you ask for two rooms?”

  “They were booked again already,” I say, shrugging. “Besides, we would have had to pay more.”

  None of that is true. I actually didn’t even consider for a moment the possibility of getting another room. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me. That’s probably why I lie – I’m too flustered to consider what the implications of the truth are, and whether I should tell it.

  “It looks like we’re the first to check in,” Will presses on, looking down at his phone and missing the probable tell-tale expression on my face. “The older couple, Andrew and Miranda Fox, aren’t coming back. We could call them?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I say, whisking the phone out of his hands and copying the number down into my own. Anything to cover the confusion that hit me a minute ago.

  Within a short call – Andrew answers the phone – I have them agreeing to meet us in an hour’s time. They insist that we come to their flat, in the centre of Sevenoaks, even though I suggest somewhere public.

  Most people would rather meet you at a coffee shop or on a park bench, in public, where you can’t turn out to be a serial killer. Which has me wondering what they want to keep private.

  “So, Miranda,” I say, taking the lead now that we’re all settled in with our teas and coffees. “How long have you two been having an affair?”

  Andrew almost chokes on his tea.

  We’re sitting in a small but neatly appointed living room, in the flat which I can see at a glance belongs to Andrew alone. Miranda is trying to look like she fits in, but her coat is on the back of her armchair – not on a peg in the hall. Not to mention the nervous little shuffling she keeps doing in her seat.

  All of these things and more – body language, furniture, clothing – tell me that they aren’t really married. But when they ask, I tell them the one thing that really let them down.

  “How did you know?”

  “Your wedding rings don’t match.”

  Andrew and Miranda both look at their hands reflexively, and I see guilt etched across both of their faces as they exchange a glance.

  “So, how long?”

  Miranda sighs. She seems to have given in to the fact that we know the truth, even if Andrew is still staring stupidly at his hand. “A year, give or take,” she says. “Andrew’s wife is at work. We booked the hotel so we could get some time alone together.”

  “I took the afternoon off,” Andrew says, still staring at that same spot. “Told work it was an emergency. Couldn’t meet you after Marie finishes or she’d find out.”

  “And your husband, Mrs…?” Will asks. There’s a hard edge to his voice. I remember how he reacted to the idea of me ‘cheating’ on him in our fake relationship sting in the last case. He isn’t hiding his distaste very well.

  “Eccles,” she provides. “Miranda Eccles. My husband is working, too. He doesn’t… I don’t think he suspects anything.”

  If we’re waiting for an explanation of how horrible their spouses are, or how loveless their marriages, we clearly aren’t going to get one.

  “So, you had plenty to hide last weekend,” I say. I flip open a notebook from my pocket and make a note of her real name.

  In truth, I don’t need the notebook. I normally remember everything fine. But then I discovered that people tend to take you more seriously if you’re writing down every word they say.

  “Are you investigating this?” Andrew cuts in.

  “Yes,” I say, without missing a beat. He doesn’t need to know that we haven’t been hired, and that it’s only professional curiosity.

  “But the detective – Lightfield, or something – he said the man had confessed,” Andrew protests.

  “Fairlight,” I say. “We’re just looking for additional evidence. Anything to back up his story. Even anything that seems to contradict it.”

  I try to ignore the glance Will sends me. We didn’t discuss this ahead of time, but I don’t think that it’s wise for us to tell people we think that the confession was false. No need to raise alarm right away – or make them think that we suspect them.

  Andrew opens his mouth to argue with us, but Miranda reaches over and lays a hand on top of his. He quiets down.


  “What do you need to know?” she asks, with the air of a woman looking to get something unpleasant done with as soon as possible.

  “Let’s start at the bar,” I say, my pen hovering above the paper. “What time did you get there?”

  “We checked in just after five,” Andrew says. “I went straight from work. I suppose we went up to the room, unpacked a bit, looked around… we were in the bar by probably six.”

  I make a note of this. “And you were still there when we came in around nine. So that was three hours of drinking, was it?”

  “We ate first,” Miranda cuts in. She seems eager to dispel any rumour of improper behaviour despite the fact of their affair. “I had a couple of white wines. We just like to sit and talk.”

  “Did you leave and return at any time?” I ask.

  “No, we moved seats from a table near the doors to sitting at the bar,” Miranda says. “It was too loud next to the speakers. We stayed until about eleven, then went up to our room.”

  “And how many hours after that did you go to sleep?” I ask.

  When there is no reply, I look up from my pad. Miranda and Andrew are speechless, regarding me with open mouths. I raise my eyebrows at them. It’s not as though we don’t all know full well what they were there for.

  “It was about two in the morning, last time I checked the clock,” Andrew managed. “Two-fifteen, or something like that.”

  “Now, the obvious,” I say. “Did you see or hear anything suspicious at all? Starting from the moment of your check-in to the hotel.”

  They both look down at the floor, then up at the ceiling, searching their memories. “I just saw that Johnny dancing with… Isabelle, wasn’t it?” Miranda says, giving a visible shudder at the thought of the victim. “They were all over each other. We had a bit of a giggle about it.”

  “I wasn’t really looking around,” Andrew says, giving Miranda’s hand a squeeze. “I had all I needed to look at right in front of me.”

  I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “And that night?”

  “There was quite a bit of noise, to be honest,” Miranda says. “We could hear the music in our room, just faintly. And people coming and going in the corridor, closing doors.”

  “I heard the door next to us close just before I fell asleep,” Andrew adds. “I remember thinking it was a bit late to be just coming in. The music had stopped at about the same time, so I guessed the party was over.”

  I consult my notes. Johnny was in the room next to them. Very interesting.

  “They kept playing the same song, didn’t they?” Miranda says, looking at Andrew. “That was the other funny thing about that night. We commented on how odd it was. At least twice. And it was the same one that blared out of the speakers in the morning, when we all came down and saw…”

  She cut herself off, that little shudder running through her again.

  “What was that song?” Will asks. “I didn’t recognise it.”

  I turn incredulous eyes on him.

  “‘Blue Monday’,” Miranda says, with a half-laugh. “I didn’t realise we were getting that old already.”

  “You’re not,” I assure her. “My colleague simply lives under a rock.”

  Will splutters and turns red, shaking his head. No amount of embarrassment is going to make me let him off the hook for this one. We really need to work on his pop culture knowledge. Getting him out of the house once in a while would probably help.

  “I believe that’s everything we need to know for now,” I say, flipping my notebook closed. “I won’t bother to ask if you both stayed in bed all night. I’m sure you would both vouch for each other even if you had done something suspicious.”

  Miranda looks mildly offended, but neither of them argue with us.

  “We’ll be in touch again if we need anything more,” Will says, getting to his feet at the same time as I do.

  “We really didn’t see anything,” Andrew insists. He follows after us as we move to the door, though I suspect it is in an effort to ensure that we actually leave rather than out of any kind of politeness.

  Fourteen – Will

  Another stomach-churning ride back to the hotel, and I was starting to remember why I preferred taking taxis.

  I was thankful at least to dismount in the gravel. It was starting to take less time for me to stop shaking after I got off, but not by much.

  “Who’s next?” Ram asked, sweeping his hair back from his forehead in a gesture that, annoyingly, seemed to make it fall back perfectly into place.

  “Well,” I said, grabbing my phone out of my pocket and checking the photos I had taken. “Some of our fellow guests should be checking back in. They might be here already. We can go knock.”

  “Good idea,” Ram agreed, pushing through the entrance doors and lifting a silent hand in greeting to Beverley as she popped up to see who had come in.

  We went up to our room, dropped off our helmets, and Ram took out his notebook.

  “Who are we doing next?”

  “Mike and Rosie. Should be in room three. Middle of the hall on the right side, as we step out of our room.”

  Ram groaned. “Oh, good. More uncomfortable romance.”

  I smirked at him. It was fun to find a situation that made him uncomfortable. Far too often, it was me who was on the receiving end. “What’s wrong with romance?”

  “Sickening,” Ram commented. “And not in the good way. Besides, I’m definitely getting a creepy vibe from Mike.”

  “Don’t say that too loud, I don’t know how thick the walls are,” I cautioned. “Let’s see your notes so far.”

  I took the pad from Ram’s outstretched hand, and squinted at the hieroglyphics on the page. I could tell that something was written there, and I could make out one or two letters, but the rest did not seem to be in the Roman alphabet at all.

  “What does this even say?” I asked.

  Ram scowled. “It’s not that hard to read.”

  “Ram, it looks like this was written by a dyslexic monkey with hand-eye coordination problems,” I said. I looked up and considered his expression, and added: “No offence.”

  Ram blinked.

  “I’ll write from now on,” I said. “You always prefer taking the lead with the questions, anyway.”

  “You’re just trying to find a way to make yourself feel useful,” Ram scoffed, and turned away. Clearly, his ego was salved by this thought.

  I almost replied the thought that went through my brain at his words: always. But I snapped my mouth shut, and simply followed him out into the hall to knock on door number three.

  “Yes?” The voice that answered us was cautious and hesitant.

  “Mike, isn’t it?” I called out. I figured my voice was probably a little more of a welcoming one than Ram’s. He tries.

  “What do you want?”

  I cleared my throat. “Can we speak properly? Not through a door?”

  There were a couple of footsteps, and then the door cracked open just wide enough to allow Mike to show his face. “What do you want?” he repeated.

  “To ask a few questions,” I said. “We’re just cleaning things up a bit, seeing if we can bring together any more evidence to help the police with their case.”

  He looked at us with clear suspicion. He moved slightly, as if preparing to close the door. “We’ve told them everything we know already.”

  “There might be something they forgot to ask,” I tried.

  Mike shook his head and stepped back, swinging the door shut. Before it could close, Ram stepped forward and wedged his boot between it and the frame.

  “Or, if you’d rather,” he said, pleasantly. “We can always go to the police and tell them a few things that we might have found out independently. Things that might not reflect so well on those staying at the hotel on the night of the murder.”

  Ram and Mike stared each other down for a few moments. I felt out of the loop.

  “Fine,” Mike muttered at last, stepping aside an
d moving back inside his room.

  The furnishings were similar to ours, down to the double bed and the patterned quilt cover which I now realised must have been a deliberate choice. On it, holding her knees to her chest as if scared of us, was Rosie.

  “Let’s all take a seat, shall we?” Ram suggested. He gestured to me to take the single chair by the window, while he perched on the windowsill itself. Mike sat down next to Rosie on the bedspread. She swung round to face us, putting her feet down on the floor.

  I couldn’t help but admire her long, slim legs. She was wearing white denim shorts, which made them look all the longer. She was what someone might call willowy.

  “So, how old are you exactly, Rosie?” Ram asked, flicking a piece of imaginary fluff off the knee of his jeans. “Fifteen? Fourteen?”

  “She’s sixteen in two months,” Mike protested roughly. “It’s hardly that bad.”

  “Underage is underage, Michael,” Ram said casually, leaning back against the glass. I gave it a quick glance. I hoped the old wooden frame wasn’t rotten.

  “Two months and then we’re free to do as we like,” Mike argued.

  “Two months won’t mean a thing to the judge.”

  Mike leapt to his feet. “What exactly do you want from us?” he demanded. “I’m not going to be blackmailed by some jumped-up private eye.”

  Ram raised an eyebrow coolly. “I probably won’t need to. I’d imagine the police have run Rosie’s name through a database and figured out how old she is already. They’re just dealing with the small matter of a murder before getting round to you.”

  Mike made a strangled noise, and looked across the room to where their bags sat on a shelf.

  “I wouldn’t bother running,” I put in. “They’ll find you the second you use your credit card, or your phone. Or anything, really.”

  “I used a false name,” Rosie said quietly. “I have a fake ID.”

  Ram smiled at her. “I imagined you would,” he said. “Which means that if Mike sits down and answers our questions like a good boy, they won’t need to find out a thing.”