Stephen Booth - The Devil’s Edge

A determined and ruthless assailant knew to take advantage of that. They would aim to get in quick and close down the resistance. It was only if you hesitated that things began to go wrong. Amateurs often messed things up at that point. They were reluctant to use violence except as a last resort, and tried to control the situation without it.

But these weren’t amateurs. They had hit hard and fast, shown no mercy and no hesitation. They had given their victims no time to react or raise the alarm, no chance of offering the slightest resistance.

‘The children,’ said Hitchens. ‘Obviously, once we were on the scene, one of our main concerns was for the children. The Barrons have a son and two daughters. The oldest, Melissa, is aged thirteen. At the time of the attack, they were all in their separate bedrooms upstairs. Valley View is a large property, and the bedrooms are in another part of the house, well away from the kitchen and sitting room where the assaults on their parents took place. One of the children told Social Services that it was quite normal for them to call their parents on their mobile phones rather than go downstairs to speak to them.’

A small, restless mutter went through the gathered officers, many of them parents themselves. They were constantly bombarded with advice on talking to their children, monitoring their activities, spending quality time together. Here was a family that seemed to spend its time in separate parts of the house, children isolated from their parents. There was a danger of losing sympathy for these victims.

The DI tried to override the wave of mutterings.

‘In any case,’ he said, ‘the youngest child, Fay, was already asleep, while the two oldest, Melissa and Joshua, were engaged in activities that would have drowned out any extraneous noise. An iPod and a computer game respectively. It seems the boy also had the TV on. As a result, they weren’t even aware of what had happened to their parents until the FOAs and paramedics arrived.’

This was taking insulation from the real world to extremes, Cooper thought. Your mother was killed and your father seriously injured in a violent assault right there in your own house, and you were unaware of it. At least one of the children might have been in some fantasy world they preferred to the real one. When the emergency services arrived at the house, it would have seemed like an extension of the fantasy, a TV drama brought right into the home. Cooper wondered how the children had reacted when they discovered what had happened to their parents. It was a shocking way for reality to intrude. The worst possible way. How long would it take for it to sink in for these kids?

‘Because the children didn’t hear much,’ said Hitchens, ‘we can’t be sure how long the offenders spent inside the house. The only thing we can be fairly confident about is that they didn’t go upstairs. In the downstairs rooms we can find no fingerprints that don’t belong to family members. It’s almost certain they wore gloves. If not, they were incredibly careful. And this was never planned as a slow, careful operation. They went in fast, and we can assume that they wanted to get out fast, too. So they wouldn’t have wanted to be worrying about leaving prints or DNA traces.’

‘What is missing?’

‘Mrs Barron’s purse, which was in her bag, and her mobile phone – which might have been left on a table, either in the kitchen or the sitting room, we’re not sure.’

‘It’s not much of a haul for such a risky enterprise.’

‘You can say that again. A couple of hundred pounds at most. They seem to have made no attempt to take anything else – neither jewellery or watches from their victims, nor anything kept in a drawer or cupboard. There was very little disturbance, not of the kind you might expect in a rapid search of the premises.’

That was an understatement, too. Cooper remembered the pristine state of the rooms at Valley View. They hardly looked as though they were lived in, let alone just been the scene of a burglary. He would have expected belongings scattered around, furniture overturned, the contents of drawers tipped out. But none of that was evident. It was what had made the blood, and the body of Zoe Barron, seem so incongruous.

‘Is there a safe somewhere in the house?’

‘The children don’t know, and the rest of the family say not. We’ve got Jake Barron’s father and his wife’s sister at the house to take a look. The whole family wanted to come, but we managed to divert them. We don’t need a crowd.’

‘Check with the company who installed the security systems anyway. Jake Barron might not have told anyone, not even his family.’

‘The forensic examination will continue for some time,’ said Hitchens. ‘But as of this moment, we can only be sure of the suspects entering one part of the house – the kitchen, via the decking and the utility room, and the sitting room, with a short length of passage in between. If they went into any other area of the house, there is no evidence of it so far. So all we have are some shoe marks, and those aren’t too clear. A few faint impressions on the tiles in the kitchen, where Mrs Barron was attacked. Nothing in the sitting room, except for small deposits of soil from the garden. The carpet has retained no footwear impressions. The weather was dry, so there are no muddy prints.’

Hitchens was starting to sound a bit desperate now. His tone of voice quietened the restlessness as officers realised the magnitude of the task ahead of them. At this stage, the hopes would be of some early suspects, and a bit of help from forensics. Or at least a sighting of a suspicious vehicle.

‘Also, we have yet to establish the route the attackers took to approach the house,’ he said. ‘Forensic examinations will be going on for some time, given the size of the property. So it would be very helpful to us if we could get an angle from someone who saw or heard anything in Riddings last night. Anything. It would at least give us a line of inquiry to follow.’

‘Can we establish a definite connection with the earlier assaults, sir?’

That was Becky Hurst. A good question. So far, it had been an assumption in everyone’s minds.

Hitchens shook his head reluctantly. ‘Nothing specific enough to rely on in court. Only a similarity in the choice of target – a high-value property in the eastern edges.’

‘Within striking distance of Sheffield.’

Cooper turned round, but couldn’t see who had said that.

Hitchens ignored the comment. ‘And, of course, the MO is comparable to the previous incidents. The difference is that a higher level of violence was used. It’s a standard pattern of escalation when suspects of this nature are able to continue their activities over a period of time.’

That was an uncomfortable fact, too. If the Savages had been apprehended after any of the first four incidents, the attack in Riddings would never have happened. Zoe Barron would still be alive, and her husband wouldn’t be critically ill in hospital. Three children wouldn’t be facing the loss of their parents.

If the same attackers were responsible, anyway. Cooper was still waiting to hear the evidence for that.

‘Meanwhile,’ said Hitchens, ‘all the available information from the earlier incidents will be referenced by the HOLMES databases to establish any firm links. As you all know, we don’t have descriptions of the offenders, except that they’re male. In previous incidents they wore masks. In this latest assault, we have no one who is capable of telling us what they saw. It could be that they became concerned about being identified. That might actually help us, if we can find out what led to that concern.’

‘You mean they might have been seen earlier? Maybe in Riddings?’