Michael Wood - The Murder House

‘The bodies have gone and forensics finished up about an hour ago. You’re still going to need overshoes and a face mask,’ he said before disappearing into the house.

‘Really?’

‘Unless you want to ruin your shoes.’

She glanced down at her cheap, sturdy slip-ons. ‘They’re hardly Jimmy Choos, but fair enough.’

In the hallway, Matilda looked at the framed photographs on the wall as she struggled into the paper suit. There was a different atmosphere to the house now the bodies had been removed. There was still a chilling darkness about the place, a sense that something horrific had happened here, but the immediate tension had lifted and been replaced with a great sadness.

The framed photographs on the walls showed the family at different stages in their lives. There was one of a handsome young man wearing his graduation outfit of cap and gown. His smile was beaming, and he was flanked either side by proud parents. They were now all dead. Butchered. Usually, Matilda reserved judgement as to the type of person who could commit this level of crime, but now, here, she didn’t care what excuse he used, was he mentally ill, high on drugs, to her, he was an evil, cold-blooded killer, and she would relish catching him.

‘I do have other crime scenes to attend,’ Sebastian called to her from the bottom of the stairs.

‘Sorry. I was looking at the photos.’

‘OK,’ he began, reading from his iPad, ‘this is where Jeremy Mercer was found. As you can see he lost a lot of blood, so the killer hit his target. Jeremy wasn’t stabbed as many times as his parents, but Adele can fill you in on that. Why is he on the stairs? Well, best guess is that he got up in the middle of the night and surprised the killer. There’s no sign of a head wound, so he wasn’t pushed or fell down the stairs. As you can see from the stains on the stairs there are some good shoe prints. Hopefully, we’ll be able to identify what kind of shoes. You can see the distinctive Nike tick logo in one on the landing.’

‘What about fingerprints?’ Matilda asked as Sebastian made his way carefully up the stairs.

‘This was a high traffic area. Don’t forget, there was a wedding here on Sunday. People will have been up and down the stairs on a regular basis. The bannister is covered with prints. None of them identifiable.’

‘Point of entry?’

Sebastian stopped once again mid-way up the stairs. He gave an audible sigh. ‘The marquee at the back of the house. The patio doors were open. The front door was locked and bolted from the inside. Nothing broken on any of the windows. No sign of forced entry. It’s all in my report which is in your inbox. Onwards and upwards,’ he said in a flat monotone as he returned to going up to the first floor.

Matilda remained where she was, looking at the amount of blood soaked into the carpet, and sprayed onto the walls. She wondered what had killed him: the loss of blood as his heart stopped pumping – a slow and agonizing death – or the stab wounds. She took a deep breath and headed up the stairs. She knew the sight that would greet her: the pool of blood where Clive Mercer had been murdered. As Sebastian was in the doorway of the room Rachel was found in, she went straight in there, leaving the horrors of what lay on the landing until she needed to see it.

Reading from his iPad again, Sebastian ran through what had been found in this room. ‘As you know Rachel Mercer was found tied to the chair. She was tied with a dressing gown belt which matches the one hanging on the back of the door, so the killer didn’t come equipped to tying anyone up. It’s been sent for analysis. There are three sets of identifiable latent fingerprints on the bedside table, fortunately it’s a nice smooth silk finish so we’ve been able to get some prints.’

The bed had been stripped of the bedding, including the mattress, so all that remained was the oak frame. There was no blood on the walls, but the carpet was stained with flecks of blood and small bloody paw prints.

Although Matilda was listening to the crime scene manager, her eyes were darting around the room. She wondered how long Rachel had been held prisoner here: what had she been forced to endure? Had she known all along that her family had been killed? If the murders had taken place in the early hours of Sunday morning and Rose hadn’t found them until just before ten o’clock, that was possibly six to eight hours of being tied to a chair, terrified, cold and hungry. What would that do to her mental health?

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yes, you’ve got good prints from the bedside table.’

‘No. I was telling you about the stains in the carpet.’

‘Oh. Sorry. Go on.’

Sebastian rolled his eyes. ‘As you can see, forensics have cut a patch out of the carpet. Depending on what they get from them they may need to come back for more. This is going to need to remain an active crime scene for a while.’

‘Not a problem.’

‘The little girl—’ he looked down at his iPad. ‘Rachel. She wasn’t physically harmed in any way. So, identifying the various blood groups will give you information as to who was killed in relation to when Rachel was tied up. No tampering with the window. The main light was on when she was found. Now, this is interesting,’ he said, going to the bedroom door.

Sebastian closed the door and Matilda suddenly felt her blood run cold. She inhaled a deep breath and held it for several seconds longer than usual. There was the distinct aroma of metallic blood with a hint of dog in the air. She put herself in Rachel’s shoes; trapped in the bedroom, tied to the chair, covered in the blood of her dying relatives. She shivered at the thought.

‘On the back of the door is a very clear print of an ear.’

‘An ear?’

‘Yes. Only small, so we’re assuming it’s Rachel’s.’

‘Why would her ear print be on the back of the door?’

He shrugged. ‘Best guess is she heard something out on the landing and pressed her ear against the door to have a listen. We’ve all done that at some point in our lives, to be nosy.’

‘So she could have heard – I don’t know – raised voices or something,’ Matilda surmised. ‘Maybe she heard the killer arguing with her dad. Perhaps.’

Sebastian raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t relish you interviewing her. Poor thing,’ he said in his usual monotone.

He opened the door. Matilda was relieved. She was beginning to feel trapped.

‘Now, on to the landing.’

Matilda swallowed hard. All she could see when she thought about the landing was the head hanging off the body.

‘Nothing of interest here forensically, so we’ll move on upstairs.’

‘Really?’ Matilda asked. She was pleased not to have to linger but was surprised by the lack of forensics.

‘Everything around here has been fingerprinted, the doors, the walls, the bannister, and we’ve found nothing. Obviously, not nothing, the bannister was full of prints, but all of them smudged. Don’t forget, this is the landing – a main thoroughfare of the house. People will have come up to use the toilet, get changed. We haven’t found a decent print at all.’

‘It was a frenzied attack,’ Matilda said, looking up at the ceiling at the sprays of blood. ‘There must have been something, hairs, anything under his fingernails.’

‘Nope. Shall we?’ he said, eager to get to the next bedroom.

Matilda frowned. When a crime scene was as frenzied as this one, when it was obvious the victim had put up a fight, something was usually left behind of the assailant – a hair, a fingerprint, a fibre from his clothing, a bead of sweat. She would have a word with Adele, see if she could find anything from under their fingernails.