Kill or Die by Samantha Lee Howe

Author:Samantha Lee Howe [Howe, Samantha Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008444600
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

I find myself with Elliot Baker while he examines Stanners’s body.

‘Someone really hated this guy,’ Elliot says. ‘Look at the knife wounds here and here…’

Elliot concludes that Stanners had tried to defend himself but his killer knew what he or she was doing.

When Elliot finishes his on-site exam, the body is removed and we comb the surrounding area. I find a knife in the bushes, not dissimilar to the one that Neva carries. It could even be hers. My mind runs over my telephone call with her. I hadn’t told her where in Scotland I was, nor even who Olive Redding’s parents were. So she couldn’t have found the place. Besides, the attack on Stanners is frenzied, angry. Neva’s kills are always cold and concise.

‘What’ve you found?’ Elliot says behind me.

I hand over the knife.

‘Interesting blade,’ Elliot says. ‘It looks like the murder weapon.’

When the search is over and anything even remotely interesting is taken away, I remove my gloves and wend my way back to the Range Rover.

Inside the car, and sure I am alone, I open my bag and call Neva.

‘Where are you?’ I ask.

‘Why?’

‘Olive’s father is dead. Someone murdered the entire household last night,’ I say.

‘And you thought it was me?’

‘Was it?’

‘I’m sat looking at boats going up and down the Thames.’ She snaps a picture and sends it to me.

‘I had to ask,’ I say. ‘There was a knife like yours at the scene.’

‘Standard Network issue,’ she says. ‘I’d never drop mine.’

‘I’ll call you later,’ I say. ‘Have to go before Beth comes looking for me.’

‘Michael?’

‘Yes?’

‘I didn’t ask you where Redding’s parents were because if I’d known, I might well have come and questioned him. Was he tortured?’ Neva asks.

‘No. It was a frenzied stabbing,’ I say.

‘Do you think it was Olive?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know. But someone really had a grudge.’

I hang up, turn the phone off and put it in my suit trouser pocket. This trip to Scotland hasn’t worked out quite how I imagined it would. The body count sure wasn’t what I’d expected.

I lock the car and head back to the house just in time to see Ray releasing Hamilton. Stanners’s lawyer is red in the face as he walks past me down to the visitors’ parking lot.

‘Your people haven’t heard the last of this,’ he says.

‘What’s with him?’ I ask Ray as I reach him.

‘He didn’t like being asked about the Network. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take him in for proper questioning. But we’re aware of him now, and I’ll be taking a look into his finances. But never mind that. What a fucking mess this is,’ Ray says.

‘I know.’

‘Talk me through what you think went down here,’ Ray says.

I walk him through the house, starting with the employee quarters.

‘Someone enters via the back door, which is also the staff’s private entrance. See, the lock was forced. Not much finesse in that, when it could have been picked. But I think they were in a hurry. Once inside, they work their way through every room on this corridor.

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