Safe by Jane Adams

Author:Jane Adams [ADAMS, JANE]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thrillers and mysteries
Published: 2020-06-22T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

At first light, Clarke collected Hopkins and they followed DI Mark Reynolds out to the cottage that had become their crime scene.

Clarke was not surprised when Hopkins told him that Ruby Messenger had indeed left during the night. She’d apparently gone down to the front desk and asked about train times, the night receptionist helping to go through the listings. She checked out just after five and went off to the station. Clarke was somewhat amused to find that she had looked at trains to Edinburgh, to Truro, and to Cardiff, so she was trying very hard to put him off the scent. He would put money on her going north.

“It’s a bit bleak out here,” Hopkins commented, as they got out of the car. The wind was whipping off the ocean and sandblasting any patch of bare skin. A wide cordon stretched around the cottage and into the dunes and there were police officers and CSI still wandering around looking purposeful. Clarke was surprised there was no media presence, but then the local police were playing it down. The brief reports he had seen had suggested a suicide, tragic but explicable, rather than a major incident. He wondered how long they could keep the story going, then looked around at the emptiness surrounding this small outpost of human habitation and decided that it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to do, at least for a little while longer.

Mark Reynolds was waiting for them by the side door and he pointed out the forensic pathway to Clarke and Hopkins. The crime scene manager took over from there and took the tour.

“My God, so much blood,” Hopkins murmured. He knew she’d seen death before but nothing like this. Clarke sort of envied her that.

He was comparing locations within the house to the crime scene photographs he had seen. Harry Prentice, slumped in the corner of the living room. Joe Messenger in the hallway between the living room and kitchen. The first officer attending had assumed he was dead until he had seen a tiny twitch of Joe’s fingers. The FOA had then quickly designated a pathway and made sure the paramedics came in via that route. He had picked the cleanest bit of kitchen floor in the hope that this would be less forensically important. In the hall, Clarke could see where the paramedics had knelt in Joe’s blood.

“They never went into the living room,” Mark Reynolds told him. “It was pretty obvious that Prentice was dead. What is astonishing is that Messenger survived long enough to get to hospital and into intensive care.”

“Whose idea was it to put him in that little back room?” Clarke wanted to know. Although nobody could fault the care Joe had received, he had not actually been in the main ICU.

“Actually, that was one of the doctors. That side room has been used as an isolation unit before. The doctor knew it could be set up quickly and with the right equipment. We were worried in case somebody got wind of the fact that he wasn’t dead yet and came to have another go.

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