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A
grey Mercedes with tinted windows eased its way up the driveway of a house four miles outside Southampton. It was approaching midnight and the moon threw a cold, hard light on to the ground. That same light created myriad shadows out of the edges of the woods that bordered three sides of the property.

The driver cut the engine and switched off the lights. He sat for a short while staring at the house through the windscreen. It was supposed to be empty, but he wanted to be sure that it was before he went any further.

The house was a two-storey affair that had been erected in the fifties. Grey and characterless. A high chimney. A flat-roofed garage that had been attached as though as an afterthought. The place was in need of a makeover.

He had never set foot inside it before, but it was the only place he could think of using at such short notice. It was by no means completely safe, but he was in no position to be choosy. There was no time to think things through. He had to go with his instincts and trust that his spur-of-the moment decisions were the right ones.

Outwardly he might have looked calm but his insides were coiled up like a spring. But that was to be expected. After all, what had happened tonight had changed his life forever. He could never return to what he’d had. Vince Mayo’s death had jerked him out of his comfort zone and flung him into the eye of a storm.

Now it was up to him to hold his nerve and see this thing through. He could not bring himself to consider the alternative.

There were no lights on inside the house. No other cars in sight. The man got out of the car and walked up to the front door. He rang the bell. Slammed the heavy brass knocker. Waited a couple of minutes before exhaling a long sigh of relief. The house was unoccupied. Just as he knew it would be. The owners were still on the other side of the world,
blissfully
unaware that their home was about to be violated.

He stood back and studied the front door. Dark wood with frosted-glass panels. He raised his right foot and kicked out with his walking boot, smashing one of the panels. There was no burglar alarm. That was lucky, although not a surprise. People would never learn. He reached in and fiddled with the lock but couldn’t get the door open. There was a window to his right, but too high to aim a kick at. He looked around. In a nearby flower bed he spotted several stone animals. A duck, a badger, a hedgehog. He picked up the duck and used it to smash the window. He reached in through the broken glass, found the handle and opened the frame. He hauled himself up with ease and climbed through it.

Then he was inside, exploring the house, safe in the knowledge that he was alone. He barely knew Peter and Anne Salmon, but it was the sort of house he would have imagined they lived in. Boring. Uninspiring. Totally lacking in imagination.

The cherry-wood furniture was old and for the most part ugly. The colours were overbearing. The place felt closed-in and claustrophobic.

He checked all the rooms. On the upstairs landing he saw a wooden pole that was used to open the loft hatch. It gave him an idea. He picked it up and lowered the ladder, then stepped gingerly up it. There was a light switch attached to a joist inside the loft. He flicked it on and a single bulb suspended from a cord came to life.

Perfect, he thought.

The loft ran the length of the house. Grim and dusty. Shadows jostling
for attention. A floor of chipboard sections had been laid over parts of it. About fifteen feet above the floor the angled rafters met to form an apex. The space felt damp and airless but it would suit his purpose.

He hurried back downstairs, searched the kitchen until he found a bunch of keys, including one for the front door. Then he went looking for some rope. But in the garage he came across something better.

Chains.

There were five of them, each one about six feet in length. Peter Salmon probably used them during bad winters to give his tyres more grip. He rolled up the chains and stuffed them into the rucksack.

Next he found some blankets in a bedroom drawer and took them up to the loft. Then he went back out to the car. The ski mask that he often wore on his long winter walks was lying on the front passenger seat. He slipped it over his head again. It felt tight against his skin.

Then he leaned against the car door and flared up a cigarette to steady his nerves. He blew out a long kiss of smoke that was taken away on a gentle breeze. His hands were shaking and his heart was pounding. He knew it was going to be a long and dangerous night. He would have to be careful but at the same time ruthlessly determined.

He dropped the cigarette butt and ground it into the gravel with a sharp twist of his ankle.

It was time to get the woman and child.

D
etective Chief Inspector Jeff Temple was not a happy man. It was gone midnight and he was knackered. As he stared down at the corpse on the kitchen floor he just knew that he wouldn’t be getting to bed any time soon.

It had been a long day. As usual the chronic shortage of CID
officers
in Southampton meant that the weekend shift was a struggle.
There’d been an off-licence robbery, a mugging and three acts of mindless vandalism.

Temple had managed to get home just after ten and had been about to crawl into bed just as the phone rang. He knew instinctively who it would be because no one else ever called him at home except his daughter and it was the last thing she would think of doing on a Saturday night.

When his wife had been alive she would urge him not to answer the late-evening calls and tell him to let them find someone else. But work was all he had now. It kept him going and staved off the
loneliness.
So without hesitation he’d picked up the receiver.

‘There’s been a murder,’ he was told by the controller. ‘In the forest. Can you go?’

So here he was, standing in the kitchen of a secluded cottage wearing white paper overalls so as not to contaminate the crime scene.

Detective Sergeant Angelica Metcalfe – or Angel as she was known to her colleagues – had arrived at the scene before him. She was the latest addition to the team, having moved down south from the Met four months ago. According to gossip it was because of a break-up with her boyfriend and a desire to start a new life away from the Smoke.

She had short brown hair and brown eyes. Attractive but not pretty. Tonight, as ever, she was dressed like a smart
business-woman
. Grey trouser suit, white blouse of some silky loose material, navy-blue raincoat. This was only the second time that she and Temple had attended the same crime scene, but he was looking forward to working with her because she was smart and savvy and nice to look at.

‘I gather you knew the victim, guv,’ she said.

Temple nodded. He’d been given the name on the way over. The first thing he did was try to contact his boss, Superintendent Lloyd Priest. But Priest didn’t answer his phone – probably because he was tucked up in bed – so he’d left a voice message.

‘Vince Mayo,’ Temple said. ‘A local freelance reporter. He runs – or rather he ran – a news agency with his partner.’

‘Is there something I should know about him, guv?’ Angel said. ‘Only I just overheard one of the uniforms describe him as a little shit who got what he deserved at last.’

Temple was concentrating on Mayo’s face. The bulbous eyes, exposed teeth, streaks of blood across his forehead.

He looked up and said, ‘I’ll tell you in a bit. What have you gleaned?’

Angel gave him a puzzled look before consulting her notes.

‘Mr Mayo has lived here alone for the past five years according to his only neighbour. I’ve had a quick look round and there’s no sign of a break-in and all his belongings appear to be in order. The
neighbour
did see a car leave here earlier that might have belonged to the killer. But don’t get excited. He didn’t manage to get the registration or even the make.’

‘Any sign of a weapon?’

‘Not as yet.’

Temple peered more closely at the body. The pathologist, Frank Matherson, was already kneeling on the floor beside it.

‘What have we got, Frank?’ Temple asked.

Matheson threw a glance over his shoulder. He had short,
pewter-grey
hair and grey eyes, with deep wrinkles radiating out from them.

‘Two blows to the head,’ he said. ‘Front and back. No question it was deliberate. Victim is somewhere in his late thirties, I’d say.’

‘Is it too soon to give me a time of death?’

‘Well, rigor has only just started to set in so this didn’t happen very long ago. Few hours at most. Say between eight and ten. We’re lucky the body was discovered so soon.’

‘And the weapon?’

Matherson thought about it. ‘A heavy blunt instrument of some kind. Those wounds are deep but also pretty smooth. The impact areas are wide, too.’

‘What about defensive wounds?’

‘There don’t seem to be any. Doesn’t look to me like this bloke struggled. Maybe he was taken by surprise.’

There were smudged footprints in the pool of blood that had spread across the lino. Temple drew Angel’s attention to them.

‘The neighbour who found the body swears he didn’t get close enough to step in the blood,’ she said.

‘Any of our lot responsible?’

‘No.’

‘So it’s fair to assume that the killer made a mess.’

‘It looks that way. As you saw coming in there’s a blood trail on the hallway carpet and up the stairs. There are also traces out on the driveway. It could have been an attempted robbery. Mayo surprised the thieves and they clobbered him. Then they panicked and ran without taking anything. Maybe related to that spate of burglaries in and around Lyndhurst a month ago. If you recall, the thieves targeted houses in remote locations.’

‘That’s something we need to give thought to,’ Temple said.

He looked around the kitchen, spotted a bottle of champagne on the worktop, uncorked.

‘What do you make of that?’

‘I’m not sure, ‘Angel said. ‘There are no glasses out to go with it. I checked the other rooms and the dishwasher. You can also see where some of it spilled on to the floor and over the
briefcase
. Mayo’s briefcase by the looks of it.’

Temple stepped carefully up to the worktop and examined at close quarters the champagne bottle.

‘I wonder what the occasion was,’ he said.

‘Well, whatever it was it was short-lived,’ Angel said.

‘Any prints?’

‘The bottle’s been wiped clean apparently.’

Something else on the worktop caught Temple’s eye. A large granite mortar bowl that would have been used with a pestle for grinding and pounding herbs. He had one just like it at home, only smaller.

He looked around the kitchen for the heavy, bat-shaped pestle, but didn’t see it.

‘There’s no pestle,’ he said.

‘What?’ Matherson got up to have a look.

‘The pestle is missing,’ Temple said. ‘You don’t often see a mortar without a pestle.’

Matherson nodded. ‘You’re right about that.’

‘Which raises the possibility that the pestle might have been used as the murder weapon.’

Matherson chewed at the corner of his lower lip. ‘It’s a sound theory. In fact I worked on a case once where a guy used a heavy pestle to smash open his wife’s skull. And that there is a hellishly big mortar, so the pestle that goes with it must be sizeable.’

‘We’d better look for it then,’ Temple said and Angel immediately instructed one of the officers in the hallway to spread the word.

Temple moved into the living room. He noted that the cottage was furnished in a style that was in keeping with its age: an old
overstuffed
sofa, a studded leather armchair, an antique table, bookshelf. Temple flicked through the titles. Reference books, dictionaries, a Thesaurus, a large collection of paperback novels, some hardback fiction by the likes of Michael Collins and James Lee Burke.

Upstairs there were two bedrooms, both with double beds. All the usual stuff such as wardrobes and drawers and pleasant pictures on the walls. Most of the pictures were paintings or photographs of the New Forest. Landscapes. Wildlife. Village scenes. But there was one in Mayo’s office that caught Temple’s eye. It showed Mayo with two other adults and a little girl. They were standing in front of a barbecue with the cottage in the background.

Temple pointed to the other man in the picture. ‘That’s Mayo’s business partner,’ he said. ‘Danny Cain. I reckon that must be Cain’s wife and daughter.’

Temple had met Cain, but not the wife. In fact he knew very little about either Cain or Mayo even though, like almost everyone in CID, he harboured a grudge against them. It was something he would have to keep in check. And so would everyone else who’d be working on this case.

‘That’s interesting,’ Angel said. ‘I checked Mayo’s landline when I got here and the last call he made was at eight forty-five this evening. It was to a number registered to a Danny Cain.’

Temple arched his brow. ‘Is that so?’

They went back downstairs, checked the utility room, then the garden. The air outside had a crisp bite to it. The moon’s insipid glow
washed over the tear-shaped lawn. There was a wall at the back, and some trelliswork entwined with honeysuckle and some kind of fern. The wall kept the creeping forest at bay.

Back inside, Temple said, ‘So who found the body?’

‘Guy who lives next door,’ Angel said. ‘He’s outside. I told him you’d want a word.’

Temple took off his forensic suit, asked Angel to look around some more and went outside.

Bill Nadelson was about sixty-five with grey hair and a weathered face. He had a sharp chin and prominent, aquiline nose. He was breathing hoarsely though his mouth and wearing a heavy dark coat.

Temple introduced himself.

‘Are you feeling all right, Mr Nadelson? You look awfully pale. Perhaps you should see a doctor.’

Nadelson shook his head. ‘There’s no need for that. It was just a shock to find Vince like that. I think I just need a strong cup of tea.’

‘Why don’t we chat in your house then?’ Temple said. ‘I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable there and we can both have a cuppa.’

Nadelson lived in a cottage not unlike Mayo’s. But inside it was much smaller, with a low beamed ceiling and too much bulky
furniture
. Temple followed him into the kitchen where Nadelson started talking as he put the kettle on.

‘Vince was a great neighbour,’ he said. ‘We got on well. My wife died two years ago and he was very supportive.’

‘So what happened tonight? How did you come to find the body?’

Nadelson took off his coat and sat at the kitchen table, opposite the detective. Temple noted that he was lean and fit looking. Heavy chest. Toned skin.

‘I’d been out all day at my son’s house in Cadnam,’ he said. ‘I got back slightly before ten. I’d just unlocked the front door and was stepping into the hall when suddenly a car screeched out of Vince’s driveway and tore along the lane with a roar that shocked me.’

‘Did you recognize the vehicle?’

‘No, it was too dark. But I think it was black or dark blue. And it was a nice-looking car. Shiny too. Maybe an Audi or a BMW.’

‘So what then?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, it was pretty unusual and curiosity got the better of me. I stepped into the lane and noticed that Vince’s car was in the driveway and the lights were on in the cottage. I decided to pop over and check that everything was all right.’

The kettle boiled and Temple gestured for Nadelson to stay put. He got up to pour the teas. Nadelson had put out two chunky
earthenware
mugs with tea bags and milk in them.

‘When I got to the cottage I rang the bell but there was no answer,’ Nadelson said. ‘So I called for Vince but he didn’t respond. I got a little worried so I tried the front door and discovered it wasn’t
actually
shut properly. I called out and went in. The kitchen is to the left of the hall and the light was on. That’s when I saw him.’

Temple put both mugs on the table and sat back down.

‘So what did you do?’ he asked.

Nadelson cupped his hands around his mug, lifted it to his lips and took a sip of tea. ‘I went in to see if he was alive, but it was obvious that he wasn’t. I was careful not to tread in the blood. I saw his wounds and realized that he hadn’t died of natural causes. I knew better than to touch anything so I immediately ran home and phoned nine nine nine.’

‘Did you go upstairs?’

‘No I didn’t. I just wanted to get out of there. It was horrible.’

‘Did you touch anything in the kitchen?’

‘No, nothing.’

Temple took him through it again and made notes. Then he said, ‘So what can you tell me about Mr Mayo?’

Nadelson described Vince Mayo as a quiet, respectful man whose only vice seemed to be gambling. He enjoyed a flutter on the horses and was a frequent visitor to the casinos in town.

‘He’s had several girlfriends,’ Nadelson said. ‘Currently there’s a pretty young woman named Jennifer. She sometimes stayed overnight in the cottage. A lovely girl. Always smiling.’

‘Was she here today?’

‘She was this morning so she must have stayed over on Friday night.’

‘How do you know? Did you talk to her?’

‘No, but I saw her briefly when I dropped in on Vince this morning. She was coming down the stairs and she was still in her dressing-gown. She said hello but I was in a hurry so I didn’t go in.’

‘Was that the last time you saw Mr Mayo alive?’

‘I’m afraid it was.’

‘So why’d you go over to his place?’

‘I’d been to the shop in town and bought Vince’s lottery tickets for him.’

‘Is that something you often did?’

He nodded. ‘Every Saturday morning. It became a routine after I offered to do it once. He always had ten lucky dips so it didn’t take me long to get an extra ticket for him in addition to my own. He always paid me of course.’

Temple ploughed on with more questions. Did Mayo have many visitors? Had the cottage ever been broken into? Had he spotted any strangers hanging around recently? Did Mayo have any enemies that he knew of? Who were his friends?

Nadelson said he didn’t know if Mayo had any enemies, but his closest friend was another journalist named Danny Cain, who was also his
business
partner in the news agency.

‘How often does Cain come here?’ Temple asked.

‘Very occasionally. I’ve met him a couple of times. He has a charming wife and a delightful daughter. I last saw them at Vince’s barbecue in the summer.’

‘Any problems between Mr Mayo and Mr Cain?’

‘I wouldn’t know, Inspector. I never talked to Vince about his business life.’

Finally, Temple said, ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to take up some more of your time, Mr Nadelson. We need to take a formal statement.’