The Blood Whisperer (3 page)

“How can you see anything
inconsistent
through all that?”

“Because I know what to look for.” She crouched careful not to touch anything and used a pen as a pointer. “Void patterns in the spatter confirm the position of the . . . of your wife at the time of the shooting,” she said choosing her words with great care.

“You can refer to Veronica as ‘the victim’. The police certainly did damn well often enough,” he said tightly. “I won’t bite.”

Kelly gave a faint smile, recognising the grim humour for what it was. “You can see here the back spatter from the entry wound. It’s very fine, almost a mist, travelling in the opposite direction to the bullet.”

“And you can tell that how, exactly?”

Kelly rose, reached for her camera and flicked through the stored images. “Look at this one,” she said. “You can see it’s teardrop-shaped—rounded at one end and with a streak at the other. The streak always points in the direction of travel. See?”

She zoomed in and tilted the camera screen towards him without thinking. He stepped in close to look and Kelly suddenly felt crowded, hot, trapped. Her fight or flight response tried to kick in. She had to stamp on it firmly before she either belted him or ran. Or both.

“So, the opposite of something like a comet tail?”

“Exactly. As the droplet hits a hard surface the back edge holds its form while the front edge breaks into what looks like a tail. It’s how we can fix the directionality of the spatter.”

Lytton straightened without apparently realising how near he’d been to serious injury. He was frowning.

“And you think there’s some problem with that directionality?”

“It’s possible.”

“Look just spit it out will you?”

Kelly took a breath and said in her best evidence-giving voice, “I observed an additional void pattern on the side of the bathtub in this area here.”

Lytton leaned over the bath holding his tie flat to his chest with one hand to prevent it dangling.

“I don’t see this void you’re talking about.”

“You won’t,” Kelly said. “It would appear to have been filled in.”

“Filled in.” Again that dead flat sceptical delivery. Again the command: “Show me.”

Kelly indicated with the pen. His face stayed expressionless.

“I can’t see any difference.”

“It
appears
correct at first glance but when you look closer you can see the directionality is actually totally opposite,” she allowed. “My guess would be someone dipped into the spilt blood and flicked it across the void to cover it. If it wasn’t for the difficulty of flicking it upwards instead of down I might not have spotted it.”

For maybe ten long seconds he said nothing. Then he stepped back as if to distance himself from her.

“That’s it?” he demanded. “That’s the reason you’ve put this whole job on hold? A tiny patch of blood sprayed so fine you can hardly make it out with the naked eye, when I’ve had half of Thames Valley and the Met crawling all over this place for days? And
that’s
all you have?”

His hands twitched in a gesture of frustration or despair. Kelly refused to cringe in the face of his anger. She kept her head up, aware she came barely to his chin.

“Once this is gone it’s gone,” she said indicating the bloodied bathtub. “I just need to be absolutely sure I’m doing the right thing.”

Lytton snorted. “Yeah of course you do.” He passed a tired hand across his face. “I . . . apologise. I’m sure you can appreciate that I’m anxious to get this over with—try to put it behind me.”

“Of course. Just as I’m sure
you
can appreciate that we have to work strictly by the book.”

He tensed, mouth flattening. For a moment she saw the swim of mixed emotions in his face, his eyes. Instead of the sorrow she’d been expecting there was only anger and confusion and a fleeting trace of something Kelly recognised as guilt.

Whatever else had been part of Veronica Lytton’s life she considered, that didn’t include a happy marriage.

She forced a smile to soften the blow and put a placating hand on his arm. “I’m very sorry for your loss Mr Lytton but I can’t ignore what the evidence is telling me.”

Lytton withdrew his arm fast, almost jerky as if he felt tainted by her touch. He was at the doorway before he delivered his Parthian shot with unknowing but deadly accuracy:

“This evidence you set such store by—suppose what it’s telling you is wrong?”

Matthew Lytton stood in the shadows by his open study window and stared down into the rear courtyard where the crime-scene cleaners’ van stood parked.

He could see the pair of them lounging in the front seats—doors open, waiting—and was aware of a ticking resentment at their idleness, however involuntary.

Lytton had made his considerable fortune in construction, demolition and renovation. Casual labour was a necessary evil that all too often lived up to its name. He’d become adept at turning up on site when his guys least expected. If he’d found any of them sitting on their backsides reading like this pair he’d have fired them so fast they would’ve left scorch marks.

Now, from his vantage point on the upper floor, he could see the big black kid was engrossed in a sports magazine. The woman was reading a book. Not a cheap paperback but a hardcover. When the distant trill of her cellphone drifted up to him she held her place with a bookmark rather than dog-ear the page before answering it.

As a man who’d grown up without books Lytton had come to treat them with respect. Grudgingly he found himself thinking better of her for doing the same.

When he first saw the woman striding along the corridor towards him with her choppy black hair and her pierced nose he’d thought she was just a girl. Something about the petite frame, the easy way she moved despite the unflattering garb, spoke of youthful vitality.

But where he’d expected truculence she’d responded only with reason. And when he looked deeper he saw she was nearer his own age than that of her young apprentice. That had thrown him as much as her stubborn refusal to be riled. Even if his overriding impression remained one of suppressed energy behind the calm facade.

His late unlamented wife had been the epitome of calm, cool and collected. He once swore that it was unnecessary to put ice in Veronica’s afternoon Pimm’s. One touch to her lips and the glass would be laced with it. But what you saw was what you got. The only fire that burned inside that perfectly stage-managed body was ambition. First for him and—when that was achieved without apparent satisfaction—for herself.

He glanced down and realised he was holding their wedding photograph. Slowly, he smoothed his thumbs across the ornate silver frame. He’d come across the picture while he was sorting through his wife’s things and been almost surprised she’d kept it.

Mind you she kept everything else. There seemed to be endless notes, shorthand reminders of conversations, social engagements, names and dates. Deciding what was rubbish and what was important had begun to give him a headache. And that was before he’d had his run-in with the cleaners.

Finding the photo gave him an excuse to pause a moment and reflect. It hadn’t been a big wedding but Veronica had still insisted on something overly lavish for their finances at the time. Looking at their frozen expressions with the benefit of twenty years’ hindsight he reflected that neither of them looked particularly ecstatic at the union.

He’d had no illusions he was the love of her life of course, just as she had not been his. They’d discussed their proposed marriage in coolly practical terms before the announcement was drafted for
The Times.

Veronica came from a grand family of rapidly declining fortune and though her parents had sniffed and muttered that Lytton “wasn’t quite of
our type
my dear,” they hadn’t needed tarot cards to see his star was firmly on the rise.

Lytton had come from nothing equipped with no more than an instinct for a deal, a nose for rundown property and the vision to see what it might become. He’d started at the bottom of the building trade and sweated his way up through almost every discipline. Now he had the hands-on expertise to turn that vision into profitable reality.

Veronica supplied class and she did it in spades.

Still their marriage had been more a business partnership than anything else—more so over the last decade. She played lady of the manor here while he spent more time at the London apartment. They’d even talked vaguely of divorce although just as there was nothing holding them together equally there was nothing in particular driving them apart.

He never asked if she’d taken lovers but assumed she had. She’d certainly been discreet. And the two of them still rubbed along all right—still talked, discussed and debated. Perhaps their separate lives had helped give them plenty to say to one another.

But even now he couldn’t find it in him to grieve openly for her as anything other than a vague acquaintance. The knowledge unsettled him.

He wondered if there was anyone else out there, beyond her parents, for whom she meant more.

Lytton had allowed his in-laws to take charge of the funeral arrangements with relief, but also knowing they probably needed the comfort of ritual. Nobody expects to outlive their only child.

He looked again at the wedding portrait as if it showed a pair of strangers. Viewed with a dispassionate eye it had some artistic merit he supposed. A black and white image lightly tinted by the photographic studio. And the frame was heavy and hallmarked if not to his taste.

He hesitated a moment then turned the picture over and removed the back. The frame could be sent to some charity organisation—the inimitable Mrs P would see to it—but the photo inside? He found himself undecided whether to keep it as a memento or throw it away.

Behind him on the far side of the room the door opened after a perfunctory knock. Annoyed, Lytton swung away from the window in time to see Steve Warwick stroll into the room.

If his business partner was not exactly the last person he wanted to see right now he was pretty high up on the list.

“It’s quite all right Mrs P,” Warwick was saying breezily over his shoulder. “He’s expecting me.”

“No I’m not, Steve,” Lytton said. “Go away.”

But Warwick had already closed the door firmly behind him, leaving the flustered housekeeper on the outside. Now he paused and was regarding him with a half-smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

Warwick was a few inches shorter than Lytton. He had a fulsome stockiness that belied his flair and determination on the squash court. Left to his own devices Warwick made business decisions with the same reckless abandon. Maybe that explained why he’d been weeks from bankruptcy when Lytton had bought out the major share of his property development company more than a decade ago. Lytton had mistakenly assumed gratitude would temper his partner’s impulsive nature.

“You want me to leave you to wallow in your grief? Oh, please, this is me you’re talking to. Spare me the theatrics at least,” Warwick taunted, once again damning that hope. He shook his head. “My friend you look like shit.”

“Were you expecting to find me in celebratory mood?”

Warwick laughed. He laughed easily—sometimes too easily at the expense of others. His were classic English blond, bland, blue-eyed good looks coupled to a public school drawl. Warwick often made Lytton feel like a rough-arsed gypsy by comparison—albeit scrubbed up and on his way to the dock.

Warwick came forwards pursing his lips as he gave the quiet book-lined study a cursory inspection. “I can never understand why with all this space you choose to hide yourself away back here,” he said. Another flashing grin. At least Warwick didn’t have typically English teeth. “Unless you let the lady Veronica beat you to the decent rooms of course.”

“You know as well as I do that I’m hardly ever here.” Lytton turned back to the window. The woman was still talking on her cellphone. She seemed somehow familiar.

Kel, the black kid had called her. Kel short for Kelly? Hmm, Kelly . . . He could swear he knew the face but couldn’t place it. Why hadn’t he asked her full name? “I like to see the comings and goings.”

It had been Veronica who’d favoured the pomp and grandeur of a central room at the front of the house above the imposing entrance hall. There she could survey her domain oblivious to what was going on behind her.

Lytton wanted his finger on the pulse. Otherwise you found yourself robbed blind by people who blamed you for not catching them sooner when the company went to the wall.

He prided himself that he’d never lost his grip even if he’d come close to it today—with a cleaner of all people. A moment’s sympathy, empathy—like she knew what it was to lose someone—and he’d almost let her see the truth.

That he didn’t give a damn.

Lytton wasn’t sure how he would have explained if she’d chosen to call him on it, that he’d stopped loving his wife a long time ago. The feeling had been entirely mutual.

“
Specialist
cleaners? My God that’s a little on the vulgar side isn’t it?” Warwick spoke at his elbow, peering down at the white van below. “I’d no idea such people existed. How very American.”

Lytton’s jaw tightened. “You’d rather I’d asked Mrs P to sweep up the pieces of my wife’s skull, wrap them in newspaper like broken glass and put them in the dustbin with the potato peelings and the remains of last night’s supper?”

Even Warwick flushed at that. “Hardly. But we can’t afford for this to get out Matt, can we? Now especially—when the Big One is so close.”

He didn’t need to be more specific. The
Big One
in question was the Lytton-Warwick Cup—although Lytton wanted to change this to the Lytton-Warwick
Memorial
Cup since Veronica had put so much work into the arrangements. It was a horse race on the flat over a mile and four furlongs with a purse to rival the classics. The company’s first foray into corporate sponsorship, designed to give them maximum kudos with the type of people Veronica’s parents really
would
consider social equals.