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To his left the pool of blood spread wider, thicker, with a rich gloss to it. We would have to double-check with the uniforms, but it was a pretty safe bet that that was where they had found Jennifer Spain. Either she had dragged herself over to die curled up against her husband, or he had stayed close after he was done with her, or someone had let them do this last thing together.

I stayed in the doorway longer than I needed to. It takes a while to wrap your head around a scene like that, the first time. Your inner world snaps itself away from the outside one, for protection: your eyes are wide open, but all that reaches your mind is streaks of red and an error message. No one was watching us; Richie could take all the time he needed. I kept my eyes off him.

A gust of wind crashed into the back of the house and kept coming straight through some crack, flooded around us like cold water. “Jaysus,” Richie said. The gust had made him jump, and he was a shade paler than usual, but his voice was steady enough. He was doing fine, so far. “Feel that. What’s this gaff made of? Newspapers?”

“Don’t knock it. The thinner the walls, the more likely the neighbors heard something.”

“If there’s neighbors.”

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed. Ready to move on?”

He nodded. We left Patrick Spain in his bright kitchen, with the thin streams of wind swirling around him, and went upstairs.

The top floor was dark. I flipped open my briefcase and found my torch-the uniforms had probably smeared their fat paws all over everything, but still, you never touch light switches: someone else could have wanted that light on or off. I turned on the torch and nudged the nearest door open with a toe.

The message had got garbled somewhere along the way, because no one had stabbed Jack Spain. After the congealing red mess downstairs, this room was almost restful. Nothing was bloody; nothing had been broken or wrenched over. Jack Spain had a snub nose and blond hair, left to grow into curls. He was on his back, arms thrown up above his head, face turned to the ceiling, like he had collapsed asleep after a long day of football. You would almost have listened to hear him breathing, except something in his face told you. He had the secret calm that only dead children have, paper-thin eyelids sealed tight as unborn babies’, as if when the world goes killer they turn inwards and backwards, back to that first safe place.

Richie made a small noise like a cat with a hairball. I trailed the torch around the room, to give him time to pull it together. There were a couple of cracks in the walls, but no holes, unless they were hidden by the posters-Jack had been into Manchester United. “Got kids?” I asked.

“No. Not yet.”

He was keeping his voice down, like he could still wake Jack Spain, or give him bad dreams. I said, “Neither do I. Days like this, that’s a good thing. Kids make you soft. You get a detective who’s tough as nails, can watch a post-mortem and order a rare steak for lunch; then his wife pops out a sprog and next thing you know he’s losing the plot if a victim’s under eighteen. I’ve seen it a dozen times. Every time, I thank God for contraception.”

I turned the torch back to the bed. My sister Geri has kids, and I spend enough time with them that I could take a rough guess at Jack Spain’s age: around four, maybe three if he had been on the big side. The duvet was pulled back where the uniform had tried his useless CPR: red pajamas twisted up, delicate rib cage underneath. I could even see the dent where the CPR, or I hoped it was the CPR, had snapped a rib or two.

There was blue around his lips. Richie said, “Suffocated?”

He was working hard at keeping his voice under control. I said, “We’ll have to wait for the post-mortem, but it looks possible. If that’s what we’ve got, it points towards the parents. A lot of the time they go for something gentle. If that’s the word I’m looking for.”

I still wasn’t looking at him, but I felt him tighten to hold back a wince. I said, “Let’s go find the daughter.”

No holes in the walls here either, no struggle. The uniform had pulled Emma Spain’s pink duvet back up over her, when he gave up-preserving her modesty, because she was a girl. She had the same snub nose as her brother, but her curls were a sandy ginger and she had a faceful of freckles, standing out against the blue-white underneath. She was the older one, six, seven: her mouth was a touch open, and I could see the gap where a front tooth was gone. The room was princess pink, full of frills and flounces; the bed was heaped with embroidered pillows, huge-eyed kittens and puppies staring up at us. Springing out of darkness in the torchlight, next to that small empty face, they looked like scavengers.

I didn’t look at Richie till we were back out on the landing. Then I asked, “Notice anything odd about both rooms?”

Even in that light he looked like he had a bad case of food poisoning. He had to swallow extra spit twice before he could say, “No blood.”

“Bingo.” I nudged the bathroom door open with my torch. Color-coordinated towels, plastic bath toys, the usual shampoos and shower gels, sparkling white fixtures. If someone had washed up in here, they had known how to be careful. “We’ll get the Bureau to hit this floor with Luminol, check for traces, but unless we’re missing something, either there was more than one killer or he went after the kids first. No one came from that mess”-I nodded downwards at the kitchen-“and touched anything up here.”

Richie said, “It’s looking like an inside job, isn’t it?”

“How’s that?”

“If I’m some psycho that wants to wipe out a whole family, I’m not going to start with the kids. What if one of the parents hears something, comes in to check on them while I’m in the middle of doing the job? Next thing I know, I’ve got the ma and the da both beating the shite out of me. Nah: I’m going to wait till everyone’s well asleep, and then I’m going to start by taking out the biggest threats. The only reason I’d start here”-his mouth twitched, but he kept it together-“is if I know I’m not gonna get interrupted. That means one of the parents.”

I said, “Right. It’s far from definitive, but on first glance, that’s how it looks. Did you notice the other thing pointing the same way?”

He shook his head. I said, “The front door. It’s got two locks, a Chubb and a Yale, and before the uniforms forced entry, both of them were on. That door wasn’t just pulled closed as someone left; it was locked with a key. And I haven’t seen any windows open or broken. So if someone got in from outside, or the Spains let someone in, how did he get back out? Again, it’s not definitive-one of the windows could be unlocked, the keys could have been taken, a friend or associate could have a set; we’ll have to check out all of those. But it’s indicative. On the other hand…” I pointed with the torch: another hole, maybe the size of a paperback book, low over the skirting board on the landing. “How would your walls end up with this kind of damage?”

“A fight. After the…” Richie rubbed at his mouth again. “After the kids, or they’d have woken up. Looks to me like someone put up a good old struggle.”

“Someone probably did, but that’s not what wrecked the walls. Get your head clear and look again. That damage wasn’t done last night. Want to tell me why?”

Slowly, the green look started to get replaced by that concentration I had seen in the car. After a moment Richie said, “No blood around the holes. And no bits of plaster underneath. No dust, even. Someone’s tidied up.”

“Right you are. It’s possible that the killer or killers stuck around to give the place a good hoover, for reasons of his own; but unless we find something to say that happened, the most likely explanation is that the holes were made at least a couple of days ago, could be a lot more. Got any ideas on where they might have come from?”

He looked better now that he was working. “Structural problems? Damp, subsidence, maybe someone working on faulty wiring… There’s damp in the sitting room-did you see the floorboards, yeah, and the patch on the wall?-and there’s cracks all over the place; wouldn’t be surprised if the wiring’s banjaxed too. The whole estate’s a tip.”

“Maybe. We’ll get a building inspector to come down and take a look. But let’s be honest, it’d take a pretty crap electrician to leave the place in this state. Any other explanations you can think of?”

Richie sucked on his teeth and gave the hole a long thoughtful stare. “If I was just going off the top of my head,” he said, “I’d say someone was looking for something.”

“So would I. That could mean guns or valuables, but usually it’s the old reliables: drugs or cash. We’ll have the Bureau check for drug residue.”

“But,” Richie said. He jerked his chin at the door of Emma’s room. “The kids. The parents were holding something that could get them killed? With the kids in the house?”

“I thought the Spains were top of your suspect list.”

“That’s different. People snap, do mad things. That can happen to anyone. A K of smack behind the wallpaper, where your kids could find it: that doesn’t just happen.”

There was a creak below us and we both spun around, but it was just the front door swaying in a snatch of wind. I said, “Come on, old son. I’ve seen it a hundred times. I’m betting you have too.”

“Not with people like this.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a snob.”

“Nah, I’m not talking about class. I mean these people tried. Look at the place: everything’s right, know what I mean? It’s all clean; even down behind the jacks is clean. All the stuff matches. Even the spices in the rack, they’re in date, all the ones where I could see the best-by. This family tried to get everything right. Messing about with the dodgy stuff… It just doesn’t seem like their style.”

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