Page 32 of Dying Breath
‘Holy fuck, he was telling the truth. I think I arrested him and put him in the van.’
Mattie looked at Browning and the pair of them grinned at each other.
Lucy shook her head and ran towards the van, pulling open the doors to the cage. She was greeted by the angriest looking version of her boss that she’d ever seen.
‘Tell those fucking morons to uncuff me right now. Thanks for getting here so fast, Lucy.’
He stood up and she held out her arm to support his elbow whilst he jumped down.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t know who you were. I had to be safe – for all I knew, you were the killer.’ The officer fumbled with his key as he unlocked the cuffs and they fell away from Tom’s wrists.
‘Tom, Tom! What’s going on? I’m late for yoga!’
If Lucy had thought that Tom looked angry before, it was nothing compared to the expression on his face as his Lycra-clad wife came striding towards him.
‘Get inside the house, Alison. You won’t be going to yoga.’
‘Why? What’s wrong and why were you in the back of that van?’
‘Get inside! Keep the boys in the house and I’ll tell you when I get a chance.’
‘I want to know – I have a right to know. I live here and I was looking forward to going to my class. It’s okay for you; I’m the one stuck in the house all day with those little shits.’
‘Your class will have to wait because they’re all dead, Alison. The Martins are dead. Every single one of them. And I need to do my job.’
His wife, who was very attractive, lifted her hand to her mouth when she registered what he’d just said. Browning took hold of her arm and led her away, back to her house, his head bent as he talked into her ear.
Tom ran his fingers over his shaved head.
‘What a fucking mess. And that’s my life, before we even start with the scene.’
‘Sir, can you tell me what you saw?’
He looked at Lucy, nodding. ‘I left it; the door was open this morning when I left for work. Oh God, what if they were still alive then and I didn’t go in to check?’
‘I very much doubt it.’
‘They were all shot. Arran – he’s only a kid. He was shot in the head. It’s bad, Lucy.’
She nodded her head. ‘I’m so sorry, Tom.’ She couldn’t help herself; stepping towards him, she hugged him close and whispered, ‘I’ll take good care of them.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tom waited for the CSI van to arrive and watched it park behind the assortment of police vehicles. Both Amanda and Jack got out, suiting and booting themselves ready for the all-clear to go into the scene. The entrance to the road was now cordoned off according to protocol, though the beauty of this street was that it only ever got foot traffic from the people who lived in the three houses along it. All three occupants of one house were dead, Tom lived in another and the very first one was empty. It had been on the market for a couple of months now; the owners had moved away to Australia.
Tom had accompanied the paramedics upstairs and shown them the three bodies whilst Lucy and Mattie got ready to go inside. Tom’s neighbours were all pronounced ‘life extinct’: there were no signs of life and it was obvious that they had been dead for some hours. The paramedics had looked visibly shaken and he couldn’t say he blamed them because he was plain traumatised.
Lucy waited with Mattie for them to come out. The sombre looks on the paramedics’ faces told her everything she needed to know. This scene was going to give her bad dreams for the rest of her life. Had the father lost it and killed his family, then himself? Lucy nodded at Tom, who had followed the paramedics out, his face drained of colour. Then she stepped through the doorway with Mattie behind her.
Her first thought was what a beautiful home this was and how nice it must be to live in a house this spacious. She passed the lounge, glancing through the open doorway to see a large circle of toy cars carefully positioned on the carpet. She felt her heart ache. They would never be played with again.
Who would want to shoot an entire family? Tom said he hadn’t seen a gun on his first look around, though she doubted that he’d been able to process what he was seeing with the shock of it all. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than being the person to find loved ones or friends murdered like this, in cold blood. Horrific images from another flat with another dead family inside flashed before her eyes. That case had been the one to penetrate her defence system and it had sent her into a complete meltdown. Poor Tom was about to find out how it felt and she wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Downstairs, it looked as if nothing had happened; in the kitchen there was a wire cooling rack with eleven fairy cakes sitting on it. They had distinctive black-and-white pirate paper cases. Lucy wondered who had eaten the twelfth – had it been Michelle or her son Arran? Had the killer helped himself to one after he’d slaughtered them all? She would get Amanda to check the bins for the wrapper, just to make sure there was no DNA evidence on it. They searched the rest of the ground floor but nothing seemed to be out of place; there were no broken windows or damaged doors.
‘Surely she didn’t go to bed and leave the front door unlocked?’
Mattie shrugged. ‘How else did the killer get inside? Tom said the door was open when he arrived.’
