car and looking inside.
‘Nothing,’ he said, turning to Irvine as she came up behind him.
She walked past him to the front door of the house. It was a heavy, oak door — double the size of a standard door. There were glass panels on either side and Irvine looked through one of them into a wide entrance hall. There was nothing immediately out of place that she could see.
‘Looks normal,’ she told Armstrong.
A metal intercom panel was installed on the wall to the side of the door. It looked to Irvine as though it was a video camera device to allow the occupiers to see who was at the door. She pressed a button on the panel and heard a chime inside.
Waited.
Pressed the button again.
Waited.
‘No one’s going to answer,’ she said to Armstrong.
He grabbed the door handle and pulled it down. The door clicked and Armstrong pushed it open. He looked at Irvine. Unsaid between them: not a good sign that the door was unlocked.
They stood together looking inside the house and listening for any sound. It was silent.
‘Does he have a family?’ Irvine asked.
‘Don’t know.’
‘It’s too quiet.’
‘Do you want to call for support?’
‘Armed response?’
He nodded.
Irvine looked inside the house. It felt empty. Or, at least, devoid of life. Whatever that would turn out to mean.
‘No. I don’t think we need to worry about anyone who might be in there.’
He got her meaning. Irvine walked inside.
There was an open staircase at the back of the hall leading up to a first-floor balcony with a glass guard along it. They went through each of the rooms on the ground floor and found nothing until they got to the kitchen at the rear of the house.
It was a high-end installation in black and grey with a central island and the best in appliances that money could buy. Marble-tiled steps led down to a dining area that had a glass roof.
Irvine walked around the island and stopped. She motioned for Armstrong to join her and pointed at the floor.
There was a dark smear of blood on the floor and a splash of it on one of the lower cabinet doors.
‘Looks like it was contained here,’ he said. ‘I mean, there’s no blood trail anywhere else down here.’
Irvine walked closer and saw that a drawer at the end of the island had been left open. There was a collection of towels in the drawer.
‘Probably took a towel from here,’ she said, pointing at the open drawer. ‘And applied it to the wound.’
Armstrong nodded.
‘Either he took him upstairs or outside.’
‘Let’s go upstairs.’
There was a trail of blood on the wooden floor of the first-floor balcony leading to a room at the far end of a long hallway. They walked carefully along the hall to avoid stepping in the blood and contaminating the scene.
The door at the end was closed. Irvine felt her heart thudding and blood rushing in her head. She reached out and opened the door.
It turned out that Marshall did have a family.
A woman was on the floor inside the door and her body prevented Irvine from pushing the door all the way open. Her face was discoloured from the beating she had suffered and her throat had been cut so deeply that her head was almost severed.
The room smelled of blood and evacuated bowels and Irvine put a hand to her nose when the stench hit her.
Marshall’s body was on the bed. She noticed straight away the mess of his right hand: two fingers were missing and the remaining ones were horribly disfigured. There was a pillow over his face. Or what was left of the pillow: shredded and soiled by blood from so many thrusts of a knife.
Irvine walked around the foot of the bed and found Marshall’s son lying on the floor on the far side of the bed. Armstong stood in the doorway staring at Marshall.
The boy was in his early teens, from what Irvine could tell from his clothes. It was impossible to know based on the mess where his face used to be.
Something burbled in Irvine’s stomach.
Hold it in, Becky.
She turned from the boy’s body and looked at Armstrong.
‘There’s another one here. He’s just a boy.’
‘He tortured them.’ Armstrong continued to stare at Marshall. ‘Why?’
‘Looks to me like he did it because he enjoys it. Which makes him extremely dangerous.’
6
DS Ewen Cameron called Irvine from the other accountant’s house an hour later. She was standing in Marshall’s driveway as the Scenes of Crime team pulled up to the house in a van. Cameron was a fifteen-year street veteran and still his voice wavered.
‘They’re dead,’ he said.
‘How many?’
Please, no more kids.
‘Two. Husband and wife.’
‘Were they tortured?’
He made a sound. Irvine wasn’t sure what it was supposed to have been.
‘Yeah, you could say that,’ he managed to say eventually.
‘Did they have any children?’
‘Looks like it from the photos in the house. A daughter. We’re still trying to track her down.’
‘But she’s not in the house?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
Armstrong came out of the house and stood beside her.
‘They found Scott and his wife,’ she told him. ‘Same story over at that house.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah. But doesn’t sound like their kid got caught up in it. At least, not yet.’
Armstrong shifted from foot to foot. Irvine looked at him. It was clear he wanted to say something.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
He stopped shuffling and met her eyes.
‘This is what the Frank Parkers of the world do, you know.’
‘Kenny, I’m not some bimbo straight out of school. I mean, I spent my time on patrol and I earned the right to the job I have now. I know what these people are like.’
‘Do you?’
‘I do. I’ve seen…’ She turned away from him as the first of the forensics team walked past her to enter the house. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ she went on. ‘To know what people are capable of.’
‘And you still treated him like he was worthy of respect.’
She turned to face him, angry now.
