that they seemed to disappear after the event. Disappeared without a trace, the newspaper reports said. Well, almost.
‘Ben, suppose we were looking at this scene without any preconceptions,’ said Hitchens.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, if the children had been harmed, we might be thinking murder-suicide. Father kills the wife, the kids and then himself. It happens.’
Cooper nodded. ‘Too often.’
They were both silent for a moment, watching the crime-scene examiners go about their work. The circus had arrived early this morning, the SOCOs and medical examiner, the photographers and CID, and the task force officers in their overalls conducting a fingertip search. They were all here promptly, arriving like magic. It was as if everyone had already known where to go, as though they were expecting something like this to happen. Well, it was that kind of summer. One where death had been inevitable.
‘Or it can be the mother. That happens too,’ said Hitchens, as if as an afterthought.
‘No. The mother does it differently. A woman sets fire to the house, so she doesn’t have to see them die.’
‘Yes. And these children are unharmed anyway.’
‘We know, though, don’t we?’ said Cooper at last.
‘Yes, I suppose so. The Savages.’
‘If you like that name, sir.’
‘Well, this was definitely savage. They’ve upped the stakes, Ben. This is a deliberate escalation.’
As he listened to Hitchens, Cooper was trying to absorb the atmosphere of the house. There was always a lingering atmosphere after a violent crime – a sense of the shock and fear, the impact of death echoing from the walls.
‘Maybe it was deliberate,’ he said. ‘But perhaps it all just went wrong for them this time.’
SOCOs were busy everywhere, dusting for fingerprints, hoovering up trace evidence, examining the garden for shoe marks. Cooper realised that he’d arrived only just in time to see the body in situ. A black van was already waiting on the drive to take it away.
‘Besides,’ said Hitchens, ‘the husband isn’t dead. Not yet. Want to take a look?’
Cooper could see the body from the back door. It lay on the kitchen floor, the face turned slightly towards him. A woman, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt stained red at the shoulders. A woman lying in a pool of darkening blood. The stain had spread right across the floor and soaked into the tiles.
There were always a lot of people around at a murder scene. Many of these officers would never have attended a violent death before. Some of them were trying to avoid looking at the body, in case they couldn’t forget it afterwards. It was different if you had an immediate job to do. If you walked into a crime scene with a professional attitude, thinking about carrying out your work, it really focused the mind. Then you were able to concentrate on looking at the evidence, assessing the circumstances of death, planning what should be done next. Sometimes it was only later, when you saw the photographs of the scene, that reality hit you.
‘The victim’s name is Barron,’ said Hitchens. ‘Zoe Barron, aged thirty-six.’
‘The husband?’
‘Jake.’
‘Okay.’
When she was attacked, Zoe Barron had been clutching a bottle of wine. Chateau d’Arche Sauternes, according to the label. It had smashed on the tiles as she fell. The golden liquid had formed thin streams through her blood, and now the smell of wine was turning sour on the morning air. The back door stood open, and flies were starting to converge on the kitchen.
It was the sight and smell of the wine that made Cooper feel suddenly nauseous, the way that blood and the presence of a corpse no longer did. He felt guilty at the excitement he’d experienced on the way here, the adrenalin that had been surging through his body and heightening his sensations as he stepped out of the car. Zoe Barron’s dead eyes stared like a reproach.
‘You know we’re already taking a lot of flak over these incidents,’ said Hitchens quietly.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, take it from me, Ben – that was nothing. The shit is really going to hit the fan now.’
Because the Barron family were far from the first. There had already been four attacks in the space of a few weeks. All the incidents had taken place in villages along the eastern edges, with high-value properties targeted in Hathersage, Padley and Baslow. Aggravated burglaries, with at least two cases of GBH if they ever came to court. Two people had suffered injuries at the hands of ruthless offenders who showed no hesitation in using violence to get in and out quickly. No sneaking through windows while the occupants were asleep for these men.
Yet from the way the Barrons were found, it seemed as though they had expected nothing. For them, it had probably been a normal day. A spell of warm weather meant a chance to tidy up in the garden, a spot of maintenance on the back fence before the autumn began. There were probably no signs of danger as twilight fell in Riddings – only the late-afternoon sun catching the edge, picking out those grotesque, twisted gritstone shapes.
And inside the house? The kitchen was the most dangerous place in any home, the room where more people were killed or injured than any other. But most of those cases were accidents. A fire, a fall, or a faulty electrical connection.
Zoe Barron’s death looked at first glance as though it might have been an accident. The dropped wine bottle, the slippery floor, the hard tiles. And that head injury, oozing blood. But the circumstances were different. The husband, for example. Jake Barron had been found in the sitting room, sprawled in front of a fifty-inch plasma TV.
‘He was lucky,’ said Hitchens.
‘So he’s alive, you say?’
‘Just about. He has serious head injuries. If he survives, there’s a high probability of brain damage.’
‘What about the children? There are children, aren’t there? In a house this size…’
‘Yes, three. Social Services have taken custody of them while some relatives are tracked down. There are grandparents living in Sheffield, and a sister somewhere in Nottinghamshire, I think. None of the kids seems to be injured, but they’re in shock, of course.’
‘Did they see anything? Or is it too early to interview them?’
Hitchens shrugged. ‘It doesn’t seem likely that they did. They were all upstairs in their bedrooms. The youngest was already asleep, and the older two were watching TV, listening to their iPods, chatting to their friends on their mobile phones. All at the same time, as far as we can tell. I suppose it’s one of the advantages of giving kids all those electronic gadgets to use. Personally, I’ve always thought it cuts them off from the real world too much. But sometimes…’
‘Sometimes that can be a good thing,’ said Cooper.
‘Exactly.’
There was a stir behind them in the doorway, and Cooper turned. Detective Superintendent Branagh had arrived. There was no doubt who would be Senior Investigating Officer on this one, then. The inquiry was getting the superintendent’s personal touch. Of course it was. A major, high-profile case like this. A sergeant would be a long way down the pecking order.
Branagh brought an air of authority on to the scene. She had a physical presence that made other officers step back. Cooper sometimes thought it was the shoulders that did it. She was built like a professional swimmer, broad and flat across the shoulders, an effect emphasised by the cut of the jackets she wore. She moved like a rugby player ploughing through the opposition, her face set in a determined glower. Cooper knew he would hate to get on the wrong side of her. But so far he seemed be in her good books. It was to Superintendent Branagh he owed his promotion.
After Hitchens had briefed her, Branagh cast a sharp eye around the immediate scene, then walked to the sitting room window.
‘Neighbours?’ she said.
‘Not so as you’d notice, ma’am,’ said Hitchens.
‘What? This isn’t an isolated farmhouse. We’re in a village. There were plenty of houses visible as we came
