‘I am not going to be responsible for selling the house,’ she said. ‘It’s been part of my family for nearly three hundred years.’
‘Well, what do you think’s going to happen when you die? There’s nobody left, Diane – sell the damn house, and get a life for chrissakes. Give that poor husband of yours a break.’
‘Surely you can take a look at the numbers again. Suggest to Matthew you buy in as a shareholder?’
‘Buy into what? The company’s worthless.’ He shrugged, put down his fork and picked up his water glass. He finished chewing. ‘No. I was only going to use the house as a tax loss, anyway.’
‘We had a deal.’
‘No daughter-in-law, no deal, Diane.’ He took a sip of water before replacing the glass on the table. ‘I’m sure you understand.’
She dropped her cutlery, the silverware hitting the plate in front of her with a clatter, and then plucked her bag from the floor next to her and rose.
‘Enjoy your fish, Blake. Be careful you don’t choke on a bone.’
Twenty-Nine
‘What is it? What’s going on?’
Kay pulled the living room door shut after assuring Courtney Hamilton they wouldn’t keep her waiting, and noticed that Barnes seemed agitated.
‘I used the downstairs toilet, okay?’
‘Yes?’
For a fleeting moment, Kay wondered if the older detective was about to embarrass them both, but he shook his head.
‘As I closed the door, I noticed another one open in front of me. Some sort of utility room – y’know, for when you’ve been out in the garden or whatever. They’ve got a washing machine and tumble dryer in there, and there’s a bag of golf clubs standing next to another door leading outside.’ He lowered his voice. ‘One of the golf clubs is covered in blood.’
Kay clenched her jaw, checked the living room door was shut before turning back to him. ‘Show me.’
He led the way across the hallway, towards the back of the house. ‘The downstairs toilet is there,’ he pointed. ‘And this is the utility room.’
‘Did you go in?’
‘Yes. I haven’t touched anything. I don’t have any gloves on me – do you?’
‘No, they’re in the car.’
He stayed on the threshold while Kay moved into the room, casting her eyes around the room.
A worktop took up the length of one wall to her right, and she realised the wall abutted the kitchen, with the sink and taps mirroring the plumbing arrangement from the other room. In front of her, the back door resembled a traditional stable door – split in half, with locks and bolts for each section.
To her right, a row of coat hooks had been fixed to the wall, all of them overstuffed with waxed jackets, hats, scarves and a row of boots in varying styles and sizes laid out on the floor below them.
The tiled floor looked well-worn, and not as polished as the rest of the ground floor. Evidently, it was a room that saw a lot of foot traffic, and was used in accordance with its intended design.
The bag of golf clubs to which Barnes had referred stood next to the back door, in a gap formed between the doorframe and the worktop.
Kay moved closer, and crossed her arms to avoid the temptation of touching anything.
As she drew near to the clubs, she noticed that one, a “wood” she recalled from memory, was stained dark red, and whereas most modern clubs were made of metal, this one looked old – and the end was misshapen.
She swallowed.
‘Barnes? Call this in. Lock down this room, and the rest of the house. Get Sharp on the phone and tell him we’ve got ourselves a crime scene.’ She pulled out her phone and headed back towards the living room.
‘In the meantime, I’ll find out where the hell Blake and Josh Hamilton have disappeared to.’
‘Good work, Barnes,’ said Sharp as they entered the incident room. ‘Is Harriet still at the scene?’
‘Yes,’ said Kay. ‘She’s got a team of four working with her – she says they’ve done a preliminary search of the house, concentrating on the utility room where Barnes found the golf club, and they’ll start a more in-depth search once they’ve finished downstairs.’
‘Good. Are Josh and his father both booked in?’
‘We had to wait for them to get back home as Courtney didn’t know where they were – Blake said he’d been to a business lunch while he’d left Josh at the library to study.’
‘We’ve split them up,’ Barnes added. ‘Josh is in interview room one. Blake is in room three.’
‘Right, we’ll start with Blake then,’ said Sharp. ‘How do they look?’
‘Josh looks sick, very pale. The senior Hamilton looks arrogant.’ Kay shrugged. ‘As usual.’
‘What were you doing at the Hamiltons’ house after Larch’s specific instructions not to go there?’
‘I wanted the opportunity to speak to Courtney Hamilton without her husband being present. He’s the only one that has an issue with me. To date, Courtney has spoken to us freely and candidly. I wanted to gauge her thoughts about Josh’s relationship with Sophie,’ said Kay. ‘She told us that he had been sleeping with her – she’d even bought him condoms and kept it secret from her husband. We were getting on well, and then Barnes found the golf club.’
‘Speaking of which, where is it now?’
‘We dropped it off to one of Harriet’s technical assistants on the way here – Harriet was too busy to leave the scene. I’ve asked him to expedite the testing of the blood to see if it’s a match to Sophie’s.’
Regardless of the find, the team would only have twenty-four hours to question Blake and Josh Hamilton. Without conclusive evidence that linked the golf club to one of them, and in turn finding an answer as to why it was covered in blood, they couldn’t press charges – or expect an extension to the interviewing process given Larch had already instructed them to request the Crown Prosecution Service charge Peter Evans with the girl’s murder.
They would have
