‘I’ll bet it’s Larch,’ said Gavin. ‘Ever since I joined this team, he’s had it in for you. Of course, I heard about the Professional Standards investigation involving you, but you’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing. I’ve never seen you acting anything but professional.’ He shook his head. ‘I really don’t understand what his problem is.’
‘I guess the question is, what do we do about it?’ said Carys.
‘We stick together,’ said Barnes. ‘For some reason, someone doesn’t want this team to be working together. Anyone have any ideas why?’
Kay took another sip of her coffee so she didn’t have to answer.
She couldn’t help recall her conversation with Adam a few nights ago, when she told him that she intended to pursue her own enquiries into Demiri once more. Was it possible she had somehow triggered the events that had affected the team since?
And if so, how did her enemies know? How were they getting that information to the incident room and to the media?
‘I have no idea,’ she said eventually.
Kay glanced up from her desk as the door to the incident room was pushed open, and Harriet Baker strode in.
‘What are you doing here? I thought you were going to email your report over.’
In reply, Harriet held aloft a briefcase in her right hand, and then pointed towards Sharp’s office. ‘I wanted to deliver this personally. You might want to listen in.’
Kay pushed back her chair and followed her across the room.
Sharp was already opening the door to his office when they approached. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ve got the results of the testing of the blood sample on the golf club,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s not a match to Sophie’s.’
Sharp ushered them both into his office, and closed the door. He gestured to the two seats in front of his desk, and waited while Harriet placed her briefcase on the desk, opened it, and retrieved a folder.
She withdrew three sets of documents from it, and passed one each to Sharp and Kay. ‘You can read the whole report at your leisure. Turn to page three, and I’ll walk you through it.’ She waited while they caught up. ‘We took samples from the head of the golf club, and ran a comparison against a blood sample taken from Sophie’s body. The results came back, and confirmed there’s no DNA match.’
‘So, whose blood is it?’ said Kay.
‘It’s mammalian in nature. I’d suggest a small animal – maybe a rat or a rabbit.’
‘Damn,’ said Sharp. ‘Josh was telling the truth. We’re back to square one.’
‘Not quite,’ said Harriet. She picked up a different report and stabbed her finger on a paragraph towards the end. ‘Those braziers the first responders had the sense to smother? We found the remnants of a rolling pin shoved into the side of one of them. It must’ve been placed there moments before Eva Shepparton stumbled across Sophie’s body because it was only partially destroyed.’
‘The murder weapon?’
‘Yes. There wasn’t much to work with, but we’ve got a trace of Sophie’s blood on the end that wasn’t in the flames – caused by splatter from the impact to her face.’
Kay wrinkled her nose as she flicked through the report. ‘Fingerprints?’
‘No, sorry. We did find some burnt material in the same brazier – it’s tested positive as wool.’
‘Clothing? So, the murderer did get blood on themselves but tried to discard the evidence.’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
Sharp pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. ‘One thing at a time. Hunter – arrange the paperwork to release Blake and Josh Hamilton from custody. I’ll go and break the news to Larch that we’re letting them go given the new evidence regarding the golf club. We’ll continue our enquiries regarding what Harriet and her team found in the brazier.’
‘There’s one more thing, Devon,’ said Harriet. ‘We found a partial footprint under one of the rhododendron bushes. It’s too small to put Peter Evans at the scene, and it’s not Eva Shepparton’s.’
‘Could be one of the guests or the parents that rushed down there before uniform arrived.’
‘Larch isn’t going to like that,’ said Kay. ‘Peter was his prime suspect.’
‘But we still have Sophie’s blood and her clothes at his flat,’ said Sharp, ‘so let’s not write him off yet.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Harriet. ‘We’ve run some more tests and simulations using the blood traces found on the rolling pin, and we’re certain that whoever your suspect is, he’s left-handed. It’s the way the weapon was used to strike Sophie.’
Sharp frowned. ‘Both Blake and Josh Hamilton are right-handed. I noticed when they signed in with the custody sergeant yesterday.’
‘Could the killer have masked his identity by using a different hand?’ said Kay.
Harriet shook her head. ‘I did wonder that, but I’m not convinced. Lucas confirms in his post mortem report that it only took one blow to the face to kill Sophie. The killer would’ve had to act fast. I don’t think he would have had time to consider changing hands to mask his identity.’
Sharp scratched his chin. ‘I’ve had Barnes and Carys going through the witness statements from the party this morning. No-one can recall seeing someone walking around with a weapon of any kind.’
‘What if the killer hid the rolling pin in the rhododendron bushes beforehand? And then lured Sophie down there somehow, in order to kill her?’ said Kay.
‘That would make sense.’ Harriet pushed her hair out of her eyes, and blinked. ‘We didn’t find any clothing fibres on the bushes around the area where Sophie was found. It had been raining the night before, so that might’ve made the branches more pliable.’
‘I didn’t notice any scratches on either Blake or Josh Hamilton’s arms, either,’ said Sharp. He wrote in his notebook, and then tossed the pen to one side. ‘I’d best go and break the news to Larch.’
Thirty-Five
Kay chewed the edge of a fingernail and stared at the computer monitor.
In the interview room, Sharp had placed a
