‘They’re through here.’ Norris approached a door and stood to one side.
Kay watched as Sharp stood on the threshold of the room and peered in.
After a moment, he turned to her. ‘They’ve been here a while.’
Kay swallowed and stepped forward. ‘How did we miss this, guv?’
‘He’s clever, Hunter. And he has a whole network of people working for him, and protecting him.’
Kay folded her arms over her chest, then followed Sharp as he began to circle the room.
Bare, except for three wooden chairs arranged to face each other in the centre of the room, the space reflected no light from outside, the single window covered by net curtains and grime.
On each of the three chairs, a dead woman sat.
Each woman had had a plastic bag placed over her head, arms tied behind her and her hands fastened to the back of the chair.
Flies swarmed in the air, and Kay waved her hand in front of her face as one of the insects came too close.
Her brow furrowed as her gaze ran over the space in the middle of the three chairs.
Each woman had been placed so she could see the previous victim, only increasing the terror she must have endured in her final moments.
Kay averted her eyes as a maggot dropped to the floor from one of the victim’s bodies, and fought down the urge to flee.
‘How long have they been here, do you think?’
‘Several weeks, I’d guess,’ said Sharp. ‘Except for this one.’
He dropped to a crouch as he approached the woman with her back to the door, her head at an impossible angle to her shoulder. His brow creased.
‘What is it?’ Kay drew nearer.
‘We’ll have to get Lucas to confirm during the post mortem, but I don’t think she died from asphyxiation – look.’
Kay held her breath and bent closer to where Sharp squatted, and looked to where he pointed.
A large hole could be seen in the plastic near the woman’s mouth.
‘She bit it?’
‘That’s what I think. And I think someone broke her neck instead.’
He straightened and swept imaginary dust from his trousers.
Kay’s eyes swept the other two bodies.
The plastic bags had protected the women’s faces from being ravaged by nature, their terrifying final moments locked forever in milky eyes.
‘Do you think it’s Demiri?’
In response, Sharp pointed to the three marks in the dust on the floor in the middle of the chairs. ‘Those look like the sort of marks a camera tripod would leave. So, yes, I think he – or at least someone working for him – filmed these women’s last moments. We’ll know for sure once Harriet and her team have been through here and Lucas has done the post mortem, but it’d be one hell of a coincidence if it wasn’t, don’t you think?’
Kay muttered a noncommittal response, keen not to inhale any more of the fetid air than was absolutely necessary.
Sharp completed his circuit of the room, ran his eyes over the three victims once more, and then jerked his head towards the door.
‘Come on. We don’t want to contaminate this scene any more than necessary.’
He stopped abruptly in the hallway as Lucas Anderson, Home Office pathologist, entered the house.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, his face harried. ‘Traffic on the M26.’
Sharp shrugged. ‘It won’t take you long to declare death.’
He pushed past the pathologist and out into the front garden of the house.
Lucas raised an eyebrow at Kay, and she shrugged.
‘It’s a bad one,’ she said. ‘He’s taking this personally.’
The pathologist checked over his shoulder, before turning back to her. ‘Keep an eye on him, Hunter. I’ve heard he’s been under a lot of pressure lately.’
Kay frowned, but nodded as Lucas patted her arm and moved past her, then hurried after her DI.
She found him on the opposite side of the lane by the time she’d discarded her protective overalls in the bin the forensic team had set up upon their arrival.
He stood with his hands shoved in his pockets, gazing up at the house.
‘Seems to me that Demiri is getting sloppy in his panic to leave the area,’ he said as she drew near.
‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that, guv.’ She shivered as she followed his gaze, and watched as the forensic team stopped on the threshold to talk with Lucas. ‘To me, it’s almost as if he’s leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
A subdued atmosphere hung over the afternoon briefing, news of the full horror of the discovery at the abandoned smallholding reaching the investigation team before Kay and Sharp had returned.
Harrison stuck his head out from Sharp’s office, his manner one of efficiency as soon as he saw them.
‘Right, let’s rally the troops.’ He disappeared back into the room, the sound of a filing cabinet door being slammed shut filling the void.
Sharp winced.
‘Okay, guv?’
‘He wasn’t even in the bloody army,’ he muttered, and stormed towards his open office door.
Kay shrugged and crossed the room to the water cooler, swallowing her drink in three large gulps before making her way to her desk and dropping her bag to the floor.
‘You’ve got a face like thunder,’ said Barnes from the desk opposite hers.
She glanced over her shoulder to check their senior officers were out of earshot, then back to Barnes.
‘Something’s going on with Sharp,’ she said. ‘I’ve never known him like this. Even Lucas said he’d noticed he seemed under pressure at the moment.’
‘Hits us all sometime.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Perhaps he’s feeling a bit threatened by Harrison sharing the investigation, do you think?’
‘Yeah. Could be.’ She jerked her chin towards the office. ‘What’s he been doing while we were out?’
Barnes grinned. ‘He only turned up an hour ago – some sort of meeting over at HQ. Plenty of pep talk about teamwork when he got back. All hot air, of course. I think he’s been checking the files to see if there
