‘Maybe they saw you coming and hid,’ Flynn suggested. ‘Like my gran used to do when the rent man came.’
‘Maybe they saw you.’
Henry was about to hold his thumb on the doorbell again when he noticed that the door, though it appeared to be closed, was just pushed tight against the frame and there was a tiny gap all around the edge. He gave it a gentle nudge. It swung open easily onto a wide hallway.
And Henry froze, instinctively shooting out his right arm to prevent Flynn from entering.
One of those sensations of utter dread shimmied through him from chest to toe as he saw the reason why the dog had not barked.
It was a red setter, one of those daft, bouncy, never exhausted dogs that went through life with an optimistic, never-say-die attitude, backed up with little brain.
He remembered the dog’s name in that instant: Carlo.
Carlo, the red setter. If it was the same dog, that is.
But Carlo was now splayed out dead in the tiled hallway, half its head blown away, lying in a pool of thick treacly looking blood. One of the dog’s back legs jerked, then stopped moving.
‘Holy shit,’ Flynn hissed in Henry’s ear.
Henry was still frozen to the spot, but his mind was moving.
Flynn was right up by his shoulder and the two men exchanged a glance.
‘I’ll make my way around the back,’ Flynn whispered.
Henry nodded. Flynn split away.
Henry sniffed up and even through his damaged face could smell the reek of cordite. He stepped into the hall and moved to the edge, trying not to step in the blood, but also trying to listen hard, his senses on fire, heart slamming, palm clammy, forehead starting to sweat. His throat was dry and saliva did not want to form as he tried to imagine what hell he had blundered into here.
The stairs to the first floor ran up from the centre of the hallway up to a landing that split in two directions.
Henry moved forward, remembering that dead ahead was the door to the kitchen at the back of the house, a large open-plan room with a dining area leading out to a massive conservatory. It was all coming back to him now.
To his left was the door to the main lounge, which was closed. Over to the right were doors to the downstairs loo, another to a smaller hallway, off which were two further ground-floor rooms, a study and a small lounge converted to a music room with a big sound and vision system.
Ahead was the open kitchen door.
Henry went to it, stepping over blobs of blood, and halted on the threshold.
The kitchen was as he recalled it. Huge enough for a central island with an extractor hood hanging above it.
It was silent in here.
Then Henry saw a pair of feet jutting out from the far side of the island. Slippered female feet, not together, but apart.
He stood there for a few more seconds, not breathing. Looking, listening… and only then did he step into the kitchen, again keeping to the edge by the cupboards, and manoeuvred himself into a position from which he could see the rest of the body which lay half-propped against the island.
The injuries caused by a shotgun were horrific. A stomach shot, punching a hole the diameter of a mug into the stomach, and one straight in the face. Close range, instantly fatal, and although Henry could not see the exit wounds, from the amount of blood he knew they would be huge.
It was Joe Speakman’s wife, Stella.
Dead, having been shot and then staggered back against the island, and slithered down to her current position.
She was wearing a dressing gown over a nightdress. On the work surface by the sink was a kettle and two mugs. Steam wisped out of the spout of the kettle, only recently boiled. Henry glanced into the mugs. Instant coffee in each, ready to be made into a brew. Next to these items was a toaster with two pieces of toast popped up, ready to be buttered.
Stella Speakman had been preparing breakfast for two and had been shot to death in her own kitchen. It didn’t take a detective to put that one together.
Henry’s instinct was to squat down and have a closer look, but he could see everything he needed from where he was.
The hairs did rise on the back of his neck as he asked himself the next questions: Where was Joe Speakman? And had he done this?
Had there been some horrendous domestic dispute here, one of those ‘murder all the family, then commit suicide’ scenarios? Or had a burglar called?
Henry backed slowly out of the kitchen into the hallway, wondering where Flynn had gone. He pivoted on his heels, eyes pausing on the dead dog, then at the other doors off the hallway, each one closed. He listened hard — not easy because of the pounding in his ears.
A squeak, a scratching noise from upstairs. Or not?
It was tempting to go up, but he had to check the remainder of the downstairs rooms first, horribly aware that someone could be hiding, still armed with a shotgun.
He did the rooms quickly. They were empty. No bodies. No gunman.
Then he was at the foot of the stairs, behind him the dog. It had stopped twitching.
He went up slowly, feeling a second gush of adrenaline. The steps were carpeted and did not creak, so he could move silently.
At the top he turned to the door to his right, knowing it led into the main bedroom. He recalled collecting his coat from the bed when he was leaving the party. He pushed open the door gently. The entrance to the en-suite was on his left, then beyond the room opened out into a very large bedroom with a sitting area and French windows leading out to a balcony. The view from the balcony, he recalled, was stunning, sweeping down the fields to the river.
He went past the closed en-suite door into the bedroom area. The huge bed was rumpled and unmade and there was no sign of anyone.
He breathed a sigh, then back-tracked to the en-suite door, which he pushed open with his fingernail. It swung easily to reveal an expensive-looking fully tiled room, half of which was a walk-in shower.
In which was the naked body of an adult male, crumpled up.
Henry edged across to look into the shower cubicle properly.
Like his wife, Joe Speakman had been blasted to death by a shotgun. Blood, brains and water mingled down the pure white-tiled walls.
Henry was putting all this together.
Speakman showering. The wife preparing breakfast. A run-of-the-mill domestic scene. Not a murder-suicide, because Speakman had not blown his own head off.
Someone else had.
Henry heard something behind him.
He spun.
And the hooded man filled out the bathroom door, a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun pointed directly at Henry’s chest.
Flynn saw the dead dog at the same time as Henry. Up to that point he hadn’t really been too concerned about proceedings. Visiting the scene of a six-month-old murder that he knew zilch about, then going on spec to see a retired SIO, even though he was vaguely curious to see what his old boss was up to, held no great interest for him.
His mind had been on plenty of other things. Primarily the fact that he’d been almost killed the night before — and was still hacking up smoke-tinged phlegm — and how he could start tracking down the two bastards who’d left him to die in a blazing inferno. Something he was planning on doing with or without Henry’s help.
Then he had to think about Diane and Colin and how he would tell her properly about the fate of the canal
