The House in the Woods (Atticus Priest Book 1) Read online

  Mallender nodded. Mack climbed out of the car and kneaded her forehead.

  Murder on Christmas Eve.

  Peace on Earth and mercy mild?

  Not tonight.

  3

  Mack fetched her phone from the car and found the number for Chief Superintendent Beckton. The call rang and, after a moment, it was answered. Beckton was annoyed at being disturbed, especially given the time of year, but she had no choice but to speak to him. The use of firearms would be controlled by the Tactical Firearms Controller at the control room, but Beckton was the Strategic Controller, and Mack had been doing this long enough to know that it would be prudent to get him onside at the earliest opportunity. Beckton listened to Mack’s summation of the scene and then gave her permission to deploy.

  Mack ended the call. She turned to the track and saw someone approaching, a flashlight bouncing up and down. Mack guessed that the flashing blues had roused one of the neighbours.

  She trotted over. It was a big man in jeans and a thick overcoat, Hunter boots splashing through the puddles, an Alsatian on a leash straining at his side. He held the dog’s leash in his left hand and a shotgun in his right, the stock of the open weapon wedged beneath his shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” the man called out to Collison.

  “Stay back, please, sir,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  Mack reached the gate at the same time as the man. “Good evening, sir. Who are you?”

  “My name’s Robson.”

  “First name, Mr. Robson?”

  “Jimmy.”

  “Do you live here?”

  He pointed. “Just up the track.”

  “And that shotgun—you got a licence for it?”

  “I’m the gamekeeper,” he said. “I work for the Wilton Estate. We had pikeys in here last week for hare coursing. Thought they might have been back. What’s happening?”

  “Have you heard or seen anything tonight? Anything unusual?”

  He gave a shrug. “Saw the lights of your cars,” he said. “Dog started barking. Thought I’d better go and see what was what.”

  “Have you seen anyone else?”

  “No one save you lot. Why? What’s happening?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss it. Please give your details to the constable and then go home—there’s nothing to see. Stay inside. It’ll be Christmas in”—she checked her watch—“five minutes.”

  The man grunted something about the season and tried to look around the barn, but, at Collison’s gentle urging, he turned away and provided his details. That done, he went back in the direction from which he had arrived. Mack told Collison to set up a cordon fifty feet from the gate and ensure that no one came in or out without her approval.

  Mack saw the lights of two approaching police vans and jogged over to intercept them. They pulled up and the occupants disembarked. She recognised Sergeant Neil Blyford. He had seven men with him. They each went to the back of the vehicles and took out their weapons from the gun safe.

  Blyford made his way up to Mack and shook her hand.

  “Evening.”

  “Boss,” he said.

  “Sorry to drag you out tonight.”

  Mack updated Blyford on the situation. He listened intently and then asked to speak to Mallender. The window was wound down, and Blyford crouched next to it and asked Ralph about his family and what they might expect to find when they went inside. He described the house, closing his eyes as he pictured it, explaining the layout: kitchen, boot room, drawing room and dining room on the ground floor; three separate staircases that led up to the first floor, with some of the upstairs rooms accessible only by one or another of the staircases. Mack watched him carefully, listening not so much to what he was saying but, rather, how he was saying it. There was nothing that suggested anything out of the ordinary. He was reacting just as she would have expected: distraught, frightened, shocked.

  Blyford asked whether Mallender thought Cameron might be responsible.

  Would he know where the shotguns were kept?

  Would he know how to use them?

  Ralph answered yes each time.

  Blyford reconvened with Mack and Lennox. She showed him the footage of the front of the house that she had taken on her phone.

  “Thank you. Helpful.”

  “Need anything else?”

  “We’re good,” he said.

  Mack stood aside and let the officers go about their work. They were each armed with the same sub-machine guns and wore the same ballistic vests and helmets. One hefted a heavy ballistic shield, propping it up against the side of the car. The men clustered together and studied the video footage on Mack’s phone.

  Blyford walked over to Mack. “I need all your officers to maintain their positions front and rear until we call in on the main channel that we’re in position. Then I want them all the way back to the rendezvous point and not, under any circumstances, to advance without my express permission. We’ll hand the scene back to you once it’s secure, and call in the paramedics to deal with any casualties.”

  “How are you going to do it?”

  “Four men stay outside for containment. I’ll take the other three, breach the kitchen door and call out to any occupants. If we get no response, we’ll advance to the injured party. Then we’ll go room by room to search for further casualties and will either arrest or neutralise any threats.”

  The first team left to secure the perimeter.

  Blyford turned to his men. “On me. We’ll give them two minutes to secure the perimeter, then we’ll go in. Mack—listen in to the channel and be ready to advance with the paramedics.”

  Mack nodded. The remaining four firearms officers all turned and made their way from the RVP towards the house. They left a tense silence in their wake.

  Mack and Lennox stood in silence and then a loud crash was heard from the farmhouse.

  “Armed police! Come out of the building with your hands up!”

  Nothing.

  The silence descended again before it was disturbed by a second, identical challenge.

  Still nothing.

  There came a series of shouts and crashes from the farmhouse as Blyford and his team stormed inside. Mack took a radio and risked a look around the side of the barn. She saw the glow of the team’s flashlights spreading through the rooms on the first floor, and then, after a minute, they appeared on the second floor, too. Lights shone out of uncovered windows and suffused the curtains of those that were closed, and she heard more shouts and the splintering of wood as boots were put through doors.

  Mack’s stomach felt empty, her nerves buzzing.

  Blyford’s voice crackled over the radio. “Backup, come forward.”

  Mack pressed transmit. “Status?”

  “Bad,” he said.

  “Signs of life?”

  “Negative,” he said. “Four bodies. They’ve all been shot.”

  4

  Mack sat down against a plough that had been left in the yard and pulled on a pair of forensic overshoes and a white forensic suit. The firearms team hefted all their kit as they made their way back to the vehicles, leaving just Blyford behind at the house. Mack hooked a mask over her mouth and nose, pulled the suit’s hood up over her head, and pulled a pair of blue nitrile gloves onto her hands, snapping them into place over the cuffs of her suit. One of the paramedics stood by her, a weary-looking middle-aged man who carried nothing apart from a stethoscope. He also wore forensic overshoes and gloves.

  “You’re authorised to pronounce life extinct?” she asked him.

  “Not my first time,” he said. “Most times at Christmas it’s suicides, though, not… whatever this is.”

  “Follow behind and we’ll go to each victim in turn. Understand?”

  He nodded. Blyford stood next to her, his weapon aimed at the ground, also with forensic boots on his feet. Now was not the time to introduce anything new into the crime scene.

  She checked that her
gloves and boots were properly fastened.

  “You ready?” Blyford said.

  Mack nodded that she was.

  Blyford led the way to the door, guarded now by Constable Britten. She felt a little sick with the anticipation of what she knew she was about to witness. It wasn’t as if she had never seen dead bodies before; she had, and had learned to compartmentalise it as just another part of the job. But this felt different. The house had a brooding presence, a weight that she felt pressing down on her as she waited for Britten to step aside. The property was isolated and remote, yet, as she glanced into the trees that fringed the perimeter, she had an unsettling feeling that they were being watched.

  The door opened into the scullery. Blyford led the way through the room and into the kitchen.

  He stepped aside so that Mack could see the body.

  It was a man, in his sixties or early seventies, lying spread-eagled across a chair that had fallen beneath him. His legs and left arm were in contact with the floor, and his head hung loosely, resting against the wall. He was wearing pyjamas and, if not for the blood that had stained his pyjama top and coagulated on the floor beneath his head, it might have been possible to mistake him for sleeping. Mack saw splatters of blood on the wall and across the glossy surface of the oven. The kitchen table had been shoved to the side and now sat at a diagonal across the room. A vase and china bowl that must have been on the table had been dislodged, and now both lay in fragments across the tile. The chairs had been disturbed, and one of them was lying on its back beneath the table.

  The paramedic squatted next to the body and briefly touched his neck with two fingers. Mack had always found it odd that, whatever the state of a corpse, no police officer was allowed to assume that they were dead unless a medical professional certified it first.

  The medic shook his head briefly and looked at his watch. “Life pronounced extinct at three thirteen a.m.”

  Blyford led the way down a corridor, up a step and then along a hallway to the front of the house. The front door was directly ahead of them, and there were doors to the left and right. Both were open: Mack looked through the door to the left and saw a dining room table and eight chairs.

  Blyford went to the door on the right. “The others are in here,” he said.

  She went inside. Blyford aimed his torch around the room. There were a table and chairs and three sofas arranged in front of a flat-screen TV that was fastened to the wall. The screen was switched on, frozen on the title screen for Die Hard. Mack took in the details, but her attention was focused on the slaughter that had taken place. A second body was sprawled out across a comfortable sofa. It was a woman, and she had been shot at least twice. There was a wound in her forehead and at least one more in her torso. Her face was obscured by a congealed mask of blood, and her shirt was crimson, with more blood pooled on the carpet around her.

  The third victim was in an armchair. A blanket had been pulled up to just beneath the line of the head, and the body was angled away from the door. Mack stepped forward and around the chair and saw that the body belonged to a second woman. She was younger than the first. Her blonde hair fanned across the back of the chair, and there was no sign of injury save the bloom of red that had gathered around the scorched holes in the blanket. She had been shot at least three times.

  Blyford swivelled, sending the glow of the torch around the room until it found the fourth body. The victim was male, early twenties, and sitting with his back propped up against the wall. He was wearing a chunky cable-knit jumper, black jeans and a pair of fluffy slippers. His left leg was straight and his right leg was bent at the knee. His arms hung loosely to the sides and, just out of reach of his hand, a pistol rested on the floor. The man had a single gunshot wound to the left-hand side of his head, with a corresponding exit wound on the right.

  Mack paused while the paramedic looked at each victim in turn. After the most cursory of torchlit glances, he shook his head once more. “Life pronounced extinct for these three victims at three fifteen a.m.”

  Mack saw cartridge cases scattered across the floor, glinting dully in the light from Blyford’s torch.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  “It’s a bad one,” Blyford agreed. He nodded down at the pistol. “Looks like a Browning nine-millimetre. Illegal, obviously.”

  “Everyone out,” she said gruffly. “Let’s secure the scene. No one else comes inside until the CSIs get here.”

  Mack made her way back outside. The house felt even more oppressive now that it had divulged its bloody secret. The rooms were gloomy, with pools of thick blackness gathered in the corners, too dark to see into. She felt a sensation between her shoulder blades, a scratchiness, and the feeling that she was being observed grew stronger. The place had an atmosphere, an ominousness that had been underscored by what they had just discovered.

  The house was secured, and no one would enter now until the CSIs had arrived. The rooms would all be carefully photographed and filmed before any further examination took place. It would take days to finish the work. The dead, unlike the living, could wait; the preservation of the scene was everything if they were not to lose or contaminate evidence.

  She thought about what might happen next. Four deaths would be a story in any event, but four deaths on Christmas Eve? It wasn’t difficult to imagine how the press would react to it. There would be reporters here as soon as the news broke. It would be a big deal. She was damned if she was going to make a mistake in a case as big, and as scrutinised, as this one would most certainly be.

  Lennox came over to where she was standing. “What have we got?”

  “Four dead bodies. Looks like three murders and a suicide.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yep.”

  She looked at her watch. It was just before four in the morning.

  “Happy Christmas, Lennox,” she said.

  Part II

  5

  Atticus Priest had been on a long walk around the city with Bandit. The dog had originally been loaned to him. The man from whom Atticus bought his pot—a malodorous and thoroughly undesirable man by the name of Finn—had neglected him, and Atticus, feeling lonely and sorry for the dog, had offered to take him off his hands for a week or two. That week or two had turned into three months, and there was no sign that Finn was even remotely interested in taking the hound back. Atticus didn’t mind. Bandit was good company and an excellent reason to get a little daily exercise. Besides that, it wasn’t as if Atticus was busy. He hadn’t had a new case for a month, and, in truth, he had begun to entertain the dispiriting thought that he might have to look for something else to do with his life. The family business, even. He greeted that prospect with a shudder whenever he considered it, but he was running out of money, and there would come a point when he might have to admit to himself that it was necessary.

  There would be a lot of humble pie to eat, but not yet. Not quite yet.

  Atticus’s office was in the middle of the city on New Street, opposite the 1960s multi-storey car park that looked so incongruous against the two-hundred-year-old properties on the other side of the road. He had found the place on Rightmove and had made an offer without seeing it. The property comprised two rooms on the first floor. The building was the middle one of what would once have been three houses, three storeys tall with brick walls and a slate-covered roof. The north-facing frontage of the three properties formed an approximately symmetrical four-bay façade in which the two middle bays of the first floor were occupied by a three-sided projecting window that stretched out over the pavement below. It was well situated, with an entrance gate that opened directly onto the pavement. The landlady, a pleasant enough if ruthless octogenarian who lived somewhere in Hampshire, owned the small complex of buildings that lay beyond the gate. The entrance passage led between a hair salon on the left and a bridal shop on the right and opened out into a garden that was only tended to when the tenants complained that it had become overgrown. There was a fitness studio, a jewelle
r’s workshop and a dental practice.

  The office would have been an excellent choice if there had been enough business for Atticus to justify the expense. Unfortunately, that hadn’t been the case.

  The door to the office was at the end of the passage, on the right-hand side. A woman was waiting for Atticus outside it. She was well dressed, wearing an oversized belted beige jacket over a skirt and top. She was good-looking, too, with lustrous hair that fell down past her shoulders. Her eyes were covered by a large pair of dark glasses. Atticus estimated that she was in her late twenties.

  “Nice dog,” she said.

  Atticus looked down at Bandit. “He’s a good boy.”

  “He’s gorgeous.” She knelt down and tickled the dog behind the ears. “What’s his name?”

  “Bandit.”

  “Hello, Bandit,” she said. “You’re a gorgeous boy, aren’t you?”

  Bandit wagged his tail happily. Atticus reached in his pocket for his keys. “Are you looking for someone?”

  She stood back up. “I am,” she said. “Mr. Priest. I don’t suppose you know him?”

  Atticus’s first instinct was that the woman had come to collect something. He owed lots of money to lots of different people and, indeed, was already two months in arrears for his rent. This woman didn’t look like a debt collector, and she was too stylish to be a provincial solicitor, but he still felt uneasy.

  He glanced at her warily. She spoke with a very soft accent that was difficult to place. “Can I ask who you are?”

  She tapped her finger against the bronze plaque that he had fixed to the wall. It read PRIEST & CO. – PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS. “It’s you? You’re Mr. Priest?”

  “I am.”

  She smiled warmly. “Allegra.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Mallender. Allegra Mallender.”

  Atticus paused. That name was familiar, although he couldn’t recall where from. “Do we have an appointment?”