BLOOD STAINED an unputdownable crime thriller with a breathtaking twist (Detective Claudia Nunn Book by Rebecca Bradley (rooftoppers .TXT) 📕

Hayley had read the report and relayed it to him, but there wasn’t a lot of detail. ‘What can you tell us about him?’ There never tended to be much information when an adult went missing. You expected them to come back. Return to their lives when they were good and ready. If there was no mental health issue, or any major health concern, which there wasn’t with Julie, then it was often considered that they had gone somewhere of their own volition and would return in the same manner they had left, abruptly and without a word to anyone.

Dominic remembered Julie’s report stated she was dating, that it had been an online relationship until recently and that she had last been seen . . . He looked to Hayley, she shrugged and pulled out the report from the folder she was holding and flicked through the pages until she found the one she was looking for and handed it to him.

‘We never met him.’ Helen wiped away the tears but more were falling as she admitted what must have keenly felt like a failure on their part. ‘It was all quite new and Julie said we’d meet him when she was happy they were a definite thing. She wanted to know it was real first.’

A deep sob bubbled up from Jonathan.

The page Hayley handed to him stared up at him. Ed had been left at home while his mother went out. When she didn’t come home he got in touch with his uncle who reported her missing. When Jonathan tried to get in touch with her and couldn’t he had worried so had gone around to her house and collected Ed. It was weird being there without her.

Hayley looked up from what she was reading. ‘Were there signs he had been in the house?’

Jonathan shook his head. ‘Not that I could tell.’

Dominic peered over Hayley’s shoulder at the pile of paper on her knee. ‘Would you mind going over there and walking through the house with us? We’re going to need to search it anyway, but I’d like your eye on the place. We don’t know what’s out of place and what isn’t.’

Hayley gave him a dead-eyed stare. They were not supposed to go in before the CSU team.

‘He’ll be suited up. We won’t contaminate anything, but he can offer us a unique insight.’

There was a sliver of light that cut into Jonathan’s eyes. He looked a little more alive. He sat up straighter. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll take you to her house and look at it with you. If I can help you then I’ll do it.’ His voice was like a child at Christmas, all eager to please and full of wishes that very probably wouldn’t come true. Santa wasn’t real and he didn’t come down the chimney.

Dominic agreed to meet Jonathan and Helen at Julie’s address after they had talked to Ed and told him they were popping out for half an hour. They would inform him of his mother’s loss when they returned. When they could spend the time with him. Now they needed to do this for Julie.

In the car Dominic called the office and asked them to arrange for the CSI search team to meet them at the address, giving them fifteen minutes grace to walk around the house first.

‘Do we even have suits in the boot?’ Hayley asked.

‘Sure we do.’ Dominic indicated right.

‘And you want to do this?’

‘Uh huh.’ He took the turning.

‘What if it turns out that Jonathan killed her?’

‘Then he deserves an Oscar and we are covering ourselves by making sure he’s fully covered in a Tyvek suit. Look, he’s already admitted he’s been in there anyway and he’s a regular visitor. He’s her brother, whatever we find in there that belongs to him isn’t going to work in our favour, he’s going to say it got there long before we went in. He’s family. Stop worrying.’

Hayley blew air out through her nose.

‘He didn’t do this, Hayley.’ He turned right onto Daresbury Road.

‘I know,’ she mumbled. ‘I hate that you’re right all the time.’

‘If it makes you feel any better I lost on the horses at the weekend.’

She snorted. ‘How did I not know you gambled on the horses?’

He turned and laughed at her. ‘Because I don’t. I was trying to make you feel better. Did it work?’

She laughed and punched him in the arm. ‘That’s for being a dick.’

‘That’s Sergeant Dick, to you.’

The house was a tidy mid-terraced on Myrtle Road, Heeley. Jonathan and Helen were not here yet.

‘What are you expecting to find?’ Hayley asked.

‘I don’t know, but she was seeing someone. I’m wondering if that someone had access to the house, if he left any clues to his identity in there. If he did then Jonathan and Helen might be able to pick it out.’

And right on cue their Fiesta pulled up behind them. Jonathan was out like a shot. The house key in his hand, ready to charge up the path and enter his sister’s house.

‘Slow down.’ Dominic held up a hand to placate him. ‘We need to get into the lovely white suits first. Protocol,’ he said as Jonathan gave him a look.

It was with a jerky frustration that Jonathan clambered into the suit he was given and as he waited for everyone else to get into theirs his fingers tapped at the side of his legs.

‘Okay.’ Dominic gathered everyone together. ‘We stay close at all times. This isn’t an opportunity to go off and look around on your own. There is going to be an official search of the premises shortly, we are here for a visual search only, no touching anything. We shouldn’t even be