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

‘Could you?’ His tone was blunt. He was tired of getting nowhere.

‘What?’ Her tone indicated fatigue. Grief was tiring and they had a long way to go yet.

‘Tell his ethnicity at least. Do we at least know what ethnicity this man is she met up with?’

Helen shared a look with Jonathan. A look that pleaded with him to help her. He stepped forward partially blocking Dominic’s view of her.

‘Helen?’ Dominic prompted.

‘Yes, I could tell. He was white. The man you are looking for is white.’

‘Thank you.’ It wasn’t much. It wasn’t much at all, but he was grateful to this couple who were giving it all they could just to stay upright. Dominic moved towards the door. ‘Is there anything else in here, guys?’

They both shook their heads. The day bearing down on them.

‘Let’s move on, then.’

The walk around the rest of the house was uneventful. For Dominic anyway. For Jonathan and Helen it was something else altogether. They had just found out Julie was dead and here they were walking around her house.

‘Thank you for coming.’ Dominic shook Jonathan’s hand at the side of the road. They’d stripped out of their Tyvek suits and looked to be your average human again, rather than the Tellytubbies’ rather odd cousins.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,’ Jonathan said.

‘If there was nothing there, then there was nothing there. We can’t fabricate evidence,’ Dominic reassured him. ‘Much as we’d love to find something immediately and clear this right up for you, it often doesn’t work that way. We’re methodical and we’ll do it right.’ He looked at Helen. ‘Do you know the dating site she used?’

Helen shook her head. ‘It was one of the new ones. I don’t know which one. I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking at the photo of the guy she was meeting. I told her he looked nice. It’s what she wanted to hear, wasn’t it? I couldn’t tell her anything else, could I?’

‘You couldn’t,’ Hayley jumped in. ‘It’s what we do. Our friends, our loved ones, they want support and we offer it. Regardless of what we really think. You had no way of knowing if this guy was on the level or not. It may be that he was. We might all be jumping to conclusions. We need to speak to him to rule him out of our enquiry.’

‘So, it might not even be him?’ She clung on to the hope Hayley had offered her.

‘We don’t know anything at this point so there’s nothing gained in getting ahead of ourselves. One step at a time.’ It was Hayley’s turn to reach out and grab an arm. She squeezed Helen’s. Helen inclined her head in thanks.

‘I’ll meet you tomorrow?’ Jonathan asked, about the identification procedure.

‘Yes. At the hospital. I’ll see you there.’ Dominic gave him his card with contact details on. ‘We’ll allocate you a family liaison officer, but in the meantime if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give me a call.’ He was asking for trouble and it should all go through the FLO but he could see Julie in the ground and wanted to do what he could for her brother. To bring peace to her family and, in turn, to her. Whatever form that took, he would do it. ‘We’ll also need to inform Social Care that Ed is currently living with you. They’ll be in touch with you relatively quickly. It’s a process in situations like this.’

Helen’s shoulders drooped like she had all the weight she could carry on them, but she gave a quick nod and ushered her bereft husband towards home.

They watched as Jonathan and Helen drove away.

‘You think it’s the dating guy?’ asked Hayley once they were out of sight.

Dominic shook his head. ‘I don’t know. She could have seen him and then walked away into the arms of her killer. CSU will seize her laptop, maybe the dating site or app is on there and we can ID him that way. The sooner we can find him the sooner we can eliminate him from our enquiries.’

They were only standing in front of the house for a couple of minutes when they heard a gentle cough at their side.

Dominic turned. Approaching them from their left was an older woman with grey hair and a little dog on a lead. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she said, not looking in the least bit as though she was sorry. ‘But I saw you enter Julie’s house with Jonathan a while ago, and the thing is, I haven’t seen Julie and Ed in what seems like an age. Can I ask who you are and where Julie and Ed are? I’m worried, you see, it’s not that I’m nosey.’

Dominic imagined the truth was she was probably a little of both. She desperately wanted to know who had entered her neighbour’s address but she was also worried about her younger friend who she hadn’t seen for a while. He could always fudge the truth, be the cagey police officer, but she was about to see the CSU van and that would set tongues wagging. Maybe the neighbour could help?

‘Jonathan is worried about his sister. He hasn’t seen her for a while and doesn’t know where she is. Have you seen her about lately?’ He already knew the answer to this one. The answer was in a refrigerator at the morgue. But it would lead on to the other questions.

The woman put her free hand up to her chest. ‘Oh, no. I haven’t seen her. I did wonder. Poor girl, I do hope she is all right. Do you think she will be okay?’

‘We need to find out what’s happened to her.’ Dominic skirted the issue. ‘Have you seen anyone around the house that you don’t recognise? With Julie perhaps?’ His hopes