Death in the Black Wood by Oliver Davies (epub read online books .txt) 📕

“Enough for now.” Caitlin was climbing out too. “Hello, Sergeant Murray.”

“Good afternoon, Mr Keane.”

“Are you two ever going to get tired of that?” Conall complained.

“Not on the job,” I told him, “even when it’s just us. Once you fall into a habit like that, it’s too easy to slip. How’s the leg, Sergeant?” I didn’t mind helping Caitlin with her training, in private, while Conall worked with his less advanced DCs down at the gym, but I’d warned her before we started that she’d probably take a few bruises. Caitlin was a good sport, and she knew it was for her own good. I wasn’t going to break any of her bones or anything, but she had to feel a blow landing to know how badly she’d failed to protect herself. We didn’t want some scumbag getting the better of her in a real fight.

“The leg is absolutely fine.” She scowled at me for reminding her of the mistake that had allowed me to land that particular kick last week. I hadn’t even been moving that quickly either. I played fair. “We believe our suspect entered the house from the rear garden, and there’s a kit bag waiting inside for you.”

We all gloved up, ugh, and went in.

Even though I was certain it would be a waste of time, I checked both the front door and the patio doors for prints. Doubtless the few I collected belonged either to the owners or to the estate agency staff, but it had to be done. The same went for the cupboard where the bag had been left and various other likely surfaces. I thought the bathroom might be more promising. If you were going to take your gloves off anywhere it would surely be in there. He must have at least taken a piss while he’d been hiding in here.

The toilet bowl was filled with blue water, with streaks of the cleaning liquid still showing above the surface, running down from the rim. I lifted the seat. No little curly hairs hiding under there either. The place was clean. The bottle of toilet cleaner was in the cupboard under the washbasin, and I checked that for prints too. Conall followed me around with the bag, passing me things and holding my phone while I lifted prints.

After I’d got my shots of the inside of the patio doors in the living room and lifted prints from the handle, I slid that open so we could check it from the outside. I pulled up the magnifier on my phone camera and got a really good look at the outside of the lock.

“It’s a little scratched up. Whatever tool he used to force it probably made those little marks. Usually you’d only expect to see scratches on the inside of a garden door like this one.” People often fumbled their keys a little. Most locks had some scratches around the keyhole. The little rear garden was fully enclosed so people would only use this door to access the garden. There was no gate in the back wall which was only about eight feet high. Easy enough to get over.

We were standing on a flagged patio area that ran the length of the rear of the bungalow. Most of the garden beyond that was lawned, with flower borders on the other three sides. The grass on the lawn was short, but I could still see patches that had been flattened by passing feet. Conall was eyeing them too.

“Let's see if we can spot where he came over the wall,” he suggested. That turned out to be easy. All the soil on the back border apart from one small patch was topped by a loosely crumbled layer. The patch that wasn’t was pressed flat. “Looks like he took the trouble to stamp it all down after he landed.”

“No clear footprints,” I agreed. “Yet another little display of excessive caution. He can’t have expected anyone to be checking this place out today, not after all the dodging about he did last night.” Once I’d photographed the ground there, we hoisted ourselves up to get a look at the other side of the wall. There was a narrow, tarmacked lane running along the back of the houses. Nothing there for us. “Come on, let’s see what that key you were given does in that lock.”

“Busted,” he decided after turning it back and forth a few times to no effect. “I’ll let the estate agents know. Is it worth removing?”

I shook my head. “Even if we took it apart, we wouldn’t be able to identify what he used on it. Come on, let’s have a look at that bag shall we.”

Caitlin had soon become fed up of trailing around after us and had retreated to the car to grab a tea from her thermos. Conall had promised to call her when we were ready to start on the bag, so he went to fetch her while I spread out another plastic sheet beside the first one. This was our very best chance of lifting a fingerprint belonging to our suspect and of collecting a sample of their DNA. The fact that he’d left this bag behind might indicate that he didn’t care if we found it, which could mean that he knew he wasn’t on any records, or it might not. The bag may only have been found weeks or months from now, and even then, why would anyone link it to our murder investigation? Why would anyone connect this bungalow to a crime that had been committed two miles away in a different neighbourhood?

There were prints on the strap and on parts of the outside of the bag, as if someone had grabbed it by the body at some point when it was empty.

“All the same set? One person?” Conall asked as I flicked through the photographs I’d just taken.

“One person,” I confirmed. “Hand