Death at Rainbow Cottage by Jo Allen (novel24 TXT) 📕

worn more on the left than on the right.’ She withdrew some printed images from a folder and spread them out in front of her on the table, highlighting particular points as she spoke. Succumbing to a sudden wave of tiredness, Ashleigh lost concentration as she rattled though them.

‘We’ll have someone for something when we trace the car.’ Chris picked up one of them and scrutinised it carefully. He was the only one of the team not in some way subdued, but he never was. There was something in his puppyish enthusiasm that reminded her of her ex-husband, both appealing and a warning. ‘Those nearside tyres are illegal. I’ve picked up enough people for that in my time.’

‘This is murder,’ said Tammy, with unusual irritation in her voice, ‘not a traffic cops' tea party.’

‘Yeah, but you know what happened with Al Capone. It’s the little things that get these guys.’

‘The rear tyre tracks were more heavily imprinted than the front ones.’ Tammy shook off his good-humoured enthusiasm and carried on.

‘As if someone had sat in the back while it was stationary?’ Still a relative newcomer to the Eden Valley, Ashleigh was unfamiliar with the location. Staring at the annotated Ordnance Survey map Chris had pinned up on the whiteboard, she tried to envisage the scene, matching the map to the photographs, the distant houses to the village. If she’d read the map right it was a clever place for a murder, with no clear line of sight to any dwelling save the bungalow the Blackwells occupied, on the edge of the village.

‘Yes. I can’t put a time to it. The ground was muddy. I imagine when you get the results of the PM it’ll tell you how long the man took to die and when he might have been attacked. And there are footprints. Man’s size ten, brogues by the look of it.’ Today, she was spectacularly brisk.

‘The sort that Len was wearing?’ Ashleigh nodded down to one of the photographs in which Len’s smartly-shod foot was clearly visible.

‘Yes. Slightly worn at the heel. I’ll email pictures and full details to you.’

‘That’s a good start.’ Jude rattled his pen on the desk. ‘Thanks, Tammy. Good stuff.’

‘Please don’t patronise me, Jude. I’m doing my job as best I can.’

There was a short silence, in which Doddsy suppressed yet another sigh and Chris looked startled. Ashleigh, who knew and liked Tammy, tested her bad temper with a smile but the investigator’s dogged determination not to respond was too much for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jude said, in a tone of complete neutrality. ‘Carry on.’

‘There was a cigarette end on the ground near the car. There was blood beside the car, and on the grass. Someone had knelt down beside the body, then run onto the lane. The footsteps petered out towards the track.’

‘That would be Natalie Blackwell. She told us she held him when he died and then ran home.’

‘That follows. I take it you’ve sent her clothes off for analysis?’

‘No.’ Jude set his pen down again. ‘By the time I went to speak to her she’d already showered and changed and her clothes were in the washing machine.’

‘No-one thought to tell her about that?’ Tammy finally looked at Jude, her frustration apparent. ‘No-one thought to tell her that it might be evidence? Surely you know how important—’

‘Thank you, Tammy.’ There was an edge to Jude’s tone. ‘I think I know how to do my job, too.’

‘Of course she’d want to get out of her clothes if they were covered in blood.’ Ashleigh frowned, trying to imagine what Natalie Blackwell must have thought, how she must have felt. ‘But you’d think they’d have known we’d need any evidence from the crime scene. And she should have been told.’

‘The PC must have made a mistake.’ Chris rushed in to try and help. ‘Jesus, but that’s pretty basic.’

‘There was no mistake. The Blackwells were told,’ said Jude. ‘But Mrs B was in a state of shock.’

It was normal enough, maybe, if someone didn't understand the significance, but Ashleigh could see that Jude had marked an asterisk beside the word clothing on his pad. ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?’

‘She suffers from OCD and anxiety.’ He’d folded his lips together as if he was reluctant to criticise. ‘She’d taken some kind of medication by the time I spoke to her. I think we can conclude her actions weren’t entirely rational.’

‘Hers, maybe. But what about her husband? If she went for a shower he could surely have taken them.’

‘Indeed.’ Jude wrote CB next to the word clothing and underlined it.

‘Never mind. We don’t have them. We can’t learn anything from them.’ Tammy resumed her narrative. ‘The murder weapon wasn’t at the scene and your people still haven’t found it.’

‘They're still looking.’ Jude’s patience with Tammy’s briskness was clearly running thin and Ashleigh couldn’t blame him. He shouldn’t have to defend what was normal procedure to someone who was looking to pick a fight. ‘It’s possible the killer, whoever he or she was, took it with them.’

‘Right. The car’s currently in the garage being checked over but I didn’t see anything unusual about it. And that’s really about as much as I can tell you.’ Tammy was already pushing her chair back. ‘If there’s anything more you need, you can ask one of the team. I’m out and about today so I won’t be answering the phone. I’ll have someone get back to you once we’ve got the results from the garage and the lab.’ She stood up, scowled at the whiteboard, and stalked out, leaving the door to bang shut behind her.

‘Not answering the phone?’ Chris stared after her in puzzlement. ‘Was it something we said?’

‘Who knows?’ Jude picked up the photos Tammy had left and pinned them up on the board next to those already there.