In Cold Blood

JANE BETTANY won the Gransnet and HQ writing competition in 2019, which was for women authors over the age of forty who had written a novel with a protagonist in the same age range. In Cold Blood is her debut novel, but she has been writing short stories and articles for over twenty years, many of which have appeared in women’s magazines, newspapers and literary publications.

Jane lives in Derby and has an MA in Creative Writing. She takes daily walks in local beauty spots and enjoys visiting the delightful towns and villages of Derbyshire and its neighbouring counties.

In Cold Blood

JANE BETTANY

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Jane Bettany 2020

Jane Bettany asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008407643

Version: 2020-08-06

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For Howard, with love

Chapter 1

The pantry was musty and airless and smelt faintly of curry powder and something that Amy couldn’t identify. It was a tiny space, crammed with out-of-date food, a battered collection of saucepans, and containers filled with dried fruit and breakfast cereals. She emptied the shelves doggedly, thrusting everything into a heavy-duty bin bag.

Reaching into the corner of the highest shelf, she retrieved the last items: a jar of pickled onions and some homemade blackberry jam. Strictly speaking, she should throw the contents away and wash out the jars for recycling – but sod that. She had better things to do with her time. Instead, being careful not to break the glass, Amy placed the jars in the bag and tied it with a double knot ready to take to the bin.

It was as she turned to switch off the light that she noticed the marks on the wall. Height marks. Just inside the door.

A child grew up in this house, she thought, as she traced the pencilled scratches with her fingers. An only child. One set of marks.

The first measurement appeared in the lower third of the wall, alongside a date – 15th January 1965. The marks crept higher with each passing year. The last was dated 15th January 1977 and recorded a height of 5′ 6″.

Perhaps the 15th of January was the child’s birthday, Amy thought. There must have been an annual ritual to record his or her height on the pantry wall.

She wondered why the marks had stopped in 1977. At 5′ 6″, a teenage girl would be fully grown. A boy might have gone on to gain a few more inches.

The measurements were a part of the history of the house that would soon be gone forever. When the new kitchen was installed, the pantry would be removed and replaced with tall, sliding larder cupboards. She and Paul had chosen a range of expensive, glossy units that would provide the kind of high-quality finish they hoped would sell the house.

Planning permission had been granted for a huge extension that would more than double the size of the existing kitchen. Amy’s vision was for a light-filled, open-plan living space with shiny work surfaces, top-of-the-range appliances, and a vast dining area. There would be skylights and bi-fold doors opening onto the rear garden. Once completed, the bright, airy room would be the redeeming feature of the otherwise unremarkable 1960s house they had bought at auction eight weeks earlier.

Grabbing the bin bag, Amy took one last look at the height marks before switching off the light and closing the pantry door. It was cold, so she flicked the kettle on to make a hot drink. Paul had been outside for most of the day, digging out the foundations for the extension. He would be ready for another brew.

As she waited for the water to boil, the back door opened and Paul came in, shivering. He was pale. Unsmiling.

‘What’s up?’ Amy said. ‘Has something happened?’

‘You could say that. I’ve only gone and found a fucking body.’

Amy tutted. ‘Yeah, right. Very funny, bro.’ Paul had been a wind-up merchant all his life. It was a trait he should have grown out of by now.

‘Seriously. I’m not kidding, Ames.’

‘Course you’re not. What is it? A cat? Dog? Someone’s long-dead hamster?’

‘It’s an animal, all right. Of the human variety.’

Dread tugged at Amy’s stomach muscles. ‘You’d better be joking,’ she said.

‘Come and take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.’

She followed him outside. They skirted the partially excavated foundation trench and stood next to what would eventually be the far corner of the extension.

‘Down there.’ Paul pointed at something protruding from the soil.

Leaning in closer, Amy realised it was the upper part of a human skull; the forehead and eye sockets jutted out from the damp layer of earth at the bottom of the metre-deep trench. If it had been buried a few inches lower, Paul would never have known it was there.

‘Shit!’ She blew air through her cheeks. ‘This is awful.’

‘You can say that again. It’s going to delay everything. There’s no chance of getting the extension finished before the new year now.’

Amy wrapped her arms across her body and glared at her brother.

‘Paul! Are you for real? A body, somebody, has been lying here for God knows how long and all you’re bothered about is the extension?’

‘Come on, sis, don’t give me a hard time. Our inheritance is tied up in this house. We need to get the work finished, sell up and move on to the next project. That’ – he pointed into the trench – ‘is a bloody disaster. The delay it’ll cause is bad enough, but if word gets out, it’s going to knock thousands off the property value. No one will be interested in buying this place, with or without a swanky kitchen. Who wants to live in a house where someone’s been murdered?’

Paul’s usual flippancy had vanished, replaced by a demeanour that was uncharacteristically sombre, almost hostile. He was obviously worried.

‘Do you think that’s what happened here then?’ Amy said. ‘Murder?’

‘Of course it is. Use your nous. The body didn’t bury itself, did it?’

‘It could have been here for hundreds of years,’ she said. ‘A body buried during the civil war or something.’

‘Civil war?’ He scowled, shaking his head dismissively. ‘What are you on about, Amy? This isn’t an ancient battlefield.’

‘OK. So maybe it was buried a lot more recently. Either way, the local paper’s going to have a field day.’

Paul trailed the fingertips of his right hand along his jawline and studied the trench thoughtfully. ‘Only if they find out about it,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ She narrowed her eyes, staring at her brother in disbelief. ‘Of course they’ll find out.’

‘Not if we don’t report it.’

‘What?’ she said, incredulous. ‘No way!’

‘Think about it. If I hadn’t dug such a deep trench, or the body had been buried a few inches further down, we’d have been none the wiser.’

Amy lifted her hands and locked her fingers across the top of her head. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting we keep quiet about this?’

‘Why not? If I pour the concrete foundations now, this little problem will stay buried forever. No one will know but us.’

He leaned back and let the muscles in his shoulders relax. Just talking about a solution seemed to have calmed him. Paul’s proposal offered a quick fix, an easy way out – but Amy was horrified by the idea.

She spun away from the trench, groaning with exasperation. ‘Firstly,’ she said, ‘this is not a “little problem”. Whoever it is lying down there was once a living, breathing human being. Don’t you think they deserve some kind of justice, or a proper burial at least? And secondly, what if the person responsible for this is still around? They know what’s hidden here. If they get away with it, what’s to say they won’t do it again somewhere else?’

‘Bloody hell, sis.’ Paul rubbed the back of his neck and kicked irritably at a clump of soil with his work boot. ‘Why do you always have to be such a goody-two-shoes?’

Amy peered down at the skull – into the empty eye sockets from which someone had once looked out at the face of their killer. Every house has its own secret history, she thought, remembering the height marks scratched into the pantry wall. Some things are best left hidden, but this definitely isn’t one of them.

She pulled out her phone and dialled 101.

Chapter 2

Detective Inspector Isabel Blood gripped the steering wheel of her car and drove through the streets of Bainbridge as fast as the speed limit would allow. She was heading to the secondary school where her youngest daughter was a pupil. At Isabel’s age, attending a parents’ evening should have been a thing of the past, but life had ricocheted off in an unexpected direction when Ellie was born.

It was damp and starting to get dark by the time she pulled into the school car park. She’d promised to meet Nathan outside the main entrance at five o’clock and she was already five minutes late.

There was no sign of him as she ran towards the school. He must have gone inside already. Pushing through the revolving glass door, Isabel dashed down the central corridor towards Ellie’s form room. Nathan was waiting outside.

‘I didn’t think you were going to make it,’ he said.

‘Sorry. Something came up. You know what it’s like.’

‘You should have taken the afternoon off. They owe you enough hours.’

Isabel pressed her shoulder against a wooden locker and smiled. ‘It’s not always possible, as well you know.’

A door opened behind them and Ellie’s form teacher, Miss Powell, beckoned them into the classroom.

They sat down and listened as the teacher began to deliver her verdict on how their fourteen-year-old daughter was doing in her lessons.

‘Ellie is highly intelligent, self-assured, eloquent …’

Nathan was unable to contain a grin.

‘However …’

Nathan’s smile evaporated.

‘Although Ellie is extremely capable, I’m concerned about her recent behaviour. She used to be a model pupil, but she’s been acting very negatively since the beginning of term. She’s become argumentative and she wastes a lot of time messing around with her friends.’ The teacher paused to let her words sink in. There was a note of frustration in her voice as she continued. ‘She’s studying for her GCSEs now and she really needs to take her schoolwork more seriously, otherwise she’ll fall behind. So far this term, she’s handed homework in late on five separate occasions and she’s not engaging in class like she used to. More worryingly, she’s been turning up late for school in the mornings.’

‘Late?’ Isabel leaned forward, a sense of unease rippling somewhere beneath her ribs. This didn’t sound like Ellie. Not at all. She’d always been a good kid.

‘She’s been catching the school bus, hasn’t she?’ said Nathan. ‘Perhaps it’s been running late, or she missed it.’

Miss Powell was unswayed by his line of defence. ‘There have been no problems reported with the school buses. Besides, when I spoke to Ellie, she told me she’d been walking to school. That’s fine, of course, if it’s what she wants to do, but the school is a long way from where you live. If she’s going to walk, she needs to set off earlier and get here on time.’

Isabel looked at Nathan, who appeared to be as baffled as she was.

‘We had no idea she was walking to school,’ Isabel said. ‘We’ll ask her about it.’

‘Perhaps you could also find out why she’s stopped coming to the after-school book club,’ Miss Powell added.

Inexplicably, it was this final revelation that shocked Isabel the most. Ellie’s love of books was legendary. The possibility that her love affair with literature might be over prematurely saddened Isabel inordinately.

‘She still does plenty of reading at home,’ Nathan said.

Miss Powell smiled. ‘That’s reassuring to hear, but I’m worried that Ellie is losing interest in her work here, at school. I’m disappointed. She could do so much better.’

‘We’ll talk to her … find out what’s wrong. Won’t we, Nathan?’

Although Nathan nodded supportively, Isabel knew that she would be the one who would have to deliver the reprimand. As far as her husband was concerned, their youngest child could do no wrong – and nothing the teacher said would change his opinion.

Having delivered the negative elements of Ellie’s report, Miss Powell allowed herself a tight smile. ‘There is one subject in which Ellie has been excelling …’

Nathan nudged Isabel and winked.

‘Her art tutor is very impressed with the work she’s been producing.’ The teacher picked up the written report and read from it. ‘He says … Ellie is creative and talented and has a natural gift.’

‘She gets that from me,’ said Nathan.

Isabel gave him a sideways glance and focused her attention back on the teacher.

Miss Powell put down the report and leaned back. ‘There’s an exhibition of artwork in the main hall,’ she told them. ‘Please take a look on your way out. Several of Ellie’s pieces are on show.’

Isabel had switched her phone to silent, but she felt it vibrate in her pocket. Pulling it out, she glanced down at the screen. It was her colleague Dan Fairfax, her sergeant. He knew where she was. He wouldn’t be ringing unless it was important.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Isabel stood up. ‘Technically I’m still on duty, so I need to take this.’

She answered the call on her way out of the classroom. ‘This had better be important, Dan.’

‘It is, boss. I wouldn’t disturb you otherwise. We’ve had word that a body’s been found. I thought you’d want to know.’

Nathan had followed her out into the corridor clutching a printed copy of Ellie’s report.

‘Hang on, Dan. I need to have a quick word with Nathan.’ Isabel turned to her husband. ‘There’s a body. I have to go.’

‘Can you spare a couple of minutes to look at Ellie’s artwork on your way out?’

‘I’d rather not rush it,’ she said, shame clawing at her conscience.

Nathan sighed, disappointed. Over the years, he had reluctantly accepted that sometimes her job had to take priority over family commitments. It was a regrettable reality they’d both come to terms with, but that didn’t stop Isabel feeling guilty. Occasionally, being a good copper meant being a bad parent, or a rubbish wife. Mostly, Isabel loved her job, but there were times when she hated the way it screwed with her life.

‘It’s better if I come back another time and have a proper look,’ she said, suppressing a flush of self-reproach. ‘Sorry, Nathan. I’m needed urgently.’

She planted a swift kiss on his cheek before hurrying back along the main corridor towards the exit, the phone clasped to her ear.

‘I’m on my way, Dan. Tell me where I need to be and I’ll meet you there.’

‘The property’s on Ecclesdale Drive. Number 23,’ Dan said. ‘It’s on that big, sprawling estate on the eastern side of town. Head for Winster Street and then turn left—’

‘It’s OK.’ She cut him off. ‘I know where it is.’

Isabel didn’t need directions. She knew it well.

***

Ecclesdale Drive sliced through the centre of a housing estate that had sprung up in the early 1960s and had grown every decade since. The outlying fields that Isabel remembered from childhood had burgeoned into a confusing network of streets and cul-de-sacs, each one crammed with showy red-brick properties.

The houses in the original part of the estate were plainer, but built on bigger plots, with long gardens filled with well-established trees and shrubs. Isabel turned onto Winster Street, driving past the recreation ground she’d visited frequently as a child. The old slide was still there, as well as a vast climbing frame and a new set of swings. The flat wooden roundabout the local kids had called the ‘teapot lid’ had been removed on safety grounds in the 1970s, as had the conical swing that had been shaped like a witch’s hat. Isabel smiled as she recalled the wild, spinning rides she had taken on that pivoted swing.

She took the second left into Ecclesdale Drive. The street was long and crescent-shaped, curving down towards an infant school and the newsagent’s shop at the end. It was years since Isabel had been here. Ecclesdale Drive held lots of memories, but not all of them were good.

She pulled up behind two police vehicles that were parked halfway along the road. Her hand trembled as she switched off the engine, her fingers quivering involuntarily like the blue-and-white police tape that was fluttering around the outer cordon of the crime scene. Battling a growing wave of unease, Isabel took a deep breath and got out of the car.

Chapter 3

She stood for a moment and looked up at number 23. It was one of a long row of identical detached properties of boring 1960s architecture. Like a child’s drawing of a house, its pointed eaves faced the road and a chimney protruded from the left-hand side of the roof. The front of the house had originally consisted of three windows and a door, but at some stage over the last couple of decades, someone had added a small porch extension.

Isabel went to the boot of her car and retrieved a pair of blue latex gloves and overshoes. Suitably protected, she walked to the edge of the temporary barrier where a uniformed officer was standing.

‘Evening ma’am,’ he said as she showed him her warrant card. ‘It’s round the back. DS Fairfax is here already.’

She stepped onto the front path and ducked under the inner cordon before unlatching the side gate at the end of the driveway. At the back of the house, she passed a pale-faced young couple who were gazing out from the dining-room window. DS Daniel Fairfax was standing in the garden with his arms folded, next to a set of lights that were illuminating an area of ground directly behind the property’s brick-built garage.

Isabel pulled up the zip of her coat to fend off a chill that was wrapping itself around her neck. ‘OK, Danny boy,’ she said. ‘What have we got?’

‘Human remains,’ he said. ‘The new owners came across them when they were digging out foundations for a kitchen extension.’

Her chest tightened. ‘Human remains? I thought you said there was a body.’

‘That’s what the duty officer told me initially,’ he said. ‘When I got here, I realised the body had been in the ground for quite a while.’

Isabel forced herself to breathe slowly to fend off a rush of nausea. ‘When you say “a while”, how long do you mean?’

‘I don’t know yet, boss. You’ll have to ask Raveen.’

Raveen Talwar was kneeling a few feet away at the edge of a half-dug trench. Isabel was glad it was Raveen. He was consistently polite and helpful, and one of the best crime scene investigators she had worked with. He dealt efficiently and graciously with questions, but he could be brash if he thought someone was trying to step on his overshoed toes. Whenever he worked a crime scene, he had a grating habit of crunching mints, the hard-boiled variety. He devoured them nonstop, even through the longest of examinations.

Despite his penchant for mints, there was something agreeable and reassuring about having Raveen around. Everyone liked him. His popularity was such that, when his wife had recently given birth to a boy, the CID team had taken the unusual step of clubbing together for a baby gift.

Isabel stumbled towards him on legs that wobbled, as though they were made of elastic. ‘What can you tell me, Raveen?’ she said.

He looked up. ‘Are you OK? You look pale.’

‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘Just tell me what you know.’

‘Nothing certain at this stage, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Any soft tissue is long gone, but these definitely aren’t bones of antiquity. If you’re going to force me to guess – which I know you are – I’d say the body has been here for at least twenty years, but it could have been in the ground much longer.’

‘How much longer?’ Her heart was pounding and she was aware that her voice was cracking treacherously.

‘It’s too early to say. The skeleton is only partially exposed. I’ll be able to tell you more when it’s been fully uncovered and removed. Don’t push me into making a rash assessment. I need to have a proper look.’

Isabel tried hard to hide her exasperation. ‘Come on, Raveen. Don’t be coy. You must be able to tell me something.’ She shifted impatiently. ‘I won’t hold it against you if you get it wrong, but I need to know. Please. How long? It’s important.’

Raveen stood up and narrowed his eyes. ‘I’d estimate the body has been here somewhere between twenty and forty years, give or take a few years.’