Let the Dead Speak: A gripping new thriller

‘Yeah, of course. I think we drove past someone chopping onions, actually. That’s probably it.’

‘Don’t take the piss,’ he mumbled.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘I want to look after him. That’s all. And I don’t know how to make it better for him.’

‘It’s a phase.’

Derwent squinted at me. ‘What do you know about it?’

‘That’s what my brother says about every annoying thing his kids do. Everything’s a phase. In a month’s time he’ll be sleeping beautifully and you’ll have something else to worry about.’

He thought about it. ‘Thanks, mate.’

‘Any time.’ I got out of the car and looked up and down Constantine Avenue. The houses were detached, set back from the road and there were no pedestrians. It was quiet, and private. ‘This is going to be rubbish for witnesses.’

‘Come on.’ Derwent led the way through the gate and paused to scan the gravel in front of the house. ‘What do you think? Tyre marks?’

‘None to speak of.’ I crouched down, trying to see. ‘Nope. There isn’t enough gravel for that.’

‘Typical.’ He looked up at the house. It was a 1930s house with ugly aluminium-framed windows that had probably been put in four decades after the house was built. It had a general air of being unoccupied. The curtains were drawn in every window and weeds had sprouted through cracks in the steps. Some rubbish had blown in from the street and tangled in the undergrowth. ‘You’d know it was empty, wouldn’t you?’

‘Empty or that it belonged to someone elderly.’ I followed him through the front door, working my hands into my gloves as a precaution but also because I really didn’t want to touch anything. I stepped over the slithery pile of post and junk mail on the doormat, wrinkling my nose. ‘It stinks in here.’

‘Not as much as the nursing home did.’ Derwent looked back at me. ‘When I get old, I’m going to Switzerland to end it all. No way do I want to drag out my days staring at the walls surrounded by a load of drooling vegetables.’

‘It can’t have been that bad.’

‘Whatever you’re imagining, it was worse.’ He strode into the kitchen, snapping with energy now that we were working again, the hunter’s instinct overriding fatigue. I tried and failed to visualise him as an old man. Impossible to think of him being calm, sitting quietly, staring at the walls. He’d burn the place down first.

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