The scene at Kibble House seemed busier than ever as night-time arrived. Dani and Easton had remained throughout, as had Eric Eccles, and Dani wondered more than once what exactly he was waiting for, and how long it’d be before he eventually gave up and went home. Did he really want to see his parents being wheeled out? Following their chat in the garden, she’d made clear to him that it was now going to be at least the morning before he was allowed in the house. Dani was determined to hold out until he’d disappeared, but she really didn’t want to be at the murder scene all night.
At least the time spent at the house had given Dani extra thinking space, and also time to catch up with McNair by phone. She kind of wished she hadn’t, as on speaking to McNair she’d found out that the interview with Clinton Harrison had never gone ahead. Something to do with him changing lawyers, though it was all a bit unclear. The upshot was that Dani would still be leading that, whenever the interview was rearranged.
She’d come to that tomorrow. Her primary focus remained at the Eccles house, where she’d spent a good while lightly rummaging around with Easton, trying to piece together in her mind the lives of the deceased as best she could – in particular using the information that she’d taken from her discussion with Eric. Certainly, she felt there was a lot more to be learned about the inner family pulls and struggles.
None of the other siblings had been to the house at all during the day or evening. Will, the youngest, was incommunicado. Nobody knew where he was. Was that a problem? Henry was visiting a professor at St Andrews University in Scotland and was doing his best to get back to the Midlands, but he hadn’t responded to messages until well into the afternoon so now looked set to not get on a train back from Scotland until the morning. Laura had been tracked to Greece. She and her husband, Hamed, and his young daughter from a previous relationship, had flown there only that morning, and were in the process of trying to arrange flights home. Again, that would most likely now be the following day.
So Eric was all alone.
Dani did of course feel immensely sorry for him, but she also remained wary too, for obvious reasons. At least he’d had no more violent outbursts.
‘What are you thinking?’ Easton asked Dani as she stood staring at the thick oak desk in Terry Eccles’ home office. The room was a quite bland, modern space really, not in keeping with the generally traditional and aged charm in much of the rest of the house.
‘It wouldn’t be the first time a businessman has been targeted like this because of a deal gone wrong,’ Dani said. ‘Or something similar.’
‘Quite a leap.’
‘It is. But unless we get anything obvious from Forensics, then the business is an area I think we need to explore. And how much is at stake because of the Eccleses’ deaths?’
‘Inheritance, you mean?’
‘Yeah. How much are the businesses worth? The house? Cars, cash? Who gets it all? Eric is a shareholder in the family business but none of the others are. Does that mean he stands to gain the most?’
‘You’re saying he’s number one in the suspect pecking order?’
‘Not really.’
‘Or does the very fact that he’s the one with the biggest finger in the pot, the one standing to gain, give motive to others?’
‘Jealousy?’
‘Absolutely.’
Dani sighed. ‘Who knows. Let’s not wait for Forensics, though. Ledford already confirmed there’s no obvious prints or anything on the murder weapons. Nor on those boots, or the window frame. So it’s going to be a waiting game for anything useful from Forensics, DNA or the like. I think we should start looking into what we can – the family, the business – right now.’
‘That might not set us off in the best light.’
‘We need a motive,’ Dani said. ‘Right now we have nothing else.’
‘You want a team in here?’
Dani nodded. ‘Let’s start them in this room. Get all the records boxed and out of here. We’ll get computer equipment bagged up and back to the office for processing too.’
Easton looked really unsure now, but Dani couldn’t do nothing.
‘Get Grayling set up on CCTV in the area,’ she added. ‘She’s always good at that.’
‘Looking for what, though?’
‘We have a rough timeline, don’t we? They were killed sometime last night. Get her to work outward from the estate with whatever towers are nearby. Look for any suspicious movements anywhere near here during the night.’
‘That’s quite a spurious search.’
She ignored that comment – more subconsciously than anything, as her mind was already moving onto something else. Her focus rested on the wide sash window that led to the garden beyond. She could see nothing but her own reflection in the blackness. She felt like she was close to grasping something, but it kept slipping away.
She heard voices out in the hallway. Banging too. She moved to the door and peered out. Three workers in white suits were busy hauling a black body bag down the stairs.
‘Come on,’ Dani said to Easton, before she rushed out of the office and towards the front door.
Outside the house the front drive was bathed in white from two portable spotlights. The otherwise glorious front entrance looked like something from a film set. Eric was standing next to a PC Dani didn’t know. Forrester and Ahmed had both already finished their shifts. Both Eric and the officer had steaming styrofoam cups in their hands, but they weren’t talking to each other.
Dani wandered over. Eric already looked suspicious as she approached.
‘They’re coming out now,’ she said to him.
He didn’t say anything. His eyes moved from her and to the open front doors of the house. Dani turned and stood by him, and moments later, with the bag now on a trolley, two white suits wheeled the first of Eric’s parents out of the house and towards the ambulance.
‘I want to see them,’ Eric said, peeling away from Dani.
‘Eric, please.’ Dani set off after him. Easton too.
‘I just want to see them.’
He reached the trolley and everyone stopped. There was a strange silence. Eric stared at the bag. Everyone else stared at him.
‘Please, can I just see? I have to know.’
Dani glanced to Easton. He was giving her a look she knew well. Your call.
‘This isn’t the right way,’ she said to Eric. ‘It’s better to let us clean them up, do the identification properly, away from here.’
‘No,’ Eric said, shaking his head. He set a glare on Dani but didn’t say anything more.
What was the worst that could happen?
‘OK,’ Dani said.
She nodded to the Forensics guy standing by the head. He didn’t say anything as he reached forwards with a gloved hand and grasped the zip. He pulled it down and Dani took one glance at Terry Eccles’ bloody face before she looked up to Eric. He was staring at his father. Nothing on his face at all. No emotion that Dani could read. No anger, sadness, distress. His features were frozen. He didn’t even seem to be breathing.
‘OK?’ the man in the white suit said.
‘Eric?’ Dani said.
‘OK,’ he said. He looked back to the front entrance.
The bag was zipped up and the trolley was rolled away to the ambulance. Nothing more was said. Dani, Eric and Easton all stood in a row in silence.
A few minutes later the second trolley came out. The same routine. Trolley stopped. Zip pulled down to reveal Annie Eccles’ death stare. Because of the angle of her head, it was like she was staring straight at her son, pleading, begging.
Dani again fixed her eyes on Eric. Again, he had the same stoic expression as he stared at his mother. He said nothing. His face was so passive… so at odds with the raw emotion he’d displayed earlier, and with the turmoil that was surely consuming him.
‘OK,’ he said, finally looking away, back to the house once more.
Annie Eccles’ remains were rolled away. Dani was still staring at Eric. Waiting for something. Anything.
‘Eric?’ she said eventually.
He didn’t respond. Didn’t register her at all. It was almost as if he was in a trance.
‘Eric? Was it them? Were they your parents?’
He switched his gaze to her. Didn’t say a word. One side of his face was caught in the glare of a spotlight, and the shadows created were sinister and eerie. Like when a kid shines a torch under their chin to scare their friends around the campfire. Dani stared back at him, tense. Waited for something. He seemed poised. Like any second he would fly into another rage, or perhaps just break down and cry.
He did neither. After what felt like an age, he simply said, ‘I’m done now.’
Then he turned and walked towards the gates.
Dani and Easton were soon on their way from Kibble House too. Dani had thought about going after Eric, but it had been a long and tiring day, and whatever the explanation for his strange mood at the end, she got the impression he didn’t want or need her hounding him any more. She instructed one of the PCs to move out after him, to keep a distance but to see where he was going and to make sure that he was OK. Once she got word that Eric had stepped into an Uber right around the corner, she decided she was content to move on. It was time for herself to call it a night too.
The drive home for both her and Easton was short. Less than two miles to Easton’s house, and hers was less than a mile from there.
‘What was that about then?’ Easton asked her once they were away from the Four Oaks Estate.
‘Eric?’
‘Odd reaction, don’t you think? And he didn’t even tell us if it was them or not.’
And Dani had really wanted that confirmation. She hadn’t pushed for it. Why not?
‘People handle grief differently,’ she said.
‘Thanks for the insight. I’d never have known.’
She laughed at his sarcasm. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to or not.
‘He’s an odd one,’ Easton added.
‘I’m keeping an open mind.’
And that was all that was said between them before Dani pulled up outside his home – a modest three-storey semi. A pretty big house really for a young man living alone. Young? Younger than Dani, anyway. Easton would be thirty later in the year. He’d never had a long-term girlfriend – or boyfriend, as Dani knew. A situation which had been exacerbated significantly recently by the fact that his troublesome sister and her kids had lived with him for months following the constant breakdown of her relationships with the losers she chose for boyfriends. But she had seemed to get her act together eventually, and had moved into her own apartment in the new year.
‘You still enjoying the new-found freedom?’ Dani asked, looking out of the window to the dark home. Nothing worse than going home to a dark and empty house. Especially after having dealt with death all day.
Easton sighed. ‘Home sweet home,’ he said.
She didn’t quite know what he meant by that.
‘Honestly?’ he said. ‘I do miss the kids. They were… fun. Hectic, but fun.’
‘You’ll have to get your own,’ Dani said. She cringed at that, though she wasn’t sure why.
No, that wasn’t true. She did know why. Her own situation at home was the exact reason why…
‘You never know,’ he said. ‘In fact, you might be distraught to hear that I’ve actually got a real live date, with a real live female human tomorrow night. I might be off the market soon.’
Dani laughed. Easton smirked. ‘Good for you,’ she said.
‘First time internet-dating.’
‘I’d offer advice, but I have none.’
‘Something along the lines of, just be yourself, Aaron, would be fine. Or you’re quite a catch, really.’
‘OK. How about this: there’s surely someone for everyone. Even someone like you.’
‘Very funny. See you tomorrow.’
He stepped out into the night.
A couple of minutes later and Dani was parking up on her own driveway. At least her home wasn’t in complete darkness. She’d never not feel vulnerable arriving home alone at night, not after the things she’d seen, and been through. She and Jason had installed a new set of security lights at both the front and back of the house late last year. The two front lights had already been triggered by her approaching car, giving a clear view of the run to the front door. Plus she could see that there was a light on in the front living room, so Jason was in, and up. Well, where else would he be at this time of night?
She got out of the car and headed into the house.
‘Jay, it’s me,’ she shouted when she closed the front door behind her.
‘In here,’ came the gruff reply from the front room.
She took off her coat and shoes and moved across the lush new hallway carpet to the living room. Jason paused whatever programme he was watching as she stepped in.
‘Bad day?’ he said, shuffling up on the sofa. Had he been asleep?
‘Pretty bad,’ she said. They’d kept in touch during the day with texts, so he knew the basics of why she was late.
‘You want to talk about it?’
She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Ten thirty.
‘Not tonight.’
He let out a long sigh as he shuffled some more, like he was about to attempt to stand up. Doing so, unaided, was still an effort for him. For months after the attack in their own home by Damian Curtis – a psycho who’d nearly killed them both – Jason, now ex-police, had been wheelchair-bound. Through surgery, intense physio, and a lot of luck in terms of the natural reversal of his paralysis, he’d ever so slowly begun to walk again. He could now manage a couple of hundred steps on his own, unaided, though they were often awkward, ungainly steps. He’d get there though, back to his old self. Dani was sure of it. But he’d never serve as an active policeman again.
Looking at him now, on the sofa, his arm muscles rippling as he manoeuvred himself, reminded her of something he’d said to her not long ago. There was no doubt his body had changed shape since the attack. He’d always been big and bulky, but his legs were thin and wiry now due to the wasted muscle. His arms on the other hand had beefed up even more from all the wheelchair use, and all the times like this he needed his arms to move his body. He’d compared himself, his new physique, to the cartoon hero Johnny Bravo who had an enormous and beefy torso but tiny little legs. Self-deprecation was one of the many ways Jason had successfully coped with his trauma. It was something he excelled at, in fact. Far more than Dani did.
Still, the thought made her smile.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’
He grimaced as he clambered to his feet.
‘You know it’s still one of the marked nights,’ he said, quite gingerly, like he knew he really shouldn’t have said it.
She did know. Every month since they’d started this routine she dreaded these few days of the month. Not because of the time spent with him, in the bedroom. That was great. But the weight of expectation, and the thoughts of what it would all lead to, was overbearing. Choking. Terrifying.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s just—’
‘It’s fine,’ he said as he shuffled over to her. He put his arms around her. His weight pressed down on her as he hugged her. Not intentionally, there was just no other way for him to stay upright. ‘I know it’s bad timing. And there’s still one more day this month.’
‘I’ll try to get back earlier tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
Easton had his date tomorrow night anyway, so why couldn’t she make a point of being home at a decent hour for once as well? It would be Friday after all.
Jason kissed her forehead. ‘We’ll get there, don’t worry about that. We’ll get there.’
Yet them getting there was exactly what terrified her so much. She just didn’t know how to explain that to him.
But she knew she’d have to, sooner or later, because one thing was certain; she couldn’t hold this lie forever.