An ambulance and an ARV patrol were already parked outside the Aireys’ house when Nick rounded the last corner.
He braked to a fast halt alongside, just as two paramedics manoeuvred a stretcher down the front step onto a pavement crowded with ogling neighbours, necks craning to see who was on board. Grace scanned their faces, saw the same horrified fascination that marked crime scene spectators everywhere.
Strapped onto the stretcher, Jim Airey’s eyes were closed, his skin a waxy beige. He lay quite still, making no complaint at the bumps on the way into the back of the ambulance.
Grace heard Nick’s breath suck inwards on a soft hiss. She glanced across, saw the bleak expression on his face and knew he was regretting the crack he’d made about shooting Airey, now he was faced with the reality.
“Don’t.” She put a light hand on his arm. “I’ve worked with the police long enough to know how the humour-under-stress thing works.”
A muscle pulsed in the side of his jaw but he didn’t reply while she collected her gear, just showed his warrant card to one of the paramedics.
“What happened?”
“Single gunshot wound to the leg,” the paramedic said shortly. “Large calibre, I’d say. He’s lucky it didn’t hit an artery or he’d have bled out.” He finished securing the stretcher in place and climbed out, closing one door, nodded towards the house. “Wife called it in. Says she got home from work and found him almost unconscious the cellar.”
A large woman in a stained tabard had stumbled out onto the pavement, weeping into a handkerchief, unaware of the blood coating her hands. Nick caught her arm.
“Mrs Airey, I’m very sorry about your husband. Did he say who did this?”
She looked at him, face ravaged. “He said it was our Edith.” Her voice was a bewildered wail, causing a ripple through the avid crowd. “I tried to be a good mother.” She gave a great heaving sob. “What have we done?”
The paramedic glared at Nick, grasped Mrs Airey’s arm and whisked her up into the ambulance, slammed the final door behind her.
“They’ve got beds at Lancaster Infirmary, so we’re taking him there,” he threw at Nick. “Question him later.”
As the ambulance set off, lights blazing, Grace followed Nick into the house. It seemed a long time since she’d carried out the FDR test on Edith here. If only we’d known then…
Hearing their footsteps, a uniformed Firearms officer appeared at the back sitting room doorway, greeted them warily.
“Is the place secure?” Nick asked.
The officer nodded. “Our shooter’s long gone. Looks like poor old Jim got it in the cellar.” He jerked his head. “He’s got a proper little arsenal down there. I knew he was into his guns, but I would never have guessed at that lot.”
“His wife reckoned it was the daughter,” Nick said. “Any sign of her?”
“Nothing,” the officer said. “Car’s still outside, but there’s a scooter registered in the mother’s name and that’s gone. I’ve put out a call for it.” He gave a brief smile. “Those things only do about thirty miles an hour, so she can’t have got far.”
Nick moved forwards. “Let’s have a look at this armoury, then.”
“I’ll go and check out Edith’s room,” Grace said.
Nick looked back at her with a questioning gaze.
“Are you sure?”
“We won’t find where she’s gone by looking in the cellar.”
She went straight up the staircase. It didn’t take much guesswork to pinpoint Edith’s room. These houses were all laid out the same; two up, two down, with the kitchen and bathroom bumped out on an extension at the rear. Edith’s was the tiny back bedroom.
Still smarting from Blenkinship’s dismissal, she put down her kit and pulled on gloves and bootees before she ventured inside.
The room was gloomy in the afternoon light. When Grace flicked on the single overhead bulb it only made the space look more shabby.
The wallpaper was childish, girlie, peeling posters of film stars and celebrities stuck to the walls around the window, where she could lie in bed and gaze at them and dream.
If it wasn’t for those posters, she’d struggle to age the occupant of this room. It was as though Edith was tied to infancy, trying to make the leap to adulthood without passing through a natural adolescence.
Grace felt the stark contrast to her own bedroom at home, long since vacated. She’d never had the desire, even as a child, to adorn the place with twee wallpaper or soft furnishings that owed more to merchandising than to function. She’d been encouraged to express her individuality in other ways, secure, safe, loved.
At least, until her father died.
Grace hadn’t even known that he was ill. Looking back, she saw how much they’d hidden, believing it best to let her assume things would go on forever as they were. She regretted their decision. Knowing would have been painful, yes, but it would have given her time to prepare…
She shook her head to clear the dust of memories, looked about her.
“Come on, Edith,” she murmured. “Talk to me. What’s driving you?”
She searched the room thoroughly, found the stack of well-thumbed magazines, concentrating on fashion and the lifestyles of the rich and famous, the pages creased from constant rereading.
She found the loose floorboards under the window, the large plastic Tupperware box hidden underneath, containing what remained of Edith’s illicit food stash. It broke her heart to find that, but she put it aside, sat back on her heels. It told her nothing she didn’t already know.
“How’s it going?” Nick asked from the doorway.
She glanced up, found him leaning against the jamb.
“Nothing useful,” she said wearily. “She must be the first teenage girl in history not to keep a diary. How about you?”
Nick ran a hand round the back of his neck. “It’s a mess down there. She must have hit him with something pretty big. Bullet went straight through Airey’s thigh and buried itself in the stairs. I’ll leave it to your expertise to recover the round.”
“Do we have any idea what the gun was?”
“Well, Airey’s got a little hidey-hole all racked out, even got his own gear for reloading the brass. Found a boxful of these.”
He reached into his pocket and picked out something small and cylindrical, flicked it across to her. Grace caught it, looked down to see a long slim bullet casing. She turned it over in her hands. Stamped into the bottom was 7.62x39.
“Seven-point-six-two was the old NATO calibre,” she said, frowning, “but thirty-nine is—”
“—Russian,” Nick said grimly. “There’s nothing down there that takes that size of round, but looking at the other stuff Airey collected, I’d guess she’s on the loose with an AK-47.”
“My God,” Grace said quietly. “The damage she could do with one of those.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing in here that might tell us where she’s gone?”
Grace’s eye rested on the single bed in the corner of the room. She’d already checked under the mattress, but now she leaned down flat on her hands and peered beneath the frame, catching sight of something bunched up near the headboard. She snapped a picture before reaching under to snag it clear. What seemed at first like a bundle of rags, unfolded into a shirt, obviously Edith’s.
Nick grunted, losing interest. “If she was a teenage boy, that wouldn’t be all you found under the bed.”
But Grace looked around her. “She’s tidy,” she said slowly. “She doesn’t leave her clothes all over the place. So why did she hide this away…?”
She straightened the shirt out carefully in the middle of the floor, examined it, but no spots of blood marred the ugly stripe. She turned it over, then picked up each sleeve in turn. And there, on the left one, she found a dark mark, a dried-in smear.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know.” Grace rose, went to the window and pulled the thin curtain aside, peering at the shirt in natural light.
“Is it blood?”
“No,” Grace murmured. “It’s dried hard, like…paint.” She turned. “Dark blue paint.” Her eyes flew to his as certainty grabbed her. “Oh, I am such a fool,” she said fiercely. “I know where he is. And I know where she’s gone.”