Minutes later, the judge adjourned the session. Closing statements would be given when they reconvened. O’Hare had dropped her final and most explosive bombshell, and Dani was livid. New evidence that had come to light? No, O’Hare had played everyone with that. So why had Barker, yet again, pretty much let her get away with it?
Just as she had done numerous times before, Dani made a point of intercepting Barker outside the courtroom to try and figure out exactly that.
‘Why are you letting them do this?’ she asked, not holding back on her clear agitation.
Barker huffed and rolled his eyes like Dani was nothing but an unrepentant and troublesome teen.
‘I’m not letting anyone do anything,’ Barker said. ‘But even I have to be cognisant of the fact that sometimes the weight of evidence swings against us. I have to say, DI Stephens, I find it most worrying that the defence team have time and time again found a way to pour doubt on Collins’s role here. Her death noted, I’m beginning to wonder why the police haven’t more fully investigated her role, particularly as not having done so is harming this trial.’
‘Are you serious? Collins didn’t do it! Ben’s evidence was a complete fabrication.’
A raised eyebrow now, in Barker’s continued show of indignant nonchalance. ‘Fabrication? A fabrication that involved approved contemporaneous records of a now deceased prison guard? Plus a sworn statement from another. Are you saying they’re all involved in a conspiracy?’
Was she saying that?
‘I don’t know about them, but I do know Ben is lying. I know him. Even if Curtis did say… whatever it was. She wants me to kill them. So what? Ben could have made him say that. He wouldn’t exactly create a voice in Curtis’s head called Ben Stephens now, would he? It’s no more likely that it was Collins than Ben—’
‘I’m sorry, but I really don’t see your point of view. Taking your heart out of this situation – which I appreciate is really difficult for you to do, for reasons I sympathise with greatly – which scenario do you think is more believable?’
Dani was stumped by that.
Faced with the evidence, and the testimonies of the guards, why wasn’t she even willing to entertain the notion that maybe she had got it wrong? Was she so desperate for Ben to be punished that she’d let it cloud her judgement?
‘But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong,’ was all she could come back with.
‘No, perhaps not. But unfortunately in a trial I can only work with what I have. Please, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure I’m ready for this.’
He turned and walked off.
‘Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?’ Easton asked.
The car in front swung into her lane without warning and Dani slammed on the brakes. The back tyres skidded on the slushy surface and Dani fought for control.
‘Fucking idiot!’ she screamed, thumping the horn.
‘You might want to calm it a bit,’ Easton said, not at all friendly.
Dani glanced to him and saw the unimpressed look on his face. She didn’t bother to respond.
‘I get the trial is hard for you,’ Easton said. ‘But you’re best just trying to forget about it. You can’t influence the outcome now. Let it run its course, and do what you need to do on your active cases.’
Let it run its course? Let Ben smear a dead woman who did nothing wrong, just so he can then play the whole situation to his own advantage? How could she possibly sit by and let that run its course?
Though she did get Easton’s point, to a degree. What she really needed to do was to push Ben out of her mind, concentrate on Clara Dunne and Jane Doe’s murders. She’d felt in the zone earlier during the team briefing, now she couldn’t have been further from the zone if she tried.
They travelled on in silence for a couple of minutes and Dani’s tension eased, if only a little.
‘I was doing some reading over the weekend,’ Easton said, his change of subject welcome and Dani really did try to push away any further thoughts of Ben.
‘Your talents never cease to amaze me,’ she said.
‘Ha bloody ha, very funny. It was nice to have some peace and quiet and a few moments to myself, to be honest. Anyway, I was reading up on vampires.’
‘Twilight? I bet you read them all, didn’t you?’
‘Wow, Dani, your inner comedy is something else today. No, not Twilight. Want to know what I found?’
‘Knock me out,’
‘So, what we think we know as vampires, or Strigoi in Romanian, weren’t these fanged things with blood dripping from their mouths, living in the dark, blah blah. They were basically undead corpses that come about when someone dies in sin – or for some other reason the soul doesn’t leave the body in death.’
‘OK?’
‘Did you know people used to black out mirrors in the homes of dead people, because they were scared that if the soul, when it left its body, saw its reflection, it would become trapped? They also smeared garlic on doors and windows to stop vampires entering. It’s amazing how many of the tropes we know are centuries old now, but things that people really did do to ward off these spirits.’
‘There’s truth in every legend, as they say.’
‘And babies were particularly vulnerable to being converted, at least until they were christened.’
‘Ah, it makes sense now. So this was just a way for the church to control its people? Scare stories to make sure everyone went to pray, everyone was christened, lived sin free, etc., etc. And made their donations every Sunday, of course.’
‘So cynical.’
Dani huffed.
‘But once you’re a Strigoi, you’re immortal,’ Easton said. ‘A walking corpse, roaming the earth, not just killing people but converting others too.’
‘So they’re more like zombies then,’ Dani said.
Easton seemed to ponder that one for a few moments, as though it was a really deep and meaningful point. ‘Maybe. Except they don’t even need to bite you. A simple touch or look is enough to turn you. And the whole stake-through-the-heart thing? That was real. I read up about this spate of child killings in one area of Romania a few hundred years ago, or maybe it was disappearances, but anyway, the locals naturally blamed vampires for it all…’
Dani could almost hear Brigitta telling the story now, and for the first time felt a wave of paranoia.
‘…they began to dig up graves. To make sure the corpses were really dead, they drove stakes into the hearts. Fear spread and people all over started doing this. The problem got so big that the Pope had to declare it a crime to exhume bodies.’
Dani was silent now as her brain rumbled with strange thoughts.
‘But do you know the freakiest part?’ Easton asked.
‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘I am. Modern-day historians are generally accepting that a lot of these things – stories of vampires, ghouls, zombies – all derived from the same issue. Know what?’
‘No idea.’
‘Premature burial.’ He let that one hang. ‘Think about it. Four hundred years ago it’s not as if everyone had a doctor on their doorstep to properly confirm death. Even today, as police officers we’re not technically allowed to do it, we have to have a doctor formally confirm death at every scene, even if it seems bloody obvious. Back in the olden days… well, they got it wrong. Surprisingly often. Just imagine, poor old Grandad is laid out in his coffin in his home, candles all around him, family dressed in black praying and in mourning, and suddenly he lurches up. Talk about being freaked out.’
Easton shivered theatrically.
‘One of my worst fears, being buried alive,’ he said.
‘One of?’
‘Don’t get me started.’
Dani laughed, and although the conversation trailed off from there, at least Easton’s light-hearted talk about Strigoi and vampires had left Dani feeling a little more focused again, even if she did remain on edge. Which wasn’t helped by the snow-covered and slushed-up roads that were jam-packed the whole of the journey to Walsall.
When they finally arrived at their destination, Dani found a parking spot on the road a few doors down from Liam Dunne’s home, which was on a tightly packed street with modest terraces either side and cars crammed bumper to bumper on both sides of the narrow road. The homes had small front yards, too small for cars to park on, which were generally paved or with tiny and plain-looking gardens. All in all a very similar set-up to the street, and the house, where Clara Dunne’s body had been found.
Despite the weed-filled front yard and the obviously cheap plastic windows which were grimy and discoloured, Liam Dunne’s house didn’t look particularly out of place on the street, and there were one or two others which Dani noted were in a similar or even worse state – awaiting a property developer with a keen eye and a tight budget who would flip them, making a few thousand pounds in the process.
‘I really have no idea what to expect in here,’ Easton said as the two of them crunched across an inch of untouched snow to the front door.
Dani didn’t answer as she took the keychain from her pocket and first unlocked the mortice deadlock before moving on to the more lightweight cylinder lock. She pushed the door open, some effort needed to prise it far enough to step in, what with the amount of post – largely junk – which had accumulated beyond.
The inside of the house was dark and cold, and there was an awful smell. Dust and mould and something else Dani couldn’t put her finger on. She went to flip on the lights. Nothing. Not a surprise. It wasn’t as though there was anyone around to pay the bill.
‘Leave the door open a minute for some light,’ Dani said as she moved through into the front lounge and held her breath as she pulled open the curtains, which caused a swathe of dust to fill the air.
She squinted and hunkered down and brought her arm up to her mouth to breathe before she turned around. The room, although not old in its furnishings, was like some kind of relic; the type of room seen on sci-fi movies when the crew of a spaceship intercepts another which has been lost in space in a time-warp for decades. The two leather sofas might have, at one time, been black or dark brown but were now grey with thick dust. The TV was the same, as was every other object. Black mould climbed the walls all around and reached down from the top corners of the room.
‘What shall we do then?’ Easton said, coming through the doorway.
‘Let’s split up. I don’t want to stay here any longer than necessary. Look for anything that gives us a clue as to who Liam was, what he was up to in life.’
‘Got it.’
‘You start down here,’ she said to him. ‘I’ll head upstairs.’
In the hallway the front door was now closed, though there was just enough daylight coming from the lounge to give a good glimpse of the space. But upstairs… it remained pitch black, with all of the curtains drawn. Much like in Brigitta Popescu’s house, Dani thought with a shiver.
She took her phone out, torchlight on, as she went up. Flashes of her unsettling trips to Brigitta’s house pulsed in her mind. Not to mention the stories Easton had been telling Dani on the trip over here. In the car, with him as company, the stories of vampires and roaming undead corpses had seemed trivial, almost amusing. Now Dani wasn’t quite so sure, and there was definitely an added chill as she ascended, which caused her skin to prickle all over.
Dani reached the first bedroom, at the back of the house, and stopped in the doorway to shine the torch around, the unsettling feeling steadily building as she gazed into the dark space.
She took a deep breath then rushed across the room to the windows and hurled the curtains open, then spun back to stare across the room.
A shadow flicked across the far wall, moving towards the door, and Dani’s heart lurched as she swept the torchlight to that spot.
Then the shadow crept back again, and she realised it was only coming from the curtain flapping behind her.
She exhaled heavily and muttered under her breath at her own frailty.
The room she was in was mostly bare: an unmade single bed, a basic wardrobe and drawers. A spare room that perhaps had never been used.
Dani only spent a minute or two in there before she went into the next room, at the front of the house. She performed an almost identical routine as before, darting into the room, pulling open the curtains in a quick motion. Except this time, more prepared, the sweeping shadows didn’t bother her half as much, at least. And there was still no sign of vampires anywhere.
This room was clearly Liam’s, she decided, with pictures on the wall and knick-knacks all over. The double bed still had covers on, the washing basket in the corner was half filled with laundry. Dani felt a wave of sadness as she stared over the space. Whatever had happened to him, whether he was dead or still alive, Liam Dunne’s life, as he’d known it, had ended the day he left here. It was as if the house was now in perpetual mourning, a feeling of ingrained misery seeping through every brick and every fabric.
Dani, heart heavy, rummaged through the dusty belongings. She could understand why, five years on, no one had come to properly clean this place out; why the police hadn’t carried out a full, forensic-type search. Before now they’d had no reason to do so, but seeing the house like this, with everything in place, was unsettling to say the least.
And to think that Liam’s sister had recently been living not far from here, busily searching for her brother, but had never herself been in here to sort through his things. As far as the law was concerned Liam was still alive, and Clara would have had no right of access.
Dani opened the bottom bedside drawer which was half filled with bundled socks and a collection of dead spiders, all shrivelled.
She ignored her squeamishness and dug a gloved hand inside and felt about. She frowned when her fingers brushed against something hard. She grasped the object and took it out. A mobile phone. A pretty antiquated handset at that, certainly from before Liam went missing in 2015, although in reality it was probably only ten years old or so – the industry had moved so swiftly.
Dani held down the power button but it didn’t come on. She put the phone into an evidence bag then moved over to a set of drawers. Most were filled with dusty cobweb-covered clothes, plus more dead spiders and insects, though the top one was a clutter of odds and sods. Within it she found what looked like an old-school petty cash container – metal, red, all scratched up from years of use. It was locked, but Dani was sure she’d seen a small key across the room in one of the other bedside drawers.
She went back to get that key and stuck it into the lock and turned. It worked. She placed the box onto the window sill and flipped the lid. Inside was…
A creak outside the room, on the landing. Dani froze and listened. There it was again.
‘Easton?’ she shouted.
‘What? You got something?’ His voice carried thinly in the air. He was still somewhere downstairs.
Dani closed the lid on the box and was about to head to the door when her attention was grabbed by movement outside the window, down on the street outside.
She was sure she’d seen a dark shadow scooting between two parked cars. As she stared now, she could see nothing, no one at all.
That same creak again. Dani, trying her best to calm her already wrecked nerves, grabbed the biggest, hardest thing she could – the cash box – and confidently strode for the door.
She jumped out into the hall, box held aloft.
She was left staring ahead, across the landing, into the dark bathroom. The noise came again, this time accompanied by a swathe of cold air. Dani rolled her eyes. The window in the bathroom was either ajar or broken, and the breeze coming in was sufficient to cause the roller blind to flap back and forth against the pane.
Dani sighed, turned and moved back into the bedroom. She placed the box back on the sill, opened it up and took out the picture of Liam Dunne, arm wrapped around the shoulder of a young and striking blonde woman. She flipped the photo over, hoping for something. No. There was no writing there.
Dani stared at the woman’s face. Not Ana. Not the dead woman from the van. Did she look Romanian? Eastern European? Slavic?
What was Dani reaching for?
As her brain rumbled, her eyes unconsciously flickered again, looking to the street outside. No, that was no act of her imagination. Nor was it a shadow or a Strigoi or whatever else. Across the road, now hidden at the edge of an alleyway, was a person. Definitely a person. Dressed all in black, head covered by a thick hood. Lurking.
Spying?
It was too big a coincidence to ignore.
Dani dropped the picture.
‘Easton!’ she shouted, already rushing for the door. ‘Get outside, now!’