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The hallway was deserted and at first the house seemed so quiet inside that A
Her nerves gradually gave way to professional curiosity, and she noted with interest that the carpets had been taken up, leaving only the bare concrete floors and wooden stairs, and that the living room had been stripped of furniture, too, even down to the light fixtures. Several holes had been punched in the walls, no doubt to ensure that no bodies had been entombed there. A
Everywhere she went she was conscious of the narrow roped-off pathway she knew she was supposed to follow. In an odd way it was like visiting the Brontë parsonage or Wordsworth’s cottage, where you could only stand and look beyond the rope at the antique furniture.
The kitchen, where three SOCO officers were working on the sink and drains, was in the same sorry state – tiles wrenched up, oven and fridge gone, cupboards bare, fingerprint dust everywhere. A
She took the silence from the cellar as her cue to go down there, noting as she did so the door open to the garage, which had been stripped as bare as the rest of the house. The car was gone, no doubt in the police garage being taken apart piece by piece, and the oil-stained floor had been dug up.
She sensed herself becoming hypersensitive as she approached the cellar door, her breath coming in short gasps. There was an obscene poster of a naked woman with her legs spread wide apart on the door which A
Through the door, much cooler down here, trying to feel the way it was, despite the two SOCO officers and the bright lighting… Janet went in first, De
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“Are you going to start that thing up again?” she asked.
One of the men gri
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“Can do.”
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“What is it?” A
“Du
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“I’ll try a few different lighting angles,” he said, almost to himself. “Maybe some infrared film to highlight the contrasts.”
“Could be a tripod,” A
“What? Bugger me – sorry, love – but you could be right. Luke Selkirk and that fu
“I think they’d have been more professional, don’t you?”
“I’d better ask them, hadn’t I?”
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This was a delicate job, A