Hour Of Darkness

Twenty-One

‘I don’t like this,’ Ray Wilding said, aloud, to nobody but himself as he pulled up, facing a red Renault Clio.

He switched off his engine and stepped out of his car and on to the pavement in front of the Mackenzie family home. It was a villa, situated in a cul-de-sac in a new tight-built estate, the kind of street that has no through traffic and consequently little privacy, in that each new arrival can be noted easily by those of a mind so to do. He glanced around, but saw no twitching curtains.

Even if he was being observed, he would have looked like the most casual of visitors as he strolled up to the house in jeans and a Waikato rugby top, casting a long evening shadow across the driveway that led up to an integral garage. He noted that it blocked off any direct access to the rear of the house. ‘Bugger,’ he whispered. ‘I’d rather be kicking in the back door if I have to, not the front.’

Hoping against hope that he had been sent to chase wild geese, he pressed the bronze button in the middle of the glass-panelled door. From within, eight bells chimed, in parody of Big Ben. As he waited, he looked for signs of movement through the thick obscure panes, but saw none. Checking his watch, he gave it half a minute, then rang the bell again.

He dropped into a crouch, pushed the letterbox open and shouted through it. ‘Superintendent! Mrs Mackenzie! It’s Ray Wilding. If you’re there will you come to the door, please, otherwise I’m instructed to make an entry.’

His right knee cracked as he straightened up. Becky had been nagging him to see their doctor about it, and a sudden flash of pain made him concede that she might have a point. He looked at the solidity of the door and considered his capabilities. ‘Left-footed?’ he murmured. ‘I don’t think so.’

Yet he was loath to summon the man with the ram. In the era of Twitter, a cop’s door being knocked down could become global knowledge in seconds, even in such an upmarket street.

He stepped across to his left, to the garage, examining its door. It appeared to be sectional, designed to open upwards and roll inwards. It also appeared to be locked. With fingers crossed, he grabbed the low-set handle, twisted it and pulled upwards, smiling with surprise and relief as it yielded to his strength and rolled open.

There was no car to be seen; the only wheels in there belonged to two children’s cycles, one with stabilisers, that stood against the far wall, beside a door that had to lead to the back garden. The place was shelved, and those were stacked with an assortment of kitchen utensils and household items: tins of paint, a box of lightbulbs, a tool kit, a big flashlight, a power washer. The impression was one of neatness, everything in its place, with a single exception. A pile of towels had been disturbed; one hung half off its shelf and two more lay on the floor below it.

Wilding stepped inside, pulling the roller door down behind him, and plunging the space into semi-darkness. In the sudden gloom he became aware of a sliver of light, to his right, from a second doorway that was very slightly ajar.

‘Oh yes?’ he murmured, moving towards it, then pushing it open. It led into a small utility room, where a narrow window, set above a Belfast sink, looked out on to the rear enclosure. A work surface, with washing machine and tumble dryer below, ran from the sink to a second door, which stood wide open, accessing the kitchen. On its right an ironing table was set into the far wall, with a pile of crumpled clothes upon it, and a steam iron standing on end, plugged into a wall socket. He reached out towards it, palm up, and felt the heat of its plate from a foot away.

‘David! Cheryl!’ the DI shouted, but he knew it was in vain. He stepped through the open door, into a big dining kitchen and looked around. Chairs were drawn to a round table. Two people had eaten there, and had left the evidence behind, uncleared: plates, cutlery, a tall wine glass with the dregs of something white, and lipstick around the rim, and two bottles of Miller Draft, one empty, the second with only half an inch left.

He moved through to the front of the house. The living area was open-plan, L-shaped with a formal dining table and sideboard in the smaller segment, and seating in the other aligned towards a flat-screen television that was set on a swivelling wall mount. Another dead Miller Draft was perched on the wide black leather arm of one of the sofas.

‘For a man supposed to be on the wagon,’ he murmured, ‘you’re leaving a lot of empties around.’

He moved through the rest of the house, quickly. The only other room on the ground floor was a small study, with a swivel chair, desk, and an Apple computer, to which a pair of candle-shaped Soundstick speakers were attached.

The Mac’s keyboard was on a shelf that rolled out from beneath the desktop. Wilding nudged it gently, and the screen sprang into life. Whoever had used it last had been looking at the P amp;O Ferries home page.

‘Fuck!’ he whispered as half a dozen scenarios jumped simultaneously into his mind.

He almost ran from the room and up the slatted open staircase. There were four bedrooms on the upper floor, and he looked into every one. The children’s rooms were strewn with toys, but their beds were made and everything else about them was tidy. The third bedroom was clearly for guests, and equally clearly there had been none, not for some days, maybe weeks, maybe months, for there was a musty smell about it and a thick layer of dust on its unadorned dressing table.

There was a family bathroom, but it was unexceptional, towels on a heated rail and the kids’ little toothbrushes in a glass by the basin.

He opened the last of the five doors and looked into the Mackenzies’ bedroom. . then recoiled. There were clothes scattered on the floor, and on two chairs that stood in different corners of the room. The interiors of wardrobes gaped from either side of sliding mirrored doors, and several drawers had been pulled open. He saw himself reflected in one of the doors, saw the grimness of his expression.

Ray Wilding had been in many crime scenes in his burgeoning CID career; he knew instinctively that he was standing in another. The only thing lacking was actual evidence of any crime.

He found it in the en-suite bathroom. It was as chaotic as the bedroom. Cabinets lay open, Mackenzie’s Gillette razor lying by the basin, a bottle of Kouros men’s eau de toilette tipped over on its side, a smear of cosmetic on the mirror. A peach-coloured bath wrap lay in the shower. He bent and touched it; still damp.

As he did so, another towel caught his eye, same colour but smaller, one of a set probably. It lay on the floor in a corner between the shower cabinet and a clothes basket, as if it had been thrown there, discarded.

He would have left it there but for the mark on one exposed corner, a mark that meant he had to pick it up. He did so carefully, with thumb and index finger, holding it aloft, letting it unfold itself, letting it reveal the stains of the blood that it had absorbed.

His pulse was thumping in his ears as he replaced it, as close to its original position as he could manage.

This was not a great idea, Mary, he thought. Discretion or no fucking discretion, I should not be here. Dorward will go ape-shit.

He backed out of the small shower room, and headed for the bedroom door. He was almost there when he stopped in his tracks, his attention grabbed once more, not by an object, but by the lack of one.

He looked at the bed, at the dented pillows and at the crumpled, stained, undersheet and he asked himself, ‘What’s wrong with this picture, Raymondo?’ then replied with barely a pause, ‘You know what’s wrong. Where’s the fucking duvet?’