Out For Blood, page 1
Deborah Masson
* * *
Out for Blood
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Deborah Masson was born and bred in Aberdeen, Scotland. Always restless and fighting against being a responsible adult, she worked in several jobs, including secretarial, marketing, reporting for the city’s freebie newspaper and a stint as a postie – to name but a few.
Through it all, she always read crime fiction and, when motherhood finally settled her into being an adult (maybe even a responsible one), she turned her hand to writing what she loved. Deborah started with short stories and flash fiction whilst her daughter napped and, when she later welcomed her son into the world, she decided to challenge her writing further through online courses with the Professional Writing Academy and the Faber Academy. Her debut novel, Hold Your Tongue, was the result of those courses. Out for Blood is her second novel.
For my mini monsters, Holly and Ellis.
I love you.
Readers are obsessed with the DI Eve Hunter series
*****
‘One of the best books I’ve ever read!’
‘I loved DI Eve Hunter and her team’
‘Without a doubt the best police procedural I have read in a long time’
‘I cannot wait to see what else is to come in the DI Eve Hunter series’
‘You won’t want to stop reading this addictive crime novel’
‘Fantastic characters that you’ll fall in love with – I really couldn’t put this book down!’
‘Can’t wait for the next one … and the next one … and the next one!’
*****
Chapter 1
Monday
GEORGE CHRISTIE STEERED. TURNING the tractor around. His gloved hands gripped at the vibrating wheel, backside bouncing as the tractor made its way along the fairway. He surveyed the multi-coloured foliage either side of him, clouds of breath being pulled away by the strong breeze, low sunrise spreading across the course. He sighed with contentment. This was why he loved the job. Practically his own boss and, at times like these, he was the only person in the world, in a part of the world that he’d happily live and die on. Hazlehead Golf Club’s MacKenzie Championship Course.
Mid-October was a time he especially loved. Late in the golf season, the greens only needed mowing once or twice a week, so his priorities were the maintenance work and repairs to prepare for winter. The course was quieter, later sunrise meaning delayed tee-off times. His job this morning: raking the bunkers.
George looked ahead, saw a spattering of beer cans lying on the green, right in the direction he was going. He tutted, stopped the tractor and jumped down. He walked towards the cans, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. Sometimes he despaired of the local kids. Surely there were better places to be hanging around after dark, but, judging by the litter and incidents of vandalism or pure thoughtlessness he often found on the course in the early mornings, it seemed they didn’t think so.
He carried the cans back to the tractor and put them behind his seat. As he pulled himself up into the cabin and sat, he spotted Tom Bradshaw ahead, teeing up on the fifth. He chuckled to himself. No disputing the old guy’s dedication to the game.
Tom was a Yorkshireman who’d moved to Aberdeen twenty years ago as part of his retirement plans. George had seen him nearly every day for the last two decades. In his eighties and a likeable guy, Tom was always the first golfer on the course, no matter the weather.
George sat with the tractor idling; he watched Tom tee off before he got moving again. He followed the gentle downhill dogleg to the left, stopped the vehicle, jumped down and grabbed his rake. Once happy with the state of the bunker, he climbed back on to the tractor, whistling low as he went.
When he arrived in front of the fifth tee, he could see Tom’s trolley and clubs over the brow of the fairway. No sign of Tom. George checked again before deciding to wait in his tractor for Tom to return, taking the opportunity to take his mobile phone out of his pocket to try for the umpteenth time to crack the Candy Crush level he was stuck on. After a few minutes of getting nowhere with the game, and with still no sign of Tom, George got down from the tractor and walked the fairway to the trolley, his eyes scanning the grass’s condition, his mind on the two Scotch pies he’d packed for lunch, hungry already.
He raised his head as he neared the trolley, doing a double take before gasping, all thoughts of lunch gone. Tom was lying on his side on the ground by the clubs. ‘What the …’ George broke into a run. Had the old guy suffered a heart attack?
He reached Tom in seconds and crouched, bending his head towards the man’s chalk-white face to check if he was breathing. Tom mumbled and lifted his hand inches off the ground, trying to point with a quivering finger inside a white and black golf glove. George bent closer, trying to make out what he was saying, hearing nothing but a jumble of nonsense. Instead, he followed the direction of Tom’s pointed finger, looking across to his left, eyes widening.
‘Jesus … Jesus Christ.’ George fell back on to the grass from his crouch, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing. Not taking his eyes from the scene, he pulled himself into a seated position, legs outstretched, the morning dew seeping quickly through his work trousers. There, in the trees by the fairway, a woman stared out at them. Long, lank dark hair framing her pale face. George knew the scrawny, dirt-covered woman couldn’t see them looking back at her. Knew she couldn’t see a thing. Not as she swung by her neck on the end of a rope that hung from the tree.
Chapter 2
DI EVE HUNTER SAW the feet first. Beige, grubby-socked soles sticking out from brown chinos that covered splayed legs. A creased sky-blue shirt, the blood at its collar looking like lipstick until you saw it spread all the way down the upper back.
She stood in the white gloss kitchen of the open-plan executive apartment, DS Mark Cooper by her side, and rocked on her paper-covered shoes. As she moved, she was aware, not for the first time, how far her injured leg had come. The limp she’d had was all but gone, thanks to gruelling daily exercises and sheer bloody-mindedness. The only time it caused her any grief now was if she let herself get too tired or tried anything excessively physical. She looked over to the forensics team, keen to distract herself from further thoughts about her leg and where those thoughts might lead her back to.
She was irritable, wanting to get started, the team’s main focus – the victim strewn on the floor – briefly visible to her amongst them as they moved about the space methodically.
‘Bloody place is stifling.’ Eve spoke to herself more than anyone else, but Cooper mumbled in agreement.
Eve was willing to bet underfloor heating was partly to blame. No expense spared in this place. Beige wall tiles and marbled worktops surrounded her, a stainless-steel cooker hood dominating the space. The breakfast bar matched the units; a square glass dining table stood in front of it. Room for four diners on the plush white leather chairs around it. Then there was the lounge area.
A harsh contrast to the recent case they’d been working: Laura Robertson and her two young children, residing in a council flat in Torry, her husband the reason for the domestic abuse case they’d been building; finally getting Laura and the kids to safety as they awaited the trial, only to watch it all fall apart when she decided not to testify and to drop all charges. Charges that were dropped on Friday, a mere three days ago, but, after a weekend full of frustration that she hadn’t been able to do more, and mild regret that she hadn’t handled the news better, Eve felt a week had passed. She closed her eyes. Laura was probably being beaten around the house already.
She opened her eyes, back in the obscenely expensive kitchen where t
Cooper turned to the stove. ‘If they did, they had an isolated case of OCD, because it didn’t extend to the rest of the place.’
Real oak floors ran throughout the two areas. Everything expensive, but far from immaculate. The apartment was probably once more a showroom than a home – although it seemed if there’d been a cleaner they’d handed in their notice. But it wasn’t a trail of dust on top of the dining table with the rolled note lying haphazardly beside it.
Eve and Cooper moved further into the apartment. The body lay sprawled on its front in the centre of a cream rectangular rug that took up all of the floor space between two black leather sofas. One upturned hand of the victim visible on the bloodstained rug.
A south-facing window covered the entire wall, three additional windows running up the right-hand side and into the kitchen. No one had made a move to open any of the heavy-lined grey satin curtains, leaving everything as it was while they processed the scene. On the left-hand wall hung a large canvas, beige and brown intertwining circles reminding Eve of the nondescript art to be found on most hotel room walls.
Eve spotted a rectangular piece of plastic lying face down on the breakfast bar. She stretched over, lifted and turned it, coming face to face with a picture of the man she assumed was their victim. She passed it to Cooper. ‘A work pass. Dean Johnstone. IT Consultant. Company called In-Serv.’ Eve, tight with impatience, not one for hanging around, wanted to be doing something, anything.
Cooper laid the pass back down for it to be bagged and tagged. Eve sought out the victim again. The pathologist, Brian MacLean, sat closer to the body than Eve would ever want to be, obscuring their view. Cooper stood on his tiptoes by her side, leather shoes creaking. He craned his neck, trying to see more, but the victim’s face wasn’t visible. The head was turned away, towards one of the sofas. The brown hair at the back of his head was matted with what appeared to be a wound at the crown. Something lay on the floor by the sofa, brown-coloured, metallic, with crusted matter on it. Blood, most likely.
Cooper confirmed Eve’s thoughts. ‘Looks like a blow to the head with some kind of poncey brass ornament.’
The ‘poncey’ was probably for her benefit, Cooper aware she had a unique taste in ornaments and furniture. Upcycling was her hobby; not much room for expensive ornaments there.
‘Poor bugger.’
Poor. The last thing this guy had been, Eve thought to herself. The rent alone for this place would be over a thousand a month. The block was a twenty-minute walk from Aberdeen’s city centre, a walk that would take you past a string of luxury hotels and restaurants on the way there.
MacLean and one of the suits gently turned the body. Eve now had a clear view, the victim’s face visible, matching the image on the work pass. After what seemed like for ever, MacLean stood and made his way over to them.
Eve stopped the rocking she’d resumed, ready to pounce. ‘What you got for us?’
MacLean sighed. ‘Expecting miracles again, I see. Initial examination shows blunt-force trauma to the back of the head. The blood-spattered solid bronze statue found by the sofa supports that, for sure.’
‘Killed with a single, or multiple blows?’ Eve wanted answers; miracles would be better.
MacLean’s bag banged off his leg as he stood clear of two of the suits. ‘I don’t think it was the blow to the head that killed him.’
‘Another wound?’ Eve looked over to the body again.
‘Not exactly,’ MacLean answered.
Eve, confused as well as impatient, waited for MacLean to spit out what he was trying to say.
‘I’ll need to confirm this back at the lab, but from what I can see the head wound wasn’t fatal. Maybe a little concussion, the need for a few stitches. It would have rendered him unconscious, I’ve no doubt about that, but he would’ve come around without too much damage. If someone hadn’t suffocated him before he got the chance.’
Chapter 3
EVE SAT RAMROD STRAIGHT next to Cooper on the sofa, where they’d been offered a seat, neither of them wanting to make a dent in the perfectly fluffed cushions. The place could’ve been lifted straight out of an interior design catalogue. Even the tropical fish in the tank that had been set into the wall appeared to have been selected to colour-match the room’s furnishings.
‘I can’t believe he’s dead.’
The cushion’s owner, the fish-colour expert, a Miss Lisa Taylor, stood across the room from them in navy satin pyjamas, the wrap-over top plunging dangerously low.
Eve was unsure how bothered the woman was at her neighbour’s death. There’d been no emotion when she’d answered the door and they’d broken the news. Maybe she was relieved the music had stopped.
Cooper went to lay his notebook on the arm of the sofa but seemed to think better of it, and clasped it in his hand instead. Wouldn’t do to ruffle the suede. ‘It must be a shock.’
Lisa stood there, giving no confirmation or denial to Cooper’s statement. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea or coffee? Glass of iced water?’
Eve took in the woman’s blonde hair, pulled into a chignon at the base of her neck, not a strand out of place above the smooth collar of her pyjamas. Eve didn’t ever look that groomed, let alone at 7 a.m. Perfume hung in the air, classy not cloying. She was glad it was Cooper with her. DC Scott Ferguson, with his perfectly quiffed hair and bulging biceps, would’ve been reduced to a fawning teenager in this woman’s company. Who knew, someone like Lisa might’ve been impressed by an arrogant poser. Truth be known, Ferguson had grown on Eve of late, the two of them having found a mutual respect. Most of the time.
Eve refused the offer of a drink. Their host wouldn’t be offering builders’ tea. It would be ginseng with a twist of unpronounceable, or something equally fancy. ‘Honestly, we’re fine.’
Lisa lowered herself on to the minimalist designer slate-grey suede sofa opposite, steam rising from the espresso she’d drained from the coffee machine.
‘Well, I need my morning pick-me-up.’ Lisa seemed put out, perhaps because she wasn’t getting to play hostess or able to roll out the china.
Eve watched her hold the cup mid-air, too hot for her lap and definitely too hot to put on the sofa or cushions. ‘You phoned in about the loud music?’
Lisa nodded. ‘Nothing new. Used to be on weekends, which I didn’t mind much, but lately it’s been creeping into weeknights too. All hours. Last night it never stopped.’ She paused, perhaps realizing it sounded a little insensitive. ‘I have an important client meeting today.’
Eve was more inclined to think she was relieved Dean Johnstone wouldn’t be around to interrupt her beauty sleep. ‘What is it you do, Miss Taylor?’
The woman looked around the apartment as if it were obvious. ‘I run an interior design business. Not long broken out on my own.’
It figured. ‘Congratulations. Did you know Mr Johnstone well?’
Lisa curled her lip, as if something sour-tasting had landed there. ‘To say hello in passing. I found him a bit … over familiar.’
‘Over familiar?’
‘Yeah, you know, touch of the elbow as he spoke, standing too close if we happened to be in the lift together. A twinkle in his eye.’
‘You think he fancied you?’
Lisa exhaled sharply through her nose as she smirked. ‘I think Dean fancied himself.’
Eve thought of the photo she’d seen on his work pass. He’d been an attractive young man. ‘Did you hear anything else last night, apart from the music? Did it sound like he had company?’
‘Dean always had company.’ Her tone spoke volumes.
‘Friends? Girlfriend?’
Lisa burrowed into the corner of the sofa, curled her legs under her, the swish of satin audible. Cooper shifted next to Eve. Even he was affected by her presence. She was assured. Confident. Stunning.
‘As I said, I usually saw him in passing, but I heard a hell of a lot more from him than I needed to.’
