Matilda didn’t say anything. She was already being stripped of her powers, her role within the force taken away from her, segregated from her colleagues; anything else they added was out of her control and not worth fighting over. This was a battle she was not going to win.
‘You’re not to start work before 9 a.m. and you’re to be out of the station by 4 p.m. Is that understood?’
Matilda rose from her seat clutching the cold-case file firmly to her chest. ‘That’s fine,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll be able to get home in time for my game shows.’
She turned on her heels and swiftly left the room. She wanted to slam the door, but would wait until she arrived home, and, at the top of her voice, would scream into a pillow from the pit of her lungs – another stress-relieving exercise from the two-faced harpy Dr Warminster.
The detached five-bedroom house in Whirlow sat in its own grounds. It was set back from a main road, and a boundary of neatly trimmed evergreens sheltered it from view. A gravel driveway forked off; one way leading to a double front door, the other to a detached garage, which sat proudly next to the house. Made of classic red brick in the Victorian era, it also included two impressive chimney stacks, and large windows.
A house and grounds of this age needed regular attention to remain looking grand. Unfortunately, nothing had been tended in over twenty years. The evergreens had been left to wild abandon, the branches drooped lifelessly, and the once brilliant green was now dull.
The garden was overgrown, the driveway almost hidden under weeds and brown leaves. The house itself was dead. Windows had been smashed and boarded up with cheap plywood. One chimney had collapsed, and the lead stolen from the roof, which had very few tiles remaining. The garage door was covered in graffiti.
A strong wooden fence surrounded the entire plot. Crudely attached stickers informed passers-by that the house was due for demolition. The once grand building was now an eyesore to everyone in the neighbourhood, and had a knock-on effect to selling prices of nearby properties.
Towards the back of the plot there was a gap between the last fence panel and the evergreens. It was a tight squeeze, but just manageable for someone thin enough to wriggle through without being seen from the main road.
Once through, the man dressed in black dusted himself off and stood up to look at the house. It was pathetic and sad to see such a wonderful building fall into a state of decay.
There wasn’t much to see; the downstairs windows were all boarded up. The padlock on the sheet of plywood covering the back door was rusted and didn’t take much striking from a rock to break it. He pushed open the door and entered.
The back door led straight into the kitchen, once the heart of the family home. It was dark and had the bitter smell of death. Cobwebs hung from the walls and light fittings, and a thick film of dust covered every surface. The kitchen had all the mod cons a wealthy family could wish for, though everything was now dated. The food processor was the size of a microwave oven. A yellowed salad spinner sat on the work surface next to the cooker. Did people still use salad spinners?
The man went through the kitchen into the large hallway. A sweeping staircase with ornate wood panelling led up to the first floor. The stairs looked warped. He wasn’t sure if he should risk climbing them.
He went through to the living room and was surprised to find the furniture still there. He could understand burglars not taking the relic kitchen implements, but he thought someone would have made use of the corner suite and even the bulky television set. He smiled at the memories the room brought back and sat down on the seat he had graced as a child. It was closest to the television so he could watch his favourite programmes without being disturbed by someone passing the screen and blocking his view.
The dining room was a sad sight. The unit that housed the best crockery had been pulled off the wall, all the plates smashed on the floor. He bent down and picked up a jagged piece. He wiped the dust from it and smiled at the pink flowery pattern. His mum loved this dinner service. It was only to be used on special occasions; Christmas, birthdays, and big family dinners. Probably kids had broken in and smashed it, not caring about the sentimental value.
From the hallway he looked up the stairs. He was tempted to ascend, despite how unstable they looked, but was frightened about what he would see. If the kitchen had been left in the state it was on the final night someone was living here, what would the bedrooms be like? Did the police clean up after a crime or would the walls be covered in dried blood, carpet matted with the leaked insides of its occupants, and bodily fluids allowed to dry and disintegrate into the very soul of the house?
The memory of what happened on the first floor angered him. It all came flooding back. He no longer wanted to go upstairs. He wanted to leave this place. He should never have come back.
He quickly left, slamming the back door behind him and securing the plywood back into position. Nobody would care that a padlock had been broken. He looked at his shaking hands, they were covered in dust. It was in his hair, up his nose, and in his mouth. He could taste the decay, the mould and the decomposition, not only of the building but of the people who had once lived inside.
Everything had already been set out for Matilda; a room allocated and the dusty Harkness files brought out of storage.
The office was no bigger than one of the holding cells in the bowels of the police station. Behind the door was an old mop and metal bucket, long since abandoned. The room had a pungent smell of damp. The only window was covered with a yellowed venetian blind, each metal slat caked in years’ worth of dust.
She went around the desk, briefly glancing down at the files, and pulled at the cord. It was brittle and snapped in her hands; the blind was staying shut. There would be no natural light in here. The only light came from the bare sixty watt bulb dangling from the ceiling. If there was ever a room to tip a depressive DCI over the edge, this was definitely it.
Matilda turned her back on the window and took in the room, which would be her place of work for the next four to six weeks.
‘Welcome back Matilda,’ she said to herself, ‘we’ve really missed you.’
She looked at the faded labels on the folders neatly placed on what was her new desk; witness statements, forensic reports, crime-scene photos, police reports – it was all here: everything she needed to know about the Harkness case. She reached out for one, but her hand stopped short of picking it up. What was this mental block she had all of a sudden?
There was a box file on the corner of her desk. She leaned forward and quickly flung back the lid. It was practically empty apart from a thick paperback book. Frowning, she lifted it out and studied it. The pages had yellowed with age and it had obviously been well thumbed before being archived. The cover, although faded, was an image of a crime scene: the slumped body of a naked woman lying face down on a crumpled bed surrounded by splashes of blood. Matilda knew straight away what this was: A Christmas Killing by Charlie Johnson was the ‘definitive true account of Britain’s most brutal unsolved crime’, according to the blurb.
She briefly remembered the book being released in the late 1990s but had never read it. She tried to avoid true-crime books wherever possible.
According to the first page, Charlie Johnson was one of Britain’s leading crime writers, having worked on several national newspapers in a career spanning two decades. Apparently he had covered many of Britain’s shocking crimes for national and international media. Matilda wondered if Charlie Johnson had actually written his biography himself. There was no author photograph, but she pictured him having small piggy eyes and a