She put him on speaker phone as she drove. ‘I’m pulling into mine now. I won’t make it. No go ahead, eat without me, I’m going to be late. I need to process a murder scene. I know – on a Friday – I’m sorry, there’ll be loads of paperwork if nothing else. If there are leads to chase tonight, it’ll be really late,’ she said to him. They were to eat as a threesome for once. Kelly was looking forward to continuing her new found conspiratorial companionship with her stepdaughter. She thought back to her own parents and how they handled the taboo. It was simple really: they didn’t. Kelly was given a book by the library and giggled with her friends at the school disco or in the woods. Kelly’s first fumble taught her little, and the second was no better. Full penetration came as a shock and she wasn’t ready, but the boy at the time had been just as scared as she was and they tried again. It was all right, she supposed. She’d learned about the clitoris when she was twenty-three years old. From what she’d seen through her work with local youth, which was extensive, youngsters today knew much more about sex from porn and it was worryingly damaging plenty of kids who thought that rough sex was normal. Violence, it seemed, was on trend.

She parked and went into her house quickly, finding a chicken tortilla wrap in the fridge and a packet of Twiglets. She didn’t even take off her coat, grabbed a bottle of water and went back to her car, heading for the address.

The body hadn’t been moved.

Chapter 18

The house was a pretty cottage on the outskirts of Braithwaite village, on the edge of Whinlatter Forest. Leaving the village to drive up the hill to the Whinlatter pass, it was easy to miss, had it not been for the police presence and flashing blue lights, and she pulled into a secluded driveway to see several patrol cars, police tape and a forensic van. The most pressing quandary on her mind wasn’t what she’d find inside, or if forensics had lifted much, it was why the hell had the call come from a phone box near Whitehaven, thirty miles away? There was only one rational answer: the caller knew what had happened.

She parked her car, away from the police tape, and slipped on a pair of gloves. She’d cover her shoes once she was inside the property. She’d been informed that it was a shocking scene, and messy. She steeled herself. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to brutality, it was the unknown that got her heart racing. Cause of death had yet to be established.