Kelly drove them both to the university hospital in Carlisle, where the murder victim awaited them in the mortuary fridge. She’d already begun the process of considering her victim, and immediate family was something she always started with. Time with family was precious to most people, including Kelly, and it wasn’t lost on her that Mary Hales appeared to have none. There was nothing in her private papers that they’d found so far inside her house that would indicate that she had any children, siblings or parents left alive or contactable. Everything in the home of the victim spoke to the investigators of a singular life. There were single portions of frozen meals in the freezer, frumpy female middle-aged clothes hanging in the single wardrobe in the bedroom and they saw no photographs in frames of smiling faces beaming back at the camera suggestive of familial ties. The house was ordered in such a way that it was configured for a person living alone. There was little cutlery in the kitchen drawers, only a couple of plates too, few toiletries in the bathrooms, and a single pair of walking boots by the back door.

They’d found a diary. It was bohemian and pretty, covered in golden feathers and ancient symbols of what the inspectors first thought to be good luck signs. Things such as the yin and yang, as well as stars and moons: all associated with somebody interested in the world of the spirit, an empath of sorts, perhaps. The diary had been submitted as evidence and Kelly had paused upon the last entry and communicated it to DS Umshaw this morning. It had been the CSI at the scene who’d pointed it out. Mary’s last entry had been written in on Thursday evening, the day before she died. It read:

There are demons out there, and they look like people.

Every investigator knew that when it came to piecing together a profile of a victim, diaries were notoriously misleading. However, Mary had been a vital, middle-aged, intelligent and bright woman, not some teenager given to writing about her angst, hormones and love life gone sour. It didn’t fit, thus they took it seriously. Often, murder victims were targets of abuse prior to the climactic event ending their life. Mary could have been scared of something. The fact that she vocalised her fears in the parameters of dramatic satanic language was mere background.

Everyone thought their tormentors demons, including Kelly. She shivered as she thought of Amy Richmond’s correspondence to her. The Teacher was demonic, but looked like a regular person.

Carlisle was busy but she managed to fight through the traffic and park in the coroner’s spot underneath the multi-storey car park.

‘I remember the first time I worked with you, Kelly.’