It was a heartfelt statement from someone who worked with animals all day long. Vets had a special relationship with animals; one that ordinary people couldn’t begin to fathom or replicate. The death of these animals had touched this one and Kelly could tell that she wanted justice. She could also tell from the level of technical detail that she’d included in her report that the vet didn’t think that it was the work of some local thugs messing around. The animals were tricked and tortured.

She went into the incident room feeling depressed. Her team was gathered and she nodded to some familiar faces who’d joined them to aid the investigation. She shared what she had so far and the room remained silent. She took questions and listened to reports on the subjects of traffic, house-to-house questioning, CCTV and a detailed labour-intensive search of the area around Mary’s house.

There was a decisive sense of gloom in the room, but Kelly knew that the worst was over. The details had been hard to listen to, now they could look ahead to doing their real jobs. A photograph of Mary Hales was pinned to the whiteboard and Kelly stared at it. They hadn’t found many images of the woman; this one had been in a drawer in her bedroom. It showed a slightly younger Mary, vibrant and smiling. It was portrait-like and Kelly wondered why it had been taken. And by whom. An image of Mary laying on Ted’s slab popped into her head and she felt a tightness in her chest. The two visions fought for attention. She could almost hear the woman speak. But more than that, the savagery involved in extinguishing a life like this one pestered her. And she knew why.

Chapter 25

Fred O’Reilly stared ahead but saw nothing.

‘I made you an egg sandwich, just how you like it, Fred. The eggs were laid just this afternoon.’

Sandra tried her best to pluck her husband from his depression. It was a melancholy that he’d sunk into as soon as the last of the police had left on Sunday afternoon: only yesterday in fact. It felt like a month, not a day, since they’d been told what happened to Mary.

Nobody could believe it.

It wasn’t that Sandra knew Mary as well as Fred, it was the manner in which she’d been killed. The fact she’d been killed. Murdered. It was a word for books, for thrillers on the BBC, not Braithwaite. Sandra had met Mary lots of times, more than she could remember, and she found her mild mannered, charming and quiet. She’d been a woman who would cause harm to no one and, as such, deserved no harm in return. And then there were her animals. Whoever did it was sick in the head: that was for sure. And that’s what they’d told the police.