Rosamund was lying on her back on the double bed, perfectly still, her limbs composed as a corpse’s might be, her legs straight, pressed together, her hands crossed on her chest.

Hobbes came into the room and looked down at the bed.

For a moment he wondered …

But, no, she was breathing evenly. Her closed eyelids were flickering. And then she opened them slightly. A smile played on her lips.

There was a pair of scissors lying on the eiderdown.

Hobbes bent closer.

Rosamund Kepple had used the scissors to cut open her blouse, on the lower right-hand side. That special place. The blades, or one of the blades, had continued through the material and entered the flesh. She had cut herself. It wasn’t a deep cut, not to look at, but the white cloth was stained red.

Suddenly, Rosamund reached up and grabbed Hobbes as she spoke in a low voice, drawn from deep down: ‘We are born from the night flesh.’ She stared at him, her eyes ablaze. ‘We crawl from the skull, from the shadows of the skull. From the sick dreams in the dark of the skull, we shall arise.’

Her smile broadened. Milk-white teeth, a fleck of lipstick on one.

Hobbes pulled himself loose from her grip. Latimer came into the room, to take charge of the situation, pressing a hand over the wound on the woman’s stomach.

The sight of blood meant nothing to Hobbes, or next to nothing, but the words she had spoken made him feel sick.

Decay Factor

Later that day, Hobbes drove to Richmond Park. It was around the time of the murder, according to the estimate. Eight o’clock in the evening. He liked to see things as they were, when they were, in the hope of connecting to the perpetrator’s intent and mood.

There was still a small police presence, PC Barlow among them. Hobbes asked the young officer to join him and they ducked under the tape to make their way off the beaten path into the wooded area. Neither spoke as they walked along. Hobbes listened to the last of the raindrops as they trickled through the branches. The smell of the autumn air always carried a sense of things ending, nature reminding us that all things must pass.

They stopped at the cleared ground. The tent had been removed.

Crime scenes after the fact: he knew them well. Another lesson from DI Collingworth.

Always go back, lad, once the hurly-burly’s done. Once they’ve carted the body away and the backroom boys have scraped the place clean.

You never know what you might find.

Hobbes stared at the black earth, the tufts of uprooted grass, patterns in the mud. The holes in the soil where the tent poles had been inserted. And over there, claw marks: another bloody dog sniffing about probably. Or something wilder. He looked to the surrounding trees; he looked up at the sky, darkening in a circle where the branches didn’t quite meet.