He was about to throw the session open to questions when the office door was pushed open and Tony Coppell, the chief forensic officer who had attended the crime scene at Oaktree Farm, entered the room.

When he realised that all heads had turned towards him, he held up a file he was holding and said, ‘I’m sorry for the delay, Detective Walker, but I’ve now got a summary of the forensic report. And you’ll be particularly interested in what we found on the two mobile phones that were taken from the house.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Coppell walked to the front of the room and stood next to James. It wasn’t often he made an appearance without being covered from head to toe in crime scene attire, and this morning he was looking trim in a tapered blue suit and a white shirt that was open at the neck.

He took some documents from his file and said, ‘We’re about to circulate this lot by email and create a series of slides, but I thought it best to brief you on the contents straight away.’

He began with the bloodstain that was found on the stairs in the cellar.

‘It was fresh blood, only a couple of days old, and tests have shown that it’s not a match for any of our victims.’

That drew an immediate response from DC Abbott, who said, ‘So that’s another mystery lobbed into the mix. As if there weren’t enough already.’

Coppell nodded. ‘We’re running the DNA through the system now to see if we get a result. Meanwhile, the other thing to note is that the breadcrumbs found in the space at the top of the cellar are only about three or four days old. My guess is they fell to the floor while someone was eating a sandwich in there.’

The significance of this wasn’t lost on James or anyone else. It pointed to someone spending a prolonged amount of time in the wall space spying on the family through the peephole.

‘It could be that whoever it was decided at some point to go into the house and wreak havoc.’ This from DCI Tanner who was on his feet and having a close look at the photos of the cellar on the whiteboard.

‘That is a distinct possibility,’ Coppell replied.

He then held up another document labelled ‘Fingerprint Analysis’.

‘We found quite a few prints on the shotgun,’ he said. ‘Most are Robert Bateman’s, but a couple belong to his daughter. It means that at some point she held the weapon, but it might well have been long before Christmas Eve.’

‘What about the knife used to kill Charlotte?’ James said.