Craig was keeping going. That was good. Just keep it together, and don’t think about who’s lying there on that kitchen floor. Don’t think about anything except the facts, and that murderers can’t fly, or appear and disappear at will. They make mistakes, because although their actions are inhuman, their weaknesses are human. He walked around the bloody surface and went into the yard. He found the animal’s body easily in the trees, following the flash made by a lone photographer taking shots of the coyote. Craig joined him. This was almost worse than Daniel. He had been prepared for Daniel the moment Bell burst into that bright office with darkness on his lips, but he was not prepared for an animal that seemed to have died ripping its own heart from its chest.

‘Never seen anything like that,’ breathed the photographer as he focused on the twisted heap of blood and fur. Neither had Craig.

Prints. No human ones, just coyote prints. Deer prints. Just deer prints.

He made a noise in his throat to the photographer by way of a reply, walked back to the kitchen door and without re-entering that mock-up of Hades, called Jeff Bell to the door with the wave of a hand. Bell nodded and left the room.

‘The prints at Bradford’s murder.’

‘Prints?’

‘The deer prints, Bell.’

The grim-faced constable nodded quickly to say he understood. He had been crying. McGee could see the staining on his cheek, the puffiness of his top lids.

‘Did you find the deer that made them?’

Bell looked at him dumbly. ‘Eh, no. I don’t believe we did.’

Craig blew steam out of his nostrils and looked towards the photographer still firing his flash in the trees. ‘Well, actually, maybe someone did. The whole wood was swept for clues. I don’t know. It might not have seemed important. You could ask Simon, eh, Constable Ross, in there. He was on the sweep.’

‘Get him out here.’

‘Sir.’

Simon came out with an expectant fire in his eyes.

‘Did you find the deer that made the prints round Sean Bradford?’

‘Yeah. We did. It was half-buried in the snow near the top of the wood.’

Craig’s antennae started to twitch. ‘Did you have it photographed?’

Ross got nervous. He guessed he’d done something wrong now. ‘No, sir. It was just a dead deer. We left it.’

Craig kept his voice very still and calm. ‘And did you see what it died of?’

‘No. It was half-buried like I say.’

‘And that didn’t worry you? That a deer had sniffed round the remains of a murdered human, then walked a few hundred yards away and also dropped dead.’ He motioned behind him. ‘Like that.’