‘Isabel,’ he whispered, and with what seemed like a gargantuan effort, he rolled his eyes upwards to indicate that his daughter was upstairs.

Bailey nodded silently, gave his shoulder the gentlest of squeezes, then stood up.

She peered up the stairs. Maybe it wasn’t too late to save Isabel. Maybe.

She started to climb the stairs.

74

Dale crept softly along the carpeted landing of Frank’s house holding the gun in front of him, his finger poised to pull the trigger at the slightest movement.

Where the fuck had that little brat got to?

He hadn’t been expecting to encounter Frank’s daughter when he got here, but when he’d seen her peering over the top of the sofa at him standing over her dad’s body, he knew she’d have to go as well. He just could not afford to have any witnesses to his crime. She’d immediately scuttled out of the living room into the kitchen. He’d chased after her, but she’d been too nimble and had looped back through the hallway, past her dad’s body and up the stairs.

Bad strategy. She should have gone out of the front door, to a neighbour’s house. But now she was trapped upstairs. She was probably hiding under the bed somewhere. Kids were so unimaginative. Thank God he didn’t have any himself.

He readjusted his grip on the gun and prowled forward towards what looked like the master bedroom. He had to admit, he felt pretty good whenever he held a gun – it gave him a real rush of power. You could end someone’s life just like that, with a tiny squeeze of the trigger. This was the first time he’d used one with a silencer, though, and it made the gun kind of bulky. The silencer wasn’t half as quiet as he’d been led to believe either, and certainly nothing like what they made out in the movies. But it was enough to at least take the edge off the bang and make it pass for something else in this suburban environment.

He’d shot Frank twice in the chest as soon as he’d opened the front door. Frank had looked so surprised. No wonder, seeing Dale standing there on his doorstep dressed in his full anti-forensics get-up, pointing a gun at him. The confusion in his eyes had been replaced by realisation as soon as he saw the weapon. But by then it had been too late. He already had two bullets in his chest. Stupid Frank.

The great thing about being in the police, thought Dale, was that it put you in a very advantageous position if you wanted to break the law because you knew exactly what could be deployed against you. Hence his anti-forensics gear. He’d gone to great lengths to ensure that there were no traces of himself at this crime scene, and instead, just evidence that incriminated Bailey. He was wearing a shower hat so as not to drop any hairs from his head, his hands were sheathed in nitrile rubber medical examination gloves, and on his feet he had plastic bags taped over his shoes. To put Bailey squarely in the frame, he was sprinkling strands of her hair here and there, hair that he’d plucked from the hairbrush in her bathroom. Not only that, he was wearing her green cashmere scarf around his neck with the intention of spreading fibres from it here before he planted it back in her flat after he was done. He’d heard her mention that it had gone missing, but she hadn’t suspected that it had been him who’d nicked it. Dozy cow. Given all her experience working undercover and the numerous plaudits he’d heard about her, she’d been remarkably easy to deceive, but then he figured she was just like all women – blinded by emotion.