Blood on Snow

  Blood on Snow

  A Detective Kay Hunter short story

  Rachel Amphlett

  Copyright © 2020 by Rachel Amphlett

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. While the locations in this book are a mixture of real and imagined, the characters are totally fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  Foreword

  The Detective Kay Hunter series is enthralling murder mystery readers with its fast-paced and entertaining storylines that provide a modern twist to the police procedural genre.

  The full-length novels are available through all major retailers and local libraries in eBook, print and audiobook.

  These short stories follow Kay Hunter’s early years as a probationary detective constable and can be read in any order. The stories form part of the new Case Files series of pocket-sized murder mysteries from USA Today bestselling author Rachel Amphlett.

  For more information about this series and more, visit www.rachelamphlett.com.

  Chapter One

  The car slewed to a begrudging standstill, the tyres sinking into fresh snow two inches thick and unspoilt.

  Beyond the windscreen stood a modest three-bedroom suburban home with a white topping of flakes covering the roof tiles, icicle-shaped Christmas fairy lights dangling from the windowsills battling for space with the real thing.

  The middle house was identical to four others in the small crescent-shaped street – except for the uniformed police officers and white-suited crime scene investigators crowding the driveway and postage stamp-sized front garden.

  To the left of the vehicle, separating the crescent from the busy main road, was a grass-covered area housing a council rubbish bin and a bus shelter.

  The grass had been churned up into a mixture of snow and mud – no doubt a snowball fight had been underway earlier that morning. A group of children held aloft mobile phones while they walked towards the secondary school farther along the road, their expressions bored rather than curious.

  Probationary Detective Constable Kay Hunter paused with her hand on the car door handle and turned to her colleague, wool from her navy scarf sticking to her chapped lips before she brushed it out of the way.

  ‘What do we know so far?’

  Police Constable Simon Higgins tucked his radio into his stab vest and reached for his hat. ‘The first responders got here half an hour ago. A woman, Liz Carter, was found dead in her back garden. The husband phoned 999 at ten past eight. They’ve got two teenagers – a boy of thirteen, and a fifteen-year-old daughter.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Kay heaved the door open, a blast of ice cold air filling the vehicle. ‘Okay, let’s go and find Sharp.’

  Her foot slipped on the icy surface of the road as she got out, and she threw her hands out to the sides to regain her balance before falling into step beside Higgins.

  She flashed her warrant card to the young PC guarding the taped-off concrete driveway, then signed the crime scene log he held out.

  ‘Kay, we’re through here.’

  Detective Sergeant Devon Sharp waited at the front door, beckoning to her.

  Ex-military police, ramrod straight with the first signs of grey at his temples, he stood to one side as she entered a bright hallway decorated with tinsel pinned in zigzag patterns across the ceiling.

  Low voices mumbled through a door to her left, while two abandoned backpacks lay next to the bottom tread of the staircase on her right.

  ‘DC Christie’s speaking to the husband and kids,’ Sharp murmured. ‘Come through to the kitchen and I’ll show you what we’ve got so far.’

  Kay kept her hands shoved in her pockets and followed him, her gaze roaming the family photographs hanging on the wall as she passed.

  Liz Carter was a stylish brunette in her forties and in all the pictures had her arms draped around two kids who shared her toothy smile. Beside them, Andrew Carter towered above his wife, his close-cropped hair doing little to disguise a receding hairline.

  Turning away at the sound of a polite cough, Kay edged sideways to let a CSI technician pass then blinked as she recognised the lanky form of Hugh Hughes.

  ‘I didn’t know you were at work this week,’ she said.

  ‘This morning,’ Hugh replied, peering over his glasses at her as he pulled away his mask. ‘Hell of a way to start the day.’

  ‘Kay?’

  She hurried to catch up with Sharp, entering a light and airy kitchen that appeared to have had a recent renovation.

  A centre worktop ran the length of the room and led to patio doors, both of which were open.

  She shivered, and followed her DS as he strode out into the garden and paused beside three stone steps bordered with snow-topped shrubs.

  A second cordon of crime tape separated them from a team of four CSIs who crouched a few yards from where Kay stood, their backs to her as they trod a demarcated path between the house and the woman’s body.

  ‘You missed Lucas,’ said Sharp. ‘He got another call out near Sheppey, but he reckons she died from a single blow to the head.’

  Kay winced. ‘Did she die straight away?’

  ‘You know what these Home Office pathologists are like. He won’t confirm it until after he’s conducted the post mortem tomorrow morning but he thinks it was instant, yes.’

  He moved to one side, and Kay swallowed.

  Liz Carter lay on her back, her blank eyes staring up at the grey sky, a strand of hair across her forehead matted with viscous blood that had splattered the front of her shirt. Her arms were outstretched like a snow angel as if she tried to break her fall, her mouth open in shock.

  Kay wanted to wrap the woman in a soft blanket to shield her from the biting wind, noting she only wore slip-on patent shoes that matched her tailored suit trousers.

  ‘Have they found a weapon?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Sharp peered over her shoulder. ‘Here’s Richard.’

  Kay turned as DC Christie walked out of the kitchen and headed towards them, his face grim. ‘The husband, Andrew, says he was in the shower when it happened. The two kids – Michael and Stephanie – were in the living room eating breakfast and watching television. Andrew noticed the back doors were open when he came downstairs, and that’s when he found his wife.’

  ‘Did he have any idea what she was doing out here?’ said Sharp.

  ‘They adopted a cat last week. Apparently it kept getting out and she was afraid it’d go missing if it escaped.’ Christie snapped shut his notebook. ‘He thinks she went out after it to get it to come back inside before they went to work.’

  Turning back to face the garden, Sharp let out a sigh. ‘All right, you two. No sign of a weapon, and this garden isn’t accessible via a gate. The only way in and out of here is through the house.’

  ‘The kids say they had the living room door open while they were having breakfast,’ said Christie. ‘No-one came in through the front door – and Andrew confirms it was locked anyway. It always is until they leave to go to work and drop the kids off to school.’

  ‘Jesse!’

 
A girl’s voice shouted from inside the house a split second before a tabby-coloured blur shot past Kay’s legs and onto the snow-covered lawn.

  ‘Christ, there goes the crime scene,’ said Sharp as the four CSIs rose to their feet and tried to usher the cat away from the taped-off area.

  Kay spun around at the sound of footsteps and closed the patio doors as a teenaged girl slid to a halt on the tiled floor.

  Shaking her head, holding out her arms to try to block the view of the garden, Kay waited until Andrew Carter guided his daughter away, and bit back a sigh of relief.

  ‘Did she see?’ Sharp’s voice held a note of panic.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Kay straightened her coat and walked over to where the DS and Christie stood on the steps, their faces concerned. ‘I think I got there in time.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  Kay sidled closer, peering past his shoulder to where one of the CSIs was wrestling with the cat in his arms, a fresh trail of paw prints covering the snowy ground.

  She frowned. ‘Sarge? No-one else has walked on that snow except the husband and the wife, right? Besides the cat, I mean.’

  Sharp moved until he was standing next to her. ‘That’s right – the CSIs stuck to the demarcated path.’

  ‘Then where are the killer’s footprints?’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Someone get that bloody camera crew away from here,’ Sharp barked, his voice carrying over the uniformed officers milling about the front garden. ‘And tell the Family Liaison Officer to close the living room curtains.’

  He turned to Kay and Christie. ‘Right, you two – split up and start talking to the neighbours. Kay, you take Higgins with you and speak to the owners of the house at the back of the Carters’ home – the gardens border each other, so our killer may have escaped that way. Christie, you’re with me – we’ll start with next door, number four. Apparently the bloke at number two on the other side works night shifts and isn’t home yet.’

  ‘Okay, Sarge.’ Kay wandered across the driveway to where Higgins hovered at the outer perimeter, and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. ‘Simon, you’re with me. Sharp wants us to interview the neighbours in the house behind this one.’

  ‘Do you want to take the car?’

  She took one look at the traffic streaming along the street beyond the crescent and the emergency vehicles clogging the kerb, and shook her head. ‘It’ll be quicker if we walk.’

  Reaching the entrance to the crescent, she paused and extracted her notebook from her bag, then drew the cluster of five houses arching left to right, added the house numbers and put a pencil mark next to the Carters’ house.

  That done, she glanced up to see Higgins watching.

  ‘Just getting my bearings,’ she said.

  ‘Does Sharp think the killer got away through one of the other gardens?’

  ‘Maybe. Let’s go.’

  She kept up with the quick pace he set, taking care to avoid icy patches that were beginning to appear on the pavement as the snow melted under passing foot traffic.

  They turned into a dead-end street that ran behind the crescent, the properties spaced farther apart than the neighbouring streets and with large gardens and driveways that swept out of sight behind brick walls or privet hedges. Here, the snow was thicker on the pavements, the tyre tracks in the road favouring the left-hand side as residents had negotiated the icy conditions to begin their morning commute.

  ‘This is the one.’ Kay paused outside a mock-Tudor home, a gravel path leading to the front door.

  Edging past a modern-looking camper van parked outside the garage, she rang the bell beside a glass-panelled door and took a step back, eyeing the six-foot-high fencing that stretched from each side of the house, shielding the back garden from view.

  A fuzzy shape emerged from behind the glass before the door swung open and a man in his sixties peered out at them, his expression confused.

  ‘We’re not interested in buying anything, whatever it is you’re selling.’

  Kay held up her warrant card. ‘Mr––’

  ‘Hugh Starling.’

  ‘Detective Constable Kay Hunter, and this is my colleague PC Simon Higgins. We were wondering if we could have a word, please?’

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but we’re investigating the suspicious death of one of your neighbours,’ said Kay, keeping her tone steady. ‘Liz Carter.’

  ‘Liz? Oh… oh my goodness.’ Starling moved to one side. ‘Come in, please. Don’t worry about taking off your shoes. We can go through to the kitchen.’

  Kay wiped her feet on the coir mat then stepped inside, her shoes clattering on the laminate flooring as she shuffled to one side to let Higgins in after her.

  An immediate warmth caressed her cheeks, and she unbuttoned her coat and loosened her scarf while Starling shut the door and gestured towards the back of the house.

  ‘Beverley just put the kettle on. Would you like a hot drink?’

  ‘No, that’s kind but we won’t keep you long,’ said Kay, and nodded to a woman hovering beside a worktop, her grey hair bunched up on top of her head and secured with various pins.

  ‘Love, Detective Hunter and her colleague say that Liz Carter was killed this morning,’ said Hugh, moving closer to his wife and then placing a hand around her waist.

  ‘Liz? Murdered?’ Beverley’s eyes widened as she raised a shaking hand to her mouth.

  ‘We can’t say for sure at the moment,’ said Kay. ‘We are treating her death as suspicious, though. How long have you known them?’

  ‘About five years,’ said Hugh. ‘We moved here when I sold my plumbing business and took early retirement. The trees out the back weren’t so big then, so we’d often stop to chat over the back fence.’

  Running her eyes over a large pinewood table set to one side of the kitchen, Kay noted its surface was covered with plastic parts and paint pots.

  A strong acetone smell filled the air as Beverley Starling flipped on an extractor hood above the stove top and rolled her eyes.

  ‘I keep telling him the fumes are dangerous, but he won’t listen,’ she said.

  Kay wandered over to the table, her interest piqued by the model aircraft taking shape. ‘What are you making?’

  ‘A Mark IX Spitfire,’ said Hugh, his voice full of pride. ‘I should have it finished by Christmas.’

  ‘By which time, he’s hoping the family will buy him some more kits to make in the New Year,’ said his wife, her tone indulgent. ‘Maybe another radio-controlled boat or something.’

  ‘What about you, Mrs Starling – any hobbies?’ said Higgins.

  ‘Oh, just craft things. Needlework, that sort of thing. I knit blankets for the local rescue shelter.’

  ‘Bev and I tend to call these our winter projects,’ said Hugh. ‘In the summer, we travel around quite a bit.’

  ‘The camper van outside?’ said Kay.

  ‘We’ve been to eight different countries in it so far,’ he beamed.

  ‘Could I take a look at your back garden please?’

  ‘Of course.’ Beverley ushered her through a utility room that carried a heady aroma of cat litter, laundry powder and damp socks.

  Kay passed a pair of work boots drying out on an old newspaper, water soaking into the print, and then followed the woman out into the garden.

  A path ran behind the house, the crunch of gravel audible under a soft layer of snow as Kay wandered away from Beverley, leaving the woman huddled in her thick cardigan at the back door.

  Beyond a landscaped terrace cluttered with an ice-filled bird bath and various seed dispensers hanging from metal stakes was a wide snow-covered lawn stretching the length of two of the neighbouring properties before it gave way to a border of thick hawthorn hedgerows and leylandii trees. A wooden shed had been built in the far left corner of the garden, a variety of composting bins and a water butt nestled beside it.

  To the right and between the branches,
Kay could see the red tiled rooftop of the Carters’ house.

  Footprints tracked back and forth in the snow, but none went as far as the hedgerow.

  ‘Whose are those?’ she said, turning back to the house.

  Higgins had emerged with Hugh Starling beside him, his gaze travelling over to where Kay pointed.

  ‘Mine,’ said Hugh. ‘I was outside earlier shovelling snow off the path and put some more food out for the birds.’

  ‘What time was that?’ said Higgins, his notebook already open.

  ‘About eight o’clock, I think.’ Hugh’s brow furrowed. ‘Yes, eight. The news was about to start on the radio – I could hear the pips on the hour as I went out the back door with the food scraps from last night to put them in the compost bin over by the shed.’

  ‘I-I can’t believe this is happening. They’re such a nice family,’ said Beverley, dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve. ‘The kids, too – always said hello if we bumped into them in the shop down the road or out and about.’

  Hugh’s mouth twisted. ‘She’s right. Much better than the idiot on the other side of the fence.’

  ‘Oh?’ Kay pulled out her notebook and flipped to the sketch of the crescent. ‘That would be number…’

  ‘Two,’ said Hugh, ‘and a pain in the backside – especially in the summer with his loud parties.’

  ‘You can smell the marijuana from here,’ Beverley sniffed. ‘I think Andrew and Liz told him to keep the music down a few times, too.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else while you were out here earlier, Mr Starling?’ said Higgins.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Do you think the murderer escaped through our garden?’ Beverley’s eyes widened as she turned to her husband and reached out her hand. ‘Oh my God. You might’ve been in danger.’