The Murder House. Michael Wood

Only small, so we’re assuming it’s Rachel’s.’

      ‘Why would her ear print be on the back of the door?’

      He shrugged. ‘Best guess is she heard something out on the landing and pressed her ear against the door to have a listen. We’ve all done that at some point in our lives, to be nosy.’

      ‘So she could have heard – I don’t know – raised voices or something,’ Matilda surmised. ‘Maybe she heard the killer arguing with her dad. Perhaps.’

      Sebastian raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t relish you interviewing her. Poor thing,’ he said in his usual monotone.

      He opened the door. Matilda was relieved. She was beginning to feel trapped.

      ‘Now, on to the landing.’

      Matilda swallowed hard. All she could see when she thought about the landing was the head hanging off the body.

      ‘Nothing of interest here forensically, so we’ll move on upstairs.’

      ‘Really?’ Matilda asked. She was pleased not to have to linger but was surprised by the lack of forensics.

      ‘Everything around here has been fingerprinted, the doors, the walls, the bannister, and we’ve found nothing. Obviously, not nothing, the bannister was full of prints, but all of them smudged. Don’t forget, this is the landing – a main thoroughfare of the house. People will have come up to use the toilet, get changed. We haven’t found a decent print at all.’

      ‘It was a frenzied attack,’ Matilda said, looking up at the ceiling at the sprays of blood. ‘There must have been something, hairs, anything under his fingernails.’

      ‘Nope. Shall we?’ he said, eager to get to the next bedroom.

      Matilda frowned. When a crime scene was as frenzied as this one, when it was obvious the victim had put up a fight, something was usually left behind of the assailant – a hair, a fingerprint, a fibre from his clothing, a bead of sweat. She would have a word with Adele, see if she could find anything from under their fingernails.

      ‘Are you sure? What about something in the fibres of the carpet?’

      ‘Matilda, every scene of crime officer who was here has had more than five years’ experience on the job. If they’d have found something they would have documented it and I would have known about it.’

      ‘I’m not doubting the SOCOs. I’m just saying, a man was stabbed so many times he was almost decapitated, yet the killer left nothing of himself behind.’

      ‘I can only tell you what we find,’ he said, hugging the iPad close to his chest and walking slowly up the attic stairs.

      Matilda remained on the landing. The image of Clive Mercer’s stricken body was etched on her brain. He was white from having bled out. The number of stab wounds to his neck were many. The attack was frenzied. How could the killer not have left something, anything of him behind? This crime scene did not make any sense.

      The stairs leading up to the attic were also smudged with bloody footprints where the killer had run up and down. The wall behind the bed was an explosion of blood. The sprays were high and long. It was difficult to understand how one person could perform such a lengthy, brutal attack, unless they had superhuman strength. Unless there was more than one person involved.

      ‘We managed to get an excellent bloody footprint from the left side of the bed.’ Sebastian pointed to where a square of carpet had been cut out. ‘Now, judging by the shoes in front of the wardrobe, Clive Mercer was a size eight. The bloody print was from a size ten.’

      ‘Only one print?’

      ‘Yes. Best guess is he put his foot up on the bed, for whatever reason, stood in the pool of blood, and placed it back on the carpet. It also matches the print from the landing with the Nike tick.’

      ‘Is that the only decent print in this room?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Shouldn’t there be more prints? What about when he left the room? Unless he levitated.’

      ‘There probably were, but look around you, the carpet is saturated.’

      Matilda looked at the floor. Her overshoes were stained red. She pondered the sight before her. She looked at the route the killer would have taken from the left side of the bed to the door after killing. The single footprint didn’t make sense.

      ‘What happened here?’ Matilda asked looking at a large smudge of grey powder by the dressing table.

      ‘Lindsay knocked over her fingerprint kit. Lucky the carpet’s stained with blood or she’d have a hefty cleaning bill on her hands,’ he said with a smile. ‘Anyway,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘you’ll like this next bit.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Oh yes. We have a hair.’

      ‘Just one?’

      ‘Sometimes it only takes one. It was under the woman’s little finger on her right hand. It’s only small but the root is attached.’

      ‘Fingerprints and a hair, I’ll take that.’

      ‘You can’t commit a crime this frenzied and leave nothing of yourself behind,’ he said, unknowingly echoing her earlier thoughts.

      But he didn’t on the first-floor landing, she thought.

      ‘Have forensics finished now?’

      ‘No. They’ve finished up here but there’s the marquee in the back garden. I doubt we’ll get anything from there as there will have been hundreds of guests here for the reception. However, it has to be done.’

      ‘True,’ Matilda said. ‘Well, thank you for this, Sebastian. You and your team have done an amazing job.’

      ‘That’s what we’re here for. Obviously, the fun starts now, back at the lab. As soon as we’ve got anything, I’ll let you know. I’ll email you across the crime scene photos once I’ve been through them all. As you can guess, there’s a lot to go through.’

      ‘Thanks, Sebastian.’

      ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’m off to see if my wife has gone into labour yet.’

      ‘Give her my best.’

      ‘Will do,’ he said, waving as he left the room.

      Matilda stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked around her. She went over to the dormer window and looked outside. It was a beautiful area of Sheffield. She pushed open the window and leaned out. It was a cold morning and she shivered as a stiff breeze entered the room. Looking down, she saw white-suited forensic officers going in and out of the marquee. Everything had to be bagged and tagged. It was probably useless and no relevance to the case, but, maybe the killer had taken a sneaky drink from a champagne bottle, or bit into a lump of cheese and left behind a pattern of some distinct dental work.

      Wishful thinking.

      She turned back and looked at the bloodbath before her. Serena Mercer had been obliterated. She frowned as she thought. Jeremy Mercer was stabbed only a few times, and, according to Sebastian, it appeared he surprised the intruder, which meant he was killed first. If that was the case, why did he receive only a couple of incapacitating stab wounds while his parents were subjected to a fierce attack? He was a young man. He was tall. He wouldn’t have been as easy to overcome as a couple in their sixties. What did that mean? Was it just the couple who were the focus of the murder? Did the killer think they were alone which is why Rachel was unharmed?

      ‘Ma’am?’

      Matilda jumped at the sound of being called. She turned to see Scott standing in the doorway.

      ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

      ‘No. It’s fine. What’s wrong?’

      ‘Nothing.