SEVEN DEADLY THINGS (Henry & Sparrow Book 3) by A FOX (best value ebook reader TXT) 📗

back. Some inner voice told her to pause and turn back to her fellow ex-Blues and her brother. ‘All of you — stay there,’ she said. ‘Don’t come in unless I say so. OK?’

Everyone seemed to sober up at once. They looked at each other and then back at her, nodding. Francis was narrowing his eyes, folding his arms and looking disapproving. Not because she’d just broken into Julie’s chalet but because he could see Holiday Kate withdrawing and DI Kate Sparrow stepping up. It was written across his face.

Kate turned back to the half-open door, and the curtain, and the smell of old, cold chips. She stepped around the curtain, pulling it closed behind her out of pure instinct. Instinct which was, as it turned out, bang on. She took a sudden, hitching breath and put her hands over her mouth. Then she turned and pulled the patio door completely shut, before letting the breath out again, slow and steady, between her fingers, marshalling her heartbeat and focusing her attention on the details.

Julie lay on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. The chip fat smell made absolute sense as Kate stared into the greasy face of her former colleague. Her legs — still gym bunny lithe and slim in running shorts — were sprawled halfway off the sofa, her arms flung up as if waving. There were spatter stains on her tight grey T-shirt. Her long dark hair hung in oily strings across her brow and cheeks. Her mouth was gaping wide and completely filled with solid white matter. It seeped from her nostrils too and slowly dripped, like candle wax, across her bruised purple throat.

At this distance, Kate could see she had probably been killed by strangulation.

But there was an outside chance Handy Bendy Julie had been choked to death with lard.

15

Holiday Kate had vanished. Detective Inspector Kate Sparrow had shoved her aside and taken over — and both Kates were glad of it. The first thing she did was step carefully across the wood-effect flooring and, grabbing a latex glove from her oh-so-useful bag, double-check that Julie was actually dead. It seemed like a foregone conclusion given her colour — pasty grey-white — and the lack of movement. Oh — and the fact that all her airways were jammed with solid white fat.

As expected, there was no pulse. The body was cool and unyielding, the eyes still fixed and staring waxily at the ceiling. Julie looked like an exhibit from the True Crime section at Madame Tussauds. Kate took a long, steadying breath as, outside, Craig called out: ‘Juuuuuuulieeeeee.’

Oh god. She had somehow imagined her horror had transmitted through curtain and glass, and instantly sobered up everyone waiting outside — but of course they had no clue what was going on. Why would they? Their lives weren’t dominated by murder.

Speaking of which, whoever had done this to Julie could still be in here. Her instinct was that the chalet was empty, but she carefully checked the bedroom, opening the wardrobe and looking beneath the bed, and then the bathroom, pulling the window over the bath shut as she did so. She knew she must secure the scene. Checking her watch, she went back to the curtain, and pulled it closed behind her before sliding the door open and rejoining her friends. She quickly brought the glass panel shut and barred the way in case any of her drunken pals decided to run inside and verify what she was about to say to them.

She glanced around and fixed on her brother, arms still folded, expression shifting from annoyance to concern. ‘Francis — I need you to go to the main office, opposite the pavilion, and find the security guy. You have to bring him right here.’

‘What the fuck?’ said Bill. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I need you all to stay calm,’ she said, hoping for the best. ‘You might want to sit down on the grass here. You need to stay quiet, too… we don’t want to wake any children.’

‘What?!’ insisted Bill, and Nikki and Craig came in on the chorus.

She took a deep breath. ‘Julie’s in there,’ she said. ‘But something bad has happened to her. No!’ She raised her palm with authority and stopped Craig in his tracks. ‘There is nothing you can do for her. It’s too late.’

‘What happened to her?’ gasped Nikki, eyes welling up, sinking onto the grass.

‘Francis? Now would be good,’ she said. Her brother nodded and hared away.

‘Has she killed herself too?’ whispered Craig, his angular face stricken.

‘No,’ said Kate, getting her mobile out and thumbing 999.

Emergency services picked up fast. ‘My name is Detective Inspector Kate Sparrow,’ she said and reeled off her collar number. ‘I’m with Wiltshire Police but I have just secured a crime scene at the Buntin’s Holiday Village in Lakefield, south of Lowestoft, in Suffolk. You need to get an SIO out here right away. There is a deceased female who I can identify as Julie Everall and it’s clearly a homicide. No sign of a suspect at the scene.’

She rattled off more information, turning away from the appalled faces of her friends while the call handler demanded more and more detail. They had indeed sunk onto the grass, holding on to each other and murmuring in shock. After a couple of minutes on the line, she was relieved to spot Francis returning with a guy in a Buntin’s uniform, carrying a two-way radio and wearing a peaked cap with SECURITY on it.

The first thing he wanted to do, of course, was enter the chalet. Kate, ending her call with a promise to stay on site and welcome the SIO, knew she needed to handle this carefully. ‘Um — Mike..?’ she hazarded, remembering his face vaguely from seven years ago. He nodded, perplexed and wary. ‘Can you hang on a moment?’ Still barring his way, she rummaged in her bag and produced her ID. He raised his eyebrows at it. ‘I’ve called in the Suffolk Police.