To all my readers, new and old… without you this would not be possible.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

THE O’MALLEY & SWIFT CRIME THRILLERS

Corn Dolls

Foxton Girls

We All Fall Down

The House of Secrets

The Uninvited Guest

Deadly Games

One Last Breath

Still Waters

Vanishing Act

Chill Pill

Bleeding Hearts

The Ghost Portrait

BLEEDING HEARTS

Copyright © 2024 by K.T. Galloway

Published worldwide by A.W.E. Publishing.

This edition published in 2024

Copyright © 2024 by K.T. Galloway. The right of K.T. Galloway to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

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.

All characters and events in this book are entirely fictional. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Kate Smith

Edited by GS & LW

BLEEDING HEARTS

AN O’MALLEY & SWIFT NOVEL

BOOK 11

K.T. GALLOWAY

In the game of love, losing your heart is deadly.

When a group of urban explorers stumble across a site they thought was a myth, they make a gruesome discovery. The remains of six bodies, each in various states of decay lain out at the bottom of an abandoned swimming pool. The only thing connecting them is their missing hearts.

When Annie and Swift watch the footage captured by the explorers they realise there had been another body in the pool. And this one is alive. With the race on to find this missing person, O'Malley and Swift dive deeper into the thrill-seeking online community.

But the deeper they search, the clearer it becomes that the killer is making a statement about love, betrayal, and the ultimate price of obsession. Can they stop him before he steals another heart?

Bleeding Hearts: The eleventh instalment in the best-selling O'Malley & Swift series, is a thrilling cat and mouse tale of obsession and fantasy. Perfect for readers of Alex Smith, JD Kirk, and LJ Ross.

MAILING LIST

Thank you for reading BLEEDING HEARTS

(O’Malley & Swift Book Eleven)

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FOREWORD

Well, here we are at Book 11! Thank you for still being with me on my journey and the journey of Annie and Swift.

I hope you enjoy this, slightly more gory book. After a few books about the O’Malleys I thought it was time to get back into the nitty-gritty crime of the MCU.

As always, it’s set in Norfolk, but the places are made up…

Enjoy 😊

PROLOGUE

TUESDAY, 1am

She was going to make history—she was certain of it. Podcaster. Influencer. Rule-breaker. She could already hear the headlines from tonight’s show. The urbex community was going to go wild. The Norfolk faction would be beating down her door to work with her, to recce and explore with her. This site was the holy grail to her fellow urban explorers, and she had gotten there first. Podcast numbers were going to go through the roof. Just like Eve was about to do.

She turned the beam of her head-torch up a notch and stood shivering at the precipice. It was midwinter, the middle of the night, not the best time to be climbing roofs, especially old corrugated iron sheets that were probably full of asbestos. But Eve had been searching for this site for nearly a year, certain it was a legend created by other explorers who wanted to increase numbers to their own sites with hashtags and CreepyPasta stories. And it wasn’t by chance she’d stumbled upon it, not that she was going to tell anyone about the anonymous message from a secret admirer. And there it was, hidden behind decades of brambles and ferns at the very edge of an old estate by the coast.

The pool was real.

So was the adrenaline thumping through her veins.

“Nearly there.” A disembodied voice floated up through the vines that were weaving their way in and out of the roof. Muffled by the urbex uniform of PPE mask and the owner’s lack of fitness. “Hang on.”

The boy the voice belonged to hauled himself up to where Eve was standing, not without a little difficulty. He coughed into the fabric of his mask, hitting at his chest like old men do when they’ve had too much stout and cigarettes. But with his hands so tightly wrapped in gloves and his coat the proportions of the Michelin Man, he wasn’t having much luck.

“Shush,” Eve hissed. “Do you want to alert the security guards to where we are? Or worse, the rest of the urbex community. God, Adam, you’re so embarrassing sometimes.”

Eve had known Adam since they were kids. Like chalk and cheese they were. She was hardworking and illustrious; he was rich and had the best equipment. And the podcast Garden of Eden worked well with the quirks of their two names. Before they joined forces, Eve’s podcast had sounded a little like she recorded it in the toilet, mainly because she had. Her little family bathroom had the best acoustics. Now they had a Go-Pro and mufflers and everything. And they were still only at school. Double whammy in the faces of the ancient explorers who’d been searching for this site for years.

They’d all been searching in the wrong place, though. They’d all been looking too far North, egged on by the rumours that the pool was owned by the same family who once ran the circus on the North Norfolk Coast. And that would make sense, what with the rumours about the pool and all.

Eve shivered again, wrapping her thin arms around her body and rubbing them to try and generate some heat. Her own exploring gear was ninja-like. Easy to move around in. Not very warm, though. She pulled her hat down over her blonde hair and waited for Adam to catch his breath.

“Wanna film your access point?” he asked.

Eve nodded. Adam lifted his hand and fumbled with the camera attached to his chest, his oversized gloves making the on/off button near impossible to push. Eve huffed and shoved his hands out the way, turning the camera on herself. A little red light glowed from Adam’s chest, like the target from a sniper rifle, and he pulled a little viewing screen from his pocket. She glanced nervously down into the darkness of the pool house, the light from her head torch bouncing off the roof around the skylight instead of finding its way into the tiled changing rooms she was about to drop into.

Hitting record on the microphone sewn into the neck of her top—thanks Mum—Eve took a breath and became one half of Garden of Eden, the Urbex Podcast that was about to hit the heights.

“We’re standing here, this evening, at the top of the world,” she said, trying to speak through her chattering teeth. “Quite literally.”

“Not really literally, though, is it?” Adam muttered, poking the corrugated iron with his booted toe.

Eve shot him a dirty stare and blinded him with the beam of head torch.

“For decades the Urbex Community has been looking for this abandoned swimming pool, affectionately known as The Lost Pool.” Eve crouched down and sat at the edge of the gaping hole in the roof, her legs dangling into the darkness. “Rumours have it, that anyone swimming in The Lost Pool was judged by the water gods. Those deemed unworthy were dragged to the bottom of the water and never let back up again. After a spate of deaths, the pool was boarded up and drained, but… the voices of those who didn’t make it echoed around the tiled abyss, wailing to be set free, until the land owner was said to be driven crazy. He had blocked off the immediate area and deleted all records of the pool from as many places as he could. Which is why The Lost Pool has been so hard to find. Some say it’s the souls of the drowned looking out for the living and keeping them away.”

Eve looked directly at the camera and smiled.

“But we’ve found it, and we’re going to see what those rumours are all about.” She dropped down into the gloom, landing on top of the lockers she’d been eyeing up. “We’re Garden of Eden, come in if you dare.”

Eve tensed, a whip of wind swirling around her neck. She looked around, the light not quite reaching the darkened corners of the changing room. Dropping down to the tiles to give Adam space on the locker, Eve’s shoes crunched on broken glass and rubble.

“Watch your step,” she said, not looking back.

It was hard to tell if this was the male or female changing rooms. Everything was blanketed in green lichen and the ceiling was hanging, dripping under the weight of decay. Somewhere in the distance, the gentle, steady plop of water echoed around the room.

“We’re in the changing room,” she said to the microphone as Adam’s red dot appeared beside her. “It’s cold, eerie, echoey. There’s a wooden bench in the corner. Did our victims sit there to take off their clothes one last time? Are they sitting there now, watching us unseen?”

“Eve,” Adam’s tone warned. “You said you weren’t going to freak me out.”

Eve rolled her eyes, checking out the room. “Tape’s still rolling, you doofus. Feel free to wait outside for me.”

Adam didn’t make a move to leave, and Eve was secretly relieved. Of all the places they’d explored—and there had been some pretty hairy catacombs and old churches—this building made all the little hairs on Eve’s neck stand to attention. It felt like something caught in the web of abandonment, struggling to be free. The whole aura of the building was off-kilter and Eve didn’t normally pay attention to woo woo rubbish like auras. She paused, holding her breath just long enough to hear the noises beyond the leaking pipe. Whispers.

“Did you hear that?” she hissed, spinning on her heels and grabbing Adam’s arm.

“What the hell, Eve?” Adam tensed under her grip. “I said stop it.”

She grunted, feeling her legs wobble under her. It couldn’t have been whispers. It must have been leaves or mice. Yes, that’s it, mice.

“Stop being a baby,” she said, her voice as unsteady as her knees. “Come on, this way.”

Eve didn’t let go of Adam’s arm as she trod carefully over the cracked, slippery, green tiles to what she hoped was the pool. The entrance to the pool from the changing rooms was a doorless, right-angled corridor. A privacy screen for swimmers in a time when changing rooms were open like this one and everyone stripped off with no shame. But right now, in the stench of mould and something a little riper, tangy almost, the corridor of broken tiles felt like the road to hell.

“We’re heading to the water now,” she whispered into the mic, feeling as though speaking any louder might awaken something from a deep sleep. “The pool, I mean. There won’t be any water. Not after this long. Maybe some rainwater if there’s holes in the roof.”

She could hear the fear in the wobble of her vowels and the lack of entertainment in her words. Pull yourself together, Eve, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and you’re going to ruin it because you’re a massive baby.

Adam covered Eve’s hand with his own and gave it a squeeze. It gave her the courage she needed to drop his arm and move. Stepping into the corridor between the changing rooms and the pool, they were plunged into darkness. Cobwebs so thick they trapped the torch light like flies. Eve shuddered and waved them away with her hands, her pale skin soon wrapped like a mummy. She shook it out, trying not to think of the spiders living in it and how they were going to escape up her arm and into her hat covered hair.

“The exit to the pool is long forgotten,” she said, wiping the cobwebs on her trousers. “Thick spider webs line what would have been a last, long walk for those poor souls lost to the water. But even the spiders have deserted this place, and I don’t blame them.”

A fear trickled into her belly, cold as ice. Her anticipation of what was to come seemed to know that, whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Glancing back over her shoulder to check if Adam was still filming, and still there to be truthful, Eve steeled herself and stepped out into the poolside.

It was like something from The Last of Us or Day of the Triffids. Great big vines, as thick as her forearm, weaved their way in and out of the walls and poked through cracks in the domed Perspex ceiling. They piled around the edges of the pool, wrapped over and under each other in swathes of green and brown. Every surface was covered, and it took dainty little steps to tread between the vines and not crush them underfoot.

“That’s weird,” Eve said, inching into the room and peering into the pool cavity. “Look at this.”

“Weirder than what we’re already looking at?” Adam asked from behind her.

A wisp of movement tickled Eve’s ear, like a tendril of the plant had reached up to caress her. Her body shivered violently, and she had to wrap her arms around herself to still it. The noises were louder out here, whispers turned to mutters, the rustles coming from directly underfoot. Eve half expected the plant to wrap itself around her legs and drag her under. It was alive, of course, a plant this strong was feeding well. But it was alive in a way that made it feel sentient. Swallowing down the haunted feeling that was wrapping itself around her spine and urging her to run away, Eve once again spoke to her mic.

“The wildlife has taken over this sorry looking building,” she said, trying to focus on the task in hand. “It’s a conservatory of greenery by the poolside. A carpet of leaves if you can imagine it. But there’s a space they’ve left free. Almost as though they’re scared of being down there.”

Eve pointed to where she had been looking and Adam leaned past her to see for himself. Although the plants had wound their way around the edges of the pool, the pool floor itself was thick with the largest vines she’d ever seen. And the tiles peeking out from between them looked pristine.

They were at the shallow end. Eve jumped down onto the pool floor and beckoned for Adam to follow her.

“We’re taking a trip to the last known resting place of many a swimmer,” she said, hoping she wasn’t in the grip of The Little Shop of Horrors. “The pool is perfect. A shrine, if you like. A tended grave for those poor unfortunate souls.”

She sang the last bit like Ursula the Sea Witch and looked back for Adam and the red dot of his camera. They needed this bit for the show. This was what people wanted. The juicy stuff. The macabre. Her listeners lapped it up and a spot of showbiz singing wouldn’t do her any harm. Her mum said she had a proper nice singing voice. But Adam wasn’t following her. He was fixed, rooted to the spot like the plant, the viewing screen dropped by his side. And he was staring at the darkened pool bed behind Eve. The deep end.

“Come on.” She wavered, feeling her hackles rise. “I want this on camera.”

Adam didn’t reply. It was like he hadn’t heard her. Eve didn’t want to turn around. Not anymore. She had no desire to see what was at the bottom of the deep end. But she turned anyway, gripping her phone in her hand and switching on that camera instead. It wasn’t as good quality as the GoPro but her cameraman was having a stroke at the poolside and Eve wanted to be famous.

“Let’s go and see what’s got Adam’s knickers in a twist.”

She edged forwards, keeping to the side, running her free hand along the solid wall to remind herself that this was real. And halfway along the pool she saw what Adam had seen and knew she’d never get over this discovery.

“Oh, god.” Eve doubled over, heaving her stomach contents all over the blue tiles by her feet.

She scrambled back, arms outstretched, flailing for purchase on something, anything to get her out of the pool. Her feet slipped on the tiles, squeaking loudly in the terrible silence until she reached the shallows.

“Adam, help,” she shouted, gripping the vines at the edge and hauling herself up so violently she tore off a nail. “Help me.”

But Adam was frozen. He was no good for anything except a warm body for Eve to throw her arms around and bury her face in his jacket. But even with her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her face hidden, the vision of bodies was as bright as day.

Lined up along the deep end like sardines in a tin. Some of them perfectly preserved, others decaying so badly they were melted skin on bone. Their faces were etched into her mind so deeply they’d be there every time she closed her eyes. She would never be able to run from them. Mouths twisted in agony, eyes wide. And each and every one of them had a gaping void where their chests had once been. A black hole of nothingness beyond their broken rib cages.

Heartless. It was the last thought Eve had before she collapsed in a heap on her own urine-soaked vines.

ONE

TUESDAY

Annie O’Malley sat by her window nursing a coffee and a croissant as the shops below her office-cum-flat started to come to life. Over the cobbled road the awnings were being opened and signs dragged outside to entice the customers in to buy homemade brownies or pot plants or handmade prints. The smell of Pete the pizza man making his famous tomato base just under her window made Annie’s stomach grumble, even through the fug of a cold she’d been trying to shake off for a week now. She was lucky, living where she did. There used to be a time when Annie had felt claustrophobic living and working in a tiny space above a pizzeria, but those times had changed.

Sunday the cat purred loudly as she absentmindedly stroked his chin. He wound his way back and forth along the windowsill, sniffing at the gap at the bottom of the sash where Annie had pulled it open as far as she dared. His orange coat looked glossy these days, his belly rather round. Much better than when she’d rescued him from a woman strapped with explosives. Sadly, her poor pot plant had taken the brunt of the not-so-new arrival as he’d taken to sleeping in the soil.

Annie sipped her drink, enjoying the calm before the storm. And if rescuing cats from bombs was the storm, then she’d seen a whole four seasons and more in the space of a few years working for the Major Crime Unit. Never a dull day in the little team she loved.

Which was good, because if Annie sat still for too long, she started to think about everything else that had happened in her personal life over the last few years instead—finding her sister and her dad after years of them being missing, and then losing them both again because they’d rather stay missing than be with Annie and her mum—and the dread kicked in. Sunday meowed in protest as Annie moved to get up from her chair.

“I know, I know,” she said, kissing the top of his head, warmed by the winter sun through the glass. “But some of us have to work to keep you in tins of Sheba and BBQ chicken pizza from downstairs.”

Her stomach flipped happily at the idea of work. Maybe her personal life didn’t have to be all doom and gloom. Unable to stop the grin pulling at her cheeks, she downed the rest of her coffee and pulled open her cupboards to find something to wear. Landing on a smart pair of trousers and a sweater that her boss, DI Joe Swift, said made her green eyes pop, Annie skipped up to the tiny bathroom in the attic space to get ready. Their relationship made the comment less inappropriate than it sounded. Annie and Joe had recently admitted their feelings for each other and the team around them had sighed a collected breath of relief.

She ran a toothbrush around her mouth, slicked on some lip gloss and mascara, and decided to leave her long, auburn curls in their natural state. It was winter; they’d add an extra layer of warmth to her head as she walked the short distance to work.

Throwing her coat and scarf on, and kissing Sunday goodbye on the head, Annie skipped down the stairs and out into the winter sunshine. The air had a cool nip to it, the cobbled pavement glistened with frost, and Annie felt her cheeks pinken.

“Morning, young lady,” Pete shouted from the door of his pizzeria. “Off to fight crime? Can you arrest that cat of yours when you get home? He’s stealing the hearts of all my customers.”

Annie laughed. Sunday had a tendency to head out through his catflap in the back window and flutter his long eyelashes at Pete’s customers.

“No can do, Pete,” she called back. “You need the Paw-lice Patrol for that kind of thing.”

She blew him a kiss and carried on her way, hearing him groan as she went.

“You’ve been hanging out with that boss of yours too much,” he shouted after her.

That was the truth right there. And one of the main reasons Annie was coping with the family dramas so well. She’d worked with DI Joe Swift ever since he’d recruited her to track down some missing children. It had taken them nearly two years to get their act together and now they were official.

Annie whistled a tune as she headed up the lane, taking the few minutes’ walk through the city centre to the police station. Today was going to be a good day, she could feel it. The sun was shining, the air was crisp; she’d slept well the previous night because of all the Valerian Root she’d been taking to stave off the family drama-induced insomnia, and she was about to see Swift.

“Morning,” she called across the reception area to her best friend, Rose, who manned the desk. “Happy Tuesday.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “People in love are so annoying,” she jokingly called back as Annie swiped her keycard to get through the internal doors to the inner sanctum.

It was early. Too early for most of the day shift staff to have arrived, so the corridors were empty. Annie pushed open the door to the open plan office where her team’s desks were located. That was empty too. Empty except for Swift, just as they planned.

“Good morning, sir,” Annie said, grinning.

“Good morning, O’Malley,” Swift replied, getting out of his seat. “You’re looking ravishing today.”

Annie silently thanked her earlier self for choosing his favourite jumper. Swift was wearing his usual DI uniform of black trousers and a shirt, but his hair was extra tousled this morning. They met each other in the middle of the room, somewhere between traffic and CID and Swift gathered Annie up in his arms.

“It’s been too long,” he said, kissing her cheeks, one then the other.

“It’s been less than twelve hours,” Annie laughed.

“Exactly,” Swift said. “Too long. Come here, gorgeous.”

He leaned in and kissed Annie on the lips and she melted into it, relishing the feeling of being held.

A small cough rang across the open plan office and Swift and Annie pinged apart like they’d been electrocuted. Annie glanced around, her face heating. Swift looked like a man possessed.

“Come out and show yourself,” he muttered. “You peeping Tom.”

A face peered sheepishly around the giant pot plant in the corner of the room.

“Not a peeping one, just a normal one,” DS Tom Page said, holding his hands up. “To be fair, guv, I was just watering the plants, not perving over you guys snogging in the middle of the office. I made myself known before you stripped off and⁠—”

“Quite enough,” Swift interrupted. “How long have you been here? Why didn’t you say hi when I arrived?”

Page grinned, putting the watering can back by the small sink in the room and heading to the MCU bank of desks.

“Well, sir,” he said, kicking back on his chair. “You were so distracted when you arrived, I didn’t want to disturb you. Muttering so loudly about being beautiful and missing someone’s coconut scented hair that I thought you were on the phone. Turns out you were just practising for Annie’s arrival.”

Swift picked up a whiteboard pen and threw it at Page’s head. Luckily for Page, Swift’s throwing skills were as good as his seducing skills, so it flew wide. Page laughed and crossed his arms.

“I could report you to the DCI for that,” he joked. “Workplace bullying.”

Swift raised a brow and took his own seat next to Page.

“How long have you been a sergeant now, Page, what is it, two months? Do you like the new role?”

Page nodded, cracking his knuckles.

“Shut up then, or I’ll get you demoted back to constable, and you can go sit over there in traffic with the other losers.”

“Who’s a loser?” Tink appeared as though she’d flown in like her namesake. She threw off her hat and shook out her pixie cut, sitting down next to Annie and completing their small team. “Don’t put yourself down, Guv. We can’t all be the cool kids of the team. You’re like our Yoda or our Fagin. Cool in your own way amongst the young’uns.”

Annie giggled and tried to cover it with a cough. Swift puffed out his cheeks and looked at her for some support. But she wasn’t going to get in the way of some lighthearted banter just because she was his girlfriend now.

“Right, the lot of you can go and work for bloody traffic,” he said as Robins opened the door to her office at one end of the open plan room and cleared her throat. Swift grimaced and whispered to Page. “How long has she been in there?”

“She got here before me, sir,” Page said, running a hand through his hair. “Probably been watching this whole charade as a bit of breakfast TV.”

Swift looked like he was going to blow a gasket, but he reined it in before Robins got to their bank of desks. Annie blew him a surreptitious kiss over the tops of their screens and tried to rearrange her face into something akin to studious as the big boss approached.

“MCU,” Robins said, her neat bob unmoving. “Nice to see you all looking so sprightly this Tuesday morning. What are you putting in your coffee?”

It wasn’t a question, not really. So they all kept quiet. Annie respected Robins like a scary head teacher who’d dish out tokens to students who deserved them and give a side-eye to those who needed to shut up. Annie liked to stay on the token side, in all walks of life—when she came to think about it.

“I’m sorry to bring down the mood but I have a heck of a case for you,” she went on. “Swift, Annie, if you could come to my office and I’ll brief you ahead of the game. Tink, Page, if you two could go and get a bucket of cold water to tip over this pair that would be much appreciated.”

Annie felt her face heat as Robins’ eyes bore into her. She looked down at a very interesting spot on her desk and hoped the floor would swallow her whole.

“Robins, we—” Swift started to protest, but she soon cut him off.

“Don’t push your luck, DI Swift.” With her hands on her hips she looked a mean figure, even at only five feet. “I’m turning a blind eye to the relationship because I’m glad you two finally figured it out. But canoodling in the office is an offence.”

Oh god! Annie felt as though she was going to burst into flames.

“Not an offence I am familiar with,” said Swift.

“An offence to my eyes, Joe,” Robins said. “I don’t want my overnight oats tainted with an image of your tongues.” She shuddered dramatically.

“Right,” Swift added, sheepishly. “Noted.”

“See to it that stops.” Robins turned and started back to her office before stopping to add a final flourish. “Oh and Swift, if I catch you at it again you’ll be moved to separate teams. And you’ll be the one going to Traffic. Annie’s brain is far too good to lose from MCU.”

She winked and closed her office door behind her. Annie looked at Swift who appeared as embarrassed as she felt, then at Tink and Page. Page was puce, his hands shoved in his mouth to stop the laughter. Tink was faring even worse at holding it all in, her eyes watering, her lip quivering.

“She said canoodling,” Page stuttered, and that was enough to set Tink off.

Her laugh bounced off the empty desks around her. Swift dropped his head into his hands and gripped at his hair, muttering something under his breath.

Annie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but as Tink looked in her direction, mouthing the word canoodling because she couldn’t get it out through her laughter. Annie couldn’t help but join in. Swift looked at her through the gap in their computers, peering up through his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile that he didn’t want the rest of the team to see.

Yes, Annie thought, today was going to be a good day.

TWO

Robins’ office was neat and orderly, just like the DCI herself. Annie shut the door behind her and Swift, shutting out the belly laughs of Page and Tink who had been batting the word canoodling between them since Robins had ceremoniously dropped it in their laps. Annie felt like a naughty child in a headmaster’s office and sat down without a word opposite her boss. Swift did the same and together they waited to have their ears chewed off.

“Can I just say?” Robins started and Annie braced herself. “That for two incredibly intelligent, resourceful detectives—and Annie I’m including you as a detective as that’s how your brain works—you took far too long detecting how you felt about each other. And I’m glad you finally made it to the right conclusion.”

Annie glanced a quick look at Swift who looked as confused as she felt.

“But no more hanky panky in the office,” Robins added, grinning. “I need folks to see I run a tight ship here.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Annie offered, forgetting that Robins liked the moniker about as much as Swift liked being called Guv. “Hands to ourselves at all times.”

Swift snorted in the seat next to her and started spider-walking his fingers across Robins’ desk towards Annie. Robins coughed pointedly and he whipped them back into his lap.

“Honestly, you’re like two teenagers,” the DCI said, rolling her eyes. “It’s cute. But now I need you to focus because this one is a doozy.”

The atmosphere in the office changed, charged with professional electricity as Robins pulled a file from the stack on her desk and laid it open. She turned it to face Annie and Swift and pushed it across the polished wood towards them.

“What do we have?” Swift asked, eyes on the scene of crime photos.

Annie pulled a photo out from the pile, grimacing at the sight. The backdrop looked like the tiles of a swimming pool, but it was the rows of bodies that drew her eye. Each one more decayed than its neighbour. Some so far gone they weren’t bodies anymore, rather they were pools of bone and melted skin.

“Jesus.” Annie drew out the word with her breath.

“Yeah,” Robins agreed. “It’s something else. They were found last night by a couple of kids in an old, abandoned swimming pool out in the sticks. Poor things, the kids I mean, they looked traumatised, unsurprisingly. But they do have video and sound footage that we can go over.”

Annie cocked her head in question.

“They’re a couple of podcasters,” Robins explained. “Run a show called Garden of Eden.”

“Religious?” Annie piped up, wondering if there was a clue in the pieces of the puzzle they already knew.

“No,” Robins shook her head. “Their names are Adam and Eve. They’re back at their respective homes now but I want you to interview them separately. Find out why they were poking around at an abandoned swimming pool when they should have been tucked up in bed. Did they have leads? What did they see? You know the drill.”

Annie nodded, looking back to the pictures.

“This has been going on a while.” Swift noted, turning one of the photographs over in his hands. “Weeks, months maybe. The site must have been pretty well hidden for the smell not to have bothered people. The decomposition on these bodies is all over the shop. Are we doing an analysis on time scales? Are the bodies all with Evans?”

Evans was the station’s pathologist and long-time friend of both Swift and Annie.

“He’s still out at the scene, yes,” Robins said. “He wanted to do as much in situ as possible because some of these bodies won’t be able to be moved… how do I say this delicately, as solid objects. He’s running all the usual tests, and he wanted to do analysis on some of the insects and larvae found in the older bodies to see if we can get some sort of timescale.”

Annie felt her stomach turn as she imagined how the pathology team would have to use buckets to collect some of these poor lost people. She knew they’d be respectful, but that was no way to end up. These people had once been someone’s son or daughter and now they were reduced to parts not even stable enough for a gurney.

“The newer ones have obvious wounds to their chests,” Annie said, pointing at the least decomposed body in the photos. “Cause of death?”

“Maybe, we’ll know more after Evans gets back to us. But I want you both at the scene before the bodies are taken away. I think this is something you need to see in person and not just in photographs.”

Annie didn’t realise her face was giving away the lack of enthusiasm for that particular instruction until Swift nudged her with his elbow.

“You can hide behind me,” he whispered.

She gave him a quick smile as Robins steepled her fingers on her desk and tapped at her lips with her forefingers. The subtle scent of Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir wafted by Annie’s nose and she spotted a diffuser sitting prettily on top of the filing cabinets. It helped calm her senses. Looking at the photos, all Annie could smell was the stomach-churning scent of decay and the acidic, metallic taste of…

“There’s no blood,” she blurted. “With those injuries there’s going to be a lot of blood. Where is it? Does the building have no roof? Has it been washed away?”

“No,” said Robins. “There’s no blood. Good spot, O’Malley. The scene of crime is in an old, abandoned pool and the first on the scene noted there was no blood anywhere. In fact, he said the pool was the cleanest part of the building. No smell of bleach or any other chemicals and it’s not going to have been washed away as the roof isn’t completely intact but it’s not open enough for that. And where would it be washed away to? The pool is watertight.”

“So these bodies have all been transported to this location?” Swift asked.

Annie picked up the photos and flicked through them, studying the snap shots of the rotting building with a weird plant growing throughout, and the external pictures of overgrown foliage and brambles and trees.

“How?” she said. “How did they transport the bodies here? There’s nowhere in the vicinity to park for a start. And these photos don’t show an easy access for someone, let alone someone carrying the deadweight of a… these all look like men. Fully grown men at that.”

“This is what I need you two to find out,” Robins said. “Search the place for exits and entrances and any signs that someone has been coming and going regularly. We need to find out who these people are—and I say people rather than men, because I actually think there is a mixture there, Annie. I don’t think they are all men.

Annie looked up at Robins, brows furrowed. Transporting bodies was no easy feat, let alone through foliage as thick as these photos showed.

“Hopefully Evans will be able to trace some of these victims with dental records or DNA,” Swift said, flipping a photo over in his hand. “This is no ordinary crime. There seems no order to the victims.”

“What we’ve got is a whole load of questions and no answers,” Robins said. “Which is why you guys are on it. And I need you to be quick to the scene. A bit of internet searching brings up a whole story about this pool. It’s an urban legend among the urban explorer community. Apparently, people have been searching for it for decades.”

“What?” Annie looked up from a particular gruesome picture of a chest carved open to reveal a hollow cavity. “And these two kids just stumbled upon it, did they?”

“Apparently so,” Robins went on. “They weren’t overly informative, but you might get more out of them when the shock wears off. The girl, Eve, was talking in circles about being lured there by the bodies of the people who died there years ago. The place is well known despite not being found until now. It’s a building with stigma attached to it. God knows why, by all accounts it’s just a pool with a couple of changing rooms attached, but you know how weird people are. And now word is getting out about the bodies and people are talking online about how they think it is haunted. So, we need to make sure we keep the scene closed off to any of these explorers who want a piece of the action.”

“This doesn’t feel like a haunted house gone wrong,” Swift said.

“Rumours stem from somewhere though,” said Annie. “What started these off, do we know?”

“No,” Robins replied. “We need to get on that too.”

“Leave it with us,” Swift said, gathering up the file and tucking it under his arm.

“Exactly what I’m doing,” Robins said with a smile.

Annie and Joe headed back to the MCU desks and filled Tink and Page in on the case. They sat there with grim faces as Swift handed out the file.

“I used to want to be an Urbexer when I was younger,” Page said. “I used to hang out with a couple of them from school. But they’d always go at nighttime and after I went to live at Gran’s she never let me out once the sun had set.”

Page had been through a lot growing up. Pretty neglected at home, his gran had taken him in as a young teen and brought him up. He’d told them all once, in a moment of honesty, that if it hadn’t been for his gran he’d have been on the other side of their interview tables and the wrong side of the steel bars.

“If you’re down with the lingo of the community maybe we can look into the online scene, Guv” Tink replied. “Get some info on the pool and search the web for forums.”

“Yeah, there’s a wealth of stuff online if you know where to look,” Page added. “Most of it’s on the normal web, but sometimes things pop up on the dark web too, and this case is giving dark web vibes.”

“Good idea, guys,” Swift said. “Go set up an incident room and get to work on the history of the pool. It’s weird, this one. There might be something hidden in the forums. A new face—though we’re looking at a couple of months ago now, given the state of some of these bodies—someone asking questions that seem a little off key. You know the drill. I’m not sure our killer is into urban exploring, as such, but then how did he come across such a unique place to store his kills?”

“You think he was storing them?” Annie asked.

“Why take them there if not?” Tink offered. “Why keep them at all?”

“And why lay them out like this?” Page asked, tapping a finger to the photo of all the bodies prone on the tiled floor of the pool. “Do we know if there’s anything linking the victims?”

Swift shook his head.

“We don’t have ID on all of them yet,” he said. “Or any of them, actually. O’Malley and I are heading out to the crime scene to meet up with Evans to see what he has. But there were no clothes found near the bodies so no handy pockets with wallets full of useful information in them”

“Lot of unanswered questions here, guv,” Page said, mirroring how Swift and O’Malley had felt back in the DCI’s office.

“Yeah,” Swift agreed.

“And there are going to be seven or so families who are missing these people,” Annie added. “Seven people who have vanished off the face of the earth. Some of whom look like they’ve been missing for a while. Let’s hope we can give them some sort of answer to what happened to their loved ones.”

“And by the looks of the most recent body, I think this perp is still active,” Tink said. “So, we need to find out who is doing this and why, before they find a new victim. And I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time to do that.”

A hush fell over the small team as they took on board the scale of what was in front of them. People’s lives were at stake, and Annie knew that the countdown to the next victim was already ticking.

THREE

O’Malley and Swift took Swift’s car. It was bigger and faster and had windows that worked properly and an engine that didn’t clunk every time they went over 50 mph. The location was programmed into the sat nav and every so often the scary female voice would tell Swift to take a left or a right or slow down for speed cameras. Annie was using the drive time to scroll her phone for information about the scene.

“Get this,” she read from a Reddit forum as Swift took them onto the main road out of the city. “The Lost Pool—not the most imaginative name ever—has been on the radar of the Urbex Community since the late eighties. ‘Owned by famed and then infamous playboy, Louis Linington, the pool was the place for late night parties and raves back a decade earlier. If you wanted to be seen, you’d be seen there.’”

“Louis Linington?” Swift asked. “Never heard of him. Is he still around, do you think?”

Annie shook her head, skimming the page. “You’re too young, haha, but I’m not sure of his whereabouts yet. There’s a whole lot of gumph here about how Linington lived life to the max and ended up spending his family fortune on booze and women.”

Swift hummed in disapproval.

“What is it with men and their obsession with squandering money on booze and women?” Annie pondered, reading on. “‘Part of the vast Linington estate, the pool was host to one last hurrah, though Linington didn’t know it at the time. With the heirs of a lot of local, wealthy families invited, Linington opened his house and gardens and had what was billed as the party of a lifetime. Only for a handful of the partygoers, it was to mark the end of their lifetime.’ God who writes this crap Do you think they’ve ever seen the inside of a classroom?”

“Is that written by the Urbex Community?” Swift asked. “What forum are you on?”

Annie scrolled up to the top of the post she was reading.

“Reddit. This particular discussion was started by someone called Urbandan so I’m guessing part of the community. And the subreddit has the heading places we can’t find.”

She clicked on the heading and started to scroll down the page. There were hundreds of new discussions. Old hospitals people were searching for. Urban myths that people were asking for truth about. The pool’s name came up half a dozen times before she’d reached the bottom of the page.

“There’s a lot of upvotes on The Lost Pool at the moment,” she said. “I think word is out about what’s been found.”

Swift glanced over at Annie, his face scrunched.

“So, errr, you lost me at Reddit,” he said, shrugging.

“I take back what I said about you being too young, you’re such a dinosaur, Joe,” Annie said, laughing. “Okay, so I’m not an expert, but Reddit is the site, subreddits are like the topics, and discussions are the threads of each topic. Upvotes are likes. Reddit has a very loyal fanbase so please don’t repeat what I said in case my terminology is wrong, and they come for me with pitchforks at dawn.”

“Reddit 101,” he nodded. “Thanks. The Lost Pool is trending then, is it? Can I say trending? Is that allowed in the Reddit community, sub community, whatever they’re called?”

“Literally have no idea,” said Annie. “But maybe we can say what we like here as ‘what’s said in the car stays in the car’?”

Swift wiggled his brows suggestively. “Oh yeah?”

“No,” Annie said, firmly. “You’ve already got me in trouble once today. Work only from now on.”

“Spoilsport.”

Annie laughed and went back to the forum, scrolling back to the posts about The Lost Pool. She clicked on one at random as Swift took them on to the dual carriageway.

“Let’s see what people are saying,” she said, mostly to herself. “Wow, so this forum doesn’t hang around. When did Robins say the bodies were found?”

“Last night.”

“People are saying the curse is back,” she went on. “That the people who died there came out and have taken more victims, forever angry at what happened to them.”

“We need to find out more about what happened to the people who drowned back in the seventies, and who they were,” Swift said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the songs playing quietly on the radio. “But also, if this pool has been lost for such a long time, then how do the ghosts lure more bodies in? Surely that’s a contradiction in terms?”

“Yeah,” Annie pondered, still reading. “Maybe ghosts have their own set of rules, I don’t know. There’s so much here to wade through, but the gist I’m getting is that people know the pool has been found. There’s no mention of any new bodies yet, thankfully. And… hold on, listen to this. Someone has written, ‘I heard it was those Eden podcast kids who found it, wtf, they’re like twelve, they shouldn’t get all the credit, we all helped them, we should all be congratulated.’”

“Whoever that is sounds pissed,” Swift noted.

“It’s probably a grown man sitting in his pants who’s never been on a real exploration in his life,” Annie said, checking out his username. “ObiWanToExplore, yep, definitely a middle-aged man with mummy issues.”

“Oy,” Swift said. “I like Star Wars.”

Annie didn’t reply, the raised brow had all the words she needed. In all honesty, Annie loved Star Wars too, but that was a conversation for another time, teasing Swift was too much fun.

“Lots of people agreeing with Obi though,” Annie read on. “Seems like the community is upset that a bunch of kids found what they’d been searching for for years.”

“Upset enough that we need to be worried for the safety of these kids?” Swift asked.

The car sped along the road, the tyres thumping rhythmically. Outside the sun was still trying its best to ward away the December chills. Bright as midsummer but so low in the sky it was threatening to blind them both. Annie readjusted her visor and sat higher in her seat to let her eyes get some respite.

“What do you mean?” Annie asked.

“I wondered if someone was killing people who found the Lost Pool so they didn’t claim the kudos but now I think of it, that makes no sense, because the killer would have to have found it first to know the others found it, you get me?”

“I’m not sure you get you with that sentence,” Annie laughed. “But I do see what you mean. The Urbex Community seem pretty cutthroat in these subreddits but on the whole they’re a supportive bunch. No one is flagging my spidey senses enough to make me think they’re a suspect, so far. And others are coming to the kids’ defence, listen ‘you want to make something of yourself, get out there and do something worthwhile like Adam and Eve did, rather than moaning about them through a keyboard.’ That was someone called LoveConquered, who seems to have their head screwed on properly.”

“Here, here,” Swift agreed. “Let’s keep an eye on it though, our killer could be there and they’d definitely be pissed at the uncovering of their lair. Right, I think this is our exit. Any idea where we go next?”

Swift took them off the main road and onto a roundabout, steering them across it in a fashion he must have learnt during an advanced police driving course. Annie held on tightly to her door, as much as she wouldn’t mind ending up in Swift’s lap, now wasn’t the time. They drove on in silence for a few minutes, each of them gearing themselves up for what they were about to see. Swift took them through a run-down town centre, the shop windows alternating between grubby and boarded up and the only place that looked open was a dodgy looking pub with most of its punters standing outside the front doors smoking. They kept going through the town and straight out the other side. Annie watched it disappear behind them then turned back to the narrowing roads in front and the dense woods either side. It might have been midwinter with very little foliage in sight, but these hawthorn bushes were thick with pendulous branches and clusters of berries casting blood red bursts through the shadows.

“It’s creepy around here,” she said. “What was that town we just passed through?”

“Deighton.” Swift was focused on the road, his massive 4x4 taking up the small lane. Annie hoped they didn’t meet anyone coming the other way because they hadn’t come across any passing places since they turned onto the lane.

“That’s where Linington’s estate is, was,” Annie corrected herself. “It was a rich town back in the day, they had a lot of farmers tending the land. Doesn’t look like it’s very prosperous anymore. He owned hundreds of acres of land, so I think we’re probably driving through part of it right now.”

“I think you’re right,” Swift said. “Because the not-so Lost Pool is around about here somewhere.”

Swift pulled the car up into a clearing so he wasn’t blocking the road. The hawthorn loomed overhead, its branches scraping the top of the car like bony fingers. Annie felt herself shiver and tried to cover it over with a cough.

“It’s okay to be creeped out, O’Malley,” Swift said, unbuckling his belt, his fingers on the door handle but not quite opening it. “This place has a weird feel about it. I’m not sure if it’s just that the sun is trapped away behind these bloody trees, or if it’s because I know what’s coming. But I’m not loving it either. You ready?”

“Not in the slightest,” she said, getting out of the car anyway. “You?”

“Nope.”

They pushed through the first wall of hawthorn and stepped over a dried-out ditch and it was so quiet it felt like they’d left the world behind. No birds sang overhead. No creatures rustled in the undergrowth. Annie felt like she was in a bubble. And not a fun one.

“Where are all the cars?” she asked, as Swift held a low hanging branch out of the way of the overgrown path.

“I’m not 100% sure,” he replied, close behind her. “But Evans and his team will need to get the van in close once they’re finished at the scene and I don’t fancy his chances getting through here.”

A bramble tugged at Annie’s ankle, she pinched it between the barbs and pulled it away, hearing the fabric of her jeans go with it.

“There’s got to be a track of some sort,” she said. “If nothing else, back in the day there would have needed to be access for cleaning, surely?”

“And the parties.”

The path ahead was so densely covered in winter branches and brambles that Annie wasn’t sure they were going to get through on foot. She spotted a fallen limb and detoured slightly to pick it up, using it to whack the thorns out of her way.

“I feel like a kid on an adventure,” she said, giving a nasty looking weed a hardy thwack. “Did you ever do this as a child? Head into the woods with a big stick and a thirst to pretend you were part of the Famous Five?”

“My sisters used to make me go first,” Swift said. “Even my older sister. They’d make up these stories that there were smugglers living in our estate and they’d scare themselves so much that we’d have to go and investigate the woods and the lake just so they could sleep at night. So yes, I did, but I think I was more Timmy the Dog than Julian.”

Annie stopped abruptly in her tracks. Swift bumped into the back of her.

“What is it?” he whispered. “What have you seen?”

Annie turned to him, a brow cocked.

“Firstly, I never knew you had sisters,” she said, giving him a nod. “Secondly, when you said estate, I was picturing the Heartsease estate or the new build place up near the hospital. Then when you added woods and lake I’m assuming you weren’t referring to a housing estate. Just how rich are you?”

Swift laughed, the sound a nice change from the deafening echoes of the woods.

“If I tell you that, you’ll just love me for my money,” he said.

Annie shook her head, laughing too. She turned back and took the broken branch to a patch of ivy with a little more force than necessary. Bits of bark flew off in all directions, but the ivy didn’t budge. It was firmly stuck between two tall trunks, weaving around them like a spider’s web. Annie dropped the branch and tore at the ivy with her gloved hands. As it fell away to the damp earth, a building appeared in its wake. Short, squat, laying low as though it didn’t want to be seen.

“Swift, look,” Annie said, stepping aside.

Something creaked in the trees behind them. A wind rushed through the bare branches, tickling Annie’s neck and running through her hair. Swift faltered as he stepped up to the gap in the ivy, peering from a distance.

“It looks alive,” he whispered.

Annie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention, little fingers of fear crept across her skull. Swift was right. There was something about the plant life growing around the low set building. It was pulsing; moving like it was a sentient being. And as Annie peered through the gap alongside the DI, the arms of the plant seemed to hug The Lost Pool even tighter.

FOUR

Feeling a bit like the prince from Sleeping Beauty, Annie tore the last of the ivy from the trees and made a gap big enough for her and Swift to sneak through. On closer inspection, the pool was wrapped not only in a Triffid, but in a belt of blue and white police tape. Annie figured the movement of the tape had caused some sort of optical illusion that made the plant seem to hug the building. Because that wasn’t possible. Was it?

Officers milled about, their radios chattering. The noise and bustle released Annie’s shoulders from around her ears as she walked with Swift up to the pool. It was much like the school pool Annie used to swim in on PE days. Not her school, they didn’t have the space in the inner-city comprehensive, they used a nearby school’s facilities. The memory of arriving in a minibus and having to change in a room full of other teenage girls made Annie break out in a cold sweat. She shook it away and tried to focus on the task ahead.

The Lost Pool had lost its magic somewhere between the ivy trees and the front door. A square building of early sixties brickwork enclosed a dilapidated looking fibreglass roof, or what was left of it. The wood covering the front door had been demolished by what Annie imagined had been a crowbar. Splinters from the board were scattered around the ground and there were large spikes still left around the entrance.

“How did the podcast kids get in?” Annie asked, stepping up to the door. “They didn’t crowbar the door, did they? I thought Urbexers were supposed to leave things as they found them.”

A police officer stood guard, lifting the tape to let Annie and Swift past.

“Climbed through the roof.” The booming voice came from a place that Annie couldn’t see, but she recognised it immediately as Evans, the pathologist. “Thank goodness the door was broken open by the time I got here, heights and me are not the best of friends. Foot covers and overalls before you contaminate my crime scene, please.”

They ducked back under the tape and found an officer with a box of PPE sitting on a tree stump a little way off. Annie grabbed an overall and stepped into it, zipping it up to her neck and covering her shoes. She also took a face mask because, if nothing else, the material would keep out the smell she knew was about to hit her. She’d seen the photos. Swift did the same and they made their way back to the entrance.

The ceilings in the pool were low, made to feel even lower by the plant that had taken residence. A small hallway opened up to the right and the left. Annie went left, walking through to a large, tiled room with benches and hooks around the perimeter. She hurried back out and tried the other way, finding the mirror opposite.

“Changing rooms,” she said.

“No flies on you,” Swift replied, following her into the second room.

“Can’t say the same about what we’re about to see, though,” Annie said.

If there was a way to cope with the scenes and the cases they dealt with then, as a psychotherapist, Annie was all for finding it. And gallows humour worked well in the face of a half a dozen or so dead bodies. It wasn’t something she’d joke about out in the community, but here amongst other people who knew how it felt to be faced with death, it helped her feel grounded.

The changing room was damp and cold and made Annie’s skin itch. Above her was a broken skylight and fresh footprints trod into the mud on the floor. The plant that had looked like a line of defence outside, was in here too. It wove its way around the iron bench legs and trailed out through the door they had come in through and the corridor that led out the other side. The pool room, Annie thought, shuddering.

Each footprint had a small plastic number beside it, so Annie knew it was okay to walk through the changing room. Crime scene photos had been taken and samples collected from in here already.

“This must have been the point of entry,” she said, nodding to the broken skylight.

“For the podcasters, yes,” Swift agreed. “But I’m still not seeing any obvious route of entry for the bodies.”

In the front corner of the changing room, a small door hung from its bottom hinge like a loose tooth. Annie peered inside to find a toilet with no seat and a small handbasin. The sink was stained a rusty red, from blood or age, she wasn’t sure. Turning the tap with a gloved hand, the water ran clean, washing away the pattern from the bowl.

“This sink has been recently used,” she shouted through to the main changing area. “Can we make sure this has been processed?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Swift called back. “I’m on it.”

She looked back out at the DI and rolled her eyes. Swift blew her a kiss through his mask and headed out of the changing room to go find the crime scene team. Without him, the changing room shifted in colour, darkening in the corners, an icy chill pulling at Annie’s scalp. She glanced around, feeling the air move behind her, a cold gust aimed right at her neck.

“It’s the broken ceiling and the fact it’s December,” Annie whispered to herself.

Not that it did much good. Something creaked inside the small toilet. The leaves on the plant fluttered in a kind of Mexican wave from the pool entrance to the changing room exit. It felt like the building was doing all in its power to get Annie to leave. She waited, goose bumps wriggling across her arms as she anticipated something reaching out and touching her. But it didn’t come. Of course it didn’t. There was no entity ready to pick her up like a beetle and deposit her back out in the woods. It was simply a building with a number of dead bodies in it. That was enough to make anyone feel uneasy.

“It’s already been processed and released,” Swift said, making her jump. “Evans is waiting for us, shall we?”

He gestured to the corridor leading to the pool.

“You okay, Annie?” he asked, double taking when he caught sight of her face. “Your forehead looks a bit clammy.”

“Just cold.” She didn’t want to tell Swift about the ghosts hiding in the corners. Not because he wouldn’t believe her, but because he would. Annie just didn’t want to taint the scene before they’d really looked at it. “Let’s do this.”

The floor was awash with mud and the slick, green stalk of the plant glistened with water droplets. Annie stepped carefully over the thick trunk, not wanting to break it or slip. She heard the flies before she saw the pool area. It sounded like the white noise from a busy road. Holding her breath, Annie walked out of the changing room and into the pool area.

It was okay. She couldn’t see them, not yet. It felt a bit like the Tardis. The pool area was bigger inside than it had looked from the woods. The ceiling had collapsed in several places and the floor was thick with foliage. The pool was right in front, from shallow end to deep end. Annie knew, from the photos, that the bodies were lined up at the very top, the deepest section. As she headed to the ladder, an overall-clad head popped up and gave them a wave.

“O’Malley, Swift,” Evans said, climbing the ladder. “My favourite team. This is pretty horrific.”

He climbed up and pulled down his mask and the hood of his paper overalls. His face was pink with the work, a line traced across his nose where his PPE had been.

“What do we have?” Swift asked. “What do we know?”

Evans puffed out his cheeks and glanced briefly over his shoulder back to the pool. When he looked back, Annie saw the way his skin slackened over his cheekbones and how the hollows under his eyes deepened.

“Six bodies,” he said. “All naked. All in various states of decay. All killed in the same way, from what I can tell, but I’ll be able to give you the definitive on that once I’ve done the PMs.”

“What way?” Annie asked.

“Strangulation,” Evans said. “There’s bruising around the necks of some of the newer bodies, looks like manual strangulation, so we’re probably looking at a male suspect. Again, not confirmed.”

“That’s a very personal way to kill a lot of people,” Annie mused.

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Evans replied. “This guy must have a heart of stone. And timescale wise, we’re probably looking at the oldest being around 6 months, the newest is less than a week.”

Swift whistled through his teeth.

“That’s a lot of bodies in less than 6 months,” he said.

“And we’ve taken swabs from the pool floor,” Evans went on. “Because going from zero to six bodies in half a year seems unbelievable.”

“You think there have been more?” Annie asked, feeling her stomach turn.

“I won’t know until the sample tests come back, but what’s your gut feeling?” Evans posed the question to the two detectives.

“It’s a very difficult thing to do,” Swift said. “Killing someone with your bare hands. And to do it so many times, you’re right, it’s unlikely that these were his first kills.”

“So, we have a serial murderer on our hands?” Annie said, the words sticking in her throat. “And no idea why he’s picking who he’s picking. God, that’s going to be fun for the press. And us.”

“That’s not all.” Evans peeled off a glove and ran his bare hand through his pink hair. “Every single one of these victims has had their chest opened and their heart removed. It’s not been a clean job, either. Ribs have been cracked open from the base, but I’ll need to get a closer look at them to see how. And the hearts look like they’ve literally been snipped out with a pair of scissors, but again I’ll need to get inside the bodies to check that.”

Annie let Evans’ words sink in. She felt her skin shrinking on her bones at the idea of someone tearing open a person’s chest to steal the organ designed to keep them alive. A sickening thought hit her.

“They were dead when that happened, weren’t they?” she spluttered. “The whole heart ripping out thing?”

Evans nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’d say they were strangled first and then broken open.”

“Thank God,” Annie breathed. “Is that why there’s no blood?”

“No,” Evans said. “That is a mystery. At first guess, I’d say they were killed elsewhere. But lividity of the newer body seems to suggest that it hasn’t been moved. And also, look around, how would they drag a dead body in here?”

Swift stepped closer to the edge of the pool and looked over the drop to the bottom of the shallow end.

“There’s no sign of drag marks or anything from here,” he said. “We were talking about this back at the station. Was the roof in the changing rooms the only way in until our guys broke open the front door?”

Annie looked up at the roof curving over the pool. It was too high to drop from, even with the soft landing onto the plant life. Sheets of what was probably fibreglass covered most of it, dotted here and there with a view up to the clouds above. There was no way that roof, even without the structural damage, would hold a grown man. So, a grown man dragging a dead body with him would end up falling through the fibreglass and into the pool before he’d even gotten to the apex of the roof.

“As far as I’m aware that was the only entry point,” Evans said. “But that’s up to your guys to confirm. I’m just here for the bodies.”

“Just here for the bodies,” Annie repeated, walking up beside Swift. “I guess we should be too. Shall we go and take a look?”

“Probably should,” Swift agreed, turning to Evans. “We’ll do what we need to so you can start transporting them to the hospital.”

“Just let me know when you’re done.” Evans gave them a nod and pulled his PPE back over his head and face.

There was a ladder, but Swift put a hand on the edge of the pool and dropped down. Annie did the same, careful not to land on any of the plant life. The ladder looked as precarious as the rest of the fixtures in the building. Not worth the risk.

“If the guy doing this didn’t drag the bodies in here after they were dead, then how on earth did he get them here alive?” Annie asked, following Swift to the top of the pool. “Because I sure wouldn’t turn up somewhere like this just because I was asked to. Let alone walk into a disused pool full of rotting corpses.”

They reached the foot of a row of bodies. Annie didn’t want to concentrate on how they went from a solid looking pair of legs on the person on the right-hand side of the bottom row, to the bloated, fluid filled green stumps on the top left.

“It’s amazing how quickly the human body decomposes,” Swift said.

Annie felt a tug of something pull at her mind. A distant memory that jarred with what she was looking at. It flagged that there was something wrong with what she was seeing, and not just the obvious.

“I don’t know if it’s the idea that there are six decomposing bodies lying at my feet,” she said to Swift. “But something feels really off about this set up and I can’t put my finger on it.”

“More off than the liquid chest cavity of victim number one?” Swift asked, motioning to the top left-hand body. Or what was left of it.

“Yeah,” she replied, stepping back carefully to take in the scene as a whole. “Something is wrong about these victims.”

She looked up at the arch of the ceiling rising high above them and the trail of the plants growing up the tiled walls of the pool around them. Just off to the right of the head of the pool, glinting in the winter sun, through the large flat leaves, were the rungs of a ladder. Annie trod carefully around the bodies and lifted the leaves away from the ladder. They came away easily, the plant was simply hanging here, rather than winding around the skeleton of the old swimming pool. And beside the ladder, sunken into the tiles on the back wall of the pool, was an old skimmer where the water would have been filtered for debris. It was the type of skimmer that would have had bars across it to stop swimmers from getting stuck. But the bars were gone and instead it was a gaping hole leading to darkness.

“I think I might have just found the entry point.”

FIVE

Annie felt cool fingers of air stroke her cheek and she stumbled backward into Swift. He grabbed her elbow before she tripped over one of the bodies.

“Steady there, O’Malley,” he said, holding her still.

“It leads outside,” she said, righting herself. “I can feel the breeze. This must be how the bodies were being transported. It’s big enough to fit them through and it could lead directly to the woods. It’s the perfect cover.”

Swift lifted the heavy leaves and stems of the plant where Annie had dropped it back over the skimmer in her haste to get away. The skimmer was larger than the more modern pool filters. It was the kind that Annie used to fear swimming near because she’d seen an episode of true crime show, 999 Emergency, where a girl had gotten her arm stuck and her head was trapped underwater. Nowadays, health and safety must dictate the size of the filters and the barriers to protect the swimmers. Back when this pool was built, health and safety probably didn’t exist.

“Let’s see what we’ve got.” Swift flicked the torch on his phone to bright and held it up to the gap in the tiles.

The darkness sucked the torchlight away like a vacuum. The space dropped down and spread out in front of them. Annie leaned closer, peering through the skimmer.

“There’s a ledge,” she said, her words echoing around the damp space. “Just under the opening. Shall I?”

She poked her torso through the hole and started to lift her leg. Something wrapped around her ankle, stopping her.

“Erm, Annie, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Not something, someone.

“Who else is going to do it?” she asked, shaking her leg so Swift would let go. “Look, we’re here now. We may as well go and have a look. We’ve got coveralls on, we can take pictures, what harm is there?”

Plenty. She knew there was a huge risk climbing into the unknown; a big drop, sharp objects, getting trapped, a serial killer. She climbed in anyway, carefully dropping through the gap in the tiles until her feet hit the ledge.

“Jesus Annie,” Swift said, clambering in behind her. “There are uniformed officers trained for this kind of thing.”

Annie stood on the narrow ledge and waited for Swift to join her.

“You were one of those once,” she said, quietly. “Live a little.”

“More afraid I’m going to die a little,” he whispered back.

They both held up their phones, torches out, illuminating the space. It was dank and mouldy and looked like a tunnel. The torch beams bounced off the walls now that they were within it. A narrow corridor led directly away from the pool. Annie directed her torch to the ground where the earth was disturbed by footprints going back and forth.

“No blood,” she said, squatting down and taking photos.

None of the prints were deep or perfect enough to take castings from, so after taking pictures from lots of different angles just in case anything could be gleaned from them, Annie stepped down from the ledge. The floor underneath had at one point been tiled too. Not the blue tiles like the pool, but cheaper patio-style ones that had long since broken up. The walls were earthen red, but hidden underneath was a slapdash paint job over thickly plastered masonry. The ceiling was just high enough for Annie to be able to stand upright, but Swift was having to bend his neck to avoid brushing the cobwebs with his hair.

“Right,” he said, wiping his hands on his overalls. “Think we’ve seen enough, don’t you? We can send in the uniforms to do a thorough sweep of the area, but it looks like it’s just a sluice tunnel, which would make sen… err, Annie?”

Annie wasn’t listening. With her torch fixed on the ground, she started to follow the mess of footprints through the tunnel. Somewhere up ahead a creature squeaked and scuffled out of sight. Annie didn’t mind mice and rats, but she was trying not to think about all the spiders that could be hanging on for dear life on the ceiling as she passed by. Her hair may be covered by her plastic, white overalls, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t drop on her and crawl under the fabric. She shuddered and puffed out a blast of air into the darkness. Her breath caught like a cloud in the edges of the torchlight.

“It’s bone cold down here,” she said.

“Yet another reason to stay poolside,” Swift muttered.

Annie pressed on through the tunnel, feeling the change under her feet where the floor was ramping away from them. They were going deeper and deeper under the woods, which made sense if the tunnel was a sluice. Maybe they didn’t have powered filters back in the seventies, and the only thing removing the waste from the water was gravity. Annie didn’t think that made much sense, but she was going with it for the time being if it meant she was able to keep walking.

“Do you really want to go back up there?” Annie asked after a few moments. Their footsteps echoed along the corridor, and Swift stayed silent, so she pressed on. “Didn’t you used to enjoy the thrill of being able to get stuck in? It’s not like you’ve shied away from it since I’ve been part of this team. We’ve been in worse situations than this. What’s happened?”

Annie couldn’t see Swift’s reaction as the tunnel only had space for single file, but she heard him scratch at his stubble, a sure sign he was thinking carefully about what to say next. She gave him space to answer. Even with a cold, the stench from the tunnel was ripe with mould spores, a dampness that was seeping into Annie’s clothes and sticking the fabric to her skin. She was exponentially glad for the face mask she’d squeezed onto her nose, and she tucked her chin down into her collar to cover her mouth even more.

“Two things,” he said, eventually. “I love this part of the job, it’s what gets me in the office every day. Being out in the field is the best, probably the only way to get to the bottom of a crime. But it’s dangerous. Look at us. We’re God knows how deep underground now. Yes, the team above know where we are, but anything could happen to us before they hear a call for help. And though I’m happy to put myself in this situation… I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about you being down here too.”

“What?” Annie stopped so abruptly, Swift walked right into the back of her. She shuffled around to face him. “I made the choice to come down here, it’s part of my job too.”

Swift lifted a hand to Annie’s shoulder and stroked it down her arm.

“Yes, it was, but I brought you into the team in the first place and if anything happened to you…” He didn’t finish. “Especially now.”

Annie crooked a brow.

“So you’re saying that before we were together you were happy for me to be creeping around a school with a serial killer, or staying in a spa that wasn’t just home to a dead body but also falling into the sea. But now I’m your girlfriend you feel the need to keep me safe?” She shook her head. “Uh-uh. I am still making the decision to be here.”

“No, it’s not that I’m not happy with it now,” he added quickly. “I don’t know if it’s ever been a case of being happy with it. It’s just now I feel different about it. Like, how would I react in an emergency if I have a duty to keep the public safe but also a deep-down need to keep you safe. Which one wins out?”

Something in the shadows scuffled and Annie felt her hackles shift and respond. She put her hand on Swift’s and squeezed.

“You just promise me that whenever we’re at work, you’re a DI and not Joe Swift, yeah?” she said, glancing between Swift and the gloom where the noise had come from. “And we can go from there.”

Swift looked past Annie, over her shoulder to the shadows.

“Guv?” she said, her voice shaking.

“I’ll try,” Swift replied. “Now can we get moving? Because I said two things were troubling me, and the second was a childhood accident in the family estate that is giving me flashbacks and I’d really, really like to get out of this tunnel.”

“What?” Annie said, again.

“Story for another day,” he replied, jamming the words out quickly. “Go, please.”

Annie was learning a lot about Swift today. The estate, the sisters, the accident, the fear he now had at being at work because of their relationship. She ignored the sense of dread creeping through her stomach and pressed on toward the darkness, torch aloft.

She had no idea how far they were away from the pool or which direction they had been walking in compared with the road and the woods and the mountain of police cars that must have been parked somewhere nearby. All she knew was they had been walking in a straight line away from the pool and the further they got, the steeper the descent had felt underfoot. Until, directly ahead, the torchlight hit a wall.

“Swift,” Annie hissed. “Look.”

She moved the light over the wall. It looked like a great solid chunk of metal. It didn’t make sense. Water wouldn’t trickle through this and filter out into the soil. The barrier would mean that the water draining from the pool would stay here, filling the tunnel and drowning anything in its path. Annie felt her lungs constrict, glancing over her shoulder to wait for a wall of water to hit her. But there was nothing there except the calming face of the DI.

“It wasn’t a filter,” Swift said, squeezing past her, hands up to feel the metal barrier. “The hole we went through back at the pool wasn’t a skimmer or a sluice.”

“What was it then?” Annie asked, ready to head back up to the relative safety of a group of dead bodies in a pool.

“It was an old maintenance gap, normally filled in after the pools are built and then only accessible from the plant room which means that this isn’t a wall,” he went on, pressing his shoulder to the metal. “It’s a door.”

The metal creaked and groaned under the weight of Swift’s pushing. Annie heard a click, and the door gave up and swung open with little resistance.

“And it’s a door that has been opened recently,” Swift said, grabbing the edge and swinging it back and forth. “Coming?”

“How could a girl resist?” Annie muttered.

They walked through, out of the dank, mouldy tunnel and into a small room. The walls and floor were bare, painted years ago and laid with concrete. But the air felt warmer, drier, less likely to be full of spores waiting to infiltrate Annie’s lungs if they could get past her mask. She pulled it down and let it hang around her neck, glad of the movement of air to her face. Ahead was another door, one that looked like a door, with cornicing and hinges and a proper knob that looked like it was an original feature. Swift swung the metal one shut and it sat flush against the wall, the only sign there was an opening being the large handle welded to the top and the bottom.

“Definitely a later addition,” Annie said, indicating the moving metal wall. “Wonder why they didn’t put the entrance to the plant room nearer the pool and the room itself.”

Swift hummed. He strode across the room in three steps and turned the knob on the normal door. It pulled open, revealing a basement corridor akin to something from a haunted house movie.

“Because they wanted it to be accessible from inside,” Swift said, peering out.

“Inside where?” Annie asked, walking up behind him and trying to see past his broad shoulders.

“If I were a betting man, I’d say we’re somewhere in the depths of Linington Hall.”

SIX

Linington Hall had probably once been very grand. Even the basement was rich with ornate wallpaper and tiled floors, though these were both long covered by a thick layer of dust. Annie held up her phone torch and swept it around. Behind them was the small room that held the entrance to the tunnel, and in front was a large open hallway with an archway leading to another room. To the right of that was a staircase with no banister that looked like a first-class trip to the A&E given the state of the wooden steps.

“What do you think went on down here?” Swift asked, his feet crunching on the broken tiles and dirt.

They walked through under the archway into a huge space with shallow windows running along the top of the walls just under the ceiling. They were too high to look out of, but at least they cast some much-needed light into the home. An old, ripped up sofa sat in the middle of the room, swollen with age and waterlogged. A small side table lay upside down against the far wall, its legs like arthritic fingers. Any of the frippery that had once adorned this room was long lost to the elements, mixed into the blackened, dirty mulch that lined the floor. The only thing that Annie could make out was the pages of an open book, reaching out as if asking for help. She walked to it and pulled it free with a sucking squelch. Turning it over in her hands, there was no way she’d be able to read the hardback cover through the decay. She flicked through the pages that weren’t stuck together but they gave up no secrets either.

“What a waste,” she said, putting it down on the old sofa, her eyes catching sight of something else. “All these things just left to rot. Surely he could have auctioned off some of his belongings to help? I mean, look at this, it might have been worth something.”

Annie had spotted the solid square shape of a painting hanging on the wall opposite the windows. The wall itself bulged like there was something trying to get out of the bricks and plaster and paper, and the painting hung wonky because of it. It was so dark with dust and dirt that the picture couldn’t be seen. She ran a gloved forefinger through the grime and saw the colours of an oil painting shining through.

“Trust me, even if he had sold off all of the items he owned, it still wouldn’t be enough to look after an old Georgian house like this,” Swift said, standing in the stream of light from the window like it was his own personal spotlight. “Especially for someone with no financial sense. Keeping a place like this would be impossible. As we can see. It’s sad. I feel for Linington. I wonder what happened to him.”

Annie nodded, wiping to reveal more of the picture. It looked like a still life, some lemons and a jug. Almost tempted to lift it from the wall and take it with her in case it was a long-lost Cézanne or Caravaggio, Annie remembered why they were there.

“We should go and see if there’s another way out of here,” she said, brushing her hands on her coverall. “See if this might be the way the killer brought the bodies in.”

Then something struck her.

“Or maybe not bodies,” she went on, holding her hand up to halt whatever Swift was about to do. “Maybe the killer enticed his victims in to look at this abandoned building and then strangled them while they were here. It would make more sense that he wasn’t carrying them all this way, don’t you think?”

Swift’s eyes widened, his face paling, and for a moment Annie thought she’d given him the creeps with her theory, until he slowly put a finger to his lips to silence her. She felt her skin ripple with fear, stopped breathing, her throat constricting, tickling enough to need to cough. Holding it in, Annie’s eyes began to water and through the tears, Swift’s face became an impressionist still life painting of its own.

Then, through the pounding of blood in her ears, Annie caught the unmistakable scraping of footsteps above their heads.

“With me,” Swift whispered, moving silently back to the hallway and the staircase.

Annie followed, trying to be as light on her feet as possible. It was hard with shoe coverings and a plasticy, paper overall that swished like the ocean every time she moved.

Stairs were never great at hiding noise. Creaking with each step, Annie and Joe rushed up to the top of them to where the servants’ quarters were hidden at the back of the house. They were in the old kitchen. A nest, long abandoned by the mouse family that once lived there, sat like an upturned hat in the range. A table, almost the length of the room, was still standing, a testament to its solid wooden frame. The sun struggled to shine through the coated windows, but even in the gloom, it was obvious that the room was empty of people.

“Look,” Swift whispered, pointing at the floor.

It felt less abandoned up here than the basement rooms had been, and in the light covering of dusty earth there were footprints. Clean ones, back and forth. More than one person had walked in the direction the detectives had just come from. Annie took out her phone again and snapped some pictures, her hand as a measurement.

Something creaked in the belly of the house. Annie’s skin shrank on her bones. Swift moved quietly behind the table, tugging Annie’s sleeve to get her to follow. Putting the solid piece of furniture between them would act as a deterrent for only so long, but it was better than nothing. She watched as he typed a text out to Evans, detailing where they were and ordering a backup team. The message whooshed away silently.

Footsteps thunked hollowly just out of sight. Annie and Swift ducked down behind the table. They wouldn’t be hidden if the man came into the kitchen, just a quick glance would give away their bright white overalls against the covering of dirt over all the other surfaces. They didn’t move. They didn’t breathe. Annie felt her pulse pounding in her neck, the blood rising to the surface of her face and making her feel lightheaded.

Someone walked into the kitchen, bringing with them the stench of unwashed skin and clothes and teeth. Annie could see the battered trainers through the table legs, taped up and held together like mummy wraps. The man coughed, hacking up a lungful of grossness. Annie’s stomach turned. Her legs were starting to cramp and the pain was excruciating. She wanted to stand up and shake them out and release the pressure that was building in her calves. But that would mean coming face to face with the man who’d probably strangled over six strangers with his bare hands and then cut out their hearts. It wasn’t a choice she was going to make.

But it was a choice that was about to be made for her.

The man walked in further, muttering to himself, seemingly oblivious to the two people hidden just feet away. He set something on the table with a loud clatter, and headed around towards Annie and Swift’s hiding place. Annie braced herself, her heart hammering. There was a shuffle of feet and an utterance of a curse, and she knew they had been seen.

The man went to run.

Swift jumped up, Annie followed suit.

“Police,” Swift yelled. “Stop.”

The man grabbed the edge of the table and pushed it at Swift. The solid table moved, he was strong, Annie gave him that, but it didn’t block or hit the two officers.

“Wait, stop,” Annie called. “Swift, don’t, it’s too dangerous.”

But neither man listened to her. Spinning on his heels, the suspect shot out of the kitchen and into the corridor. Swift took chase, calling after him as he raced in the same direction. Annie went to run after them both, fearing for Swift’s safety, but faltered as she reached the door. She wasn’t as fast as Swift and she had no idea of the layout of the huge house. Swift had called it in, and Annie wasn’t strong enough to fight off a man the size of the one who’d just fled the room. But it wasn’t just the idea of coming face to face with a killer that had stopped her. It was what he had left on the table.

Blood dripped across the wood, running in the rivulets down the knife-scratched surface. At first glance, the table had seemed to be stained with years of dirt and neglect, but now Annie was closer she could see the rust red markings were the dried smearing of old blood. Breathing through her mouth, she stepped up to the table and squinted, not wanting to get an eyeful of someone’s torn out heart. Through her lashes, Annie could make out a dark, red shape. Smooth sinewy skin was stretched over blue and purple veins.

“Swift,” she shouted, staggering back. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

She fumbled with her phone, dragging it out and hammering at the password. Her fingers sweated in her gloves, but the material held her phone still. She needed to do something, and she needed to do it now. Because if Swift’s message to Evans wasn’t seen, then they were going to end up dead.

“Annie, you okay?” It was Tink.

“Tink, we need back-up,” Annie cried. “We’re in Linington Hall in the old staff kitchen and he’s here, Tink. Swift has gone after him.”

“Annie?” Tink demanded. “Annie are you okay? I’ve called in your backup, they won’t be long, there’s a whole team at the pool on their way. What’s going on? Talk to me.”

Annie heard a shout from deep within the house. Swift? The killer? She was so focussed on the mass of remains on the table that she couldn’t differentiate.

“Tink,” she lifted the phone back to her ear. “It’s not a heart.”

“You’ve lost me, Annie,” Tink replied. “Keep talking. Let me know you’re okay.”

Annie looked again, open eyed this time. The taut skin of what she had thought had been a human heart cut from a chest, was pulled against the shape of something altogether less disturbing. Somewhere off stage a troop of footsteps clattered like an army marching through the building.

“Your backup should be with you now, Annie,” Tink said, her voice tinny over the speaker that was nowhere near Annie’s ear. “Annie.”

Shaking her head, Annie lifted her phone again.

“Tink,” she said. “I’m scared.”

“Well, whoever it is that Swift is chasing, he’s going to be in a cell really soon.” Tink sounded relieved.

Annie heard the shouts of the backup; freeze, don’t move, police. There was a scuffle and a cry and the shouts reverberated around the whole hall.

“It’s a rabbit, Tink,” Annie said, crouching slightly to get a better view of the mass on the table. “He’s been practising on rabbits.”

SEVEN

Swift had pulled down the hood of his overall, his face shiny, by the time he walked back into the kitchen. His forehead was creased with worry, but it smoothed out as he caught sight of Annie.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For running off like that and leaving you alone.”

“Did you get him?” Annie asked, ignoring Swift’s apology because he did his job and that’s what she told him to do; that’s what she wanted. “Look at this.”

She pointed to the skinned rabbit on the table, lying there like a ghost. Swift came over, his chest rising and falling. He looked clammy and his cheeks shone with the ruddiness of someone who wasn’t used to running for such a long time. Annie gave him the once over.

“No, he was too fast and he knows this building too well,” Swift said, poking at the rabbit with his gloved finger. “I lost him, but the team are out searching now and there’s only so many places he can hide, surely?”

“Unless there are more secret underground passageways to escape through,” Annie said. “Do you think he’s our guy?”

“I think if you ask Nibbles, here, he’d say yes” he said, pointing at the rabbit carcass, before puffing out his cheeks and adding. “Now, we need to get out of here while he’s on the run. Evans is starting to take the bodies back to the hospital now, too. Do you want to look around the pool again while Crime Scene take over here?”

Annie shook her head. She could still picture the crime scene vividly if she closed her eyes.

“What I really want to do is talk to the people who found the bodies,” she said, something still niggling at her about the whole scene. “Can we do that before we go back to the station?”

“You read my mind,” Swift replied. “Page has called ahead and let the families know we want to talk to them. We’re meeting them at the boy’s house, Adam Wright his name is. Now, can you remember where I left the car?”

Adam Wright was rich. Well, his family was. That was plain to see by the sweeping driveway and the creeping ivy on the Victorian redbrick pile he lived in with his mum and step-dad. A gaunt-faced woman let them in, her skin hanging off her cheekbones in the same way her clothes hung from her shoulders. Everything about her drooped.

“This way,” she said, sighing as though it was a lot of trouble to have to entertain the police in her highly polished home.

Annie and Swift followed her past a lot of shiny, dark wood fittings to a living room that looked like the inside of a Laura Ashley catalogue from back in the 80s. Four large sofas sat in a square around a fabric coffee table. A young woman sat cross-legged on one of them, what must be her mum perched next to her, a carbon copy of each other, one aged over time. The sofa opposite was taken by a young man with a huge grin and what must be a larger appetite than his mum’s. Adam Wright was rosy cheeked and looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of a Boden catalogue, his Breton striped Henley clashing with the pattern of the sofa.

“Take a seat,” Mrs Wright gestured to one of the empty sofas. “I was just doing drinks.”

She left the room without asking what either Annie or Swift wanted. They introduced themselves and Annie took a seat. Swift paced the room, looking at the frippery and taking up as much space as he could, making himself known. He did that at work when he needed to, it was a front he was great at putting up, because in real life, Annie knew Swift hated being the centre of attention. She watched him, knowing that he’d be taking in every minute detail about the people around him and the environment they found themselves in, looking for clues at how he made them feel. These three may not be suspects but they were intrinsically linked to the case and he needed them to know that, if they hid anything from him, he’d find out.

“This is so exciting,” the boy said. “I’ve never met the real-life police.”

“You must be Adam?” Annie asked.

He nodded, his floppy brown hair shaking.

“And that’s Eve,” he said, pointing at the girl sitting opposite. “And her mum, Miss Francis.”

As Eve’s mum said hi, Eve just lifted a hand in greeting. Her face was impassive, she was much cooler than Adam, taking this all in her stride. Outwardly, anyway. Annie knew most teenage girls were anything but calm and collected on the inside.

“I hope you’re not talking to my son without an adult present?” Mrs Wright had silently returned to the room carrying a tray replete with filled mugs of tea, or possibly coffee, Annie couldn’t tell from the colour of it.

Mrs Wright obviously didn’t put a lot of faith in the non-police adult already sitting quietly in the room. She set down the tray on the coffee table and started handing out cups. They were a random selection of chipped mugs and bone china. Annie took hers, sniffing at the contents under the guise of blowing the hot liquid. Coffee. She cradled the mug in her hands, an old Kit Kat cup that must have originally come with an Easter egg perched on top.

“We were just saying hello,” Annie replied as Mrs Wright sat down next to her son. The sofa didn’t move under her feather weight.

“We need to ask both Adam and Eve some questions about last night,” Swift said, standing behind the empty sofa, hands on the back of it. “We’re not doing this under caution, but we feel that as they’re both under the age of 18 we need an appropriate adult present.”

Mrs Wright’s eyes narrowed as she smirked. Eve’s mum was definitely an appropriate adult and Annie wondered what beef these two had between them.

“So, Adam, Eve,” Swift went on. “Are you happy for your parents to stay or would you like us to find you another appropriate adult?”

Mrs Wright definitely wasn’t expecting that.

“I’m staying,” she said, pursing her lips.

Swift left a pause, the room filling with the slurps of coffee and the ticking of an old clock on the mantelpiece, flanked by ornate candle holders, the candles still unlit.

“That’s up to Adam,” he said eventually.

Adam grinned. He looked at his mum, weighing up his options with exaggerated facial expressions. Opposite him, Eve muttered that it was fine.

“Go on then, Mum,” Adam said, sniggering. “You can stay. As long as you pass me a biscuit ‘cos this might be hungry work and I’ve not eaten in a while.” He looked at the detectives, a childish grin on his face. “I need my brain food.”

Mrs Wright was still pursing her lips, her mouth looked like an old prune. Swift nodded and went to sit down opposite Annie. They sat, quietly, in a square of people as they sipped their drinks. Annie noticed that Eve hadn’t touched hers and wondered if Eve knew something she didn’t know about the Wrights’ kitchen. She looked into the murky brown liquid and prayed it was okay.

“Have you two known each other long?” Annie asked, when Swift stayed quiet. She knew it was her moment to take the reins.

“Since we were kids,” Adam replied.

Annie knew they were still kids, so she pressed some more.

“Primary school friends?”

“No, Adam has been at Gresham’s since prep school.” Mrs Wright looked miffed.

Annie recognised the name of the private school in North Norfolk. Over on the other sofa, Eve’s mum scoffed, trying to cover it with a cough and a swig of her coffee. So, the parents weren’t the best of friends then?

“And where do you go to school, Eve?”

“Local high school.” Eve glared at Mrs Wright. “And we met originally in church group, but we re-met because we’re both part of the Urbex Community and there’s forums and stuff where we talk.”

“That means Urban Exploring,” Mrs Wright added. “Another way of describing trespassing. Though I am putting my foot down now. I knew it was a hobby to be discouraged by the kinds of people Adam had started befriending, but this is a step too far for my boy.”

It was as though those kinds of people weren’t sat in the room with her. Annie gave her a nod, trying to keep the judgement from her face.

“And so you became friends again on the forums?” She directed that question to Eve.

The young girl nodded.

“Adam was in a Sub all about The Lost Pool and we met there,” she said. “I can’t believe we were the ones to find it, even when so many others couldn’t. And they were adults.”

“That was good skills,” Annie said, encouraging. “What gave you the idea to look where you did?”

Eve pulled her sleeves down over her hands, crossing her arms over her chest. Annie normally associated that action with defensiveness but today she was chalking it up to the fact that the Wright’s didn’t like to spend money on heating. The room was frigid. Every time someone took a sip of their hot drink, their breath puffed out like a small cloud.

“I can’t remember now, not really,” Eve replied. “We’d been searching Google Earth and that, like most Urbexers, but I think it was maybe something Adam said about how the ground around the estate looked like Triffids and we should probably give it a wide birth. I had no idea what Triffids were so I googled it and apparently it’s from an old book or something. Anyway, I zoomed in to see if they looked like they would blind me, and I saw the edge of the building. So, I guess you could say it was a joint effort.”

Annie could see Mrs Wright just dying to add something to the conversation, so before the old hag could make Eve feel small about not knowing the John Wyndham classic, Annie intervened.

“And it was a great effort from you both,” she said. “I’m just so sorry that your adventure ended the way it did. What can you tell us about last night?”

She left the question open for them both to answer.

“Mum won’t like this,” ‘Eve ventured. “But I borrowed her car and picked Adam up. He’s got a lot of stuff and it was cold and it was after midnight. It would have taken us hours to get to Linington without it and we’d never have got back for school. Sorry Mum.”

Eve looked at her mum and grimaced. Miss Francis just smiled and looked as though she wanted the sofa to swallow her up.

“I’ve told her before that it’s against the law,” Miss Francis said to Annie. It was the first she’d heard the woman speak. Her voice reminded Annie of a high school teacher who’d let her sit in class during lunch break to escape the bullies. Annie liked her immediately. “And I’ve said I’ll get her lessons as soon as she turns 17. But she’s a safe driver. Well, the car always comes back in one piece anyway. I trust her.”

Eve beamed at the complement from her mum.

“I learnt from the best,” she said, grinning. Miss Francis’ eyes widened and Eve quickly added. “You know, off road and that.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not here to pick you up on underage driving, are we, Detective Inspector?” Annie paused for Swift to confirm with a brisk shake of his head before turning back to Eve. “But don’t do it again. Not until you’re seventeen and have a provisional permit. We can’t turn a blind eye if you’ve already been cautioned.”

“Understood,” Eve said, biting her lips together. “Thank you.”

“So, you got to the hall,” Annie went on. “Then what happened?”

Adam shuffled forward in his seat, leaning his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

“I kept saying that we should leave it,” he said. “It was so thick to get through the woods and then the building looked mank.”

“In what way?” Annie prompted.

“Like, it was gross and looked like it was going to fall down if it wasn’t being held up by the bushes. And we all know the story of the drowned men and how Linington topped himself because of it. But Eve wanted to get in, so we went in.”

Annie looked to Swift. So Linington had killed himself, that was news to them.

“It was the find of a century, Adam.” Eve interrupted Annie’s thoughts, wide eyed. “People had been looking for the pool for years and we found it. Two kids beat the rest of the Norfolk Urbex to it, maybe even the rest of the UK Urbex. Be proud.”

Adam glanced sideways at his mum who was looking sternly at him.

“Yeah,” he said, eyes down. “But maybe we shouldn’t have gone in. ‘Cause of the bodies, and all.”

Eve shrank into herself. The sofa swallowing her into its cushions.

“We didn’t know they were going to be there, though, did we?” A flash of fear took hold and Eve’s face paled. “It was awful. They were just lying there. It must have been some sort of witchcraft, or the rumours of being lured there to drown are true. There’s no way those bodies climbed in through the roof like we did. Those poor people. Do you know who they were? Do you have seven families to go and give bad news to?”

“Eve, we don’t need the details.” Adam was equally as clammy-looking now.

Eve looked up at Annie, the whites of her eyes bright against the clash of patterns behind her. But Annie wasn’t about to answer her question as she jumped up from the sofa, sending everyone else reeling backwards.

“O’Malley?” Swift said. “Everything okay?”

“No,” Annie replied, carefully putting her cup down on the tray. “Swift, we need to leave. Now. And we’re going to need all the footage from last night, kids.”

“Your colleagues took it all,” Mrs Wright replied, stony faced.

To his credit, Swift didn’t question Annie’s motives as she marched out the room, shouting her thanks as she went. It was only as they climbed into the car that he spoke.

“What happened back there?” he said, concern etched in his rumpled brow.

“Seven bodies, Swift,” she said, pulling on her seatbelt. “Eve said there were seven bodies lying in the pool.”

“What? No, she must have been mistaken,” Swift said, turning the engine over and reversing like a madman. “When the police got there the body count was six. When we got there, the body count was six.”

“We need to see that footage.”

EIGHT

It felt like the whole of the county’s task force was in the open plan office when Annie and Swift burst back through the doors. Voices clamoured to be heard, telephones rang out, and the noise of the keyboards sounded like hail on a tin roof.

“Woah,” Annie said, halting at the door. “Did I miss a memo about free food or something?”

“Pre-Christmas crime bonanza,” Swift said, heading past Annie to their bank of desks. “It’s always abnormally busy at this time of year. Some people love a break-in, some people spend too much time with their family. Sad really, given what a wonderful time it should be.”

“Guv,” Page said, looking up from his screen. “I’ve got some interesting stuff from Reddit that you’re going to want to see.”

“Great,” Swift said, sitting down and booting up his computer.

Annie skip-walked to her seat and did the same, saying hi to Tink and Page as she went.

“I’ve been digging into Linington,” Tink said. “There’s a fair bit about him online, he sounded like a bit of a playboy. And uniform is still searching for the runner. Good to see you both in one piece. Well, two pieces, one each. But you know what I mean.”

“Good work, both of you,” Swift said, his brow furrowed at his screen. “We’ll get onto what you’ve got in a moment, but first we have a problem.”

“What’s happened?” Tink asked, her typing coming to an abrupt end.

“We’ve lost a body.” Annie couldn’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth.

Page looked over the top of his screen at her, his forehead wrinkled.

“That’s a new one,” he said. “Did it fall out of Evans’ van on the way back.”

“Maybe that great bloody plant ate it,” Tink added, shuddering.

“Negative on both of those options,” Swift replied. “Ah, here we go. Look at this, guys.”

Page rolled his chair over to Swift’s desk and Annie and Tink crowded around behind them, staring intently at the frozen image on Swift’s computer. It was the footage from The Garden of Eden podcast, great quality, given it was filmed by kids, though they were probably more au fait with the tech than Annie was nowadays.

“Is that the old changing rooms of The Lost Pool, urgh?” Tink asked, as the camera focussed on the chipped tiles and broken benches. “That would be a sick note every single swimming lesson if that had been my school pool. My boobs would be out for everyone to see in that changing room, where’s the privacy?”

“That would be a sick note for everyone else,” Page muttered under his breath, smiling.

Tink threw her chewed pen lid at him, and it bounced off his head onto Swift’s keyboard. Annie laughed, glad of the moment’s reprieve from bodies and cold, damp abandoned buildings. Swift hit the spacebar and the video kicked into action. Panning around the room, Annie could still smell the dampness in her nose, ripe with the metallic tang of blood. She opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and watched.

Though the equipment was top notch, Adam Wright’s camera skills left a lot to be desired. His hands were shakier than an old person who’d spent their life drinking every day and was now on an enforced detox. Watching the video was making Annie feel seasick. Adam had taken a quick scan of the changing rooms, sweeping around in an arc, but the picture was so good that it counteracted a lot of the shaking and they could pick out the broken tiles and the plant-strewn walls and flooring. Eve had done a bit to the camera, but it was Adam’s panicked voiceovers that were stealing the show. It was obvious he didn’t want to be there. To his credit, he had followed Eve through to the pool and filmed as she’d dropped to the empty pool floor.

“Here, this is it” Swift said “Everyone look closely because this film is like a poor man’s attempt at a Palme d’Or winner. Watch.”

Adam’s camera picked up the minutiae of the plants around his feet before scrolling up to the top of Eve’s head as she walked to the deep end. Greenery blurred at the edges of the screen, fixing Eve in focus in the middle. Annie wasn’t sure if that was deliberate on Adam’s part, but it made it feel like a horror movie. Which was what it was, Annie supposed.

Then the screams started. It was bone chilling. Eve was so young, and she’d just walked into a pile of oozing dead bodies. The camera swung around, and Eve came back into view, her arms outstretched for help. Swift hit the spacebar.

“There.” He poked a finger at the screen. “Look. They were telling the truth. There are seven bodies, not six.”

He moved his finger away and the screenshot was horrifying. Behind Eve’s panicked face, Annie could make out the bodies as she remembered them. It was angled and not in focus, but the background of the shot showed clearly the seventh body that hadn’t been there when the police had arrived. It was a man, clothed, unlike the rest of them. His chest was probably intact given the lack of blood, and his skin was pale and blotchy and looked like a wax figure. He hadn’t been mutilated. Yet.

“Oh God,” Annie said. “The killer was probably in the room with these kids.”

Page blew out a stream of air and rocked his chair back and forth, leaning into the screen. Annie didn’t want to think about what could have happened to Adam and Eve, especially as the site of the bodies hadn’t been found by anyone in years except their killer. She shuddered and was going to get Swift to continue on with the footage when Page shot out of his chair so quickly it flew backwards towards where Tink was standing.

“What the—” Tink started, her hands on Page’s shoulders.

“Look,” Page interrupted, leaning right in and tapping the screen. “Jeez, zoom in on this guy’s face, Swift.”

Swift did as he was told and there was a collective gasp around their team. Not only had this guy managed to avoid being mutilated post-mortem, he was also not yet mortuus. His eyes were wide open, staring in horror at the camera. Not just horror, there was a pleading in his eyes that made Annie’s throat constrict.

“He’s alive,” Annie breathed. “Holy crap. Press play.”

Swift hit play and grabbed his phone from his desk, calling out as they all watched in horror as the man tried and failed to lift his arm to capture the attention of the petrified kids. They didn’t see him try to move as they were too scared by the whole scene.

“It’s Swift,” he said into his phone. “We’ve got a live one. Lying nearest to the shallow end, looked to be starting a new row of bodies. He wasn’t there when we arrived. Just confirm for me that we didn’t know there was a seventh body?”

Annie heard the person on the other end of the call shout seven and took that as an affirmative. So did Swift.

“Get a team to search for him. I’m sending you over the footage now. And find that runner. How did we miss this?” Swift did the modern-day version of slamming down the phone and turned to his team. “Guys, this changes things. We have to work fast. Page, Tink let’s go over what you’ve found and see if that gives us any clues as to where this man might have been taken.”

Swift dragged the camera footage to his email and once it had whooshed away from his computer, he led the way to the incident room like a man on a mission. Annie’s mind was whirring as they made their way along the corridors, past the interview rooms to the room Tink had set up ready for them. Six bodies, dead, mutilated, and left for goodness knows what reason in the bottom of a pool. A seventh lying waiting for the same fate? Where was he now? The guy that ran from them in the kitchen must know. He’d killed them all and now the team had to find their seventh victim before it was too late for him too.

The incident room smelled faintly of Tink’s perfume and good coffee. The white board was already a spider diagram of Linington Hall and its past occupants. The podcast pair and photos of six dead bodies made up the rest of the surface of the board. Swift immediately drew a seven and a question mark under the picture of the last body, circling it again and again. He tapped the nib under it, marking the pristine whiteboard with red dots.

“Let’s start with Linington. Tink, go for it,” Swift said, dropping into a chair around the large table in the middle of the room.

Tink took the floor, her face steely, making her platinum blonde hair shimmer with colour.

“Okay,” she said, looking between the members of her team. “The Linington’s have been a family in Norfolk for centuries past. There’s evidence of them going all the way back to Kett’s Rebellion. Prosperous family, wealthy, all the ticks in all the boxes.”

“Until?” Page asked, looking at the photos of the abandoned property and the overgrown grounds around it.

Tink picked up some of the crime scene photos of the pools exterior and stuck them to the diagram.

“And then the last generation of the Linington’s took the family values a little less seriously than the rest of them.” She tapped her finger on the photograph of a man tacked under Louis Linington’s name.

He was in his early twenties. Handsome in a roguish way with his floppy hair curving around his cheekbones, and his cravat offering a pop of colour clashing with his shirt.

“This is Louis, last in the Linington line,” Tink said.

“Easy for you to say,” Page interrupted, laughing.

“Less easy for Louis, as it was,” Tink went on, her lips quirking at Page’s joke. “He had what we now know to be a spasmodic dysphonia from birth. That’s a speech impediment that made him sound hoarse, and breathy, and trembling. From what I’ve read, his teachers wrote him off, which says something in a very expensive fee-paying school. And then when he got older, people used to say he was drunk all the time, when actually it was this impediment.”

“Until it was actually the drink,” Page added.

“Sadly, yes,” Tink nodded. “I guess back in the sixties and seventies people were less tolerant of those kinds of differences and Louis was bullied relentlessly at school, so much so that he left early. There were rumours that people were paid to come to his parties.”

“That’s so sad, poor Louis,” Annie said, looking at the grinning man in the photograph and trying to match it to the story.

“What makes it even sadder is that it was his parents who were the ones fronting the money,” Tink went on. “They were the ones forcing him to pretend to be popular because they needed to keep up appearances.”

“Jeez.” Swift whistled through his teeth. “Nasty people. What happened to Louis? Adam, the podcast kid, said he’d committed suicide.”

Tink stuck up another photo, this time Louis Linington was laid out in a bathtub, fully clothed, frothing at the mouth. Annie couldn’t help but gasp.

‘Sorry,” Tink said, holding up a hand. “I should have warned you about this one. This is Louis’ crime scene photo. He drank himself to death not long after the tragedy in the pool.”

“Poor guy, that’s so sad.” Annie scrunched up her face, the man was too young to be in a crime scene photo. “What actually happened at The Lost Pool? Why did it close?”

Swift shifted in his seat, rolling his head on his neck. Annie grimaced when she heard it crunch.

“All we know, for sure,” he said. “Is that five people died. Do we think it’s linked to the current deaths?”

He’d directed his question to Tink but it was Page who spoke first.

“This is where Reddit comes into its own,” he said. “It’s like an armchair detective’s best friend.”

“What about a real detective?” Swift asked, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smile.

“Casual acquaintance at best,” Page replied. “But it’s great if you can sift through the gumph for the good stuff.”

“Which is what we did” Tink added. “And there are a lot of weirdos on there so we both need a raise and some bleach for our eyeballs at the end of this case, please guv.”

“Noted.” Swift nodded once.

“Old reports from our files suggest drugs and alcohol were in the blood streams of all five men,” Page went on. “And the five deaths were all men at Louis’ final party. From all accounts they were paralytic, and it was a tragic accident. Eyewitnesses say they wanted to swim, that was the whole point of the party, after all. And many said they warned the men not to, though how true that is, who knows? It’s always nice to think you’d stop a tragedy like that, but do we ever really contain the fun of others when death seems so far from reach at events like that? So in the end there was no sign of foul play and the coroner’s report put it down to misadventure.”

“So where do the rumours of Louis and murder come from?” Annie asked, unable to stop thinking about what Page had just said. He was an old head on young shoulders.

Page puffed out his cheeks and shuffled his papers, trying to find the right ones. He looked down at them and read.

“Well, Reddit believes that Louis killed those men because they were the ones who bullied him at school.” Page lifted a sheet of paper and kept reading. “There was no weight given to this at the time, but the more I read the more I kind of believe it. The community is very anti Louis Linington. I’ve got a search going on the regular posters, see if we can get real-life details on the keyboard warriors. There’s three who are up there as the most talkative; Urbandan and ExploringEverything, they think he actually survived and has been living at the house and luring people into horrible deaths all these years. A revenge act, I suppose, for the torment he went through as a child. Then there’s someone called LoveConquered who is a voice of reason.”

Annie remembered the names from her quick search in the car. Swift swung his head around to look at the spider diagram Tink had drawn.

“There’s no more reported deaths between now and back in the seventies when Linington died?” He rubbed at his chin. “If he’s been doing that, he’s been doing it very discreetly.”

“Yeah.” Page rubbed a hand over his face, he looked like a man who’d fallen down a Reddit rabbit hole and been glued to his screen for the last twelve hours. “That was the one thought that was keeping me grounded, too. There’s no reports of missing people with any connection to Linington or the village of Deighton over the last sixty years.”

“And what about now?” Annie asked. “Some of these bodies have been there weeks, Evans said. Someone has to be missing them.”

“Yeah. I’ve got someone matching missing person files with the description of the bodies,” Tink said, swiping through her phone. “But there have been reports more recently.”

A thick rain cloud passed over the warm winter sun that had been bursting through the windows of the incident room. The room fell into darkness, and Tink’s phone, the only source of light, glowed eerily across her face.

“Where are all the answers?” Swift said, into the gloom. “We’ve got a board full of questions. Who are the dead? What really happened to Linington? Who is that man we saw in the Hall? How did the Lost Pool stay lost for so long? Who has been doing this? And why now?”

Annie stood up and walked to the board. She traced her finger along the line between Louis Linington’s picture and the abandoned pool.

“I think that last party has more to do with the recent deaths than we’re giving it credit for. There are too many coincidences between the scenes. The newly laid out bodies in the same position as the dead bodies from the party. Someone knows something.” She stepped back, giving herself room to see the whole board.

Something about it was troubling her, she needed time to think it over.

“Carefully, Annie,” Swift said, getting to his feet. “You’re starting to sound like a Redditer, or whatever they’re called.”

“Conspiracy theorist,” Page offered.

Annie shot him a look as Tink snorted away a laugh.

“Tink, Page,” Swift said. “I need you guys to run a search on local names that flag up on the system, people who’ve been arrested or cautioned before. Then get to the Hall, see what the SOC officers have found. Hopefully the runner! O’Malley, we’re going to see Evans to get some answers about these bodies. There’s a killer on the loose who’s seemingly targeting a random selection of people to mutilate, and we need to shut this down before someone else dies.”

Annie nodded, looking again at the different stages of death on the board in front of her. Swift was right, but Annie was scared that they were already too late.

NINE

Evans was busy at work when Annie and Swift arrived at the hospital. He motioned through the plastic curtains for them to take a seat at his desk.

“How you doing?” Annie asked Swift as they took the empty guest chairs.

“Yeah, okay.” He looked at her and smiled. “Bit of a weird one, this, hey?”

“Plus ça change,” Annie laughed.

Swift picked up a pen from Evans’ desk and started clicking the top in rapid succession. Between that, the near-death experience at the Hall, the bodies in the pool, and the underlying smell of bleached death in the morgue, Annie’s head was starting to pound. She slid the pen from between Swift’s fingers and put it back on the desk.

“Do you think we’ll ever get something straightforward?” he asked. “Like, I don’t know, wife poisons husband for clicking his pen too loudly. Open and shut case. She confesses, bottle of cyanide still in her hands.”

Annie laughed again, shaking her head.

“I think the clue is in the name of our team,” she said. “And wife kills husband. If that was your idea of a roundabout proposal, it’s a no. You’ll have to try harder than that.”

Her lips curled into a smile as Swift pressed a fist to his chest.

“Ooof, you’re killing me here, Annie,” he said, eyes squeezed closed. Peeking one eye open, he added. “But that means it’s not a never, if you’re telling me to try harder.”

Annie’s heart was racing, and she was about to tell Swift to stop teasing when Evans popped his head through the curtains and gave them a toothy grin.

“You want to come through,” he said. “Or shall I come and give you the rundown out here?”

Swift furrowed his brow and popped his lips as he thought about what to do, but Annie knew immediately.

“I want to come and see them,” she said. “I need to know what we’re up against and the bodies were all so… I don’t know, enveloped in plant life back at the pool that I need to see them here.”

“You’re the boss,” Evans said, disappearing behind the curtain. “You know where the PPE is.”

A few moments later, once again clad in protective gear, Annie and Swift made their way past the morgue and the drawers where Evans kept his dead, through to the mortuary.

“Twice in one day,” the pathologist said. “I’d say it’s an honour, but we all know it’s because people have died and that’s definitely not an honour.”

Annie looked at the gurney, the outline of a person hidden underneath a white sheet. She thought, in the moment, that an autopsy by Evans would be an honour.

“Sorry to keep you, by the way,” Evans went on, gripping the corner of the sheet and twisting it between his fingers. “I had an old man with arsenic in his system. Don’t see them very often anymore.”

“Definitely the wife,” Swift said, chuckling. “We should have been given that one.”

“Not major enough for the MCU.” Annie nudged him with her shoulder.

“I worry about you two sometimes,” Evan replied, brow raised. “Anyway, here’s the second most recently deceased. Oh, and I heard there was a live one? I’ve taken swabs from the pool floor, so I’ve asked for them to be rushed through.”

He pulled the sheet back and revealed the body below. It was a young man, maybe early thirties, if Annie was to make a guess. He had red and black bruising around his neck and a gaping hole in his chest, but other than that the man looked like he was sleeping peacefully.

“What can you tell us about him?” Swift asked, eyes on the body.

“Well,” Evans stepped to the opposite side of the trolley to let Annie and Swift get a better view. “I’ve autopsied two of the six bodies so far and from eye I can tell you that it’s likely they were killed by the same person. The cause of death looks to be strangulation, probably by hand. Similar bruising on the necks across all the bodies. Hand span looks to be the same. The mutilation was done post-mortem, thankfully. Crude opening of the chest, I’d say probably a scalpel and a hacksaw.”

“A scalpel?” Annie asked, leaning in and looking at the neat incision in the skin at the top and bottom of the hole in the chest. “Doesn’t that suggest someone who knows what they’re doing?”

Evans shook his head and indicated to the second incision that he had made just to the side of the original wound.

“It shows that the killer’s tools are professional and sharp.” He drew a finger down in a line between the dead man’s collar bone and the wound. “But anyone who is a professional would know that this is the best place to cut the skin to access the chest. Like the usual Y shape I would do for an autopsy. It would allow better access to the place in the ribs you need to crack open.”

“That’s interesting,” Swift said, walking up and down the trolley, looking closely at the dead man’s skin. “Is there anything you can tell us about the instruments? Do different scalpels cut in different ways? Can we track them?”

Behind them, the fridges kicked into life, their fans whirring to move the air and keep the stored bodies cold enough to not rot away. It reminded Annie of the fragility of where they were and what surrounded them. She wanted to do her best to identify this man and find who did this to him. Someone out there must be missing him.

“Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can buy surgical tools online now,” Evans replied. “Next day Amazon delivery and you’re halfway to being a psycho too. There’s no way of narrowing down what tools were used, but if you find something that might be our weapon, then we can match the teeth or blade to the markings on the rib bones.”

“Gotcha,” Swift said. “And I only ever buy bin bags and books on Amazon, so not quite there yet.”

Evans’ lips pulled into a smile.

“Why do you think the killer mutilated the bodies?” Annie asked, peering into the empty chest cavity.

“I have no idea of his motivation,” Evans said. “But I can tell you what he did to mutilate them. Give you something to go on?”

“Please.” Swift had stopped at the feet and was looking at the soles. “Just out of curiosity, have you washed the body?”

“Not yet,” Evans said. “They were this clean when they came in. Probably stripped after death. I had the same thought.”

The pathologist walked around the trolley and pulled the sheet back over the John Doe, covering his face last. Evans always treated his patients with the upmost respect, Annie loved him for it. They may be dead, but they were still people, and he wasn’t going to let this man sit out naked and vulnerable if he didn’t need to.

“Let’s go to my computer and I can show you what I got.” Evans’ shoes clopped along the tiled floor.

The detectives followed him away from the chill of the mortuary, stripping off their PPE and depositing it in the yellow bin at the plastic curtains. Back in the office was warmer and Annie felt her chest expand. She wasn’t a fan of the mortuary, but she knew she got more from seeing the bodies in real life than she ever would from looking at photographs.

Evans sat at his desk and Annie and Joe took the seats they hadn’t long vacated. Tapping away on the keyboard, Evans hummed as he looked over at them.

“Here we go,” he said. “This is the write-up from the first body, and it will be almost the same from the one you’ve just seen. Male, thirties, well-nourished and only showing natural signs of aging. Cause of death is manual strangulation. Postmortem mutilation and heart removal. Non-clinically removed. All other organs showing natural signs of aging. No other items were removed. No co-morbidities.” He looked up at the detectives again. “Basically, your killer strangled the victims and then removed their hearts. No other injuries.”

“Was the mutilation done in situ?” Swift asked.

“The lividity on the most recent body suggests yes, it was.” Evans rubbed his face. “But if that’s the case then where’s the blood? It’s a question that’s been bugging me, so I think we need to look at the evidence that’s factual here. The bodies were likely killed and mutilated in the same place and given the temperature and blood settle on the latest body, your scene of crime is the pool. And I will leave it up to you to work out what happened to the ten pints of blood that would have been spilled from them all. Or, let’s say eight pints as there was some left in the bodies I’ve autopsied so far.”

“Would the lack of blood affect the results of temperature and lividity?”

“Yes and no,” Evans explained. “Livor mortis was markedly less in these bodies, but the same principles apply. And there was blanching on some of the bodies to suggest that they died and lay where they were, with the leaf pattern from the plant in the pool etched on their skin.”

Annie shuddered.

“And no hearts were found at the scene?” she asked.

“No.”

No one spoke for a beat, each of them considering what this detail meant for their case. Evans’ computer beeped, a signal he had a new email, but to his credit he didn’t read it immediately.

“What are you thinking?” the pathologist asked. “Six bodies, each with their hearts removed.”

“Some sort of transplant gang?” Annie said, though she knew as soon as the words came out, they sounded wrong. This wasn’t another Thomas Theobald adjacent case and Annie didn’t want to be reminded of the mess, yet again, left by her dad and her sister.

“The hearts need to be still pumping for black market organ trade to be the case. These bodies were dead when the hearts were harvested. Thank God.” Swift said. “So, no, not organ trafficking. But other than that, I have no idea. Trophies?”

“Maybe,” Annie agreed, relieved. “But he was keeping the bodies, why take trophies too? Unless he wanted something to take home and stash under his pillow at night. Maybe someone was making medicine? Offerings to a god? I don’t know, it’s so specific yet so random too.”

“It would help if we knew who the dead were,” Swift said, sighing and swinging his chair back and forth.

Evans turned to his screen and moved his mouse with a swish along the mouse mat. Annie wasn’t sure what time it was, but she felt her stomach turn over with hunger as she sat still. It grumbled, cutting loudly through the silence.

“I think I might be able to help with that,” Evans said.

“Have you got a secret stash of Double Deckers in that desk of yours?” Swift asked.

Evans frowned for a beat then widened his eyes.

“No, I’m not helping with Annie’s hunger,” the pathologist said, turning his screen to the detectives. “My Double Deckers are sacred. I meant I could help with identifying the bodies. Well, one of them, anyway. Look at this, hot off the press.”

Swift and Annie bolted upright in their chairs at the sight. On the screen was a form from the pathology lab. Results were in for one of the John Doe.

“One of the bodies you’ve not yet autopsied,” Swift read. “One of the more recent deaths by the looks of it. There was a match on the hospital systems as this guy has recently visited A&E for a suspected broken foot. We’ve got a name and an address. O’Malley, we’re on the move.”

TEN

Ellis Cashmore lived in an ordinary house on an ordinary street in an ordinary suburb of Norwich.

“Ready?” Swift asked.

He and Annie sat in Swift’s car looking through the window at the low brick wall and the neat front garden of the semi-detached home that had just had its heart broken. There was an old Peugeot in the drive, an estate, sensible in its shape and colour.

“As I’ll ever be doing something like this,” Annie conceded. “Are you sure that the liaison officers have already been round?”

As soon as the dental records had been matched the force had sent a team specially trained to inform the family. Swift had taken a detour on the way to Cashmore’s property to give them the time they needed and to get him and Annie some lunch. Annie hadn’t felt much like eating but she knew a grumbling stomach in a grieving family’s home wasn’t the way to go. She’d forced down some fries and a milkshake and now felt like bringing them back up again.

They left the car and walked down the brick weave path from the pavement to the green front door. There was a bee-shaped knocker and Annie lifted it and knocked twice. A FLO who Annie recognised answered the door and ushered the detectives inside.

“She’s in the front room, I’ll make more tea,” she said, quietly. “Her name is Emma. They only recently got married.” The FLO dropped her voice even more. “And… um, she’s pregnant.”

Annie’s stomach dropped to her feet.

“Yeah,” the FLO nodded and disappeared to the back of the hallway to the kitchen.

Annie and Swift walked quietly into the living room where a young woman sat cradling a cup of tea and a bundle of tissues. Her face was swollen and pink, her eyes tiny. But through all that Annie could see the natural beauty radiating from her. She had her blonde hair swept up in a bun and a casual but obviously luxe cashmere jumper over jeans. An outfit she would have picked out before her world came crashing down.

They sat on the sofa opposite the woman in silence for a moment as Emma Cashmore stared at nothing outside the window.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs Cashmore,” Annie said, eventually.

The woman turned slowly and nodded. Her movements like those of a sloth.

“We know this is difficult, but we need to talk to you about Ellis,” she went on. “We need to ask a few questions so we can find out what happened to your husband.”

Emma’s eyes clouded over but Annie was sure she caught the movement of a brief nod. Annie handed over to Swift.

“Can you tell us when you last saw Ellis, please Emma?” Swift sat forward, forearms resting on his knees.

Swift’s question fell into a deep silence. The living room was void of any background noise like traffic or clocks or chatter. Annie swallowed hard, wondering if it was her ears playing tricks on her, but nothing changed. And then Emma started to talk.

“Sunday night,” she sniffed. She was well spoken and had a soft voice even through the tears. “He is away on a work trip at the moment. But he’ll be back on Wednesday if you need to talk to him.”

Annie caught Joe’s eye and shook her head. Mrs Cashmore was in shock, she didn’t need them to remind her of her husband’s death.

“Does your husband have any enemies, Mrs Cashmore?” Swift directed the conversation. “Anyone who he’s argued with over the last few months or owed money to, anything like that.”

Emma Cashmore burst out laughing. The sudden noise made Annie jump and the way the bereaved woman continued laughing was making Annie feel uneasy. The FLO took that moment to return to the room with a tray of drinks. She set them down on a sideboard and sat with Emma, taking her hands and uttering comforting words.

Emma turned to Annie and Swift, her eyes streaming and a maniacal smile pulling on her lips.

“My Ellis, enemies?” she laughed again, bubbles forming around her nose. “He’s a paediatric, oncologist who spends his spare time baking cakes for the local school and running to raise money for the hospital. He rescues stray cats and adopts them until they find good homes. He’s the opposite of hated. People love him. Everyone loves him. His heart is so full of love that sometimes I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

Emma crumpled in on herself as she spoke. Her tea spilled over her legs and the sofa under them, the cup clattering to the floor. The FLO gathered her up in a hug and looked over to the detectives shaking her head.

“Come on,” Swift said to Annie. “Thank you for your time, Mrs Cashmore, we’re just going to take a look around.”

They stepped out into the hall and Annie pulled the door shut behind them.

“That was hard,” she said. “Poor woman.”

Swift nodded, leading them to the back of the house and the galley kitchen. A matching set of Emma Bridgewater tea and coffee tins perfectly offset the bright yellows of the walls and the greens of the units. Annie walked to the far wall where there was a calendar pinned next to the back door. Both Emma and Ellis had a column, they were busy working people with social lives that looked to revolve around a strong friendship group.

“Look at this,” Annie said, pointing at a date in the next week. “They’re hosting a bake sale for the kittens on Saturday. Well, they were.”

Swift opened and closed a few drawers. The first was full of cutlery, the second a well-stocked spice emporium. He tried a third and found what he was looking for. It was piled with letters and keys and old cables. Annie watched him rummage through it, taking out some of the letters and skim reading them.

“They’re all bills that have already been paid and written on, even the cables are wrapped neatly and tied so they don’t cause spaghetti junction in the drawer.” Swift lifted a stack of chargers twisted into figures of eight. “Who lives such an organised, well-rounded life?”

“The Cashmores,” Annie replied. “We could all take a leaf out of their book. Selfless to a point.”

Annie looked back to the calendar and saw December 25th circled in giant gold pen. And tomorrow was supposed to be Christmas Decoration Day. Annie felt her heart ache for the family of Ellis Cashmore.

“Selfless to a point of getting himself killed,” Swift pondered. “Is that a thing?”

“Maybe. But who would do something like that?” Annie shrugged.

“He’s oncology, yes? Maybe it was someone he couldn’t save.” Swift puffed out his cheeks and put the cables back in the drawer, closing it softly. “Or maybe just someone wanting revenge on the perfect family.”

“Six, seven times over?” Annie shook her head. “That’s some jealous individual right there.”

“Maybe Evans will have some more hits for us and we can look into some of the others,” Swift went on, but he didn’t look convinced. “Let keep looking around. There’s got to be some skeletons in the Cashmore’s closet somewhere.”

There weren’t. After another thirty minutes of searching, Annie and Swift came up empty handed. The Cashmore wardrobes were neat, the cupboards were stacked with fresh towels and smelt like the kind of home Annie thought she’d have when she grew up. Annie had felt a pang of sorrow for Emma as she’d peeked into the nursery and seen the little baby grows hanging like dolls clothes. Even the spare room was neat and orderly, only a pile of books in the corner stood out. A little card on top in handwritten text said the books were on their way to the charity shop. The Cashmores were a family who lived by the book and had their lives in order. They were probably known in the community for their big hearts, and now all they’d be remembered for was an unnecessary and brutal death.

“Literally nothing,” Swift said as they trudged down the stairs and back out of the house to the car.

“We need to look into places Ellis visited regularly, the people he met with,” Annie said, climbing into the passenger seat. “Maybe you’re right and it’s a family who’ve had a loss and they took it out on their friendly oncologist?”

Swift was scrolling through his phone, checking new emails and texts that had come through while they’d been in the Cashmore’s home. Annie watched him quietly, her mind a tangle of all the threads of the case.

There was the old Linington mystery. Why had five men died in his pool? What happened to Linington? Is he really dead too? What had gone on between the pool closing down and The Lost Pool being a thing on an urban explorer’s list?

Then there were the new bodies. Six. Seven if she counted the one that was still alive. Why kill them? Why steal their organs? Who was the man that had slipped through their hands at the hall?

It was all linked, it had to be. Swift had told Annie during one of her very first cases that there was no such thing as a coincidence in the world of detective work. If there was a link, no matter how tenuous, chances were that the link was real. And it was Annie’s job as the psychotherapist in the team to wheedle away the noise and work out what those links were.

“Can we go back to the Hall?” she said, looking over at Swift who was frowning at his phone. “I’d like to take more of a look around the whole building if I can? And maybe another look at the pool now the bodies have all been moved.”

Outside the car, the sun had started to drop behind the houses. The early nights and late mornings would soon be at their peak, the daylight hours simply a glimpse of light between two darknesses. Annie shivered, pulling her coat around her body. Swift kicked the engine into life and flicked on the heating, blasting the car with a comforting warmth.

“I’ve just had a message from Tink at the Hall,” he said, throwing the car into gear and pulling out onto the road. “She and Page have found something they need us to see. And you’re right, we need to look again with fresh eyes. Buckle up, Annie, Tink said it’s urgent.”

ELEVEN

It took them a while to find the rest of the MCU in the sprawling corridors of Linington Hall, but when Annie closed her eyes and listened, she could hear the unmistakable bickering voices of Page and Tink coming from the first floor. Annie and Swift ducked past the uniformed officers and made their way up the stairs to see what was going on.

The rest of the Hall was in the same run-down state as the basement and kitchen Annie had already seen. Paper peeled from the walls and mould grew from the floor like veins running through the woodwork. Water dripped with the regularity of a broken pipe somewhere offstage, and there was a dank smell that permeated the building and wound its way up Annie’s nose. She wrinkled it, and started to breathe through her mouth. She wasn’t sure how safe the stairs were, but they held her weight well enough. Swift didn’t seem overly concerned as he skipped up them and through the ornate archway at the top.

“This would have been an insane place to live in,” he said. “Look at the cornicing up here.”

Annie cast her eyes upwards to the most elaborate decorative moulding she’d ever seen. Double rowed, intertwining plants, and what looked like they might have at one point been tiny little roses.

“Puts your boring coving to shame,” she said, dryly. “You need to get yourself a ceiling rose for the downstairs loo to keep up with the Joneses.”

Swift looked down at his shoes and scuffed at the dusty floorboards.

“Oh my god, you’ve already got one in there, haven’t you?” she laughed.

“It came with the house,” Swift shrugged, motioning for Annie to go through first. “It’s original Victorian plasterwork. I like a decorated ceiling, it’s why I notice it in other places like this weird, ass, Hall.”

Annie ran a hand down his arm, glad that he was the way he was. She followed him into a gloomy corridor with half a dozen doors, most of which were hanging from their hinges.

Page and Tink’s voices bounced off the walls.

“It was one of Cher’s greatest hits.” Page sounded strained, then broke into song. “Then I was walking in Memphis, walking with my feet ten feet off of…”

Page was a surprisingly good singer, and he had been giving off Cher vibes before he petered out. Annie followed the voices along the corridor.

“It’s ten feet off of Beale,” Tink sang back. “Beale Street, heart of the Blues District in Memphis. And Marc Cohn sang it first, way back in the sixties. Cher didn’t write as many songs as you’d like to think.”

Annie peered around an open doorway, the actual door nowhere to be seen. Tink and Page were sitting together on a chaise longue that had seen better days, their phone torches illuminating their faces. Swift stared at them with a raised brow and a smile on his face.

“People say Annie and I are like an old married couple,” he said, making the two sergeants jump. “They’ve obviously never been in a room with you two. What’s going on?”

“That’s never going to happen for more than one obvious reason,” Tink said, rolling her eyes at their boss. “And thank God the cavalry has arrived. Can someone with some sense please tell Page that Cher did not write ‘Walking in Memphis’?”

“Is this what’s urgent?” Annie asked, taking in the room. “An argument about a song.”

They were in an old bedroom. Drapes still hung from the high ceiling over a window that was twice the height and width of Annie’s huge sash windows back at home. Swift’s favourite cornicing continued into the space, missing in places so it looked like a pattern for morse code. What was once a solid wooden wardrobe stood rotting away in the corner of the room below a patch of damp that had taken out a chunk of the ceiling.

Tink bounced up from the chaise and brushed down her trousers.

“Not quite,” she said, offering Page a hand up. “We fell down a rabbit hole.”

“Reddit rabbit hole,” Page added, groaning as he hauled himself up on Tink’s arm. “Actually, there were two things we needed to show you that didn’t involve the great and powerful Cher.”

“Cohn,” Tink muttered, quietly.

“Oh boy,” Swift said, turning a 180 and leaving the bedroom. “Let’s move somewhere where I don’t need a torch to see to bash your heads together.”

The corridor was marginally brighter, and as they all made their way back down the stairs and through to the kitchen, Annie’s eyes didn’t have to strain to see what was right in front of her.

CSI had been in and done a once over on the room, their bright spotlights in every corner. The skinned rabbit was thankfully no longer there and scrapings from the tabletop had been taken for analysis. Page laid down a tablet on the cleanest part of the wooden surface and tapped it to life. The rest of the team gathered around. Though Annie was curious to see what was on the tablet, she also couldn’t stop staring over at the stairs that led down to the basement and the secret passageway to the pool. Itching, just under her skin, made her want to leave the rest of the group and go back down those stairs. She wanted to soak up the atmosphere back in the basement and feel the walls of the passageway to the pool. There were secrets hidden down there that weren’t going to be visible to the CSI team and Annie wanted in on them.

“O’Malley, you with us?” Swift soon brought her back into the room.

“Yeah,” she said, turning her attention back to the tablet. “Sorry.”

She felt Swift brush her hand with his and give her fingers a squeeze. Squeezing back, Annie gave Page the nod to start.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on the forums,” the sergeant went on. “Mostly it’s the same old chatter about Linington and the pool. But there’s been an influx of quite vicious messages from a few different users.”

“The same names we saw earlier?” Annie asked. “What were they, Dan something?”

Page nodded, pinching the screen to zoom in on the chat.

“Yep, UrbanDan is getting weirder,” he said. “And LoveConquers is still trying to make them all sound like loons. In fact, LoveConquers has suggested that they shut down that thread so people stop being mean to each other. Then, look at this, whoever is behind the account has also given a few suggestions as to who the killer might be. Given that everyone is still convinced Linington is alive and killing these people himself, LoveConquers is still a weirdly sane voice amongst a lot of noise.”

“Are they names we know?” Swift asked, leaning with a fist against the table.

“We’re running checks now,” Page replied. “But yeah, one name stood out against the others. A Simon Frain.”

Swift shook his head.

“I’m not familiar.”

“He’s a guy who’s been arrested a few times for affray and charged with battery. He’s dangerous and apparently always carries.”

“Is uniform checking on him?” Swift asked. “If he’s involved and potentially armed then we need to be on guard.”

“Yeah.” Page went back to the screen and scrolled down to the next thread. “Which makes me think that LoveConquers is also local. Maybe someone who cares about the area and doesn’t want a lot of press and presence ruining their quiet location. Who knows. We’re still trying to pinpoint all these users’ IP addresses. Especially this one…”

Page looked through the thread, pausing every so often to look at what was written before swiping onwards. He hummed to himself as he did so. A song that sounded very much like the Cher song he’d been arguing with Tink over. Eventually he stopped, tapping the screen with his finger.

“Here we go, Guv,” he said. “This rang alarm bells.”

Annie looked to where Page was pointing.

User: WalkingInDeighton - Those kids are going down. They’ve broken a cardinal rule of exploring and told the police about us. They need to watch their backs. Our village will not suffer fools gladly. Garden of Eden I’m coming for you.

“The username is brand new, only added to Reddit a few weeks ago,” Page said, straightening up. “And if this person is local, too, then maybe we need to take this threat seriously. What do you think, Guv?”

Swift rolled his shoulders back and rubbed a hand down his face. His skin looked tinged with a greyish tiredness. Annie felt it too. This case was not only complex and making their brains work hard, but it had also seen Swift chasing a perp which would have spiked his adrenaline, and it had to drop at some point. The sun had set, and Annie had no idea what the time was or when she’d last eaten. She felt like her legs were made of jelly. But there was a man out there who’d escaped the clutches of the killer, and his clock was on a countdown no matter how tired and hungry their team became.

“Is that actually a rule for Urban Explorers?” Swift asked. “Not telling the police about where they’ve been exploring, I mean.”

Page turned and leaned against the table. The room was now mostly shadows, the moon not providing enough light to reach the windows let alone the room itself. The crime scene team had set up spotlights dotted around the ground floor, but the bright beams gave Annie a headache, and from the way her team was all shielding themselves from the one beam in the kitchen, she guessed she wasn’t the only one.

“The only rules I could see were ‘take only photos, leave only footprints,” Page told them.

“And, actually,” Tink added, crossing her legs at the ankles. “Some of the posts actively encourage people to call the police when things go wrong.”

“So this guy might not be an explorer?” Annie asked. “Just a man who’s livid that his secret place has been disturbed. Maybe we’re looking at our perp.”

“Like a killer coming back to a crime scene, only this time they’re doing it online?” Page asked.

“Maybe.” Annie scrunched up her nose. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking; a loose thread not yet pulled. But she could feel the start of a theory blooming in her. “How long does it take to trace an IP address?”

“Minutes,” Swift replied. “Unless the user is using a proxy.”

“Or they could be using an internet cafe,” Tink said. “Police can trace these but it’s normally useless information.”

“So we should assume that this person is local then, given their name.” Annie sucked at her teeth. “And if we don’t have any other info on them yet, then we should take the threat seriously.”

“We’re looking at a killer who seems to be indiscriminate, a Reddit forum—and we already know they’re a little weird, and targeted threats.” Tink nodded. “I say we get uniform outside these kids’ houses until we know a little more, at least.”

Swift’s phone dinged and he drew it from his pocket. Now Annie had a little inside knowledge, she knew he was probably trying to balance the idea of how real the threat was against how much a patrol guard would cost. Ultimately it was down to Robins to sign off on any expenses, but Annie knew Swift always got the brunt of Robins’ annoyance if he went too far over budget on any case. And Swift wasn’t normally one for following budgets.

Something scuttled across the room and all four heads spun to the darkened doorway. Swift put his finger to his lips, ushering all of them to be as quiet as possible.

Annie’s blood rushed through her body, thumping loudly in her ears. But over the sound of her fear, she caught the shuffle of footsteps just out of sight.

“Swift,” she mouthed. “Someone is there.”

She pointed a finger towards the stairs leading down to the basement, barely daring to breathe. The person on the stairs moved again, sending shadows across the doorway.

With a single nod from the DI, the team spread out, as silent as mice. Each of them approached the door to the stairs from a different angle. When they were all in position, Swift held up a hand, stopping them all.

“We need to be careful,” he whispered. “It could be our man. And if our man is Frain then he’s an immediate danger, do not approach him without caution.”

He looked between them, getting a nod from each. Then, counting down on his fingers from five, he kicked open the door and they all flew through.

TWELVE

The scream was so loud, Annie felt it in her bones. Her skin shrivelled and shrank around her, and she felt all the ligaments in her knees vanish. Over the shouts of the DI and the crashing of the door, it wasn’t until Swift had the intruder’s arms behind their back and was marching them through into the kitchen that Annie realised who it was.

“Eve,” she called. “Swift, let her go, it’s just Eve.”

Swift cast Annie a glance and looked to see who he had apprehended. Close up, Annie could see the artery pulsing in his neck. It was fast. Much faster than his outward demeanour portrayed. He immediately dropped the girl’s arms from behind her back and spun her around to face him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, rubbing her shoulders like a parent. “Why are you back at the pool? What were you doing down there?”

Eve’s face looked stony, her mouth a thin line and her eyes narrow.

“I should report you for GBH.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ve bruised me.”

Annie winced at Eve’s silliness as Swift pulled himself up to his full height, his shoulders back. Even if the young girl was scared, taunting the detective was not the way to go.

“Go search the basement and the tunnel to the pool,” Swift ordered, and Page and Tink left the room together, back into the stairwell.

“Don’t play games, Eve,” Swift said, sternly but not unkindly. “You’re sneaking around in an area cordoned off by police tape, I could have you done for obstruction of justice.”

Eve’s face paled and she chewed at her bottom lip. Annie stepped up.

“Can you tell us why you’re here, Eve?” she asked. “How did you get here?”

Eve’s eyes widened. “I didn’t drive, if that’s what you’re thinking? I listened when you told me not to.”

She gave a single smug nod, as if that one piece of good behaviour outweighed the fact she was back at the crime scene.

“Good, good,” Annie said. “It must have taken you a while to get here then. Did you leave after Detective Swift and I left Adam’s house? Where’s Adam, is he with you?”

“His mum was making them some dinner, so he wasn’t allowed to leave.” Eve scuffed her toe into the floorboards, her wide jeans flapped around her legs with the movement. Annie could see where they stuck to her shin bones that the girl was skinny as a rake.

“She likes to pretend she loves him, given that’s all we really want at the end of the day. But he can see right through it. But he’s not going to turn down her roasts.”

There had been a vast difference between the lifestyles of Adam and Eve. That much was obvious in the size of Adam’s house and the clothes that each of the podcasters wore. But Annie wondered if the differences ran deeper than that.

“Did you not want to stay and eat with them?” Annie asked, keeping her question light. Behind her, Annie could feel Swift moving away from them, giving them space.

“Didn’t want to,” Eve said. “His mum’s an idiot.”

“I got that vibe too.” Annie pressed a finger to her lips, looking around conspiratorially.

Eve giggled. A lovely sound in the oppression of the kitchen.

“Look, Eve,” Annie went on. “Why don’t I give you a lift home and we can have a chat on the way, how does that sound? It’s late, your mum must be wondering where you are.”

“Mum’s working,” Eve shrugged.

“We could get a drive through on the way,” Annie added. “Maccy Ds?”

“Okay.” Eve perked up; her smile wide.

The young girl pulled at her sleeves and buried her hands inside them. Up close, Annie could see she was in need of a hair wash and the coat she was wearing was threadbare at the elbows. There was a small stain on the cuff. Rust red and newer than some of the other marks. Realising she was frowning, Annie pulled her face back into a neutral expression and tore her eyes away from Eve’s jacket.

“Now, was there anything you needed to do while you were here? What was it you came back for?” she asked, instead.

Eve shrank into herself again, her shoulders drooping. She looked between Annie and the staircase behind them.

“It’s okay, Eve, whatever it is that’s troubling you,” Annie said, as Tink and Page came back into the room. “We are here to help you.”

Tink and Page stopped talking as they came back into the kitchen. They moved across to where Swift was standing and Tink whispered something in his ear.

“Are they talking about me?” Eve’s face closed off, her mouth drawing into a line.

Swift took three strides to walk across the room.

“No Eve,” he said, gently. “But Annie and I do need to leave now.”

Annie looked at him and then back to Eve. “Hold on just a second, love, I’ll be right back.”

Annie took Swift’s arm and led him out of the kitchen and into the vast hallway. A couple of uniformed officers nodded hello as they made their way through from the front doors. Annie smiled, checking out the evidence bags they carried in their gloved hands.

“Swift, whatever it is that needs doing, you can do it alone,” she said. “Eve’s scared, but there’s something she’s not telling me. I’m going to take her home.”

Swift popped his lips. “Okay, I’ll take Page, you can go with Tink. We’ve got the name and address of a couple of other victims, and I need to talk to their families this evening.”

Tink sidled up behind them, putting an arm over Annie’s shoulder.

“Sounds like a plan, Guv,” she said. “Only issue is, Page drove me here, so you go with him, and we’ll take your car.”

She held out her hand, grinning. Swift looked at it with disgust then saw that both Annie and Tink weren’t going to take no for an answer.

“Oh god,” he said, picking his keys from his pocket and dropping them in Tink’s open hand. “On one condition, Annie drives.”

“Sure,” Tink said, closing her fingers around the keys.

The women turned to head back into the kitchen when Swift stopped them.

“Two conditions, actually,” he said. “Maybe three⁠—”

“Joe,” Annie said, going back to him and putting a comforting hand on his arm. “It’s okay. We’re both adults who know how to drive. Tink’s done the extended police driving course. I… well I passed on my third attempt and am able to drive a stick shift so an automatic will be like driving a go cart. Stop worrying and go and do some detecting.”

“Right, right,” he said, his hand reaching out toward Tink as though trying to summon the keys back by using The Force. “Well, just don’t look in the driver’s door pocket.”

“Weird, but okay,” Annie said, making her way back to Tink.

“Obviously that’s the first thing we’re going to do now,” Tink called back over her shoulder.

Annie heard Swift muttering obscenities as they headed back into the kitchen. The kitchen that was now empty.

“Oh crap,” Annie hissed. “Tink, she’s gone. Quickly, search the room, she wouldn’t have gotten past us out in the hallway.”

Tink and Annie ran around the large kitchen, checking in all the places Eve would be able to hide in. The room was empty. Wherever Eve was, she wasn’t still in the kitchen.

“The stairs,” Annie called.

The two women ran to the door and pulled it open. They hauled themselves down the stairs and ran through the basement level calling Eve’s name. Annie ducked her head around the door to the forgotten games room she and Swift had found, but Eve wasn’t there.

“The pool?” Annie asked, her chest rising and falling with the exertion.

“Why is she here?” Tink asked as they ran towards the small room at the back of the basement. “Why come back?”

“I don’t know, but there was something she was hiding from me,” Annie replied, breathlessly. “And I think she might have had blood on her coat sleeve. We need to find her.”

Annie went first, heading into the damp space with the heavy metal door leading to the pool. It was wide open, probably left that way by someone in a hurry.

“This way,” Annie said, seeing Tink hesitate where the light from the spotlights stuttered out at the threshold. “It’s a straight path to the pool, no way anyone can get lost in there.”

“Even me?” Tink didn’t look sure.

“Even you,” Annie laughed. “It’s literally impossible.”

They pulled the door wider, and Annie stepped into the passageway, drawing out her phone and switching on the torch. Even though she’d walked this pathway only a few hours earlier and knew it was a one-way route to the pool, Annie felt her skin crawl at the idea of getting lost down there. It felt like purgatory, a deep sense of unease blanketed over her like a cloak.

“We’d better hurry,” Tink said, close behind. “Eve could be out of the pool and halfway home by the time we get there if not.”

“Right, yep.” Annie took a deep breath and started walking. “Why did she run?”

Maybe talking would help ease the uncomfortable band that was restricting Annie’s airway.

“Because she was doing something she shouldn’t’ be doing,” Tink replied. “Isn’t that why they all run?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Annie ducked under a cobweb. “But why come all the way to the house? She must have known there’d be a police presence here.”

Annie felt the toe of her boot hit against something uneven on the floor and she threw her arms out to brace against the wall. Managing not to face plant the ground, she pushed off and set back walking.

“Watch your step,” she called to Tink.

“It’s a stalk,” Tink shouted back. “Like something from Jack and the bloody Beanstalk.”

“Wait until you see the pool.”

It didn’t take them long to reach the gap in the pool wall. Annie pocketed her phone and hauled herself through, wishing she’d kept up with her New Year’s Resolution to go to the gym. Still, there was a new January coming and she could pretend like she was going to get fit for a few months, all over again. Tink was about four inches shorter than Annie, so Annie shuffled around and leant back down, giving Tink a hand up the wall and through the hole in the tiles.

“Holy cow.” Tink whistled through her teeth at the jungle that surrounded them both. “This is insane. It’s like something out of the movies. Feed me, Seymour.”

Annie watched as the DS walked around slowly, her head sweeping back and forth as she took in the high sides of the pool and the plants that covered them like a holey, knitted scarf.

“It’s all over the building,” Annie said, heading up to the shallow end. “I guess this is what happens when nature gets to take over what humans have left unloved.”

Annie turned to look down the pool towards where the bodies had been laid out last time she was here.

“I can’t believe we missed a live one,” Tink said, following Annie’s gaze. “Where do you think he’s been taken?”

“There’s so few places to go from here,” Annie said, climbing up out of the pool. “And there was maybe thirty minutes from when Adam and Eve made their discovery, to when the police arrived. The killer couldn’t have gotten far. Especially with a body, even if it was a live one. The video footage made him look like he wasn’t going far on his own so the killer would have to lift or help them to move at least. And this isn’t someone who is going to want to go willingly, even if they’re not totally compos mentis.”

Annie’s mind raced. The killer could have taken the body back out through the hole in the tiles to the Hall. Or they could have gone through the changing rooms and out the roof. Or…

“What if they’re still here?” Annie blurted. “What if that man who ran from Swift was the killer? I know the officers searched the building, but what if there’s another secret hiding place that only he knows about?”

“We need to find Eve,” Tink gasped. “And we need to find her before she gets hurt.”

THIRTEEN

A deathly silence fell over Annie and Tink. Through the thumping of blood in her ears, Annie could have sworn she heard the plant creak and groan. The giant stalk stretched out its fingers to capture Annie and Tink if they stood still for too long.

You sound insane. Annie shook her head. She was tired and hungry and hallucinating death by ivy when she should be searching for a vulnerable young girl lost in the building.

“You check that side,” Tink shouted, popping Annie’s thoughts like a bubble. “And I’ll go this way.”

The pair scrambled up from the pool floor and ran in opposite directions. Tink to the changing room on the left, Annie to the right.

“See you out the front.”

The room was a mirror image of the one she’d searched earlier. The same cracked tiles and plant-strewn floor. Annie ducked her head under the benches, not quite sure what she hoped to find there, but neither a killer, a half-dead man, nor a young girl was going to be the answer. Dust and spores tickled her nose and made her sneeze loudly in the echoing space.

“Eve,” she shouted. “Are you in here?”

Her words bounced off the walls and came right back to her, unanswered.

The small toilet room on this side was without a door completely. Empty, bar a toilet bowl full of green leaves. Even the sink had been torn from the walls. Annie let out a yell in frustration and ran through the door to the entrance hallway. Tink was already there, shaking her head. There was no way anyone was hiding in the two feet of corridor between the changing rooms and the external door. Annie pushed it open, sticking her head out to greet the uniformed officer standing guard.

“Did you see a young girl come this way?” she called.

The man shook his head. “I’ve not moved from here in a few hours, no-one in or out.”

Annie thanked him and withdrew her head.

“The ceiling?” Tink suggested. “Where they got in the first time around.”

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Annie nodded. Something wasn’t adding up and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. She needed to go through the steps again in her head. They made their way to the hole in the ceiling and while Tink tried to work out how to reach up to the gaping void in the ceiling, Annie sat on the bench with her head in her hands.

Eve had snuck back into The Lost Pool, most probably through the hole that Annie was sitting under. She’d managed to evade the uniform officers on the door and had made her way back to the pool room, then through the gap in the tiles to the Hall.

“Tink,” Annie yelled, bouncing to her feet. “How did Eve know about the passageway to the Hall from the pool?”

Tink jumped down from the bench, sucking at her teeth.

“There’s no way we’re getting up there unless you give me a piggyback,” she said. “So, there’s no way Eve got out.” Tink focussed her attention away from the escape route above her and looked at Annie. “And, good question, maybe she saw it when she found the bodies?”

Annie shook her head. There was no way.

“I barely saw it when I was standing next to it,” she said. “And that was without the added panic of arriving somewhere and stumbling across a load of dead people. As a teenager.”

“You think she might have already known about it?”

Annie didn’t answer. She was beginning to wonder just how involved Eve was. What other reason could there be to come back to a place like this?

“Let’s go back,” she sighed, her head starting to pound again. “Lead the way, Tink. We can drive out to her house and see if we can spot her on the way.”

They trudged back into the pool, around the taped off area, and back through the gap in the tiles. Tink shone her pocket torch on the ground to show them the way. The light was brighter than Annie’s phone torch, but the beam was narrower. The DS kept it pointed at the floor, and they walked in silence along the passageway, stepping over the errant plant stalks and broken rubble.

“Eve’s keeping something from us, I’m sure of it,” Annie said as they went. “She didn’t find that hole in the pool by accident. And why come to the Hall at all?”

Tink swung her torch around, illuminating the floor by Annie’s feet. In the dull glow, Tink’s face was mostly shadow, the light flickering upwards like flames.

“What was she looking for?” Tink asked. “More content for her podcast. And how did she find the pool in the first place? Page scrolled back a long way in his Reddit search and this place has been talked about for years, it’s revered almost, so I don’t know if I believe it was an accidental find. Maybe she was called here by the undead.”

Tink moved the torch so it was under her chin and made ghosty noises, but Annie thought she might have been on to something. Why else would she return to the scene, if it weren’t to finish what she started?

“The undead as in the man who was still alive?” Annie asked. “What if the body we lost wasn’t a victim.”

“Oh, god, that’s very original Saw storyline right there, Annie,” Tink frowned. She dropped the torch away from her face and swung back around. “Crap, I can’t see a thing now, hold up, I’ll go slow until my eyes have adjusted.”

Tink stumbled forward, hands outstretched. Annie couldn’t see much past Tink’s silhouette, so she followed carefully in her footsteps.

“Did we find out any more about Linington?” Annie asked, placing a hand on the wall beside her to get over a large vine she didn’t remember passing before. “Do we know if he is definitely dead? And what about Simon Frain, the name that the Reddit poster gave us?”

Tink grunted as she squeezed between two narrow posts. Annie followed; her nose scrunched in confusion.

“There’s a load of people who think Linington’s been living at the Hall under cover of a pretend death,” Tink replied. “But I don’t know. We’re waiting on the autopsy to be pulled from storage.”

Annie hummed in agreement.

“And Frain is a pretty horrible character by all accounts,” Tink went on. “He’s been arrested a few times, but the affray and assault charges are all violent ones. The kind that could have led to murder charges or manslaughter at least, had the people died. As it happens, they were maimed, and a few have ended up with PTSD as a result of their attacks.”

“God, he sounds appalling.” Annie brushed a cobweb from her face. “Do you think he could be our guy? That Reddit poster seemed keen to point him out to us.”

“Out of all the unsightly characters living in the vicinity, he’s the only one we haven’t been able to get hold of,” Tink replied. “Those bodies weren’t the first time this person has killed, I don’t think. So maybe he’s worked his way up to it with his previous arrests.”

“Maybe,” Annie agreed. “There’s no way someone’s first kill would be so methodically laid out, is there?”

“You’re the psychotherapist, you tell me?” Tink stopped so abruptly that Annie walked right into the back of her with a thud.

“Everything all right?” Annie asked, taking a step back.

Tink swung her torch around, half blinding Annie in the process.

“Sorry,” the DS said, lowering the beam. “It’s just, I feel like we’ve been walking for longer than when we were heading the opposite direction.”

Annie cast an eye over the walls that were decidedly more unkempt than she remembered them being. And that was saying something.

“You said even I couldn’t get lost down here,” Tink smiled. “Would you like to retract that statement?”

Annie looked at the floor, the rust-colour stains that had covered the pool was present here too. A thin trail on the dusty ground, like someone had walked this path with paint on their shoes. Or worse.

“Keep going.” Annie dropped her voice, her finger pressed to her lips.

“You’re panicking me,” Tink whispered back. “What’s the matter.”

“This isn’t the path we took,” Annie mouthed, the words barely making any noise at all. “I think this is leading us somewhere we maybe don’t want to be.”

“Not helping,” Tink mouthed widely.

But to her credit, Tink kept on walking towards the horror that Annie felt was coming. She could sense it in her bones. Her hair stood on end and her skin crawled with the feeling of insects scuttling over it. She shuddered and shook her arms to loosen the tension.

“I love that you’re always so on the nose with stuff that you can sniff out an answer before the rest of us,” Tink whispered, tiptoeing forward. “But this time I hope you’re wrong. Really wrong. So wrong that we’ll be laughing about this for days.”

But Annie wasn’t wrong. Tink’s torch threw beams up along the pathway where, a few feet away, they hit a door. It was another metal door set into the wall, much like the one to the basement of Linington Hall. Tink put her ear to it, her brow furrowed, listening. Annie waited, trying to work out what Tink’s facial expressions meant.

“I can hear movement. Shuffling, maybe.” Tink’s nose crinkled. “And it stinks.”

“Should we go for backup?” Annie asked, quietly.

“What if it’s Eve, or our body seven?” Tink replied. “He’s gotta be in need of some serious medical intervention by now.”

“If he was a victim,” Annie added. “What if it’s the man who ran? What if it’s Frain? Or Linington?”

The women looked at each other, having the thought at the same time.

“What if they’re all one and the same?” Annie said and Tink nodded. “As much as I don’t want this to be like the first episode of the Saw franchise—the good one before it got ridiculous…”

“But still watchable,” Tink interjected, shrugging.

“We need to open this door.” Annie took a deep breath.

“Oh, bloody Nora.” Tink puffed out her cheeks and transferred her torch to between her teeth to free up both of her hands.

She muttered something that sounded like on three and then nodded her head once, twice, three times, before pushing the door quietly away from her.

The smell that hit them was enough to make Annie gag. Her eyes streamed as potent gasses escaped the room. Annie thought it must be a portal to hell given the stench. They inched forward into the dark and Annie heard the shuffling sounds echoing through the space.

“Where are we?” she whispered, pulling out her phone because Tink’s torch wasn’t enough.

Hitting the light, Annie squeezed past Tink and aimed her light straight ahead. And she knew that what she saw would stay with her forever.

The floor was sunken, three steps at the door led down into what could only be described as a pit of writhing limbs.

“Oh god,” Tink whispered, backing away.

Annie focussed her light down into the chasm. She thought the scene at the pool had been bad, but this was one of the most disturbing things Annie had ever seen. The hollow was about ten feet by ten feet, but there was no telling how deep it was because it was full of bodies. They were decomposed. Rotting. Shells. Not a scrap of clothing to be seen, just a soup of organs and flesh. They were moving, squirming. But that was impossible, these bodies were long dead.

She put her arm up over her mouth, feeling saliva gather as the nausea came in waves. She lifted her other arm, motioning for Tink to get out, but the young DS was already gone from the room, her torch light waving back out in the passageway. And as Annie stumbled backwards, trying to find the doorframe, but not wanting to take her eyes from the horror that they’d uncovered, she saw why the mass of bodies seemed to be moving. Rats. Their black eyes glistening as they watched Annie’s panic, ready to pounce.

“Run, Tink,” she shouted, spinning on her heels.

FOURTEEN

“I never, ever want to see anything like that again in my whole life.” Tink sat with her hands wrapped around a mug of sugary tea from Page. It was the first thing Tink had said since they’d found the pit of hell. “Or my next life.”

The four members of the MCU huddled around the kitchen island at Swift’s house. There was a full tub of Quality Street and a bottle of brandy on the marble worktop. Annie peeled off the plastic wrapper from the chocolates and picked out a green triangle. Swift may have been keeping these for Christmas, but team wellbeing took priority.

Annie had driven Swift’s giant car slowly and carefully all the way back from Linington Hall, her hands shaking so much that she’d gripped the wheel until her fingers went numb. Tink, quiet in the passenger seat, didn’t utter a peep as they drove the half-hour back, waited for the iron gates to open, and parked up on the driveway that was bigger than the cobbled street Annie lived on.

“Ditto,” Annie uttered, rubbing her hands down her arms to warm up.

The kitchen wasn’t cold. In fact, with the underfloor heating, it was the warmest place she’d been in since the start of winter. But the shock was starting to seep into Annie’s bones and make her shiver. She felt Swift’s presence behind her and relished the warm blanket he wrapped around her shoulders, the weight of his hands squeezing the tops of her arms and letting her know she was safe.

Kitchens were always the go-to place in the aftermath of shock. Warm, comforting, a hub where people could gather and potter in a safe space. Page had made tea and Swift had made up some beds for the MCU so they didn’t have to go home. But no-one was ready to leave the kitchen yet.

“Evans is at the scene,” Swift said, matter-of-factly. “He’s assessing what can be done in situ and what can be moved to the morgue.”

He walked around the kitchen island and put a hand on Tink’s shoulder.

“I know it may not feel like it now, but you’ve done a good thing by finding what you did. You have given those families some closure,” he said, grimacing. “It’s not really the word I want to use, given the circumstances, but you know what I mean. We’ll know more about the number of victims when Evans has had a chance to look more closely.”

“Poor Evans,” Annie whispered, picking her mug from the island and taking a swig of sugary tea.

The room fell quiet, the ticking of the clock and the whirring of Swift’s fridge serving as a backdrop to the team’s heaviness about what they’d found.

“How did I go so wrong?” Tink whispered. “It was a straight path from the pool to the hall and I ended up in a basement fit for a horror movie.”

“Your internal compass is basically a bunch of kittens trying to find their tails?” Page offered.

Tink snorted into her tea and the mood in the room lifted a little.

“That may be true, given the number of times you’ve ended up in the wrong room back in the station,” Swift said, taking the stool next to Annie. “But you’ve got a good excuse here.”

“How so?” Tink asked, flicking a chocolate wrapper at Page’s face and hitting him square between the eyes. “Didn’t miss that, did I?”

Page caught the shiny, purple paper as it bounced off his forehead and scrunched it into a small ball, placing it on a sizeable pile of wrappers he’d already accumulated.

“When Annie and I took that path from the pool, we stayed to the right, mostly because I had my right arm out to guide us,” Swift said. “But you must have strayed slightly left. There’s a small opening, a bit like in Labyrinth when the worm guides Sarah the wrong way through a gap in the maze…” Swift paused, Tink’s face looking more confused than when he started talking. “You’re too young. Anyway, there was a slight fork, unnoticeable in the dark, that led the way you both went. We’ve got officers down there now, checking to make sure there are no more hidden routes.”

“Where does it lead to?” Annie asked. “Apart from… you know, certain death.”

Swift gave Annie a wry smile at the phrase from the movie she’d just quoted at him. She wasn’t too young to remember the Jim Henson classic.

“That room you found is at the basement level of the Hall,” Swift replied. “It’s been blocked off from the rest of the basement, but you could at one point get to it from that games room we found.”

“That’s why the painting was hanging funny? It wasn’t a warped wall, it was a blocked off door,” Annie said, nodding. “So who closed it off?”

Page got up and grabbed the kettle, filling it with water and flicking it back on to boil. He leaned against the countertop, hands crossed over his chest.

“It’s looking more and more like an inside job, isn’t it?” he said, sucking at his teeth. His muscles pushed against the shirt he was wearing, the sleeves looked like they might, at any point, give up hope of containing his biceps.

“Inside to whom and what?” Annie asked, poking around in the Quality Street for an orange cream.

“Linington,” Page replied, tipping the contents of the used teapot into the bin and rinsing it around with freshly boiled water. He carefully scooped more loose tea into the pot and filled it with what was left in the kettle. “Everything is leading back to Linington, the man, the Hall.”

“You think the Reddit gang are right in saying he’s still alive?” Tink said. “That whoever it was who ran from Annie and Joe was our guy, Louis?”

Page shrugged. “Whoever it was knew the Hall well enough to vanish right under the DI’s nose. And whoever is killing these people knows the Hall well enough to know where to drag the decomposing bodies to make room for fresh ones.”

Annie shivered again. “There is that,” she said. “But where has he been living all this time and why did no-one notice he wasn’t actually dead? Do we have the full report from his autopsy yet?”

Tink shook her head, chewing on a toffee penny. She looked to Page to answer while her teeth were stuck together.

“Not yet,” Page answered. “It’s still being fished out of the files. But what if his family paid the authorities to pretend he was dead? Rich people can do whatever they like, can’t they?”

“It’s not all like the movies, Page,” Swift said. “And, besides, why would they do that? Why not just move away?”

Page set the teapot down on the island and took the stool next to Tink.

“I don’t know why they didn’t just move away, but if Louis had a party and people ended up dead, what better way to avoid the repercussions than to pretend that he was dead too?”

Annie whistled. “That’s a good point.”

“Thanks.” Page smiled. “I have them occasionally. I’m a sergeant now, don’t you know.”

He poured them all a new cup of tea, brewed to perfection, and added a dash of milk and sugar to Annie and Tink’s.

“All I’m saying is that these Reddit people must have gotten their ideas from somewhere,” he said. “And there was an old guy running around the Hall when you were there, guv.”

Swift added some milk to his own mug and leant back on his stool. Somewhere in the distance a siren rang through the night.

“Say it is Linington,” Swift said, sipping his drink. “Why kill all these people? Does that mean the original deaths were murder too?”

Annie looked out the window into the darkness beyond. Though Swift’s house was in the middle of the city, he was set so far back from the road that it was pitch black out the front bay windows and the back. She shivered at the idea of someone creeping up the driveway and watching them all brainstorming a crime in the safety of a warm home.

“Those autopsies stated drowning as the cause,” Tink replied, toffee gone. “And they were accidental. But who knows, maybe they weren’t accidental, and our Louis got a taste for death.”

The threads were still unravelling in Annie’s head, and she knew that what the team was saying was plausible. Still, it didn’t make the doubts quieten.

“Let’s keep an open mind,” she offered, a voice of reason. “We still have Frain to consider, and what did you find out from the family you went to see, Swift? Who was the victim?”

Swift pulled out his notebook from his pocket and flipped to the latest page.

“Kyle Citron,” Swift read out. “Late twenties, male, single, still living at home with his parents who only had good things to say about him, of course. He’d not come home from a football match he was refereeing a couple of nights ago. Parents said it was unlike him, but not so much that they were worried. Kyle had a lot of friends who he’d stay with on occasion. Worked at a small newsagent in Deighton, a 7/11 type place. We went to speak to them and they also had nothing but good things to say about him. Apparently, he used to turn a blind eye to the kids with no money when they pocketed a Mars Bar or the new mums who couldn’t afford nappies when they snuck them in under the pram seat.”

“Anything that connects Kyle with the paeds doctor, Ellis?” Annie asked.

There was a clue burrowing away at the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite place, yet. Something about Ellis and Kyle that rang bells.

“I asked DCI Robins to get a team onto it, but she gave me one person,” Swift replied, taking a purple chocolate and handing it to Annie. “And so far, they’ve not found a match on anything other than them being overly nice people. Which narrows our victim pool down to most of the universe.”

“I can’t think of a few people who wouldn’t be in trouble,” Annie laughed, taking the chocolate and thanking Swift.

“She’s going to keep working on it,” Swift went on. “And she’ll look at the connections with the other victims too. I know there was a woman, Sheila something, who worked in the library in the city. And now we’ll have a much bigger pool of names, given your find earlier.”

Annie wasn’t sure pool was the best word to use given the circumstances in which they’d found the bodies or the state of decomposition they’d been in. But she kept quiet as Tink already looked like she was on the verge of bringing up her Quality Street.

“Right.” Swift clapped his hands against his thighs and got down from his stool. “I don’t know about you all, but I am dead on my feet. We need to be back on it again first thing, so I suggest that you all get a good night’s sleep. Your beds are all made up, now don’t say I’m not the best boss you’ve ever had.”

Tink nodded, grabbed the bottle of brandy, and silently made her way out of the room. Page followed on her heels, getting a couple of bottles of water from the fridge.

“Shall we?” Swift held out a hand to Annie and she felt the weariness of the day sitting on her shoulders like a weighted blanket and not the woollen one it was.

“Let’s,” she replied, taking his hand and letting herself be led out of the kitchen and up the stairs to a king-sized bed with her name on it.

FIFTEEN

WEDNESDAY

The next morning rose bright and crisp, the fog and rain had already been burnt away by a sun that really shouldn’t be up in the sky yet. Annie blinked a couple of times and nudged a snoring Swift.

“I think we might have overslept,” she whispered.

Swift grunted and pulled the duvet up over his head. Laughing, Annie dragged herself from the bed, headed to the ensuite, then pulled on a spare set of clothes she kept in Swift’s wardrobe. As she pulled at the clothes hangers, Annie saw that it was more than one set of clothes taking up his precious hanging space. Along with those and the toiletries littering the second basin in the bathroom, Annie thought Swift was being very quietly generous with his space. Yes, he might have a lot of it, but that didn’t mean he had to share it.

She stole down the stairs and into the kitchen to grab a coffee for herself and Joe and found herself face-to-face with Tink and Page who were up and dressed and already tapping away on their laptops.

“What time is it?” she asked, grabbing a couple of mugs and filling them from the pot already made.

“Little after nine,” Page replied. “Morning, sleepyhead.”

“Nine?” Annie threw a glug of milk in each mug and winced as the fridge clattered shut. “Why didn’t you wake us?”

Tink’s face screwed up in disgust.

“Walk into Swift’s bedroom,” the DS said, not looking up from her screen. “When you’re there. We value our lives more than that, thank you. You need to wake the boss up, though, we’ve been sent more cause-of-death autopsy reports from Evans. And there’s something you’re both going to want to hear.”

Annie wasted no time running back out of the kitchen and taking the wide staircase as quickly as possible. Swift’s room was all the way at the back of the house and there wasn’t a lot of coffee left in the mugs by the time she got there.

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she called loudly, setting the drinks on her bedside table. “But the day is calling and we’re already two hours late for work. Up. Up. Up.”

She flapped at the duvet from the foot of the bed and less than ten minutes later they were all sitting around the kitchen island as though none of them had left from the night before.

“What have you got, Tink?” Swift said, running a hand down his face. “It better be good; I was dreaming about holidaying in the Maldives with you three serving me cocktails and fresh fruit.”

“Wow…” Annie raised a brow at Swift who had the decency to look a bit sheepish.

“Well, you know, maybe you were on the lounger beside me,” he coughed.

“Nice try,” Tink said. “We all know Annie was there in a coconut bra and grass skirt attending to your every whim.”

Page shuddered so hard that his stool bounced across the floor in Tink’s direction.

“Don’t you start.” She gave him an icy stare and he shuffled it back. Tink turned to the whole team. “Right, so, first thing. Evans emailed us all late last night with the full results of the first couple of autopsies. All the vics died from asphyxiation. Manual strangulation. Which we knew, but he just wanted to confirm that they all died in the same way. Tox reports all came back clean, at most there was traces of alcohol and one of the vics had smoked a joint recently, but nothing out of the ordinary. All vics had their hearts removed but nothing else was touched. The incision wasn’t clean, not done by a professional. Though he did say they probably used professional tools because cracking ribs isn’t an easy job.”

Annie grimaced at the idea of pulling apart someone’s chest bones to reveal their hearts. She’d heard bones break under her hands as she’d done CPR before and that was from putting the weight of her whole body through someone’s ribs. The noise had made her feel ill and that was through the act of saving someone’s life. To break bones to steal a heart was something altogether more unsavoury.

Stealing someone’s heart. The thought stuck in Annie’s head. The words often used to describe the act of love not death. She filed that away for later.

“So that’s from the six bodies in the pool, yes?” Swift asked, opening the lid of his own MacBook and logging in.

Tink nodded. “Yep, and he’s going to start on the others right after he’s dealt with an RTA that came in last night.”

“Busy guy,” Swift muttered. “Right, so all the victims were killed, maimed, and left to bleed out in an old pool. Most of that we knew. I’m not sure Evans’ report gets us any closer to finding out who the perp is. Any views?”

Swift looked at Annie because he knew she’d have something to say. And he was right.

“I think it tells us a lot about our perp,” she said. “Now we know they’ve all died in the same way so there must be a reason they’ve all died this way, surely? And he’s killing them ‘cleanly’.” She emphasised the point with finger quotes. “No traces of anything in their blood and he’s killing them without poisons or gunshot or stabbings.”

“What does that tell us, exactly?” Swift asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” she confessed. “But as soon as it comes to me, I’ll let you know.”

Swift gave her a nod and then opened the floor up to the rest of the team. “Anyone else?”

“How is he strangling them without disarming them somehow first?” Page asked. “Unless he’s Goliath or The Rock, keeping your hands around someone’s neck long enough to kill them is hard, let alone if they’re struggling to break free. And we all know how adrenaline can turn us all into raving monsters when we need it to, so these vics should have been fighting for their lives. Any defence wounds?”

“I’ve been wondering that since Evans hinted at the cause of death.” Swift stood up and started pacing the kitchen. He went the length of the island rather than the whole room, because from one end to another was too far away for the team to hear him. “Any sign of head trauma? Or, like Page said, any defence wounds?”

Tink looked at her screen and Annie brought up the autopsy report in her own emails. There was no mention of blunt force trauma to the skulls and nothing to indicate any form of tranquilliser had been used. There were no scratch marks on the vics’ hands that indicated self-defence, no traces of foreign DNA under their fingernails.

“Nothing,” Tink said, echoing Annie’s own findings. “There are a couple of marker points on the tox screen that Evans is looking into in the blood, spikes where there shouldn’t be spikes. But he said they’re not tranquillisers; chemical chloroform and the like, and they’re naturally occurring. Nothing at all to indicate these vics put up a fight.”

Swift tapped his fingers together like Mr Burns.

“So, the killer managed to persuade the victims to follow him to the Lost Pool and then just stand there while he killed them. We’ll add all that to the list of unknowns then.” He huffed out a breath. “Anyone got anything we can use to help us?”

“Yes,” Tink nodded. “And this is going to blow your mind.”

Tink paused for effect, but the only effect it had was to make Swift sigh loudly.

“I’m only on my first cup of coffee for the day so I don’t have the wherewithal to feign excitement about a piece of news,” he grunted. “Blow my mind already.”

Tink giggled and opened her mouth to speak.

“And don’t even think about making that statement into something rude,” he added, quickly shutting her down.

“Okay,” she said, steadily. “While our team was searching for Linington’s autopsy report they stumbled across something altogether more shocking. Back when he was a teen, Linington fathered a child.”

“What?” gasped Annie. “Who with? What happened to them? I thought the whole point of the Linington Estate going into disrepair was because he was the last in the line and he squandered the fortune on drugs and women.”

“Sadly not squandered on contraception, though,” Swift added. “What do we know?”

“The mum was a young girl,” Tink went on. “Slightly older than Linington at the time, she was sixteen.”

“Did they pay the family off?” Annie asked.

Swift got up from his stool and started busying himself in the kitchen.

“Carry on,” he said, whipping out a pan. “I am still listening, but I can’t work on an empty stomach.”

Page rubbed his hands together as he saw the butter, eggs, and bacon emerge from the fridge.

“No money changed hands,” Tink went on. “The Linington family denied all responsibility and threatened to shame the girl and report her to the police for taking advantage of Louis as he was under the age of consent.”

“Jeez,” Annie whistled through her teeth. “That’s harsh.”

“Yep,” Page added. “Records say that they didn’t even let her put Linington on the birth certificate as the father.”

“Do we know who the child was? Is? They’ll be, what, in their fifties now?” Annie asked.

“Yeah,’ Page replied. “The team is trying to track them down as we speak but it’s hard when we have nothing to go on.”

A waft of frying bacon and asparagus stopped the team in the middle of their discussion. They all looked at Swift with eager eyes.

“You’re like a pack of dogs,” he said, grimacing. “Back to work, you’re freaking me out staring at me like that.”

A collective stomach rumble sounded around the kitchen like a Mexican wave of hunger and Swift rolled his eyes and went back to the griddle of bacon. Tink caught Annie’s eye and gave her a little smile which Annie returned.

“Starving,” she mouthed when Swift wasn’t looking.

“So, we’ve got a mother who has brought up a child by herself. And they weren’t paid off with wads of cash.” Annie spoke over the sizzle of the eggs being cracked into a frying pan. “I wonder if that child, who is now an adult, knows who their father is and has tried to track him down.”

“Or if that child now has children of their own,” Page mulled. “And they’re the one looking for a long lost relative. Do you think the mother, if she knows, would keep their own child safely away from Linington Hall?”

The different trains of clues were thundering around Annie’s head, all of them the express service. Annie only hoped they were heading in the right direction. She could feel the tingle of an answer forming and had to leave it alone to percolate or else she’d knock it off the tracks. Which is why it was perfect timing as Swift presented a platter of fried food and plates for them all in the middle of the island and told them to tuck in.

“Eat up.” Swift grabbed his own plate and sat back next to Annie, nodding across to Tink and Page. “Then, after breakfast, you two are off to talk to a certain Simon Frain, local bad boy. We need to know his whereabouts over the last few nights, and he is going to need a watertight alibi if he doesn’t want us to bring him in. Annie, we’re going to have another chat with Eve and find out why she disappeared and where she went, and how she got to the Hall without a car.”

Annie made an agreeable noise and picked the crispiest pieces of bread and bacon and topped them with the runniest eggs and greenest asparagus spears she could find. She knew there was something big that they were all missing and it was irritating her as much as the yolk that had just broken before she wanted it to. Something important was staring them in the face and hopefully with brain food and a moment’s reprieve, that something would start singing and dancing right on the island with them.

Or maybe it would stay hidden, like Linington himself had all these years, and possibly his secret child too. Annie stabbed at the one intact egg left on her plate and watched as the delicious yellow yolk ran through the rashers and soaked into her bread. Something about that action made her hackles rise and all of a sudden she knew where the blood from the victims had gone.

“Oh god.” Annie pushed her plate away in disgust and three sets of eyes looked at her as though she’d gone mad.

“Something wrong with my cooking?” Swift asked, brows raised.

“It’s the plants,” Annie replied, breathless. “That’s why the ones in the pool are so huge. We had no idea where all the blood was going, right? You can’t kill someone and rip open their chest without there being a lot of blood. Our killer must be feeding the plants the blood of the victims, leaving them in the empty pool basin for it all to soak away before he moves them to the pit. It’s what we do with our houseplants, isn’t it? Blood, bone, and whatever mixture. Though that’s dead fish not humans, but the principle is the same, isn’t it? That great big triffid has been soaking up human blood like a milkshake.”

Tink and Page slowly put down their cutlery.

“You could have waited until we’d finished eating before you told us that theory, Annie,” Tink moaned.

Swift was the only one still going at his breakfast.

“We need to take a sample of it,” he said, finishing his mouthful. “Annie, you and I will do that after we speak to Eve.”

“Not sure I want to go anywhere near it,” she replied. “It’s got a taste for human flesh, what if it tries to eat me?”

Swift nodded down at Annie’s plate and the half-bitten asparagus spear still pronged on her fork. “You’re probably eating its cousin, so fair’s fair, I say.”

SIXTEEN

If Adam lived in the Garden of Eden then Eve’s home was the weedy driveway just before the gates. The contrast in their lives was stark. It wasn’t that Eve’s home was neglected, more that it was in need of work that would cost a lot of money. And it seemed that the Francis’s didn’t have the kind of money to repair broken, mossy roof tiles and fix damaged down pipes.

Swift had pulled up right outside the row of terraced cottages, and from her passenger seat, Annie could practically see into the upstairs and downstairs windows. Were it not for the pretty net curtains, she’d feel like she was in the Francis house watching TV with them. As it was, when they knocked on the doors, it turned out that none of the members of the Francis household were in, let alone watching Loose Women or This Morning.

The door next to the Francis’s creaked open and a face popped out, glaring at Annie and Swift with crinkly eyes and a mop of white hair.

“Hi, we’re looking for Mrs Francis,” Annie said, smiling. “Do you know if she’s around?”

“She’s a Ms,” the old woman replied, stretching out the word like a bee buzzing. “And they’re not in. Goodness knows how they got up and left so early because they were up shouting at each other all night last night.”

Annie and Swift looked at each other.

“So Eve was here too, was she?” Swift asked.

“Who do you think she was arguing with? The dog?” The old woman pursed her lips.

“Are they normally loud neighbours?” Annie asked.

The cottage walls were thick and constructed in a time when builders cared about what materials they used rather than just how much they cost.

“Sometimes,” the old woman replied. “Sometimes not.”

“But last night they kept you awake?” Annie probed. “Could you hear what they were arguing about?”

“Might have been able to but I’m not a gossip.”

“Of course you’re not,” Swift muttered, trying to peer through the small window in the wooden front door.

“Though I will say that whoever it is that Eve is stepping out with, Ms Francis doesn’t like him. And neither she should. Eve is far too young to be stepping out with any man. No matter how well connected he may be. Ms Francis should just accept her standing in life and be grateful for the roof over her head. If you ask me, young people these days don’t know how good they have it…”

She would have kept on with her tirade had Swift not smiled sweetly at her and unlocked his car with a loud beep. Opening the door, he motioned for Annie to get in too.

“Really,” the old woman muttered, gnashing her teeth. “People are so rude.”

Annie gave her a secretive glance and leaned in closer. She smelled of Parma Violets and the musty smell of charity shops. There was a warmth seeping out from between her and her front door, so much so that Annie just knew inside would be toasty and also a little damp around the windows.

“Don’t mind him, he’s just a massive grump because he didn’t get enough sleep last night either,” she said, grinning. “He should take a leaf out of your book and be more of a team player. Neighbourly.”

That made her smile. Annie wasn’t being facetious, she knew Swift could be a bit abrupt if he was in a hurry, and she thought this woman might have a little more information to impart in their direction. And she was probably lonely. Old people often were.

“It’s important to look out for each other,” the old woman replied. “Take my Gerald, for example, he always made sure that everyone’s bins were taken in straight away, so burglars wouldn’t know which houses were empty on bin day.”

“He’s a kind man,” Annie agreed. “Your street is lucky to have him.”

“He’s dead.”

Annie died herself a little inside.

“Sorry for your loss.” She turned to go. “Have a good day. And thank you for your time.”

The woman pulled her cardigan closer around her shoulders and shuffled back into the darkness of her living room. As she was closing the door she cleared her throat in a way that got Annie’s attention, as she knew it was designed to do.

“If you want to know where they are, then I overheard them at the front door on their way out,” she said. “They were very loud; it wasn’t my fault.”

“Of course,” Annie placated. “It must be hard overhearing everything they talk about.” With your windows wide open to make sure you don’t miss a word.

“Last night Ms Francis was angry at Eve for sneaking away to a swimming pool. And I thought to myself, goodness knows why she’s swimming, she’s skin and bones and not much else. But then when Eve was shouting about going to see someone and how important it was to make sure he was okay, I knew that she can’t have been swimming and maybe that was their rendezvous point. You know, her and her boyfriend. And when they slammed all the doors shut this morning, I just knew that Eve wasn’t heading to school. She waited until her mother had gone to work and then scuttled the other way. I bet you my last toffee penny that she’s gone swimming.”

“That’s very helpful, thank you again.” Annie was itching to get in the car to tell Swift, but she didn’t want to leave if the woman was appreciating having someone to talk to.

“I am very helpful, but it’s time you left me alone because I have my bridge friends over in thirty minutes and I’ve not yet made the cocktails.” She didn’t wait for Annie to reply before slamming the door in her face.

Annie checked her watch. Half past ten. She was tempted to stay for eleven o clock cocktails and a game of bridge herself, but a rapping on the window behind her dragged her back to reality. Holding her hand up in acknowledgement, Annie pulled open the door and climbed in.

“Did you hear all that?” she asked as Swift started the engine and drove away.

“Yes,” he replied, circling the car at the end of the road and heading back towards Linington Hall. “But only because you were both talking so loudly, I didn’t mean to overhear it all.”

He cast his eyes in Annie’s direction and gave her a grin.

“I was thinking she was lonely and only eavesdropping because she wanted some company,” Annie added. “But turns out she’s just nosy.”

“Luckily for us.” Swift indicated and turned onto a main road.

“What do you think is going on?” Annie asked.

“I think that Eve knows more than she’s letting on.” Swift checked his sat nav and carried on past the road they’d taken when they first found the pool. “I’m starting to wonder how a child could have found a site that explorers had been looking for for years. At first, I thought it was good luck, but I don’t know.”

“Tink said the same thing.” Annie watched out the window as the bare branches and sodden hedgerows gave way to the Linington Hall drive. “You think she knew about it already?”

Swift slowed down and rounded the entrance, driving along the overgrown gravel, the sides of the car scraping what must have been an ornately shaped Privet at one point in its life.

“I think there was a reason she came back to the pool last night,” he went on. “Maybe she wanted to cover up evidence or… I don’t know. She’s so young, it feels wrong, but there are so many things pointing us to Eve right now.”

Annie was quiet for a moment. She mulled over the idea of Eve being the one to wrap her hands around the necks of the victims and squeeze until they were no longer breathing.

“There’s no way,” she said out loud. “She’s so skinny and only a teenager, her hands wouldn’t be strong enough to kill those people. Her fingers probably wouldn’t even reach around the necks of some of them.”

Swift pulled up beside a row of marked police cars and killed the engine. Outside, the mist lay like a blanket over tall grass, the sun unable to penetrate the bare trees and ever-present gloom surrounding Linington Hall to burn it off.

“So, she’s working with someone else then,” Swift replied.

“The man who ran.” Annie let the words hang in the air. “Frain? Linington? The seventh victim wasn’t actually a victim?”

Outside was a buzz of activity. The police tape flapped in the icy breeze and the officers were on high alert. They lifted a hand at Annie and Joe as they got out the car and trudged to the front of the Hall.

“I wanted to come here rather than the pool so we can catch Eve unawares.” Swift waved back at the uniformed officers guarding the door.

They stepped out of the way as a gurney was wheeled past by a grim-faced man in a protective suit. A black zip up bag balanced on the top of it. As he pushed it out of the Hall and onto the driveway, Annie wondered how they managed to get the bodies she and Tink had found onto a trolley like that. The way they’d looked they would have proved difficult to lift, let alone stay in one piece.

“This is the last of the victims,” the man said, obviously reading Annie’s facial expression. “They’re contained in plastic boxes.”

Bile rose in Annie’s throat, hot and stinging and distracting enough that she had to take a step away and breathe deeply in through her nose and out through her mouth. A strong hand on the small of her back gave her comfort and she was about to offer a hug in return when something caught her eye through the trees.

“Swift, don’t look now,” she whispered. “But I think someone is watching us.”

Through the thickness of her coat, Annie felt Swift’s hand tense as he processed what she’d said.

“Do you think it’s Eve?” he whispered back.

“I’m not sure, I can’t see well enough, and I don’t want to spook them, whoever it is.”

Annie straightened up and pretended to stretch, eyes focused on the trees and the movement she knew she’d seen. The trees stood empty, the branches swaying, mocking Annie and her vivid imagination.

“There was someone there,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

But there was no-one there anymore and Annie felt a heat of shame rise up her cheeks.

“I believe you.” Swift was honest, and his words made Annie feel okay. He could have written it off as trauma or the wind or an animal, but Swift was taking her for her word. “Let’s get inside and see if we can go through to the pool…”

His eyes widened at the realisation of where they’d have to walk to get from the Hall to the pool.

“It’s okay,” Annie reassured him. “If we keep left, we’ll be okay.”

“If you’re sure, God sorry, Annie, I didn’t think. I should have parked up at the pool like last time.”

“No,” she replied, brow furrowed. “You did the right thing. We don’t want to alert Eve to our presence. Honest, it’s not like I’ve not seen a dead body before. Maybe not a soup of them, but yeah, it’ll be okay. Come on, it’s freezing out here.”

It wasn’t much warmer inside. The holes in the roof and the lack of soft furnishings made the Hall feel, if anything, colder than outside. The sun never graced the internal rooms, and the dampness seeped into Annie’s bones much as it had seeped into the bones of the Hall itself. She shivered and shoved her hands into her coat pockets.

“Do you think there are other hidden passageways in this place?” Annie asked, her chin tucked into her zipped up collar. “Do you think that’s how we were given the runaround by Eve and by that guy you chased? They ran off into a wall that opens by means of a switch hidden in a bookshelf that triggers when you pull forward a copy of Treasure Island.”

“Sounds like that secret passage in that girl’s school case we solved, O’Malley,” Swift replied, grinning. “So, I’m not counting anything out, not really.”

Their footsteps echoed through the empty hallways. Annie opened doors of the rooms she hadn’t yet explored and was met with holey ceilings and peeling paper.

“But,” Swift went on, poking his head around the doorway of what started life as a parlour, “I don’t know if there will be any in the Hall itself. It was built such a long time ago and has listed status so any structural quirks like that would be written in the original plans.”

“Doesn’t that make them more likely?” Annie asked, stopping in a room that must have started life as the library. “Given the need for priest holes and the like.”

The library looked like a pulping room for forgotten books. And there was no Treasure Island switch staring them in the faces.

“You’re in the wrong decade for priest holes, O’Malley,” said Swift. “That was Tudor times, this is Georgian. I’m guessing the only secrets in the main build here are the staff stairs at the back and maybe some rooms at the top of the house which we can’t get to because the staircase up to them is currently on the floor in the main bedroom. I think those underground additions came much later, probably the seventies when the pool was built.”

Annie screwed up her nose. “You think the killings have been going on since then?”

“No.” Swift shook his head. “No, I think that’s a relatively new thing. Maybe months or a year, if that. Evans thinks that the bodies you found have decomposed more rapidly because of the number of them and the heat they would have created between them. Plus, I think the pit you found might have started life as an icehouse and they made a new entrance to it when they built the pool.”

Annie agreed and was about to tell Swift so when a large chunk of ceiling fell directly onto her head.

SEVENTEEN

“What the?” Annie felt like a cartoon character with stars floating around her head.

Somehow she had ended up lying on the floor surrounded by mouldy copies of Penguin Classics. She felt sick with the pain and reached up a hand to inspect the damage, hesitating in case she came back with blood-soaked fingers. But her skull seemed to be intact.

“Annie, are you okay?” Swift coughed through the dust, waving his hand in an effort to clear the air. “Oh God, that could have been so much worse.”

Annie looked at him curiously. She had been knocked to the floor, her hair was caked in plaster dust—the old kind that was probably full of horsehair and people’s skin, and she was going to have a giant egg on the back of her head. How could it have been worse?

Taking Swift’s hand, Annie pulled herself to her feet, squeezing her eyes shut as the room spun around her.

“You need to be seen by a paramedic,” Swift said, staring into her eyes.

It might have been romantic, were it not for the fact Annie knew he was looking to see if her pupils were different sizes, and she was about to drop dead from a brain bleed. Still, she supposed, in its own way that was romantic enough.

“I’m fine,” she replied. “It’s a good job I’ve got a tough skull.”

“It’s a good job you weren’t standing two feet to your left,” Swift added.

He looked a bit pale and clammy and when Annie turned slowly to look at what he was talking about, she could see why it could have been a lot worse. Just next to where she had ended up on her backside was a heavy, wooden beam that had used to hold up the floor above. Annie had been hit by the floor which had been painful enough, that beam would have killed her. She shuddered and then regretted the movement. And as she looked up to see the damage to the room above, she found herself staring right into the eyes of the man who had run from the kitchen.

“Swift,” she shouted. “It’s him.”

Swift looked in the same direction and kicked into gear.

“Stay here,” he called as he dashed out of the room.

But there was no way Annie was staying put, not this time. With an aching head and a dusty mouth, Annie ran out into the hallway and in the opposite direction of her boss. She could hear him shouting for backup as he ran up the stairs and soon there was a cacophony of footsteps in his wake. But Annie had an inkling that the fleeing man wouldn’t stay put for the officers to catch, much like last time. And with the main stairs full of police, she guessed there was only one other way out. The staff stairs.

Annie hadn’t really thought much about how the stairs from the basement came straight up into the kitchen. They stopped there, which meant that the staff would need another way to get to the other floors in the home without being seen. It hadn’t crossed her mind until Swift had mentioned the secret staff stairs as being integral to a home like this.

Which meant, somewhere along the back of the house there would be a staircase secreted into a wall. And that’s where Annie was headed. She’d seen it in films and read about them in books. Those kinds of narrow spaces that were used by staff to flit seamlessly between their world and the front of house. Not seen, not heard, just useful. Pretty awful way to treat people if you asked Annie, but then she’d never even had enough money to pay for someone to water her plants, let alone look after a whole giant house for her. Pondering whether Swift’s family home was big enough for staff and if they let them out of the walls during daylight hours, Annie almost missed the slight gap in the ornate border running along the back wall.

The gap was top to bottom, made to seamlessly fit down one of the panels of decoration. Almost seamlessly. She put her hand against the wall, feeling a cool breeze tickle her fingers where the tiny gap gave away what was hidden. She put her ear to the wall, listening for a rush of footsteps and giving a little punch in the air when they started getting louder. Looking around, Annie quickly pressed her back against the wall beside the door, half hidden by a plasterwork angel and waited for the secret door to open.

It didn’t take long. The door pulled back, bringing with it a gust of freezing air and the man who’d escaped from them earlier. He ran in Annie’s direction and she stuck out her foot, sending him flying through the air and landing on the floor with a clatter.

“He’s here,” she shouted to the officers. “I’ve got him. Hurry. Back corridor. He’s here.”

The man rolled over onto his back, brushing dust from his face, though it didn’t do much given how ingrained the dirt was on his skin underneath. He lifted himself up onto his elbows and cast a glance around.

“Don’t move,” Annie said, lowering her voice and directing it towards him.

She stepped up, hoping that the officers would arrive soon. What if they hadn’t heard her shout? What if they weren’t coming. Her head was thumping and her eyeballs felt as though they were pulsing out of her skull. The man had landed in a crumpled heap at the corner where the wall met the kitchen door. He had two means of escape now. Out the front or down through the kitchen into the pool house. Annie hoped he’d stay where he was and take neither. But he was getting the movement back in his arms and legs.

“Why did you pick them?” Annie asked, hoping to stall him.

Killers like this one were keen to tell their stories. Why else display the victims the way he did, if not for show? Though something niggled at the back of Annie’s mind. The other gravesite they’d found, bodies hidden there for months.

“What was it about them that made you do it?”

The man gave Annie a wry smile that sent a chill up her spine.

“Who are you?” she whispered, leaning in. “Frain? A Linington heir.”

Or both?

“Come a little closer and I’ll tell you,” he replied, his voice barely a breath.

He spoke with the rounded accent of the rich. Like he was on a stage and not lying prone at the foot of a police officer.

“I’m not stupid,” Annie shot back. “I can hear you well and good from where I’m standing, thank you.”

He made a noise, halfway between a cough and a hiccup. She wondered if she’d done more damage to him than it looked from the outside. Could she be arrested for tripping someone up if they’d broken a rib and punctured a lung and were drowning in their own blood? It was only as the noise got louder that Annie realised he was laughing.

“Guys, he’s here, I’ve got him,” she shouted again, louder, her skin shrinking around her bones.

She was on her own with a man who was a potential killer, and he was laughing at her. Her whole body shuddered with disgust and for a flash she considered giving him a swift kick in the ribs just to stop the way his lips were curled in a grin. Then she remembered that’s not who she was, no matter how much she’d like to. Instead, she watched as he rose to his feet with more grace than she’d given him credit for. He stepped closer to her. The stench of unwashed hair and teeth made Annie’s throat constrict. Alarm bells rang in her head, telling her to run away. But where would she go? She wasn’t fast enough to get away. Not with a head injury.

He leaned in, lifting his chin and sniffing Annie’s hair. She stepped back again, feeling the wall behind her.

“You think you’re so clever,” he said, his voice hot and heavy on her cheek. “But you’ll never understand anything about me.”

“Urgh,” Annie threw back in disgust, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. “I understand more about you than you’d like to admit. You think you’re so clever, being out here in this Hall and playing the innocent vagrant under a blanket of filth and stench. But I know you’re hiding something, and I am going to find out what that is, if for nothing else but to help the families of all those dead people who have been right here under your nose. And you can’t run anymore. We’ll find out who you are and what you’ve been doing, because at the end of the day, goodness always prevails.”

Annie could have added a lot more but the way his eyes narrowed gave her second thoughts. And, just as he hitched his trousers higher and brought his face closer, a blur of black and white sped out of the corridor and knocked him to the ground again. The officers shouted at him to keep still as they knelt on his back and dragged his arms behind his body, handcuffing him and hauling him back to his feet. Swift was behind them, worry on his brow until he caught sight of Annie.

“You okay?” he mouthed.

She nodded, not wanting to reply over the cacophony of noise the man was making. He wasn’t just shouting and protesting his innocence, he was screaming about murder at the top of his lungs. The uniformed officers dragged him past Annie.

“You say goodness conquers,” he shouted in her face. “But you’re wrong. You’re so wrong. It never ends well. And this is no different. You’ll see.”

“Get him out of here,” Swift yelled, kicking at the floor by the man’s feet and missing him by mere millimetres. “And shut him up.”

The man’s screams could be heard echoing through the Hall until he was out in the carpark and locked safely away in a cruiser. Only then did the throbbing in Annie’s head start to subside.

“What a piece of work,” she muttered. “He’s linked to this, Swift. Could he really be Linington?”

Swift rubbed his face and scratched at his stubble with his knuckles. “I don’t know if he’s Linington himself, maybe, we’ll find out if we can get him to talk. But there’s something else, Tink messaged to say that Simon Frain isn’t home. That it looked like his home hadn’t been lived in for a while. So maybe it’s him?”

“He looked old though; I thought Frain was in his fifties.”

“Prison and homelessness can add years, make people frail and weak.”

“Managed to give you the runaround, though,” Annie said, her lips curling into a smile.

“Twice,” Swift conceded. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“He had insider knowledge.” Annie walked Swift over to the servant’s door and pushed it open with her hand. “There’s a whole warren of corridors out there and I’m betting you that’s where he went when he ran from us the first time.”

“You think he’s been working with someone else?” Swift stepped into the secret door.

Annie shook her head and laughed and all of a sudden the world started to swim around her. The walls melted and the floor came at her in sickening waves. She reached out a hand to steady herself, feeling cool plaster underneath her fingers. Taking a deep breath and trying not to fall over, Annie shuffled to lean against the wall.

“Er, Joe,” she called. “What are the signs of a concussion again?”

EIGHTEEN

“You should have gone to the pool and looked for Eve,” Annie protested as the doctor shone a torch in her eyes, lifting her lids one by one.

The doctor had already asked her to name the current Prime Minister and if she could tell her the year. Swift was redundant as he wasn’t allowed to help with the answers anyway. Neither could Tink or Page, but they crowded round Annie’s chair like a protective force.

“And you guys don’t need to be here, either.” She looked between the sergeants with what she hoped was an angry brow.

The doctor looked up from Annie’s face and gave the team a smile.

“You’ll be pleased to know that young Annie here has a clean bill of health,” she said, pocketing her torch. “What I’d like to know is how hard you’re working her because I’d say the dizziness was caused by low blood sugar. Not helped by exhaustion.”

Swift had the decency to look sheepish.

“We’re working a case,” he told the doctor. “It’s easy to forget to stop. And I did make her breakfast this morning but then she started talking about blood eating pla… You know what? Never mind. Thanks, doc.”

Swift got to his feet and bundled Tink and Page out of the room, leaving Annie and the doctor alone. The doctor was writing up notes on the computer, but she stopped and smiled at her patient.

“That’s a good team you’ve got there,” she said. “They really care about you. But is there anything you’d like to add while we’re on our own? Any medical conditions you want to disclose while they’re not listening in?”

It was a kindly smile the doctor was giving Annie, the kind that made Annie want to stay and chat about her life and the horrors of the case she was dealing with. But she shook her head.

“I think you’re right about being hungry and tired,” she conceded. “I need to look after myself during cases like this, it’s just hard, isn’t it? We always want the best for our clients, whether they’re still alive or not.”

The doctor nodded, stoically. She would know better than most about the need to cross every t and dot every i.

“Keep an eye on your blood sugars,” she added as Annie was pulling on her coat. “If you start to notice the dizziness more or feel thirsty or are frequently urinating then come back and we can talk more. Especially if there’s a history of diabetes and other autoimmune illnesses in your family. Take care, Annie.”

Annie said her thanks and clicked the door shut behind her. She had no idea if diabetes ran in her family because her dad had reappeared for a few days after being missing for most of her life, not long enough to delve into those kinds of conversations. And her mum was anything but forthcoming with any information, let alone medical. Annie sighed and went to look for her work family instead. They were sitting on a bench in the car park of the hospital sharing a grab bag of Walkers Cheese and Onion. Tink sat in the middle, keeping a tight hold of the bag, while Page and Swift made darting movements to try and steal the crisps inside. Annie was too far away to hear what they were saying but she could make a good guess at it. That was her family, right there. Fighting over a bag of crisps when they could all easily afford a bag each.

“Let’s go to Pete’s,” Annie said as she reached the bench. “Doctor’s orders.”

They bagged a window table seeing as it was after the lunch rush and before the evening meals had started. Annie set down her coat and then went to find Pete to check he was still serving at this awkward hour. She was surprised by a meowing sound coming from behind the counter.

“Sunday?” Annie peered over the cash register and saw Pete and her own orange cat having a cuddle in the kitchen.

“Annie!” Pete put Sunday down and ran out the kitchen to give her a big hug instead. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Have you come to take your cat back? Because I was only joking yesterday about him stealing my customers’ hearts.”

“And pizzas?” Annie asked, laughing.

“No.” Pete shook his head. “That bit was true. Come. Come. I see you’ve brought your friends. Let me say hi.”

Pete raised a hand and walked over to the table by the window where Tink already had her face stuck in the menu. Annie squatted down at the kitchen entrance and made kissy noises, trying to coax Sunday out from the ovens where it was warm and smelled like melted cheese. She was fighting a losing battle. The cat gave her the eye and then circled on the spot before dropping into a ball and falling asleep.

“Love you too, Sunday,” she called, trying not to feel neglected.

“He’s just comfortable where he knows he can escape easily out the back door and climb up to his home.” Pete comforted Annie as she came back to the table. “He knows who his mama is. Now, you will have a large deep-pan veggie with extra mushrooms. Bit early for a glass of red, though, yes?”

Swift laughed. “We’re also at work so let’s stick with water. But we can make it the fizzy kind, let’s push the boat out. And I’ll have a BBQ deep-pan, please.”

“Ah yes,” Pete said, grinning. “This is the third time you’ve made this order, so this will be your regular now. Welcome to the club.”

The rest of the team ordered their pizzas, meat feast for Tink and Hawaiian for Page, and Tink vowed to become a regular before the end of the year. Given it was already mid-December, Pete was dubious, but Tink was up for the challenge and said that Page was going to be her wingman. Page resigned himself to the task with quiet acceptance and soon the rest of the table quietened with him.

Outside, the Christmas shoppers had their heads down against the rain, battling the crowds for last minute gifts. Annie watched them through the window with their heavy bags and woolly hats.

“Are we doing Secret Santa this year, Guv?” Page asked, pouring himself a glass of fizzy water from the bottle Pete had set on the table. He poured a glass for everyone else too.

“You know what I’d really like for Christmas this year?” Swift asked, sternly.

“Annie in a sexy Mrs Claus outfit?” Tink joked.

Annie barked out a laugh that surprised herself. “No chance, his house is way too drafty for that kind of get-up.”

Swift puffed out his cheeks but Annie could tell there was a laugh being suppressed in there somewhere. He put his palms on the table and looked up at his team.

“I’d like for you to go back to calling me Swift and not Guv, you know how much I dislike that,” he said, slowly.

Tink pretended to ponder over the idea for a beat before.

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s ingrained in me now. It’d be too much work to undo it and I need to spend all my brain power on solving crimes, not playing to my boss’s crazy whims.”

Annie sniggered again, trying to hide it behind a sip of water. The bubbles tickled her nose and made her sneeze. Everyone looked at her.

“Sorry,” she shrugged. “Why is it you don’t like being called Guv, Joe?”

Swift lifted a brow at Annie.

“And she’s the only one who’s allowed to call me Joe,” he said, smiling. “O’Malley, remember where we are.”

“We’re at Pete’s,” she replied, deadpan. “Getting pizza.”

“You guys will be the death of me,” Swift added. “And it’s a long story about the whole Guv thing.”

“Stems back to childhood, apparently,” Tink added.

Page, who had been busy folding his napkin into a swan, looked up with a furrowed brow.

“Is that what the staff used to call you back then, Guv?” he asked, in all seriousness. “And it reminds you of better times and makes you sad because you have to cook your own dinners and make your own bed now?”

“Right, you can all shut up until the food arrives.” Swift crossed his arms over his chest and huffed out a sigh. “It was something my sisters used to joke about. They’d call me Guv’nor before they shoved me in the cellar and turned out the lights. Apparently, it was to build character, like they were street urchins from Oliver Twist and I was their apprentice pickpocket. It’s why I don’t like it… or enclosed underground spaces.”

Annie put a hand on his knee and gave it a squeeze. She felt Swift’s hand on hers, squeezing back. There was always a good level of banter in the team, it’s what made them work so well. And when Pete arrived at the table with four pizzas balanced on his arms the mood lifted even more and the air filled with the scent of cheese and tomato and Pete’s secret herb mix.

“You need to eat up all this pizza and soak in the goodness,” Pete said, coming back with a giant pepper grinder and covering everyone’s pizzas. “You’ll all feel much better about yourselves once you’ve eaten a Pete’s Pizza.”

Pete winked and left them to it. Annie had a slice half-way to her mouth when she stopped, realising what Pete had just said. It started to droop, a piece of mushroom threatened to fall onto her plate.

“Oh god,” she started to say, when Swift lifted up a hand to stop her.

“Annie,” he said, his voice deep. “Whatever it is you’re about to say can wait until we’ve all finished. I don’t want another episode like the one we had at breakfast. I, for one, am absolutely loving this pizza and I feel like you’re about to ruin it with talk of inappropriate things.”

Annie gave a single nod and caught the slice of mushroom between her teeth. They mostly ate in silence, dotted now and then with noises of delight at the pizza they were eating. Page muttered something about how he was upset at Swift never inviting them here before and Tink reminded him about their regular pizza challenge which he was now much more thrilled about.

When the last slice was eaten and the fizzy water had all been drunk and the MCU team looked like they were about to fall asleep on their plastic chairs, Annie decided to talk. She put down her napkin and steepled her fingers.

“I think I know why he’s cutting out their hearts,” she said, and all eyes were on her. “What do we know about all the victims so far? How they’re all the same.”

“Nothing,” Page replied. “Not unless you count how nice they all were.”

“Exactly.” Annie pointed a finger at Page. “Exactly that. They’re all good people. Who do we have? Ellis Cashmore a paediatric doctor. Sheila, was it? A library worker with a good heart. A good heart! And Kyle Citron, erm, what was he again? Shop worker at a newsagent who gives new mums free nappies when they can’t afford to buy them. And I’m willing to bet my Pete’s Pizza points that all our other victims are good people too.”

“So our killer is taking their hearts as trophies because they’re good people?” Tink asked, screwing her face up. “That’s weird. What is he doing, putting them on display in a weird ass museum? Testing them for size and shape to see if they’re all the same?”

“Nope,” Annie replied, and to her left she heard Swift groan as he realised what she was about to say. “Our killer isn’t taking their hearts for trophies and he’s not keeping them. Our killer is eating these people’s hearts. And my guess is that he is doing it to make himself a better person.”

“Soak up the goodness,” Page muttered, echoing what Pete had said earlier. “Annie you’re a genius.”

“A genius who needs to come with me to talk to the man from Linington Hall,” Swift said, pushing his chair back and hurrying over to the cash register. “Tink and Page, go and find Eve and bring her in. She’s got a lot of explaining to do.”

NINETEEN

An ice had settled on the roads as Annie and Swift drove the two-minute route from Pete’s to the station. It crackled and hissed under Swift’s wheels like an angry snake. He pulled up in the car park at the back of the station and they stole inside before the snow started falling.

Annie felt better for the food, though she could do with a coffee as a pick me up for the long evening they had ahead of them. The open plan office was still buzzing, despite the late hour, but Annie and Joe headed straight for the interview rooms and the man sitting not-so-patiently waiting for them.

“I should be in a cell,” he yelled as soon as they opened the door. “Where are my rights? I’ve been stuck in this room waiting for hours and no-one is answering my calls for attention.”

A wall of sweat and body odour hit Annie as she entered the interview room, and she baulked at the idea of sitting in there for any length of time. But they didn’t have a choice. She breathed through her mouth and took the seat next to Swift as he introduced them both.

“Can you tell us your name, please?” he said. “And confirm for me that you still wish to decline legal representation. Do you understand the severity of what you’ve been charged with?”

Officers had arrested the man under suspicion of criminal squatting, breaking and entering, and trespass. But they’d also arrested him for the unlawful killing of one or more people, and the intent to kill another.

The man sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Under the harsh lights of the station, Annie could see the years of grime engraved in his wrinkles. He could have been anything from seventy all the way down to forty, and all the ages in between. His mop of hair was an indeterminate colour, could be brown, could be blonde, most likely grey with added dirt. His clothes were old, but Annie could tell they once fit well and the way they had held their shape despite… well, everything, made her think they were made from expensive materials. He also spoke well under the chesty rattle his words held.

“What happened to your money?” she tried, realising what she’d actually seen on the kitchen table. “I can tell you were once a man of means. You’re now squatting in Linington Hall and catching rabbits for your dinner. What happened to you?”

There was a twinkle in the man’s eyes as he looked at Annie.

“You’re good,” he said. “I can see that you’re a good person.”

“Good enough to strangle me and then cut out my heart?”

The man’s face clouded for a split second before he pulled back his anger.

“You see what you want to see,” he replied, eventually. “People always do. Take Louis for example, people thought he was fun, outgoing, gregarious, when actually, he was hurting and scared.”

Swift sat forward. “Louis Linington? You knew him?”

“Yes, I knew him. He was my best friend.”

Both Annie and Swift gasped. It was audible enough for the man to hear and his face lifted into a smile. It made him look younger than the sixty-five or so age he must actually be.

“You thought I was him, didn’t you?” he asked. “I see people talking online, but I don’t like to do anything to quash those rumours. I quite like stoking them to be honest. Those people who are worried he’s still around could do well with a little scare now and again.”

Annie sat up straighter, something starting to piece together in her mind.

“So which one are you, then?” she said, slowly. “UrbanDan? LoveConquers? No, you won’t be LoveConquers, they’re a voice of reason, aren’t they?”

The man smiled again, he was enjoying this and Annie was starting to lose her patience with him. And she wasn’t the only one. Swift banged his fists against the table and made them both jump.

“Sorry, O’Malley,” he said, sternly. “But this guy needs to talk.”

“Okay,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Keep your hair on DI Swift. You’ll have to forgive me; I don’t hold a lot of confidence in our local police force. Louis was my only friend growing up, I was an outsider, a bit weird, and he saw past that and told me I was the only real friend he had too. The only one his parents didn’t have to pay to spend time with him. I came to you, you know? Told you about Louis and how he was feeling after the accident in the pool. He was so upset by it all. He didn’t even want the damned party, and he wasn’t the one using drugs and drinking and swimming all at the same time. And he blamed himself for the deaths of those poor men. But you just brushed it off, told me he was a man so he could pull himself together or risk being ridiculed. Well, he did neither, did he? And I hold you all responsible. If you’d listened to me, Louis might still be here.”

The man’s face fell slack, his eyes brimmed with tears. Annie felt a pang of sorrow at the loss of his best friend. She knew what it felt like to be alone, especially at the cusp of adulthood when friends were the lifeline of that difficult transition.

“I’m really sorry for what happened to Louis,” she said. “And you’re a good friend, trying to help him back then. This is no excuse for how you and he were treated, but times were different then, and I’m sorry that you didn’t feel listened to. That you weren’t listened to.”

The man’s watery eyes widened and his lip wobbled. He drew it into his mouth and bit down on it. Annie carried on talking, trying to appeal to his better nature.

“But right now, we’re in the middle of a murder investigation that you are intrinsically wrapped up in. We need your help. Please can you just start by telling us your name?”

"WalkingInDeighton.” The man lifted his chin.

“What?”

“That’s his Reddit username, am I right?” Swift asked.

The man nodded.

“WalkinginDeighton,” Annie repeated, mind whirring. “Weren’t you the one who threatened the kids who found the bodies? You’re angry that they brought the Urbex community to your house?”

“It’s complicated.”

Swift crossed his arms. “What’s not complicated is the number of bodies that have been recovered from the place where you were living. A place that the Urbex community has been searching for for years, yet you knew where it was all this time. What’s not complicated is the link between you and the bodies. What’s not complicated is our ability to charge you with these murders when we have so much evidence linking you to these deaths.”

Swift’s phone rang out in the silence left by his words. He excused himself from the room and slammed the door shut behind him. Annie waited until the dust had settled and then turned to the man.

“Can you tell me your first name, at least?” she asked. “So, I can stop thinking of you as The Running Man in my head. You’re fast, by the way, gave our team a run for their money, DI Swift included.”

The man let out a rattling laugh. “I just know the Hall’s secrets, that’s all. I’m not all that fast anymore. But I used to have to be, you know? Those young men who hung out at the Hall were bullies, the lot of them. Whenever they turned up at the Hall, they’d chase me down if I was already there. The only way I could save myself was to run from them. They outnumbered me five to one, because Louis wasn’t going to fight them and get in trouble with his parents. If this makes me sound like a dreadful person, then so be it, but I wasn’t sad to see them being fished out of the bottom of the pool that night. What I was sad about was how it affected Louis.”

“Did you have anything to do with their deaths?” Annie asked, aware that the recording was still going. “Those five men.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m not a killer, young lady. Oh, and it’s Michael.”

“I’m sorry?”

“My name, it’s Michael.”

“Thank you, Michael,” Annie replied. “Can you tell me a bit more about what you meant by you’re not a killer?”

Michael shrugged. “Just that. I have never killed anyone. I might have wanted to at some point, but there’s a difference between people who feel angry enough to kill someone, like me with my bullies, and people who actually do. I like to think it’s a case of humanity. And in my case, I wanted the killings to stop. That’s why I messaged the podcast kid.”

Annie looked directly at Michael, trying to understand what he was saying. He looked younger, as though the weight of the secret had lifted years from him as he offloaded it.

“You told the kids about the bodies?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I told Eve where to find The Lost Pool. I saw her post on Reddit and thought it was the best way to stop what was happening. I knew that if they made it public then the killings would have to stop. I couldn’t go to the police myself because I knew I’d be the main suspect, and if there’s anything I learned back when I was a child, it’s that I can’t trust the police. But then when they arrived I… I felt awful at what I’d done, but I also knew I’d done the right thing. Because I recognised then, that the killer was in the room.”

“So the killer was there when the kids arrived?” Annie said. “There was a man who had survived, he was there in the pool when they arrived, but he wasn’t there by the time the police arrived. The killer was waiting there all that time. Is it Frain?”

Michael shook his head as though trying to comprehend all of Annie’s questions, his eyes dropping to the table between them.

“No, that man is most certainly dead now,” he told her, picking at the sleeves of his coat with his fingernails. “They tricked me. They’re Linington’s heir. They knew where the pool was all along. I hate being made to be a fool.”

“Wait, you mean the kids?”

“Not both of them, no,” he replied, looking at Annie, his brow rumpled.

“Eve,” Annie expelled the air from her lungs in one breath.

She’d been wary when all the evidence had started to lead to the young girl, but could she ignore it all when Michael was basically giving them her name? The man opened his mouth to reply but Swift was back by her side, his hand on her shoulder.

“Annie,” he whispered in her ear. “A word, outside.”

Wincing at Swift’s bad timing, Annie held a hand up to Michael.

“No, wait,” Michael said. “I need to finish what I was telling you.”

“I’m sorry about this, it’ll have to wait,” she said, getting up and following Swift out into the corridor. “He started talking, Joe. He told me his name and he was the one who directed the podcasters to the scene, and he’s basically said that it’s Eve.”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Swift replied, nodding at the uniformed officer to go in and watch Michael. “Tink called. Eve answered her phone and told Tink she’s back at the pool. We need to go and pick her up.”

Annie shook her head. “I still don’t get it, Swift. How can she be doing this? She’s stick thin and featherweight.”

“Because she’s not doing it alone,” Swift replied. “She’s there now with Frain and I’m worried that Frain is going to flee, but not before he ties up all loose ends first.”

“And Eve is a loose end?” Annie asked, already knowing the answer. “What are we waiting for?”

TWENTY

Annie’s head was spinning by the time they made it back to Linington Hall. And not just because of Swift’s driving. If Eve was the Linington heir, then her mum was Louis’s daughter. Their life of poverty seemed all the more unfair, but that was no reason for Eve to take revenge on all those poor souls who’d had to die so she could absorb their goodness.

“The victims all knew their killer,” Annie called to Swift as they ran across the gravel to the entrance of the Hall. “The local shop worker, the librarian, the paediatric doctor, they’re all members of a community that those kids were a part of. Eve knew them all, she knew what good people they were and she still killed them. What I want to know is how Frain is involved.”

“How did she manage to recruit him?” Swift asked, nodding hello to a uniformed officer who lifted the tape for Annie and him to duck under. “And with all these police around, how the devil did Eve and Frain manage to get into the pool unseen?”

Swift aimed the comment at the officers milling around the hallway. Their guard was down because they’d caught Michael, and in their eyes, he was the one they had been after. But he was actually the one trying to stop the killings, not start them. Something wasn’t ringing true in Annie’s mind, the threads that had begun to unravel were knotting again, clouding the story so Annie couldn’t make heads nor tails of it.

They had a killer, intent on strangling their victims and cutting out their hearts. Annie thought this was because they wanted to soak up their goodness and become a better person themselves. The heir of Linington Hall was involved. A grandchild of Louis. Why not just accept the title and regain the Hall? Why was Eve not doing that? Why was her mum not doing that? They lived in a small terrace cottage with damp windows and net curtains to stop the prying eyes of people out on the pavement. They could have this entire gigantic building and hundreds of acres of land if Eve’s mum could prove she was part of the Linington DNA. What was stopping them?

“I’m not sure about any of this,” Annie confessed. “All of it, in fact. There are so many things that don’t make sense. Like, how on earth were they luring people down here of their own free will?”

They’d made their way to the kitchen and were heading down the back staircase to the basement. It was getting dark again, the winter nights drawing in before the day was over. Annie trod carefully in the impending darkness over the broken floor to the small room at the very bottom of the Hall.

“Like, why would anyone think to themselves, yes it’s a good idea to follow someone I don’t know down into the depth of a manky old hall and then through a passageway that feels like a coffin?”

Swift stopped so abruptly that Annie walked right into the back of him. He spun around and cocked his head.

“You’re right. So, these people all knew Eve, and with Eve being so small and innocent looking they’d gladly follow her wherever she asked them to. What kind of harm would they come to by following a schoolgirl?”

“Quite a lot,” Annie answered, sadly, shaking her head. “I’m still not 100% there with it all, though.”

“Let’s get to the pool and see what we find.” Swift opened the door for Annie before thinking twice and heading inside the passageway himself. “Stick to the left, yeah?”

“I think so,” Annie replied. “Why haven’t we put a load of spotlights down here already?”

“Budgets.” Swift walked forward, left hand outstretched and fingers brushing the brickwork. “Had to take them out to use elsewhere as soon as all the bodies had been recovered.”

“Jeez, that’s a bit mercenary,” Annie moaned.

“Sadly, it’s what’s needed,” Swift replied. “But let’s not die of boredom talking about budgets.”

“Not when we can die in other, painfully gruesome ways along this hellhole corridor.” Annie was only half-joking and was glad to see the shaft from the pool in the distance. “Do you think there are other corridors down here that we haven’t yet found?”

“Not sure,” Swift said. “But let’s not tempt fate, hey? One, no actually, two lots of dead bodies is enough for anyone. But I’ve had the uniforms doing a thorough search down here since you and Tink made that discovery, and they came up empty handed.”

“Micheal, the running guy, said that the seventh body we saw and then lost is most likely dead by now,” Annie went on as Swift came to a stop at the entrance hole to the pool. “Do you think his body will be out there waiting for us?”

She looked beyond Swift to the pool, illuminated in blues and greys by the setting sun piercing through the holes in the roof. An eerie green tinge reflected from the plant made it look like the room was filled with stagnant water. Annie tried not to think about why the plant was thriving so well. The human blood coursing through its xylem.

“Possibly,” Swift whispered. “And it’s possible that Eve and Frain are out there too, so we need to go carefully. What is that smell? Can you smell it, Annie? Is it me?”

Swift lifted an arm and sniffed, shaking his head. Annie sniffed the air. It smelled of the candles she sometimes lit in the summer to ward away the flies from her little flat.

“Eucalyptus?” she murmured. “No, citronella.”

“It smells like the pharmacy at my local doctor’s surgery.” Swift had his nose in the air, now, like a basset hound searching for a trail. “Medicinal and a little bit throat irritating.”

“That wasn’t here before, was it?” Annie asked.

“The smell?” Swift said. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe something Evans has done to clean the scene. But then, we have been wearing masks when we’ve been here before, maybe we just didn’t notice it as well.”

Annie nodded. There was a voice in the back of her head trying to tell her a story. She listened carefully to it as she got up onto the platform and pulled herself up through the gap in the tiles. The smell was pungent in the basin of the pool. It was almost organic; a taste that was filling Annie’s mouth and nose. She didn’t think it was a chemical that Evans would use. Those were more acrid and fake, like the floral perfumes old people wore, clinging to the air when they walk past in the street. This scent moved with the air and wasn’t so much lingering as part of the atmosphere.

Glancing around, waiting for Swift to climb through, Annie noticed the leaves of the giant plant were weeping. She stepped up to them, lifting their heavy fronds. They were scarred, cut with what must have been a knife to make the slice so clean and neat.

“Was this us?” Annie asked Swift as he picked himself up from the floor where he’d dropped.

“What’s that?” He walked up behind her.

“Did we take cuttings of this plant to test in the labs?”

“Hmm, I think so, though this doesn’t look like anything has been taken from it, it’s just been sliced.” Swift lifted the leaf from Annie and inspected it. “Maybe we took the sap. Is that what plant juice is called? Sap.”

“Let’s look for Eve,” Annie said, though her gut feeling was to run away as fast as possible.

She wrapped her arms around her body and headed to the shallow end of the pool to get out. It was only as she was approaching the ladder that she saw the feet. Men’s shoes. Muddy. Toes pointing towards the sky.

“Swift,” she called. “Quickly, come here.”

Swift dropped the leaf and ran towards Annie. They both climbed out of the pool basin and stood over the man lying on his back amongst the thick vines. Definitely dead. Annie dropped to her knees and felt for a pulse, despite the grey tinge to his face. His skin felt like marble and his chest neither rose nor fell. But it was intact.

“Look,” Annie said, pointing to the marks around the man’s neck. “He’s been strangled. Do we think this was Eve?” Annie’s head was pounding. She couldn’t make sense of the dead man in front of her. “He’s intact. Maybe we startled her. Interrupted her mutilation.”

Swift knelt beside Annie and felt the man’s face.

“I know it’s bloody freezing in here, but this guy has been dead for longer than the few minutes we’ve been here,” he said, picking his phone from his pocket and trying to unlock it. It flew out of his fingers and landed face down on the plant, thankfully buffering the screen from any more damage.

“Maybe when Tink called Eve she fled before she’d finished?”

Annie’s head felt like it was in a vice, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her arms out, trying to dissolve the pain. When she opened them again, Swift’s face was pale, his eyes sunken.

“You okay?” she asked, hearing her own words echo around her skull.

Swift shook his head and winced with the movement. He grappled around for his phone.

“We need to get out of here,” he tried to say, his words blended in with each other and Annie looked again at the way his face was melting down his bones.

“What’s going on?” Annie knew that what she had said, hadn’t come out the way she meant it to. “Poison?”

A slow clapping sounded out from somewhere behind them. Chilling Annie to the bone. Her head spun as she tried to look and see who was there, hiding in the doorway of the changing rooms.

“Carapa Procera,” the voice said. “I used to leave it in the tunnel, so I wondered how long it would take to start working in such a large area. Seems pretty effective to me, what do you guys think? It’s not native to this country, but I’d say it’s settled in well in the years since my grandad planted it. Might have been great grandad, actually, I’m not sure since they paid mum off to not be involved in their lives. Known for its medicinal properties, and alongside the Alchornea Cordifolia, they have great anaesthetic properties too.”

“Adam?” Annie croaked, and the slow clapping started again.

“Took you long enough,” he replied, appearing from the changing rooms and slowly walking towards Annie.

Something glinted in his right hand and, when he turned, Annie saw the long blade of a zombie knife. Serrated one edge, smooth the other, and the hook of the head like evil personified. She shuddered uncontrollably and tried to get up and run, but her legs and arms wouldn’t work. They were like lead weights, the nerves in her brain unable to fire them into life. Swift was stumbling beside her, crawling across the ground to try and put himself between Annie and Adam.

The young boy’s face was covered, a mask that reminded Annie of the hospital wards at the beginning of the pandemic. The effect was bone hollowing. The ends of Annie’s fingers began to tingle and the fear that she was having a heart attack or a stroke gave her the boost of adrenaline she needed to get back to her feet. Not that it did her much good. Wobbling around like a Weeble, Annie had no way of balancing and no way of staying upright. She landed back down on her knees with a painful thump, narrowly missing the body of the dead man.

“Mind out,” Adam shouted, waving the knife erratically. “Not that he will.” The boy cackled. “Simon Frain, in case you’re wondering. And why would I eat his heart when he’s the evilest one in the room? I want people to love me, not hate me. I tried to throw you off the scent, even called him here this evening, and Eve too, because I thought if you saw them both together you might add two and two and make five. But Eve ran away when she saw me, and he ended up just getting in the way, so I thought I’d do your job for you and get rid of him.”

Gears clunked in Annie’s head.

“You’re LoveConquers,” she tried to say.

Adam must have gotten the gist of her words because he hooked a thumb into his coat lapel and looked like a rooster.

“The very same,” he crowed. “And love does conquer. Ever since I started my campaign, I’ve found friends and made connections I never would have before.” His eyes darkened as Annie forced hers to stay open. “Someone like Eve would never have even spoken to me before my reckoning. You’ve seen her. She’s way out my league. But by consuming the goodness in others I have become someone to be loved… finally.”

The way his face dropped and his eyes searched the pool room for whatever it was that was still missing in his life, it almost made Annie feel sorry for him. Almost. But Adam was insane. And very, very dangerous. He had Annie and Swift in the palm of his hand and as Annie felt the paralysis take grip, she hoped they had both been awful enough for Adam to leave their hearts intact.

TWENTY-ONE

She wasn’t going to die. Not today.

When someone is put under anaesthetic the messages from the nerves in the body travel to the brain, but the brain can’t respond. A highly trained anaesthetist monitors the patient until it’s time to bring them around again. It’s a tightrope walk with a death-defying drop either side. Too much and there’s a risk of respiratory failure, heart failure, and death. Too little, and the patient is paralysed but not unconscious, causing them to feel what is happening while being able to do nothing about it.

And that is where Annie was. Lying on her side, she had minimal movement, and she could feel her body shutting down while her brain was in a spiral of panic. Swift was the other side of Frain’s body, his eyes shut already, a dribble of saliva running down his cheek. Annie tried to keep moving, wriggling her fingers and toes and focussing her mind on making her arms and legs respond.

Something crawled across her face, tickling her nose and lips and there was nothing she could do about it except scream internally.

“I could leave you both here for your colleagues to find.” Adam was pacing back and forth in front of the changing room entrances, the knife swinging by his side. “That would be a treat for them, wouldn’t it? Their beloved soldiers fallen at the last hurdle. And I can tell that there’s more between you two than colleagues, work friends, friends in general. You two are lovers, aren’t you? Don’t worry, I know you can’t answer me. By now your brain will be trying to fire instructions along your synapses and somewhere along the way the message is blocked.”

Adam stopped pacing and walked slowly past Annie and Swift, his shoes brushing Annie’s face. She jerked her neck, worried that he was going to kick her, surprised that she could still move. Thankfully, Adam was too busy dropping into the pool basin to notice the movement and Annie took the opportunity to burrow her face into the thick jacket collar, glad that she’d made the decision to zip it right up. Her nose was streaming, but there was nothing to be done about that. Except maybe thank the stars that her cold might be the reason she was still able to feel parts of her body as her blocked nose was a filter for whatever it was Adam was drugging them with.

“Yes, maybe I’ll wait for you to drop into a deep sleep and then wrap your bodies around each other in a lasting embrace. I think that’s fitting for you two. I don’t know you well enough to feast on your goodness. You might be complete knobs, and I don’t want to jinx the good work I’ve done so far.”

He swung the blade like a samurai sword, narrowly missing the leaves and vines that were covering the tiles. Annie thought the noise knives made in the movies was added later in post-production, but this blade was cutting the air with a trembling swoosh.

“It was so easy, you know, getting people to come with me. Poor little Adam.” His swinging was controlled and contained like an ancient martial artist. “I had something to show them, I needed their help with a project, the school bullies had locked me in and I needed to make the building safe. If people think you’re doing something good, they will help, especially those ones with a good heart. And then the plants got to work, putting my meals to sleep. Doesn’t show up on an autopsy, that’s what I realised from the men who drowned in the pool. Grandad was clever like that, made people think these men had done it themselves.”

He crouched down and sniffed at the leaves he’d already cut open, his mask protecting him from their poisonous fumes.

“They were so delicious too. Tender and sweet and went very nicely with the mash Mum made. Buttery, you know? She is always very generous with the butter.” He licked his lips, the motion magnified through the plastic around his mouth. “I think Mum might have been on to me, though. She stopped eating my meals. She’d turned vegetarian, if you can believe that? For someone who used to buy giant steaks and eat them bloody and raw in front of me, that was laughable. If she’d shared her food with me instead of giving me the leftovers on a dirty plate then I might not have had to kill people to become the good person I am today. But in killing people I’ve made myself a better person. Better than she’ll ever be. I’m a person who people want to spend time with now, not ignore and hope they’ll go away. Weird, isn’t it? How life turns out. I think Grandad Louis would be proud of me. He’d be singing the praises of my work. Thought he was a bit sloppy, mind. Could have made it less obvious that it was him who did it. And then he turned out to be a weak man anyway. I think that’s where Mum gets it from. She’s not great at anything other than being quietly controlling and a little bit of a bitch, if you get me?”

Remembering the stick thin woman who’d been with Adam yesterday at his house, Annie wriggled her toes, happy to feel the movement working its way up her right leg. Keeping her mouth covered was further reducing the effects of the plant’s aerosol drug. The memory of the woman triggered Annie’s brain; she knew what had been troubling her back in the incident room now. The picture of Louis Linington had been familiar and it was the similarities to Adam and then to his mum that had done it. The subtle slant of their noses and the wide eyes. If she’d noticed it earlier, they’d not be in this predicament. But hindsight was often a bully, reminding her of what she’d missed.

Glancing a chance look back at Swift, her heart flipped over in her chest. He looked pale, his eyelids unmoving. Annie didn’t want to think about what that meant. Swift had spent the whole case outwardly showing concern for Annie and treading that fine line between wanting her to do her job and wanting to protect her. And how had Annie repaid him? By not seeing what was right in front of her nose until it was too late.

She needed to do something, and she needed to do it soon or it would be too late for Swift. And looking at the way Adam was stroking the blade of the knife, it would be too late for her too.

Think, Annie, think.

Her extremities were fizzing back to life. She could feel the coldness seeping into her clothes and through her hair. As quietly as possibly she started to wriggle closer to the dead body of Frain.

He’s a dangerous man, do not approach him if you see him because he carries at all times. Swift’s verbal warning about Frain flashed in her mind.

Adam had stopped talking and the silence of the pool room was impossibly heavy. If only Swift would start snoring or mumbling in his unconscious state, then Annie would know he was still breathing. It might drive her to distraction while she was trying to nod off, but right now, she’d give anything to hear that familiar soft snort.

Shifting her hips, Annie hit the edge of a large vine, slipping forward until her head was resting on Frain’s ice-cold hand. Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed it down, scared to draw attention to herself.

Across the room, Adam had started to pace again. He walked from one side of the pool to the other, halfway between the shallow and deep ends so his head was visible above the parapet. The blade shone in the air every time he swung it around his head. His movements were becoming more and more erratic, as his words sped up.

“Do you know how hard it is to strangle someone? he pondered aloud. Annie could tell he wasn’t expecting an answer. “But I couldn’t do it any other way because their hearts would be tainted. And breaking into someone’s chest is like cracking concrete. You have to really want to get in there. I tried, you know, pulling their hearts out from near their stomachs, but I had no idea what I was dragging out. Liver, kidney, some intestines. It all looks the same, weird really, not like the books with pictures of neat cartoon insides and spaces between organs. We’re really just a big bag of meat. And stomachs stink when you cut them open by accident. They’re basically a bag of sick.”

The words brought back the image of the death pit and Annie heaved, feeling her body wracked with the pain in her freezing muscles. She held her breath, hoping that Adam hadn’t noticed, listening out for fast footsteps running back to stop her with the evil looking knife in his hands. But they didn’t come. Adam hadn’t noticed. He was too busy raging, his words coming thicker and faster.

“I tried to stop Eve from coming here that first night. That idiot who’s been squatting in the Hall—MY HALL—gave her the location, can you believe that? I should have sliced his neck while I had the chance but there was no way I was going to absorb goodness from that stinking hobo so I left him alive. Biggest mistake ever.” He stabbed at a vine creeping over the lip of the pool and the blade cracked against the tiles under it, sending a shockwave of noise through the room.

The young boy staggered back, his heavy weight knocking him off balance. Annie took that moment to lift her head off Frain’s hand and drag her arms to his coat.

Come on, come on, she thought as she pushed the heavy material open.

There was no way he’d carry a weapon in an accessible pocket. If he had anything on him it would be tucked away in an inside pocket or down the back of his jeans. Annie hoped it was the former, he was too heavy for her to move to reach the latter. His arm fell away from him, the back of his hand hitting the tiles with a thud. If Adam turned around now, he would see what she was doing. She had seconds to move but her limbs were still weighed down like she was dragging them through treacle.

Where are you? Annie’s fingers were numb with cold as she pressed the jacket to find anything she could use against Adam. Where are you?

“And don’t even get me started on how I tried to keep Eve away that night,” Adam shouted. Annie glanced over and saw him kicking out at the vine he’d tripped on. “She wouldn’t listen to me. Kept telling me it would be safe. I knew it would be bloody safe, but she didn’t. What she had to see in here was wrong and I hope she’s going to be okay. No one should see the aftermath of my work. Not unless they’re brave, like I am. Brave enough to take my own health into my own hands. I was weak before, properly weak. It’s no wonder no one loved me. Now look at me. I’ve got friends and Eve. And now my mum is so scared of me she doesn’t hurt me anymore and she can’t ignore me anymore. I would have thought she’d have learned what it’s like to be unwanted by your parents. But I guess she learned from the best.”

He kicked again, Annie heard the scuffing of his shoes. Under the cover of his loud protest, she swiped her hand across the dead man’s torso, her fingers brushing against something unyielding in Frain’s jacket. With the last of her strength, Annie lifted her arm and dragged the coat open fully. And then she saw it. The smallest knife Annie had ever seen poking out of the inside pocket. She almost laughed in despair. It was the size of the paring knife she had at home. That wasn’t going to stop anybody, let alone a boy in a psychotic episode wielding a 12inch zombie blade.

“And I wobbled the camera,” Adam was still shouting. “That was clever of me, past me wouldn’t have done that. If I was going to have to film my work then I didn’t really want it to be too clear now, did I?”

He laughed maniacally, thwacking the knife down on a vine again and again.

“Oh.” For a moment Adam stopped, crouching down to inspect his damage. “I’m sorry. You’ve done me well and here’s me taking out my anger on you when I have two humans who could serve the same… what do you think you are doing?”

Annie’s blood ran cold. He’d seen her. She turned her head and watched Adam pounding towards her across the pool floor with a speed that belied his size. His eyes were huge, red rimmed, and haunted. It took him seconds to cross the pool and drag himself out of the basin. Standing over Annie she felt the sweat from his head dripping onto her face. She rolled onto her back and faced up to him. He was towering over her. She was prone and vulnerable.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Adam shouted, his breath misting in the air. “The plant’s power would have given you some relief from the pain I’m about to inflict upon you. But I’ll make it quick. Killing people was never my objective. Suffering was never what this was about. I just wanted people to like me as much as they liked my grandad. I wanted crowds of friends to covet me. People need to worship me the same way they did Louis Linington.”

He lifted the zombie knife above his head, the jagged blade glinting in the moonlight now filtering through the broken ceiling. Letting out a cry that would have shattered any remaining glass, Adam brought the knife down to Annie’s chest.

But she was too quick. Jamming the small blade she’d grabbed from Frain into Adam’s Achilles, Annie rolled out of the way as his knife hit the ground. He screamed. Blood gushed from his ankle, and he hit the floor as his leg gave way.

“Louis Linington only had one good friend who knew the real him,” Annie cried, dropping the knife. “The rest had to be paid. No one worshipped him. Just like no one will worship you.”

He tried to get up but his leg gave way under him with a sickening crunch. Annie must have cut through the tendon.

“What have you done? What have you done?” Adam was yelling and crying and Annie felt awful as he rolled on his back, his fingers gripped tightly around his leg. “Help me.”

A sickness swept over her. He was just a boy. She’d hurt a boy.

“You don’t deserve any help.” The voice carried across the pool room. Eve came into Annie’s line of sight, her face pinched and pale. “How could you, Adam? You killed so many people, and for what? Legendary status? It’s pathetic.”

Spit trailed from Adam’s lips; his eyes narrowed as he saw his friend crouching down to help Swift.

“What’s pathetic is how you all treated me,” he roared. “You hated me until I became those other people, and they became me. Don’t pretend otherwise. You’re as much to blame for this as I am.”

Eve slipped out of her coat, her thin arms shaking. She wrapped it over Swift’s body and tucked it in under him. The rush of love Annie felt for the girl and for Swift boosted her. She pushed herself upright and reached out to grab Adam’s knife from where he’d dropped it, throwing it out of range.

“No, Adam,” Eve sobbed, staggering up from Swift’s body and making her way over to her old friend. “I liked you. I always liked you, even from when we were little. I thought your mum wanted me out of the picture because she thought you were better than me, but now I know she was trying to protect me from you. That’s when I knew it was you and I’ve been trying to come back and help Michael after he helped me, because he is a real friend. You’re insane, Adam, and I’m sorry I was ever your friend.”

Pain flashed across Adam’s face, but Annie couldn’t let herself be caught up in his grief. Not when she had her own to deal with. Swift was too pale. Too still. Even with Eve’s jacket for warmth, he looked like the ghost of Linington Hall.

And then the wonderful sound of boots running into the pool filled her ears. Help was arriving in the form of paramedics and police who immediately ran to Swift and Adam. Annie let out a sob in relief as they checked Swift’s vitals and gave a nod for a stretcher.

“Come on, Annie,” Eve said, her hand outstretched. “We’re done here. Let me help you get to the hospital. But you’ll have to just ignore the fact I’ve been lying about driving my mum’s car this whole time. You should let me off though, seeing as I pretty much saved your life.”

TWENTY-TWO

THURSDAY

“Those traffic lights are turning,” Swift said, gripping the sides of his seat. “You’ll probably need to slow do…ooown.”

Annie pressed her foot to the gas and sped through the amber light, eager to get home and away from the backseat driver that was her boyfriend. She thought she’d taken the quick route from the hospital that had given him the all clear after five hours in A&E, but it was rush hour morning traffic. Annie could have sworn it should have already been the weekend, but there had been a blur of days since they’d been given the case of The Lost Pool, and Annie had lost the plot in the first few hours.

Swift had been tense since they left the hospital and was testing her last shred of patience. Annie might have been full to the brim with gratitude that Swift had been dragged from the pool by uniformed officers and immediately taken to hospital. She was relieved that Adam had been arrested before he, too, was taken for treatment. And happy that Eve had been taken home to a loving mother who had been worried about her. Annie might have been giddy with relief that there would be no lasting damage to either of them - Annie’s cold, and her healthy dose of Valerian Root to help her sleep, had ironically stopped her from falling asleep under the plant’s power. There had been a moment where Annie had felt the purest love towards Swift as he’d woken from his unconscious state and hers was the first name he’d called for. But right now, she’d happily push him from the car if he dared to mention how close she was to the car in front again.

Two car’s length gap, Annie, don’t forget. His car was three times the size of her own, it was hard to work out how much space that was, especially when her head still thumped with the residual effects of the plant’s powers. Both the plants, in fact. Officers had taken samples but Annie had Googled the names of the plants Adam had spoken of while she waited for Swift to be poked and prodded by the team of doctors and nurses.

Potent and deadly, the websites had said. Used for medicine in their different forms, each with an anaesthetic effect that was exacerbated by both of them having spliced into each other over the years since the Liningtons had imported them and planted them as a way of boasting about their wealth. Not to mention how they’d grown exponentially with the blood of Adam’s victims.

Annie shuddered and indicated, turning the car into Swift’s driveway. Down through the thicket of trees, the house came into view. Lights were dotted in windows here and there, and smoke was pluming from one of the chimney stacks.

“Do you think they know what they’re doing?” Swift asked, leaning forward in his chair to look up at the white trail in the dark morning sky.

“Relax,” Annie replied. “I’m sure Page and Tink know how to start a wood burner.”

Annie glanced up at the thick plume and crossed her fingers over the wheel. Page might have been taught how to light a fire with newspaper and twigs and matches, but Tink definitely had a faux flame number on a flat screen at home.

“You’d better put it in the garage,” Swift told her as she pulled up in front of the house. “I think it’s going to frost overnight.”

He clicked a button on his keys and the door of the huge garage set back a little from the facade of the house started to open.

“Good idea,” Annie replied, pulling the car to a stop at the front door and putting it in park. “But why don’t you go on in and I’ll catch you up. It’s cold and you can go and check on the fire.”

“Yes.” Swift nodded. “Thanks.”

He gave her a peck on the cheek and stepped carefully down from the car. Annie watched him walking across the gravel and up the steps to the wide front door, holding himself like a fragile ornament and all of a sudden the overwhelming feeling of love flooded her body. She was just hungry and cold and tired.

Tink was there as Swift pushed open the door, slipping an arm through his and helping him over the threshold. She waved at Annie, and Annie waved back as she put the car back into drive and headed to the garage. There, sitting in the quiet darkness of the surprisingly warm space, Annie felt tears start to trickle down her cheeks. Once they’d started she couldn’t stop them. They ran down her face, pooling in the neck of her scarf and coat. The pain and the relief from the last few days had reached the brim and was spilling out uncontrollably. Sobs wracked her body and even with her arms wrapped around her, Annie couldn’t stop shaking.

She’d worked on difficult and dangerous cases before. Been at the brink of disaster and seen the face of death. But this case had been something else. No. This case had shown her something else. That Swift had been right to panic about where she was and if she was okay, because that’s what you did in a relationship, you cared about the other person. Annie hiccupped a sob. She was going to have to work out a sane and sensible way to carry on working with Swift, because she knew she couldn’t hide in his garage every time she was worried about him.

Wiping her hands down her face, Annie just transferred the tears, everything too damp to mop them up. She opened the glove box to search for some tissues. It was empty except for the logbook and an old, but very neat, Ordnance Survey Map. Clicking it shut, Annie reached down the side of her chair into the driver’s side pocket, in case he kept a box of Kleenex or a pack of fancy M&S tissues. Probably Christmas ones knowing Swift. It, too, was empty. Almost empty. Her fingers brushed against a strip of card, and she pulled it out, remembering too late that Swift had told her to keep out of that particular storage space in his car.

What is it?

Annie turned the small card over in her hands, laughter replacing her tears. She’d recognise that logo anywhere. It was hers. Her old one, anyway. Annie O’Malley, Psychotherapist, PhD, MBACP. Her mobile and email listed under her name. At the time, Annie had thought the cute font was endearing. Now it looked childish. But it gave her a wave of longing for her uncomplicated life and her meaningful and safe job. Was this card the reason Swift didn’t want her snooping?

She turned the card over, remembering how she’d left it for him after their first interview back when Annie had been working with a missing girl’s father. On the back, written in Swift’s neat handwriting, it said:

Call her.

Call her.

Annie laughed again. Her uncontrollable sobs gave way to uncontrollable peels of laughter that were verging on the hysterical. She was laughing so hard that she didn’t notice the internal door to the garage opening and the flood of light hitting the floor. It wasn’t until Swift pulled open her door that she knew she had company.

“Everything okay in here?” Swift asked, prising the card from Annie’s fingers and putting it carefully back where she’d found it. “We all wondered where you’d gotten to.”

Annie sniffed, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her coat. Swift came into clarity through her tears. His blue eyes and tousled hair, the dimples in his cheeks as he caught on to her laughter, it was all that was right in the world.

“I was just taking a moment,” she admitted. “Then I was looking for some tissues because my moment took a detour.”

Swift gave her a lopsided smile and held out a hand.

“I’ve got a box in the living room,” he told her. “Super sized and coated in some sort of menthol balm. They make my eyes sting like crazy, but they’re great for clearing the sinuses.”

“Perfect.” Annie took his hand and got down from the driver’s seat.

As her feet hit the garage floor, Swift gathered her up in his arms and squeezed her so tight she thought she might not be able to breathe. But she stayed there, uncomplaining. Because it was just where she needed to be.

Five minutes passed by. In that time Annie felt her heart rate slow and her jaw unclench and her shoulders drop from their tense height back to where they were supposed to sit. Swift neither talked nor made a move to leave, he just kept her wrapped up in his arms where she knew they were both safe. She heard a throat being cleared and looked around Swift’s chest to see Page and Tink standing in the doorway to the boot room. Page had a tray of food in his hands. It looked like Annie’s favourite picky tea and smelled like melted cheese and butter and salty potatoes.

“Food’s ready,” Tink said, clutching a corner of the platter.

“Tink says that like she gave me a hand,” Page laughed.

“I peeled those things, didn’t I?” she bit back.

“By things you mean the sweet potatoes?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Or maybe you mean the peppers.”

Tink looked at Page and narrowed her eyes, pouting.

“You’re trying to get me to trip up, we didn’t peel the peppers… did we?”

They carried on squabbling playfully as they turned and headed back into the house, still carrying the tray between them.

“Hungry?” Swift asked Annie, throwing an arm over her shoulder.

“Starving.” Annie leant into him.

They walked to the door together, ready to head inside and eat and sleep and play ref between their team members. Letting Annie go first, Swift hesitated in the doorway, one foot still in the garage. He glanced back and winced.

“You go on, Annie, I’ll just be a moment,” he told her. “You’ve parked the car a little skewiffy, I’m just going to straighten it up.”

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PROLOGUE

This is an uncorrected proof copy, please do not quote from or use for marketing without the publisher’s permission.

The studio was quiet, save for the faint hum of the electric heater battling against the chill seeping through the old brick walls. Eliza Warren rubbed her hands together, the faint sting of cold making her joints ache and her skin prickle. Despite the light from the overhead spots, the room felt shadowed, as if the night itself had crept inside and nestled in the corners of the studio amongst the blank canvasses and the ones Eliza had discarded.

These canvases were arranged like sentinels along the walls, some draped in protective sheets, others bare and raw. Each one was a tiny fragment of her life’s work, yet none quite as unsettling as the painting that now stood on the spare easel in the corner by the window.

Her unfinished portrait.

She avoided looking directly at it as she worked, adjusting the placement of smaller pieces destined for tomorrow’s exhibition. She’d painted hundreds of portraits over the years—faces of strangers, loved ones, even herself—but this one was different. It had been from the start.

The subject was a woman. Eliza didn’t know her name, though the face had haunted her dreams for weeks before she’d begun painting. She’d woken in a cold sweat one night, the image of those piercing grey eyes burned into her mind. Throwing the cat from the blankets, Eliza had rushed down the stairs to her studio before the vision faded and had painted with the ferocity of an axe murdered going at his prey. The paint had covered her and dotted the concrete floor, but she had tunnel vision. Not able to look away from her work until the first layer had been put to canvas.

Now, the portrait sat there, accusing and incomplete.

Eliza set down the frame she’d been holding and wiped her hands on her apron. The studio felt colder than it should have, even with the heater running. She turned her head, drawn by the faintest tug of awareness, her gaze landing on the painting.

The woman’s unfinished face seemed to glow in the light, her pale features almost luminescent against the shadowy background. Her lips were parted slightly, as if about to speak, and her eyes—those eyes—seemed alive, full of a quiet rage that Eliza could feel in her chest.

She shivered and turned away.

“It’s just a painting,” she muttered under her breath, forcing herself to focus on the tasks at hand.

Her final exhibition. That was how the gallery director had described it, though Eliza hadn’t thought of it in such dramatic terms. It wasn’t as though she was hanging up her paint brushes, just that these days she found her hands weren’t quite as willing as they had been, and her eyesight wasn’t quite a sharp as it once was. Still, there was a weight to the planned event. After decades of perfecting her craft, of creating images that seemed to breathe and pulse with life, Eliza felt a deep sadness at the director’s counsel.

She reached for a small canvas leaning against the wall, its gilded frame catching the light, but her hands trembled as she lifted it.

Behind her, the air seemed to shift.

She froze, the canvas slipping slightly in her grip. The studio was empty—she knew that. The door was locked, the windows bolted shut. But there it was again, that sensation, like the brush of a hand against her shoulder.

“Eliza,” she whispered to herself. “You’re overworked. Tired. Getting older. That’s all.”

But even as she said it, she couldn’t ignore the creeping unease. Slowly, she turned her head, her gaze flicking back to the portrait.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Something was different.

The woman’s face hadn’t changed—at least, not at first glance. But there was something in her expression, a subtle shift that Eliza couldn’t quite place. Her lips seemed... tighter, almost curling into the faintest of smiles.

Eliza took a step closer, her heartbeat thundering in her ears.

“It’s just the light,” she said aloud, her voice reedy.

She reached out to adjust the lamp above the easel, hoping a change in angle would banish the illusion. The light flickered briefly before settling, casting stark shadows across the woman’s face.

Her grey eyes were watching Eliza. Knowingly.

Eliza stumbled back, her hip colliding with a low table and sending a jar of brushes clattering to the floor. She gasped, the sound sharp in the thick silence it had broken. The painting hadn’t moved. It couldn’t have moved.

And yet...

The longer she stared, the more convinced she became that the woman’s expression had shifted again. Her lips were no longer parted, and her eyes—those impossibly vivid eyes—seemed to glisten with tears.

“No,” Eliza whispered, shaking her head. “This isn’t real. I’m imagining it.”

But her gaze was fixed on the canvas, unable to look away. The air in the studio felt heavy, charged, like the moments before a thunderstorm. She could hear her own breathing, shallow and quick, playing a sorry tune against the ticking of the old clock on the windowsill.

And then it happened.

A movement.

Not in the studio, but on the canvas. The woman’s head tilted ever so slightly, her eyes narrowing as if she were focusing on Eliza.

Eliza screamed, stumbling back again and nearly tripping over the scattered brushes. Her back hit the wall, and she pressed herself against it, her hands trembling as they gripped the fabric of her painting apron.

The lights flickered once more, casting the studio into brief, suffocating darkness before flaring back to life.

The painting was no longer serene.

The woman’s face an expression, twisted into something cruel, her mouth curling into a sneer that stretched unnaturally wide. Her eyes, the very reason Eliza had fought to paint this portrait, now black pits; endless and hollow.

“Eliza,” a voice whispered, low and rasping, from somewhere deep within the room.

Eliza’s heart stopped. The sound wasn’t human, it was a voice carried on the wind. She scanned the room frantically, but there was no one there.

“No,” she said, her voice trembling. “This isn’t happening.”

The shadows in the studio seemed to thicken, pooling from the corners and stretching toward her like grasping hands. The light flickered again, plunging the room into darkness for longer this time.

When the light returned, the painting was different again.

The woman was gone.

The canvas was blank, the brushstrokes of the background smeared as if someone had dragged a hand across the wet paint.

Eliza’s knees buckled, and she sank to the floor, her breath coming in shallow gasps. She stared at the empty canvas, her mind racing to make sense of what she had seen.

Then, slowly, she turned her head toward the corner of the room.

And there she was.

The woman from the painting stood in the shadows, her pale face illuminated by the faint glow of the heater. She stepped forward, her bare feet soundless against the wooden floor.

Eliza tried to scream, but no sound came.

The last thing she saw before the light flickered and died a final death, was the woman’s terrifying face, inches from her own.

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ALSO BY K.T. GALLOWAY

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The O’Malley & Swift adventures available to buy now!

CORN DOLLS

Their first case sees Annie and Joe on the hunt for a young girl who is missing. Snatched from her home during a game of hide and seek. Left behind in her place is a doll crudely twisted from stalks of corn.

FOXTON GIRLS

When a spate of suicides occur at prestigious girls' school, Foxton's, Psychotherapist Annie O'Malley is called in to talk with the students.

What Annie finds are troubled young girls full of secrets and lies; and a teacher caught in the midst.

WE ALL FALL DOWN

When a young woman falls ill and dies after a night out, her friends blame a cloaked figure that had been stalking them in the streets. A masked face with hooked beak, immediately recognisable as a Plague Doctor.

THE HOUSE OF SECRETS

With a lead on her missing sister, Annie and Joe travel north and rent a small cottage in the village where Mim was last spotted. Only, the village has a dark history of its own. The cottage was home to a family who haven’t been seen in over forty years. Their things still packed away in the basement, awaiting their return. It's a macabre destination for the dark tourist, and the rest of the village isn't much more welcoming.

THE UNINVITED GUEST

Back in Norfolk and back to work, Annie O’Malley and DI Swift are called to an isolated seaside village and the exclusive Paradise Grove Spa. Renowned for its peace and tranquility, the spa and its staff offer the chance to relax and recuperate in a discrete private setting on its own causeway. So when a dead body turns up in one of the rooms with no clue to who he is or how he got there, suspicion falls on the secretive group of guests.

DEADLY GAMES

When Annie and Joe are called to the local park to investigate reports of vandalism, they begin one of the most harrowing cases of their career. The vandal is a scared young woman with a bomb strapped to her chest and a list of games she must play. As the games get more gruesome, the young woman has a choice to make; kill or be killed.

ONE LAST BREATH

After the distress of Annie O’Malley’s last case, she’s in need of a bit of rest and recuperation. So her sister, Mim, books them on a flight to a luxury all inclusive resort in Spain for a break. But what was supposed to be a chance to sip sangria and reconnect with each other after so long apart soon turns into something terrifying when a group of armed men storm the hotel and take the guests hostage.

VANISHING ACT

When the celebrated illusionist, Gabriel Mirage, is found dead in the midst of his own vanishing act, O’Malley and Swift are thrust into a realm where the truth is as elusive as the disappearing act itself.

CHILL PILL

Annie finally reconnects with her father, only for him to be arrested and beaten to a coma. Can she and Swift clear his name so Annie can find out the truth of her childhood before it’s too late?

BLEEDING HEARTS

In the game of love, losing your heart can be deadly. When six bodies are found in an abandoned pool, hearts missing, O'Malley and Swift race to stop a killer with a twisted message. Can they unravel the truth before another heart is stolen

THE GHOST PORTRAIT

When renowned artist, Eliza Warren, prepares her final exhibition, one portrait refuses to stay silent. The unfinished painting of a woman shifts, her face twisting with a sinister life of its own. As shadows close in, Eliza realises her masterpiece isn’t just art—it’s a deadly secret waiting to be unleashed.