DEAD SILENT. Neil White

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      Hunter scowled as he watched Roach march towards the double doors at the front of the house.

      ‘When were they last seen?’ Roach shouted over his shoulder.

      ‘About a week ago,’ Hunter replied.

      ‘So it could be a holiday.’

      ‘Claude’s chambers don’t think so. He’s halfway through an assault trial, and by disappearing they’ve had to abort it.’

      ‘What, you think they’ve run away?’

      ‘It depends on why they’ve gone,’ Hunter replied. ‘Bit of a gambler is Claude, so the rumours go. Maybe he’s had that big loss that always comes along eventually. If Mrs Gilbert is used to all of this, the fancy furniture, the dinner parties, the cash, she’s not going to settle for nothing. They could have emptied their accounts and gone somewhere.’

      Roach didn’t look convinced. ‘House prices are rising. There’ll be plenty of money tied up in this place.’

      Hunter took a step back and looked up at the house. The curtains were drawn in every window. ‘Maybe he got too involved in a case? Lawyers think they’re immune, but they’re not, and they’re dealing with some real nasty people. I know judges who have been threatened, just quiet words when they’re out with their wives, thinking that no one knows who they are.’ He stepped forward and pressed his face against one of the stained glass panels. ‘There’s a few letters on the floor, so they haven’t been here for a while.’

      ‘What do we do?’ Roach asked, looking around.

      Hunter followed his gaze. There was someone watching them from the other side of the road, a teenager, a newspape delivery bag on his shoulder. ‘Go ask him if he knows anything.’

      Roach paused for a moment, and then he shrugged and walked away. Hunter watched him until he was a few yards away, and then he rammed his elbow into the glass in the door. When Roach whirled around at the noise, Hunter shrugged and said, ‘Slipped,’ before he reached in and turned the Yale lock. Roach pulled a face before heading back to the house.

      The pile of letters scraped along the tiled floor as Hunter pushed open the door. He pointed at the envelopes. ‘See how far back the postmarks go.’

      Hunter squinted as his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. The hallway stretched ahead of them, with stairs leading upwards, the stained glass around the doors casting red and blue shadows along the wall. They both crinkled their noses. The house smelled stale.

      Hunter looked into the living room to his left. Nothing unusual in there. Two sofas and a television hidden away in a wooden cabinet, crystal bowls on a dresser, nothing broken. There was a room on the other side of the hallway dominated by a long mahogany table.

      ‘No sign of a disturbance,’ he said. ‘What about the letters?’

      ‘These go back a couple of days,’ Roach said, flicking through them. ‘Bills and credit card statements mostly.’

      Hunter went along the hall to the kitchen. It was a long room, with high sash windows looking along the garden. There was a yellow Aga and a battered oak table, and china mugs hung from hooks underneath dusty cupboards.

      ‘They hadn’t planned to leave,’ Roach said. When Hunter turned around, Roach was bathed in the light of the open fridge door, holding a half-empty milk bottle. ‘This is turning into yoghurt. They would have thrown it away.’

      Hunter scratched his head. He ambled over to the window and looked out at the two lawns, green and lush, separated by a gravel path. There was an elaborate fountain in one corner of the garden, with a wide stone basin and a Grecian statue of a woman holding an urn, with a steel and glass summer house in the other. Hunter could see the bright fronds of plants.

      Hunter looked downwards, at the floor and the walls, and then out at the garden again. He was about to say something when something drew his eye, a detail in the garden that didn’t seem quite right. He looked closer, wondering what he’d seen that had grabbed his attention, his eyes working faster than his mind, when he realised that it was the lawn itself. It was flat all the way along, green and even, but there was a patch near the back wall where it looked churned up, as if soil had been newly piled up on it.

      ‘What do you think to that?’ Hunter said, before turning around to see Roach kneeling down, examining the skirting and the wall. ‘What is it?’

      Roach looked up, his brow furrowed, his cockiness gone. ‘It looks like dried blood,’ he said. ‘And there’s some more on the wall.’

      Hunter followed his gaze; he saw it too. Just specks, and some faint brown smears on the white wall tiles, as if someone had tried to clean it away.

      ‘What do we do?’ Roach said.

      Hunter pursed his lips, knowing that he was in a lawyer’s home, and lawyers can make trouble.

      But blood was blood.

      ‘You can forget about your strawberries,’ Hunter said, and headed for the garden. As Roach joined him, Hunter lit a cigarette and made for the path that ran between the lawns.

      ‘Where are you going?’ Roach shouted.

      ‘Gardening,’ was the reply.

      Hunter walked quickly down the path, towards the disturbed patch of grass at the end of the garden. He stopped next to the soil beds beside the high garden wall, just before the path wound round towards the summer house. Hunter pointed. ‘Can you see that?’

      Roach looked and shrugged. ‘Can I see what?’

      ‘Soil,’ Hunter replied. ‘On the grass, and there on the path.’ He pointed at some more dark patches. ‘Someone’s been doing some digging round here.’

      ‘It’s a garden,’ Roach said. ‘It’s what people do.’

      Hunter ignored him and strode onto the soil beds, dragging his foot along the ground, his face stern with concentration. Then he stopped. He looked at Roach, and then pointed downwards.

      ‘It’s looser here,’ he said. ‘Crumblier, less dense. And there’s soil on the lawn and the path. Perhaps they thought it would be rained away, but it’s been hot all week.’ Hunter pointed to an old wooden shed, painted green, on the other side of the garden. ‘Get some spades.’

      Roach looked aghast. ‘We can’t rip up a barrister’s house just because we’ve found some old blood.’

      ‘Is that because he’s a barrister?’

      ‘Yes,’ Roach answered, exasperated, ‘because he can make trouble for us if we get it wrong.’

      Hunter drew on his cigarette. ‘We can wait for the rest of the squad to arrive, and they can get the excavators in here because you saw spilled gravy.’

      Roach looked uncertain.

      ‘Or we could dig a hole and then fill it back in again,’ Hunter said.

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