DI Bassett

By the time we arrived, it was already too late. No sign of forced entry. No sign of the horrors that lay within, no sign of the crime that had transformed one woman’s top floor, cosy Victorian flat into something from Stephen King’s nightmares. No sign until –

DS Taylor lets me in. ‘In the living room, Guv. It’s weird. And not pretty.’

I walk down the hallway, squeezing past a man and a woman in latex gloves wielding blusher brushes, dusting down every surface in a search for a print. A flashbulb from a pathology photographer’s camera acts like a distress flare, showing the way.

The room’s crowded. Too much furniture, too big for the space. Too many people. Too many memories. Too many lies. Too many of us, standing around, drinking sweet tea from styrofoam cups, talking into mobiles, breathing in the dark smell of musty upholstery and past their sell-by date flowers and death.

And her. The victim. The deceased. Sitting in her chintz armchair like she’s waiting for tea for two. Except the tea’s gone cold and the top of her head’s been removed like a scalped boiled egg, a yolk of blood spilling down her face that wears a look of incongruous serenity. A cap of skin and bone and long red hair sits neatly in her lap, a fright wig emblem of silent ferocity.

In front of her, a coffee table’s been overturned. In the space where it stood lies a once white sheet, now blood-spattered. And drawn onto the sheet are two circles, one inside the other. Inside the inner circle, a pointed image, like a Star of David. Around it between the two circles, more stars, crosses, what look like ancient symbols.

I force myself to look away. Which is when I see the writing on the wall. In blood. Streaks of blood. And whilst it’s still legible, it’s also as if something, someone’s, tried to wash it away. From the snares of the Devil deliver us O Lord.

I walk over to the wall and look at it. It’s wet, not just blood wet, but water wet. As if the wall is crying. Crying for the scene laid out before it. Pink rivers trickle down the wall, following geographical pathways made of raised patterns in the wallpaper to the skirting where they dribble into dirty stains, topographical rivers of blood by William Morris.

I stand looking at the wall. It’s like I’m not really here. I swear I can hear voices, indistinct, echoing voices, voices that mourn, voices that implore, voices that beseech –

‘Guv? Guv?’ A different voice. An everyday voice. Taylor’s voice. ‘You alright, Guv? You were miles away.’

I pull myself back into reality. The wall’s dry. The blood’s dry. The letters are clear. From the snares of the Devil deliver us O Lord.