Chapter 12

As he came around to the rear and approached the back door, he noticed how suddenly darkness had crept up on him. Dusk was sucking up the natural light, so he pulled out his pocket torch. The small beam shone to the far side of the estate. It was only the evening, and it was spring, but the weather had been grey since morning so it was unsurprisingly bleak now. A few knocks on the door and adjacent windows, more for posterity than in genuine expectation, along with some customary sweeps of the torchlight up and down the brickwork. He looked like a proper detective doing some real detecting, thought Jain, with a wry smirk. Eventually, the detective started looking away from the house itself and towards the other small structures dotted around the rear. Another memory flashed back, but this one was not of Neates House. Instead, a memory of police training school popped up like a projection in his mind. Jain vividly remembered a course on domestic violence and missing persons, whereby the trainer had shown them some photos from a real case.

This case involved a young woman who had reported domestic abuse to the police on numerous occasions but her abuser was never arrested. One day, she was reported missing by her family, so the police went to her home and spoke to the husband. He confirmed that she had gone missing but did not know where she was. Days later, after the case was escalated up the police ranks, her body was found in their shed, almost folded in half, legs sticking up from within a refuse bin. She had been there in that exact position when the officers first went to speak to the husband, but as they had not done any checks on the property her body went undiscovered for almost a week. Days of agony for the family not knowing what had happened. Days of degradation and lost evidence due to body decomposition. And, days of opportunity for the husband to get away. Fortunately, he was arrested and ultimately imprisoned, explaining that he had beaten her in anger until she had stopped moving. He had panicked and hidden her body in the shed. When the police came round he almost confessed to them, but when they left without finding her he gained confidence and thought he had gotten away with it, but did not yet know what to do with the body. It turned out that he had beaten her on many occasions and she had been failed by the authoritiesthe policewho could have prevented her murder. The memory of that case, and the photos in particular, had always stuck with Jain when most other legal definitions and case law had long since been forgotten. For that reason, he looked at his surroundings now and realised that if he did not look in all of them, then he might be failing someone.

Jain started with the old stables, methodically opening and looking in each. They were all just empty concrete shells. He moved on to the sheds, and found them all empty except one. This shed was most certainly not a lifeless, empty shell. In fact, it looked positively homely. Aside from all the tools and gardening equipment, there were other items that the detective considered odd for that location. There was an oil lamp on a shelf, unlit, but quite new lookingand a massive fire hazard, he thought. There was a thick blanket, folded up and neatly placed atop a stack of sealed compost bags. There was a Thermos flask, with tea still inside, on a different shelf, and a carrier bag with some sandwich wrappers on the floor. The use-by date on the sandwiches indicated they had been purchased at least three days ago. Jain also noticed a red stain on the corner of a shelf near the doorway. Jain used his phone camera, and handy flashlight, to take a photo of the belongings before inspecting the red stain more closely. He had seen enough blood in his time to be fairly sure that's what it was. His gaze drifted vertically down from the shelf and he saw spots of red on the floor beneath it. He took another photo and walked back out of the shed.

The rest of the area was pretty much just grass and trees. Big, old trees lining the perimeter, going back as far as the low light allowed him to see. He decided there was nothing more he could do here and it was time to leave. Trees couldn't tell him anything. Walking back down the gravel path to his car, he saw a man stood next to it, looking in the window. He stepped off the noisy gravel and onto the quiet grass, quickening his pace. Just before reaching the gate he shouted, "What are you doing?"