in the doorway. ‘How are you?’
‘Surviving.’ I nodded at Thomas. ‘I almost didn’t recognise him. He’s grown.’
‘They do that.’
‘He looks at home here.’
‘Your parents look after him now and then. When Melissa is busy and I’m working.’ He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, suddenly awkward. ‘They didn’t tell you?’
‘Keeping secrets goes both ways in this family,’ I said tartly, knowing that my dad was listening. He was smiling to himself when I looked across at him. It made sense to me, in a way; Derwent had moved to a house near them, and he and his girlfriend had no parents nearby to help out with Thomas. For reasons that escaped me, my parents loved Derwent. They must have been only too happy to involve themselves in his life. My brother Declan had two girls and they had been vocally disappointed that they didn’t have a grandson. It was up to me to provide one, Dec had informed me, because he was finished. I had done precisely nothing about that.
So, of course, my parents had taken matters into their own hands and found a substitute. I didn’t know why I was surprised.
‘Thomas, are you hungry?’
He nodded, his eyes round and hopeful.
‘Would you like a scone?’
‘Yes please.’
With some relief I put the plate down beside him and watched the scone disappear.
‘Better than a Labrador,’ Derwent said. ‘Can I have a word?’
‘Sure.’
He jerked his head towards the hall and I followed him out of the kitchen.
‘Are you bored yet?’
‘Out of my mind,’ I confessed.
‘Thought you might be. I brought you something.’ He handed me a folder and I flipped it open one-handed.
‘Kev’s report on the Bishops Avenue house. It’s exactly what I wanted. How did you know?’ I sat down on the bottom step of the stairs, already reading.
‘I had a feeling you’d want to see it.’ He leaned against the wall, watching me. I flipped through the report quickly, skimming for the gist, then closed the folder and looked up at him.
‘Very interesting.’
‘Understand any of it?’
‘Some parts,’ I said carefully.
He grinned and took out his phone. ‘He told me to call him so he can talk you through it.’
I put Kev on speakerphone so Derwent could hear both sides of the conversation. Kev sounded as if the only thing he had ever wanted to do, his whole life, was explain his report to me. ‘It was an interesting one! Big house, lots of visitors. It’s going to take a long time to identify all of the people who left their DNA in and around the place.’
‘What about the bathroom with the damaged bath?’
‘The whole room had been thoroughly cleaned many times, but I lifted the rubber sealant from around the bath and guess what? Blood. It gets everywhere, luckily for us.’
‘Do we know whose?’
‘We identified one sample as being likely to belong to Iliana Ivanova. She was reported as a missing person at home in Bulgaria and they had familial DNA on file in case a body turned up.’
‘Why didn’t we know Iliana was a missing person?’
Derwent answered. ‘Her family had no idea what had happened to her. One July day two years ago she didn’t answer her phone when they called. They never heard from her again. They did try to get the Met to take an interest in looking for her, but the case wasn’t progressed. As far as I can tell, a PC went round to her last known address, they said she’d moved on without leaving a forwarding address and the file was closed.’
It was all too easy to disappear, I thought, especially when you weren’t from the country where you went missing and no one there much cared you were gone.
‘What else did you find, Kev?’
‘Blood from three other sources, but I haven’t been able to identify any of them so far.’
‘Three? We only know of one other person they cut up – the man in the pool.’
‘I’m afraid so. Two of them are very small samples – hard to work with. We’re doing our best to get usable DNA.’
‘They were a bit too relaxed in that video when Iliana died. They’d used that method of disposing of bodies before.’
‘Could be they’ve used it since,’ Derwent said. ‘Too good a way of disposing of bodies not to take advantage of it.’
‘What about Paige Hargreaves? Did you find any trace of her?’
‘I didn’t find any evidence that she was there, but I didn’t find anything to say she wasn’t.’
‘Cagey,’ Derwent commented.
‘I’m not going to