The Eighth Court (The Courts of the Feyr - By Mike Shevdon Page 0,18

said the first voice.

“Seems to be OK now,” said the man.

“I’ve got some candles if you need them. They’re scented ones, but if you need some I’ve got plenty.”

“I’m fine thanks.”

“Am I interrupting something?” said the female voice.

“I was just sitting down to supper,” said the male voice. I could hear the blatant lie in that. From the tone, I was surprised she couldn’t.

“OK then. I’d best be getting back.”

“See you, then.”

I heard the footsteps padding back to the door above me, and then the door closing. The man’s door closed too, but I thought for a moment I could hear the faint sound of giggling coming from the man’s flat, though not in a male voice.

I set that aside and peered through the window into Claire’s flat. The windows were shut, and there were no lights inside. There was a fire exit off the kitchen and I pressed my hand to the door, wary of booby traps. Claire knew to protect herself from intruders – especially ones with my abilities.

The door clicked and I eased it open slowly, opening my senses to the dim interior. What hit me first was the smell – a stuffy, foetid aroma that jarred with my memory of the flat. It had been spotless when I’d been here last, and I couldn’t imagine her leaving it otherwise.

I stepped inside, leaving the door ajar for the fresh air more than anything else. The interior was dim, but I could see marks on the walls that hadn’t been there before. I weighed the risk for a moment, and then clicked on the light. I didn’t fancy exploring the flat in the dark.

The glow from the energy-saving bulb gradually increased. Now that I could see, my heart sank. There was a long streak down the wall, as if someone had fallen backwards, trailing their hand down the wall while it was covered in brown paint. Except I already knew it wasn’t paint.

Now that I knew what to look for I could see the trail along the carpet. I followed it into the living room where I had once spent the night on the sofa. I clicked on another light.

This room had been Claire’s sanctuary. It was filled with keepsakes and dark-wood furniture. Some of that furniture had been hacked to pieces. Other pieces were smashed. The sofa I had slept on was slashed so that the stuffing bulged out in white tufts.

Someone had swept blood in spatter-lines up the walls and across the carpet. There were trails of blood everywhere.

Blood spatters onto the glass wall as Raffmir’s sword slices the head from the nurse who brought us the key to the cells. Her head bounces down the corridor. Lines of black blood run down the glass leaving a dark smear in their trail. The smell of fear and death is in my nostrils…

I shook myself, trying to push the memory from beneath Porton Down Research Centre back down. It was too much. I turned and ran for the fire escape, bursting through the door onto the balcony and throwing up over the railing into the alley below. There was little enough in my stomach, but that didn’t stop the dry heaving.

I already knew I was going to have to go back into the flat.

The kitchen seemed a good place to start. The bedrooms were what I’d been dreading. I’d seen too many bodies in the last year or so, and it never seemed to get any easier. I wondered how policemen coped, which set me thinking about Sam Veldon. Depending on what I found, I would decide whether Sam would have to be told.

I stood in the small galley kitchen and tried to piece together what had happened. Part of the smell was the slowly rotting red peppers on the chopping board and the chopped tomato in the pan on the stove. She had been in the middle of preparing a meal and then… what? Just left it? Heard a noise? There was a knife rack on the worktop. One of the knives was missing. It wasn’t on the worktop or in the sink where grease had congealed around the edge of the murky water.

I turned back past the fire exit and looked at the streak down the wall. It was blood – you didn’t need to be a forensic scientist to see that. Had she fallen? It looked like she’d pressed her hand to the blood and then collapsed, smearing it down the wall. There was