The Dark

Book 2: Detective Alice Madison

by Valentina Giambanco

Genres: Female Sleuths; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

The critically acclaimed, breathtaking thriller: perfect for fans of Angela Marsons, CL Taylor and Kathryn Croft. Seattle Homicide Detective Alice Madison is bound to jailed murderer John Cameron and attorney Nathan Quinn by a debt that cannot be repaid, by a nightmare that changed their lives forever. When the remains of Quinn's younger brother - murdered as a boy - are discovered in a shallow grave, Madison vows to follow the trail of brutal deaths to discover the sinister truth. A sadistic killer stalks the investigation as demons from Madison's own past are unearthed and darkness closes in. How far is Madison prepared to go to save a life? Discover more Detective Alice Madison with the other books in the critically acclaimed series - The Gift of Darkness and Blood and Bone.

Release date: September 4, 2014

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 384

Sample

Alice Madison shifted in the comfortable upholstered armchair and adjusted the holster that dug a little into her right side. She stole a glance out of the wide window. Puget Sound shone in the pallid January light, the silver creased white in spots, and Mount Rainier rose from blue shadows in the far distance.

She turned when she realized the silence had stretched for longer than was polite. Dr. Robinson was watching her.

‘Don’t worry. I know people come here for the sharp psychological insights but it’s the view they stay for,’ he said.

He had made that joke the first time they had met a few weeks earlier. She smiled a little today as she had then, not entirely sure he was unaware he was repeating himself.

The sign in the lobby said Stanley F. Robinson PhD. The office on the fifteenth floor was smart, the colors muted.

He was early fifties, salt-and-pepper hair in a short cut and big brown eyes. A useful look for a psychologist who worked with cops: fairly unthreatening with bouts of inquisitiveness, she mused.

‘How was your week?’ he asked her. Dr. Robinson’s desk was mercifully free of pads and pens. If he took notes he did so after their sessions.

‘Good,’ Madison replied. ‘Paperwork from a few old cases to tidy up. A domestic incident which turned out to be nothing. Pretty standard stuff.’

‘Did you think about the forest incident? I mean, longer than for a few seconds during your day.’

‘No.’

‘Did you experience any unusual thoughts or have unusual reactions as you went about your business? I’ll let you tell me what’s unusual for you.’

‘No, nothing unusual.’

‘Any reaction to chloroform or other PTSD events?’

‘No.’

‘Anything at all about the last week or in general that you’d like to talk about?’

Madison had the good grace to at least pretend she was pondering the question.

‘Not really,’ she said finally.

Dr. Robinson mulled over her reply for a few moments. He sat back in his chair.

‘Detective, how many sessions have we had to date?’

‘This is the third.’

‘That’s right, and this is what I’ve learnt: you are a Homicide Detective; you joined your squad last November – that’s, what, about two and a half months ago, give or take. You have a Degree in Psychology and Criminology from the University of Chicago – good school, great football team. Your record at the Seattle Police Department is impeccable. You play well in the sandbox and there are no red flags in your private life. Not so much as a traffic violation. With me so far?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Last December all hell breaks loose and once the smoke clears the Department sends you here to make sure you’re fit for work and ready to protect and to serve. You are very frank: you admit to a reaction to chloroform as a consequence of Harry Salinger’s attack on you and your partner, but that stopped weeks ago. No panic attacks, no incidents of post-traumatic stress disorder. Nothing, after what happened in the forest. The boy, the rescue, the blood.’

He paused there and Madison held his eyes.

‘Do you know how long it took me to gain all this perceptive knowledge?’ He didn’t wait for her to reply. ‘Seven minutes. The rest of the time what I got was “good” and “pretty standard stuff” and “nothing unusual”.’

‘What do you want from me, Dr. Robinson?’

‘Me? Nothing. I’m quite happy for you to come up and just look at the view. You can do with the break and I get paid either way. But here’s the thing: even though I will certify that you are indeed fit to work and ready to protect and to serve – because you are – it is simply unthinkable that those thirteen days in December left no trace on you somehow. So, these goodies I’m giving you for free: you have occasional nightmares, possibly an exact memory of the event but more likely your own perception of the event and whatever troubles you about the nature of your own actions in it. And, most of all, I’m willing to bet you are careful never to be alone with your godson since you got him out of that forest. How am I doing?’

Madison didn’t reply.

‘Good meeting you, Detective. Have a nice life.’

Dusk. Alice Madison parked her Honda Civic in her usual spot by Alki Beach. Her running gear was stashed in a gym bag in the trunk but she leant against the bonnet and let the clean salty air into her lungs. The Seattle–Bremerton ferry was going past, seagulls trailing in its wake. Bainbridge Island was a blue-green strip across the water and downtown Seattle shimmered in the distance.

As far as she could remember, even as a newbie officer with her crisply ironed uniform, Madison had come to Alki Beach and run after her shifts. The comfort of the sand under her feet and the rhythm of the tide after a hard day; the sheer physical release after a good day. It had been a constant in her life and Madison knew very well that there were precious few of those, and she was grateful for it.

Then, the last day of the year just gone, after the end of those thirteen days, Madison had come back to the beach, changed into her sweats, started running and promptly slipped into a recall so vivid, so physical, that she had to stop: the sweet smell of pine resin still in her nostrils. Hands on her knees and water up to her ankles, her trainers soaked. Any dreams you want to tell me about?

Her arm had healed; the rest of her would take whatever time it would take. Madison changed in the back of her car. Her first strides were hesitant but she ignored the forest floor shifting under her feet, and the sudden scent of blood. And she kept running.

The rush-hour traffic carried Madison into California Avenue SW without any apparent effort on her part; she followed the flow south with the windows rolled down and her faded maroon University of Chicago hooded sweatshirt stuck to her back. She wiped the perspiration off her brow with a sleeve and drove, listening to the local news on the radio and not thinking about Stanley F. Robinson PhD.

We find our blessings where we can and Madison pulled into a parking space opposite Husky Deli and stretched her sore limbs as she locked her car.

Her grandfather had brought her here for an ice-cream cone her first weekend in Seattle. Her grandmother was busying herself in the market nearby. They sat at the counter; he looked at the 12-year-old girl he barely knew and spoke to her like no one had spoken to her before.

‘I hope you will like it here – I really hope you will. All I’m asking is that should there be anything troubling you, anything at all, you talk to me, to us. I don’t know what happened with your father and I’m not asking that you tell us. I’m just asking that you don’t run away, that you don’t just leave in the middle of the night. And we’ll do our best to help you in any way we can.’

Then he put out his hand. Alice looked at it; no one had ever asked her word about anything. She passed her Maple Walnut cone into her left hand and shook with her right, sticky with sugar. They kept their word, and so did she.

Madison rubbed the sole of her trainer against the edge of the pavement to get rid of a significant amount of Alki Beach that had insinuated itself into the grooves. She mingled with the shoppers and filled a basket with food for home as well as a Chicken Cashew sandwich – no parsley – and broccoli cheese soup that would probably not make it home.

Standing at the counter she was no different from anybody else.

‘Whole or half?’ the man asked.

‘Whole.’

‘Cup or bowl?’

‘Bowl.’

‘Roll?’

‘No, thank you.’

The man’s gaze lingered for a fraction of a second over the two-inch fine red line across her left brow; it would fade in time, the doctor had said. Madison hadn’t cared then and didn’t care today. All that mattered was that it made her a little bit more recognizable after the flurry of articles and media reports in early January.

The man nodded; he must have been working there since bread was invented.

‘Cone? Caramel Swirl’s freshly made.’

Madison smiled. ‘Not today.’

She started on the soup in the car, engine already running, and by the time she turned into Maplewood and her driveway, the carton was empty.

Three Oaks is a green neighborhood on the south-western edge of Seattle, on one side the still waters of Puget Sound and on the other patches of woodland and single family homes in well-tended gardens.

Madison parked next to her grandparents’ Mercedes and balanced her gym bag on one shoulder; her arm was wrapped around the grocery bag as she unlocked the door, toed the sandy trainers off and gently pushed the door shut with one foot.

She padded into the kitchen and unpacked the shopping. Without turning on the lights she crossed the living room and opened the French doors, letting in the fresh air. The answering machine flashed red. She ignored it, settled herself into a wicker chair on the deck, her feet on the wooden rail, and unwrapped the sandwich.

The garden sloped down to a narrow beach that ran along the waterside properties; tall firs on either side worked better than a fence. In the half-light Madison looked at the plants and the shrubs: soon they would wake up for a new life cycle – the Japanese maples, the magnolias – each one seeded and nurtured by her grandparents.

Madison knew nothing about gardening yet she would weed, water, prune and make sure that everything stayed alive because they weren’t there to do it anymore. She worried good intentions wouldn’t make up for ignorance. In her job they usually didn’t.

Once the stars were bright enough, Madison stepped inside. Her Glock went under the bed in its holster and her back-up piece – a snub-nose revolver – was oiled and dry-fired. Madison peeled off her sweats and climbed into a long hot shower.

The message had been from Rachel: ‘Tommy’s birthday party is next month. I hope you can make it.’ Nothing but love and kindness in her voice.

You have occasional nightmares, possibly an exact memory of the event but more likely your own perception of the event and whatever troubles you about the nature of your own actions in it. And, most of all, I’m willing to bet you are careful never to be alone with your godson since you got him out of that forest.

The nature of your own actions. Madison wasn’t exactly sure she understood the nature of her own actions and she was honest enough to admit to herself that there had been moments that night that she probably did not want to fully understand. It had been a blur of fear and rage and she didn’t know exactly how much of one or the other.

Tommy would be seven soon. On that awful night she had sung ‘Blackbird’ to him and he had come back to them, to life, to his red bicycle and his little boy’s games. Her godson would be seven and Madison tried hard to come up with an excuse not to go to the party and failed.

As every night since that day in December her last thoughts went to two men: one in jail, locked behind walls and metal doors guarded by armed correction officers, and yet more terrifyingly free than any human being she had ever met; and the other in the prison of his injuries, somewhere deep past the corridors and the silent rooms of a hospital a few miles away. His sacrifice had meant Tommy would have a seventh birthday party. She could not think of one without the other.

Madison closed her eyes and hoped sleep would come quickly.

Under the bed, inside the safe, a neatly folded page from The Seattle Times has been tucked under the off-duty piece.

BLUERIDGE KILLER CAUGHT

In the early hours of December 24 the nightmare that had gripped Seattle for thirteen days finally came to an end. Harry Salinger, the prime suspect in the murder of James and Annie Sinclair and their two young sons, was apprehended by Seattle Police Department Homicide Detective Alice Madison in an undisclosed location in the Hoh River Forest.

Mr. John Cameron, who had initially been under investigation for the crime, and his attorney Mr. Nathan Quinn, of Quinn Locke & Associates, were also present. The former is being held without bail on a charge of attempted murder. Mr. Salinger, an Everett resident, sustained life-threatening injuries and is now under guard in a secure medical facility.

Mr. Salinger has also been charged with the kidnap and reckless endangerment of Thomas Abramowitz, 6, Det. Madison’s godson, and with the assault on Det. Sgt. Kevin Brown and Det. Madison earlier in December.

SPD has not made public when Det. Sgt. Brown will come back to active duty.

Mr. Cameron and Mr. Sinclair were first connected by tragic circumstances as children twenty-five years ago when three Seattle boys were abducted and abandoned in the Hoh River Forest, Jefferson County.

Nathan Quinn held up his left hand and flexed it. It was flawless. No scars, no pain. He stood in the clearing in the Hoh River Forest; he saw every twist in every branch and there was nothing but woods and winding streams for miles. The air was soft on his skin and sunlight slanted through the spruces. A warm, sunny August afternoon. All was well, all was peace.

A whisper through the grass behind him and Quinn turned.

A boy watched him from the edge of the treeline. Twelve years old, fair wavy hair and pale lips. So pale.

‘David?’

The boy was barefoot.

‘David?’

Nathan Quinn felt the jolt of awareness as the morphine wore off and he remembered that he was in a hospital and his brother had been dead for twenty-five years.

‘Mr. Quinn.’ The nurse’s voice found him through the dull pain that had welcomed his body back. ‘There are some police officers here to speak with you. If you feel up to it.’

Nathan Quinn held up his left hand: it was covered in bandages and as he flexed his fingers the pain ran up his arm. In the last four weeks he has seen no one except for doctors, nurses, two detectives from the Seattle Police Department who took his statement and Carl Doyle, his assistant at Quinn Locke & Associates. Everyone else without exception has been turned away. After two weeks in a medically induced coma he had barely the strength to breathe.

‘They’re from Jefferson County,’ the nurse said.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I know.’

It was Saturday and Madison was off duty – a rare event. Her days off had acquired a routine of late: the call, the journey, the exchange of information, the second call. Madison checked her watch – her grandfather’s: 8.25 a.m. Enough time to put on a wash; she picked up her sweats from the floor where they’d been discarded and added whatever was left in the hamper.

She pulled on black jeans, a dark blue shirt and short leather boots. Her cell rang as she was adjusting the snub-nose revolver into an ankle holster.

She picked it up from the bedside table.

‘Madison,’ Lieutenant Fynn said.

‘Sir.’ Madison froze with her trouser hem stuck in her boot: her shift commander would not call her at home on her day off for chit-chat and giggles.

‘Just had a call from Jefferson County. Four days ago park police found human remains about a mile from where you were. Took them this long to recover them.’

Madison knew what was coming before she heard the words.

‘A child. The remains are years old.’

‘David Quinn,’ she whispered.

‘Could very well be. County police is getting a new DNA sample from Nathan Quinn as we speak. We’ll know soon enough.’

‘The kidnap happened in Seattle. It’s our investigation.’

‘I know. If it’s David Quinn they’ll ship the remains to our ME and we’ll pick it up from there.’

‘Thanks for letting me know.’

‘It’s worse than we thought.’

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘The skull bears evidence of trauma.’

Madison’s mind raced to recall the details she had learnt from the newspapers.

‘No, David Quinn suffered from congenital arrhythmia. At the original inquest—’

‘Madison, if that child is David Quinn it wasn’t accidental death. He was killed by blunt trauma to the head.’

‘It’s …’ She struggled to find the words.

‘I thought you would want to tell him in person.’

‘Yes, I’ll be on my way in a minute.’

‘Way to spend your day off.’

Fynn had just rung off when the cell beeped again.

‘It’s Doyle.’

‘Carl. How are you?’

‘I honestly don’t know, Detective. How are you?’

‘I’ve just heard; my boss called me.’

‘It will take a few days for confirmation, they said. Do you need to write this down?’

‘No, go ahead.’

‘Blood pressure normal; the swabs came back clear – no infection; physio was hell this week – as they expected – but it’s progressing. Eye test, no difference from before the event. So far, so good. The antibiotics for the partial splenectomy are very strong; they hope to diminish the dose gradually and see how the remaining spleen will react. No temperature, no unusual numbers in the blood work.’

‘Thank you, Carl.’

‘Are you going for the 10 a.m. slot?’

‘I am.’

‘Are you going to tell him?’

‘Yes, he has a right to know before it hits the news.’

‘We’ll speak after.’

Madison shrugged on a blazer and locked her front door. The drive would give her time to prepare herself. Whatever good it will do.

It had taken them twenty-five years to find him but at last David Quinn was coming home. Abducted with two friends and taken to the Hoh River Forest, tied to a tree with a heavy rope and left to fight for breath until he passed out. Then the men had taken his body and left the other children to the approaching night. No one was ever charged with the kidnap, no reason had ever been found for the abduction. There was no body, no forensics, no chance of a prosecution.

Three children were taken into the woods, two came out alive. One, James Sinclair, would grow up to be a good man, to have a family and to perish one day last December by the hand of a madman. The other would grow up to be something quite different.

Madison drove south on 509, she took an exit west through Des Moines and then crossed I–5, heading fast toward the King County Justice Complex and John Cameron, the last surviving Hoh River boy.

The King County Justice Complex rose from a concrete parking lot, telling the world exactly what it was: an adult detention center for 1,157 inmates, waiting for trial or sentenced as per the Washington State Guidelines Commission instructions.

Madison made sure nothing had been left in view on the car seats and walked toward the Visitors’ Reception.

Family groups and single people were also making their way in for the 10 a.m. slot, the sun doing little to warm up the group in the shadow of the 20 ft-high perimeter wall.

Madison could have locked her off-duty piece in the safe at home and avoided the issue of checking it at the Reception Desk but she was a cop. She carried a shield, she carried a piece.

She filed in with the others, a quiet serious group with a few somber children.

A young woman in a delicately patterned dress made a beeline for Madison as soon as she entered the Reception.

‘Detective Madison, if you have a moment the Deputy Warden would like a word before your visit.’

Mid-twenties, softly spoken, blonde hair up in bun. She looked like she could have been handing out books and lollipops in a children library.

‘Sure,’ Madison replied.

‘I’m Karen Hayes.’ The young woman led her down a side corridor. ‘I assist both the Warden and the Deputy Warden.’

Madison had never been inside that part of the jail. It could have been any kind of corporate business: people typing in offices, carpeted floors and water coolers. Still, about twenty-three locked metal doors away from the small geranium pot on Karen’s desk men stood, walked and slept, men who had taken lives and done things to their victims that made them wish for death.

These clerks and secretaries organized their days, their dental checks, their parole boards and their menus – all in these brightly lit rooms scented with sandalwood and apple.

Madison, on the other hand, had reached into their thoughts and followed them into dark alleys and, in spite of the sandalwood, she felt their proximity like the touch of gun metal between her shoulder blades.

‘Detective Madison.’ The Deputy Warden held his office door open for her. He looked like a benign high school principal; a white button-down with a burgundy tie and his jacket hung on a rack.

‘I’m Will Thomas, Deputy Warden at KCJC.’

He shook her hand once and waved her to a chair in front of his desk. ‘I thought we should – how can I put it – open the channels of communication.’

Madison had no idea what he meant; she felt her own instant reaction to impending governmental speak and hoped her natural courtesy would hold.

‘You are here to visit John Cameron.’

And there it was.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘You’re not family and you’re not a friend.’

‘No.’

‘You’re not his attorney and you’re not here on police business.’

‘No.’

‘Yet you have visited him regularly since he was brought here at the end of December. He is quite popular. Alleged murderer of nine, charged with assault and denied bail. Since he was apprehended FBI agents from LA have come to interview him, as well as assorted officers from the DEA and the ATF – and I don’t know how many media requests we’ve had. He turned down every one of them. A popular guy apart from one thing.’ Deputy Warden Thomas sat back in his chair and regarded Madison.

‘He hasn’t spoken one word. Not to them, not to anybody. Except,’ he smiled briefly, ‘to you.’

Madison flashed back to a clearing in the Hoh River Forest in the early hours of the morning: Tommy frozen cold in her arms, Nathan Quinn covered in blood at her feet, and John Cameron standing before her like he was made of the very night around them.

‘If you want to leave, leave now. If you stay, do not say anything to me or to anybody at all. Do you understand?’

‘John Cameron chose to stay because Quinn was badly injured even though he knew the police were on their way. Quinn was injured saving my godson’s life. That’s why I’m here.’

‘I see. How is Mr. Quinn?’

‘Progressing.’ Madison replied. ‘Slowly.’

‘How is Harry Salinger?’

‘I have no idea.’

Harry Salinger had torn through their lives and almost destroyed them; Cameron had left him close to death on the river bank that night. The judicial system might hold Cameron on a charge of Attempted Murder but Madison could not put a name to what he had done to Salinger.

‘Detective, I like to think of KCJC as a ship, a very large ship. Some people come and go, as you do today, but others, like Mr. Cameron, come to stay for a long time. A long journey, so to speak. I want to keep that journey as smooth as possible. For him, and for everyone else here. You know he’s not in the general population, right?’

‘I know.’

‘Two days after he arrived the incidents of violence between inmates went up ten per cent. Just knowing he was here.’

Madison knew that if Cameron was kept in isolation it wasn’t for his own protection.

‘There’s a long line of men who can’t wait to prove themselves against him and that, I’m afraid, is not something we can have. So, since you’re the only person he speaks to, I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page.’

‘We don’t swap recipes, sir. I barely know the man.’

‘Still,’ the Deputy Warden said, ‘is there anything I should know?’

Not a benign principal, more a science teacher about to dissect a frog.

‘John Cameron was not apprehended, Mr. Thomas,’ Madison said. ‘He wasn’t caught. He’s here because he chooses to be. As long as everybody remembers that you shouldn’t have any problems.’

‘Why would he choose imprisonment?’

‘Because he wouldn’t leave Quinn while he was fighting for his life.’

‘Maybe you overestimate his personal involvement in the situation, and underestimate the security systems of this institution. This is not a bed and breakfast in the San Juan Islands.’

‘You might want to ask Harry Salinger about how personally involved Cameron felt when Salinger murdered James Sinclair and his family. As for the security system here, nothing would make me happier than knowing it’s as good as you say it is.’

They regarded each other for one long moment and Madison saw a man with graying sandy hair and a desk bare of any family photos, a man trying to keep things running in a place where men would do anything to anyone for any reason.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘For what it’s worth, Cameron doesn’t feel he has anything to prove to anybody. He’s not vain; he’s not going to go out of his way to make trouble. But if someone – if anyone stands between him and the thing he wants, he will not be stopped, not without extreme consequences for both sides.’

‘What if he changes his mind about staying?’

Madison stood up to leave. ‘We can only hope that he doesn’t.’

The first time Madison had met John Cameron she had followed him into a dark wood and waited, unarmed, just to speak with him. The second time he had broken into her home and she hadn’t even known he was there. The third time they had chased Harry Salinger, the man who had killed his friend and kidnapped her godson, through the Hoh River Forest.

If John Cameron was out in the world, she would be one of the people who would hunt him down. If she was the one between Cameron and whatever it was he wanted, she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to remove the obstacle. If there were words for that kind of acquaintance, Madison didn’t know them.

As always, they met in a separate cell, away from the bustle of the visiting room and the brazen curiosity of inmates and strangers. Madison had checked in her shield and her piece, the female guard assessing her like one would an unexploded device.

She had been patted down and cleared and now stood in a bare room made of metal bars inside a larger room; a scratched table bolted to the floor and two chairs made in a prison workshop somewhere in the fifties completed the setup.

The door opened and two armed guards came in, escorting a tall man in orange overalls. It meant he was waiting for trial and had been denied bail; it meant a crime of violence.

Madison turned to face him.

His file told her that he was thirty-seven years old, six years older than she was, and that the four scars that crossed and glistened on the back of his right hand were a reminder of the hours spent tied to a tree with James Sinclair and David Quinn when he was twelve. The numbers were unforgiving: five men on board the Nostromo, three drug dealers in LA, one dealer in Seattle. Nine alleged murders: not one of them had ever come anywhere near any charges.

The file gave details and dates and times of death but it couldn’t possible give a sense of what it was like to stand in the same room as this man. The fact they were inside a jail was incidental. He was a predator and when his amber eyes met hers she felt the familiar chill in the pit of her stomach.

‘Detective.’

‘Mr. Cameron.’

He wasn’t shackled. The two guards simply withdrew and locked the barred door of the cell with the scraping of metal against metal. Madison could see them in the low light, flanking the exit, their weapons – and their desire to be anywhere else – in plain sight.

His dark hair had been cut jail short but aside from that she couldn’t see any discernible changes. He looked as if he had just strolled in, as if he could just as easily stroll out. Only one thing was different, she realized – not that anyone else would notice: she had seen Cameron with Nathan Quinn and there was an ember of humanity there, of warmth. This Cameron was completely shut down; the man who had drunk coffee at her grandmother’s table had packed up and gone.

They sat. Madison gathered her thoughts. He waited. This visit was going to be different.

‘I just spoke with Doyle.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and recalled the details. ‘Blood pressure normal; the swabs were clear – no infection; physio is coming on, with difficulty. Eye test was positive, no sight loss. They want to diminish the antibiotics for the spleen gradually and see how it will behave. No temperature, blood work okay.’

John Cameron held her eyes. His gaze was very direct and Madison wondered what he had learnt about her during these visits and how he would use it one day, out of this cell.

‘Thank you, Detective.’ He stood up and was almost at the door in one swift silent movement.

‘There’s something else.’

He turned.

They had never spoken about it and as far as Madison knew the children had hardly spoken about it at all at the time.

‘About a mile from the clearing …’ there was no need to clarify where that was, not to this man ‘… Park police found human remains. A child. Possibly buried over twenty years ago.’

Something came and went in Cameron’s eyes. A thought, maybe hope. Madison couldn’t tell yet his focus on her was almost tangible.

For twenty-five years everyone had believed that the death had been accidental. They had been wearing blindfolds, they had heard him suffocate. As if that day hadn’t borne enough misery.

‘There was blunt trauma to the head, enough for cause of death,’ she continued.

John Cameron stood quite still. There were memories there, Madison was sure of it.

‘They have just taken a fresh DNA sample from Quinn,’ she fi