LITMIR.BIZ

      PROLOGUE

      WEDNESDAY, 8TH OF NOVEMBER

      Costello pulled her car up outside the Haggerty family home. The large house on Balcarres Avenue would always be that to her – the family home. Now it looked cold and dead in the bright winter sunshine, rays glinted off the ivy-covered slates giving a sparkle to the bricks of the red chimneys. She looked at the stained-glass window, the multi-coloured mosaic of Botticelli’s Primavera was just visible through the reaching branches of the monkey puzzle tree. Behind the tall wrought-iron gates the grass was verdant, the pebbles still raked into the neat furrows that had so impressed Archie Walker. On that day.

      That dreadful day when she and Archie had walked up the path, Costello ignoring the sense of dread in her stomach.

      The trees were tall and mature, even devoid of leaves they cast long spindly shadows over the wide road, old-fashioned, gently cambered. The kind of surface that leant itself to roller-skating, so Costello’s granny had once told her.

      She turned the Fiat’s engine off, slipping down in the seat, thinking about another night she had parked in this very spot, that cold night she had seen Malcolm try to climb out the window above the porch, attempting to get away from his father. And Costello was convinced that was exactly what the boy was doing. Involuntarily, she picked up her mobile, looking at the blank screen. Malcolm had left her a message on her phone. A twelve year old wanting help from a detective to escape from a monster, to get away from his father. George Haggerty.

      The bastard.

      But she’d got the voicemail the following morning. When it was too late.

      Six hours after he had summoned up enough courage to defy his father and call Costello, she and Archie had walked up this path, entered the family home and found Malcolm’s body, curled up on the beige carpet at the foot of his parent’s bed, Abigail Haggerty had her arms still wrapped round Malcolm, holding him close, giving her only son some solace as his short life slipped away. No doubt her own last breath had swiftly followed.

      That image was seared into Costello’s memory, Abigail and Malcolm, and the speckles and spatters of crimson blood on the mirrored wardrobe doors. She could recall the events up to that, walking into the house, opening the unlocked back door; the first warning sign. Then the music floating from above; ‘The Clapping Song’. The element of theatre. Then upstairs past the little teardrop of blood on the magnolia wallpaper, the stain the killer thought he’d cleaned away. Then into Malcolm’s bedroom, too quiet. The Star Wars posters on the walls, the smooth R2D2 duvet cover decorated with a Celtic top, a pair of black leggings, two woollen socks, the trainers. They were arranged as if the child had been lying there, dressed and then spirited away, shedding his clothes and leaving them behind.

      In the car, Costello wiped an angry tear from her eye, remembering how she had paused on the top landing, alert to the smell of blood. She had hesitated, not wanting to go any further but the door of the master bedroom was open, intriguing and beguiling. And all the time that song was playing.

      Clap clap.

      At that moment Costello had known, that was George Haggerty’s little joke. Clap, clap. He had looked right at her as he stood at his stepdaughter’s funeral, smirking, slowly clapping his gloved hands.

      Standing in the doorway she had seen the blood on the doors, the walls, the ceiling. She had to force herself to carry on willing herself to think past the iron-rich stench of the blood, the sweeter mulch of faecal matter. Her last memory was of Abigail lying curled, her arm up and over the smaller figure of her son; Malcolm’s hands wrapped round her elbow, his fingers still gripping the lilac silk of her blouse.

      At the time, Costello had presumed she would have the next day to sort it out.

      She had been wrong.

      What would happen if she didn’t act now? What if she ran out of time? She gripped the steering wheel in frustration; her colleagues in major investigations had accepted George Haggerty’s alibi as cast iron. To her mind only the guilty had alibis as good as that. George’s alibi for the night his wife and child were killed was Police Scotland.

      Costello knew she’d get the bastard, she had been watching his every move since.

      She only had to wait. Bastard.

      She looked back at the gates, closed now to keep the media away from the ‘Monkey House of Horror’. What secrets had been obscured by the monkey puzzle tree that had grown large in the front garden, hiding the windows from prying eyes?

      Costello had only to wait twenty minutes before she saw some movement through the bare branches of the beech hedge. She had been following George Haggerty for a couple of weeks; she knew his routine. He would be going north to see his father in Port MacDuff now. She slid down further in her seat as the garage door opened, the gates swinging wide, the white Volvo rolling out majestically to park on the street. The driver’s door opened and Haggerty, casually dressed for him in jeans and anorak, got out and walked back up the driveway, his shoes making no noise or indent on the gravel. True to his routine, he re-emerged a couple of minutes later, locked the gates closed behind him and walked briskly back to the car where he stopped and turned. He looked straight at Costello and smiled, clapped his hands together slowly twice, and climbed into the car.

       Clap clap.

      He drove away, without looking back.

      George Haggerty was getting away with murder.

      He was getting away with two million pounds in life insurance.

      But Costello was going to stop him, even if it killed her.

      Or him.

      She smiled, turning the key in the ignition of the Fiat.

      Preferably him.