For All Our Sins - T.M.E. Walsh DCI Claire Winters crime series

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last thoughts were not of his childhood or a fond trip down memory lane. They were of a moment in a not so distant part of history.

      Yes, Wainwright remembered her.

      He also remembered a large oak staircase bathed in blood and a door closing, containing the screams within. Even now he knew it was too late to repent and change the fate of his soul.

      He recalled a quote he’d read once. Something that had stayed with him all this time, scratching away in the back of his mind: The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.

      Subconsciously, Wainwright had always known that one day his past would come back to haunt him.

      Now the time had come, he welcomed it with open arms.

       CHAPTER 2

      Ice-blue irises pulled tight leaving the pupils the size of a pin prick as she stared skyward, hand raised to her brow, useless against the might of the sun’s rays.

      Detective Chief Inspector Claire Winters felt a shiver shoot up her spine, like icy skeletal fingers scraping against her skin, despite the heat of the day. It was early morning, but the temperature on the dash of her car had said it was close to 24 degrees already.

      Her shirt was sticking to her back underneath her suit jacket like a second skin. The air was muggy, close, pulling at each breath she took, yet despite this she still felt like ice, right down to her bones.

      A feeling of dread pulled at her inside as she lowered the sunglasses from the top of her head, back down on her face.

      She stared at the door ahead, the entrance to the looming tower block opposite her. A place she’d just left. A place she hated. A place that had become more somewhere to call home than her house several miles out of Haverbridge.

      Claire’s mind drifted to dark thoughts. They came thick and fast lately. Like a nightmare that didn’t end after she woke each morning. It continued long through the days. Sometimes it threatened to swallow her whole.

      Sometimes Claire wondered if perhaps that’d be easier.

      Just let all the fight be torn out of her and scattered to the wind, until all that remained was an empty shell.

       Wouldn’t that be too easy?

      She felt her BlackBerry vibrating inside her trouser pocket. She’d turned the ringer off whilst she’d been inside the building, inside that wretched flat that housed someone she’d long since come to loathe and love in equal measure.

      She glanced at the screen, her grip tightened on the phone resting in her palm. Her finger hovered over the Answer button.

      How easy it would be to just throw it away, forget her job, forget this life. Forget everything that’d passed and start again.

      This is not you, she told herself. He does not define who you are, what you do, what comes next. She glanced up at the tower block again as she answered the call.

      Take back the control.

      ‘DCI Winters,’ she said. Her lips were dry, cracked, sore. She touched her fingers on her free hand to her bottom lip, pulled them away. Tiny dots of blood were on her fingertips.

      ‘Guv?’ said Detective Constable Gabriel Harper at the other end of the phone.

      Claire snapped back to the here and now. She’d detected something in his voice that was different. Whatever he was going to say, wasn’t going to be good.

      ‘What is it, Gabe?’

      There was a drawn-out pause. Claire could hear his breathing. It was far from normal. A new sensation gripped at her insides. She bit down on her bottom lip, made herself turn away from the tower block.

      ‘What’s wrong, Harper?’ she said as she crossed the road towards where she’d parked her car earlier, a steely edge returning to her voice.

      She heard Harper’s sharp intake of breath. ‘Guv, this isn’t something I can explain over the phone.’ He paused. ‘We need you back now, something’s happened at one of the local churches. Reports are coming in about a woman collapsing outside St Mary’s, completely covered in blood…someone else’s, not her own.’

       CHAPTER 3

      The coffee was like lava over his tongue, scorching the roof of his mouth, but for Detective Sergeant Michael Diego there were worse things in life than bad coffee.

      With his unwashed hair and two-day-old stubble, he was still a handsome man, but the insomnia suffered last night through to the early hours of this morning was taking its toll before the clock had struck nine this morning.

      He’d been out the office for a few hours, and now that he was back in time for lunch, he didn’t feel like working.

      Haverbridge had that effect on him. Nestled in the county of Hertfordshire, the large town was fast becoming a haven for outsiders and, despite the recession, a construction haven.

      Just thirty miles north of London, Haverbridge was attracting people from all walks of life and, being somewhat averse to change, Michael barely raised a smile at the prospect of more investment in his home town, despite the prosperity it could bring.

      He hated what was overflowing from the London boroughs. He liked the old, hated the new.

      Modernisation was something he was reluctant to adapt to. Like Haverbridge Police Station’s CID room, situated on the second floor in a modern part of the building.

      It was a recent extension to the original building that’d been updated and refurbished despite impending government cuts, and although it was fairly spacious, Michael always felt claustrophobic in it.

      He knew it was something that came from an experience rooted deep in his past.

      Something he didn’t like to dwell on. He tried to push it from his thoughts.

      He turned to glance around the room, and sipped his coffee.

      The walls were lined with maps, photographs and notes for ongoing inquiries, including several pictures from the case he was investigating. He saw the photograph of the suspect involved, whose eyes looked like they would burn holes in Michael’s flesh and carve his name on his soul.

      Pushing the thoughts from his head, his eyes swept over the room again. There were groups of desks broken up in sections for detective constables, sergeants and inspectors, and behind floor-to-ceiling glass wall partitions was Detective Chief Inspector Claire Winters’s office.

      Her lair.

      There she could keep an eye on him, watch his every move.

      But not today. Not so far anyway. In fact he didn’t know where half the people were right now for that matter. Harper had been rushing off to his car when Michael had reached the station, something too urgent to wait.

      It wasn’t Harper that bothered him anyway. It was Claire.

      He hadn’t even caught a glimpse of her, which, whilst it was unnerving, pleased him somewhat. He conceded that he was just too tired to fight with her today, although part of him still enjoyed the banter.

      He walked back to his desk and slumped down in his chair. He flicked the switch on the old desk fan beside him. It blew warm air at his face but it was better than nothing.

      He grinned to himself. All the money that’d been spent on this new office, with air con, and it chooses one of the hottest days in August to break down. Change wasn’t always for the better.

      He pressed the plastic cup to his lips, drinking the rest of his coffee in one go. He crushed the cup in his palm and, aiming it at the wastepaper basket, he threw it. The crushed cup hit

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