Kissing the Demons by Kate Ellis Page A

through the automatic doors, ID at the ready, he came out from behind his desk to greet them, hand outstretched.
    â€˜Peter Darman, Manager. Bad business. We’re all shocked; that goes without saying.’
    â€˜Of course,’ said Joe. ‘Is there somewhere private we can . . . ?’
    â€˜We’ll need to speak to all the staff,’ said Emily as Darman led them behind the front desk into a small office bearing the legend ‘Manager’ on the door. ‘Someone might have seen or heard something suspicious. And I presume you have CCTV here?’
    Peter Darman’s well scrubbed cheeks turned a delicate shade of red. ‘Well . . . er . . . actually it hasn’t been working for the past few weeks. I’ve put a request in to the Council for it to be fixed but these things take time.’
    â€˜Your maintenance staff couldn’t deal with it then?’ said Joe.
    â€˜No. It’s a specialist job, or so they say at the council offices. Please sit down.’
    Joe and Emily made themselves comfortable.
    â€˜Is there anywhere I can conduct interviews?’ Emily asked sweetly.
    â€˜Of course, Chief Inspector. You can use this office if you like.’
    This was what Joe knew she was hoping for. She nodded a gracious acknowledgement of the manager’s selfless generosity with his personal space and got down to business.
    Darman didn’t need much encouragement to launch into a detailed account of how he discovered the body. He spoke as though he had gone over the story time and time again in his head, which he probably had. Joe always liked a thorough witness.
    Soon it was Darman’s turn to give up his seat behind the desk to Emily and call in his staff one by one.
    The story was the same each time. It had been an ordinary Monday morning and nobody had seen or heard anything unusual. The clichés were trotted out again and again. Nobody could believe that such a thing could happen and the general consensus of opinion was that it was either ‘terrible’, ‘shocking’ or ‘awful’.
    The sixth member of staff to be interviewed was the man who had been with Peter Darman when the body was found. Den Harvey, in contrast to his boss, was somewhat overweight. His well-worn tracksuit bottoms had a tendency to slip down over his bulging middle and he kept hauling them up for decency’s sake. He had a round, unhealthy-looking face and Joe caught a strong whiff of sweat as the man sat down reluctantly in front of them.
    As Harvey gave them the account of the discovery in his own words, Joe noted that it varied a little from Peter Darman’s. Harvey reckoned she was probably a student at the university. You could tell them a mile off, he said. And he seemed to know that she’d been stabbed. When Emily asked him how he knew, he merely shrugged and said it was simple. He took a special interest in murder, he said almost proudly. He liked reading true crime books and, if you knew what you were looking for, these things were obvious.
    Joe was about to ask more questions but Emily gave his knee a warning nudge under the desk. They watched the man leave in silence. But as soon as he was out of the room Emily spoke.
    â€˜I’d like to find out more about our Mr Harvey.’
    â€˜So he’s on our list?’ Joe said with a conspiratorial smile.
    â€˜Oh I think that goes without saying, Joe, don’t you?’
    Matt was alone in the house. But as he tried to concentrate on his work, he kept hearing sounds, muffled thuds and shuffles as if someone was downstairs. But he knew the others were out. At first he tried to ignore it. But eventually he put his music on. The house was getting to him. And however many times he tried to tell himself that it was all in his head, he still felt like an unwelcome visitor in the place. It wasn’t something he could put into words but he knew there was something there that