Free AM02 - The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina

the phone, Morrow looked down at the handbag on the floor. Again, good leather, good deep mustard color, quirky design with big zips and slightly outsized fastenings. Morrow bent down awkwardly and flicked the top of the bag open with her pen. A set of keys sat at the bottom: four keys clustered around a simple silver hoop. She was pleased to see shop receipts littering the bag. Most tills printed the time and date and their shop address. They’d be able to retrace Sarah’s movements from them.
    Morrow stood up and watched as they dusted the iPhone carefully, flicking black dust all over the white linen.
    She looked back at the door to the room, thought her way down the stairs to the porch and imagined Sarah Erroll coming into an empty house. Her face was a hazy cloud of blood, her body slim and lithe in the fitted black dress.
    Sarah left the suitcase by the wall, dropped her keys into the mustard bag and pulled her shoes off by the heel. Morrow imagined the gentle pwup as the hard heels fell to the tiled floor. She saw Sarah reaching into the baggy handbag, feeling around the rubble in the bottom for the taser phone, stepping across the hall to drop it carelessly by the other wall. Or stand at the top of the stairs and throw it down.
    Morrow started again with the taser: it was near the site of her death. She’d been going for it or someone else had it and dropped it there. It could have been in her handbag and someone had taken it, thought better of it and dropped it on the way out. “Check the taser for prints.”
    “Aye.”
    “Check it for fiber traces too,” she said. “See if it came out of this bag.”
    She saw the faceless woman drop her shoes and climb the stairs, imagined the aches and strains of sitting on an airplane for seven hours, imagined her pleasure at taking off the lacy underpants, pulling on a T-shirt and being swallowed by the big bed.
    They walked back downstairs, holding the wall as they stepped carefully past the body. Harris was in front this time and she saw him actually look straight at the mess for a moment, not flinching, and hoped it was because of her example. He tiptoed between the red footsteps and stopped at the bottom, holding out a hand to help her. She brushed his hand away.
    “Shoe prints?”
    “Aye,” he said. “Found black fibers in them, probably made of suede.”
    Harris tipped his head and looked back up as Morrow came to stand by him. The footsteps were a mess of red, smeared over steps, some crisp prints, some spaces where the deep green carpet showed through.
    “They about a size eight?” said Morrow.
    They looked for a moment, angling their heads, stepping one way and another to discern a pattern.
    Finally Harris said, “Two sets?”
    “Is it?” She stepped over to where he was standing and saw a perfect print next to another, both right feet, one bigger than the other but the same sole markings. “God, you’re right. Shit. ”
    Two was bad. If there were two it wasn’t enough to show that they’d been there and been splattered with blood. It meant they would have to show a jury that each of the co-conspirators had been actively committing the violence. They’d have to charge them with conspiracy to commit murder, which had a lesser tariff. It was unsatisfying, especially if one of them had been standing at the side shouting at the other one to stop. If the defense could plant a doubt they could both walk. Morrow felt it reduced the process to trial by combat: that the stand-off was usually won by the stronger party, not the innocent one. The best they could hope for was physical evidence that proved the case.
    She squinted at the footsteps again. “Shit. They’re the same. We need to find something, marks on the sole or something.”
    “They’re the same though, is it a uniform?” said Harris.
    “Mibbi.” She waved at the stairs. “Can we break these steps down, reconstruct the movements? Take out the interview roulette.”
    “Dunno. I’ll