Free The Sixth Soul by Mark Roberts Page B

the door properly on your way out. This road, you know, is a magnet for murderers.’
    In the hall on the way out, Rosen took out his mobile phone and Bellwood closed the front door behind them with a reassuring slam.
    On the step, Rosen dialled.
    ‘Who are you calling?’ she asked.
    ‘Archives, Gwen Swift’s cold case file,’ replied Rosen.
    Walking down the path, Bellwood took out her mobile.
    ‘Who are you calling?’ asked Rosen.
    ‘Social Services. We need to track down the foster-children.’
    ‘I was just about to ask you to do that.’
    ‘I guessed you would,’ said Bellwood.
    Rosen’s phone rang and he waited.
    ‘I think this is the worst case I’ve ever tackled in my life,’ he said.
    The phone kept ringing as the clouds thickened against the sun.
    ‘Carol?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘It’s good to have you on board.’
    She nodded and, turning away from Rosen, could do nothing to stop the brief smile blossoming on her face.

16
    I t took several phone calls and two and a half hours for Social Services to come up with the list of the twelve long-term foster-children on Isobel
Swift’s books. Along with the names, an email arrived with the last known contact details of the twelve and a resolute promise to find the names of the short-term foster-children. Contact
details for the twelve went back as far as the mid-1970s and continued up to the early 1980s.
    Bellwood looked around the incident room and saw Harrison, staring at his laptop screen, sullen to the marrow, with a pile of printouts from the internet following his search for Alessio
Capaneus.
    As she began the obligatory task of ringing round the last known numbers, Bellwood watched Harrison make his way to Rosen’s desk to drop off the Capaneus printouts. Harrison hovered there,
scanning its surface.
    He picked up the one framed picture of Rosen’s wife and smirked at the image. Bellwood watched, resisting the urge to tell Harrison to put it down.
    ‘Is it true she lost her marbles?’ asked Harrison.
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Rosen’s wife. I overheard some talk in the canteen when I first came to this nick.’
    Bellwood didn’t want to have the conversation with Harrison but he already had a little information, so she decided to appeal to any semblance of a better nature in him.
    ‘I don’t know the details, Robert, but yes, she did suffer with her nerves though she’s well now. Did you hear why she became ill?’
    ‘Nah.’
    ‘They had a baby; this is going back years. Hannah, they named her. She died of cot death.’
    ‘Oh.’ He looked completely untouched and Bellwood wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
    Harrison passed Bellwood on the way back to his desk. Her face was set, her eyes lowered, her attention locked onto the phone.
    ‘Tough-looking bitch, that old Mrs Rosen,’ said Harrison. ‘Wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of her in a darkened corner.’
    Bellwood said nothing, but committed every word and action to memory.

17
    M emory.
    Herod sat on the cold stone floor of his basement. The dim blue light gave him the sense that he was hundreds of metres below the surface of the water and the silence that filled his head was
like the pressure of a whole ocean bearing down on him.
    He surveyed the basement, its doors and fortified walls. If he’d designed it himself, he couldn’t have come up with a more user-friendly suite of rooms.
    The estate agent who’d sold it to him had been reluctant to fill him in on the background to the basement. But the property had been growing stale on the books and so he had decided to
spice things up with a little house history.
    ‘Mr Graham, the farmer who lived here, was in the RAF during World War II. He was an observer when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He never got over it. He’d seen what a little
bomb could do at first hand. Actions have consequences. He believed he was going to be paid back. Hence the underground bunker.’
    The squalor of the living space above the basement had