Close Your Eyes by Michael Robotham Page B

crouch down, propping on my haunches, and study the speckled pattern of blood on the floor. Something must have been covering the floor when Elizabeth was first stabbed. The object had one straight edge and one obvious corner, slightly curved.
A plant? A table? A lamp?
Nothing in the photographs or the 3D scan reveals the source. Perhaps the forensic team took it away for analysis. I cross-check with the evidence log and find no record of the item. Either a mistake has been made or the killer took something away with him.
    Leaving the sitting room, I climb the narrow stairs, pausing involuntarily as my left leg freezes mid-step. Focus. Move. Obey.
    Entering Harper’s room, I see a publicity poster for
Game of Thrones
fixed to one wall. Opposite are two large photographs of a wind farm and a coal-fired power station.
Which is the greater blight on the countryside?
reads the caption.
    The ceiling slopes above the bed, following the roofline. Harper has used the space to display dozens of Polaroid images, mostly artistic shots of abandoned buildings, railway goods yard.,warehouses and stretches of stark coastline. Elsewhere in the room there are charcoal and pencil portraits, given depth by the delicate cross-hatching and shading. Some of the drawings still have notes in the margins from her art teacher:
Tone does not follow form … flattens it … Don’t use cross-hatching for foliage … You lose perspective in the foreground …
    Opening the relevant album of crime scene photographs, I follow as each shot moves closer to the single bed where the duvet has been pulled up, shielding the occupant from immediate view. I can only see the top of a head with sleep-tousled hair. The duvet is pulled back for the next series of images. Harper looks as though she’s sleeping. I half expect her to groan in protest and roll over, telling me to go away.
    She is lying on her back with her hands folded on her chest, her right thumb hooked into the silken bow tied at the front of her pale yellow nightdress. Her hair is spread in a halo across her pillow, perfectly framing her face, except for a few strands that have come to rest on her cheek.
    A fuzzy-looking brown teddy bear is tucked between her arm and her side. Her nightdress extends to her thighs, pulled down. Her legs are slightly apart. Her feet splayed at forty-five degrees. Her toenails painted.
    She has been left like this. Arranged. Someone came to this room and suffocated her. Afterwards he rearranged her body, pulling down her nightdress, placing her hands on her chest as though she’s Sleeping Beauty waiting for her prince.
    Questions are forming. This wasn’t sexual. Harper wasn’t raped or violated or defiled with stab wounds. It was almost the opposite. He tried to safeguard her modesty or protect her innocence. He created an idealised fairy-tale resting place. Why? What did Harper represent that Elizabeth didn’t?
    The teddy bear strikes a strangely paternal note. This small gesture is the act of someone who loves children. Perhaps the toy had special significance to Harper – every child seems to favour one above the others. A father would know. A father would care.
    According to the post-mortem report, Harper had two broken fingernails. She fought back as the pillow was pressed upon her face and may have scratched her attacker. Afterwards, he dipped her fingers in bleach to remove any possible evidence.
    Going back over the details, I try to understand the sequence of events.
    If the killer had broken through the front door, Elizabeth and Harper would have heard him. One of them would have phoned the police. Instead Elizabeth put on her dressing gown and went downstairs. More likely she knew this man. She opened the door, perhaps expecting him. She poured a glass of wine – a nightcap, just the one – her prints were found on the glass.
    The police assume that Elizabeth was murdered first and didn’t have time to cry out or to warn Harper. The killer must have