On the right-hand side of the crystal, which was formed of sharp spikes, there were bloodstains. She looked at the other crystals that lay around the floor and none of those had blood spatter on them.
What if it wasn’t blood spatter at all? This woman had fought her attacker with everything she had.
Had she managed to injure her assailant?
As the techies began to bag the victim’s hands, she instructed them to bag the purple crystal too.
There was a good chance they now had their killer’s DNA.
Sixty
She guessed Donnie Drake, the lodger, to be in his late teens. His blond hair framed a face that had still not returned to its natural colour. His pallor only accentuated the red-rimmed eyes.
Someone had thought to give him a glass of some type of alcohol, which seemed to have steadied the trembling somewhat.
Bryant was putting his notebook back in his jacket pocket. She knew he would have got the finer details on timings, so she didn’t need to bother with that.
Kim took a seat at the kitchen table while Bryant faded back to give the boy some space.
‘You doing okay?’ Kim asked.
‘I’m not sure to be honest,’ he replied candidly, and she nodded in acknowledgement before moving on.
‘Donnie, I need to know if you touched anything.’
He shook his head.
‘You didn’t go into the room or try to give her CPR?’
‘Should I have done? Would it have helped?’
‘No, she was long gone,’ Kim reassured him. ‘You did everything right.’
‘I just can’t believe it, even though I saw it with my own eyes. Who could do something like that?’
This kid wasn’t even in his twenties and he’d seen something that he’d never forget.
‘How long have you lived here?’
‘About ten months now. I transferred from Wolverhampton to Dudley Tech and most of the rooms were gone, but I struck lucky here. Cheap and close.’
‘Can you tell us more about Karen?’
‘I never called her that. She was Miss Felton. She changed her name back after her divorce.’
‘Was it recent?’ Kim asked.
‘Couple of years. That’s why she took in lodgers. She needed the money to buy him out.’
‘There are more of you?’
He shook his head. ‘Not at the minute. Amelia moved out a couple of weeks ago. Went back to Kent. Miss Felton had put an advert out.’
‘Where?’ Kim asked.
He shook his head.
‘Did Miss Felton ever have trouble with her boarders?’ Kim asked. The woman was ultimately allowing strangers to live in her home.
