Present Darkness Read Free Page A

the floor and counters. Piles of flour, rice, coffee and sugar were dumped onto the small pine table. A white girl in a cotton nightie sat in a chair with her face buried in her hands, weeping.
    “Name?” Emmanuel whispered before going in.
    “Cassie. We got that from the neighbour who called in the disturbance. Nothing from her yet.”
    Negus, the detective on babysitting duty was a solid, old-fashioned cop Emmanuel knew from the station. He would have come on duty with three things: a loaded gun, adrenaline and a hard man face. Good cop or not, he was ill-equipped to comfort a teenage girl whose parents might die tonight.
    “Thank Christ,” Negus mumbled when he reached the door. “I need a piss and a smoke.”
    The girl, Cassie, sobbed and kept her fingers tightly closed. Eyes shut, face hidden, she was trying to block out the chaos. Emmanuel walked into the room; time for Cassie to put her hands down and open her eyes.
    “The foot police found her in that corner.” Mason pointed to a spot near a four-burner gas stove. “We’ve tried to get her out of here but she won’t leave.”
    The kitchen, at least, smelled of cinnamon and caster sugar instead of blood. There was no blood in this room that Emmanuel could see. The headmaster and his wife had been beaten in the bedroom while the house was turned over: a job for two men, minimum. He found a kettle in the debris and filled it at the sink.
    “Do you want a cup of tea, Cassie?” he asked. “Or cocoa, if I can find it?”
    “Nothing,” she sniffed.
    “You’re sure?”
    “Uh huh.”
    She was talking. That was a start. Emmanuel left the water running and checked her for injuries. Blood running down her thighs or dripping from an elbow would have shown up in the flour sprinkled on the floor. The flour was still clean. Cassie’s freckled legs and pale arms were likewise unmarked by trauma, her yellow nightie, pristine.
    “Is that blood?” Emmanuel leaned closer, heart thumping. Red was smudged across the back of her hand. Christ knows what injuries hid behind those shuttered palms.
    “What?” she hiccupped.
    “There.” He gently touched the spot and noticed the red had a strange metallic sheen.
    “Oh.” She dropped her hands to the table and rubbed at the smear with a fingertip. “I don’t know where that came from.”
    Oh yes you do, Emmanuel thought. It wasn’t blood Cassie scrubbed away at so hard. It was lipstick.
    “I’m Detective Sergeant Cooper,” he said. “Are you hurt any place that I can’t see?”
    “No.” Cassie scraped the last trace of red away with a fingernail and looped a strand of frizzy ginger hair behind her right ear. She was about fifteen with bright hazel eyes and a wide mouth that belonged in a broader face. Freckles sprinkled her nose, neck and collarbones so her skin appeared browner than white. “I’m all right. Really.”
    Emmanuel gave her his handkerchief. “Can you tell me what happened?”
    She blew her nose and frowned, thinking.
    “Take your time.” Emmanuel lit the gas flame under the kettle. “There’s no rush.”
    “I … I was asleep in my bed and there was a … a big crash. Like there was someone in the house.” Her frown deepened, cutting a trench into her forehead. “It was dark. I couldn’t see.”
    “Tell me what you did then.” Emmanuel sat at the table. “After the noise.”
    “I got a fright and I got out of bed.” Cassie twisted the corner of the handkerchief into a tight cylinder. “Then I hid behind the wardrobe.”
    “Your wardrobe?” He’d noticed the ripped doors and the scattered contents from the corridor.
    “ Ja . That one.”
    “Did you hear voices from there?”
    “What?” The question seemed to startle her and the corners of her wide mouth twitched. “I … I don’t know what you mean.”
    “You were behind the wardrobe while the robbers were in your room. Did they say anything?”
    Cassie took a deep breath, looked away to the kitchen window. The moon now