The uncanny abilities of London crime-scene specialist Kelly Jacks to coax evidence from the most unpromising of crime scenes once earned her the nickname of The Blood Whisperer.

Then six years ago all that changed.

Kelly woke next to the butchered body of a man, the knife in her hands and no memory of what happened.

She trusted the evidence would prove her innocent.

It didn’t.

Now released after serving her sentence for involuntary manslaughter, Kelly must try to piece her life back together. Shunned by former colleagues and friends, the only work she can get is for the crime-scene cleaning firm run by her former mentor.

But old habits die hard. And when her instincts tell her things are not as they appear at the scene of a routine suicide, she can’t help but ask questions that somebody does not want answered.

Plunged into the nightmare of being branded a killer once again, Kelly is soon fleeing from the police, Russian thugs and a local gangster. Betrayed at every turn, she is fast running out of options.

But Kelly acquired a whole new set of skills on the inside. Now street-smart and wary, can she use everything she’s learned to evade capture and stay alive long enough to clear her name?

Praise for Zoë Sharp:

“The Blood Whisperer is a cracking, compulsive read: once you've read the electrifying first few pages, you’ll probably develop intense feelings of annoyance towards anyone or anything that takes you away from it and the wonderful, gutsy, spiky heroine. I loved every word of this brilliant, mind-twisting thriller and even yelped out loud at one of the genius twists.” Bestselling crime author, Elizabeth Haynes

“Scarily good.” Lee Child

“Zoë Sharp is one of the brightest of the new generation of British crime writers.” Stephen Booth

“Zoë Sharp is a master at writing thoughtful action thrillers.” Meg Gardiner

“If you don't like Zoë Sharp there's something wrong with you. Go and live in a cave and get the hell out of my gene pool! There are few writers who go right to the top of my TBR pile—Zoë Sharp is one of them.” Stuart MacBride

“Zoë Sharp is going to be a superstar.” Jon Jordan, Crimespree magazine

THE

BLOOD WHISPERER Zoë Sharp

For Derek and Jill

who've helped to keep it all together

and

Sarah and Tim

who've been there since the beginning

www.ZoeSharp.com

Cover design by www.NuDesign.co

Murderati Ink [ZACE Ltd]

Copyright © Zoë Sharp 2013

THE

BLOOD WHISPERER

Prologue

She wakes to the smell of blood.

It saturates the air to lie metallic across her tongue—so fresh-spilt it has not had time to spoil.

She knows the scent well enough to be calm and yet also terrified. It is not that she is squeamish but the implications are clear to her.

What the hell is happening here? And where is here?

She gradually returns to herself, realises she is lying face down on a hard surface. Her whole body feels gripped by the aftermath of a fever. Her head is turned slightly to the side, legs splayed as if to mimic running and arms twisted behind her. The position is awkward, like she dropped in mid-stride or was flung there. She flexes her wrists half expecting to find them bound but she is not restrained.

She takes a moment to examine if this makes things better or worse.

The answer doesn’t come readily.

In fact nothing comes readily, neither awareness nor memory.

Mentally she fumbles backwards for her last clean recollection. It remains blurrily beyond reach.

That alone is enough to start the panic forming a bubble in her chest. It compresses her heart, squeezing her lungs against her ribcage so she can hardly breathe.

She forces her eyes open.

From this perspective the room has tipped sideways. It seems familiar but she doesn’t recognise it. Maybe the bloody pool seeping across the boards towards her has something to do with that.

The encroaching tide jolts her out of lethargy. Her adrenal gland fires a staccato burst into her system and she flinches from the shock of it, tries to roll away. Instead she flops raggedly onto her back, gasping. It’s a start but not much of one.

Her eyes slide closed again and she discovers her limbs are not yet her own. They refuse to know her, fighting every attempt to control them. She growls in frustration-laced fury.

And all the time the smell of the room overloads her senses. She has the educated palate of a connoisseur. Underneath the sharp tang of blood she detects the lingering slurry of fear.

The kind of fear humans embrace when there is nothing else left to them.

Her own fear motivates her eyes to reopen. They do so with reluctance akin to peeling a limpet from a tidal rock.

The room is still there. She’d been hoping to blame some kind of waking nightmare but this is real.

Far too real.

A crowd of images jostle her, elbowing for supremacy. She grasps the analytical part of her brain by its scruff and shakes it into concentration. Sluggishly she notes the blood pool leads away from her.

She lies still for a moment and monitors her own body as the extremities slowly come back online. She aches right down to the roots of her hair as if from a beating but as far as she can tell there’s no specific damage.

So the blood isn’t mine.

Of course it isn’t hers, she reasons. She can recite the facts as well as anyone—that the human body holds between three-point-five and five-point-five litres. A loss in excess of forty per cent is almost invariably fatal and experience has shown her exactly what that kind of exsanguination looks like.

To have this amount of blood let must surely mean . . .

Her heart leaps into her throat and bounces there.

With a grunt of outright effort she makes it up onto one elbow. The room sways and distorts alarmingly before it steadies.

Progress, of a sort.

What she sees next is not progress of any sort.

The body is no more than two metres away. Blood haloes around it and edges ever closer as if seeking a living host. It leaches from a dozen ragged slits in clothing and skin.