by Gwyn GB
‘Nothing so far,’ one of the SOCOs, the thin pasty one with eyes like a weasel, replies.
‘Let’s get back and get set up,’ Bob says to her, already heading out the flat.
Claire takes one last look around. The place is crawling with SOCOs, hard to see it as a home and not a crime scene right now. She’ll come back again later.
‘Did he drive a car?’ she asks the uniformed officer at the door.
‘We’re looking for it,’ he replies. ‘Got an Audi key but parking’s a mare round here so it could be a couple of streets away.’
‘OK, thanks.’
She leaves, knowing in a few hours she’ll be reacquainting herself with Neil on the autopsy table.
5
Rachel, 14th October 2016
She’s not used to being a victim, feeling vulnerable, the cold grip of fear. Rachel wakes after a disturbed sleep to see the chair she’d jammed against her bedroom door lit by the pale autumn morning sun.
A wave of nausea washes through her, the result of too little sleep and the memory of her slow progress through the house last night. Clutching a large kitchen knife she’d locked every door and window before going into each room, opening every cupboard in the house and checking she really was alone. Once she felt able to show her back to a dark room she’d peered carefully through the curtains into the back garden, searching for signs of someone out there.
At the end of the garden, where the fence becomes hedgerow, she’d seen a shadow and the flash of electronic light - a mobile screen. She’d tried Neil again, his presence would scare them away, but he hadn’t picked up.
Eventually, Rachel barricaded herself into the bedroom, staying fully clothed, ready for action.
In the daylight, and with a tired mind, she starts to question the events of last night. Was there really somebody there? Was she just being paranoid? Is it the tiredness that’s making her jumpy, sending her heart racing when a loose strand of hair falls across one of her eyes?
She heads into the shower, locking the bathroom door and relishing being able to relax under the hot water which pounds her skin. This has to stop, she tells herself. She won’t be bullied like this. She knows she can’t rely on Neil, can’t rely on anyone for that matter. She’ll get dressed, go out and investigate. Maybe get some security cameras fitted, find out if there really is someone watching her, and if so who. She’s got the day off because she’s working tomorrow, Saturday, it means she can get ready. The daylight will give her courage.
Once dressed, the first thing Rachel does is check on the rabbits. It’s comforting to pick them up and feel their warm bodies against hers. She sits for a few moments watching them tuck into the lettuce leaves, chomping through them from side to side like manic old typewriters working through a sheet of paper. Their simple needs and complete ignorance of her fear gives some respite. She hasn’t felt this vulnerable since she was 11 years old.
6
Rachel, February 1994
Rachel knows there’s something wrong even before she’s opened the tired wooden door into their farmhouse kitchen. Her right shoulder aches from carrying the school bag which bulges and threatens to burst its zip, spewing out the books inside.
She’s no idea why she’s nervous. What’s changed. What has made her uneasy - but for a moment she hesitates - preferring the pain from her shoulder to the possibility of what is beyond the door. She re-traces the circle of the smiley face she’d made, sometime last week, in the dusty grime of the opaque glass window. Then, smile renewed, she presses down on the metal handle and enters.
The kitchen is empty, devoid not only of her mother but any scent of cooking. The air hangs undisturbed, holding its breath for fear of scattering the dust particles gliding on the shafts of light.
‘Mum!’ Rachel shouts into the house. Her dad will still be in the fields or working with the herd in the milking barn. There’s no reply so she scans the kitchen worktops for a note. They’re empty. The gadget-less surfaces are wiped clean, breakfast things long since washed and put away. Nothing to be seen, except the kettle and the stains and gouges of family life.
She takes her coat off, putting it over the back of a chair. She’s thirsty after the walk home so heads to the fridge to get some of the unpasteurised milk her father always brings in each day. The fridge is another surprise, it’s full. The shelves are packed with food: ready-made meals, pasta, sausages, and yogurts. Her mum has obviously been shopping, blown the month’s budget in one go by the look of it. That’s not like her. Maybe she’s won some money, come into an inheritance? Perhaps they have visitors? Has Rachel forgotten a birthday or other celebration? Even at 11, Rachel knows money is a bad word in their house, its mention always a precursor to arguments and tears. She pours herself a glass of milk, one thing they always have in abundance.
Just as she’s finished tipping the cold creamy liquid down her throat, she hears him. The noise makes her freeze, ears straining, goose bumps rising on her neck and arms. What is it?
She hears it again, a wounded animal moaning. Is it a cow injured? No, the sound is coming from inside the house. Should she run into the yard? Seek out her father or George and Reg, the two men who’ve helped him with the cows for as long as she can remember?
Rachel’s heart pounds in its small frame and she stands shock still, taking tiny panicked breaths that barely make her chest move. She reaches out for the wall to steady herself - placing her palm against its cool surface.
There it goes again, a deep guttural moan. Something is dying in pain. Slowly she steps forward, edging towards the hallway and closer to the noise, one eye on the back door in case she needs to escape. Her instincts tell her running is going to be much better and that whatever she finds beyond the kitchen cannot be good. She stays. An invisible force pulling at her inquisitive mind.
Into the hall now, there’s the moaning again. It’s coming from their sitting room. She stops a moment, listening so hard her ears almost hurt.
‘Sally,’ she hears. It’s her dad calling to her mum, although his voice sounds strange. Relief floods through Rachel freeing up her fear shackled legs. Does he need help? She rushes into the sitting room.
The sight of her father on the floor alone, bent double, his face glistening with grief, eyes red raw in pain, kicks her right in the stomach.
‘Dad?’ she asks, ‘Are you OK?’ He looks up, the vacant gaze of the shocked. Rachel’s eyes are drawn to his feet. He has his boots on. He never wears his boots in the house.
‘Rachel!’ He tries to stand, but the effort is too much.
Rachel remembers to breathe.
‘Dad, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?’
He snorts back more tears and shakes his head.
‘Where’s mum?’ He’s really scaring her now. Dads don’t behave in this way, adults shouldn’t be like this. It isn’t right. ‘Dad,’ she says it more quietly, instinct kicking in, and kneels on the floor beside him. His dirty boots have left smears of mud and cow excrement on the carpet, the brown merging in with the copper swirls of the pattern. Her mum will be so cross.
‘Dad,’ she says again, touching his hand this time.
‘Your mum,’ he says at last, looking up at her, ‘Your mum has…’
Rachel’s body tingles with the alarm of fear. She nearly clasps her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear the next words. She knows, from the state of her dad that they’ll be words to change her life forever. Bad words.
‘Your mum is gone,’ her dad says finally, gripping onto her arm. He seems to be battling to form the words in his mouth, face contorting in the struggle. ‘She’s dead,’ he says with more effort.
‘No. No,’ Rachel hears a voice like hers come from somewhere and she pulls her arm free, as though breaking the connection will stop him. Stop this nonsense.
‘Car. She had a car crash,’ he continues, glazed eyes not focusing on her or the result of his words.
Rachel collapses, all strength gone. Her mum dead? No,
she can’t be. She was here this morning. She kissed her before she left for school. Warm and very much alive.
A surge of adrenaline kicks in. She scrambles to her feet and runs out to the yard where her mother parks her car. En route the threadbare hall carpet nearly trips her up, catching her toe in its skeletal fibres, and slamming her shoulder into the wall. She doesn’t feel it.
She bursts out of the kitchen into the fresh air but even that turns sour. The space where the car should be is empty, just a dirty brown stain where the oil leaks.
Back into the house, up the stairs. She’s not in their bedroom. She’s not in the bathroom. Nothing but her things and the lingering scent of her.
Rachel pounds back down the stairs to the sitting room. Her dad is still on the floor, exactly where she’d left him.
‘Why mum?’ She shouts at him, ‘Why?’
There’s no answer, just sobs. Her dad not even half the man he’d been this morning.
They sit like this until the room grows dark and Rachel starts to shiver with the cold, or perhaps it’s the shock. When she finally gets up off the floor her legs are shaky. She walks, like an elderly woman, over to the old electric heater in the corner and flicks it on. She watches the element inside until it is glowing red, her eyes blurring over, gaze fixed. For a second she forgets and then it hits her again, a two-ton truck of emotional bricks ramming into her consciousness, splitting open her heart. Why would God do this? He’s cruel. Or maybe he doesn’t exist at all. How can he be a good God, why would he take her mother from them? How can her mother be here this morning and gone by the afternoon?
She turns to look at her father. He’s rocking back and forth, clutching his knees and staring ahead. Should she get some help? But who? They don’t have any relatives living near, in fact they have very little family at all.
Outside she can hear the herd being led from the milking barn, their hooves clattering on the cobbles and the odd shout from Reg or George as they shoo them along. How can life carry on as normal when the heart of her very being has been ripped out?
7
Claire, 14th October 2016
The team has already kicked into action back at the station, the Major Incident Room almost assembled. Everyone is noses to screens or setting up equipment. As Claire walks in she’s overtaken by a man with a trolley laden down with a large shredder and two more computer screens. Another man follows wheeling two large whiteboards. Claire recognises the woman who greets them, it’s Lena Kowalski, who was Office Manager on her last case. She hopes this one will be more successful.
Claire scans the room for other familiar faces, there’s a fair few and it looks like a good team. Everyone wears the look of people completely focused on the task.
‘One hour,’ shouts Bob above the bustle. ‘I want as much info as possible on our victim.’ He disappears behind a computer screen and is immediately swamped by various officers seeking or giving him information.
Claire sinks into her chair and logs onto the system. This is her first murder enquiry at a full Detective Inspector rank. She’s been assigned to Bob, who is Senior Investigating Officer, with the idea that she works towards Assistant SIO. She needs to impress. She knows there were a few eyebrows raised at her promotion, and a few noses put out of joint after the last enquiry. It’s never easy when you know that your colleagues failed in their duty of care. Jackie Stiller would still be alive today if more notice had been taken of her situation. If more notice had been taken of what Claire had said! She deserved the promotion, but there’s a little part of her that can’t help feeling she profited from someone else’s misery and misfortune.
The intel is already starting to come in. Their corpse in the bath is definitely Neil Parsons, 31, and no previous. Claire looks into the eyes of the dead and wonders what they’d seen or done which has led to them being closed forever. He’s just one year younger than she is; a good looking guy, completely unrecognisable from the purple-faced corpse in the crime scene reports.
She still sees each case as a life, a human being, that’s important. She met a DCI last year who’d crossed that line. He’d become numbed by the daily acquaintance of death and violence, and it had turned his heart black. There’s no coming back from that.
‘Hey baton, want a coffee?’ Claire bristles. Detective Sergeant Lewis is a mate of Jack’s and consequently his naturally irreverent personality is decidedly over familiar. To say Claire hates that nickname is an understatement. Trouble is, everyone at the station knows it, so she’s an easy target.
Claire swallows hard and breathes in deeply. Sod it, she will have one, if he is going to irritate her then he can bloody well fork out for a coffee.
‘Yes thanks, Lew. Latte.’
‘No sugar right?’ he beams back at her.
She wonders why he doesn’t get that broken tooth in the front fixed. Maybe it takes the focus from his balding head! She berates herself for being such a bitch.
‘Right,’ she replies, forcing herself to smile back. Last time she’d looked in his face it was after he’d been racing Jack with Jager Bombs, just before he’d run into the bathroom and puked the whole lot back up again. Jack had simply crawled into bed and attempted to initiate sex by pawing her roughly and breathing alcoholic fumes that would have been enough to keep an Olympic torch burning for the entire Games. Finally, he’d fallen asleep on the job, before rolling off and snoring for the rest of the night.
Claire had lain awake working through an imaginary crime scene, visualising the autopsy report which would show death by alcohol poisoning - after she’d carefully smothered him with his own pillow. She didn’t of course. She’d just lain awake for most of the night, occasionally slapping him or rolling him over in an effort to stop the noise, but unable to escape to the sofa because Lew was crashed out on it. She’d earned a bloody coffee.
One hour later and they are all assembled, an expectant buzz of chatter as DCI Bob Walsh stands up.
‘OK I want your full attention.’ The room falls silent as his voice reins in the dozen or so men and women who have been discussing everything from the state of Neil Parson’s bank account, to why the Sergeant’s wife is asking for a boob job for her birthday.
‘Right. This one’s spotless, no previous, a seemingly respectable young professional. No signs this is a burglary. It’s going to attract attention. We need a quick result. Sarah, you took a statement from the cleaner who was first on the scene?’
‘Yes sir,’ DS Sarah Potter jumps to attention. ‘She said everything was exactly as she’d expect and it was only the sound of a tap running that took her to the bathroom, where she discovered the deceased. Lovely man is how she described him. Had a few women through the flat, and that was corroborated by the neighbour - on the bedroom side if you know what I mean. But no sign of any criminal activity.’
‘Any chance he could have been an escort?’ Bob queries, his mind and half the room’s working overtime on the bedroom noise issue.
‘Nothing so far, just a good looking bloke,’ Sarah replies.
‘Who’s research?’ Bob’s fact hungry mind has already moved on.
‘Me Sir.’
‘OK Tom, what you got?’ he barks at the nervous DS. Tom Knight is one of those young men who’ve yet to fill their frame; an Alsatian puppy growing into his paws. His blond hair is thin and wispy which adds to the youthful effect.
‘So,’ he starts, consulting his screen, ‘Neil Parsons, 31, works for Crowther and Taylor as a Digital Marketing Exec. We’ve requested bank statements and phone records. He’s paid well, enough for a good lifestyle for a singleton. We’ve got officers at his place of work now taking statements.’
‘Neighbours?’
‘Nothing so far of any consequence, just say he’s a nice bloke and it’s a real shock.’ Tom looks up at Bob apologetically.
‘CCTV?’ Bob moves on, throwing his query towards the back of the room where Sam, a civilian analyst, is half listening and half engrossed in a screen.
/>
‘Nothing at the flats, unfortunately. System broke a week or so ago and the caretaker hasn’t got round to fixing it. We’ve got two at a small supermarket and a bookies along the road running south. Two more which are ours at lights going north and west, but the area is by no means watertight. We’re plotting the potential escape routes and checking CCTV now.’
‘I want maps on the board,’ Bob directs. Sam nods.
‘SOCO?’ Bob calls out to Margaret Taylor, Scenes of Crime lead.
Margaret snaps to attention. ‘Obviously preliminary, but looks like they’ve been careful. No signs of a forced entry - so potentially someone he knew. Looks like a large blade, meant to kill. No evidence of a struggle. The autopsy should confirm a single wound to the back which did the job it intended, so the killer likely knew what they were doing. They would have been sprayed. From the blood patterns and those missing, I’d say we’re looking for someone tall and well built. We’ll get a more detailed estimate once we’ve modelled it.’
Bob nods, taking it all in. He sucks in some air to fertilise his thoughts.
‘OK, so chances are we’re looking at a male killer and potentially premeditated?’
Margaret nods, ‘One thing I would add is that there’s a knife block in the kitchen, only sharp knives in the flat, and none of them are missing.’
Bob turns to address the room again. ‘I want a list of possible motives and suspects on this board by lunchtime. The number of women could be important, is he scamming them, or even blackmail? Is it a disgruntled ex-lover or cheated husband? I want every inch of his financial affairs checked. Sam, we need CCTV commandeered and looked through within a half mile radius. The killer could have parked up and walked to the flats rather than risk a vehicle being seen. Anyone gives you any crap about handing over footage, pass them on to me. If this guy was sprayed how did he get away without someone noticing? Lewis, track down the victim’s friends. We’ve got a family liaison officer with the parents in Cornwall, if they come up with any names I’ll let you know. Take Tom with you. I want to know where Neil Parsons went, what he liked to do and who he did it with. The rest of you see the Action Manager for your tasks.’ Bob turns to Claire now, ‘Falle, you and I are gonna go see the woman who called our victim three times last night, find out what she knows and if she realises her impeccable timing.’
