The Couple on Cedar Close

by Anna-Lou Weatherley

  ‘Looks pretty efficient to me!’ I can’t imagine what it would feel like to slash the throat of another human being, but I reckon it’s safe to assume that the intent to cause severe harm is pretty much a given.

  ‘Severing the major veins however, well, that would be messy, very unpleasant, and also slow and rather noisy…’ She glances at me and pushes her glasses a little further up her small nose. ‘Gurgling, choking, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I get the picture.’

  ‘A large volume of the person’s blood would have to drain before they die with this method, so, like I say, messy and slow.’

  I glance at Mills’ body then back up at Vic. She’s in the zone now, concentrating, drawing her conclusions in real time as she inspects the wound in detail.

  ‘Cutting the carotid artery is the most efficient way to guarantee a fast death,’ she explains. ‘It basically cuts off blood flow to the brain and because it’s so fast, it can be pretty neat. There would be some blood loss, pretty much in keeping with our man here, until the heart stops beating anyhow, but it wouldn’t be the horror show it would be if the veins had been severed. If that had been the case, then we’d probably need waders.’ Vic says this without a hint of irony. ‘Still, it’s a noticeable amount. Of course, if the trachea had been severed as well then it all might just drain straight into the lungs. But then of course if he’d also been stabbed…’

  I inwardly wince at the horror Robert Mills must’ve experienced in those final moments, unable to breathe, choking on his own blood. Simultaneously, I think I’m a little bit in love with Vic Leyton. She talks about death as though she’s reciting a recipe. Almost makes it sound palatable.

  ‘So,’ I ask, ‘to summarise, you think the suspect cut the artery, and they knew what they were doing to make a clean, or cleaner, job of it?’

  ‘Yes to the first, but I couldn’t possibly comment on the last, I’m afraid. That would be speculative.’

  I nod. I suspect ‘speculative’ isn’t a prevalent word in Vic’s vocabulary.

  ‘There are no visible defence wounds to the hands, no cuts, abrasions, bruising, although a proper PM will reveal any nuances… It looks as if he didn’t put up a fight, which suggests the knife wounds occurred after his throat was severed. Maybe even as he lay dying, or already dead.’

  I stare at the corpse in front of me, viewing it from different angles. I spot something. ‘There’s something underneath him,’ I say, bending down once more. It’s sticking out, just visible beneath his chest, under his ribcage, a piece of paper…

  Vic raises her eyes as I gently push Robert Mills’ body with my fingers, grateful for the thin layer of protection that my rubber gloves offer. ‘Looks like a letter,’ I say as I slide it from underneath him. It’s an envelope, the corner of which is blood-soaked, but the rest is intact, unblemished. I feel a rush of excitement, adrenaline gathering a pace as it fizzes through my lower abdomen and up through my guts. It’s addressed to ‘Mrs Laurie Mills’ in typed letters, looks official. It’s open.

  My breathing is shallow as I gently remove the contents from the envelope. Even Vic Leyton looks intrigued as I very carefully and gently unfold the A4 piece of paper.

  ‘Dear Mrs Mills,

  I am writing to inform you that your husband, Robert Mills, has instructed us to act on his behalf with regards to divorce proceedings…’

  ‘It’s from his solicitors.’ I turn to Davis. ‘It’s telling the wife that he’s begun divorce proceedings. Dated three days ago… Get this to forensics.’ I put the letter back into the envelope as carefully as I took it out. ‘And get onto the solicitor, a Michael James at James, Stannard and Co., based in Soho by the looks of the headed paper.’

  Davis nods efficiently, taking it from me.

  I see the ambulance guys coming through the guest room now with a body bag ready to take Robert Mills to the mortuary, a venue I’m pretty sure wasn’t on his bucket list of places to go before he turned forty, and I glance at Vic Leyton.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll need to talk to the wife,’ she says dryly, glancing briefly at the murderer’s message on the mirror.

  ‘Perhaps I do,’ I remark.

  Jesus, I can’t wait.

  Seven

  Laurie Mills has never been in a police car before and sheer naked terror runs down her spine as she sits in the back seat next to a female police officer whose silence is only adding to her burgeoning fear. She stares out of the window at the passing cars but takes nothing in. Every few minutes a rush of reality hits her like a sledgehammer to her chest: Robert is dead! Robert is actually dead!

  She sees him on the floor of the guest en suite, replays the moment over in her mind on a diabolical loop: how his familiar frame seems almost alien as she enters the bathroom, like it isn’t really Robert at all, but someone else collapsed and bent up out of shape. Nothing could have prepared her for what she had seen, and her mind had been frantic in an attempt to rationalise the irrational. It had occurred to her for the briefest moment that this was some kind of bizarre joke – a sick, tasteless prank – until she’d seen the blood that is, and the wound where it had come from.

  Laurie gasps again as the images torment her; she squeezes her eyes tightly shut. She hadn’t seen the message on the mirror at first. She had been so preoccupied with her dead husband’s corpse that she’d not noticed it. Lying, cheating scumbag… She had stared at the letters like they were Greek. She didn’t understand. Who had written it?

  ‘He… he was supposed to come for dinner…’ she says, suddenly feeling the urge to speak.

  The policewoman nods, takes a notepad from her jacket.

  ‘He didn’t show up. I thought… I thought he’d stood me up… I was furious… He’d hurt me so much… with the baby and everything, with Claire… after the accident… I rang his phone… I heard it ringing upstairs—’

  The policewoman is scribbling in her notepad, simultaneously nodding up at her and murmuring soothing words like, ‘It’s okay, Laurie—’

  ‘Oh God… Oh God, Robert, my Bobby… oh God.’ She buries her face in her hands. ‘I… I’d made him beef Wellington…’ Laurie thinks of Claire suddenly and looks down at her hands. They’re covered in blood; it’s drying into the grooves and lines of her skin, underneath her fingernails. She begins to shake. ‘No… no… NO!’

  ‘It’s okay,’ the policewoman reassures her again. ‘We’re almost at the station now. You’ll be seen by a doctor; we’ll get you cleaned up. It’s okay.’ Her voice is soft but authoritative, and Laurie finds it strangely comforting to let someone else take control. She’s used to others being in control and telling her what to do now, ever since the accident.

  ‘We’ll need to take some samples from you, Laurie. DNA, fingerprints, bloodstain samples – it’s standard procedure, okay? Is that okay, Laurie? Do you understand what I’m saying? Then we can get you cleaned up, have a cup of tea and talk, okay?’

  Laurie’s staring at her hands, at the bloodstains on them.

  ‘Laurie? Laurie, is there anyone you want us to call for you?’

  She’s still staring at her hands as she answers. ‘Yes… yes, I understand…’

  The PC nods. ‘Okay… it’s okay,’ she says, but they both know it isn’t. ‘You’re not under arrest.’

  This sends a jolt through her solar plexus. Arrest? Why would she be under arrest? Why are they talking about arresting her? Oh my God, they think I’ve killed Robert. A slither of self-preservation begins to penetrate through her shock and terror, marginally sobering her thoughts, bringing her back to herself.

  ‘I… I want to speak to my mum,’ she stammers. ‘My mum…’

  The police officer pats her arm again but it feels robotic, emotionless, and she wants to pull away; she doesn’t want to be touched. Laurie feels sick, nausea rising up into her guts. She thinks of the message written in blood on the mirror again. The killer’s message. Jesus Christ. Panic and fear is arriving now in full force, seizing her thr
oat and tightening like a vice round it, shortening her breath.

  ‘Did I kill him?’ she says the words aloud, without realising, without thinking about them too much. ‘Did I kill Robert?’

  The policewoman, she suddenly realises, is wearing gloves.

  ‘I don’t know, Laurie,’ she asks gently. ‘Did you?’

  Eight

  The press have already arrived as I leave the house. A group of them has congregated at the end of the close, straining to find a way through the police barriers, like vultures circling a fresh carcass. Good news always travels fast. I spot Fi in among the throng and pretend I haven’t seen her. We’ve been out for a few drinks in recent months, me and Fi. I suppose you could call them dates. On our last ‘date’ she stayed over and we ended up in bed together. I think we both knew it was on the cards. I wouldn’t go as far as to say we made love, but it was nice sex, good sex even, and it had felt comfortable and natural. I’m glad my first time since Rachel was with Fiona Li. We’re friends first and foremost, and I like her a lot. I trust her and respect her, even if she is a hack. Plus, she’s beautiful and funny. She’s a good woman. And yeah, I fancy her. Or maybe it’s something else. Anyway, it just sort of happened after a few drinks.

  There was no awkwardness the next morning. In fact, it was kind of nice waking up next to a warm body and having a makeshift breakfast of tea and stale toast. But there were no butterflies, not like there had been with Rachel, and I didn’t get that same ache when she left, the ache I used to get whenever my girl walked out of the door. In some unspoken way it was as if we both needed each other for that one night. For different reasons maybe, but there was no bad feeling. She left on good terms. I think we both knew it wouldn’t happen again. I haven’t called her since that night and I feel bad about that; things just got in the way. Now it’s been a couple of weeks and it might be a bit awkward…

  ‘Dan!’ She spots me and calls out to me as I make my way down the driveway and like a complete coward I pretend I haven’t heard her, which makes me feel even shittier.

  ‘Forensics are rushing through the phone and the prints on the knife,’ Davis says as she follows me down the driveway.

  I nod, trying to squash the sense of unease that has misted over me like November fog. On the surface this looks like a straight-up domestic, a spurned wife taking revenge on her cheating husband. The attack has all the hallmarks of a crime of passion. It very possibly is, only my intuition is telling me there’s something more, that it’s not as cut and dried as that and to reserve my judgement before jumping to any obvious conclusions.

  ‘Anything from the neighbours?’

  Davis nods. ‘Quite a bit actually.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s fair to say that it was common knowledge that the Millses’ marriage was in big trouble,’ she says. ‘Allegedly, Robert Mills had been having an affair and it turns out he had a child with another woman. They were giving things another go it seemed, he and the wife, though according to the neighbour I spoke to he hadn’t been at the marital home much recently, making her think that he’d left to be with his mistress. Seems they kept themselves to themselves when they first moved in, which was back in February, especially Laurie Mills, bit of a recluse according to’ – Davis checks her notebook – ‘a Mrs Jessica Bartlett at number 15, to the left.’ She points at the property next to the Millses’ house. ‘She says she often heard them arguing when the deceased lived there – shouting and slamming doors and what not – and that the deceased was always coming and going. He was friendly enough though, apparently, chatty – made more of an effort to integrate into their little community than the wife.’

  ‘Doesn’t make her a murderer,’ I say quietly, almost to myself. ‘And…?’

  ‘The team are out doing more door to door now,’ Davis replies. ‘Some of the neighbours weren’t in or didn’t answer. Jessica Bartlett suggested we talk to’ – she leafs through her notebook again – ‘a Mrs Monica Lewis, lives at number 25, opposite the Millses. Apparently she and Laurie were best friends, known each other for years, went to school or college together.’

  ‘Right. Well, we need to speak to her.’

  ‘Bartlett said something about an incident that happened back in July.’

  ‘An incident?’

  ‘A very public argument between Laurie and Robert Mills. Apparently, Mrs Mills publically outed her husband’s affair and the fact that he’d fathered a love child to everyone at a street barbecue before fleeing to her house in floods of tears. Made a right drunken show of herself, as Bartlett put it, and… now this is quite interesting.’ Davis raises her eyebrows.

  ‘Go on…’ Davis loves to do cliffhangers, but I indulge her. It’s a small price to pay for her tenacity.

  ‘And, the neighbour recalls how Mrs Mills threatened to kill her husband, screamed how much she wanted him dead in front of the whole street.’

  ‘I see,’ I say. ‘Well I guess that is pretty interesting. But it’s hardly a confession, is it? I mean, I imagine it’s what a lot of wives say to their cheating husbands in the heat of the moment.’

  Davis looks down at the floor suddenly, like I’ve struck a nerve.

  ‘I want everyone spoken to, a list of names of everyone who lives here. I want to find out who the Millses were, what their life was like, what they were like. Someone might’ve seen something tonight; they all look like a bunch of curtain twitchers so I’m pretty convinced something will come up. And that Monica woman, the friend you mentioned, talk to her. I want her interviewed first, then everyone else on this street.’

  Davis nods. ‘Technically, it’s a close, boss,’ she grins at me and I mock frown at her in response.

  ‘So, do we know who the other woman is yet? A name for the mistress?’

  ‘Claire someone, no surname yet, no address. Maybe Laurie Mills can shed some light.’

  ‘Send someone down there as soon as we’ve got an address, okay?’

  From the corner of my eye I can see Fi again. She’s standing off to the left of the crowd of vultures, looking at her phone. I turn back to Davis. ‘What’s your take on this, Davis?’ I ask her because I know how it looks. The message on the mirror, the murder weapon, no forced entry and an acrimonious break-up fuelled by infidelity. Some might say the writing, in this case quite literally, is on the wall. And yet I just don’t think so…

  ‘There was no break-in, boss, no one else at the scene, the suspect is claiming temporary amnesia during the time the murder happened, there’s a weapon and a motive, and by the wounds inflicted, I’d say it was done with some degree of frenzy, fuelled by passion, hate, revenge. It’s not looking good for Mrs Mills.’ Davis hesitates. ‘Yet… I don’t know… She’s such a tiny person,’ she says, mirroring my own thoughts. Her intuition is speaking to her, just like mine is.

  Laurie Mills is – from what I have briefly seen, and from what Davis has clearly noted too – tiny. She’s a diminutive woman with limbs like a bird, and a broken one at that. That’s the image that popped into my head when I first saw her, a broken bird. To kill a man twice, maybe three times her size just seems so… unlikely, though admittedly not impossible. Human strength cannot be underestimated in extreme circumstances, no less extreme emotions, but there was, is, a fragility to Laurie Mills that made me feel she could barely pick up a knife and fork, let alone practically decapitate her strapping 6ft-plus husband and plunge a knife repeatedly into him.

  ‘People can have the most incredible strength when they want to,’ Davis says, reading my thoughts once more. ‘Rage, protecting their children, fear—’

  ‘Yes.’ I agree with her because I know it’s true.

  ‘Hate,’ Davis says with a tinge of sadness. ‘It does terrible things to people.’

  I think of Craig Mathers then, the man responsible for ploughing into my Rachel on her motorbike, killing her, and our tiny unborn child inside her, outright, and his face flashes up in my mind.

  ‘Doesn’t it just,’ I s
ay.

  Nine

  Laurie – Spring 2015

  ‘You’re going away again?’ Laurie blinks at her husband, the disappointment in her voice matching her expression.

  ‘C’mon now, Law, you know it’s my job. That’s what I do, what I’ve always done. Please don’t start.’

  ‘I’m not starting,’ she says, careful not to sound defensive. She doesn’t want to upset him, but she wants to address the issue of them spending so much time apart. ‘We’ve hardly spent more than a whole week together in three months. We’ll never start a family like that.’

  She hears him sigh, watches him roll his eyes.

  ‘Here we go again… You sound just like Martha did, and Tammy and the others. I thought you understood, Law; I thought you were different.’

  Laurie feels herself bristle, stuck somewhere between protestation and acquiescence. She resents it whenever he compares her to his coterie of ‘crazy controlling exes’ – it always managed to shut the argument down, lest she be lumped into the same category. But it wasn’t too much to ask, wanting to see your new husband more than a few days a month, was it?

  ‘Besides, you’re going to be away yourself in a couple of weeks; the big hotel contract… Deborah and Jack will want you with them when they go to Italy – you’re the best designer they’ve got on the team and they know it.’

  She turns away from him but can’t help smiling. She knows what he’s doing, softening her up with compliments.

  ‘It’s just that you’ve been away so much lately. We’ve hardly had any time for… us.’ Laurie pouts a little to take the edge off her obvious discontent. She doesn’t want to sound needy; Robert said that Martha was the biggest whinger he’d ever met and she’s nothing like Martha, or the others who’d tried to hold him back and clip his wings, women who had attempted to ‘own him’, as he’d put it. Women who did not understand his need for creative freedom and his wanderlust; women who were jealous, needy and questioning of his myriad female friends. That’s why he’d married her, he’d said. ‘You’re nothing like any of the others – you get me, you allow me to express myself, to be myself. That’s what a true soulmate is, Law; that’s why I want to take my last dying breath with you…’