Dead Man's Daughter

by Roz Watkins

  *

  We eventually arrived at the edge of the woods, and crossed the road to reach Elaine’s cottage. I hammered on the door and it flew straight open. I wrenched off my muddy boots and sodden socks, followed Elaine through to a faded living room, and lowered Abbie onto the sofa.

  ‘Get some blankets around her,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back.’ I dashed barefoot over the road to my car, grabbed some evidence bags, and slipped my feet into the spare trainers I’d shoved in there in a fit of sensibleness. My toes felt as if they’d been dipped in ice, rubbed with a cheese-grater, and held in front of a blow-torch.

  Back at the house, Elaine had swaddled Abbie in a couple of towels and about five fleecy blankets that looked like they could be the dog’s. I decided it was best not to smell them.

  ‘Do you have anything she could wear?’ I asked. ‘So we can get that wet nightdress off her?’

  Elaine hesitated. ‘I still have . . . ’

  Abbie looked up from her nest of fleeces and mumbled, ‘Where’s the dog?’

  Elaine called him, and Abbie stroked the top of his head gently, her eyelids drooping, while Elaine went to fetch some clothes.

  The room was clean and tidy but had a museum feel, as if it had been abandoned years ago and not touched since. Something caught my eye beside the window behind the sofa. A collection of dolls, sitting in rows on a set of shelves. I’d never been a fan of dolls and had dismembered those I’d been given as a child, in the name of scientific and medical research. And there was something odd about these. I took a step towards them and looked more closely.

  A floorboard creaked. I jumped and spun round. Elaine stood in the doorway, holding up some soft blue pyjamas. ‘These?’ They must have belonged to a child a little older than Abbie.

  I nodded, walked over and took the pyjamas, then sat on the sofa next to Abbie. I opened my mouth to thank Elaine and ask if she had a child of her own, but I glanced first at her face. It was flat, as if her muscles had been paralysed. I closed my mouth again.

  I persuaded Abbie to let me take off the sopping-wet, blood-soaked nightdress and replace it with the pyjamas. Her teeth chattered, and she clutched my scarf. I put the nightdress in an evidence bag.

  ‘My sister Carrie knitted that for me.’ I was better at saying her name now. ‘When I was very young. It’s the longest scarf I’ve ever seen.’

  Abbie touched the scarf against her cheek, closed her eyes and sank back into the sofa.

  I looked up at Elaine. ‘Do you know if she lives at Bellhurst House? She said she lived in the woods, but she’s pretty confused.’

  Elaine stared blankly at me. ‘Yes, I suppose she must. They own the land that goes down to the gorge.’

  A pitter-patter of my heart. The guilt that was so familiar. Again I tried to remember what the woman from Bellhurst House had reported. Someone in the woods, someone looking into their windows, someone following her. She hadn’t lived alone; I remembered that. There was definitely a husband, possibly children.

  ‘Is that your house, Abbie? Bellhurst House?’

  She nodded.

  ‘A car went down there,’ Elaine said. ‘In the night. I couldn’t sleep. Down the lane. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But now I’m wondering . . . ’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly. About three or four, I think.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Police are on their way to the house. What colour was the car?’

  ‘I couldn’t see – it was too dark.’

  I turned to Abbie. ‘Do you remember anything about what happened?’ I said. ‘Where the blood came from?’

  She leant close to the dog and wrapped her arms around him. He gave me a long-suffering look. Abbie spoke softly into his ear, so I could barely make out the words. ‘Everyone always dies. Jess. And Dad . . . ’

  I looked at her blood-stained hair. ‘Who’s Jess?’

  ‘My sister.’

  I imagined her sister and her father bleeding to death in those dark woods, surrounded by statues of terrified children. ‘Where are your sister and your dad, Abbie?’

  No answer. She closed her eyes and flopped sideways towards me.

  I caught sight of the dolls again.

  It felt as if someone had lightly touched the back of my neck with a cold hand.

  It was the eyes.

  In some of the dolls, the whole eye was white – no iris or pupil. In others, the iris was high, so you just saw the edge of it as if the eyes had rolled up inside the doll’s head.

  I turned away, feeling Abbie’s soft weight against me.

  2.

  I skidded my car to a halt on an icy, stone-flagged courtyard in front of the pillared entrance of Bellhurst House. Back-up hadn’t yet arrived and the place was deserted. I’d left Abbie with a PC at Elaine’s, but my stomach was knotted with concern for her relatives. They could be lying inside, gasping for breath, blood pouring from their wounds. I jumped from the car.

  The house was Victorian Gothic, in the style of a small lunatic asylum. The kind of place where you’d find inexplicable cold corners and notice the cats avoiding certain rooms. It had two spiky-roofed, bay-windowed halves, flanking a tower topped with a witches’ cap roof.

  I bashed a brass lion-head knocker against the oak door. No answer, but when I shoved the door, it opened into a narrow hallway. A stained-glass window splashed colours onto the carpet. I stopped a moment and listened, aware that I shouldn’t go in alone.

  I stepped into the hall. ‘Police! Is anyone there?’

  Nothing. The house was so silent, it hurt my ears.

  I checked downstairs. There was evidence of a break-in – a forced window and glass crunching underfoot in a utility room – but I didn’t stop to investigate.

  The stairs were narrow and all slightly different heights, making it hard not to trip. They led onto a landing which smelt of library books and damp coins. I crossed the creaky-boarded floor and poked my head into the first bedroom. It must have been Abbie’s room, or possibly her sister’s – decorated in the pink and purple that some little girls seemed to insist on, to the horror of feminist mothers. I gave it a quick glance – no blood – and retreated onto the landing. Another door opened into a larger room.

  I froze. A man lay sprawled on his back on a double bed. Blood had sprayed onto the white wall beside him – a jagged line of crimson blobs with tails trailing below. More blood smeared the white duvet, the sheets, and the cream carpet by the bed. It was fresh and vivid, its coppery smell filling my nostrils.

  I rushed over and checked his pulse, but I knew he was dead. I felt a wave of despair for Abbie – so strong my knees went weak. Was this her father?

  I could never get used to these moments. The visceral shock of someone being dead. The knowledge that his family would have to live forever with this. Abbie would always be the girl whose father was murdered. Possibly the girl who saw her father murdered. This would be with her for the rest of her life.

  I took a moment to look at the man’s face. To think of him as a person, before he became a job, a problem to be solved, a puzzle to be pored over.

  I let myself feel the sadness, then took a deep breath and forced myself into robotic mode.

  I scanned the walls. The blood was arterial – you could see the tell-tale pattern produced by the pumping of his heart. I glanced at the man’s throat. The carotid had been slit. He lay on his white sheets surrounded by the spectacular crimson display, his head jerked back into the pillow.

  I flicked my gaze around the room. A window was open. Drawers had been pulled out and upended, leaving T-shirts and underwear littering the floor. A photo by the bedside showed a couple grinning at the camera, blue sea behind them. It was this man. I pictured little Abbie, wrapped in fleeces, hugging the dog, blood smeared on her face. The room shifted as if I was on a boat. Had she seen this done to her father?

  And where was the sister? And what about the mother?

  I needed to get out. Ge
t the scene secured. My mind was full of all the things I had to do – gripped by that familiar desperation to get this right. To get it right for the relatives. For little Abbie.

  I carefully left the bedroom and checked the rest of the house, pushing each door with tight fingers, praying I wouldn’t find a dead sister or mother.

  I didn’t. The house was empty. I called in what I’d found, spoke to the crime scene manager and media officer, and walked back out to my car.

  I jumped. Tyres kicked up gravel. A silver four-wheel drive hurtled along the driveway and skidded sideways onto the paved area, almost hitting my car. A woman leapt out and ran towards me. She looked familiar. The woman from the photo by the bed, minus the sunniness. ‘What’s going on?’ she shouted. ‘Where’s Abbie? What have you done with her?’

  I took a step towards her, trying to block her from going into the house. ‘Abbie’s fine. Wait a minute.’

  She pushed past me.

  I reached for her arm. ‘You can’t go – ’

  She pulled away. ‘Where’s Abbie?’

  ‘Stop! You can’t go inside.’ I shot round her and blocked her path with my body. ‘Abbie’s fine. She’s not in there.’

  She tried to shove past me, so hard I was forced to push her away. She caught her heel on a flagstone and fell backwards, landing with a thud. I reached down to her, but she jumped up without my help.

  I saw her arm draw back and then my eye exploded. I collapsed onto the icy ground.

  *

  I opened my eyes. Wow, that hurt. Of course they all chose that moment to arrive. The pathologist, a herd of SOCOs, half of Derbyshire’s uniformed PCs, and DS Craig Cooper – the nastiest cop in town. I heaved myself up as quickly as possible and tried to look like someone who hadn’t been punched in the face.

  Craig jumped out of his car. ‘Christ, what happened?’

  I gestured into the house. ‘Victim’s wife’s in there. Get her out.’

  I touched the skin above my cheekbone. There were types of people you expected to thump you, and she hadn’t been one of them. I’d allowed her through, and now she’d have messed up the scene.

  I suited up in the shadow of the house. My ankle was throbbing. I’d injured it as a child and it hadn’t healed well. A big lump of callus stuck out and restricted movement, making me walk with a slight limp and minimising my chances of ever looking like a glamorous TV detective. I must have bashed it when I’d fallen.

  Craig appeared, leading the wife by the arm. Her hair and clothes were smeared red, and she was hunched over, letting out gulping sobs. Craig gave a little shake of his head and rolled his eyes to the sky.

  The woman pulled herself free of Craig and stood breathing heavily and seeming to get control of herself. She raised her head. ‘Where’s Abbie? Where’s my little girl?’

  ‘She’s with police at a neighbour’s. She’s fine.’

  The woman sniffed loudly and took a couple more open-mouthed breaths. ‘I told the police someone was stalking us. I told you but nobody believed me. Oh God . . . ’ She folded forwards again and held her stomach.

  ‘We’ll need to ask you about that,’ I said gently, ignoring the implied criticism. ‘But I have to get a few things started. Then I’ll take you to Abbie.’

  She leant against one of the pillars by the door.

  ‘Was anyone else in the house?’ I asked. ‘Abbie mentioned her sister.’

  ‘There’s no one else.’ The woman swallowed and seemed to shrink into herself. ‘Jess died. Years ago.’

  I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing emerged. Craig took the woman’s arm and led her away.

  I made sure inner and outer cordons were in place, and went back in for a careful look around.

  The hallway led into a utility room that had an old-house smell of mould and mushrooms. Its window had been smashed, the catch released, and the sash shoved upwards, making a space big enough for someone to climb in. The house still had its original wooden windows, making it an easy target. One thing for hideous PVC double glazing – it did make breaking in a little harder, and prints showed up so much better on plastic than on wood.

  The kitchen was terracotta-tiled and rustic, with a central butcher’s block fit for dismembering large animals. The room was tidy but lived in, the fridge adorned with magnetic letters and a rather competent drawing of a dog’s head. A calendar on the wall showed school trips and ballet lessons. I glanced at today’s date – Rachel back from Mum’s. They were so terribly sad, the calendars of dead people, full of assumptions of an ordinary life continued.

  One of a collection of impressive chef’s knives was missing from a knife block on the countertop. If they were in order, it was the largest. I looked at the others – all throat-slittingly sharp.

  There was no evidence of an intruder in the living room. The TV and a laptop were still there, and the normal clutter of a family. A sketch pad and pencils, a thriller involving submarines, a pile of tedious-looking paperwork, a pair of nasty trainers.

  A small study next door had been substantially trashed. All the drawers in an antique-style desk had been emptied, leaving piles of papers strewn over the floor. I scanned the piles, not knowing what I was looking for, wondering what they’d been looking for. Trying to sense the murderer’s presence in the room amongst the mess they’d made.

  I scrutinised the bookshelves. More man-thrillers, reference books, and a little cluster of self-help, including a book called You Become What You Believe, which seemed tragically ironic in the circumstances. A card was propped on a low shelf of a bookcase, a picture of a kitten on its front. I lifted it with a gloved hand and looked inside. Thank you for getting in touch. We appreciated it. We don’t know who you are and we can’t tell you who we are, but it is of comfort to us that something good has come out of this terrible tragedy. I stuck it in a bag.

  I noticed a door in the corner. It was hard to picture the layout of this peculiar house. I walked over and pushed it, and found myself in a bright room with a bay window overlooking a garden. Green-tinted light flooded in. The walls were lined with benches, on which drawings lay scattered. I stepped over to look at them. A charcoal heart on cream paper, snakes’ heads projecting from it, the muscle of the heart melding seamlessly into the snakes’ necks, an optical illusion making the muscle seem to twitch. Another heart shown split in two, blood oozing from its red centre. A third with a single eye which stared out at me and seemed to follow me as I walked along by the bench. I felt goose pimples on my arms, and made a note to get the whole lot bagged up.

  Upstairs, nothing was obviously wrong in the pink room. No blood that I could see. Just a normal kid’s room – another sketch book, pony pictures on the walls, a globe on a painted desk, a mauve duvet hanging over the side of the bed, a fluffy elephant on the floor. My eyes were drawn to a sparkling amethyst geode on the bedside table, its purple crystalline innards shining from inside a dark egg of stone. I’d loved crystals and minerals too when I was a child.

  The air in the main bedroom had a metallic sweetness that touched the back of my throat. The pathologist had arrived. Mary Oliver. We’d bonded over a few corpses since I’d come to the Derbyshire force six months previously – we shared an interest in obscure medical conditions and a guilty Child Genius addiction.

  A glimpse of bone shone through the dark slash in the man’s neck, reminding me of abattoir photographs from animal rights groups. ‘So, he was killed by cutting his throat?’ I said.

  ‘Almost certainly. The PM will confirm.’

  ‘Is the carotid severed?’

  ‘Yep, cut right through with an inward stabbing motion. Two stabs, by the look of it. That’s why we’ve got some nice spatter.’

  ‘Would someone need a knowledge of anatomy or would random stabbing do it?’

  ‘Random stabbing could do it, although you’d have to be lucky with the location of the knife.’ She paused and looked at me. ‘Or unlucky, depending on your point of view.’

  �
��Time of death?’

  ‘Can’t be accurate on that yet, as you know.’

  ‘But . . . ’

  ‘His underarms are cool. From his temperature and the lividity, I’d suggest somewhere between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. He’s not been moved post mortem. This is all provisional, as you know.’

  ‘Okay. And he doesn’t seem to have struggled?’

  ‘I’d say he was fast asleep and he never regained consciousness. Unpleasant business.’

  Something had to be pretty gruesome for Mary to say it was unpleasant. Her bar was high. ‘So, it’s a premeditated attack then? Is that what we’re saying?’

  ‘There are no defence injuries that I can see at the moment. It’s not your typical interrupted-burglar or domestic scenario. Shame the wife got in and messed up the scene though.’

  ‘I know.’ I reminded myself I’d done my best to stop her, at some personal cost. Guilt was my specialist subject, which I could perform to Olympic level. ‘The child had blood on her as well, so I suppose she must have come in and seen this.’ I imagined briefly how Abbie must have felt. I’d been about the same age when I’d found my sister hanging from her bedroom ceiling. I hoped Abbie wouldn’t still be having flashbacks in her mid-thirties. ‘She’s not saying much.’

  Mary frowned at me. ‘Have you found a weapon?’

  ‘No. What are we looking for?’

  ‘An extremely sharp knife with a pointed end.’

  ‘Something was missing from a knife block in the kitchen.’

  ‘Could a woman have done it?’

  I hadn’t heard Craig creeping up behind me. He was quiet, given what a lump he was. I stood back a little to let him see into the room.

  ‘What Craig wants to know,’ I said, ‘is whether someone with limited upper body strength could have done this.’

  ‘Don’t get all uppity,’ Craig said. ‘Women do have limited upper body strength.’

  ‘Assumptions like that get us into trouble,’ I said. ‘You need to arm-wrestle my friend Hannah. I suppose at least you’re not assuming a man did it.’