Читать книгу: «Let the Dead Speak»

2

I sat in the car, not moving. The rain danced across the empty street in front of me. It was unusual for it to be so quiet at a crime scene. Murder always attracted crowds, but the rain was better at dispersing them than any uniformed officer. The journalists were hanging back too, sitting in their cars like me, waiting for something to happen. Walking across the road would count as something happening, so I stayed where I was. The less attention I attracted, the happier I was.

The light wasn’t good, the dark clouds overhead making it feel like a winter day. I checked. Not quite six o’clock. More than three hours to sunset. Two and a half hours since the 999 call had brought response officers to the address. Two hours and ten minutes since the response officers’ inspector had turned up to get her own impression of what they’d found. Two hours since the inspector had called for a murder investigation team. Ninety minutes since my phone had rung with an address and a sketchy description of what was waiting for me there.

What I saw was a quiet residential street in Putney, not far from the river. Valerian Road was lined with identical red-brick Victorian townhouses with elaborate white plasterwork and black railings, their tiled paths glossy from the rain. The residents’ cars were parked on both sides of the street, most of them newish, most of them expensive.

The exception: a stretch about ten houses long where blue-and-white tape made a cordon. Inside it, police vehicles clustered, and an ambulance, the back doors open, the paramedics packing up as they prepared to move off. And halfway along the cordoned-off bit of street, a hastily erected tent hiding the doorway of the house that was my crime scene.

A stocky figure emerged from the tent, yanked down a mask and pushed back the hood of her paper overalls. Una Burt. Detective Chief Inspector Una Burt, acting up as our superintendent. The guv’nor. Ma’am. My boss. Her hair was flattened against her head: rain or sweat, I guessed. My skin was clammy already, the shirt sticking to my back, and I hadn’t done anything more energetic than drive across London on a wet Sunday afternoon. It was warm still, despite the rain.

Beside me, Georgia Shaw shifted in her seat. ‘What are we waiting for?’

‘Nothing.’

‘So let’s get going.’ She had her hand on the door handle already.

‘We are murder detectives. By the time we turn up at a crime scene, by definition, nothing can be done to save anyone. So what’s the rush?’

She cleared her throat, because when you’re a detective constable you don’t say bullshit to a detective sergeant. Not unless you know them very well indeed. Even if the detective sergeant is so newly promoted she keeps forgetting about it herself.

‘We’re not going to find the murderer by sitting in the car, though, are we?’

‘I once caught a murderer while I was sitting in a car,’ I said idly, more interested in the crime scene in front of me than in talking to the newest member of the murder team.

‘Who was that?’ Georgia narrowed her eyes, trying to remember. She had read up on me, she told me on her first day, and made the mistake of saying it in front of most of the team. If we’d been alone, I might have been able to be nice about it. As it was, I had turned on my heel and walked away, too mortified to say anything. I didn’t need to. I knew my colleagues would say plenty once I was out of earshot.

Some of what they said would even be true.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said now. Be nice. ‘Ancient history. The thing to remember is that it’s not a waste of time to take your time.’

Georgia smiled, but in an irritable stop-telling-me-what-I-already-know way. She was strikingly self-possessed for someone who’d been a member of the team for two weeks. Maybe it was just that I expected everyone else to be as diffident as I had been. Self-confidence had never really been my strong point but it was irrational to dislike Georgia simply because she was assertive.

It was a lot more rational to dislike her because she was absolutely useless. A graduate, she was on a fast-track scheme and had been moved to my team straight after her probation. She was young, she was pretty, she was articulate and confident and ambitious and not all that interested in hard work, it seemed to me. She was a filled quota, a ticked box, and I didn’t think she deserved to be on a murder investigation team.

Then again, that was exactly how the other members of the team had felt about me when I joined.

So I disliked her, but I sincerely tried not to.

Kev Cox emerged from the house, his face shiny red. He scraped back his hood and said something to Una Burt that made her smile.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Kev Cox. Crime scene manager. The best in the business.’

Georgia nodded, making a note. I’d already noticed that her closest attention was reserved for senior police officers – the sort of people who might be able to advance her career.

And a glance in my rear-view mirror told me that one of her prime targets had arrived, though the best thing she could do for her career was probably to stay far away from him. He inserted his car into a space I thought was slightly too small, edging it back and forth with limited patience and a scowl on his face. Not happy to be back from his holidays, I deduced. He had sunglasses on, despite the rain, and he was on his own, which meant he had no one to distract him.

And I suddenly had a reason to go inside. The last thing I wanted was a touching reunion with Detective Inspector Josh Derwent in front of Georgia. There was no way to know what he would say, or what he might do. He would have to behave himself at the crime scene.

At least, I hoped he would.

‘Let’s get going.’ I grabbed my bag and slid out of the car in the same movement. It took Georgia a minute to catch up with me as I strode across the road and nodded to Una Burt.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Maeve.’ Limited enthusiasm, but that was nothing new. I had been disappointing Una Burt for years now. Georgia got an actual smile. ‘Get changed before you even think about going into the house. We need to preserve every inch of the forensics.’

As opposed to obliterating the evidence as I usually do.

‘Of course,’ I said politely.

‘This is a strange one. Come on.’ She led the way into the tiny tent where there were folded paper suits like the one she wore. It was second nature to me now to put them on, to snap on shoe covers, to tuck my hair under the close-fitting hood and work my hands into thin blue gloves and settle the mask over my face. There was a rhythm to it, a routine. Georgia wasn’t quite as practised and I remembered finding it awkward when I was new. I slowed down, making it easier for her without showing her I’d noticed she was fumbling with her suit.

‘What’s strange about this one, guv?’

‘You’ll see.’

I looked down instead of rolling my eyes as I wanted to. Just tell me . . . But Una believed in the value of first impressions.

My first impression of 27 Valerian Road was that it was the kind of house I’d always wanted to own. It was a classic Victorian terraced house inside as well as out, long and dark and narrow, with coloured encaustic tiles on the hall floor and stained glass in the front door. I could have done without the blood streaks that skated down the hall, swirled on the walls, splotched the stairs and – I tilted my head back to look – dotted the ceiling. It was enough to take a hundred grand off the value of the property, but that still wouldn’t bring it into my price range.

‘Cast-off.’ The words came from behind me, and I’d have known Derwent’s voice anywhere, even if I hadn’t been expecting him, but I still jumped. Georgia gave a stagey gasp.

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ I said. And hello to you too, DI Derwent. ‘Was it a knife, Kev?’

‘Possibly. We’re still looking for the weapon,’ he called from his position at the back.

I could picture it: a knife swinging through the air, wet with blood after the first contact with the victim, shedding droplets as it carved through space and skin. And those droplets would tell us a multitude about the person who’d held the weapon: how they’d stood, where they’d stood, which hand they’d used, how tall they were – everything, in short, but their name.

So I understood why Una Burt was particularly determined to preserve the finer details of this crime scene, and if possible I walked a little more carefully as I moved through the hall, stepping from one mat to another to avoid touching the floor. It wasn’t a large space and there were five of us standing in it, rustling gently in our paper suits.

‘Has this been photographed?’ I asked.

‘Every inch,’ Kev said. ‘And I’ve got someone filming it too. But the blood-spatter expert won’t be here for an hour or so and I want her to map it before anything changes.’

I nodded, glancing into the room on the right: a grey-toned living room, to my eye untouched, although there was a SOCO rotating slowly in the middle of the room holding a video camera. Film was much better than still photographs for getting the atmosphere of a crime scene, for putting things in context. Juries liked watching films. I moved back, not wanting to appear on camera. ‘Where’s the body?’

‘She always asks the right questions, doesn’t she?’ Kev nudged Una Burt happily. She didn’t look noticeably thrilled behind her mask.

‘Have a look upstairs.’

Derwent was closer to the bottom of the stairs and he went first. Georgia went next, followed by me. She put her hand out to take hold of the rail and I caught her wrist. ‘Don’t touch anything unless you have to.’

‘Sorry.’

The lights were on in the hall and at the top of the stairs, and it was too bright for comfort. Blood flared off every surface, dried and dark but still vibrating with violence. I didn’t know anything about the victim and I didn’t know what had happened here, but fear hung in the air like smoke. Don’t think about it now. The facts came first. The emotions could come later.

‘What happened here?’ Derwent had stopped at the top of the stairs, moving to one side to let the rest of us join him. A huge wavering bloodstain had soaked into the sisal carpet that covered the floor.

‘We think this was possibly where the first major injury was inflicted. There’s a lot of blood downstairs but in small quantities up to this point,’ Una Burt said. ‘Maybe defensive wounds. Maybe transferred from up here on the attacker’s clothes and hands.’

‘Or the victim’s,’ Kev said, and got a glare from Una Burt. Interesting.

The blood had settled into the weave, spreading out so it was hard to tell how much there was. Not enough to be an arterial injury. Survivable, potentially, I thought. ‘This isn’t a great surface for us, is it?’

‘Nope.’ Kev gestured at smudges on the woven surface. ‘Those are footprints and kneeprints. No detail, no definition. Give me a nice tiled floor any day.’

‘You’ve got the hall downstairs,’ Derwent said.

‘Except that we had people in and out with wet feet before I got here. The coppers had the sense to step carefully but the others …’ Kev raised his eyes to heaven. ‘You’d almost think it was deliberate. If it hadn’t been for the rain we’d have a lot more to go on.’

‘Who was that?’ I asked.

‘One of the two residents – a female aged eighteen – and one of the neighbours,’ Una Burt said. ‘He gave her a lift back from the station. They came in and found this. You’ll need to talk to both of them.’

I nodded and followed the trail to the small bathroom on the right, staying in the doorway because there was nowhere to stand that wasn’t covered in brownish red residue. The shower curtain hung down, ripped off most of its rings, streaked and splattered like the walls, like the ceiling, like the cracked mirror where we were reflected like a gathering of particularly awkward aliens. There were partial handprints on the sink, which was chipped, and the toilet. The seat had come away from the hinges on one side, so I could see the blood ran down inside the bowl, where it had settled thickly under the water.

It had been a white room, once.

‘Christ,’ Derwent said. ‘How many victims did you say there were?’

Una Burt ignored him. ‘This is the main location for the attack. It’s human nature to want to hide and there’s a lock on the bathroom door but this was the worst possible place to run to. It’s a small space with one exit and not much you could use to defend yourself. The attacker was able to stand in the doorway and cause maximum damage at his or her leisure.’

‘His, surely,’ Georgia said. Her eyes were round and very blue above the white mask, but her voice didn’t tremble.

‘Sexist,’ Derwent observed under his breath and she turned to look at him.

‘You can’t assume it was a man,’ I said. ‘You can’t assume anything.’

‘Indeed not. Come on.’ DCI Burt led us back towards the front of the house. ‘Down the hall beyond the bathroom there’s a further bedroom but it’s not disturbed and the blood trail doesn’t lead down there. It belongs to the daughter. This seems to have been used as a guest room.’

It was a large room with a bay window and a cast-iron fireplace on the wall opposite the door. The bed was rumpled. There was a chest of drawers in an alcove, but the bottles and brushes on top of it had been knocked askew. I couldn’t see any blood, but something else was all too evident.

‘What the fuck is that smell?’ Derwent stepped backwards.

‘Watch where you put your feet. The cat was shut in here,’ Kev explained.

‘For how long?’

‘That’s the interesting thing,’ Una said. ‘The daughter left here on Wednesday. It’s Sunday now. It would appear the cat defecated on three separate occasions and it obviously urinated as well, quite copiously.’

‘You’d think it would have run out of piss after a while.’ Derwent was crouching down, peering under the bed at the carpet.

‘Yes, but look at this.’ Una pointed to the corner of the room where there was a half-full bowl of water. I went over for a better view and saw short, fine hairs suspended in the liquid. I nudged the bowl with a gloved knuckle to check the carpet underneath, and the single circular mark told me that it was a one-off arrangement.

‘Someone locked the cat in here deliberately, but they didn’t want it to suffer. They didn’t bother with a litter tray but they left enough water that it could survive until the cavalry came. It could manage for three days without food but it couldn’t have lived without water.’

‘The girl was away from Wednesday,’ Derwent said. ‘Did anyone know she was coming back today?’

‘I don’t know. Maeve, you can ask her about that. I want you to interview her.’

I nodded as Derwent flashed me a look that said Don’t think I won’t try to come along just because you’re a detective sergeant now. I ignored him. He was still getting used to the idea of me being a little more senior, with more responsibilities and, crucially, more independence from him.

To be honest, so was I.

‘Who else lives here?’ I asked Una.

‘The girl’s mother, Kate Emery, aged forty-two. Her bedroom is upstairs.’

I leaned back to check: no blood on the stairs. ‘Was it disturbed?’

‘Not as far as we can tell. Not during or immediately after the attack, anyway. No blood.’

‘Is she the victim?’ Derwent asked.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Don’t you have a photograph of her?’ Georgia hesitated. ‘Or – or is the body too badly damaged to be identifiable?’

Una Burt exchanged a look with Kev that seemed to amuse them both. ‘Come downstairs and tell me what you make of it.’

It was strange how quickly you got used to the blood, all things considered. We picked our way down the stairs and already it was more like a puzzle than an outrage. That was how it would stay for the moment, and it was useful to have that detachment even if I knew it wouldn’t last. I followed Una Burt down the hall, Derwent treading on my heels he was so keen to see what lay ahead. On the left, under the stairs, there was a small shower room. She threw open the door and stood back.

‘Voila. What do you make of that?’

‘Is this where the attacker cleaned up?’ I scanned the walls, seeing faint brownish streaks on the tiles. ‘I smell bleach.’

‘And drain cleaner. Highly corrosive, designed to dissolve hair and dirt that blocks pipes. I found the bottle in the kitchen, in a cupboard. Homeowner’s property.’ Kev’s eyes crinkled as his mask flexed: he was actually smiling. ‘We know they were in here. We know they tidied up after themselves. What we don’t know is whether we’ll get anything useful from it.’

‘Great,’ I said, meaning the opposite. ‘What else?’

‘The blood trail goes into the kitchen and through the kitchen.’ Kev guided us into a smart white kitchen, pristine apart from the dried blood that dragged across the wooden floor and marked the corner of the cabinets. It was smeared across the doorframe and the handle of the back door. ‘And then it disappears. I’m not going to open the door because it opens outwards. It’s still raining cats and dogs and I don’t have a tent set up there yet. I don’t want to lose any of the marks on the inside of the door, but I can tell you what I found – or didn’t find. There’s a patio out there and I can’t currently locate a trace of blood, or a usable footprint, or anything that might tell us where our victim ended up. The rain has obliterated everything.’

‘So no body,’ I said.

‘No body,’ Una Burt confirmed. ‘At this stage we can’t even be certain who we’re looking for. We won’t be sure of that until the DNA results come back. What we do know so far is that Kate Emery hasn’t been seen since Wednesday night. We could run this as a missing person inquiry but I don’t want to waste time. She’s left her phone, her handbag, her wallet, her keys and a whole lot of blood behind. There’s no way someone loses that much blood and walks away. We’ll hope for a sighting of her alive and well, but what we’re really looking for is a corpse.’