Читать книгу Dead Man’s Daughter - Roz Watkins - Страница 10

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. Get 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.’

‘Au contraire,’ Craig said, having recently returned from some winter sun. ‘It’s probably the bloke’s wife.’

That probably said more about Craig’s relationship with his wife than it did about the murder, but I decided to keep that insight to myself.

‘You wouldn’t need a great amount of strength,’ Mary said. ‘Because it was done with an inward stabbing rather than a slicing motion. A feeble little woman could definitely have done it.’ She smiled at me to show her solidarity.

I nodded a thank you at Mary, and stood for a moment taking in the room. Something was odd. The chaos of pulled-out drawers and strewn clothes was muted. I couldn’t imagine an intruder storming through.

An en-suite bathroom led off the bedroom. From the droplets of water in the cubicle and on the floor, it looked as if someone had taken a shower within the previous few hours.

Back on the landing, I noticed something on the windowsill, almost hidden behind the curtain. At first I thought it was a vase, but then realised it was a carving in pale wood. I walked over and looked more closely. It was a miniature version of one of the stone statues I’d seen in the clearing – a child screaming. The terrible face was the same, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. But there was one difference. This one was naked, and where the heart should have been, the wood had been gouged out, leaving a hollow in the child’s chest.