Читать книгу Persons Unknown: A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick 2018 - Susie Steiner, Susie Steiner - Страница 8

It’s good to have Manon back, he thinks, striding across the police station car park towards the featureless grass expanse of Hinchingbrooke Park. He plans to cut through to the wooded area where the body has been found – quicker than trying to walk the enormous curve of Brampton Road. That road is gridlocked with rush-hour traffic, the headlights of school-run mums and commuters out of Huntingdon. Only around five-ish – an unusual time of day for someone to meet a violent death. And opposite a school, too.

He’s anxious to get there, to be the first. He breaks into a jog. In the distance, he can see blue lights illuminating the trees in a rhythmic sweep, the flash of a couple of fluorescent jackets.

It’s good to have her back, but Manon has to understand that things have changed. He isn’t her DC any more – she can’t sit in a car the way she used to and bark orders at him. He’ll likely be leading this case – not as SIO, that’ll be Harriet – but on the ground, running the constables. The thought makes him jog faster. He wants to get there, get started. But his excitement – or is it a stitch? – is tugged at from below by something like aversion. His body pushes forward but his inner self pulls back. He can’t do it. He isn’t up to it. He’s been over-promoted by the super, who thinks of him as a son.

Davy is panting (it’s a wonder he passed his last bleep test); his heart knocking with impatience to master the scene, and with fear also. He might be unmasked at any moment.

‘The shallowness deep within,’ Manon said, ages ago now – just after his promotion – when he’d discussed his Imposter Syndrome with her. ‘You’re not the only one, you know.’ And he’d wondered whether she meant, ‘You’re not the only one who thinks you’re a useless twat.’

Why does he keep thinking about her? He wishes she was here, that’s why. She seems a more substantial person than he does. He slows to a walk because the stitch is really painful now. Even more substantial these days: her breathing laboured, her breasts enormous. He doesn’t want to be one of those men, but it’s like trying to pretend you’re looking out to sea when there’s a vast mountain range right in your sightline.

He comes alongside the body. Looks around him. Harriet’s not here, nothing’s started yet. Within half an hour this place’ll be crawling with uniforms. Looking down, he sees the clothing has been cut open so paramedics could work on the victim’s chest – white shirt, suit jacket, wool coat, Ozwald Boateng written on the purple shimmering lining. The eyes are open, mouth too, the chest caked in dried blood and the small incision of the wound itself, evidently from a knife, like a cut in an uncooked joint of pork. Small red opening in waxy yellow flesh.

Davy looks around him again.

He crouches down unsteadily, and a gust of wind nearly pushes him on top of the corpse. He puts a hand out to balance himself. You don’t want to contaminate the scene – isn’t that the first rule, the only thing they drum into you at training? Keep your hands in your pockets.

If only he could cop a glance at that wallet that he can see poking out of the purple silk lining – then he could get started. If he could get a name off a bank card, an ID, then the story can start and this is a whopper. This one’ll be all over the news. The pressure, he can feel it already popping at his temples, is going to be massive. Keep your hands in your pockets, Davy Walker.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Davy?’ It is Harriet.

He jumps up. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I’m not doing anything.’

‘Yeah, well, step away from the evidence until SOCO gets here,’ she says.

‘Know who he is?’ Davy asks.

‘Not yet. But he’ll still be dead in an hour after forensics have got what they need so there’s no need to be patting him down.’

He takes a step back.

‘We need to cordon this section of wood, make it wide,’ Harriet says. ‘Where’s your notebook, Davy? C’mon, or do you not want to run this scene? First priority is hands-and-knees search for a weapon. No point getting the dogs out, too many people around. But we do need community policing down here – I want the public reassured by not being able to move for police officers. We need a community inspector to go into the school, talk to the head, make sure all the kids get home safely. Same at the hospital.’

‘We should check Acer Ward,’ Davy says.

‘Yes, good thought. See if you can track down the consultant psychiatrist, ask him if they had any psychos go walkabout this afternoon. I didn’t just use that word, by the way.’

‘What about an ARV?’

‘No, leave them out – what can armed response do, realistically? Let’s not blow the budget. I want scene guards on the cordon, not the idiots we had on the last one. There’s a lot of footfall, I don’t want this scene contaminated, OK?’

‘Who found him?’

‘Judith Cole, over there,’ Harriet says, nodding towards a woman whose hair is matted against her head with blood. It’s smeared down her cheek and has soaked the collar of her coat. She has the distant look of a person who has yet to take in what has happened to her. Someone – a paramedic, probably – has placed a foil blanket over her shoulders of the kind used by runners at the end of a race.

‘She’s significant, obviously – last person to see him alive. We need her clothes for forensics.’

‘Why is there blood on her face and hair?’

‘She cradled the victim, tried to listen to his last words apparently.’

Davy is writing furiously, his hand cold and shaky. Harriet doesn’t stop, rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Also at the hospital, let’s check to see if anyone’s self-admitted. Knife wounds.’ She nods at the executive detached homes curling around the cul-de-sac adjacent to the school. ‘Over there, Snowdonia Way, that’s where I want house to house to start. And we can warn them to be vigilant while we’re at it. Set up a roadblock. We want witnesses, people who were driving in this direction.’

Davy is writing down Acer Ward while his brain tries to keep a tab on the subsequent items on the checklist. Nothing must fall off the checklist. He’s thinking Snowdonia Way, that was next, then – what? – something to do with clothes.

At the same time some other part of his brain is thinking, this isn’t a tidy one: not the usual kind of murder where the person who did it is lying smashed next to the victim or is making a cack-handed run for it towards a waiting panda car or where their perp is just, well, obvious because of the backstory: in a relationship with the victim, threatened them with it last time, just did a massive drugs deal and owed someone money. Sent a text saying, ‘I’ll get you, you’re for it.’ Their perps, often, were not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier and the cases were tidy. Dirty but clean, as in ring-fenced, not leaching towards the executive new builds of Snowdonia Way with their gas barbecues and two-car garages. Davy feels the anxiety reach its fist around his stomach.

‘So that woman Judith Cole,’ Harriet is saying, while Davy scribbles hosp – knife wounds? ‘He died in her arms apparently. At least, he was dead by the time the paramedics arrived. They tried to resuscitate him but no luck.’

‘Funny place to die,’ Davy says.

‘Yes. Very public. Who the fuck is stabbed at half four in the afternoon?’ Harriet’s swearing always peaks at a crime scene. ‘Let’s start with a statement from Mrs Cole, down at the station. Send someone to get her a change of clothes. She only lives over there, 5 Snowdonia Way.’

‘He looks well-to-do, not our usual lot,’ Davy says, nodding at the body.

He steps across the seeping ground to take a look at the man’s face the right way up. He has pouches beneath his eyes the size of teabags, a Roman nose. In fact the whole head seems Roman: his hair, cut close, curling forwards towards his forehead like Caesar’s crown of leaves. What was it made of? Manon would know.

As she walks away, Harriet adds, ‘Need to get the CCTV off the road and this footpath, if there is any.’

Time is of the essence, even when your victim is dead. Witnesses move, rain washes fibres away, memories fade. The commuter who might have noticed something vital goes home to his family, eats dinner, watches TV and soon cannot distinguish between Tuesday and Wednesday. CCTV gets inadvertently wiped by a shopkeeper who knows no better; car number plates are forgotten, descriptions blurred with other memories. They don’t call them the mists of time for nothing.

Investigations, Davy realises as he looks at his checklist without knowing quite where to begin, run on the energy of time, run against it sometimes if a living person’s in danger – a kidnap, say, or a kiddie lost. Other times it’s justice that runs against the clock. Given time, your perp can get rid of the weapon, wipe down his prints, cook up an alibi or hot-foot it to somewhere sunny. The Costa Brava is bristling with British timeshare criminals.

Time blunts all.

It’s a relief, now, to be in the warmth of the major crime unit: frying drips on the coffee-machine hotplate; the clack of fingers on computer keys; muffled mobile calls saying, ‘No I won’t be home, job’s come in.’ There is no one for Davy to call, no one who minds whether he stays out all night. There’s been no one since Chloe, and that ended more than a year ago. Not so much that she put him off all relationships, more that he didn’t get back on the horse, and now he’s not even in the vicinity of a stable.

As with investigations, so it is with heartbreak: time drains the sharpness from the picture. When Davy’d first broken up with Chloe, she was in every thought he had. He cried every day when they separated, even though it was his choice (doom balloon that she was). Nowadays, he can think of her dispassionately as a significant ex, could even bump into her without a rise in his vital signs. The love has run cold, just like it will with the evidence if he doesn’t get a shifty on.

Davy glances at his watch – 8 p.m. Being outside for three hours has made his checklist damp. He spent it standing in that patch of wood, sometimes taking a break to sit in an unmarked car, receiving updates from his DCs. Nothing from the hospital; nothing from house to house, except varying degrees of alarm; nothing from the roadblock.

He’d spotted a scene guard smoking a fag and throwing it to the ground.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at the fag butt.

‘What? Nothin’ to do with me,’ the chap said.

‘Better not be,’ Davy said, ‘because it’s going to be tested by forensics and if your DNA is anywhere near it, you’ll be in big trouble.’

‘OK, well, actually it might be mine,’ he said, picking the butt up and putting it in his pocket.

‘Victim’s name is Jon-Oliver Ross,’ Harriet told him, when SOCO were done. ‘Banking type from London. Business card says Dunlop & Finch Wealth Management.’

‘Never had call for a wealth manager myself.’

‘No, me neither. I find an overdraft is all the wealth management I need,’ Harriet said. ‘Anyway, we need to find out why he was in Huntingdon, when he travelled in and how. Fella that did it might not be local either. We’ve also got a photo of a woman found in his jacket pocket. A four by six of a blonde, real stunner. She’ll be an ex, so we better know who she is as soon as possible.’

SOCO discovered drips of blood at wide intervals along the footpath leading away from where the body was found, and these are being analysed. The phone found on the body is an iPhone, latest version, locked with a passcode so as good as useless. Call data from the telecom company will tell them when texts were sent and to which number, but not their contents. For that, you need access to the handset. Same with apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat.

Davy stretches back, trying to release the stiffness in his shoulders. The frenetic atmosphere has calmed somewhat. The Hinchingbrooke School kids have all gone home, there are no other reports of anyone being stabbed, so it’s looking less and less like a random psycho on the rampage, which doesn’t surprise him because it’s almost never a random psycho. Relationships are what drive people to murder, in Davy’s experience.

DC Kim Delaney appears before him, her arms arranged like a forklift, piled with folded clothes. ‘Change of clothing for Judith Cole,’ she says. ‘Brought in by her husband. He’s downstairs.’

‘D’you want to talk to her about changing out of her clothes?’ Davy says. ‘Better coming from you, really.’

‘Why?’ Kim asks.

‘Oh, you know, you being,’ he coughs, ‘you know, a woman.’

‘So I have to have all the underwear chats, is that it?’

Davy colours up. It’d be just his luck to fall foul of some kind of mishandling of the politics of the sexes.

‘No, no, of course not. I’ll do it then, shall I?’ he says.

‘Don’t be a twat, Davy. I was only joking.’

‘Oh,’ says Davy. ‘Oh, right.’