Dark Vet

by CJ Hannon

  ‘I like to think so, sir.’

  He jams on a shiny black lace-up and ties it with quick fingers, keeping eye contact with her. ‘If you’ll allow some advice from someone who’s been round the block a few times?’

  ‘I’d value anything you have to say, sir.’

  Other sock. ‘Ultimately, you help solve this murder, solve ten, a hundred.’ He puts on his second shoe, throttles the strings up tight. ‘It won’t bring Sandy back.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Do you? Do you really? Ask yourself. Are you doing this to even up the check and balance? Or to bring comfort to bereaved families looking for justice? You need to know your own why.’

  ‘I–’

  He holds up a hand. ‘I don’t want an answer. It’s not for me.’ He does a soft chopping motion with his hand in the air, as if bestowing a blessing. ‘Know yourself. Bring your motivation, your method and your desired outcome into alignment. It helps you to keep it together up here.’ He stabs a finger at his temple.

  She notices for the first time, the buddha paperweight on Smithes’ desk. It’s no wonder the grunts nickname for Bill Smithes is “Guru”, though she likes to think it’s more reverent than disparaging.

  ‘You want to be SIO one day, correct?’

  ‘I do, yes, sir.’

  ‘So, let’s go down to the Major Incident Suite. The team’s waiting. I’m going to introduce you as deputy SIO. If you want it of course?’

  ‘Sir.’ She doesn’t know what to say. It’s a fudge to put someone of her rank as deputy, it’ll put some noses out of joint, but to hell with that. She wants this. ‘Thank you,’ she manages.

  ‘You’re in the weeds with this, I want you to take a lead role in the operation. You know how I like to work.’

  Smithes has a reputation. The watchful captain on the bridge, rarely seen laying a hand on the tiller, even in a storm.

  Smithes grabs his jacket, shrugs it on. ‘You’re going to brief the team on the case so far. Uzoma will give us his initial thoughts from a profiling perspective. Got it?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘This is it Van Doren, the next step. Ready?’

  The Major Incident Suite is split in two, with interview rooms, a room for press conferences, meeting rooms and adjoining offices to house the temporary teams. A bigger operation, Phalanx, occupies MI Room 1, so Windbourne is stationed in MI Room 2. It is carpeted, smart, climate-controlled. Its glass fronted walls have vertical blinds permanently pulled down.

  Someone has made a good start on the murder board; a blown-up image of Martin Kitteridge at its heart. There is a stack of photographs of the wife and the rest of the staff. Crime scene photos, printed on photo quality paper. A zoomed-in map of the Hove area with a couple of pins; the Kitteridge house and the veterinary practice, an annotated timeline template. A canvas with just the background layer of paint applied.

  Of course, there is investigative planning software that does all this digitally, and it’ll all be there too. For Van Doren nothing quite beats standing shoulder to shoulder with a colleague and letting your mind wander the board on this scale. To move and arrange things about by hand, to stretch red string between victim and a suspect brought a special, tangible, satisfaction. Most important however, is seeing the victim’s face each time you enter the room.

  A reminder: here is a victim.

  It triggers a thought. Every time she steps into her mother’s hallway, she sees a photo of her father there on the wall. Like a private murder board. Stuck in time.

  She shakes it away. Writes Operation Windbourne in green marker on a whiteboard.

  Then the team bustle in.

  They settle noisily in their seats and she feels like a supply teacher. Unprepared. Ready to bluff. A cocktail of adrenaline and nerves does the rounds. She stares out at them, all familiar faces. Charlie Collins is in as Reader/Receiver filtering the lines of enquiry, logging it on the HOLMES system, an unglamorous but important rite of passage for almost every detective constable working in major crimes. She’d steal him away when time allowed for field work, but he’d be made up to be in the tent.

  Smithes is last in, followed by Dr Uzoma. Smithes claps his hands twice to silence them, and then the guru gives a brief introductory welcome, and introduces her as Deputy SIO.

  The room doesn’t erupt in surprised murmurs. They watch her, pens poised.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. This is too quick. ‘Afternoon, everyone. Let’s get you up to speed.’ You’ve got this. You know it better than anyone. She begins fluently with the dates, times, the victim’s particulars and the circumstances of the death, including the fresh summary from John Hall’s unofficial verbal forensic pathology report. She expects to hand over, but Smithes waves her on. ‘Good. Carry on, Detective Inspector. What should we do next? I’ll just jump in when something occurs.’

  Christ. Was he going to put any stamp on this investigation?

  ‘The CSI team are out now conducting a routine sweep of the Kitteridge household. Our main task at hand is to build our list of potential suspects. We’ll need to tooth comb the tech, the business, check the CCTV in the area, financial records, mobile records, flag absolutely anything that relates to snakes. Interview the suspects and check alibis.’

  ‘Who do we have so far as potential suspects?’ the question comes from Sarah Gardner, an Intelligence Analyst with a good reputation.

  Van Doren indicates the photos on the murder board and flashes Collins a knowing grin. ‘The wife, Melody Kitteridge.’ She slides her finger down to the staff photos. ‘And by default, all the staff. This gentleman is Hugh Forrester, the receptionist. Next is Kathy Spellerman, the veterinary nurse and Lydia Gregorivic who runs the Pet Salon. I expect we’ll add some faces to this in the coming days.’

  She looks over to Smithes. Anything else?

  Thankfully he stands, hands in pockets. He takes a position by her side, massaging his neatly clipped beard.

  ‘Thank you, Detective. A couple of things before I hand over to Dr Uzoma.’

  Smithes radiates calm as he turns to face the team. ‘I’ve just had confirmation that the snake venom detected in the victim came from a cobra. Highly unusual.’ He turns to her. ‘You talked about the importance of finding and checking alibis. Our murder weapon didn’t need a human hand to wield or strike it. What real value is an alibi? It wouldn’t eliminate a suspect, because no human needed to be present during the death window.’

  You arsehole. In front of everybody? Is this some sort of test? She opens her mouth, closes it like a goldfish. Every eyeball beaming shame for her to absorb. She imagines them at the coffee station, in the corridors. See, I told you, she isn’t ready. Did you see her face?

  The silence stretches.

  ‘Detective?’

  Her mind clears with an answer. ‘I respectfully disagree, sir. A human hand very likely was needed during the death window.’

  He narrows his eyes. ‘Explain.’

  ‘We haven’t found the snake. Up until now we assumed it escaped. But there’s a much more likely possibility. That the perpetrator was there, released the snake into the room, then caught it and took it with them.’

  ‘Actually, Sir, Ma’am.’ A hand goes up. Pete Wade from forensics.

  Smithes motions for him to speak.

  ‘I’m still writing up the forensics report on the crime scene, but we did find traces of substrate bark on the floor of the office, but not outside it in the corridor… or anywhere else in the practice.’

  ‘Substrate bark?’ someone asks.

  ‘It’s what you’d typically find in a snake tank, like the wood chippings.’ Van Doren says, excitement gathering. ‘Which strongly suggests the snake didn’t slither out of the room. Somebody had to have been there to release it into the room and then gather it in.’

  ‘May I?’ Doctor Uzoma practically leaps up and she steps aside, buzzing at this breakthrough.

  He conn
ects his laptop to the projector. ‘This feels like the moment to talk about a possible profile.’ Dr Jonathan Uzoma, with his thick glasses, short greying hair and erudite air is an absorbing presence in front of the projector screen. A rare breed, a former detective turned psychologist, plying his trade as one of the most respected criminal profilers in the UK.

  He talks in a baritone with faint traces of cockney, testament to his years with the Met.

  ‘Disclaimer. Profiles are a guide, never an absolute. Use it to prioritise the suspects, never to discount them.’ He turns to the murder board and taps a long finger on the blown-up photo of Martin Kitteridge. ‘I always begin with the victim. Who was he? Why him?’ He glances down briefly at some notes.

  ‘The victim, who I’ll refer to as MK, was a popular man. Thirty-seven years old, had been married for eight years. Cambridge-educated, where he met his wife. No children. Started the Kitteridge veterinary practice with his wife and lives in an expensive, statement home.’ An image of the house on Medina Villas comes up on screen.

  ‘MK was a success, and he wanted you to know it.’ Uzoma shows a crime scene image of the certificates and plaques on the wall of MK’s office. ‘He was someone who wanted respect.’

  ‘Plenty of doctors put their qualifications on their walls, isn’t adoration a bit of a leap?’ Collins asks.

  Uzoma inclines his head, considering. ‘Maybe. Come to think of it, I have a few framed certificates on my own office wall, Constable. Saying all this makes me feel self-conscious.’ He gets a small chuckle. He indicates to Van Doren for the board pen, and she only realises that she’s been gripping it the whole time, like a stress stick. She chucks it and he catches it, pops the lid.

  ‘Now let’s talk about the killer.’

  Van Doren listens intently, eager to hear Uzoma’s thoughts.

  ‘How MK was murdered tells us an awful lot about his killer.’ He writes in caps: DEEPLY PERSONAL. ‘There are a million ways to kill someone, the methodology used here was, let’s be frank, complex. To me this is classic message as method. The way MK died was a message, most likely to MK himself.’

  Van Doren stuffs her hands in her pockets, intrigued.

  Uzoma clicks onto the slide showing the leg bites. ‘The pathology report will likely confirm what we suspect: MK was lightly sedated with Midazolam. What if the killer wanted MK to see the snake, to have some comprehension of what was happening? I believe it is a symbol of something that is significant to him, to them. The snake, the murder weapon, was probably removed by the killer. Why?’

  He waits.

  ‘Because the snake mattered to the killer too?’ Pete Wade offers.

  ‘Yes! Otherwise the attending officers would have found it with the body. The snake symbolised something private between killer and victim.’

  Uzoma writes SNAKE = SYMBOL, returns the lid and pushes his glasses higher up his nose.

  ‘The killer dosed MK just the right amount. Stop for a moment and just think about how hard that is. What’s his exact weight? How much has he eaten? How much of the whisky would he probably drink? The variables at play here are dizzying, nigh on impossible unless you knew MK and his habits intimately and had the pharmaceutical knowledge to pull it off.’

  He writes: PHARMA KNOWLEDGE. ‘This was meticulous and thoroughly planned.’ He writes up the words as he talks: ‘You’re looking for a planner, someone intelligent who was close to the victim and has pharmaceutical knowledge.’

  ‘All the staff at the practice would fit the bill.’ This from Critchlow, one of the uniforms.

  Uzoma lifts a finger, ‘Motives are statistically likely to be revenge or jealousy.’

  Van Doren finds her voice, ‘Do you think this is the first time for the killer? Or could he or she have killed before?’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t just assume it was a man. Poison –which is what this is, technically speaking– is statistically the method preferred by women. As for your very excellent question...’ Uzoma pushes his glasses up again. ‘None of your main suspects so far have any previous, correct?’

  ‘Not according to HOLMES,’ Collins says.

  ‘Then if you put a gun to my head – don’t!’ He holds up a finger and gets a polite chuckle from uniform. ‘I’d say due to its personal nature, that this is a debut. Now,’ he holds up a long finger, ‘a question for you all. Out of your initial suspects, does anyone leap out at you given the initial profile? Someone to investigate deep, question further. After all, that’s my role here, to help you narrow down to high probability targets. You get to streamline resources, go for the jugular, get a result. Detective Van Doren? You’ve a keen eye from what I’ve seen so far. Thoughts?’

  ‘I like to be led by the evidence,’ she says.

  ‘Me too. But where will you look for that evidence first?’

  ‘Gun to head time?’

  ‘Gun to head time.’

  ‘The wife,’ she says. Collins nods vigorously. ‘Everything in your profile fits. Intelligent. She’s a veterinary surgeon, has pharmaceutical knowledge. Nothing is more personal than a spouse. On top of that she had access, her prints are there, she poured the spiked whisky down the sink. She would probably know how to handle a snake.’

  ‘Sounds like a high-probability place to start.’ He turns to Smithes. ‘Any reason she’s not in here for questioning already?’

  ‘She does have an alibi for the whole window. She claims to have been on call at a farm in the Downs.’

  ‘Is it cast iron? You can always give it a kick, see if it’s solid or if it’ll wobble and topple over. That’s the ex-detective in me talking.’

  Smithes nods to himself. ‘Let’s keep an open mind, but I like the fit too. Let’s bring her in for further questioning first thing tomorrow, see how she responds to a bit more pressure.’ He nods to her, to let her know she is to arrange for this to happen.

  The temptation is there, a quick, clean result with Smithes’ crack team. Perhaps the Acting could be dropped from her job title.

  But first. Her intuition is being put on trial.

  It’s gone nine by the time she leaves Sussex House.

  She’s buzzing, and calls Mum from her handsfree.

  ‘Mum! Great news, I just got Deputy SIO on a big case.’

  ‘That’s wonderful news, poppet. That was what you wanted wasn’t it?’

  ‘I just needed to tell someone; I feel like I’m going to explode!’

  She hears Adam, her step-father ask something, and her mother relay the news.

  ‘Well done Astrid!’ Adam shouts.

  ‘He says well done.’

  ‘Yes, I heard him. Thanks.’

  ‘Have you not told Jenna yet?’

  ‘I’m nearly home now. I’ll come and see you soon, okay?’

  ‘I’ll see you on Thursday, won’t I?’

  She smacks her forehead. ‘Yes, of course, Thursday. See you there bright and early.’

  The clock on the digital display reads 9:32 p.m.

  Up in the flat, Jenna, Caz and Sam sit around the dining room table, empty dessert bowls in front of them, wine glasses still charged.

  ‘I’m so sorry, it’s been a mad, mad day,’ Astrid says, greeting and hugging Caz and Sam, giving an apologetic squeeze of Jenna’s shoulder.

  ‘There’s a plate for you in the microwave.’

  ‘Great, thanks.’ Astrid pops the door, suddenly ravenous, and on seeing the plate of curry, her stomach turns. It’s like John Hall had taken a bowl and scooped out someone’s insides and added some rice. Instead she finds a bottle of prosecco in the fridge.

  ‘Is there a celebration?’ Caz asks.

  There’s an icy silence, which she, Astrid, destroys with the pop of the cork. ‘Maybe a little. I just got made Deputy SIO for the first time on a murder investigation.’

  Jenna accepts the glass and raises it. Her jaw set hard. ‘To you, then Astrid. Congratulations.’

  ‘Cheers!
’ Caz and Sammy say in unison, missing the coldness in which Jenna had delivered it. The borderline irony.

  But she hadn’t. She’d worked so damn hard for this… yes, she was a little late for dinner but she could make it up to them.

  Astrid leans forward, smiles with all the energy she can muster. ‘So, tell me everything. How’s married life treating you, ladies?’

  14

  Melody

  Sunday morning. Melody removes her scarf and gloves, scans the cafe. Full tables. A line at the counter. The milk frother roars over the robotic hum of the coffee machine, the clink of saucers roughly stacked, a room of conversations scrambling over the din to be heard.

  I can’t think, can’t breathe here, there’s no space.

  Turn. Leave! But they’ve spotted her, waving from a table at the back of the cafe. She covers her ears, hunches as she sidesteps past the line.

  Hugh and Kathy stand to greet her, then Lydia more slowly. Melody slides into the vacant seat.

  ‘Good morning,’ Hugh says. He’s the only one still in his winter garb; a smart herringbone coat with a mustard scarf.

  ‘Just sit, would you?’

  They exchange looks, sit. In front of her is a latte and a croissant dusted in icing sugar. Why would they do that? Wasn’t it unhealthy enough already?

  ‘How are you holding up?’ Hugh says.

  She pushes the plate away, and drags the coffee nearer.

  ‘Melody… we are just so sorry,’ Kathy says, voice catching.

  Lydia draws her into a hug and mutters, ‘Come on now, hold it together.’

  Melody stirs the coffee, the milk swirls into a galaxy, dissipates. ‘Have the police spoken with you yet?’

  ‘Kathy’s had a call from the detective who’s handling the case. I expect we’ll be next.’

  ‘I trust you’ll all help them to the best of your abilities.’ She takes a sip of coffee. There is probably a right thing to say now, but she doesn’t know what it is.

  ‘I have bad news. More bad news, I mean.’