Watch Over You

by M. J. Ford

  A young woman in what looked like a nurse’s uniform was crouching beside Harry, who lay with his head propped up against a seat cushion. She was holding a towel to the back of his head and it was almost completely saturated with blood.

  ‘Oh my God, Harry!’ said Jo, kneeling down beside him.

  His skin was grey and his eyes remained open just a fraction. A few tulips lay strewn on the carpet beside a broken vase.

  The woman looked at her desperately. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A friend. I’m a police officer.’

  ‘Is the ambulance here?’

  Jo shook her head. ‘It will be soon.’

  ‘He’s not responding at all,’ said the woman. ‘I can’t stop the bleeding.’

  Jo had so many questions, but they could wait. ‘Pulse?’

  ‘I’ve not had chance.’

  Wondering what sort of nurse didn’t check for a pulse, Jo laid her fingers against his wrist. His skin was still warm, but she couldn’t feel anything and his hand was completely limp. Heavy. She checked the carotid artery too, but there was nothing there either. She leant right over his face. ‘Harry, can you hear me?’

  Ferman’s glassy eyes didn’t so much as flicker.

  ‘Okay, keep the pressure on,’ said Jo.

  She gently pulled back Ferman’s chin, and bent her lips to his. Two breaths, ten compressions. She’d done resuscitation once before for real, off-duty, on a toddler pulled from a swimming pool, and it had worked. With children you had to be gentle – it was easy to break the breastbone. With adults, not so much. She put all her weight into the thrusts, driving the heel of her palm to get Harry’s heart beating again. Nothing after the first round, so she tried again. Not good, but she was nowhere near ready to give up.

  ‘Come on, Harry!’ she said. The sound of competing sirens drifted from the distance.

  The third round of breaths and compressions became the fourth, and she was aware of hope seeping out of the room. His body was so utterly inert – it already felt like she was pumping dead meat, not living flesh. A look in the eyes of the nurse confirmed her own pessimism. Then suddenly there were more people in the room wearing paramedic uniforms. Jo vaguely recognised faces from past scenarios, but her brain didn’t have space to remember names. No time for pleasantries. She bent to deliver another set of breaths, but a hand gently and firmly pulled her back.

  ‘I’ve given five sets of breaths and compressions,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, we’ll continue.’

  Jo watched, still seated on the ground, her fingers digging into the carpet as the paramedics took over, placing an oxygen mask on Harry’s mouth. They spoke to each other in urgent, professional tones. The nurse originally on the scene stood beside Jo, eyes glued to their work.

  Too quickly, after only a few attempts, the paramedics looked at each other. There was a shake of the head, a mumbled phrase, and a replying nod, then a checking of watches.

  Harry lay completely still on his lounge floor, eyes still open and focused intently on the ceiling.

  Jo buried her head in her hands.

  * * *

  ‘Josie, he’s beautiful.’

  ‘You have to say that.’

  ‘True, but I mean it.’

  She was rocking Theo up and down. He’d been crying since the moment she brought him inside.

  ‘He’s got your eyes too.’

  ‘You need to stop with the clichés. You’ll be telling me how well I look next.’

  Harry smiled. ‘Well, you do.’

  ‘I’m desperate for the loo. Can I put him down on the floor?’

  Harry held out his arms. ‘It’s all right. I can hold him.’

  Jo hesitated. Not because she didn’t trust Harry, but because the offer took her by surprise.

  ‘Here, catch,’ she said.

  She moved closer to him, and with a little fumbling, he slid his arms between hers and lifted Theo to his chest.

  ‘Don’t take the crying personally. You sure you’re okay?’

  He stroked Theo’s cheek with a large, nicotine-stained finger. ‘It’s been a while, but yes.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  She went up the stairs to the only toilet in the house. The C-section had healed, but there was still a twinge as she reached the top of the steps. Strictly, she shouldn’t even have been driving for another week, but she’d had to get out.

  It was while she was washing her hands that she realised the crying had stopped. On the landing, she could hear Harry singing quietly, croakily, below.

  ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …’

  For a few moments, she stood and listened, filled with an odd mix of emotions. It was a song her own dad had sung to her. She descended quietly so as not to break the spell.

  Harry stopped abruptly as she stepped onto the bottom stair. She found him sitting in his armchair, cradling a sleeping Theo.

  ‘Show off.’

  ‘I have that effect on people.’

  Her stomach rumbled. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I missed breakfast.’

  ‘Well sit yourself down, lass! I make a mean slice of toast.’

  * * *

  Time didn’t exactly stand still inside number 21 Canterbury Road, but it felt like it was circling, not sure when to get involved again. Uniformed officers arrived, the familiar faces of PCs Oli Marquardt and Andrea Williams. Jo had drifted outside in a daze, and only recognised Andy Carrick when he was right in front of her on the pavement, talking.

  ‘It’s Harry,’ she mumbled. ‘He’s dead.’

  Carrick went straight inside. A crowd had gathered across the road, and another uniform was keeping them at a distance and answering questions. Jo walked back to her car. She hadn’t cried – she felt too caught up in the moment still. Too confused. She’d made a call to Amelia, asking her to pick up Theo. As the minutes ticked by, the urge to rush away and hold him was becoming almost painful.

  Her boss emerged from the house, making a beeline for where she sat in her car with the door open.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jo,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere distant, like she was hearing it on a time-lag.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Yes, from the moment you arrived.’ He was speaking to her like a vulnerable witness, and his coddling tone pulled her out of her reverie. I’m not a witness. I’m a police officer. She went over the details as she remembered them. ‘The nurse was the first on the scene, I think,’ she said.

  Carrick nodded. ‘She’s not a nurse. She’s a dental assistant. Just happened to be passing by.’

  That explained the reluctance to carry out CPR.

  ‘Who called it in?’ said Jo, mind still playing catch-up. She felt the burn of shame. I shouldn’t be sitting here. I should be helping.

  Carrick glanced back towards an elderly woman, being spoken to by a uniformed officer. ‘The neighbour, Mrs Milner.’

  ‘There was a report of a disturbance, wasn’t there?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Carrick. ‘Mrs Milner heard raised voices around three o’clock, but she didn’t look in until four-thirty. Harry had already been assaulted. He was alone.’ He paused. ‘Jo, are you okay?’

  She wasn’t. Her feet and hands were like frozen blocks. Her brain was a mess of thoughts about Theo. What would he be thinking, picked up by his aunt? Would he be okay?

  ‘Sorry, Andy. I’m back with it. You’re sure he was assaulted?’

  She realised that she’d assumed a fall.

  ‘We found the poker from the fire. There’s blood and hair on the end.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’ A wave of nausea rose from her gut. Who on earth would hurt Harry? She’d sat by that fire and used that poker on a winter night during her pregnancy.

  ‘Jo, I think you’re in shock,’ said Carrick. ‘Do you want to go?’

  He was giving her permission, but there was a hint of disapproval in his voice, so rare fo
r Andy. He was finding this hard, too. He hadn’t known Harry like her, but they weren’t strangers. She knew she wasn’t being herself, the Jo Masters he trusted and respected. Snap out of it, she told herself. Do your job.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said. She took out a bottle of water from beside her car seat, stood, and took a deep swig. ‘Can we go in and look around?’

  ‘Scene’s secure. They won’t move him until we’ve done.’

  ‘Any more uniforms?’

  ‘Four on the way.’

  Jo looked up and down the street. It was a warren round here – old workers’ terraces on a grid, ginnels between houses, and alleys running along the rear giving access to back yards. Whoever was responsible had a dozen ways to leave the area. If they lived close, they could have slipped away pretty quickly and easily, on foot or in a vehicle. ‘Okay, let’s get statements from everyone gawping. Every resident of the street, and any front door within fifty metres. There’s CCTV outside the betting shop on the junction with Winchester Crescent – might be worth having a look, anything time-stamped between three and five. What about processing the scene?’

  ‘Cropper and his team are on their way,’ said Carrick.

  ‘Already?’ Jo knew the crime scene officers were normally very busy.

  ‘Given Harry’s ex-staff, we’ll be pulling out all the stops.’

  ‘You think this might have something to do with work? Revenge?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Carrick. ‘Harry would have put a lot of people away in his time. Local folk too.’

  The idea curdled in Jo’s stomach. Harry Ferman was in his eighth decade, in poor health. If someone had wanted to hurt him, he couldn’t have put up much of a fight.

  ‘What about next of kin?’ asked Carrick.

  Jo had known Harry long enough to be pretty certain there. No kids since his daughter Lindsay had died years ago, an innocent victim in a drink-driving collision. ‘There’s an ex-wife, Jess. Lives in Derbyshire, I think he said.’ From what Harry had told her, the split hadn’t been anyone’s fault – just a drifting apart after the tragedy with their daughter. ‘I’ll keep a look out – he might have an address book inside.’

  ‘I can take care of that,’ said Carrick. ‘You get back to the station.’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I mean, I’d rather stay here. With him.’

  It looked like Carrick was going to put his foot down, but instead he touched her shoulder. ‘You sure you’re up to this? What about Theo?’

  Jo was grateful for the human contact, but the sudden mention of her son’s name brought another spike of anxiety. Andy had been amazing at supporting her application for reduced hours. He knew what it was like as a parent, trying to assemble the jigsaw of work and childcare into something manageable. But in turn, she knew it wasn’t just her personal life he was thinking of. He had to manage his team to ensure resources were available as and when needed for emergencies like this one. He was rightly nervous about making her the senior investigating officer on priority cases.

  ‘That’s sorted,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to let me take it, boss. You know I’ll do a good job.’

  He gave her a compassionate nod. ‘I trust you completely but don’t hesitate to let me know if it gets too much.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Carrick went across to speak with the uniform manning the tape. Jo texted Amelia, thanking her again, and telling her to call if there were any problems.

  With a clearer head, she donned protective gear from the stash in her car, signed in with the officer now stationed at the door, and re-entered the crime scene like a different person entirely. In turn, the house itself seemed to have undergone a transformation from the familiar to the strange. Death could do that – change the complexion of everything. This wasn’t Harry’s house any more, a place she’d enjoyed cups of tea, and the occasional dram of something stronger – it was a crime scene, where every surface and fibre and object might yield evidence that would lead to his killer. Including, she thought, the body that lay, now covered in a sheet, where it had fallen. Grief threatened her resolve again, but she girded herself. She hadn’t been here when it mattered, but she was here now, and there was a job to be done. She promised herself, and him: no mistakes.

  Harry had lived in this house since his divorce – around twenty years. It had always been orderly when she visited, in keeping with its occupant’s unwavering daily routine of walking to the newsagent’s for a morning paper, then on to the pub sometime after lunch. Harry’s only hobby had been watercolour painting. On one impromptu visit, she’d seen a picture of a city scene resting upright on his kitchen table, and he’d admitted, blushing, that it was one of his own.

  As she looked around the living room, her first impression was that it looked almost identical to the last time she’d been here five months ago with Theo, yet there was something slightly uncanny. At first, she put it down to the fact that the brutal act with the poker had somehow changed the atmospherics, but on catching sight of herself in the gilt-edged mirror beside the mantelpiece she realised that wasn’t it at all. Something had changed. She walked towards the mirror, and ran a finger along its upper frame. The glove came back clean.

  Crouching to look at the floor, she examined the carpet near to the skirting board. Housekeeping had never been Harry’s forte. He’d had a bad back, and arthritic hands, making any thorough cleaning hard. She’d surmised also that he simply didn’t care, with only himself to please, but things had been getting worse. And the last few times she’d been here there had always been a considerable layer of dust in the hard to reach places, or anything out of direct eyesight. He had a vacuum cleaner, but it was as old-fashioned as the TV. Either he’d found a new pride in dusting and acquired a newer model, or he’d got a cleaner. Neither felt likely.

  Behind the couch was the poker. As Carrick had said, there was an unmistakable coagulation on the hooked end, matting together a couple of Harry’s grey hairs. Again, the questions throbbed in her head. Who? Why? The poker didn’t answer, but it could well yield prints when Mel’s team arrived. She looked away, surveying the room for any other signs of the struggle, and found what she was searching for across the light shade above. A foot-long string of blood droplets, each the shape of elongated tears. One didn’t need to be an expert in blood spatter analysis to see what had happened as the assailant drew back his arm from a blow. The ferocity of the attack lingered as Jo moved through into the kitchen.

  It wasn’t a large room, and the units appeared not to have been updated in all the time Harry had been a occupant. The cupboards were Formica, lined with aluminium trim. A free-standing gas hob. Harry had eaten his meals at a small square table tucked into the corner, with two chairs on the open sides. There were two mugs on the table-top now. A guest then? Jo went over, and saw the drink in one wasn’t finished. She bent to sniff – coffee. Harry had told her he never touched the stuff. Jo laid the back of her hand against the side of the cups in turn, to test for any residual heat. Perhaps a little. Had Harry been sharing a cuppa with the person who killed him? Hard to see how a friendly chat, sitting just a foot apart, could descend to murder before a drink was even finished.

  She examined the rest of the room, and her eyes took in the drying rack, stacked with two plates and several pieces of cutlery. A shared meal, too? She wondered if her old friend had met someone. She couldn’t imagine him dating, but he’d always been good company, and kind, and the face of a once handsome man still lingered in his somewhat worn features. If he had found some romance, she was pleased for him.

  There was a small dresser beside the table, displaying earthenware ornaments, and a photo of Harry and his daughter. Lindsay had shared his pale, serious eyes, and his strong nose, but the rest of her face had been more vivacious and joyful. She was beaming in the photo, and strands of her long brown hair had blown across her father’s face. Jo had once remarked on the picture, telling Harry that Lindsay had been a beautiful young woman. He’d surprised
her by being only too happy to talk, and he’d told her the photo was taken on the beach in Hove on the south coast, on a trip the family had taken just prior to her first year at university. A year before she died. Even though Jo had never met the girl, it was almost heart-breaking to look at the image. What it must have felt like to her dad, to see her everyday, so alive, Jo couldn’t grasp.

  She tugged open the right-side dresser drawer. Inside was a collection of pens, keys, batteries, a small torch. The left side contained what she was looking for – a small leather-covered address book. She opened it, and flicked through the pages. Harry’s handwriting was dreadful, and some parts were indecipherable. Several sections were crossed out, and Jo wondered if that meant the addressee had moved on, or was deceased. Many of the names had ranks attached in abbreviated code – old colleagues from Harry’s thirty years on the job. He’d been in Oxford for all of it.

  Jo found what she was looking for under G – Jessica Granger. He’d always called her ‘Jess’ in conversation, but the address was unlikely to be a coincidence – ‘Ashbourne, Derbs’. The writing here was perceptibly neater too, as if he’d taken extra care inscribing it. There was no phone number, but a local officer could be sent to deliver the news. Hopefully Jessica was still at the same address. Jo made a note in her own copybook.

  Directly beside where the address book had lain was a stack of paperwork, and she lifted it out to leaf through. The pile contained receipts, utilities correspondence, a recent bank statement, and the instruction booklet for the mobile phone she’d convinced him to purchase about a year ago. The second item down caught Jo’s attention. It was an invoice sheet, signed by Harry himself, for £65, paid to a local glazier called PJ Adams Ltd, based on the Iffley Road. It was dated just over two weeks prior on March 29th. The work completed was handwritten – ‘Single pane, rear door.’

  Jo looked across the kitchen and saw the results. The back door had two panes of glass in its upper half. On closer inspection, she saw the lower one, just above the mortise keyhole, was new – with cleaner sealant around its rim. Jo remembered from the briefing notes Heidi had prepared for her return that there’d been a spate of opportunistic burglaries in the area, presumably addicts taking what they could. The warren of streets made the neighbourhood easy pickings. Mostly elderly residents, simple to sneak in from the back, hopping a fence, and nick what you could to flog elsewhere. It didn’t take a leap of logic to work out the same might have happened here – someone could have knocked the glass through, then used the key in the lock to open the door. Pretty much a gift to a petty criminal. Jo pulled out her phone, and called the station, asking if there had been any recent reports from Harry’s address about a break-in. The answer came back negative. Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Harry didn’t have much of value anyway. No computer, no jewellery. The TV would be more trouble than it was worth. And the key was in the lock still, which struck her as odd. If you’d been robbed in that way, why leave yourself open to exactly the same crime? Besides, she told herself, if the break-in happened two weeks ago, it seemed unlikely to be connected to the murder anyway.