by Jane Casey
‘How much do you reckon they want for it?’ Derwent was looking at the estate agent’s board outside, which was leaning at a drunken angle.
‘Too much. But after this, I’d say they’d take an offer.’ I followed him up the path and through the front door. It led straight into a living room that had no furniture except for an abandoned chair with a cane seat that had fallen to pieces. It also contained a large number of police officers, SOCOs and a woman who was talking to Una Burt and Godley.
‘Who’s she?’
‘That’s Dr Early, the pathologist,’ I whispered, suppressing a shiver. The air in the house was cold and slightly damp. There was a sweetish, musty smell that made me think of mice. I hoped it was mice. Mice would be all right. Where you had mice you didn’t have rats, I’d always heard.
Having tried and failed to place Dr Early, Derwent shook his head.
‘She did a case for us last year. A woman in the boot of a car. The doctor was pregnant,’ I prompted him. ‘You were rude to her.’ As if that was enough to remind him.
‘Okay. It’s coming back to me.’
I couldn’t tell if Derwent was humouring me or if he genuinely remembered, but he made his way over to Dr Early and waved a gloved hand. Shaking hands at crime scenes was never a good idea.
‘So, doctor, what have we got?’
‘She’s in the bedroom.’ The last time I’d seen Dr Early she had been round and pink and more or less on the point of giving birth. In her non-pregnant state the doctor was pale and thin, with the fidgety movements of someone who burned a lot of calories without even trying to. She touched the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘I was just saying, I think it probably happened around eleven this morning.’
‘That’s specific.’ Derwent sounded dubious and the pathologist coloured.
‘I’m basing it on what her colleague told me about when she came in here and the last communication he had with her. From my point of view there’s nothing to suggest that she was here for long before she was killed. Everything is consistent with eleven as a time of death. This is an unoccupied building and it’s cold in here. Colder than outside, in fact. Based on her internal temperature I’m fairly confident about the timings.’
‘Have you seen her yet?’ Derwent asked Godley, who shook his head. ‘What are we waiting for?’
‘Nothing. It’s just a bit crowded in there at the moment.’ DCI Burt moved towards the door and I followed, seeing a corner of a postage-stamp-sized kitchen with a bathroom beyond.
‘Where are the others?’ Godley asked Derwent.
‘I made them stay outside. No point in everyone coming in here.’
I was one of the lucky ones, I gathered, and tried to feel lucky. I wasn’t all that keen on going through to the bedroom. Una Burt was tapping her fingers against her legs, which for her counted as jumping up and down. After a minute she ran out of patience and leaned into the kitchen.
‘Can you make some room in there, please? The superintendent would like to view the body.’
The sound of shuffling feet and rustling paper suits filled the air. Four SOCOs edged into the living room, pulling down masks and pushing back hoods. One of them, his hair sleek with sweat, was Kev Cox, my favourite crime-scene manager. He was imperturbable usually, no matter how awful the state of the body. Today, he was grim-faced as he nodded to us.
‘Cover up before you go in, please. Shoe covers and gloves. Maeve, you need to tie your hair back. Don’t touch anything. Don’t move anything.’
‘It’s not our first crime scene,’ Burt said, flashing a tight smile that meant she was annoyed.
‘A reminder before you wander in there is better than a compromised crime scene,’ Kev said solemnly.
‘Of course.’
I had been quietly getting ready while Burt was getting her lecture. Kev nodded to me to go ahead and I went in on my own, feeling self-conscious.
The kitchen was pale green and looked as if it had been installed when the house was built. It was all rounded edges and circular handles. Some of the drawers were hanging open. They had dusted for prints already, and a fine mist of black powder blurred the edges of the worktops and doors. I passed through without stopping, glancing into the dark bathroom as I went. It was dingy and dated, like the rest of the place, and the smell of rodents was stronger there. Beside it, I found the door into the bedroom. The door was open already, a technician’s bag holding it in place.
It wasn’t a big room – about the size of the living room, maybe eleven feet by thirteen. There were built-in cupboards and a radiator, a single window and a bare light bulb in the ceiling. And there was a body on the floor, accounting for the reek of fresh blood and the big, spreading stain on the carpet.
I hadn’t been expecting it to be anything but bad, given the circumstances. I just hadn’t expected it to be as shocking as it was.
The first thing that occurred to me was how young Emma Wells was, and how pretty. Dark hair, tied back in a small bun. An oval face. Hazel eyes. She was still wearing make-up, bright on bloodless skin – pink lipstick, blusher, smudged mascara. Small hands and feet. She looked childish in her big high-vis jacket. She looked as if she had been playing dress-up when someone had come up behind her and slit her throat.
I crouched down near her head to look closer and jumped as a voice spoke behind me.
‘You can see a mark on her jaw where he held her head.’ Dr Early pointed a gloved finger at the shadow on the girl’s face. ‘Very quick. No sign of a struggle.’
Her hands were open and relaxed, I saw. ‘She didn’t even know, did she?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘God.’ Derwent had made it past Kev Cox’s checkpoint. He leaned over me. ‘No messing.’
‘One cut,’ Dr Early confirmed. ‘He knew what he was doing. Sharp blade. He didn’t leave it for us, I’m afraid.’
‘Look at the size of her. It’s not as if she was going to fight back. How old did you say she was?’
‘Twenty-two,’ I said.
Derwent’s face was hard with anger. ‘What a mess.’
‘How did they get her here?’ I asked.
‘We think she was flagged down on the street,’ Godley said. He was standing in the doorway, well back from the body. ‘She was walking around the area.’
‘On her own?’ I asked.
‘She’d just qualified for independent patrol. Her sergeant said he wanted her to get more confidence. She tended to hang back a bit. Let him take the lead.’ Godley’s voice was strained.
‘Is he here?’ Derwent asked.
‘Outside.’
Derwent started towards the door and Godley put out a hand to stop him. ‘Don’t be too hard on him, Josh. Imagine how he must feel.’
‘I want him to tell me that himself.’
‘Josh!’
Derwent had already gone, shouldering past Una Burt, who exclaimed in annoyance as she stepped out of his way.
‘I’ll go with him.’ I stood up.
‘Don’t let him hit anyone,’ Godley said.
‘Oh, right. I’ll just stop him, shall I?’ Nine times out of ten, I managed to rein in the sarcasm when I was talking to my superior officers. This was definitely the tenth time, and from the look on Godley’s face, he knew he deserved it. I softened, very slightly. ‘I’ll do my best.’
I found Derwent in a corner of the living room, standing over the sergeant. He was grey-haired and his face was lined. His hands shook as he turned his uniform cap over and over, mindlessly. The PCSOs were managed by regular police officers; this sergeant, at least, seemed to take the job seriously.
‘So I sent Emma out for a bit of a walk around. We’ve got a drop-in session in the local library this afternoon, at three – or we did. One of the things our neighbourhoods team is always asked is whether we get out on the beat enough. I try to get my PCSO team out every day, at least for a while.’
‘Yeah, but you sent her out on her own.’
‘I d
id. She wanted to go. She wanted to learn.’ The sergeant bit his lip. ‘You know the sort of criticism they get from people. That they’re no use. That all they do is go round in pairs talking to each other. The chat-to-kill thing.’
Derwent nodded. He’d been guilty of that particular line himself.
‘I wanted to make sure my PCSOs looked professional and behaved like police officers, so people felt they could trust them. That’s the whole point of them being here. They’re supposed to be support for the real police, so we don’t have to waste our time on stupid requests from the public.’
‘And yet so many get through anyway,’ Derwent said drily. ‘Tell me about Emma. What was she supposed to be doing?’
‘Walking around this area.’ He took out his phone and showed us a map. ‘These five streets. Then we were supposed to meet up. She got through three of them.’
‘Anything happen?’
‘Not that I heard.’ He winced. ‘She didn’t like being on the radio much. Got intimidated. She had a little voice, you know. She got teased when she was on the open channel.’
I did know. I’d had to get over that myself. The temptation to become gruff or remain silent was overwhelming.
‘So what happened? How did you know where she was?’
‘She called my phone to say someone had flagged her down to tell her his aunt’s house had been broken into, giving this address. She told me she was going to check it out.’
‘With him?’
‘She said he’d driven off and she was on her own.’
‘And then?’
‘Nothing. She didn’t call back. I waited at the corner of Buckhold Street and Granger Lane, which was where we were supposed to meet. I checked with the control room after a while to see if she’d called it in and they hadn’t heard from her. They couldn’t raise her. I called her mobile a few times and there was no reply. I walked around here about half past eleven, I suppose.’
‘Was the front door open?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but pulled to. No one was here. No car outside. I went through to the bedroom just to make sure she wasn’t here and I found her.’ He swallowed, hard. ‘She was a good girl, you know. She wasn’t going to make a police officer but she knew that. She was talking about going into primary school teaching. She’d have made a lovely teacher. Brilliant with kids. They all loved her. I mean, we all did.’
His eyes were liquid with tears, all of a sudden, and I felt my throat tighten in sympathy. Derwent swore, quietly, which was as good a way as any of relieving his feelings. I drew him away to the kitchen, where Godley and Burt were standing, talking.
‘Well?’ Godley said, and I told him what the sergeant had shared with us.
‘Lamb to the slaughter.’ Derwent folded his arms. ‘What do we think? Random, copy-cat, or connected?’
‘Random feels like too much of a coincidence,’ I said. ‘We’ve got two men acting together, which is what happened with the TSG team. She was in uniform, going about her work. She was a soft target, admittedly, compared to the TSG team.’
‘But it’s a better choice of victim,’ Burt remarked. ‘The death of a vulnerable young woman is going to make a big impact on the public. Bigger than a middle-aged sergeant or even a lot of fit young policemen.’
‘A better choice,’ Derwent said with ill-disguised distaste.
‘For them, obviously.’ She had bristled like a cross porcupine.
‘Right,’ Godley said, wisely ignoring the pair of them. ‘Josh, go and brief the others. Get them started on door-to-door enquiries. I want to know everything that happened today. More than that, I want to know every car that has parked along Rossetti Road in the last three weeks. Anyone strange who was here, anyone out of place.’
‘I’ll get Colin Vale to check with the council as well,’ Derwent said. ‘See if they issued any parking tickets. It’s all residents’ parking around here. Someone might have got caught out.’
‘Good. What else?’
‘It might be worth talking to the estate agents,’ I said. ‘They might have shown the property to someone recently, or they might have had a phone enquiry about it. You’d want to be sure it was empty before you set up to wait for your victim.’
‘Good thinking. You can do that yourself,’ Godley said. ‘Josh, get a move on. We want to cover this area as quickly as possible.’
Derwent gave me a look as he left, which I interpreted to be silent disapproval that I had found a way out of doing endless door-to-door enquiries. It would have been unfair had I not fully intended to spin out my estate-agent query for as long as possible.
Una Burt waited until he was gone. ‘Charlie, that man is intolerable.’
‘Josh? He’s not so bad.’ Godley sounded absent-minded, as if this wasn’t the first time he’d had this conversation so he didn’t need to concentrate too hard.
‘I cannot work with him. He’s rude, he swears like a docker and he has no respect for anyone.’
‘He’s a good police officer.’
It was faint enough praise, I thought, and couldn’t help chiming in. ‘He’s not so bad when you get to know him. I mean, he is just as bad as you’d think, but you get used to it.’
‘I don’t see why I should have to get used to it.’ She turned back to Godley. ‘I really think he’d be happier doing something more muscular. He’d enjoy working with the Trident lot.’
Trident investigated gang crime and homicides linked with gangs; Una Burt was right to suggest that it was a good fit with Derwent’s skills. That wasn’t why she was suggesting it, though.
‘I think if he wanted to join Trident he’d have done it by now,’ I said.
‘Maybe he needs a little push.’ Her eyes were cold.
I turned to Godley, waiting for him to tell Burt to get lost. He’d brought Derwent on to his team because he liked him and enjoyed working with him. He knew Derwent was an asset, even if he wasn’t the sort of person you necessarily wanted to interact with the public.
Godley was staring at the floor, his mind obviously elsewhere. The silence made him look up.
‘Una, I know you are more than capable of dealing with Josh and whatever he throws at you. I can have a word with him if you like.’
‘I don’t need you to tell him to be nice to me but I would appreciate it if you’d point out his opportunities for career development are far greater elsewhere. Because I’m not going anywhere, no matter how hard he tries to make life uncomfortable for me.’
And that was it in a nutshell, I realised. She thought Derwent was trying to get rid of her. In a way, she was right – he’d have thrown a party if she decided to leave. But he’d accepted he had risen as far as he was likely to in the police. He wasn’t prepared to put in the time and effort to toady up to the bosses in the quest for a promotion. Una Burt was worried that Derwent had his eye on her job, but it was making her paranoid. She wasn’t actually getting any special treatment from him.
‘I’ll try to find the time to talk to him,’ Godley said.
‘You don’t want him to leave, do you?’ The question came out before I could stop it.
Godley shrugged, not meeting my eye. ‘It’s about what’s best for him and what’s best for the team.’
‘But you can’t think it would be better for Derwent to go?’
‘I must have a word with Dr Early before she leaves. Excuse me.’ Godley walked out past me.
He hadn’t given me an answer, I thought, unsettled. I wasn’t sure what he thought about Derwent. Maybe it was just that Godley was upset about Emma Wells’ death. I was on the brink of tears again, I realised, and wasn’t sure why, except that there was nothing right or fair about a young woman dying horribly in a miserable unoccupied house and there was nothing right or fair about Godley letting Burt put the boot into Derwent.
Una Burt was in a different frame of mind. She gave a sigh of pure pleasure. ‘I don’t think we’re going to have to cope with Josh Derwent for much longer.’
I master
ed my emotions to reply. ‘I don’t mind working with him.’
‘You’re too nice. I’m not.’ She gave me a narrow smile. ‘I’m not going to be treated like that and just put up with it.’
‘He’s like that with everyone,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘That’s not an acceptable excuse.’
‘Excuse us, ladies. We’re going to need to move you.’ The men from the mortuary van had arrived, carrying a stretcher. The bungalow was so tiny, they needed the rooms to be empty so they could manoeuvre their way around the corners.
I took the opportunity to escape the conversation and the cold, dank atmosphere of the house. Outside, it was starting to rain. I looked for my colleagues and saw no one except Godley, who was leaning against his car, reading something on his phone.
Just like that, something snapped. I marched over to him.
‘Can I have a word?’
‘Of course.’ He slid the phone into his pocket and looked at me with a frowning, quizzical expression, as if to say I have no idea what you could want with me but I’ll listen politely anyway.
‘In private.’
His eyebrows went up. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I don’t think you want anyone else to hear this.’ Somewhere deep inside I was shaking, but there was no sign of it in my voice.
Wordlessly, Godley opened the passenger door of his car for me. I got in and he shut it, then went around to the other side and got in. ‘Will this do?’