by M A Comley
“I’ll ring him now, ma’am. Thank you.”
Kayli stopped the car, reversed into someone’s drive, and headed back into the city of Bristol. Her thoughts turned to solving the crime of the poor woman whose body had just been discovered in her own home. That was all the information Kayli had so far.
Fifteen minutes later, Kayli found a parking space close to the victim’s address. She opened the boot of her car, extracted a white forensic suit, and pulled it on. After slipping a pair of plastic shoes over her ankle boots, she snapped on a pair of blue latex gloves. A uniformed officer was guarding the front door. Kayli flashed him her ID. “DI Bright, SIO on the case. Don’t let anyone else in until I say they can come in, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. The victim is in the bedroom.”
“Thanks. Any witnesses? Who called it in?”
He pointed to a young woman sitting on a nearby wall, bawling her eyes out as she gave a statement to a young uniformed female officer.
“Can you ask your colleague to get the witness’s statement down inside her vehicle? It’s cold, and she’s probably suffering from shock as it is. Use your common sense and get that actioned immediately,” Kayli snapped.
The officer rushed down the steps and whispered something in his partner’s ear. The female officer looked Kayli’s way and nodded, then the pair of them accompanied the young woman to their car and placed her in the back seat. Satisfied, Kayli entered the house. She walked through the rooms, one by one, making mental notes. There was a handbag on the kitchen table—did that belong to the victim or the witness? She followed the smell of lavender into the bathroom, where the remains of what appeared to have been bubble bath circled the tub’s plughole. The small window was open, and there was a muddy footprint on the edge of the bath. Did the assailant enter the window, or was that the way he escaped the crime scene?
Hearing someone call her name, she retreated into the hallway to find her partner, Dave Chaplin, hobbling through the door on his crutches. “Stop! You know better than that, matey. Get togged up. You can’t come in here like that.” She suddenly felt guilty about calling him out to the scene, since he was struggling with a broken leg. Still, he had insisted since his ‘accident’ that she treat him as normal.
He let out an exasperated breath, turned, and headed back to his car. Dave reappeared a few moments later wearing an outfit identical to hers, a crutch tucked under each arm.
“Sorry, matey. You’re hindered enough at the moment with those things. Come with me. I’m walking the scene.”
“I’m used to them. It’s a slight inconvenience. That’s all. Have you seen the vic yet?”
“Not yet. Looks like her handbag is untouched in the kitchen, although that could be the witness’s bag. Apparently, her flatmate was the one who found her. She’s out there now, giving a statement to uniform.” Kayli led Dave into the bathroom and pointed out the muddy footprint.
“Point of entry or escape route?” Dave asked. He leaned in to observe the print more closely. “All right, the shape of the print and the amount of mud on the surface of the bath indicates it’s an entry point to me.”
Kayli smiled and nodded. “Good spot.”
“The vic is in the bedroom. That’s our next port of call.” She pushed open the door opposite the bathroom and froze. The victim, a young woman, was sitting upright on the bed. Though dishevelled, she was still wearing her pyjamas and robe, although some of the buttons on her pjs were undone.
Kayli swallowed the bile burning her throat. “Jesus.” Her gaze latched on to the woman’s head, which was trapped in a plastic bag half-filled with the woman’s own vomit.
Dave dry heaved. “Oh, fuck! That’s gross.”
“She either suffocated or drowned in her own vomit. We won’t know until Naomi has had a chance to examine her. Appalling death, either way. Poor woman.”
Dave navigated the room to stand on the other side of the bed. He bent down to look at the woman’s hands, which were behind her. “She was tied up. Wait a minute... look.” He pointed to the back of the victim’s head. “Blood.”
Kayli’s eyes narrowed as she thought. “Maybe she was struck over the head first and tied up while she was unconscious. A head injury might have caused her to vomit.”
“DI Bright?” Naomi called out from the main door. “Are you here?”
“Hi, Naomi. We’re in the bedroom.”
Naomi Stacy, the resident pathologist in the Bristol area, poked her head into the room. “Ugh... that’s not pretty.”
“Tell me about it. Thanks for dropping everything and coming over. We’ve got a muddy footprint in the bathroom. Dave reckons that was the way the assailant entered the premises.”
“My guys are just sorting out the equipment now. I’ll get them on that right away in case it disappears. Anything else I should know?” She placed her case on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“A handbag in the kitchen. Now I’ve seen the victim, I’m going to see if there is any ID inside. It might belong to the witness outside, the vic’s flatmate.”
“You do that while I carry out a quick assessment.”
Kayli motioned for Dave to join her in the kitchen. She opened the handbag and dipped her hand inside to find the woman’s purse. She found her driving licence and studied the woman’s photo. “Ah, here we are. Sarah Abel. That’s definitely her. Shit, she’s only twenty-six.” Kayli shook her head, upset for both the victim and the family yet to be informed. “I could do with Donna being on duty back at the station right now. She’d have the woman’s next of kin within seconds.”
“I’ll ring her. She won’t mind returning to work if it’s for a good cause. The media are already sniffing around outside. If they start airing the residence, it could be distressing for the family to see it on TV.”
“You’re right. Ring her, Dave. Send her my apologies, but tell her it’s important.”
Dave punched Donna’s number into his phone and put it on speaker when she answered. “Donna, we need your expertise on a new case. Any chance you can get back to the station?”
“Of course. I can be there in ten minutes. What do you need, Dave?”
“Next of kin on a Sarah Abel, of Fifty-two Winchester Avenue, in the Saint Paul’s area.”
“On it. I’ll get the info to you ASAP,” Donna replied.
“Thanks, Donna. I really appreciate it. You know how important the golden hour is in an investigation,” Kayli shouted.
“I do, boss. Leave it with me.”
“You’re a star, Donna. Speak soon,” Dave said before he hung up.
“I need to have a quick chat with Naomi first, and then I think we should see what the witness has to say.” They walked through to the bedroom again to find two other members of Naomi’s team in the room with her. One was taking photos of the victim from several angles. “Any idea about the cause of death yet, Naomi?”
“Hmm... hard to tell. Could be suffocation or drowning at this stage. I’ll know more when I open her up and inspect her airways et cetera. Either way, she suffered a ghastly death.”
“Did you notice the wound on the back of her head?”
“I did. I also noticed blood on the dado rail just inside the front door on my way in too.”
Kayli groaned. “Damn, I missed that.”
“Therefore, I’m assuming either the assailant came through the front door, or the victim ran towards the front door, trying to escape. My take is that she opened the door to her assailant, he surprised her, and either jumped out on her or shoved her back. She lost her footing and hit her head on the dado rail on the way down. Either way, the force wasn’t enough to kill her. Because she vomited in the bag, we know she wasn’t dead before it was placed over her head.”
“I like your thinking. Seems plausible to me,” Kayli said.
“I need to process the scene. Is there anything else you need to know before I get on with doing that?” Naomi asked.
“Nope. We’ll let you get on. I wan
t to question the witness now anyway. Let me know the results as soon as you can.”
“I will. Don’t worry.”
Kayli and Dave made their way back to Kayli’s car, where they stripped off their protective clothing.
“The witness looks really upset. I hope we get some sense out of her,” Kayli said. She reached out and gave Dave a helping hand with his crutches.
“That’s natural, I guess, after coming home from work and finding your flatmate dead.”
“All right, Dave, stop stating the obvious.”
Balancing on one leg, he smiled tautly as he tugged off the final leg of his suit and discarded it. Kayli picked up both suits and slung them in the boot of her car. “Let’s do this.”
She tapped on the window of the patrol vehicle. The startled young PC opened the door and got out. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m just winding up here.”
“That’s okay, Constable. We’d like a word with the witness as soon as we can.”
“Do you want to use my car, ma’am?”
“Thanks, I’ll hop in the back. My partner can sit up front.” Kayli opened the back door, slid in the seat, and smiled at the blonde woman, who was shaking, despite her thick woollen black winter coat. “Hello, Jane. I’m DI Kayli Bright, the officer in charge of the case, and this is my partner, DS Dave Chaplin.”
Dave waved his hand and pulled his broken leg into the car before he shut the door.
The young woman sniffled and muttered, “Why? Why Sarah?”
“We don’t know yet. But it’s our intention to find out. What time did you arrive home?”
“At just gone six thirty, my usual time.”
“Did you see anyone in the property when you arrived?”
Jane shook her head. “No. The front door was locked. My key wouldn’t turn, so I couldn’t get in.”
Kayli glanced at Dave then back at the witness. “So, how did you gain access to the property?”
“I climbed in through the bathroom window. Sarah and I had an agreement to always leave it open in case one of us forgets the key.”
“That means the muddy footprint on the side of the bath was yours then?”
“Yes, I didn’t think to wipe my feet before entering.”
Kayli couldn’t tell if the comment was sarcasm or shock, so she ignored it. “Did you try the front door once you got inside?”
“Yes, someone had dropped the latch on the front door.”
Dave looked up from his notebook. “Is it usual for Sarah to drop the latch once she’s home?”
“No. We never usually do that until the end of the evening, before we go to bed.”
“Have either you or Sarah had any problems with anyone lately? Either of you have boyfriends?”
“I have a boyfriend, Sonny. He’s on holiday with friends in the US at the moment. Sarah split up with her latest fella, Gary, a few months ago.”
“Gary? Do you know his surname?” Kayli asked, her heart rate notching up a little.
“Gary Young. He’s in the navy, down in Plymouth.”
“When was the last time Sarah saw Gary, do you know?”
“A few weeks ago. He came home on leave for the weekend, called round to see how she was. They were still pretty friendly with each other, although she let it slip he struck out at her once. They just found the distance between them unacceptable to have a lasting relationship. My God, he’s going to be gutted when he hears about poor Sarah.” She shook her head, and fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “What am I going to do without her? We were like sisters. Shared all our secrets and celebrated all our successes together.”
“I’m so sorry. Can you tell us where Sarah worked?” Kayli rubbed the top of Jane’s arm.
“At the local radio station. She was a kind of runner-cum-admin assistant to the DJs there. She loved her job.”
“Have you noticed anyone hanging around the house recently, acting suspicious at all?”
Jane seemed to consider her answer before she replied, “No. I can’t think of anything, and Sarah didn’t highlight anything of that nature, either. She would have warned me if she’d spotted anyone up to no good, and I would have done the same.”
“What about Sarah’s next of kin? Do her parents live locally?”
“Oh, Christ! Yes, they live around twenty minutes from here. They’ll be devastated. Maybe I should have called them.”
“No, that’s fine. The news will be better coming from us. It would be good if you had a number for them, though?”
“It’s in the house, top drawer in the sideboard in the lounge, in Sarah’s address book. She never trusted leaving all her contact numbers in her phone. They all got wiped out a year or so ago, which made her revert back to having a hard-copy type of address book.”
“We’ll take a look in a moment. Is there anything else you think we should know? I appreciate I’m asking a lot under the circumstances, but anything you can tell us will definitely aid our investigation. How did she get on with her work colleagues, for instance?”
“Okay in the main. I recall she had a problem with one of the DJs, but I think that was sorted pretty quickly.”
“Problem? What kind of problem?”
“She briefly told me a DJ had touched her up. She handled it by going to the boss, who sorted it out right away.”
“Interesting. When was this?”
“A few months ago now. I think she was still dating Gary back then.”
“We’ll visit her workplace for the low-down on that, thanks. Anything else you can think of? Did Sarah have other exes, perhaps?”
“No. She was quite fussy whom she dated. Wasn’t the type to dump one bloke to start dating another. If anything, I suppose you could say she preferred her freedom to permanently dating someone.”
“Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Now, we need to get you somewhere to stay for the evening. Maybe a day or two until Forensics have finished their side of things. Do you have anywhere you can go?”
“Yes, I can go back to the hospital, bed down there for the night in one of their emergency dorms on the nurses’ wing. Can I grab some things from the flat first?”
“Yes, I’m sure that will be okay once the pathologist gives the all-clear.” Kayli handed the young woman a card. “Here’s my number. If you think of anything later on you might have missed, please get in touch with me, day or night.”
Jane took the card in her shaking hand and tucked it in her coat pocket. “Please, find this disgusting person. Sarah didn’t deserve to die. She was so young, had her whole life ahead of her.”
“I promise you that we’ll certainly do our best. Let me go and have a word with the pathologist. I’ll be right back.” Kayli and Dave left the car. She turned to Dave and said, “Why don’t you sit in your car? I shouldn’t be long, then I think we should head back to the station.”
“The station? I think we should head over to see the victim’s parents first.”
Kayli nodded. “You’re right. We’ll do that. See you in a tick.” She stepped into her white paper suit and plastic shoes again and entered the house. “It’s only me, Naomi,” she shouted as she walked through the front door. At the doorway to the bedroom, she said, “Two things. The witness said the front door was locked when she got home. Can you get your guys to dust it for prints for me? There’s also the question of how the assailant exited the building. Maybe he went through the bathroom window, the same way the witness gained access to the property. She’s saying the muddy footprint belongs to her.”
“Brilliant. Okay, I’ll get the team on that in a second or two.”
“Last thing. The flatmate is going to have to move out for a day or two, and she needs to pack a bag. All right if she does that?”
“Would you mind accompanying her? We’re a little tied up to babysit someone at present.”
“Of course. Can I grab a spare suit from your van?”
“Yep, feel free.”
Kayli retrieved the paper suit from Naomi’s van
and gave it to Jane, along with a set of plastic shoes. After donning the suit, Jane hesitantly ascended the steps up to the house. She paused in the doorway to inhale and exhale a few deep breaths before stepping over the threshold.
Kayli smiled at her. “You’ll be fine. We’ll just throw a few things in a bag and be out in no time at all.”
“Thank you. Not sure I could face seeing Sarah again.”
“You won’t have to. Okay, are you ready?”
“Yes, I think so,” she replied, her breath shuddering a little.
Jane pointed out which room was hers, and they both entered the medium-sized room, which had a window facing the front of the property. There were no curtains at the window, only a roller-blind—practical, but less homely. An old white discoloured wardrobe stood in the alcove, and mismatched bedside tables sat on either side of the double bed. Jane pulled down a travel bag from the top of the wardrobe and opened the door. She bundled a few trousers and jumpers into the bag then crossed the room to one of the bedside tables and extracted a handful of underwear. “I need to go in the bathroom to pick up my toothbrush and paste, plus my shampoo and deodorant.”
“That’s fine. I’ll come with you. What about a towel? You’ll need one of those too, right?”
“You’re right. Thank you. I’m not thinking straight.”
Once they were finished, Kayli popped her head into Sarah’s bedroom, said farewell to Naomi then escorted Jane off the premises. “Do you have a car?”
“No. I’ll get a taxi.”
“I’ll drop you off. Slip out of your suit and jump in my car.”
Jane handed the suit to Kayli, who threw it together with hers into the boot of her car. “I’m going to drop Jane off at the hospital,” she called out to Dave. “Will you follow me?”
“Yep. Want me to chase up Donna?”
“Please. I forgot to pick up the address book from the premises. Thinking about it, I better shoot back in and do that now. Sorry, Jane, bear with me a second.” Kayli chastised herself for not having all her concentration on the job. She donned the suit again and rushed back inside the house to retrieve the small address book from the top drawer of the sideboard in the lounge. She placed it in an evidence bag and left the house yet again. Get your act together, girly.