James Craig: Time of Death

Carlyle sighed. ‘Fine.’ He got up and followed her back into the kitchen. It looked bigger with the body removed, but he was still careful to avoid the blood on the floor as he stepped towards the open dishwasher. Peering inside, he saw that it was largely empty apart from a couple of mugs and some cutlery. On top of a nearby work surface, however, was a steel skillet that had not been there before. It had been sealed in a plastic bag.

Carlyle looked at the woman expectantly, without feeling the need to expend the effort to either introduce himself, or to ask her name.

‘This looks like it could be it,’ she said, taking her cue.

Carlyle nodded. ‘It must have been cleaned up pretty good in there.’

‘Yes,’ the woman said, ‘and the outside of the dishwasher has been wiped clean of all prints. But we should still find some material in the filter or the pipes.’

‘Good,’ said Carlyle. Finally, he could feel his energy levels rising. They should have this sorted out by the end of the day, if not earlier. The thought of such an easy win put a spring in his step. ‘That’s very good,’ he said. ‘Very helpful.’ He turned and walked back into the hallway. Checking his watch, he wondered idly if he could beat his previous record for closing a case. Seven or eight years ago, he’d had a homeless girl deliver up a full confession to the killing of her ‘boyfriend’ less than three and a half minutes from the start of her formal interview. Carlyle had been counting off the seconds from the clock in the interview room as she droned into the tape recorder. The boyfriend had been an evil, drunken bastard and had deserved everything he got, which in this case was more than a dozen stab wounds to the head and chest.

Carlyle had felt no real interest in the girl – a runaway from some provincial hellhole – or why she had done it. He couldn’t even remember what had happened to her subsequently; if she had been sent to prison or placed into care. But he could still close his eyes and see her blank expression. And he recalled the fleeting satisfaction derived from closing a case almost before it had even been opened. Sometimes people couldn’t get the words out quickly enough. Spilling your guts was an extremely commendable impulse, in the inspector’s book. The question now was: would Mr Mills similarly oblige?

Standing in the middle of the living room, Carlyle looked Henry Mills up and down. He waited for Mills to make eye contact before speaking.

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mills replied.

‘Did you kill her?’ Carlyle asked evenly.

Mills looked at his empty glass. ‘No.’

‘Come on, Mr Mills, it looks very clear-cut to us.’ He glanced at Joe, who responded with a vague gesture of agreement.

‘No.’ Mills shook his head. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. He suddenly seemed completely sober.

Fuck, Carlyle thought. No confession means no record-breaking for me today. His energy levels started ebbing again. Time for our man to visit the station, he decided. Stick him in a cell for a while.

No more Famous Grouse.

No more armchairs.

No more comfortable untidiness.

No more options.

Wait a while and then charge him. Start making this thing feel real. But that would mean a lawyer, stretching things out even longer. He gave it one more push. ‘You didn’t do it?’ He gestured at the glass. ‘Or maybe you don’t remember doing it?’

‘No,’ Mills said firmly, sounding clearer by the minute. ‘I didn’t do it. I haven’t forgotten anything. I didn’t even have one drink last night.’

Carlyle glanced at the bottle and decided that was not very likely. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘if you didn’t do it, then who did?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mills said again, as if it was an even more acceptable answer the second time around. ‘She was like that when I found her.’

‘Where were you when it happened?’

‘In bed, asleep.’

‘Did you hear any noise?’

‘No. I wear earplugs because I’m a light sleeper.’ He nodded in the direction of the window. ‘The traffic . . .’

‘If it wasn’t you,’ said Joe, ‘do you know who might have done it?’

Carlyle folded his arms. This was the bit where they would be told that the victim was a modern-day saint who didn’t have an enemy in the world.

Mills carefully placed his glass down on the floor next to the bottle and looked at the sergeant, hopeful that he might prove to be more reasonable than his rather snide boss. ‘It had to be her enemies.’

‘Her enemies?’ parroted the inspector.

‘Yes.’ Henry Mills nodded. ‘I’m sure it was them. No one else would have done this. Not to Agatha.’

Commander Carole Simpson eyed the large plate of sandwiches that had been placed on the table in front of her and groaned. Looking out across the river from the tenth floor of New Scotland Yard, she was suddenly struck by the thought that there must be millions of people out there who were actually having an enjoyable day. Not her. To say that being promoted had turned out to be something of a mixed blessing was an understatement. Meetings like this made Simpson feel that she had been transformed from a copper into a pen-pusher.

The Planning, Performance and Review Committee was almost three hours into its scheduled eight-hour session, and it was heavy going indeed. Sixteen people around the table, who either didn’t know each other or didn’t like each other, were reviewing the latest Specialist Crime Directorate Management Information Report , which presented the Directorate’s ‘key objectives and core performance indicators’.

The conference room was hot and stuffy. Simpson stifled a yawn as best she could. For her this was increasingly what modern policing looked like: number-crunching while hidden away in an airless room, as far away from the public as possible; as far away from the criminals as possible. It was enough to send anyone to sleep.

After everyone had carefully chosen their food, the committee turned to the Homicide section of the report. The overall homicide detection rate for the previous year was 85 per cent, slightly worse than the year before but still very satisfactory and – crucially – well within the performance target band.

As the discussion rambled on, Simpson recalled with some satisfaction how she had personally overseen the investigations regarding four of the murders in question. Her officers had enjoyed a 100 per cent success rate. And now she was putting all that effort to good use. Although technically not part of the SCD’s efforts, she had made sure that the cases were included in the report, in order to boost the overall clean-up rate figures. After all, when you were locked in an endless battle with the politicians for money and resources, every little helped.

Having made the mistake of biting into a cheese sandwich, which was foul, she washed it quickly away with a mouthful of coffee while listening to someone raise the issue of the recently proposed changes in the murder law. The plan was to replace the existing partial defence of ‘provocation’ with one of ‘fear of serious violence’ or, in exceptional circumstances, ‘seriously wronged’. Neither was much of a defence, Simpson reckoned. She was nervous at the constant attempts to fiddle with the laws of the land. Britain was a safe country; London was a safe city. Most people were good citizens or, at least, respectful subjects. The laws worked – they should be left alone.

Like any decent copper, the commander basically thought that the only successful defence against a serious charge should be ‘I didn’t do it’. Lots of people thought that they were ‘seriously wronged’ one way or another. In her book, that could never be any kind of excuse for murder.