Stephen Leather - Once bitten

I was printing it out when the phone rang. It was De'Ath calling, wanting to know how I was getting on.

"Just finished," I said, and held the receiver by the side of the laser printer so that he could hear for himself. "How's the investigation?"

"Which one?" he said, though he knew full that I wouldn't be asking about Henry Kipp, Esq.

"The girl," I said.

"Yeah, the girl," he said. "To be honest, Doc, it ain't going so well."

"I thought you said it was open and shut."

"Yeah, didn't I just? We got the report back from Forensic and it was his blood on her face and hands, no doubt about it. But there was no blood on her clothes. Yet he was covered in it. He'd been stabbed in the chest and slashed about the throat, there should have been red stuff all over her.

And there's still no sign of a murder weapon."

"What's her story?"

"Now she's saying that she found him in the alley and was trying to give him the kiss of life.

Can you believe that? Blood streaming from his throat and she's trying to give him the kiss of life!"

"Who was the guy?"

"Still waiting to hear from the bag 'em and tag 'em boys. They're gonna take his prints and run them through the computer. Look, Doc, I wanna see her report as soon as possible."

"No sweat, but I don't think it's going to be of much help. She's not a crazy, far from it."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Can you bring it round?"

"Half an hour, is that OK?"

De'Ath groaned. "Oh, man, can't you come round now? Look, I tell you what, we've just got a warrant to go round and check out her place, why don't you meet us there. Any time after ten,

I agreed eagerly, too eagerly maybe, but I was intrigued by the girl and I thought that a visit to her home might provide some sort of insight that I wouldn't get from simply talking to her. I finished the printing, put on a tie and was outside her apartment block by ten-thirty.

It was a four-storey modern block on North Alta-Vista, close to Sunset Boulevard, and I realised, fairly close to where she'd been discovered kneeling over the body. I recognised De'Ath's car parked outside and I walked up the stairs rather than taking the lift to prove to myself that I was in good condition. I was out of breath when I reached the top floor so I stood in the hallway until I felt better and then rang the bell. De'Ath's partner, Dennis Filbin, a bulky Irishman with a drinker's nose, opened the door, grunted, and let me in.

"Don't touch anything," he growled. He was wearing polythene gloves and so was De'Ath who came out of the bedroom with a worried look on his face.

"Don't touch anything," said De'Ath.

"I already told him," said Filbin.

"He already told me," I said. "You found anything?"

"Make-up, a teddy bear, closets full of clothes. She don't appear to have no bad habits." He sounded disappointed.

"You sound disappointed," I said. "Mind if I look around?"

"Help yourself. Just don't touch anything."

"Can I have a pair of gloves?" I asked him.

"If you don't touch anything, you won't need gloves," De'Ath snarled. "Have you got the report?"

"I've got both – Kipp and her." I handed them to him and looked around as he and Filbin read through the reports. The apartment was small: a lounge with a small kitchenette leading off it, and a bedroom with space for a double bed, a dressing table and little else. Her clothes were in closets which were built in to the wall opposite the bed and I used a pencil to push one of the doors open.

There were lots of clothes hanging up: dresses, jackets, skirts, blouses, mostly cheap and cheerful stuff, the kind you'd expect to find in any young girl's bedroom. There were three framed posters on the wall, all of them movie posters: Total Recall, Gone With The Wind, and Bambi. Eclectic taste, no doubt about it. There was a fluffy toy rabbit on the dressing table, and a black and white photograph in an antique gilt frame. I bent down to look at the picture, it was of a young man sitting in a director's chair, obviously taken on a film set because in the background were cameras and lights and a tangle of thick, black wires. The man was in his early twenties, clean shaven with his hair swept back, black and glistening as if it had been oiled. He was looking over one shoulder and smiling as if he knew the photograph would end up in a girl's bedroom. It was a movie star smile, gleaming teeth and sincere eyes. On the back of the chair was the name of the film. Lilac Time. And below those words was a name – Greig Turner. It was an old photograph, and the cameras in the background seemed to belong to the golden age of movie-making, maybe before sound, even. To the right of the picture, adjusting one of the lights on a massive tripod, was a man dressed in baggy trousers and checked shirt wearing a cap like Jimmy Cagney used to wear in his old gangster movies. I wondered if Terry was a movie buff who liked to collect momentoes of old movies, but apart from the three framed prints and the photograph there were no other collectibles around. Perhaps the man in the photograph was a relative. Father perhaps? No, that couldn't be right because her name was Ferriman. Unless she'd changed it. If the man was in his twenties and the picture had been taken, say, in the 1930s, then he'd be in his eighties now. Grandfather perhaps?

"Whatchya looking at?" asked De'Ath's voice from behind me. I straightened up. My spine clicked as I did. It had started to do that a lot recently. Arthritis setting in, I bet.

"The photograph," I said. "A relation, maybe?"

"Yeah, maybe. We've about finished here, you'll have to make tracks."

"OK, give me a minute or two will you?"

The bed was covered with a thick peach-coloured quilt and only one pillow had an indentation in it and for some reason I felt pleasantly pleased that Terry Ferriman appeared to sleep alone. I followed De'Ath back into the lounge. There was a small television set, a hi-fi, a three-seater black leather sofa and a matching easy chair. The carpet was short-piled, grey and featureless and the walls were white and bare. No pictures, no photographs. There were some books and CDs on black metal shelves which ran the full length of one wall and there were black blinds over the two windows. The blinds were down but open so that lines of sunlight cut through the room and drew bright oblongs on the floor. There was a black metal and smoked glass coffee table in front of the sofa and on top of it were a couple of fashion magazines. De'Ath was right, there was nothing there. No blood-stained knife, no pile of bloody clothes, no manuals on how to be a successful murderer. I could see why he was so disappointed.

The kitchenette was white and spotless and looked as if it had never been used. There was a cooker, a microwave, a small fridge-freezer and a double stainless steel sink. There was a scrubbed wood knife rack in which were slotted black-handled knifes, a toaster, and an electric kettle.

Everything was gleaming. Pristine. As if she'd never cooked there.

De'Ath saw me looking at the clean, white surfaces. "Looks like she eats out a lot," he said.

"There's only wine and some fizzy water in the fridge."

"Nothing unusual about that," I said. "You'll find precious little to eat in my fridge." Funny how I kept wanting to make excuses for her. "Nice place," I said.

"Yeah, compact," he said. "Bit small for me, but I guess a girl on her own would be quite happy here."

"Samuel, you know there's a knife missing from the rack?"

"Yeah," he said. "We noticed that."

"No toothpicks," said Filbin as he came out of the bathroom.

"Toothpicks?" I said.

"We found a toothpick stuck in the shoelaces of the victim," explained Filbin. "And there weren't any in his pockets. Could be from the perp."