Roz Watkins - Dead Man’s Daughter

Craig jumped out of his car. ‘Christ, what happened?’

I gestured into the house. ‘Victim’s wife’s in there. Get her out.’

I touched the skin above my cheekbone. There were types of people you expected to thump you, and she hadn’t been one of them. I’d allowed her through, and now she’d have messed up the scene.

I suited up in the shadow of the house. My ankle was throbbing. I’d injured it as a child and it hadn’t healed well. A big lump of callus stuck out and restricted movement, making me walk with a slight limp and minimising my chances of ever looking like a glamorous TV detective. I must have bashed it when I’d fallen.

Craig appeared, leading the wife by the arm. Her hair and clothes were smeared red, and she was hunched over, letting out gulping sobs. Craig gave a little shake of his head and rolled his eyes to the sky.

The woman pulled herself free of Craig and stood breathing heavily and seeming to get control of herself. She raised her head. ‘Where’s Abbie? Where’s my little girl?’

‘She’s with police at a neighbour’s. She’s fine.’

The woman sniffed loudly and took a couple more open-mouthed breaths. ‘I told the police someone was stalking us. I told you but nobody believed me. Oh God . . . ’ She folded forwards again and held her stomach.

‘We’ll need to ask you about that,’ I said gently, ignoring the implied criticism. ‘But I have to get a few things started. Then I’ll take you to Abbie.’

She leant against one of the pillars by the door.

‘Was anyone else in the house?’ I asked. ‘Abbie mentioned her sister.’

‘There’s no one else.’ The woman swallowed and seemed to shrink into herself. ‘Jess died. Years ago.’

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing emerged. Craig took the woman’s arm and led her away.

I made sure inner and outer cordons were in place, and went back in for a careful look around.

The hallway led into a utility room that had an old-house smell of mould and mushrooms. Its window had been smashed, the catch released, and the sash shoved upwards, making a space big enough for someone to climb in. The house still had its original wooden windows, making it an easy target. One thing for hideous PVC double glazing – it did make breaking in a little harder, and prints showed up so much better on plastic than on wood.

The kitchen was terracotta-tiled and rustic, with a central butcher’s block fit for dismembering large animals. The room was tidy but lived in, the fridge adorned with magnetic letters and a rather competent drawing of a dog’s head. A calendar on the wall showed school trips and ballet lessons. I glanced at today’s date – Rachel back from Mum’s . They were so terribly sad, the calendars of dead people, full of assumptions of an ordinary life continued.

One of a collection of impressive chef’s knives was missing from a knife block on the countertop. If they were in order, it was the largest. I looked at the others – all throat-slittingly sharp.

There was no evidence of an intruder in the living room. The TV and a laptop were still there, and the normal clutter of a family. A sketch pad and pencils, a thriller involving submarines, a pile of tedious-looking paperwork, a pair of nasty trainers.

A small study next door had been substantially trashed. All the drawers in an antique-style desk had been emptied, leaving piles of papers strewn over the floor. I scanned the piles, not knowing what I was looking for, wondering what they’d been looking for. Trying to sense the murderer’s presence in the room amongst the mess they’d made.

I scrutinised the bookshelves. More man-thrillers, reference books, and a little cluster of self-help, including a book called You Become What You Believe , which seemed tragically ironic in the circumstances. A card was propped on a low shelf of a bookcase, a picture of a kitten on its front. I lifted it with a gloved hand and looked inside. Thank you for getting in touch. We appreciated it. We don’t know who you are and we can’t tell you who we are, but it is of comfort to us that something good has come out of this terrible tragedy . I stuck it in a bag.

I noticed a door in the corner. It was hard to picture the layout of this peculiar house. I walked over and pushed it, and found myself in a bright room with a bay window overlooking a garden. Green-tinted light flooded in. The walls were lined with benches, on which drawings lay scattered. I stepped over to look at them. A charcoal heart on cream paper, snakes’ heads projecting from it, the muscle of the heart melding seamlessly into the snakes’ necks, an optical illusion making the muscle seem to twitch. Another heart shown split in two, blood oozing from its red centre. A third with a single eye which stared out at me and seemed to follow me as I walked along by the bench. I felt goose pimples on my arms, and made a note to get the whole lot bagged up.

Upstairs, nothing was obviously wrong in the pink room. No blood that I could see. Just a normal kid’s room – another sketch book, pony pictures on the walls, a globe on a painted desk, a mauve duvet hanging over the side of the bed, a fluffy elephant on the floor. My eyes were drawn to a sparkling amethyst geode on the bedside table, its purple crystalline innards shining from inside a dark egg of stone. I’d loved crystals and minerals too when I was a child.

The air in the main bedroom had a metallic sweetness that touched the back of my throat. The pathologist had arrived. Mary Oliver. We’d bonded over a few corpses since I’d come to the Derbyshire force six months previously – we shared an interest in obscure medical conditions and a guilty Child Genius addiction.

A glimpse of bone shone through the dark slash in the man’s neck, reminding me of abattoir photographs from animal rights groups. ‘So, he was killed by cutting his throat?’ I said.

‘Almost certainly. The PM will confirm.’

‘Is the carotid severed?’

‘Yep, cut right through with an inward stabbing motion. Two stabs, by the look of it. That’s why we’ve got some nice spatter.’

‘Would someone need a knowledge of anatomy or would random stabbing do it?’

‘Random stabbing could do it, although you’d have to be lucky with the location of the knife.’ She paused and looked at me. ‘Or unlucky, depending on your point of view.’

‘Time of death?’

‘Can’t be accurate on that yet, as you know.’

‘But . . . ’

‘His underarms are cool. From his temperature and the lividity, I’d suggest somewhere between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. He’s not been moved post mortem. This is all provisional, as you know.’

‘Okay. And he doesn’t seem to have struggled?’

‘I’d say he was fast asleep and he never regained consciousness. Unpleasant business.’

Something had to be pretty gruesome for Mary to say it was unpleasant. Her bar was high. ‘So, it’s a premeditated attack then? Is that what we’re saying?’

‘There are no defence injuries that I can see at the moment. It’s not your typical interrupted-burglar or domestic scenario. Shame the wife got in and messed up the scene though.’

‘I know.’ I reminded myself I’d done my best to stop her, at some personal cost. Guilt was my specialist subject, which I could perform to Olympic level. ‘The child had blood on her as well, so I suppose she must have come in and seen this.’ I imagined briefly how Abbie must have felt. I’d been about the same age when I’d found my sister hanging from her bedroom ceiling. I hoped Abbie wouldn’t still be having flashbacks in her mid-thirties. ‘She’s not saying much.’

Mary frowned at me. ‘Have you found a weapon?’

‘No. What are we looking for?’