Roz Watkins - Dead Man’s Daughter

‘Are they Jackson Pollocks?’ Jai nodded towards a collection of blood-spatter photographs.

I frowned, pretending to disapprove of him.

Richard strode in, took off his jacket, and chucked it at a chair. It missed and fell on the floor. I nearly reached down for it, but realised there were precisely three men nearer to it than me. Why should I dash to pick the damn thing up? Especially given the way he’d just spoken to me. I noticed DC Fiona Redfern twitching too. But neither of us moved.

Jai retrieved the jacket.

‘Thank you, Jai.’ Richard shifted aside to let me into the hot spot. ‘It’s a long way down for me these days.’

I took a deep breath of the dubious air and stepped forward. ‘Right. The victim is Philip Thornton. Forty-eight-year-old male. Stabbed in the early hours. He was in the house with his ten-year-old daughter. Wife was apparently at her mother’s.’

Jai yawned inappropriately.

‘Am I boring you?’ I said.

Craig leered. ‘He’s been up late with his new girlfriend.’

I didn’t know Jai had a girlfriend. I looked at his open face. Would he not have told me? They were all staring at me. I realised I should say something corpse-related. I spoke too loudly. ‘The victim’s carotid artery was cut with a very sharp knife. As far as we can tell, he was asleep and didn’t put up any fight.’

‘So, whoever did it went in with the intention of killing him?’ Jai said.

‘Looks like it. There was evidence of an intruder in the house.’ I pictured the upturned drawers in the study and bedroom – remembered my feeling that something wasn’t quite right. ‘Possibly.’

‘We got into his phone. Very interesting.’ Our allocated digital media person, Emily, was the antithesis of every stereotype about sad geeks. As well as obviously being female, she glistened with Hollywood shine – all advert-white teeth and smooth-skinned perfection. Every time I saw her, I did a double-take, especially when she was surrounded by her dowdy colleagues, like a dahlia amongst dandelions.

‘Go on, Emily,’ I said.

‘There were missed phone calls and texts between 4.15 a.m. and 4.30 a.m. from a contact called Work . A mobile phone which we’re tracing.’

Emily clicked something and a list appeared on a screen behind us.

Call History:

4.15 a.m. – Work .

4.16 a.m. – Work

4.18 a.m. – Work

4.20 a.m. – Text from ‘Work’: ‘Phil, I need to talk.’

4.22 a.m. – Text from ‘Work’: ‘Why are you ignoring me? I know Rachel is away. I have to talk to you.’

4.30 a.m. – Work

4.33 a.m. – Work

4.40 a.m. – Work

‘Did he reply to any of this?’ I asked.

‘Nope. Not at all,’ Emily said. ‘I’ll leave you to it. I’m off to find out who Work really is.’ She walked off, leaving the room feeling drab in her absence.

I turned away from the screen. ‘The victim’s wife thought he’d been secretive recently. Which obviously ties in with the calls and texts. And the woman who reported the child in the woods said she saw a car driving up the lane to the house. In the night. The lane doesn’t go anywhere else. It’s possible this Work person could have gone to try and meet Phil.’

‘It fits the provisional time of death,’ Jai said.

The energy in the room bubbled up at the prospect of a good early lead. ‘The wife’s also been in touch previously about a stalker,’ I said. ‘And unfortunately – ’

‘We in our wisdom ignored her.’

Richard was starting to piss me off. He was obviously riled about me having the audacity to want time off.

I folded my arms and pivoted away from Richard. ‘We need to look at the details, obviously. But we didn’t have a lot to go on.’

‘We’ll get the blame for this,’ Craig said. ‘We need to cover our arses.’

‘Mainly we need to find whoever killed him,’ I said.

Richard coughed. ‘Quite so, Meg. And also cover our arses.’

I glanced at the texts shining guiltily from the screen. ‘If it was someone he was having an affair with, they could have faked the intruder. There was something not quite right about that. And we should look at the woman who found the girl in the woods. It’s a bit convenient that she saw the car in the middle of the night. And she seemed to know who the girl was. Plus, I had a feeling she might have known the victim too.’

They all nodded sagely except Richard, who scowled at me. ‘A feeling ,’ he said. ‘You need more than that.’

I ignored him and carried on. ‘And, oh I don’t know, it’s probably not relevant, but . . . ’ As soon as that came out of my mouth, I knew it wasn’t confident enough. Not Alpha enough.

Richard jumped on me. ‘Why are you telling us then?’

I felt sweat prickling under my armpits. Maybe it wasn’t just about Richard’s wife leaving. Maybe he was going through the male menopause. I’d read somewhere that men’s moods were more cyclic than women’s, contrary to received (male) wisdom.

I raised my voice. ‘Okay, I think it might be relevant. There was something strange going on in that family.’

‘Other than the bloke having his carotid slashed?’ Richard said. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘His artwork. Her reaction to it.’

Jai gave me a puzzled look. Craig rolled his eyes and said, ‘We’ve got an absolute corker of a lead with those phone calls and texts and – ’

‘I saw the photos of that artwork,’ Fiona said. ‘It’s creepy. Hearts doing weird things. Do you think he was on drugs when he did it? It’s not normal.’

Craig wouldn’t like being interrupted by Fiona. He was tapping his fingers on his knee – that meant he was about to get snide or aggressive. He’d have a dig now.

‘Poor bastard’s had his throat slit,’ he said. ‘And you ladies are all over the fact he did a bit of screwed-up art in his spare time.’ There it was.

I pretended Craig didn’t exist. I even managed to do something weird with the focus of my eyes, so I was staring directly through him at the coughing IT guy behind. ‘The victim’s daughter had a heart transplant last summer. There was a card I think might have been from the family of the donor. But the art suggests all’s not well. And the way the wife talked – it made me think there was something wrong.’

‘When you hear hoofbeats,’ Richard said. ‘Think horses, not zebras.’

‘Huh?’ Jai said.

‘Look at the most likely explanations,’ Richard said. ‘It’s not hard to understand.’

‘It could have been the wife. If she found out her husband was having an affair.’ Fiona was clearly not interested in the zebras, and was of the opinion that an affair was good grounds for throat-slitting.

‘And she was desperate to get back inside the house,’ I said. ‘I think she may have messed up the scene deliberately. And someone had been in the shower.’

‘But her story adds up,’ Craig said. ‘She was at a petrol station in Matlock at nine in the morning.’

‘She could have come to the house earlier and then gone back to Matlock. We need to check. There are no immediate neighbours, and there are ways to the house that avoid CCTV altogether, but we can look at the camera on the main road.’ I raised an eyebrow at Richard. ‘And the spouse is always a horse, don’t you agree?’

‘Didn’t the little girl see anything?’ Fiona asked.

‘She was on sleeping pills for night terrors she’s been having. We haven’t been able to get much sense out of her. It looks like she must have woken up, wandered through to her parents’ room, found her father, tried to wake him and got blood all over her, and then run out into the woods.’