Persons Unknown. Susie Steiner

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СКАЧАТЬ at him. He’ll likely be leading this case – not as SIO, that’ll be Harriet – but on the ground, running the constables. The thought makes him jog faster. He wants to get there, get started. But his excitement – or is it a stitch? – is tugged at from below by something like aversion. His body pushes forward but his inner self pulls back. He can’t do it. He isn’t up to it. He’s been over-promoted by the super, who thinks of him as a son.

      Davy is panting (it’s a wonder he passed his last bleep test); his heart knocking with impatience to master the scene, and with fear also. He might be unmasked at any moment.

      ‘The shallowness deep within,’ Manon said, ages ago now – just after his promotion – when he’d discussed his Imposter Syndrome with her. ‘You’re not the only one, you know.’ And he’d wondered whether she meant, ‘You’re not the only one who thinks you’re a useless twat.’

      Why does he keep thinking about her? He wishes she was here, that’s why. She seems a more substantial person than he does. He slows to a walk because the stitch is really painful now. Even more substantial these days: her breathing laboured, her breasts enormous. He doesn’t want to be one of those men, but it’s like trying to pretend you’re looking out to sea when there’s a vast mountain range right in your sightline.

      He comes alongside the body. Looks around him. Harriet’s not here, nothing’s started yet. Within half an hour this place’ll be crawling with uniforms. Looking down, he sees the clothing has been cut open so paramedics could work on the victim’s chest – white shirt, suit jacket, wool coat, Ozwald Boateng written on the purple shimmering lining. The eyes are open, mouth too, the chest caked in dried blood and the small incision of the wound itself, evidently from a knife, like a cut in an uncooked joint of pork. Small red opening in waxy yellow flesh.

      Davy looks around him again.

      He crouches down unsteadily, and a gust of wind nearly pushes him on top of the corpse. He puts a hand out to balance himself. You don’t want to contaminate the scene – isn’t that the first rule, the only thing they drum into you at training? Keep your hands in your pockets.

      If only he could cop a glance at that wallet that he can see poking out of the purple silk lining – then he could get started. If he could get a name off a bank card, an ID, then the story can start and this is a whopper. This one’ll be all over the news. The pressure, he can feel it already popping at his temples, is going to be massive. Keep your hands in your pockets, Davy Walker.

      ‘What the fuck are you doing, Davy?’ It is Harriet.

      He jumps up. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I’m not doing anything.’

      ‘Yeah, well, step away from the evidence until SOCO gets here,’ she says.

      ‘Know who he is?’ Davy asks.

      ‘Not yet. But he’ll still be dead in an hour after forensics have got what they need so there’s no need to be patting him down.’

      He takes a step back.

      ‘We need to cordon this section of wood, make it wide,’ Harriet says. ‘Where’s your notebook, Davy? C’mon, or do you not want to run this scene? First priority is hands-and-knees search for a weapon. No point getting the dogs out, too many people around. But we do need community policing down here – I want the public reassured by not being able to move for police officers. We need a community inspector to go into the school, talk to the head, make sure all the kids get home safely. Same at the hospital.’

      ‘We should check Acer Ward,’ Davy says.

      ‘Yes, good thought. See if you can track down the consultant psychiatrist, ask him if they had any psychos go walkabout this afternoon. I didn’t just use that word, by the way.’

      ‘What about an ARV?’

      ‘No, leave them out – what can armed response do, realistically? Let’s not blow the budget. I want scene guards on the cordon, not the idiots we had on the last one. There’s a lot of footfall, I don’t want this scene contaminated, OK?’

      ‘Who found him?’

      ‘Judith Cole, over there,’ Harriet says, nodding towards a woman whose hair is matted against her head with blood. It’s smeared down her cheek and has soaked the collar of her coat. She has the distant look of a person who has yet to take in what has happened to her. Someone – a paramedic, probably – has placed a foil blanket over her shoulders of the kind used by runners at the end of a race.

      ‘She’s significant, obviously – last person to see him alive. We need her clothes for forensics.’

      ‘Why is there blood on her face and hair?’

      ‘She cradled the victim, tried to listen to his last words apparently.’

      Davy is writing furiously, his hand cold and shaky. Harriet doesn’t stop, rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Also at the hospital, let’s check to see if anyone’s self-admitted. Knife wounds.’ She nods at the executive detached homes curling around the cul-de-sac adjacent to the school. ‘Over there, Snowdonia Way, that’s where I want house to house to start. And we can warn them to be vigilant while we’re at it. Set up a roadblock. We want witnesses, people who were driving in this direction.’

      Davy is writing down Acer Ward while his brain tries to keep a tab on the subsequent items on the checklist. Nothing must fall off the checklist. He’s thinking Snowdonia Way, that was next, then – what? – something to do with clothes.

      At the same time some other part of his brain is thinking, this isn’t a tidy one: not the usual kind of murder where the person who did it is lying smashed next to the victim or is making a cack-handed run for it towards a waiting panda car or where their perp is just, well, obvious because of the backstory: in a relationship with the victim, threatened them with it last time, just did a massive drugs deal and owed someone money. Sent a text saying, ‘I’ll get you, you’re for it.’ Their perps, often, were not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier and the cases were tidy. Dirty but clean, as in ring-fenced, not leaching towards the executive new builds of Snowdonia Way with their gas barbecues and two-car garages. Davy feels the anxiety reach its fist around his stomach.

      ‘So that woman Judith Cole,’ Harriet is saying, while Davy scribbles hosp – knife wounds? ‘He died in her arms apparently. At least, he was dead by the time the paramedics arrived. They tried to resuscitate him but no luck.’

      ‘Funny place to die,’ Davy says.

      ‘Yes. Very public. Who the fuck is stabbed at half four in the afternoon?’ Harriet’s swearing always peaks at a crime scene. ‘Let’s start with a statement from Mrs Cole, down at the station. Send someone to get her a change of clothes. She only lives over there, 5 Snowdonia Way.’

      ‘He looks well-to-do, not our usual lot,’ Davy says, nodding at the body.

      He steps across the seeping ground to take a look at the man’s face the right way up. He has pouches beneath his eyes the size of teabags, a Roman nose. In fact the whole head seems Roman: his hair, cut close, curling forwards towards his forehead like Caesar’s crown of leaves. What was it made of? Manon would know.

      As she walks away, Harriet adds, ‘Need to get the CCTV off the road and this footpath, if there is any.’

      Time is of the СКАЧАТЬ