Chapter 2
Nadeeka tries to speak, but the words won’t come. This can’t be possible. She’s hallucinating. Having a nightmare. Jamie can’t be – he can’t be dead.
‘I’m so sorry.’ DI Burton puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t be seeing this.’ He’s steering her towards the front door, gently but firmly, and Nadeeka twists around, because surely if she looks a second time she’ll see an empty room, a spotless carpet?
But he’s still there. Jamie. One arm flung against the wall, blood blurring the outline of his body so it’s impossible to say where his sweater finishes and the carpet begins.
A sob erupts from within her and her legs buckle.
The detective inspector puts one arm around her, gripping both her elbows, marching her forward. Out of the house.
‘There should have been someone on the cordon,’ he says, as they step on to the drive. He looks meaningfully at the uniformed police officer.
‘Sorry.’ The lad flushes a deep red. ‘Sir,’ he adds hurriedly.
There’s a bench by the front door. Nadeeka put it there so she could watch the girls when they were playing on their scooters.
Cedar Walk is a cul-de-sac, the residents mostly families or downsized retirees, but Nadeeka only knows the neighbours to nod to, and she likes to keep an eye on her daughters.
You never know what could happen, even in a nice neighbourhood like this one.
She half-sits, half-falls on to the hard wooden seat.
The front of the house doesn’t get the sun, and the bench is still frosted with cold. Damp seeps into her trousers.
DI Burton sits next to her, his body turned to face her. ‘I’m so sorry, both for your loss and for how you learned of it – neither of those things should have happened. I know this is a terrible shock, but I need to ask you some questions. Is that okay?’
Nadeeka nods mutely.
‘When did you last see your partner alive?’
‘This morning.’ Nadeeka takes a gulp of air.
Her body isn’t behaving normally; her breathing is ragged and lumpy, and there’s a buzzing in her ears like a fly against a window.
‘Before I left for work. But I just spoke to him. I called him, you see, then I came home because . . .’ Nadeeka stops.
She doesn’t want to tell the detective she thought Jamie was with another woman.
She doesn’t want him to think badly of Jamie, not when Jamie .
. . She blinks rapidly, trying to force away the sudden, violent image of his body.
The outstretched arm, the blood-soaked sweater, the smell.
‘Deep breaths, now,’ DI Burton says. ‘Nice and slow.’
Like rust, she thinks. Like dirty pennies.
Like the butcher’s shop when the cleaver hits the block.
She’s hyperventilating. The buzzing in her ears is so loud now it’s all she can hear, and she feels a hand on her back, pushing her forward so her head is on her knees.
The uniformed officer says, She needs an ambulance, but DI Burton says, She’ll be fine, and he tells Nadeeka to breathe in then out, in then out – that’s right, you’re doing great, until eventually she’s doing it on her own.
She straightens. Slowly, cautiously. ‘I – I’m sorry. I suddenly felt faint.’
‘You’re in shock,’ DI Burton says. ‘This is a terrible thing to happen.’
‘I heard someone in the background when I was on the phone to Jamie,’ Nadeeka says, now that she’s able to speak again.
‘Someone was in the house. A woman.’ She mustn’t hold anything back, even if it makes the police think badly of Jamie.
‘Whoever it was would have been the last person to see Jamie alive. They might have seen who—’ Nadeeka breaks off.
She feels suddenly stupid. The last person to see Jamie alive wasn’t a witness, was she? She was a killer.
‘The voice you heard was very likely the person who attacked your partner,’ DI Burton says, confirming her thoughts. ‘It’s very important you tell us everything you can remember about that call.’
Nadeeka heard the voice of a murderer. A chill runs through her at the thought. She should have called Jamie back after he hung up on her, rather than driving home, trying to catch him out. Maybe if she’d rung back she’d have distracted his attacker, or—
‘You said the voice was female. Are you certain of that?’
‘Completely certain.’
‘Any discernible accent?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Nadeeka feels panicky. Why hadn’t she taken more notice? Identifying the woman she heard is critical, and Nadeeka has nothing useful to offer the police.
‘Were there any other voices?’
‘No. At least, I don’t think so. I only heard the woman.
’ Only wanted to hear the woman, Nadeeka thinks, remembering how quickly her mind jumped to conclusions.
She wonders now if there had been a second voice; if the woman had been talking to someone other than Jamie.
She presses her palms into the sockets of her eyes, trying to remember, but already it seems like a fever dream.
How is it possible that two hours ago she was talking to Jamie, and now he’s dead?
‘What did the woman say?’
‘I don’t remember. I mean, I didn’t hear. You know the way you’re aware the television is on in the next room but you can’t make out what programme’s on?’
DI Burton nods.
A thought strikes Nadeeka. ‘Who called the police?’
‘Control room had an anonymous call in on the nines. We’re working on tracing it. The caller gave your address, but unfortunately by the time we arrived . . .’
A movement from inside the house catches Nadeeka’s eye. She jumps up, her heart thumping at twice the speed, because there was only Jamie in the house, and if he’s moving, then he can’t be dead . . .
‘Forensics.’ DI Burton must have seen the hope on Nadeeka’s face, because he breaks the news gently. ‘They’ll be there for some time, I’m afraid.’
A broad-shouldered man with a shaved head comes out of the house with Jamie’s laptop and mobile phone in clear plastic bags. He’s wearing a paper suit with a hood, and a mask covering the lower half of his face. His feet are encased in blue plastic shoe coverings.
Nadeeka watches as Jamie’s belongings are loaded into the back of a van.
‘Why are they taking his computer?’ At the back of her mind, something starts to grow.
An ugly, painful what if. She searches DI Burton’s face for answers.
‘Do you think there’s something on it? Something bad?
Is that why someone killed him?’ She sinks back down on to the bench.
‘At this stage, we simply don’t know.’
Nadeeka is reassured by the way DI Burton doesn’t break eye contact. She’s glad he’s being straight with her, not pulling any punches; that he’s honest about not having all the answers.
‘But this is the only opportunity we have to secure all the evidence,’ he adds.
‘If we were to realize further down the line that we needed Jamie’s phone, or fingerprints from a specific part of the house, it would be too late.
We have to do a thorough job now. For Jamie’s sake.
’ DI Burton gives a brief nod to the forensics officer, who is on his way back into the house.
‘We want to find the person who did this and bring them to justice.’
Tears spill over Nadeeka’s eyelashes. ‘I just don’t understand who would do something like this.’
‘Did Jamie have any enemies?’
‘Enemies? He’s a health and safety inspector, not a gangster.’
Nadeeka’s teeth are chattering, and her words bump into each other. DI Burton takes off his jacket and drapes it around her shoulders. ‘Come and sit in my car. I’ll put the heating on.’
They walk towards a blue Vauxhall Corsa.
‘Had Jamie fallen out with anyone recently?’ There’s a beep as the car unlocks.
‘When police arrived on scene – ’ DI Burton opens the passenger door for her ‘ – they found the front door ajar and your partner’s body in the living room.
The front door latches automatically, but there was no sign of forced entry, which suggests Jamie opened the door to his attacker.
It’s possible he knew them – maybe even expected their visit. ’
Nadeeka shakes her head. ‘Jamie’s from Sheffield. He relocated to be with me six months ago and hasn’t really got to know anyone locally yet. To be honest, he was struggling to settle. The only people he knew apart from his colleagues were ones I introduced him to, so . . .’
Her sentence tails away as it hits her. She looks around the quiet cul-de-sac in which she has always felt so safe.
If Jamie knew his killer, what if she knows them too?