Chapter 3
Him
Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harper
The sound of my phone buzzing wakes me from the kind of dream I don’t wish to be woken from.
One in which I am not a fortysomething-year-old man, living in a house with a mortgage I can’t afford, a toddler I can’t keep up with, and a woman who is not my wife but nags me anyway.
A better man would have got his shit together by now, instead of sleepwalking through a loaned-out life.
I squint at my phone in the darkness and see that it is Tuesday.
It is also stupidly early, so I’m relieved that the text doesn’t appear to have woken anyone else.
Sleep deprivation tends to have terrible consequences in this house, though not for me—I’ve always been a bit of a night owl.
I shouldn’t feel excitement about what I read on the screen, but I do.
The truth is, since I left London, my job has been as dull as a nun’s underwear drawer.
I’m head of the Major Crime Team here, which sounds exciting, but I’m based in deepest, darkest Surrey now, which isn’t.
Blackdown is a quintessential English village less than two hours from the capital, and petty crime and the occasional burglary tend to be as “major” as it gets.
The village is hidden from the outside world by a sentinel of trees.
The ancient forest seems to have trapped Blackdown—and its inhabitants—in the past, as well as permanent shadow.
But its chocolate-box beauty could never be denied.
Blackdown is filled with an abundance of thatched cottages, white picket fences, an above-average number of elderly residents, and a below-average crime rate.
It’s the kind of place people come to die, and somewhere I never thought I’d find myself living.
I stare at the message on my phone, practically drooling over the words as I drink them down:
Jane Doe discovered in Blackdown Woods overnight. MCT requested. Please call in.
Just the idea of a body being found here feels like it must be a mistake, but I already know it isn’t. Ten minutes later, I’m sufficiently dressed, caffeinated, and in the car.
My latest secondhand 4 × 4 looks like it could do with a wash, and I realize—a little too late—that I do too.
I sniff my armpits and consider going back inside the house, but I don’t want to waste time or wake anyone.
I hate the way they both look at me sometimes.
They have the same eyes, filled with tears and disappointment a tad too often.
I’m a little overenthusiastic perhaps, to get to the crime scene before everyone else, but I can’t help it.
Nothing this bad has happened here for years, and it makes me feel good—optimistic and energized.
The thing about working for the police for as long as I have, is that you start to think like a criminal without being seen as one.
I turn on the engine, praying it will start, ignoring the glimpse of my own reflection in the rearview mirror.
My hair—which is now more gray than black—is sticking out in all directions.
There are dark circles beneath my eyes, and I look older than I remember being.
I try to console my ego; it’s the middle of the bloody night, after all.
Besides, I don’t care what I look like, and other people’s opinions matter even less to me than my own.
At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
I drive with one hand on the steering wheel, while the other feels the stubble on my chin.
Maybe I should have at least shaved. I glance down at my crumpled shirt.
I’m sure we must own an ironing board, but I’ve no idea where it is or when I last used it.
For the first time in a long time, I wonder what other people see when they see me.
I used to be quite the catch. I used to be a lot of things.
It’s still dark when I pull into the National Trust parking lot and I can see that—despite the fact that I came straight here—everyone else appears to have beaten me to it.
There are two police cars and two vans, as well as unmarked vehicles.
Forensics are already on the scene, as is Detective Sergeant Priya Patel.
Her career choice hasn’t managed to grind her down yet; she’s still shiny and new.
Too young to let the job make her feel old, too inexperienced to know what it will do to her eventually.
What it does to us all. Her daily enthusiasm is exhausting, as is her perpetually cheerful disposition.
My head hurts just from looking at her, so I tend to avoid doing so as often as it is possible when you work with someone every day.
Priya’s ponytail swings from side to side as she hurries toward my car.
Her tortoiseshell glasses slip down her nose, and her big brown eyes are a bit too full of excitement.
She doesn’t look as if she’s been dragged from her bed in the middle of the night.
Her slim-fit suit can’t possibly be keeping her petite body warm, and her freshly polished brogues slide a little on the mud.
I find it strangely satisfying to see them get dirty.
I sometimes wonder whether my colleague sleeps fully dressed, just in case she needs to leave the house in a hurry.
She put in a special request to transfer here to work under me a couple of months ago, though god knows why.
If there was ever a time in my life when I was as eager as Priya Patel, I can’t remember it.
As soon as I step outside the car, it starts to rain.
An instant heavy downpour, saturating my clothes in seconds, and assaulting me from above.
I look up and study the sky, which thinks it is night even though it is now morning.
The moon and stars would still be visible, had they not been covered with a blanket of dark clouds.
Torrential rain is not ideal for preserving outdoor evidence.
Priya interrupts my thoughts and I slam the car door without meaning to. She rushes over, trying to hold her umbrella over my head, and I shoo her away.
“DCI Harper, I—”
“I’ve told you before, please call me Jack. We’re not in the army,” I say.
Her face experiences a freeze frame. She looks like a chastised puppy, and I feel like the miserable old git I know I’ve become.
“The Target Patrol Team called it in,” she says.
“Is anyone from the TPT still here?”
“Yes.”
“Good, I want to see them before they leave.”
“Of course. The body is this way. Early indications show that—”
“I want to see it for myself,” I interrupt.
“Yes, boss.”
It’s as though my first name is simply a word she can’t pronounce.
We pass a steady stream of staff I vaguely recognize—people whose names I’ve forgotten, either because I didn’t learn them in the first place, or I haven’t seen them for so long.
It doesn’t matter. My small but perfectly formed Major Crime Team is based near here, but covers the whole county.
We work with different people every day.
Besides, this job isn’t about making friends, it’s about not making enemies.
Priya has a lot to learn about that. The hushed quiet we walk in might be uncomfortable for her, but not for me.
Silence is my favorite symphony; I can’t think clearly when life gets too loud.
She shines a flashlight on the ground a little way ahead of our footsteps—irritatingly efficient as always—as we crunch over a dark carpet of fallen leaves and broken twigs.
Autumn has been and gone, a guest appearance this year before shying away to make room for an overconfident winter.
The top button is missing from my coat, so it no longer does up all the way.
I overcompensate for the gap with a Harry Potter–style scarf displaying my initials—a gift from an ex.
I’ve never quite managed to part with it, a bit like the woman who gave it to me.
It probably makes me look like a fool, but I don’t care.
There are some things we only hold on to because of who gave them to us: names, beliefs, scarves.
Besides, I like the way it feels around my neck: a cozy personalized noose.
My breath forms clouds of condensation, and I shove my hands a little deeper into my coat pockets trying to keep dry and warm.
I’m pleased to see that someone thought to put up a tent around the body, and I step inside the white PVC door.
My fingers find the shape of a child’s dummy in my pocket at the exact moment my eyes see the corpse.
I grip the pacifier so hard that the plastic cuts into my palm.
It causes a small burst of pain, the kind I sometimes need to feel.
It isn’t as though I haven’t seen a dead person before, but this is different.
The woman is partially covered by leaves, and quite a distance from the main path. She would have been easy to miss in this dark corner of the woods, were it not for the bright lights the team have already set up around her.
“Who found the body?” I ask.
“Anonymous tip-off,” says Priya. “Someone called the station from a pay phone down the lane.”
I am grateful for an answer that is as short as the person who gave it. Priya is prone to being a talker, and I am prone to impatience.