Chapter 5
FIVE
DAN
Present day
I can smell it in the air, fresh, like an abattoir, the moment I walk through the front door – blood.
My heart plummets. I’m not especially superstitious, but it’s as if the cosmos somehow knows whenever I’ve got a night off. It’s when all the killers seem to come out to play.
‘Fatality, gov. Single stab wound to the chest, the body’s in the kitchen.’
DS Lucy Davis, my revered number two and trusted ‘work wife’, had moments earlier greeted me outside the apartment complex on Stockwell Gardens.
She was wearing full PPE and an apologetic look. I was on my way home, you see, looking forward to spending some time with my actual wife, and our three kids – not to mention enjoying the pad thai dinner that was waiting for me – when the call came through, forcing me to do a quick U-turn.
‘Looks like a domestic, gov. Victim is a Mr Milo Harrison, thirty-four, a banker in the city, apparently,’ Davis informs me as I step into a protective suit. ‘He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics. Dr Leyton is on her way.’
This cheers me up a bit at least. I’ve got a soft spot for my favourite pathologist, Victoria Leyton, even if she is a bit too keen on a cadaver for my taste.
‘Who called it in?’
‘Tilly Ward, a friend of the victim’s partner, placed the 999 call at 6.31 p.m., gov. Local woman, thirty-six years old. She claims that the victim came at her and her friend with a knife, and that she stabbed him in self-defence. She requested police assistance and an ambulance.’
‘Who’s the friend?’
‘Someone called Samantha Valentine, the deceased’s girlfriend apparently, also living at the address according to Ward.’
‘And where’s Tilly Ward now?’
‘Inside the apartment, gov. She’s pretty traumatised.’
‘I would imagine so if she’s just stabbed someone to death.’
‘She’s saying that she got a message from this friend, Samantha Valentine, earlier today around 5 p.m., asking her to come to the apartment because the deceased had become violent and was threatening her with a knife.
Tilly says she left work immediately – she’s a sales assistant at a local bookstore – and drove over to the apartment.
She claims she walked straight into a bad situation and that while the three of them were in the kitchen, Milo Harrison came at them with a kitchen knife.
She then says she picked up a knife, or Samantha gave her a knife, she can’t remember exactly, and she defended herself, stabbing him once in the chest.’
‘What about Milo Harrison? Does he have any previous, any DV on record?’
She shakes her head.
‘He’s clean as a whistle, boss – nothing.’
‘And where’s the friend now, this Samantha Valentine, can she corroborate all of this?’
If she can then we might be looking at a Section 76 – lawful use of force used in an act of self-defence – and I might be home in time for microwave pad thai after all.
‘Yeah, well, that’s just it, gov, we can’t find her.’
‘Can’t find her?’
‘Apparently, she wasn’t at the scene when the first attending officers arrived. She may’ve got scared and run off, gone to a friend’s? We’re trying to trace her now, gov. Tilly says she was on foot, so she can’t have gone far.’
‘Do we have a phone number for this Samantha?’ I glance up at the apartment complex.
It’s a posh building, newly built with a glass facade, the kind that looks more like a swanky hotel.
It’s no doubt got a communal gym and swimming pool, but it stands out like a clown at a funeral against the backdrop of the other poor-relation high rises that surround it.
‘If we haven’t, get one. And let’s start door-to-door and make sure the whole area is sealed off. No one else in or out – and Davis,’ I turn to her, ‘let’s find this missing Samantha Valentine quickly, yes? Clearly, she’s a vital witness.’
I zip my suit and glove-up as I make my way through the short hallway into the kitchen where the body is, noting a small pair of women’s boots neatly placed by the front door.
SOCO has arrived now. I hear the pops of the cameras and the rustle of their protective green suits as they invade the property like a swarm of giant locusts.
Like me, any of them could have dinner going cold for them at home tonight, but this is the job; it’s what we all signed up for.
A pair of uniformed officers step aside the body as I enter the sparse-looking kitchen.
It’s a modern room – lots of white and exposed brick – and there’s not much in the way of furnishings.
The walls are almost bare – there’s a large mirror on one and a clock on the other, opposite – and the shiny chrome appliances appear almost untouched, like the occupant rarely uses them.
I think my wife refers to this type of aesthetic as ‘minimalistic, industrial chic’, something I imagine, as a man with three kids, only exists in glossy magazines and on social media.
There’s no obvious signs of any altercation having taken place; there’s nothing smashed or broken, nothing upended.
‘Sir.’
I take in a long, deep breath as I brace myself to look at the body. The day I stop doing this little ritual is the day I should give the job up. It never gets any easier.
He’s lying on his back, his arms lightly outstretched either side of his body, and he’s bare-chested. There’s a large, dark, teardrop-shaped puncture wound above his heart. You can see it’s deep – it’s practically a hole – and the blood is still glistening fresh and oozing from it.
The rest of him looks untouched at a cursory glance though; no clear injuries, no bruising or defensive wounds. I crouch down with a sigh beside him and whisper his name aloud.
‘Milo… Milo Harrison…’
His eyes are open, fixed in a look of surprised confusion, like he wasn’t expecting what happened to him to have happened at all.
A chill tickles my spine. It’s never pleasant viewing a dead body, not least one with their eyes wide open, grimacing in a death mask.
Like I say, I’m not particularly superstitious, but it has been said that the dead capture their final moment in their eyes like a snapshot, and that if you look deep enough into them, you can see it.
The only thing I see, however, when I fix mine upon his, is my own convex reflection from the fancy hanging light above.
I think it’s a fair observation to note that Milo Harrison was a good-looking guy.
He’s got that dark five o’clock shadow thing going on, and judging by his defined torso, he wasn’t shy around a gym either.
I don’t know his story yet. Is he a domestic abuser who got a taste of his own medicine?
I stare at the deep black hole in his chest, at the blood that is only now just beginning to coagulate.
It doesn’t look like a frenzied attack. There’s only one stab wound, albeit a fatal one.
Tilly Ward’s initial account could be plausible.
She hasn’t fled the scene, and she called for help promptly, though a post-mortem will give us more insight.
I let out a long breath.
Whatever has happened here reeks of tragedy already. Every domestic always does. Statistically though, the body I’m staring at would be more likely to be Milly than Milo.
‘Ah! The famous DCI Riley!’ Vic Leyton appears behind me.
She’s holding up a copy of a newspaper in her hand.
I groan. Archer – Superintendent Gwen Archer – my boss, had recently talked me into doing an in-depth profile piece on ‘a week in the life of a homicide detective in the capital’ for the Standard Life newspaper, and it was published this week.
I was a reluctant interviewee – I’m much more comfortable asking questions than I am answering them – but I knew by Archer’s tone that I wasn’t going to get out of it.
‘It’ll be good for PR, Dan,’ she’d said. ‘And you’re the best looking out of a bad bunch.’
Flattery got her everywhere. And it got my mugshot plastered all over social media.
‘Great photo, Dan.’ Vic arches an eyebrow from beneath her PPE. ‘You look…’ she pauses, thoughtfully, ‘… distinguished!’
‘I’ll take that.’ I smile at her, try to disguise my discomfort about it all.
As always, it’s a pleasure to see Dr Victoria Leyton, and yet every time I do, we’re united by the worst kind of circumstance, which makes it a strange and unique relationship in that respect.
She casts her eyes at the body on the kitchen floor with a sigh of her own.
‘A domestic?’
‘Looks that way,’ I say, adding the caveat, ‘on the surface at least.’
‘Well, if it is, then I hope he deserved it.’
I look down at Mr Harrison, at his young, fit and healthy-looking body surrounded by a large dark red pool of his own blood, and wonder if anyone really does.
‘Well, it looks as if he was standing when he was struck by the knife. I can tell by the position of the body, how he’s fallen.’ She crouches down next to him on the kitchen floor, and I watch with a certain awe as her eyes scan him in detail. After a moment she looks up at me.
‘I suspect the assailant is left-handed, or that they held the weapon in their left hand when they struck the blow.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘You see the direction of the dots of blood, how the splatter appears to get bigger at the top of the wound?’
I crouch down next to her again and she points to the hole in his chest.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think so.’
‘Well, for each hand, the starting point of entry wound is different.’
‘Is that so?’
Every day is a school day with Vic. I’ve learned more about the human body from her than I ever did in any biology lesson. If she’d been one of the teachers at my school, I would definitely have had a crush on her.
‘Right-handed wounds start right and end left, but in this handsome chap’s case, it’s the reverse, which suggests the assailant held the weapon in their left hand. It’s not conclusive, of course, but in my experience…’
Davis appears in the doorway.
‘Lucy…’
‘Yeah, well, it’s all a bit strange, boss, but it appears that the friend and girlfriend, this Samantha Valentine, isn’t officially registered at this address.’
‘OK. So where is she registered?’
‘That’s just it, gov, it seems she isn’t registered anywhere. The neighbours are saying that Milo Harrison lived here alone and that they have never seen him with a girlfriend, or anyone who fits the description that Tilly gave us.’ She raises an eyebrow.
‘We’re running checks now and a number of Samantha Valentines come up in the UK – but no one who matches the description, demographic or geographic – no one local.
’ She shrugs. ‘And just take a look around the apartment, gov, there’s no trace of her, of any female at all; no possessions, no toiletries, clothes, photos – nothing to suggest a woman lives here.
I dunno, gov, what do you reckon? You think it could be a ruse of some sort? ’
As if on cue, I hear the sound of a distressed female’s cries coming from the next room.
‘Well, Davis. Let’s find out, shall we?’