Sixteen
The house stood halfway along a quiet road, a mile or so from the sea, between the southwest corner of Claremont Park and the Burton’s biscuit factory.
A two-storey semi, the -property would have been all but indistinguishable from most of its neighbours were it not for the brightly lit forensic tent erected just inside the gate where a low wall met an overgrown privet, the flapping strips of fluorescent crime scene tape, and a clutch of numbered evidence markers dotted around the scrubby -rectangle of front lawn.
‘Why yellow?’ Miller finished fastening his bodysuit and pointed to the scattering of evidence markers. ‘They’re always yellow.’
Priya Acharya cradled the brew she’d just collected and leaned back against the side of the van.
Much to the delight of everyone at the scene and in anticipation of a long night ahead for all concerned, the ‘tea-wagon’ had arrived fifteen minutes before and was parked at the end of a long line of police and forensic service vehicles.
Miller had already spotted Sara Xiu sitting in the back of one of the squad cars, talking to a woman he presumed was Stacey Cheshire.
‘Yellow’s probably just the colour that stands out best,’ Acharya said.
Miller nodded. ‘Yeah … but is it, though?’
‘Is it what?’
‘The colour that stands out best.’
‘Yes, I’m guessing it is.’
‘What if the crime scene was yellow?’
Acharya turned to stare at him. ‘I’m struggling to imagine that.’
‘Well, yes, so am I, now that I think about it … but what if a body was discovered in a bed of daffodils? Or on a yellow carpet?’
‘Who the hell has a yellow carpet?’
‘I’m just saying—’
‘As we’re discussing bodies …’ Acharya took a slurp of tea and nodded towards the forensic tent, ‘This one looks a bit more straightforward than the one in the lake.’
‘This one is actually a murder, though?’
‘Oh, I think so,’ she said.
‘Thank God for that.’
‘There’s no sign of a murder weapon, but we’re talking about a single stab wound to the chest. A couple of hours ago at most, I’d say.’
‘Killed in the front garden, d’you think?’
‘Are you asking me to speculate, Miller?’
‘Why not? Fill your polypropylene bootees.’
‘Well, judging by the trail of blood from the front door, which is easy enough to track thanks to those little yellow -evidence markers, he was stabbed on the doorstep. He managed to -stagger out into the garden, but couldn’t quite make it as far as the road.’
‘So, opened the door to his killer, then.’
‘That’s one possibility.’ Acharya downed what was left of her tea and dropped the cup into the bin. ‘As ever, I’m not commi-tting to anything until I’ve got the unfortunate gentleman on the slab. I’m guessing that you’ll be joining me for that?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ Miller said. ‘I’ll bring nibbles.
’ He watched the pathologist walk back along the line of vehicles towards the house, then shouted after her.
‘What if the body was discovered in a big vat of congealed custard?’ He couldn’t be sure if Priya simply hadn’t heard him or was just choosing not to revisit what was, by any measure, a less-than-groundbreaking conversation.
Either way, he was more convinced than ever that he’d only imagined the …
flirtation when they’d talked on the phone the previous day.
What was it Xiu had said? Highly unlikely.
Miller heard a car door opening and turned to see the woman herself stepping out of the squad car.
She leaned down to exchange a few more quiet words with Stacey Cheshire, before stepping away and being replaced by a Family Liaison Officer, then marched across to join the shortish queue at the tea-wagon. Miller moved to stand behind her.
‘What’s the story?’ he asked.
‘Same thing she told the uniforms,’ Xiu said. ‘She was out with a couple of friends. I’ve got the names, so hopefully we can confirm all this before the formal interview in the morning.’
‘Formal as in “at the station, on record” sort of thing, or are we getting dressed up?’
Xiu ignored him. ‘She left her friends around eleven-thirty and found the body when she got home twenty minutes later.’
‘How’s she holding up?’
‘Fairly well, I think. I’m not sure it’s really sunk in yet.’
Once the troll working the urns in the tea-wagon had explained to Xiu a trifle brusquely that they did not have camo-mile, they stepped away with their drinks and Miller told Xiu what Acharya had told him.
He repeated his suggestion that the victim had opened the door to his killer.
Xiu had clearly considered this scenario already, and although she did not dismiss it, she immediately offered a very different explanation.
‘Unless the killer was in the house with him to begin with.’
Miller turned to look at the front door. ‘Talking of which …’
‘He’s in the kitchen,’ Xiu said. ‘With a couple of uniforms. Not saying very much, apparently.’
‘I’d best go and have a quick word,’ Miller said.
‘You fancy him for it?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘A strong possibility, I would have thought.’ Xiu held out her arms as though she was stating the obvious. ‘Considering the set-up they had. He’s got to be our prime suspect, surely.’
‘Well, I’ll ask him, obviously,’ Miller said. ‘There’s no guarantee he’ll fess up, because you know how devious these killers can be, but it’s worth a try.’
A few minutes later, Miller walked into a kitchen that, thanks to the presence of two uniformed officers, a photographer and a crouching CSI, felt somewhat smaller than it actually was.
He asked all those who were there in a professional capacity to step out for a few minutes, then sat down at the table opposite a man with a blanket around his shoulders and a small, quivering dachshund on his lap.
Miller lowered the hood of his bodysuit. Said, ‘Hello, Barry.’
Barry Cheshire sighed and shook his head.
‘I can only tell you what I told them,’ he said.
‘Whatever the hell happened, I slept through it. I didn’t know anything about anything until I heard Stacey screaming and then I jumped up and went outside and that’s when I saw Darren laid out in the garden. That’s the long and the short of it.’
‘OK,’ Miller said. ‘Thanks for clearing that up.’
‘Obviously you lot think I had something to do with it. I’m not imagining that, am I?’
‘Well, it’s not a ludicrous assumption, is it? What with there being a body in your front garden that happens to be that of the bloke your wife was shacked up with. I can’t imagine you and him were best mates.’
‘We weren’t mates at all,’ Cheshire said. ‘He was a tit.’
Miller nodded. ‘You might not want to say anything else until you’ve got a solicitor present.
Certainly nothing about how much of a tit you thought the murder victim was.
We can sort all that out in the morning.
’ He reached across and began to rub the dog’s ears.
‘She’s lovely, by the way. I can see why you’re so fond of her. ’
Cheshire stared for half a minute or more, like he was waiting for something. ‘Listen, I’ve got no problem with you making a fuss of Ruby,’ he said at last, ‘but have you actually got any questions?’
‘Oh, I’ve got plenty of questions.’
Cheshire waited some more.
‘Such as … would you say that this house is probably worth more than similar houses elsewhere, because you can smell the biscuits from the biscuit factory up the road?’
‘Sorry … what?’
‘I know it’s not quite the same as it was.
Back in the day, though, that place was making Wagon Wheels and Jammie Dodgers, yeah?
We’re talking about some of the greatest biscuits ever made, right there.
Biscuit bloody royalty. I’m telling you, Barry, when I was a lad I’d ride my bike round and round these streets just breathing it all in.
Obviously, it’s a different operation now, but they’re still knocking out Maryland Cookies and they’ll always be classics, right? ’
‘Yeah, I suppose,’ Cheshire said.
‘You suppose?’
‘To be honest, I don’t even smell it any more. You get used to smells, don’t you?’
Miller shook his head, horrified. ‘Used to the smell of freshly baked Maryland Cookies? Jesus, Barry, that’s not just being a bit blasé, that’s being dead inside.’
Miller knew that whether Barry Cheshire was a witness or a suspect, anything he got from him now – without a solicitor present and when, in all likelihood, the man was in no fit state to be interviewed – would be evidentially worthless and ultimately inadmissible in court.
It was the reason he’d raised the issue of biscuits in the first place, for want of anything else to safely talk about.
Now, though – as was often the case when Miller went off at a tangent – he had well and truly warmed to his theme.
‘I mean, seriously, what do you think? If you were ever going to sell this place, I reckon its proximity to the biscuit factory has got to put a fair few thousand on the asking price. Forget about school catchment areas and transport links. It’s biscuits that are going to make the difference, mate.
The unique and glorious smell of biscuits. ’
‘What if you don’t like the smell of biscuits?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I’m just saying, some people might not like it. The smell of biscuits might actively put them off the place.’
‘Well, now I can only assume you’re still in shock,’ Miller said.
‘Why on earth would I be in shock?’
Miller turned and nodded back towards the front door. -‘Darren, lying out there. Seeing him.’
‘I’ve seen worse.’
Miller watched Barry Cheshire absently stroking his dog’s head, staring past Miller and out through the kitchen window into the dark. He remembered what Cheshire had told him the day before; those five tours.
‘Course you have,’ he said.
He could hazard a decent guess as to what Barry Cheshire was thinking about. The chaos and the carnage. Things a soldier could not easily unsee and horrors that even a hard-bitten copper could never really understand.
Miller hoped it wasn’t too obvious that he was still thinking about biscuits.