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Chapter 1
Or a dead body.
I learned of both when Scott Coral rang me up that Wednesday morning. Normally I wake rather slowly. But Scott’s selective vocabulary -- ‘bloody’ (in this instance an adjective, not a swear word), ‘unresponsive,’ ‘break-in,’ and ‘cold’ -- jolted me awake as thoroughly and quickly as if he’d thrown a bucket of iced water on me. It didn’t sound good. So I showered, dressed and made the drive to the village in record time, my mind momentarily forgetting this was the day Graham was due back in our department, and I couldn’t wait to work with him again. Or see him. But that would have to wait. Right now we had to deal with a death.
As I got out of my car, I waved to Scott, who looked even taller and more authoritative than usual as he stood at ease outside the crime scene.
“She’s inside,” Scott said, nodding toward the house. “Murdered, if you want my opinion. But I’m just a response driver, not a detective.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Only Jens can pronounce death, Scott.”
“Seems daft. I mean, it’s obvious she’s dead. She’s lying in a pool of blood, a knife wound in her back…” His voice trailed off as his eyes sought mine. Standing as he was in the sunlight, his eyelashes cast long shadows across the green irises of his eyes, yet even the shadows couldn’t diminish the amazement shining there. Or his curiosity. He tucked the tail of his white shirt more firmly into the back of his fatigue trousers -- mumbling that it had pulled out slightly when he’d bent over the victim -- and shook his head. “She could be decapitated and I still can’t state that she’s dead. Daft.”
“So, tell me about your discovery,” I said, my attention drawn uncontrollably to the front door. Police Constable Byrd had already suited up and was working inside, according to Scott. I had no intention of entering the house just yet. Graham, when he arrived, would decide who would work the scene.
However, nothing prevented me from looking. So I stood in the open doorway, craning my neck like a SRO concert-goer. Or a rubber-necker passing a road accident. Luckily, I didn’t have to stand on my toes or lean halfway around the doorjamb. The office, where the body lay, was to my right, thirty feet away, just beyond the front lounge. Since the house sported an open floor plan, the major portion of the crime scene was visible.
The victim looked to be around medium height with a thin build. Red, curly shoulder-length hair lay fanned out over her head, indicating she had fallen face down and forwards. She was dressed casually in a long skirt -- probably cotton, from the floral print on it -- tee shirt and sandals. Implying she’d been killed yesterday, before going to bed.
She lay on her stomach, in a vast amount of blood. I took Scott’s word that she had a gash in her back, for at this distance and angle I couldn’t see it. But I could see the knife handle protruding from her back. And the room and its contents -- a large wooden desk, computer and printer, several large books stacked on the desk’s edge and on the floor near the swivel chair, and what looked like several handfuls of papers smothering a portion of the desk and the chair. Aside from the mess of papers, the room seemed well kept and would be nice to work in, with its pale blue painted walls, dark blue Venetian blinds, and oriental-style rug. A large poster of a woman gazing into a crystal ball claimed the wall immediately above her desk. Art Deco style, I thought. In keeping with the stained glass lamp on the desk.
“How’d you find her?” I finally asked, straightening up.
“Sort of an odd chain of events.” We walked some distance from the house, stopping by the front gate. By this time, half past seven, the morning sun was peaking above the line of trees to the east and had just touched the farthest section of the main street through the village. It picked out houses and shops in haphazard fashion, anointing its chosen few with a splash of light and a hint of mid-day warmth. Scott said, “I was first at the scene, so when I realized the situation, I called it in. Byrd came, suited up, and told me to ring you up.”
“Fine, but what brought you? Did you see someone break in?”
“The victim’s friend had evidently been ringing the house for hours. The phone was constantly engaged, which the friend thought odd. We’re talking hours, Brenna -- last night and this morning.”
I nodded. Even the chattiest of girl friends wouldn’t tie up a phone that long.
“The friend came over and knocked on the door. There was no answer. That worried her because she assumed that if the phone was engaged, her friend should be home and could answer the door. She listened for a few moments but it was too quiet. Odd way to describe it, but that’s what she said -- too quiet.”
I looked again at the front of the structure. It was a house that could have been built during Henry VIII’s reign, if one judged by the exuberance of the vegetation smothering its foundation and walls, but by style proclaimed it to be a late Victorian worker’s cottage -- perhaps built for an estate worker and his family, or a railway worker when the line came to Buxton in the 1860s. I glanced at the flowerbed, the moss-wrapped garden ornaments and green painted wood bench. A robin sat on the lip of a terra cotta flowerpot and optimistically eyed the soil but, at a breath of wind, hopped off to continue his pursuit of breakfast at the base of a birch. Early morning in the English village of Lesser Holme seemed a pleasant way to begin any day, with the flax-colored sunlight christening the crowns of the trees clustered in the valley and sliding over dew-drenched tile roofs. Several hours would pass before it would slant down the paved streets and peer through ivy-bordered windows. But it was a start.
“The friend tried calling again,” Scott went on. “This time on her mobile phone, standing outside the front door. The line was still engaged. She finally got so worried that she called the station at six o’clock.”
“And you got here at half past six.”
“Hell of an early hour, isn’t it?”
“Normally, yes, but not so when you’ve been concerned about someone for several hours.”
“I know. I was just….”
I knew what he meant. It was a terrible way for him -- and the friend -- to begin their days.
Scott said, “I was dispatched to take a look. I walked around and was able to see in by the window in the rear that hadn’t had the curtains drawn. Oh, by the way --” He paused to point to a window farthest from the road. “A SO will have to check for scuff marks on the wall below the window, but it’s low enough that a taller person may not have had too hard a time gaining entry that way.”
I nodded, already envisioning the Scientific Officers delving into every recess of the house. During such times I wondered if the victim’s spirit hovered overhead, watching the intrusion and either damning us for assaulting her privacy or blessing us for attempting to catch her killer.
“Anyway,” Scott said, “I could see her, lying in a great deal of blood. I ran around to the front again. Luckily the front door has a vertical inset of glass near the knob. I broke the glass, unlocked the door and gained entry. Since her eyes were open and there was all that blood, I assumed she was dead, but I felt her neck for a pulse. Nothing. I could also tell from the knife and the wound position that she’d been murdered. There was nothing I could do for her at that point, so --” He took a breath.
Though it might sound callous to the layperson, the victim’s body was now considered ‘evidence’ and if Scott had done anything like trying to resuscitate her, he could destroy crucial evidence. He needed to protect the scene in situ, and that meant leaving her as he had found her and getting on with his job.
Scott continued. “I radioed in, letting them know I’d found an unresponsive person on the floor. I then cleared the house and --”
“You’re joking! Without backup?” Even a kid who watched police shows on the telly knew to wait for reinforcements. I pulled a face, not wanting to think of what could have happened to him. “What if the killer was still inside? You could’ve been a second victim, Scott! We don’t need that!” By which I implied the same upheavals to Constabulary morale, the same fears that enveloped friends, family and colleagues. We’d experienced enough of that turmoil in March when Graham had been in hospital. And, though I didn’t say it, if Scott had been seriously injured or killed, I don’t know if I could have survived mentally or emotionally.
Scott chugged on as though his safety was of no concern to any of us. “I needed to make certain the house was safe, Bren. I didn’t want him creeping up and attacking me while I examined the body. If the weapon had been a firearm, I might have waited for backup, but since a knife had been used -- and a kitchen knife, implying the murderer wasn’t a professional and hadn’t brought his own -- I felt safe in searching the house. I could have held my own in a knife attack.”
I agreed, remembering Scott excelled at hand-to-hand combat and defense. Which was why he taught tactical defense for our section.
“After that, I cordoned off the house with crime scene tape and guarded the house until you and Byrd arrived.” Having related the episode, he seemed to emotionally stand at ease. His breathing became slower and his face muscles relaxed. There was no suggestion of the humor that permeated many crime scenes -- jokes that were needed to distance the officers from the heart break of the tragedy. His eyes steadily searched mine, perhaps wanting to strengthen the bond between us, then, just as quickly, vanished, replaced by Professionalism. “I looked carefully at the floor while I walked up to her. I doubt if I trod on anything vital.”
“And the knife…. One of hers, I suppose.”
He shrugged. “The blade is probably jammed in quite far, if not all the way -- I only gave it a cursory look. The handle seems to be right against the body.”
“Any question of suicide?”
“Not with the angle of the handle and it being a back wound. It’s virtually impossible you could stab yourself at that location. You’d have to clamp the knife handle in a vice and ram yourself onto the blade with a ton of force to drive it in that deeply. Even if you wedged the knife handle in a chair, say in the crevice between the back and the arm, the knife wouldn’t remain in the correct position when you threw yourself onto it. No, it was obvious from all those points that we have a murder. The best thing I could do for her was get on with my job of searching the house for the killer, if he was hiding, secure the scene and ring for the team. She was past the hand-holding or CPR stage.”
Scott was right. Once he had preserved any evidence, his next duty was to keep the house secure until the murder team arrived to take over.
“So,” he added, brushing a fly from his sleeve, “let your SO know that the broken door glass is my doing. I didn’t want to disturb any potential evidence at the office window in case our murderer gained access to the house that way.”
“And the phone…. I assume it was off the hook because she was calling for help,” I said, recalling the office scene.
“Too bad she died before she could. We might have saved her life.”
“She could have other injuries than the back wound you saw, Scott. She might not have lasted a minute if she has multiple or serious knife wounds.” I paused, wondering at a likely scenario. If she had been seated at her desk, heard someone break into her house, and grabbed the phone…. “Do you know her name? Did you look around for any I.D.?”
“I didn’t disturb a thing, Brenna. Just ascertained the circumstances and rang up headquarters. The friend that alerted us supplied the victim’s name. It’s Varian Wells.”
“Varian!” I echoed. “What an unusual name.”
“That’s not all that’s unusual. She’s a psychic.”
I know I blinked in amazement. “I don’t mean to be crass, but if she was any good I wonder why she couldn’t forecast her own death.”
“The thought had occurred to me, too.”