‘What about an ARV?’
‘No, leave them out – what can armed response do, realistically? Let’s not blow the budget. I want scene guards on the cordon, not the idiots we had on the last one. There’s a lot of footfall, I don’t want this scene contaminated, OK?’
‘Who found him?’
‘Judith Cole, over there,’ Harriet says, nodding towards a woman whose hair is matted against her head with blood. It’s smeared down her cheek and has soaked the collar of her coat. She has the distant look of a person who has yet to take in what has happened to her. Someone – a paramedic, probably – has placed a foil blanket over her shoulders of the kind used by runners at the end of a race.
‘She’s significant, obviously – last person to see him alive. We need her clothes for forensics.’
‘Why is there blood on her face and hair?’
‘She cradled the victim, tried to listen to his last words apparently.’
Davy is writing furiously, his hand cold and shaky. Harriet doesn’t stop, rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Also at the hospital, let’s check to see if anyone’s self-admitted. Knife wounds.’ She nods at the executive detached homes curling around the cul-de-sac adjacent to the school. ‘Over there, Snowdonia Way, that’s where I want house to house to start. And we can warn them to be vigilant while we’re at it. Set up a roadblock. We want witnesses, people who were driving in this direction.’
Davy is writing down Acer Ward while his brain tries to keep a tab on the subsequent items on the checklist. Nothing must fall off the checklist. He’s thinking Snowdonia Way, that was next, then – what? – something to do with clothes.
At the same time some other part of his brain is thinking, this isn’t a tidy one: not the usual kind of murder where the person who did it is lying smashed next to the victim or is making a cack-handed run for it towards a waiting panda car or where their perp is just, well, obvious because of the backstory: in a relationship with the victim, threatened them with it last time, just did a massive drugs deal and owed someone money. Sent a text saying, ‘I’ll get you, you’re for it.’ Their perps, often, were not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier and the cases were tidy. Dirty but clean, as in ring-fenced, not leaching towards the executive new builds of Snowdonia Way with their gas barbecues and two-car garages. Davy feels the anxiety reach its fist around his stomach.
‘So that woman Judith Cole,’ Harriet is saying, while Davy scribbles hosp – knife wounds? ‘He died in her arms apparently. At least, he was dead by the time the paramedics arrived. They tried to resuscitate him but no luck.’
‘Funny place to die,’ Davy says.
‘Yes. Very public. Who the fuck is stabbed at half four in the afternoon?’ Harriet’s swearing always peaks at a crime scene. ‘Let’s start with a statement from Mrs Cole, down at the station. Send someone to get her a change of clothes. She only lives over there, 5 Snowdonia Way.’
‘He looks well-to-do, not our usual lot,’ Davy says, nodding at the body.
He steps across the seeping ground to take a look at the man’s face the right way up. He has pouches beneath his eyes the size of teabags, a Roman nose. In fact the whole head seems Roman: his hair, cut close, curling forwards towards his forehead like Caesar’s crown of leaves. What was it made of? Manon would know.
As she walks away, Harriet adds, ‘Need to get the CCTV off the road and this footpath, if there is any.’
Time is of the essence, even when your victim is dead. Witnesses move, rain washes fibres away, memories fade. The commuter who might have noticed something vital goes home to his family, eats dinner, watches TV and soon cannot distinguish between Tuesday and Wednesday. CCTV gets inadvertently wiped by a shopkeeper who knows no better; car number plates are forgotten, descriptions blurred with other memories. They don’t call them the mists of time for nothing.
Investigations, Davy realises as he looks at his checklist without knowing quite where to begin, run on the energy of time, run against it sometimes if a living person’s in danger – a kidnap, say, or a kiddie lost. Other times it’s justice that runs against the clock. Given time, your perp can get rid of the weapon, wipe down his prints, cook up an alibi or hot-foot it to somewhere sunny. The Costa Brava is bristling with British timeshare criminals.
Time blunts all.
It’s a relief, now, to be in the warmth of the major crime unit: frying drips on the coffee-machine hotplate; the clack of fingers on computer keys; muffled mobile calls saying, ‘No I won’t be home, job’s come in.’ There is no one for Davy to call, no one who minds whether he stays out all night. There’s been no one since Chloe, and that ended more than a year ago. Not so much that she put him off all relationships, more that he didn’t get back on the horse, and now he’s not even in the vicinity of a stable.
As with investigations, so it is with heartbreak: time drains the sharpness from the picture. When Davy’d first broken up with Chloe, she was in every thought he had. He cried every day when they separated, even though it was his choice (doom balloon that she was). Nowadays, he can think of her dispassionately as a significant ex, could even bump into her without a rise in his vital signs. The love has run cold, just like it will with the evidence if he doesn’t get a shifty on.
Davy glances at his watch – 8 p.m. Being outside for three hours has made his checklist damp. He spent it standing in that patch of wood, sometimes taking a break to sit in an unmarked car, receiving updates from his DCs. Nothing from the hospital; nothing from house to house, except varying degrees of alarm; nothing from the roadblock.
He’d spotted a scene guard smoking a fag and throwing it to the ground.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at the fag butt.
‘What? Nothin’ to do with me,’ the chap said.
‘Better not be,’ Davy said, ‘because it’s going to be tested by forensics and if your DNA is anywhere near it, you’ll be in big trouble.’
‘OK, well, actually it might be mine,’ he said, picking the butt up and putting it in his pocket.
‘Victim’s name is Jon-Oliver Ross,’ Harriet told him, when SOCO were done. ‘Banking type from London. Business card says Dunlop & Finch Wealth Management.’
‘Never had call for a wealth manager myself.’