A moment later the door ahead of her opens and she stares up at all six feet five of DS Mike Peters, wearing a paper forensics suit and a comforting smile. He offers a hand and she takes it, wishing she’d thought to wipe the sweat from her palm, wishing he didn’t so remind her of her dad.
‘It’s okay,’ she says unconvincingly. ‘It’s just…’ She can’t think of anything to say, no excuse for her appearance, nothing that she hasn’t used before. Peters simply nods as she starts to move forward. He passes her a suit to match his own, and she feels, not for the first time, like an actor putting on her costume, playing the part of someone in control.
She tries to keep her head down as she moves along a dark, narrow hallway but she can’t resist looking up at a photo that she somehow knew would be there. It’s of two young boys, both with cheeky grins, both utterly oblivious to the horrors that life can bring. She wonders whether she had ever been like that, or whether she had known the truth from the very beginning.
She estimates the older boy to be about three. Three more years with a mother than she ever had. But she knows he won’t remember that time, beyond the photos that his father shares. He’ll never be certain how much his mother loved him. The younger boy, two, perhaps, is far smaller. She knows about that, as well. She’d also been sickly and small as a child, a worry to her dad and a target at school, at least until she’d proven herself ready and willing to fight. And fighting is what she wants to do now when she considers not only what has just ended in this house, but what, for the boys, has only just begun. Having lost her own mum a long time ago, Katie knows only too well what comes after, likely even worse given the violent nature of this death; she knows about the gradual curdling of knowledge and understanding inside of them. She knows how, even if everyone thinks they’re coping, there’ll be moments that prove them all wrong, flashes of anger, of reckless behaviour and blame.
She turns away, eyes blurring, nails digging into her palm. On the floor to her left is a stack of shoes, all carefully arranged with the exception of the smallest pair. Beside them is a toy tractor, crushed flat and with a wheel missing. She steps around this whole area, following the markers instructing her to do so, reminding her to stay on the right path, reminding her just how late she is.
In the kitchen at the end of the hallway lights are set up and people are moving around busily as they go about their various assignments. She can still feel the heat of alcohol in her blood and wishes, for the hundredth time, that she’d listened to her boss’s advice to stay at home and get some sleep. Not that she will have learned her lesson. Most likely she’ll be doing the same thing tonight; anything, to try and wash away the collection of memories she knows she’s about to add to. She feels she ought to say something as she steps into the kitchen, something to break the oppressive silence, but when she finally gets a glimpse of what they’re working around, it’s all she can do not to cry out and run.
The victim is young, possibly younger than her own forty years. She meets the eye of Kieran Smith, a young detective new to her team. She knows he’s looking for reassurance, but there’s nothing she can say to convince him they’re going to win here.
‘Name?’
‘Sarah Cleve.’
She glances across at Sarah’s wedding finger. ‘Husband informed?’
‘A couple of hours ago,’ says Kieran before looking away, as if he’s the one that should feel guilty for drawing attention to her tardiness. ‘DS Peters and I tried to… But he… But you can’t…’
She knows exactly what he’s trying to say. She’d been the one to inform the husband of the first victim, Sally Brooks, a week ago. He’d refused her request to sit down before she told him the news, and when he’d started to fall she’d only just reached him in time. He’d cried on her shoulder and then squeezed her as if it might bring his wife back to life. If Katie could have swapped places at that moment, if she could have been the one carved up on the floor while the mother continued to raise her smiling children, she would happily have made that deal.
‘You’ve done well,’ she says to Kieran, managing half a smile. ‘You all have.’ Her voice barely carries to the rest of the room. Once, she’d have easily commanded the scene with clear and precise orders and everyone would have listened, knowing that it was going to get them what they all wanted, but that seems a very long time ago now.
The forensic photographer steps aside to give her a better look. The woman’s naked body has been contorted to look as though she’s finishing a golf swing, except her hands have been wrapped around a carving knife instead of a club. Most likely it is the same knife that has been used to cut her neck from ear to ear and spilt a life’s worth of blood across the kitchen floor. Across her bare stomach, part hidden by the now-congealing blood, is a long caesarean scar, around which are hundreds of fresh, tiny slits, starting in a vertical line just beneath her breasts then spiralling round towards the belly button. Baked beans have been used on the floor to create a speech bubble from her mouth and written in the centre, in capital letters, is a single word:
SLICE
Someone moves alongside her. She doesn’t need to look across, knowing who he is from how close he’s standing.
‘Good night last night?’ he whispers. ‘When’s it my turn?’
‘Just a couple more billion first,’ she says, through gritted teeth. ‘Tell me what you know.’
‘I know you shouldn’t be here in this state. I’d hate to think what might happen if word got back to the Super.’
‘Well, you’ve seen a lot of terrible injuries,’ she says. ‘I’m sure you can imagine.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘It’s a request for you to stick to what you’re supposed to be good at, Dr Parker.’
‘And what are you good at now, DI Rhodes? Not such a star working on your own, are you? Not Daddy’s little protégé anymore.’
She turns to look at him for the first time, lifting her stare past his jutting chest and up to his unbearable grinning face that others have described as handsome, but that she has only ever wanted to punch.
‘About forty years old,’ she says, this time with enough volume for the rest of the room to hear, her eyes still locked on his. ‘A blow to the back of the neck out in the hall, which knocked her out. She was then dragged through here, and her throat was cut with a serrated knife, likely the same knife which has been placed in her hand. Judging by the blood splatter and angle of flow I’d say the rest of the wounds were inflicted after death. Time, probably late yesterday evening. Eight o’clock-ish?’
Dr Miles Parker blinks and takes a step back, almost treading on another forensic examiner crouched behind him taking photographs of a stain on the kitchen floor. He says nothing, but the look of surprise turning to anger is clear on his face.
‘Just remember who has the qualifications,’ he says, quietly. ‘From what I hear you barely went to school.’
‘If you think this job is about qualifications,’ says Katie, with a sigh, ‘then you clearly still have a lot to learn.’
She returns her attention to the body, running her eyes across the figure until they fix on the inside of the woman’s right thigh. She’s poorly shaved up there, perhaps expecting such an area would not be seen by anyone, not even her husband now the young kids are dominating their lives. It feels like a crime in itself to be staring, to be focusing on such an intimate spot. But she has no choice. She has to know.
She contorts her body to get a better view, her back starting to protest as it remembers a slipped disc from a reckless but successful pursuit in the past. It had earned her both a medal and a reprimand, but she knows she would be just as reckless now if it meant she could catch the bastard that did this.