But he preferred it when the door closed, when the woman’s voice faded away, when it was just the two of them. He would listen to the baby’s gurgling laugh, her coos and chatter. He listened to her breathe. Short, shallow breaths in and out of little lungs. Sometimes he listened to her cry. But she didn’t cry often. She was a good girl.
Hacking the Alexa in her room made the little gadget so much more useful.
Helpful for so many things.
For listening in.
Feeling like a part of the family.
30
DI Gilbourne & DS Holt
Gilbourne took two of the pills from the small plastic bag and held them in the palm of his hand.
Twenty years ago he could go a night without sleep and it would barely touch him. Ten years ago, even. Crime scene, search, door to doors, arrest, interview, doing the briefings, grab an hour of sleep along the way, plenty of coffee and he could keep rolling. That sleep-deprived first or second or third day after you got the call, pushing and pushing until you could finally charge your suspect.
But he wasn’t that man anymore. The years had left their mark on him. With the ranks of frontline officers increasingly depleted and not enough new blood coming through to replace them, with the ever-growing expectation from the top brass and the know-nothing politicians above them, the thin blue line was getting thinner all the time. Everyone was stretched to the limit and beyond. And everyone had their breaking point.
His eyes were gritty, his head thick with fatigue. Heneededthis. It was just about staying sharp, that was all. It was what the victims deserved, what their families deserved. He shook a third pill out of the clear plastic Ziploc bag and threw all three into his mouth. Found an almost-finished takeaway cup in the driver’s side door and washed the pills down with a grimacing mouthful of yesterday’s coffee.
He opened the car door and poured the rest of the cold coffee onto the lay-by’s cracked grey tarmac. The country air was a cold slap in the face as he got out of his car and he pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his raincoat. Holt was waiting for him a few metres away, the younger man with his head down, talking earnestly on his mobile. Seeing his approach, Holt hurriedly finished the call and slipped the phone into his pocket. Somehow, he looked fresh and ready to go despite the hours they’d been putting in this week. He looked keen. Excited, even. What was that saying?Youth is wasted on the young.
Gilbourne nodded a hello to his partner.
‘What have we got, Nathan?’
‘Called in two hours ago by a woman walking her dog. Uniforms came down to check it out and found the body just down there, in the stream near those trees.’ He pointed into a stand of beech trees further off the track.
‘Come on then.’
The two of them set off up a rise out of the lay-by, an unofficial path where the grass was trodden flat up the bank’s gentle incline. It levelled out at the top, the path disappearing into trees. There was a uniformed officer in a high-vis jacket standing sentry by the first oak tree, at the top of the bank. Gilbourne showed his ID and stopped to take a brief look back.
A country road between Beaconsfield and Amersham, curving away in both directions. Quiet. You’d probably hear approaching traffic from a fair way away, before you saw it at least. Or before they saw you. It was early afternoon but only two cars had passed since he had parked up a few minutes before. Trees on both sides made for good cover and concealment. He estimated the distance from the lay-by into the trees at five or six metres. It was up a slope, but even so a reasonably fit man carrying a body – assuming the victim was average size and weight – could probably cover that distance in six to eight seconds. Which didn’t make him hopeful about witnesses driving by and catching their killer in the act.
All in all, it was a good spot. Well-chosen. The best they could probably hope for was dash cam footage that might have caught any cars parked in the lay-by over the last couple of days.
Holt waited for him, his face alert with excitement, pointing further into the trees as he caught up.
‘It’s just down there,’ he said. ‘There’s a dip in the ground but you can’t see it until you’re virtually on top of it.’
‘The Thames Valley boys been all right about handing this over?’
Holt nodded. ‘No bother at all. They seemed happy about it.’
Gilbourne allowed the younger detective to lead, pushing through low bushes and stepping over logs rotting on the ground. The ground was muddy, the path slick with autumn rain and the air heavy with the smell of moss. About twenty metres from the road they reached another couple of uniformed officers, thumbs hooked into their stab vests at a cordon of blue and white police tape, the outer perimeter put in place to stop anyone else stumbling into the scene. There was no media presence yet, but with the number of police vehicles pulled into the lay-by behind them, it was only a matter of time. He made a mental note to give the force press office a heads-up when he was on his way back to the station later.
‘Did she disturb anything, the dog walker?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Holt said. ‘They’ve got her in a patrol car back at the lay-by.’
‘Did you ask her?’
‘I assumed the uniforms checked that with her, and they didn’t pass on anything to me.’
Gilbourne took out packet of Marlboros from his pocket and lit one with his Zippo, taking a long drag on the fresh cigarette. He had seen too many crime scenes messed up by over-zealous bystanders, putting their hands on the victim, contaminating good sources of DNA and trampling trace evidence into the ground in a misplaced effort to help. He’d even had one screwed-up scene where a guy tried to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a neighbour who’d been dead for more than twenty-four hours. That had taken some untangling.
‘Let’s not assume, OK, Nathan?’ He blew smoke upwards into the air. ‘Have another chat with her, double-check she didn’t touch anything or let the dog near the body.’
