So, when he swung into the driveway of the apartment block and found the carpark crammed with police cars, he was only a little bit surprised.
The flashing lights and crackling radios woke up Charlie.
‘What the fuck?’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Tudor replied, parking up on the kerb. He took in the unmarked vehicles and the armed unit, along with two ambulances. Yellow tape and blue signs were already being put in place. Full crime scene procedure, and not your usual small time event. ‘Don’t move,’ he told Charlie, getting out and locking the car with the teen in it. He closed his ears to the boy’s protestations. The Audi was bullet proof. He would be safe enough there, even without a small army of coppers scurrying around the place. An officer stopped him at the cordon.
‘Sorry, sir, I can’t let you go any further.’
‘Private security for one of the residents,’ he told him, indicating his car and its occupant. ‘I need to get the boy home.’
‘Afraid you’ll have to wait a while longer. There’s been an incident.’
‘No shit.’
The officer threw him a look. ‘If you’d just like to get back in your vehicle, sir. As soon as it’s safe to go in we’ll let you know.’
‘So, it’s not safe now? Looks like the cavalry is already here.’
‘It’s a crime scene, sir. I’ll have to ask you to be patient…’
At that moment a car arrived. It was a car Tudor knew. He watched Deb Chowdhury get out. When she saw him she smiled, then corrected her expression for the benefit of the policeman.
She flashed her ID and the officer stepped aside.
‘He’s with me,’ she said simply. ‘Let him through.’
The police officer hesitated, his orders to keep everyone out at odds with the instruction his superior had just given him. Tudor stepped through that brief pause, striding beside the DI with the confidence of someone who was supposed to be there. He followed her up the steps of the building. At the reception desk, the concierge was being questioned. Deri’s face was ashen. He looked older and frailer than he had done only a matter of days before. A young officer led the way. They took the stairs, passing members of the SWAT team on their way out. When they reached the door of Flat Nine, DI Chowdhury signalled to a DS.
‘Let’s have it, sergeant,’ she said. As she listened she put on shoe coverings and nodded to Tudor to do the same.
‘John and Elaine Richards and son Kyle. Double homicide plus suicide, ma’am. Teenager shot his parents then turned the gun on himself.’
‘No signs of anyone else having been in the flat?’
‘Caretaker says no-one went up or came down all day aside from residents. Says the family was nice, ordinary. He was an English teacher. She worked in a health food shop. Kid never been in trouble…’ he trailed off as the DI and Tudor headed through the door.
The Richards’ home showed a little more flair than the Salingers’. The decor was educators meets hippy lite, a few crystals here and there, fruity candles, ethnic rugs, pieces of art that looked as if they had been collected from foreign holidays, judging by the framed photos on the walls. And lots of books. The forensics team were doing their work in silent concentration. The lead doctor exchanged nods of greeting with the Inspector and made room for her to pass through. Tudor garnered no more than a curious glance. Evidently Deborah Chowdhury’s judgement was to be trusted.
John Richards was on his back on the living room floor, reading glasses still in his left hand, bullet hole through his forehead. On the desk by the window sat a tall stack of students’ work waiting to be marked. Tudor wondered fleetingly who would see to that now. Who would explain his death to those youngsters? Who would pick up the severed threads of his life that had connected him to the wider world? He experienced a coldness settling about him and recognised it as the protective shell he had learned to employ many yearsearlier. When you lived in violent places, when every day you engaged in that violence one way or another and saw its brutal consequences, you had to find a system to separate yourself from it. The army had taught him that. Those who failed to learn that lesson did not fare well, either in the field or back home.
They moved on to the kitchen. Elaine Richards was on a chair, slumped forwards over the table, two entry points in her back. A mug of coffee stood cooling just beyond the reach of her outstretched hand. No signs of any sort of panic or argument anywhere. All was orderly and ordinary, in a slightly bohemian way, with houseplants in need of attention, washing up stacked on the drainer rather than put away, the daily paper left half read, a velvet jacket slung over the back of one chair. Outside the kitchen window, a chime twisted in the evening breeze, sounding a falsetto death knell for the family. The boy was sitting on the tiled floor, propped against the cupboards, skewed sideways by the force of the shot he’d inflicted on himself. Right handed, right temple. A whole family wiped out in a blur of deadly activity. Tudor thought about the Salingers in the flat a few floors below. The difference there was the frenzy, the craziness. Otherwise there were striking similarities, the biggest of which was that this was sudden slaughter of ordinary folk that camefrom within their own families. He shivered. The incongruity of such fatal, explosive violence against the backdrop of the mundane was somehow jarringly shocking. He became aware that Deborah was speaking.
‘So, seems he shot his mother first, then turned, stepped through the doorway… his father must have got up from his marking and started towards the kitchen…’ she had taken a pen from her bag and pointed with it as she spoke, mapping out the movements. ‘…only to be met with the bullet that stopped him. Pretty close range, but still a good shot. And then,’ she turned back to consider the lad on the floor. Tudor saw her falter. He wondered if, like him, the sight of young life ended by a bullet yanked her back to her past. Did she too see the ghosts of lost comrades round every corner? Particularly when those corners revealed such devastation. She cleared her throat and went on. ‘So, then Kyle here took a step back, maybe one more look at his mum, and then…’ She stopped again, this time to make a note in the small pad she had fished out of the ever present bag. Without looking up she called back to the Detective Sergeant. ‘Philips! Where’s his phone?’
‘His phone?’
She looked at the assembled detectives, officers and forensic team, taking them all in with a sweeping glarethat let no-one off the hook. Tudor was reminded of how well she had commanded soldiers. ‘He was a teenager. His life will be on his phone. Find it. Get it unlocked. I want all the contacts on it, recent calls, texts, chats… the lot. You on it, Philips?’
‘On it, ma’am.’
Tudor began to notice the taint in the air. It wasn’t just a smell; you could taste it. The flat was warm, and the deceased were quickly moving from victims to cadavers. He was relieved when DI Chowdhury turned to go. He tried to take in as much as he could as he walked back through the unremarkable rooms. Two such events in the same building in a matter of days was beyond odd. Maybe Charlie was going to have to give up on his cool new home. His boss would not be pleased. He didn’t want to miss anything helpful. As he was about to leave the living room, something caught his eye. On the credenza was what looked like a shrine, almost, though with no photos. There were fat candles, a small decorated box, an embroidered cloth, and a painting above that seemed familiar somehow. It was more a pattern than anything else, geometric and intricate. But why a shrine at all? Had there been another child, lost perhaps? Or was this something religious? Neither idea seemed to quite fit. More oddness. The other thing that bothered him, the other thing thatdidn’t fit, was the Richards themselves. How could a teacher and a shop worker afford an apartment in the Aurora? He’d understood the Salingers: they were old, could have traded in a townhouse they bought before the boom, might even have had an inheritance or two. But the Richards family? Even assuming they had found the funds to meet the inflated price such flats went for, would they have the right connections? Again, the Salingers’ age meant they could have known people, or at least that there was more chance of it. How had Mr and Mrs Average found their way into the most sought after building on the Thames?
Tudor and Deborah rode the lift down. He wanted to say something to her, something kind, but there was too much between them for pleasantries. Or there had been once. He didn’t want to sound trite. Nor did he want to patronise her. She was a professional. It was a tough job, but she could handle it. It was she who eventually broke the silence.
‘I have a name for you,’ she said.
‘You do?’
