DAN
Present day
I can smell it in the air, fresh, like an abattoir, the moment I walk through the front door – blood.
My heart plummets. I’m not especially superstitious, but it’s as if the cosmos somehow knows whenever I’ve got a night off. It’s when all the killers seem to come out to play.
‘Fatality, gov. Single stab wound to the chest, the body’s in the kitchen.’
DS Lucy Davis, my revered number two and trusted ‘work wife’, had moments earlier greeted me outside the apartment complex on Stockwell Gardens.
She was wearing full PPE and an apologetic look. I was on my way home, you see, looking forward to spending some time with myactualwife, and our three kids – not to mention enjoying the pad thai dinner that was waiting for me – when the call came through, forcing me to do a quick U-turn.
‘Looks like a domestic, gov. Victim is a Mr Milo Harrison, thirty-four, a banker in the city, apparently,’ Davis informs me as I step into a protective suit. ‘He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics. Dr Leyton is on her way.’
This cheers me up a bit at least. I’ve got a soft spot for my favourite pathologist, Victoria Leyton, even if she is a bit too keen on a cadaver for my taste.
‘Who called it in?’
‘Tilly Ward, a friend of the victim’s partner, placed the 999 call at 6.31 p.m., gov. Local woman, thirty-six years old. She claims that the victim came at her and her friend with a knife, and that she stabbed him in self-defence. She requested police assistance and an ambulance.’
‘Who’s the friend?’
‘Someone called Samantha Valentine, the deceased’s girlfriend apparently, also living at the address according to Ward.’
‘And where’s Tilly Ward now?’
‘Inside the apartment, gov. She’s pretty traumatised.’
‘I would imagine so if she’s just stabbed someone to death.’
‘She’s saying that she got a message from this friend, Samantha Valentine, earlier today around 5 p.m., asking her to come to the apartment because the deceased had become violent and was threatening her with a knife. Tilly says she left work immediately – she’s a sales assistant at a local bookstore – and drove over to the apartment. She claims she walked straight into a bad situation and that while the three of them were in the kitchen, Milo Harrison came at them with a kitchen knife. She then says she picked up a knife, or Samantha gave her a knife, she can’t remember exactly, and she defended herself, stabbing him once in the chest.’
‘What about Milo Harrison? Does he have any previous, any DV on record?’
She shakes her head.
‘He’s clean as a whistle, boss – nothing.’
‘And where’s the friend now, this Samantha Valentine, can she corroborate all of this?’
If she can then we might be looking at a Section 76 – lawful use of force used in an act of self-defence – and I might be home in time for microwave pad thai after all.
‘Yeah, well, that’s just it, gov, we can’t find her.’
‘Can’tfindher?’
‘Apparently, she wasn’t at the scene when the first attending officers arrived. She may’ve got scared and run off, gone to a friend’s? We’re trying to trace her now, gov. Tilly says she was on foot, so she can’t have gone far.’
‘Do we have a phone number for this Samantha?’ I glance up at the apartment complex. It’s a posh building, newly built with a glass façade, the kind that looks more like a swanky hotel. It’s no doubt got a communal gym and swimming pool, but it stands out like a clown at a funeral against the backdrop of the other poor-relation high rises that surround it.
‘If we haven’t, get one. And let’s start door-to-door and make sure the whole area is sealed off. No one else in or out – and Davis,’ I turn to her, ‘let’s find this missing Samantha Valentine quickly, yes? Clearly, she’s a vital witness.’
I zip my suit and glove-up as I make my way through the short hallway into the kitchen where the body is, noting a small pair of women’s boots neatly placed by the front door. SOCO has arrived now. I hear the pops of the cameras and the rustle of their protective green suits as they invade the property like a swarm of giant locusts. Like me, any of them could have dinner going cold for them at home tonight, but this is the job; it’s what we all signed up for.
A pair of uniformed officers step aside the body as I enter the sparse-looking kitchen. It’s a modern room – lots of white and exposed brick – and there’s not much in the way of furnishings. The walls are almost bare – there’s a large mirror on one and aclock on the other, opposite – and the shiny chrome appliances appear almost untouched, like the occupant rarely uses them. I think my wife refers to this type of aesthetic as ‘minimalistic, industrial chic’, something I imagine, as a man with three kids, only exists in glossy magazines and on social media. There’s no obvious signs of any altercation having taken place; there’s nothing smashed or broken, nothing upended.
‘Sir.’
