A Fatal Verdict (3 page)

3. Knife and Flowers

It had not been easy for Terry to leave the party. The phone call had come just at the time when Esther had stung her arm on a nettle and decided she had had enough, so he had tears and a mini tantrum to cope with for starters. Jessica, bless her, had been very helpful and found a dock leaf for the stings, and Sarah Newby had been fine, saying of course they could stay as long as they liked and sending Emily to look for a box of choc-ices in the freezer, but she had been distracted just at that moment by the arrival of her son Simon with a new girlfriend with studs in her nose, and however jolly and friendly the other lawyers were they were a bunch of adult strangers as far as Jessica and Esther were concerned.

Trude would pick the girls up soon after six, he assured Sarah, and he sent Trude a text message to confirm where they were. But it was all a familiar, heart-wrenching mess. He left Esther sitting on Emily’s lap, her face and dress covered with tears, chocolate and ice-cream. No chance now of talking about the fun they had had earlier; that was all for Trude. The girls would be in bed long before Terry got home.

But on the phone, Detective Sergeant Tracy Litherland had been emphatic. An attempted suicide, suspicious circumstances, could be attempted murder. Incidents didn’t get a lot more serious than that, and Terry was the senior detective on call. He had to go.

Bill Rankin, one of the two uniformed constables who had first answered the 999 call, let him into the flat. As he came in, Tracy Litherland glanced at him apologetically.

‘Sorry to call you out, sir, but it does look serious.’

‘It had better be.’ Whatever he did he was in the wrong place, he thought irritably - if he had stayed with his children, he would have been neglecting his job; but now he was here, he was neglecting his children.

‘This is where it happened, sir, from what we can make out.’ Noting the scowl on his face, Tracy Litherland adopted a quiet, businesslike approach. She led him through the tiny hall into the living room, where they stepped over a litter of scattered female clothing to the bathroom door. ‘The paramedics found her in there, sir. Wrists slashed and her face under water, they said.’

Terry and Tracy contemplated the bathroom in silence. Under normal circumstances it would have been pleasant enough; the bathroom fittings were new, the walls tiled with attractive patterns of seaweed and fish. But pools of bloody water disfigured the floor, and the bath itself had a bright red ring around it halfway up where the surface of the water had been, and a long red smear of blood leading to the plughole. There was blood on the wall tiles too, and on the outside of the bath next to the basin. Always, when confronted with a scene like this, Terry had to consciously steel himself, close down the shutters in his mind against the memory of how his wife Mary had died, crushed in the wreckage of her own car. How much blood there must have been then, too.

It was the work of a moment but Tracy noticed. The way his eyes closed, his body tensed, the deep breath that was let out slowly. She had seen it before, they all had. Some pitied him for it and thought he was over the hill, but for her own part she respected the strength that allowed him to face it and carry on. He made mistakes from time to time, they all did; but he had also been spectacularly right when almost everyone else, in particular their boss DCI Will Churchill, had been wrong. And for that reason there was a tension in the department. Churchill’s supporters longed for Terry to make a mistake, others fervently hoped that he would not. Most of them knew that if his wife had not died when she did, he would have got the job that Churchill now had; Tracy for one thought the department would be a better place if he had.

On the floor underneath the basin lay a kitchen knife with a black handle. Terry picked the knife up with a plastic evidence bag folded over his hand, and sealed it in.

‘She’s dead then, is she?’ Tracy asked the young constable.

‘Not when she left here, sarge, no. Still breathing, she was. That’s why her boyfriend wanted to go to the hospital with her. Nick took him in the car.’

‘He was the one who dialled 999? This boyfriend?’

‘Yes. Name of David Kidd. This is his flat.’

‘I see.’ Tracy knelt to examine the clothing on the living room floor. A girl’s jeans, teeshirt, bra, white socks and trainers, scattered here and there on a green, patterned carpet. Her panties were on the arm of the sofa.

‘Any blood?’ Terry asked.

Tracy stood up. ‘Not that I can see, no sir. It looks like she undressed here and then got into the bath.’

‘Where she cut her wrists with a kitchen knife,’ Terry said thoughtfully. He glanced at the window to his right. There was a dining table in front of it, with an empty wine glass next to a colourful bunch of flowers in a vase. Outside the window, at this same three story height above the ground, he could see people walking along the medieval city wall, twenty yards away across the back yard. Behind them, framed by sycamore trees, rose the magnificent tower of the 14th century cathedral, York Minster, its white stones suffused with a rosy glow in the evening sunset.

An elderly couple on the city wall paused, entranced by the sight. The wife posed with her back to the Minster, while her husband photographed her. As she stood there, smiling, her eyes met Terry’s and he realized that she was watching him with the same idle curiosity that he was watching her. A thought came to him.

‘These curtains,’ he asked the uniformed constable. ‘Were they closed when you came in?’

‘No sir, don’t think so. Can’t have been. We haven’t touched anything at all.’

‘Then if she got undressed there, where you’re standing,’ he said to Tracy thoughtfully. ‘She would have run the risk of providing a free peepshow to anyone passing outside on the wall.’

‘That’s true, sir, yes,’ Tracy agreed. ‘Although there’s frosted glass and a blind in the bathroom. Fancy one too, if you like that sort of thing,’ she added, looking at the pattern of sea horses and ferns on the roller blind which was pulled halfway down.

‘Hm,’ said Terry thoughtfully. ‘Maybe if you’re going to kill yourself you’re past caring about modesty.’

‘Maybe.’  Tracy looked again into the bathroom and then wandered around the living room. There were several African masks on the wall, and framed photographs of lions and giraffes. ‘Looks like she didn’t care about drying herself either, sir. There’s no towel.’

‘Yes there is, in here.’ Terry’s voice came from the bedroom, on the opposite side of the living room from the bathroom. Like the rest of the flat, it was clean and neat, the furnishing new and well cared for. It contained a double bed, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers. A green towel was flung over the end of the bed. The wardrobe and chest of drawers were both open, and on the floor at the foot of the bed there was a black holdall with clothes and books in it. Terry began unpacking it slowly.

‘All female clothes,’ he said, as Tracy watched. ‘A nightie, underwear, tights, blouses, makeup. Two university library books about the Bronte sisters, and last week’s copy of Cosmopolitan, presumably for light relief, main article ‘How to give a man multiple orgasms’.’ He looked up, clumsily trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘I’m taking this in for closer examination, Tracy.’

‘Sir.’ Tracy favoured her superior officer with a deadpan stare, then relented. Terry was handsome enough for a man of his age, but had never been a great Lothario. Always a little too shy, uncertain how to act with women.  Perhaps because he’d married so young, left the sexual battlefield early, and was at a loss now he’d suddenly returned to it. Anyway his children probably took up most of his social life. The corner of her mouth twitched slightly. ‘I think you need help.’

‘I suppose I would.’ Terry glanced at her, then sighed. ‘Anyway, what does this tell us? It rather looks as though the young lady was moving out, doesn’t it? In which case  ...’

‘Why break off and kill yourself instead?’

‘Exactly.’ Their eyes met again, all traces of humour gone. ‘This begins to look strange, sir, doesn’t it. Unless ...’

‘What?’

‘She might have been moving in, rather than out. Unpacking that bag, rather than packing it, if you see what I mean.’

‘And then tried to kill herself because of what? Something her boyfriend said?’

‘Perhaps.’ Tracy gave a tiny shrug. ‘Either way, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If you’re leaving, why not just go? And if you’re moving in, why start by getting in the bath to slash your wrists?’

‘Why indeed?’ Terry swung the knife thoughtfully in its plastic bag, as though it could give him inspiration. ‘Why, in any case, do it in your boyfriend’s flat? Was it a cry for help, perhaps? And if so, what was he doing, all the while?’

‘He did ring 999, sir,’ Bill Rankin volunteered. ‘And he claims he attempted first aid.’

‘The least he could do, in the circumstances,’ said Terry softly. He walked back across the living room into the kitchen, where there were some carrots, onions and mushrooms ready sliced in a saucepan, with a half-finished glass of red wine next to them. On the wall was a photo of a young man standing proudly beside a Lotus sports car.  There was a telephone on the wall too, its receiver smeared with blood. ‘He had blood on his hands when he phoned, then.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Constable Rankin had followed him in. ‘He was soaking wet and covered with blood when we arrived. He said he’d found her like that in the bath and tried to get her out before he phoned. Or after - he wasn’t very clear. He was in a right panic, in fact. Couldn’t stop talking or flustering all the time he was here.’

Terry noticed the number 1 flashing on the answerphone, and pressed the play button. A metallic voice began to speak from the tape. ‘You have ... one ... message. Message one.’ Then a girl’s voice; somewhat hesitant, Terry thought, with long pauses between each phrase as though she wasn’t quite sure what to say.

‘Hi. Dave, it’s me ... if you’re there pick this up, will you ... Dave? ... well I’m coming over this evening but don’t get your hopes up ... it’s just ... well I’ll see you if you’re around and if not it doesn’t matter ... just ... don’t let there be anyone else there, all right? ... bye.’ The phone clicked and began its mechanical recitation. ‘Sunday, three .. twenty .. seven.. p.m. End of messages. To delete all messages, press delete.’

Terry looked thoughtfully at Tracy and Bill Rankin. ‘So, what do we make of that? She’s coming over, she wants him to be alone but not to get his hopes up, he starts to prepare a meal ...’ He glanced around the kitchen curiously, at the sliced vegetables, the half-finished glass of wine. There were drops of what looked like bloody water here and there on the floor. ‘Or at least one of them did. Was it him who did the cooking or her, do you think?’

‘Hardly likely to be her in the circumstances, sir, surely,’ Tracy said. ‘I mean, what are you saying - she stood here chopping vegetables and then thought, sod this for a lark, I’ll get in the bath and put an end to it all. Just like that?’

‘Not likely, is it?’ Terry agreed. ‘But then if it wasn’t her, it must have been him. He was standing here cooking while she was slicing her wrists in the bath. What sense does that make? Anyway, where’s the knife?’

‘Knife?’ Tracy gazed at him bemused. ‘In your hand, sir. In that evidence bag.’

‘Not this one, Trace.’ Terry waved an arm around the kitchen. ‘I mean the one in here. The one that chopped these vegetables. Where is it?’

Tracy looked, and saw what he meant. There was no knife on the worktop, or in the sink, or on the floor. There was a knife block in a corner with three other knives in, but each, when she pulled it out, looked clean. There was one empty space in the block.

‘The knife that isn’t there,’ Terry said. ‘Now what does that tell you?’

Tracy shook her head. ‘I’m not sure, sir. Either she was cutting the vegetables after all, or - what? She came in here to ask lover boy for a knife? Not very likely, is it? Can I borrow that for a moment, I’m in the bath and I need to cut my wrists? He must have known. Unless ...’ Her eyes met his, widening slightly as the same thought occurred to them both.

‘Unless he cut them for her,’ Terry nodded grimly. ‘It begins to look like that, wouldn’t you say?’

‘He wasn’t here, sir,’ the young constable interrupted.

‘What?’ Terry turned away, surprised.

‘He wasn’t here. He was out when it happened, shopping, then he came back and found her like this. That’s his story, anyway. He told us, over and over again. Couldn’t stop saying it. He went to the corner shop on Bootham and bought those flowers.’ He indicated the vase on the table in the living room.

‘Ah. I see.’ Terry walked back into the living room and inspected them curiously. ‘Which you wouldn’t do, of course, if you were about to kill your girlfriend. Would you, constable?’

‘Me, sir? No!’ Bill Rankin looked shocked.

‘Unless he bought them to put them on her grave, but that’s too soon,’ Terry murmured to himself softly. ‘He came in with the flowers and found her, you say?’

‘So he said, sir, yes.’

‘Then he rang 999. Did he try to help her first?’

‘So he said, sir, yes. He was burbling something about sticking a plaster on her wrists. As if that would stop it. The paramedics were right sick of him.’