Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (3)

‘The gay undertaker?’

‘He’s not an undertaker. He’s a Forensic Pathologist.’

‘Erika, how will you ever find a boyfriend if you surround yourself with dead people and gay men?’

‘Lenka, I don’t want a boyfriend, and I don’t surround myself with gay men. He is one friend. Anyway. This is a fresh start for me. I sold the house in Manchester and after far too long renting here in London, I’ve bought my own place. I finally feel like I’m moving on since…’ Her voice tailed off. She was going to say, since Mark died. Erika’s husband, Mark, had also been a police officer. He’d died on the job over four years ago, during a botched drug raid. A few months after his death, Erika had moved down from Manchester to take up a post in London. It had been a rough four years, personally and professionally, but buying this house, for all its faults, truly felt like she was making a fresh start.

‘Are you happy?’ asked Lenka, her voice softening.

Erika had to think about that for a moment.

‘Not quite, but it’s the closest I’ve felt to happiness for a long time. Listen, I’ll get my new phone set up so we can video call. But there’s a lot of work to do on the house, and the garden is a mess.’

‘I won’t judge you. I’m just interested to see it.’

‘I’ll hold you to that. Give my love to the kids, and Marek.’

When Erika got off the phone, she found a woolly hat in the pocket of her coat and pulled it on. A bare bulb hung at the bottom of the stairs, but the light didn’t reach to the landing above. She carried on along the hall, past the boxes and the door to a small downstairs toilet, which she kept closed. When Isaac had accompanied her to the second viewing of the house, he’d commented that the toilet reminded him of the movie Trainspotting, and he’d half expected to see a young Ewan McGregor crawl up out of the bowl.

It looked as if the kitchen was last decorated sometime in the 1970s. There was a small wooden work surface with a Butler’s sink under the window, and Erika’s new fridge freezer hummed in the corner, looking out of place against the yellowing walls. All Erika had unpacked so far was a kettle, the microwave, and a couple of coffee mugs. The thought of rummaging through boxes for plates and utensils and then heating something up in the grimy kitchen was too much. There was a chip shop two streets back, and it was getting on for 8pm, so she decided to go and get something to eat.

When she left the house, the streets were empty and a mist was hanging in the air. Erika put her head down and her collar up as she walked to the chip shop. A delicious warmth and the smell of fried fish enveloped her as she stepped through the door. It was an old-fashioned British chippie with a huge silver fryer. The long, green Formica counter was dotted with grains of salt and vinegar spills, and next to the till were two huge jars of pickled eggs and bottles of vinegar and ketchup. Erika ordered a large cod and chips with a can of Dandelion and Burdock, and ate the fish and chips out of the paper sitting at one of the booths in the window. The road outside was quiet, and the mist seemed to be thickening. The other customers had taken their food home, so she was alone inside.

Erika looked down at the can of Dandelion and Burdock. It was a fizzy drink unlike any other. It had been Mark who had introduced her to it, when she first moved to the UK, along with fish and chips. She stared at the can. Four years on from his death, everything still seemed to lead back to him. Another memory came back to her from that fateful day, of Mark lying beside her, bleeding out from his gunshot wound. Erika closed her eyes. They’d never caught who pulled the trigger. It wasn’t just Mark who’d died that day. Five of her colleagues were killed in total. Her team. She put her hand up to her neck and felt the scar where she’d been shot. Lenka’s question came back to her.

Are you happy?

Erika looked down at the delicious fried fish and chips, and thought of the crumbling house that was hers. She felt content. Maybe she could put happiness on the back-burner for the time being and settle for just being content.

It was just after eight thirty when Erika left the chip shop and came back out onto the pavement. The fog was now freezing, covering the surface of the tarmac in a dusting of white. On her way back to the house, still new to the area, she took a wrong turn, and found herself in a narrow road of terraced houses where a couple of streetlights were out. As she walked down, she saw how smart the houses looked, and stared ruefully at their sand-blasted brickwork and double-glazed sash windows.

Halfway down the road, there was a gap in the row of houses, and a modern concrete block of flats sat back from the road with a small neatly kept garden out front. The lights in all the windows were dark, but as she passed, a light flicked on in the ground floor window. A loud, blood-curdling scream made Erika stop in her tracks.





2





The scream came from the behind the left-hand window of the ground floor flat. It seemed to echo in Erika’s ears, and then it came again, longer, making the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. Erika hurried down the short path to the main entrance, which was a double-height glass door looking into a dingy hallway with a parquet floor. She tried the door handle. It was locked, and she could see a small red light glowing next to a card key entry pad. Erika ran back down the path and onto the grass on the left-hand side of the building. She reached up and knocked on the glass. There was now a sobbing coming from inside.