Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (9)

Erika stared down at Vicky’s body. She leant forward and gently lifted Vicky’s hair. The young woman’s face was blood-spattered and bruised. Her lips were drawn back in a grimace of fear, exposing her teeth. Her eyes were open wide and glassy. A death stare.

‘She wouldn’t have been able to scream, with the gag in her mouth,’ said Erika.

‘No. I doubt she could even breathe properly,’ said Isaac. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t suffocate.’

Erika looked at the curtains, closed over the window. It was close to the small garden looking onto the road outside. If I heard Tess scream when I was walking past, did anyone hear this poor woman fighting for her life? she thought. She was reminded how close she lived, and thought back to the agent who had sold her the new house. How he’d rhapsodised about Blackheath being such a safe place, with a tight-knit village community. As far as she knew, no one had been brutally slaughtered in her old post code.

They all took a step back as two of the SOCOs moved to Vicky’s body and lifted her right hand and then her left, taking swabs from underneath her fingernails. Her nails were cut short, Erika noted. Isaac was ready with a plastic bag and they dropped the swabs inside.

She took in the rest of the room. There was a long low unit with a flatscreen TV, and shelves on either side which contained four glass candle holders in different colours, and a lava lamp. Erika imagined that with good lighting the flat was cosy, but the harsh forensic lights seemed to expose its shabbiness. The wallpaper sagged with damp in patches, and the pale carpet was dotted with the ghosts of stains. There were scuffs and chips on a coffee table, which had presumably been pushed under the window when she opened out the sofa bed, and beside the window was a set of bookshelves which were chipped in places, revealing chipboard under the faux-wood finish. The bedroom door with the makeshift recording studio was open, and Erika could see through to where two SOCOs were working with fine brushes, dusting for prints on the black desk and the doorframe. The fine, grey fingerprint powder glittered under the bright lights.

‘It would be worth finding out why Vicky was in bed so early,’ said Peterson. ‘Did she have company?’

‘She’s still dressed,’ said Moss, indicating Vicky’s blue jeans, white socks and the blood-soaked sweater. Erika turned her attention back to the living room and nodded.

‘What about a murder weapon?’ she asked.

‘It’s too early to be specific,’ said Isaac. ‘A long sharp blade. The stab wounds are random but neat and precise.’

Erika looked over to the kitchenette in the second half of the room. It was neat and clean, but the lights illuminated the torn, grubby linoleum and cobwebs on the ceiling above. She could see a knife block lying on its side on the counter.

‘There’s a knife missing from that block,’ she said.

‘We haven’t found a weapon yet,’ said Isaac.

Erika, Moss, and Peterson took a step back as a metal stretcher on wheels with a black body bag was pushed into the small living room. Three of the SOCOs moved into position and carefully lifted Vicky’s body clear of the bed and onto the shiny black of the open body bag. They turned her gently over onto her back, and Erika watched as her body shifted limply and her hair fell away from her face. Vicky was petite, with a porcelain doll-like face, but the effects of rigor mortis were developing fast and her death grimace was more pronounced; lips peeled back and eyes open wide.

‘I’ll do the post-mortem tonight,’ Isaac said. ‘I’ll let you know more as soon as possible.’

‘Thank you.’

Erika took one last look around the flat at the blood-soaked mattress. There was a crackling of plastic as the body bag was closed and zipped up, entombing Vicky’s remains in its shiny blackness. It struck Erika, how fragile life was. She wondered how Vicky had felt the last time she walked through her front door. Was she happy? Sad? Scared? Whatever she felt, she probably had no idea she would be leaving in a black body bag.





6





Erika, Moss and Peterson followed the stretcher with the body bag as it bumped its way down the short driveway to the black mortuary van parked out on the road next to the white police support van.

They stopped in the front garden and pulled off their crime scene coveralls, depositing them into plastic forensic bags.

‘Can you sort out a search for the murder weapon?’ Erika asked Peterson.

‘Yeah. I’ll get a team together to check out the surrounding gardens,’ he said, moving off to the support van.

‘Can you come with me to talk to Tess?’ Erika said to Moss, adding, ‘If you could go over to the support van and make sure she stays inside, with that on its way to the morgue van.’

‘On it,’ said Moss. The two young police officers who Erika had asked to interview the neighbours came out of the building towards her.

‘Ma’am, there seems to be only one other neighbour in tonight,’ said the taller of the two.

‘Okay. What are your names?’ she asked.

‘I’m Constable Robbie Grant,’ said the taller, who was very pale with a smooth flawless, complexion.

‘Constable Amer Abidi,’ said the second. He was equally handsome and fresh-faced, and as he nodded and smiled, the top edge of a tattoo on his dark skin peeked above his shirt collar. ‘There are three floors in the block of flats,’ he said, pointing back at the building entrance. ‘And three flats on each floor. Vicky Clarke is at flat one, Charles Wakefield lives in number two, and at three, there are two sisters, Sophia and Maria Ivanova, both trainee doctors, but there’s no one in.’