The old Victorian house was showing its age, but beneath the rusty tears that dribbled from the drainpipe fastenings, and the peeling paint flecks around the window frames, there was something else. Character. Lauren Salter had never been one for fanciful analogies, but there was something in the red-brick facade, in the half-round columns that framed the doorway that emanated strength and steadfastness; enduring qualities that the passage of time couldn’t diminish.
Well, that was settled then, thought Salter ironically. Put in her report that Wattis Wright lived in a solid, dependable house, and that would be her character profile of the murder victim in the books. She remained a moment longer on the top step, looking up at the house. She understood the reason for her reluctance to duck under the yellow incident tape and enter the building. It was because once she crossed that threshold, there would be no turning back. This would become her case, her investigation, and she was going to have to conduct it according to one simple guiding principle. It would inform her every decision, guide her every movement. Don’t fail him.
“The lead? Er, yes, ma’am. Great. Thank you.” Even in playback, her response sounded wishy-washy and unprofessional. But in fairness, the news had come as a bit of a shock.
“You’ve already been to the scene,” Shepherd had said as Salter was still recovering. “So tell us, Sergeant, first impressions?”
Danny Maik had been beside them, but he’d held back. He’d known which sergeant Shepherd was asking. So, Detective Lauren Salter, newly appointed to Equally Shared Sergeant’s Duties, had taken a deep breath and plunged in. “There’s no sign there was anyone else present, so we should probably go with … we should go with,” she’d corrected herself, “the idea of a single assailant for now.”
“A random attack?” Shepherd’s eyes had gone to Danny here, as if the two of them might know better. She couldn’t bring herself to believe it was random, Salter had told them, but if it was targeted, it was hard to see what for. “Certainly not robbery. There are no signs the attacker entered beyond the hallway. Nothing was disturbed; nothing appears to have been taken. In fact, there was a certified cheque, made payable to the victim, in plain view. Granted, it’s not easy to cash a stolen cheque, but it’s not impossible, either. You’d have thought it would’ve been worth the killer’s while to take a chance on it, especially for that amount of money.”
Shepherd had nodded. “And the method, Sergeant Salter? Do you have any concerns about that?”
She did. The first stab wound to the chest would have proven fatal. There would have been a lot of blood. But it was followed by a second thrust, much, much harder, delivered sometime after the first, possibly even minutes later, when it would have been obvious the victim was already dead. But what was the killer doing between those two knife thrusts? To deliver that blow, the killer would have had to step into the hallway, but why stand there all that time, waiting, before delivering that second thrust?
Shepherd had looked at her for a long moment. “Plenty for you to be going on with, then,” she’d said finally. “I’d suggest you get started.”
Salter drew a deep breath, unlocked the front door, and entered.
The heat from the spring morning hadn’t yet found its way into the hallway of the house, but the light had. Pale swatches of colour spilled onto the tiled floor. Salter thought at first they might be spots the post-crime clean-up crew had failed to mop up, but turning to look over her shoulder she realized it was sunlight, filtering through the small stained glass panels in the front door. She stood for a moment looking down at the place where the victim had been found, still clutching the telephone receiver, a carving knife driven into his chest up to the hilt.
A large room opened off the hallway to the right and she entered through the wide, door-less archway, hearing the soft creak of the wooden floors beneath her footsteps. A parlour, the room would no doubt have been called on the Victorian builder’s plans. It was an office now, a curious jumble of old furniture and antiquated electronics. An oak rolltop desk dominated the facing wall, flanked by a fax machine and a cumbersome, freestanding photocopier, of the kind Salter had not seen since she was a teenager. On an exquisite reproduction Elizabethan writing table stood a computer set-up of only slightly more recent vintage than the photocopier. The tiny screen and keyboard shared the standard grey-beige colour of computer generations past, as did the bulky tower resting against one of the legs of the desk. No wonder the SOCO team had dubbed this place Jurassic Park.
She moved from the office into the room behind it, another empty space, ringing with silence. She had never felt so much an intruder in a crime scene. It was the solitude, she realized. Usually she was in attendance with a senior investigator, Danny or Inspector Jejeune. Often there were forensic techs around, fingerprint teams, even a medical examiner. Now, it was just her, DS Lauren Salter, and a house full of secrets. And her mantra: Don’t fail him.
It was cooler in here, at the back of the house. The room drew no warmth from the sparse furnishings: a well-worn armchair, a set of heavy brocade curtains, a faded area rug that looked like it would have been worth a lot of money when its colours were vibrant and new. Along the back wall was a heavy wooden sideboard on which a turntable and receiver stood. Beside the sideboard was a shelf unit holding a neatly arranged stack of vinyl albums. Neither had the coating of dust Salter had seen on such items in other crime scenes she had visited. These were not relics from some forgotten past. They had been used recently, and regularly, she suspected.
She crossed to the chair and sat down, listening to the silence in the room, trying to collect her thoughts. What had she seen so far, what had she learned that might help her? Beside the chair was a side table. Salter silently recited SOCO’s inventory: two empty beer cans, one glass. The brand was Danny’s beer of choice. Perhaps there was a marketing campaign there somewhere, she thought idly, Pardham’s: the choice of men who prefer to stay home at night and listen to old songs. Should have the stuff flying off the shelves. Neither the cans nor the glass were here now. They had been bagged and taken for analysis, as likely the last items the victim had touched before he went to answer the door for the final time in his life.
In a holder beneath the table there was a small address book. Salter took it out and riffled through the alphabetized pages. Most of the categories were empty, page after page of blank sheets. In fact, there were so few entries she was able to count them individually: eleven. Perhaps somewhere in the list lay answers about what had happened here. Certainly, at this stage, she had none. She took leaned back in the armchair to consider what, if anything, she knew about the case so far. The silence of the room settled in around her and she closed her eyes, enjoying the peace of it for a few moments.
The shrill ring of Salter’s phone startled her awake but she’d reflexively answered it before she was fully alert.
“Sergeant Salter? Susan Bonaccord. I understand you’ve been trying to contact me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“About that night, when I was on the phone with Wattis Wright?”
“Oh, right, yes.” Salter rubbed her face awake with a hand. “Yes, thanks for getting back to me.” She stood up and began to move around the room, getting her thoughts in order. Don’t fail him. “I wanted to go over things again with you. If you’re still at the hotel, I could come over.” A thought struck her as she looked around the empty house. “Although, perhaps you could just talk me through it now.”
“Now? What, you mean on the phone?”
“I’m at the house. The scene … the crime scene.” She sighed irritably at her own fumbling.
“Well, if you’re sure …” Bonaccord sounded dubious, and in truth, Salter could think of no good reason to do things this way. Except she was here, now, and Bonaccord’s first recollection was always going to be the clearest one, the most visceral, closest to the emotions. Setting it against Salter’s own observations as the woman’s account led her through the scene might just help the sergeant to see things in a different light.
“We’d been talking for some time when I heard the doorbell go in the background. It was one of those old-fashioned chimes, I remember. Quite loud.”
Salter entered the hallway, its pitted, harlequin-tiled floor still dappled by pools of stained-glass light. Beside her, the wall-mounted phone sat on its cradle, its long, twisted cord dangling almost to the floor. She stood facing the doorway, recalling the large round doorbell on the door jamb outside.
“He asked me to excuse him, while he spoke to the … person at the door. And then I heard … it was like he was gasping for breath, drowning almost. Only not quite.”
Salter stared down at the tiled floor, at where Wright would have lain as the blood bubbled up, filling his lungs, creating the gurgling sound Bonaccord had heard.
“I asked if he was all right, what had happened. But of course, he didn’t reply.”
Salter saw Wright now, lying on the cold tiles, the phone in his hand, the life spilling out of his body in a pulsing red stream. He was listening to Bonaccord’s voice, wanting to say he’d been stabbed, to tell her he was dying, but unable to move or speak. Or finally, to breathe.
Perhaps the silence on the phone meant Bonaccord was dwelling on those details, too. Salter needed her not to. They could distort other impressions she might have.
“Did you hear the other person’s voice at all?”
“No.”
“And Mr. Wright didn’t say anything, after he excused himself to open the door? A name? Anything?”
“No. Hello. That was all.”
“Hello, like he knew the person?”
“I suppose so. I never thought about it.”
Salter stared at the doorway, imagining someone standing there, someone he knew. The address book provided meagre pickings, but perhaps that was no bad thing. It certainly limited the suspect pool.
“Are you still there?” Bonaccord’s inquiry sounded slightly impatient. “Is there anything else, Sergeant? Only I have rather a lot to do this morning.”
Salter looked at the stained tiles in the empty hallway once more, at the phone cord hanging forlornly down the wall, at the door with its pastel patches of light shining through. They were discussing a man’s violent death, and still Bonaccord had her mind on other priorities.
“This cheque your company issued. The accompanying letter says something about a rights purchase.”
“That’s correct. We purchased the rights to some properties from Mr. Wright. He wrote all the music for the Shammalars. I’m too young to remember them, frankly, as I imagine you are, but they were a big act in the sixties.”
The name may have rung a distant bell somewhere in Salter’s memory, but she couldn’t conjure up any pertinent facts. She’d ask her dad, Davy, when she got home. As hard as it was for her to believe, looking at him these days, he’d apparently been an avid music fan when he was young. If the Shammalars were as big as Susan Bonaccord seemed to be implying, Davy would likely have heard of them.
“This deal, was everybody happy with it? No disgruntled parties being forced into something against their better judgment?”
“Absolutely not. In fact, we were both delighted to have concluded our agreement. Mr. Wright was, quite frankly, very keen to have the money, and we needed the rights. Our clients are staging a large West-end production that should be a strong fit for the current nostalgia market. This represented a very good deal for both sides. I’d be happy to discuss this all further at some point, Sergeant, but I’m afraid I really do have to get on just now.”
Salter tucked away her phone and looked around. From the hallway, she could see the chair she’d been sitting in when she’d fallen asleep. How many nights had Wattis Wright sat there, she wondered, immersing himself in the tunes from another era, reliving the memories of some earlier time. If only it was that easy, she thought. If only we could revert to the innocence of our past lives just by spending a couple of hours listening to music. Whether it had ever worked for Wattis Wright, she couldn’t have said. All she knew was, it would take more than a few old songs to bring back her own carefree days. A lot more.