but I had always been lucky, so far. Anna Melville’s luck had very definitely run out.
The house wasn’t the only focus for the SOCOs’ attentions. They had identified her car. It would be taken away for detailed examination, in case she had given the killer a lift, or in case he had opened the door for her, or in case he had so much as leaned against it while they spoke. Like her home it would be ripped apart. There was so much mud to pan for one tiny fleck of DNA gold that could incriminate a killer. Technology meant we needed less and less to prove our cases, but that made it harder on the technicians who had to search for evidence that was literally invisible. There was still a place for good old-fashioned police work to narrow the focus to one person, one man with a dark heart, one killer. Jurors treated forensic evidence with reverence, but more often than not we were the ones who had put the defendant in the dock, and the forensics were just part of the picture.
All of which made me sound like any other copper, I thought. It was a commonplace to complain about not being appreciated, across all ranks, in all branches of the service, across all the different forces. It wasn’t a job to do if you liked being praised or if you wanted to earn a lot of money. It was a job to choose if you couldn’t see the value in doing anything else. It was a fundamental part of what made me who I was: without it, I wouldn’t know myself.
And the reason why I put up with the terrible hours and disappointing pay and sometimes miserable working conditions was staring out of the windows on either side of the road. The neighbours were starting to realise what had happened, staring at the news come to life in their very own street. Later some of them – the more sensitive ones – would think about the fact that a murderer had walked past their doors not long before, on his way to kill. Somehow it was worse to think about him leaving after he had finished, dragging his slaked desire behind him. It made me shiver and I didn’t have to sleep on Carrington Road. It wasn’t my home that had been defiled.
DCI Burt parked the car, humming under her breath. Godley heard the engine and turned to glance in our direction. I saw his eyebrows twitch together in a frown, but I couldn’t tell why.
I let her walk across to him on her own as I took a detour to drop my coffee cup in a bin. The wind stung my face and I huddled inside my coat, dropping my chin down to hide behind my collar. Carrington Street was lined with maple trees, which were shedding their leaves as if foliage was going out of fashion. The gutters were clogged and the air had that vinous smell of decay that I associated with autumn. A mordant technician in wellies and a boiler suit was working his way along the road, raking through the piles of leaves, filmed by the handful of news cameras that had made it to the latest crime scene. Someone had tipped them off that it was a murder but so far, judging by the questions they were shouting at me, they didn’t know there was anything to connect it to the other deaths. And they wouldn’t find out from me. I turned to walk back to the house and my bag vibrated against my hip.
Shit .
I don’t know why I looked at the screen because I knew who it was going to be, and why. The ringing was somehow more insistent, the vibration stronger, because it was Derwent on the other end of the line, hating me for making him call back. I simply didn’t dare answer it when DCI Burt had specifically told me not to. I looked up and saw she was watching me, as was Godley. I made it very clear that I was rejecting the call, dropping the phone back into my bag with a flourish so they couldn’t miss what I had done. The part of me that rebelled against authority and hated working in a hierarchical organisation was outraged that I was obeying orders blindly, without being offered any explanation as to why it was necessary.
If it had been pissing off
The house wasn’t the only focus for the SOCOs’ attentions. They had identified her car. It would be taken away for detailed examination, in case she had given the killer a lift, or in case he had opened the door for her, or in case he had so much as leaned against it while they spoke. Like her home it would be ripped apart. There was so much mud to pan for one tiny fleck of DNA gold that could incriminate a killer. Technology meant we needed less and less to prove our cases, but that made it harder on the technicians who had to search for evidence that was literally invisible. There was still a place for good old-fashioned police work to narrow the focus to one person, one man with a dark heart, one killer. Jurors treated forensic evidence with reverence, but more often than not we were the ones who had put the defendant in the dock, and the forensics were just part of the picture.
All of which made me sound like any other copper, I thought. It was a commonplace to complain about not being appreciated, across all ranks, in all branches of the service, across all the different forces. It wasn’t a job to do if you liked being praised or if you wanted to earn a lot of money. It was a job to choose if you couldn’t see the value in doing anything else. It was a fundamental part of what made me who I was: without it, I wouldn’t know myself.
And the reason why I put up with the terrible hours and disappointing pay and sometimes miserable working conditions was staring out of the windows on either side of the road. The neighbours were starting to realise what had happened, staring at the news come to life in their very own street. Later some of them – the more sensitive ones – would think about the fact that a murderer had walked past their doors not long before, on his way to kill. Somehow it was worse to think about him leaving after he had finished, dragging his slaked desire behind him. It made me shiver and I didn’t have to sleep on Carrington Road. It wasn’t my home that had been defiled.
DCI Burt parked the car, humming under her breath. Godley heard the engine and turned to glance in our direction. I saw his eyebrows twitch together in a frown, but I couldn’t tell why.
I let her walk across to him on her own as I took a detour to drop my coffee cup in a bin. The wind stung my face and I huddled inside my coat, dropping my chin down to hide behind my collar. Carrington Street was lined with maple trees, which were shedding their leaves as if foliage was going out of fashion. The gutters were clogged and the air had that vinous smell of decay that I associated with autumn. A mordant technician in wellies and a boiler suit was working his way along the road, raking through the piles of leaves, filmed by the handful of news cameras that had made it to the latest crime scene. Someone had tipped them off that it was a murder but so far, judging by the questions they were shouting at me, they didn’t know there was anything to connect it to the other deaths. And they wouldn’t find out from me. I turned to walk back to the house and my bag vibrated against my hip.
Shit .
I don’t know why I looked at the screen because I knew who it was going to be, and why. The ringing was somehow more insistent, the vibration stronger, because it was Derwent on the other end of the line, hating me for making him call back. I simply didn’t dare answer it when DCI Burt had specifically told me not to. I looked up and saw she was watching me, as was Godley. I made it very clear that I was rejecting the call, dropping the phone back into my bag with a flourish so they couldn’t miss what I had done. The part of me that rebelled against authority and hated working in a hierarchical organisation was outraged that I was obeying orders blindly, without being offered any explanation as to why it was necessary.
If it had been pissing off
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