Dark Water (Detective Erika Foster 3)

‘He’s divorced,’ said Moss. ‘I heard him moaning about his ex wife a couple of weeks back.’

They noticed a large wet patch on the carpet outside the bathroom door. It was slightly ajar, and they moved slowly across to it. Erika pushed it open and they saw in the tiny bathroom that the bath was full to the brim. DI Crawford’s naked body floated in the water, which was stained red. One of his arms flopped out and over the side, and they could see he had slashed his wrists.

57

Two days later, Erika attended the mortuary with Moss and Peterson. Both Amanda Baker and DI Crawford’s bodies were laid out side by side on the stainless steel mortuary tables. Isaac was waiting for them, weary after performing both autopsies through the night.

‘What disturbs me about both of these deaths, is that whoever did this, made a very weak attempt to pass them off as suicides,’ said Isaac. ‘It’s almost like they’re mocking us.’

‘You don’t think they were suicide?’

‘No, I don’t,’ he said. He moved to Amanda Baker first. She lay under a white sheet, and she was placed on her front. It was only when Isaac pulled down the sheet that they saw the angry weals around her neck.

‘You can see here the usual kind of bruising I would expect to see from a hanging, the rope has bitten deep into the skin and left a very clear and defined line,’ he said indicating the line running around her neck. ‘If you can see here, there is a series of small circular bruises at the nape of the neck. This indicated to me that the noose was placed over her head, tightened, and then she fought, the knot of the noose moving and creating a ring of bruises. You can also see the bruise at the base of her her spine…’ he moved down and gently pulled the sheet back. ‘We also recovered some skin cells from underneath her left hand fingernails. This indicated she fought with an attacker…’

Isaac paused and then moved over to the body of DI Crawford. He lay on his back, his hair combed back from his forehead. His arms lay out of the sheet and beside him.

‘You see here, there are two long incisions one on each arm. They are horizontal as opposed to vertical, and each cut severed the radial artery, the main artery that supplies blood to the arms and hands. It was done with a strait-razor, or what you might call an old barber shop razor.’

Moss grimaced at the sight of the two long slashes in the arms, which had been neatly stitched up.

‘He had high levels of alcohol in his blood, and also traces of the sedative Halcion…’

‘We talked about Halcion the other day,’ said Erika.

‘Yes, it is illegal in the UK, but not so in the USA, and it’s possible to get hold of it online.’

‘So he got drunk, took the sedative and slit his wrists? He seemed on edge the last few days he was in work, well he seemed distracted for the whole time he was on the case,’ said Moss.

‘He didn’t slit his wrists,’ said Isaac.

‘How can you tell?’

‘The barbershop, straight razor was found on the edge of the sink. It had been wiped clean, there were no prints.’

‘Couldn’t he have done that himself?’

‘He could have, but there would have been torrents of blood when he sliced open the radial artery. He would have had to use a cloth or a tissue, there were no bloody cloths or tissues fond at the scene and the bloodletting was confined to the bath water and the tiles surrounding the bath. Whoever did this, wanted to make it look like a suicide, but also pass on the message that it wasn’t so.’

‘And they were both discussing the Jessica Collins case in the lead up to their murders,’ said Erika.

‘There’s more I have to tell you,’ said Isaac. He moved over to the long counter by the sink where he had some paperwork.

‘We were able to test the skin cells from under Amanda Bakers fingernails, we got a positive match on a Jayden Quince. He’s ex army, served in Iraq and then was discharged shortly afterwards. He was charged with GBH four years ago, hitting a man in a club in the west end. He had his DNA taken then and its been stored on the database.’

‘That’s fantastic,’ said Erika.

‘I suggest you send forensics back into DI Crawford’s flat and do a complete swab.’

‘This is such good work, Isaac,’ said Erika.

‘There’s one more thing; the DNA matches the blood taken from your flat the other night when the intruder broke in. It’s the same man. I think he was coming for you too.’

58

Gerry had been keeping a low profile. He’d bled badly from the cut behind his ear, where the woman had hit him. She’d knocked him unconscious, and he didn’t know how long he had been out when he came to on the carpet in the darkness. Then he’d heard her in the bathroom with the two kids who were whimpering.

He knew something was badly wrong when he staggered to his feet. The room was spinning and lurching to one side, he went to the bathroom and tried the door, but he felt himself losing consciousness. He gripped the handle and pushed. The door had given a little and he’d staggered back hitting the floor hard, pain coursing up his tailbone.

The kids inside the bathroom were crying, she was trying to quiet them down. His mind raced, calculating the possibilities. He could kill the woman, but what about the kids. When he agreed to this, it didn’t include kids. And there was a baby. He’d blacked out again, and when he came to he could hear the far off sound of police sirens.

Abort, he had to abort, he decided. He ran from the flat and out into the garden. The route he’d planned out before stayed in his mind and he moved through several dark gardens. He stopped in a large garden, filled with trees and bushes and found a pond, shimmering like ink in the darkness. He leaned over and washed the blood from the side of his face. The cold water felt good on his skin. He then moved on, and found his car parked in a back street.

* * *

He’d lain low in the small house he rented, he slept, he gathered his strength and now on the third morning he knew it was time. He went to the tiny bathroom and flicked on the light above the mirror. The bruise had gone down on the side of his face. He’d done a rough job tacking together the three inch cut on the side of his head with surgical glue, and the iodine he’d swapped over it, against his cappuccino coloured skin had a green tint.