Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster emitted a weary
sigh as he crouched over the woman’s corpse, arc lights in
the garden bathing them both in bright light, anticipating
the first light of dawn. During his convalescence, human
nature had not taken a turn for the better. He rose to
standing, wincing slightly at the bolt of pain searing up his
leg from the metal plate holding his right shin together,
then shuddered as he felt a cold cough of wind on the
back of his neck. He’d not worn a coat, assuming when he
was called and told of a woman’s murder at her house she
would be found inside, and not outside on a small, slightly
overgrown lawn.
The throat had been cut. The body was framed by a
wide slick of blood. He looked around the garden. The
fences at all three sides were high, giving a degree of
privacy, though the upstairs windows of the properties
on both sides would have had a partial view. Young professional
couples lived either side and got home after dark.
Neither of them had seen the body. Still, to Foster it
seemed the killer had taken a strange risk.
He returned to the house. The sitting room was neat
and ordered, no signs of a struggle. Foster rubbed his
face with his right hand. It was his first week back, early
November. He’d insisted on being on call. The call had
come that Tuesday morning at 4 a.m., four hours after the
body had been discovered. He climbed into his old suit,
realizing only then that he could fit his thumbs into the
gap between his gut and the waistband, forcing him to dig
out a belt and pull it to the tightest notch. It had been just
over six months since he’d been tortured and beaten and
saved only seconds from death. The thought of getting
back on the job had kept him going during some long
dark nights of the soul. During some nights, when the
dreams were at their worst, Karl Hogg’s hot breath still in
his nostrils, the excruciating pain as both tibia and fibula
snapped under the weight of Hogg’s mallet, he’d thought
this moment might never arrive.
But here he was; his first case back.
He had anticipated a gang killing, probably some hapless
kid stabbed in the street in Shepherd’s Bush or Kensal
Rise. Instead he’d got this – a woman lying dead in a garden,
in a lavishly furnished Victorian terrace, on a quiet
affluent street in Queen’s Park, a middle-class ghetto
between Kensal Green and Kilburn.
Detective Inspector Heather Jenkins walked into the
sitting room with a scene of crime photographer at her
shoulder. ‘Mind if I . . .’ he said, motioning towards the
garden nervously.
‘Fill your boots,’ Foster said.
He turned to Heather. Her hair was scraped and tied
back off her face and she looked pale and worn. Bad news,
he thought.
‘The victim’s name is Katie Drake,’ she said. ‘Thirtyseven
years old. An actress. The neighbours two doors
down found her. They had a set of keys. They were alerted
by a friend of Katie’s after she and her daughter failed to
turn up at an ice-skating rink to celebrate the daughter’s
fourteenth birthday.’
Foster felt a shudder of apprehension. ‘And where’s the
daughter?’