When she came off the phone the hallway was eerily quiet. The other two doors in the hallway remained closed.
‘Does your sister live in the flat?’ asked Erika, thinking of the recording studio set up in the bedroom.
Tess nodded.
‘Is it her flat?’
‘No. It’s mine. My husband’s. Ours. Vicky rents it from him… Us.’
‘Do you live locally?’
‘Round the corner. I own a restaurant, Goose, with my husband in the village.’
It took Erika a moment to work out what she meant. Some of the more well-heeled locals called Blackheath ‘the village’。
Erika asked her how old Vicky was. Twenty-seven, Tess told her. And Tess explained that Vicky hadn’t turned up to work her shift at the restaurant; that’s why she came to the flat.
‘And is your pub just around the corner?’ She was trying to keep Tess talking until the ambulance arrived, she didn’t want her to go into shock and collapse.
‘It’s not a pub,’ said Tess. ‘Goose is a quality restaurant.’
Only in England, thought Erika, would a person still think to add on that detail, moments after witnessing the brutal slaying of a sibling. She wondered how close they were. She looked back at Tess, sitting with her back straight and her ankles crossed in a finishing-school pose, which seemed to contradict her scruffy clothes and the Crocs.
There was a knock on the glass and Erika looked up to see Detective Inspector James Peterson standing outside. He was a tall, lean black man in his late thirties, but he looked much younger. His hair was shaved close to his scalp at the back and sides, and he had short spray dreadlocks on top. His perfect posture always made Erika think of a toy soldier, standing so upright. He wore jeans, trainers, and a thick purple fleece jacket. She got up and opened the glass door, stepping outside and pulling it shut behind her.
‘Hey, I was just leaving the cinema in Greenwich when I got the call from control…’
‘Yes. Jesus. It’s a young woman’s body. Looks bad. Her sister found her,’ said Erika, indicating Tess sitting inside. He went to say something when an annoyed voice shouted, ‘James, you’ve got Winky Bear!’
He turned and Erika saw there was a car parked at the kerb. The interior light was on, and Fran, an attractive blonde-haired woman with very pale skin, was searching the back seat next to a young mixed-race boy strapped into his car seat.
Peterson put his hands into his jeans, and Erika spied a little white piece of material poking out from the pockets of his fleece.
‘Is this what she’s looking for?’ she said, reaching over and pulling out a tiny white teddy bear with a cute face, and winking one eye.
‘Yes. He’s Kyle’s favourite, thank you,’ he said, and went rushing back to the car. Up until Fran appeared on Peterson’s doorstep last year with his son, Kyle, Erika and Peterson had had an on-off love affair. Erika had tried to put Peterson out of her mind, and for the most part she’d succeeded, but it was difficult when they worked together. She’d hoped that one day they would be ‘on’ full-time and make a go of it. She shook the thought away.
An unmarked police car pulled up in front of Fran’s with the blue lights flashing, and Detective Inspector Moss got out. She raised a hand to Peterson, and walked up the path towards Erika. She was a short stocky woman with shoulder-length red hair, and her face was a mass of freckles.
‘All right, boss? I was just on the way home when I got the call,’ she said. ‘Is Peterson on duty or off?’ she added, looking back at him clipping Kyle into his car seat.
‘On. They couldn’t find Kyle’s teddy bear.’
Moss raised an eyebrow.
‘I spent all afternoon trying to find a crack whore called Doris, and when we arrested her, we discovered she likes to throw her own shit,’ she said, pulling a face.
‘That’s disgusting.’
‘I know, and I’d just bought this new from Evans.’ She indicated her smart grey trouser suit. ‘I was lucky her aim wasn’t great, but one of the poor Specials got it right in the face…’
Erika glanced back inside to check on Tess, and saw that she was now talking to an older man holding a full black bin bag. He looked like he was trying to extricate himself from the conversation.
Fran drove off, and Peterson hurried up the path, joining them as they walked back through the front entrance into the hallway.
‘I really have to get this bag in the bin,’ the old man was saying. He was completely bald, with a fleshy, jowly face. He didn’t have any eyelashes or eyebrows and his skin was very shiny. His voice tailed off when he saw Erika, Moss and Peterson.