He arrived five minutes late. Usually arriving late earned a place on the Efficiency Wall, where photos of shamed members of staff who were not holding up departmental standards were displayed. However, Theo was never late, never, and rather than the ritual chiding, he received an automatically generated email informing him that he had been docked one hour’s pay, and a concerned knock on the door from Edward’s secretary, El, asking him if he was okay.
“I’m fine. Think I’m coming down with something.”
“Ah, yes…” she muttered, and beat a hasty retreat to the antibacterial gel she kept in the bottom drawer of her desk.
Words on a screen.
beaten to death with a clothes iron
run over then run over again three times he drove the car until she was
dropped the child out of the window
claims he didn’t realise how hard he was hitting until it was too late
a kitchen knife, the relationship had been deteriorating for
When Theo’s calendar beeped, reminding him of the weekly team performance meeting, he nearly laughed.
Sat at the back.
Did his best not to fall asleep.
Returned to his desk.
Forgot to eat lunch.
set on fire after school because she called her fat
strangled after refusing to consider marriage with the man in
trapped between the cot and the wall suffocated to death
police investigation fee: £7891.56 (ex. VAT)
societal responsibility levy: £81,000
victim assessment fee: £128,918
no. of pets left behind by deceased: 3
value of pets: £5680
cost of rehousing pets: £675
But hey! The cats have already been spayed otherwise that’d be another £240 on the indemnity for the killer to pay, can’t have non-spayed cats running around it’d be…
Dependent children remaining to deceased: 1.
Age of child: 7.
Added value of dependent minor: £18,900, plus a further £2715 because the child witnessed her mother die and will thus require mandatory counselling with a recommended sponsor who will charge…
will charge…
a fee equivalent to…
on an hourly basis of…
Theo realised he’d been staring at nothing, and started hard enough to knock his empty coffee cup off the desk.
It tumbled to the floor, the handle cracking off the side, the rest of the ceramic surviving in one piece. He picked the handle up gingerly, wrapped it in tissue paper, put it in his bag. Maybe he’d be able to stick it back on. Superglue or tile grout or… something. Gripfill, perhaps.
Email.
A defendant had settled his indemnity, selling off a two-bedroom flat in Putney to cover the cost. Because he’d done so without taking the matter to court, he achieved a 10 per cent discount on the murder of his mother-in-law, thus taking the total profit to the department to a mere…
But the woman on her third shoplifting charge had already sold her mother’s wedding ring and the indemnity was overdue so her case was to be referred to the prison service for labour rehabilitation, making something useful for society, like circuit boards for mobile phones, or those glasses that don’t have any lenses in to make you look cool, or face serum guaranteed to keep you both firm and soft all at once.
Theo looked away, marked the email as unread, went to the toilet, sat in the locked cubicle with his pants around his ankles, realised he had no idea what he was doing, sat a while longer, felt ridiculous, went back to work.
At 4.55 the new case arrived.
It hadn’t gone to him initially. But Charlotte Burgess, who specialised in well-paying homicides, had taken one look and done some quick maths—cause of death, manner of arrest, value of deceased—and concluded that the matter was fairly open-and-shut and couldn’t bring in more than £60,000, which wouldn’t count for much on her performance review so…
she sent it on.
Which was silly really, because if she’d looked closely she would have seen the discretion clause that any wise auditor could squeeze for at least another £90,000 if they played it right.
Hey, Theo. This arrived, but I’m snowed under. Can you take a look at it? Thanks! xx
All of Charlotte’s emails ended with two kisses. She’d once signed off to a high court judge with snuggles and lols! and the judge hadn’t known what these words meant, and assumed it was just a youth thing.
Theo opened the case file.
Homicide, suspect arrested and full confession given. Status: pending assessment.
Dani Cumali.
It occurred to him that he’d only seen her feet.
And her brain of course but actually the brain on the wall, her bare feet pointing upwards these weren’t much to go by and he’d sort of assumed, he’d just thought well there it is, here we are but thinking about it he’d only really…
He opened the file.
The front of her face was remarkably intact, given the two bullets that had entered it. The back of her skull had taken most of the damage when the bullets exited, bursting open like an overheated pudding.
The bruising across the rest of her body was almost black, the blood congealing between broken arteries post-mortem.
A photo was attached of the killer.
Her name was Seph Atkins, and the cops suspected this was an alias.
Seph Atkins had called the police almost the second Dani’s body hit the floor. A transcript was attached.
“Yes, I’d like to report a homicide… I’m sorry do you need to… yes, homicide, that’s right. No, I did it. Yes. Yes. The address is… as in sierra, echo… yes, echo… what do you estimate as being your response time? Yes, that’s fine. Thank you. Of course I can hold. Thanks.”
And then in the distance, the sound of faint words, as if the killer was holding her phone against her shoulder, muffling her words, addressing someone else. The transcriber couldn’t decipher what was said, but Theo knew the words, heard the truth of it.
“Now if you just make like a heron…”
He closed the file, copied it to a USB stick, put the stick in his pocket and went home twenty minutes early. Such action might have caused something of a stir, but it being Theo, no one really noticed.
Chapter 22
Nearly fifteen years before Dani died, the boy who would be Theo took the train to Oxford. He had imagined that Oxford was always bathed in autumn sunlight, but when he arrived it was raining, and despite his best efforts he couldn’t seem to get invitations to any of those dinner clubs where they served whole roast pig and performed sexual acts with…
…well, he didn’t know if he believed the rumours, but everyone said it was the best thing to do if you wanted to get ahead in life.
He imagined he’d live on a quadrangle overlooking immaculate lawns, in rooms with high walls and medieval locks. His hall of residence was certainly near an immaculate lawn, but had been tacked on in the 1980s as a discreet extension, and featured disappointingly modern electromagnetic key fobs.
He kept to himself. Sent Dani the odd email. Answered the phone when his mum called, and when they’d gone too long without talking would call her and they’d chat for an average of forty-three seconds.
“Hi, Mum.”
“Oh, you called. How nice. Yes. Very nice of you to call, yes, good that you remembered well I’m all right. I’m all right and I’m doing well it was good of you to call.”
“I wanted to see if you were…”
“Good of you to call, you are a good boy. Well, that’s lovely. Goodbye!”