Kill Who You Want

Chapter Two

Plot reminder: Due to a parents' evening at his son's school, Inspector Kubič has arrived late at the murder scene. He is about to see what lies behind the kitchen door...

~~~~~

Catherine Butterfield lay half-twisted across the floor, her torso turned to one side. A thick ruby pool had gathered beneath, some of the blood smeared, patterned into the same shoe prints as those in the living room. Elsewhere, syrupy runoff dribbles were straightened in the jointing grooves between the tiles, turned off at perfect right angles. On the fridge door, there was more blood - a long downward trail from where she'd slumped, vainly grasped out a hand. The arm remained propped upright, elbow bent, slender wrist crooked. A question mark.

Her left foot, still slippered, had become wedged under the opened door of the dishwasher. Inside, the stacked pots and pans gleamed squeaky clean under the ceiling light; a plate lay smashed across the tiles nearby. She'd just begun unloading, the attack coming from behind. Stealth, surprise, hand or perhaps cloth clamped to her mouth, the knife shredding the woollen knit of her cardigan; four times, five, who knew how many? Then the final thrust, the most sickening of all, this dug deep into the apex of the stomach swell. The knife handle had been left protruding outwards, a symbol of conquest like an explorer's flag on a mountain peak.

Crouched in close examination over the body was the district coroner, Bert Ashcroft. Tilting his face upwards, he offered Kubič a solemn nod of greeting.

"A profession like mine, all the sights one sees, I suppose one tends to become a little hardened over the years. One hates to admit it, but you might even say immune." The grey, bespectacled eyes turned downwards once more, lids creasing into a wince. "Nothing prepares you for this though. Something so..." - there was a shake of his head as he sought the correct words - "wilfully brutal."

There was another detail, Kubič now noted. Something else Wye had mentioned on the phone, as incongruous as laughter at a funeral.

A playing card.

It lay propped face up against the victim's right thigh as if casually tossed there after the event. Stooping himself down beside Ashcroft, a brief examination revealed it as the six of clubs.

What the hell was that all about?

As both men pulled themselves wearily back upright, Kubič lifted his gaze out through the kitchen window. It was already dark, the interior light picking out lingering patches of the previous week's snowfall: sunless corners, the sloped roof of the small wooden shed. It was a typical suburban back garden: long, hedge-bordered, a crooked line of paving stones leading to rear gate. It reminded him in many ways of the old place on Kirkwood Road... Unbidden, a memory came floating into his mind: three-year-old Danny red and screeching from a bee's sting.

No, he thought. Not here, not in this garden. There would be no crocodile tears, echoing peels of laughter. No August paddling pools, carrot-nosed melting snowmen.

Beside him came the weariest of sighs: "Nothing much I can tell you that you can't already see for yourself inspector."

Nodding solemnly, Kubic pulled an inch from the liquorice lace in his coat pocket, slipped it into mouth. "Need a time Bert."

"Recent," came the reply. "It's a recent one, inspector. Rigor mortis hasn't yet set in."

"A time," Kubič pressed.

There was a deep inhale, the air around them thin somehow, elusive. "A couple of hours perhaps."

Wriggling wrist free from overcoat sleeve, Kubič checked his watch. "Around four then?"