Fatal Witness (Detective Erika Foster #7) (2)
‘You’re not going to leave me in peace, are you?’ he said, coming back towards her. His voice was low and controlled. She cried out and kicked but he grabbed her legs, dragged her up off the floor, and threw her back on the sofa bed.
He picked up the knife and she saw him looking around, working out what to do. He gripped the bottom of the folding frame and tipped it up, raising her legs. Her body was bent in half and then she felt his weight on top as he folded her into the mattress, the metal frame crushing her. He folded the mattress again using all his weight on top. She felt a roar of pain as her shoulders popped out of their sockets, and her knees were up around her head. The gag in her mouth moved down her throat, crushing her windpipe.
And then the knife sank into her back, and then sliced open the side of her cheek, it plunged into her hip and then the meaty padding of her calf muscle. He was stabbing the knife through the mattress.
She couldn’t breathe, and the frenzied stabbing continued, the knife plunging into her body as she was crushed under the weight of the folded-over mattress.
She wanted death to come quickly, but the three long minutes before her wish was granted was an eternity.
1
Detective Chief Inspector Erika Foster was standing in the empty front room of a crumbling Victorian terraced house. Outside the front window, a gloomy grey October evening was pressing against the glass. The floorboards were rotting in places, and above her head a yellow damp spot bloomed across the ceiling, met the wall, and carried on down, blistering the faded flowery wallpaper. A bare bulb cast a dingy forty-watt glow over the room. Her phone rang in the folds of her winter coat and she pulled it out. It was her sister, Lenka.
‘Erika. I just tried to FaceTime you,’ said Lenka, speaking in their native Slovak.
‘I haven’t set it up on my new phone,’ said Erika, which was true. She switched the phone to her other ear and pulled up her collar against the cold.
‘So, how are things in the new house?’
‘Good. The movers delivered all my boxes, and…’ Erika’s voice trailed off as she looked around, trying to imagine how she was going to make it like home. A high-pitched rattle sounded through the walls.
Erika stepped out of the living room into the hallway, her shoes echoing on the bare floorboards. She’d turned up the thermostat to thirty degrees half an hour ago, and the central heating seemed to be in agony, but unable to warm things up. There was silence, and then the clattering of pipes started again, echoing down from the dark landing above.
‘What’s that noise? Can you call me on Skype?’
Erika looked at the hallway piled high with boxes. Her warrant card and police radio were balanced on the end box. Why did she think she could rough it? She had no bed, very little furniture. She knew she should have asked her landlord for another month at her rented flat, and done a bit of work on making the house habitable. This was the main reason she didn’t want her sister to see the state of the place.
‘Lenka, I haven’t got Skype, either. And my computer is buried in a box somewhere.’
‘I thought we agreed you would show me your new house? You paid so much for it… I don’t know how people live in London with the way things cost. And now Brexit is happening. Is it really the best time to buy your first house?’ There was a final screeching clank and then the boiler fell silent. ‘I keep seeing in the news that they’re going to start chucking Eastern Europeans out.’
‘I’m not going to be chucked out. I’m a police officer, and I have dual citizenship,’ said Erika. Lenka made a noise, somewhere between a grunt and a snort.
‘Can you at least text me your new address, so I can send you a housewarming present?’
‘Yes. I could quite literally use a heater in here.’
Erika knew that a housewarming present was the last thing on Lenka’s mind. She wanted the address so she could look it up online.
‘What’s the area called?’
‘Blackheath.’ Erika went back to the front room and put her hand on the ancient radiator under the bay window. She felt a slight warmth through the cold metal. There were no curtains, and she saw her reflection in the glass. Erika was six feet tall and had always been thin, but she noted how particularly scrawny and drawn she looked. Her short blonde hair stood up in messy tufts. She moved to the wall, flicked off the light, and could now see out of the window to the dark expanse of the heath opposite. A row of streetlights lit up the road running through the middle, casting pools of orange across the scrubby grass.
‘Does Blackheath mean anything?’ asked Lenka.
Erika sighed.
‘Yes, a heath is a patch of semi-wild ground, and…’ She hesitated. ‘And it’s Black heath, because, apparently, it was used as a plague pit after the Black Death.’
‘Dead bodies are buried there?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Don’t you deal with enough dead bodies at work on the murder squad?’
‘It’s not like that. It’s in a lovely area. With independent shops, and bars.’
‘And a plague pit outside your front door!’ Lenka snorted.
‘They’ll never build on it, so I’ll always have uninterrupted views,’ said Erika, repeating what the fresh-faced young estate agent had told her, with a straight face. ‘It’s close to work, and my colleague, my friend, Isaac lives round the corner. You remember Isaac?’