Page 17 of Dropping Like Flies

Having left the engine idling, I wasted no time in pulling away from the curb. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

“I said I would, didn’t I? When do I ever say things and not go through with them?”

When you asked me to marry you. You didn’t go through with that, did you? My fingers tightened around the steering wheel as I struggled not to verbalize my thoughts. “Right. You normally just say no.”

“There you go then. I said yes, so here I am. And given it’s almost three in the morning, I feel I should be congratulated for that.”

“Congratulations. Welcome to the real world.”

Griffin turned his head to stare out of the window, denying me a glimpse of his expression. “Oh, my world’s real enough. We just conduct it at more reasonable hours, like after breakfast.”

Leaning forward slightly, I opened the glove compartment and pulled out a chunky Kit Kat, flicking it onto Griffin’s lap. “There you go, breakfast.”

He picked it up and stared at it, but didn’t unwrap it. “Too kind.”

We’d barely gone a couple of miles before my nose wrinkled, the whiskey fumes filling the car too strong to ignore. “Jesus! It smells like a distillery in here.” Griffin turned his head my way, the power of his glare undisputable. “Well, it does.” I opened the window, the breeze that rushed in cold but infinitely fresher. “Couldn’t you have taken a shower or something?”

“You gave me fifteen minutes.”

“You could have brushed your teeth or used some mouthwash.”

“I could have done. I didn’t.” A brief pause, and then, “Is this what you’re going to be like? If I’d wanted non-stop nagging, I would have gone ahead and married you.”

A knife in my gut would have hurt less. I tried to think of something equally cutting to retort with and came up short, settling for silence instead. Eventually, Griffin sighed. “I’m sorry. That was a low blow and I shouldn’t have said it.”

“It was,” I agreed. “We’d be better off pretending we’re strangers.”

Griffin gave a humorless laugh. “I’m not sure that’s an option.”

Neither was I. Strangers didn’t feel each other’s emotions. They couldn’t tell what the other one had eaten for dinner that night, and they certainly didn’t suffer second-hand orgasms.

I didn’t have to check the numbers of the houses as we turned onto the road in Whitechapel. The uniformed officers crawling across the small yard like ants, and the police cordon to keep people at a distance, made our destination obvious. I parked the car just outside the cordon and climbed out. Griffin was slower to join me, his expression reminding me that this was my world, not his.

“It’s a lot,” he said as he took it all in.

“It is,” I agreed as I engaged the car’s central locking and flashed my badge at the officer tasked with enforcing the cordon. “He’s with me,” I stated, as the young police constable’s gaze turned Griffin’s way. “A specialist assigned to this case.”

He nodded and waved us through, both of us maneuvering ourselves beneath the tape. The front door of the house was wide open, forensic officers in full gear coming and going. I was required to show my ID a couple more times before we reached the bedroom where most of the action was taking place. It didn’t bother me. I would have been more upset by people not doing their jobs. Stringent security meant less chance of a crime scene being contaminated.

With Lou confined to desk duty to make way for Griffin, Sergeant Michael Brownlow took on the responsibility of briefing me, our paths having crossed previously. “What have we got?” I asked him, keen to know as much as I could before I surveyed the scene itself. It helped to have a more rounded picture.

He raked his gaze over Griffin, but didn’t question who he was. “Neighbors reported a disturbance at just gone midnight.”

“What sort of disturbance?”

“An argument. Banging. It seems like this one put up more of a fight than the others. They saw someone leave, but said it was too dark to get much of an idea of anything beyond it being a male of above average height.”

“No description at all?” I tamped down on the buzz of excitement at someone having seen the perpetrator. It might be more than we’d gotten for any of the other murders, but that didn’t amount to much if it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

Brownlow shook his head. “No idea of age. No idea whether his hair was dark or blond. Said he kept to the shadows.” He checked his notepad. “They said he was carrying a bag. Described it as a fairly standard backpack. No markings on it as far as they could see. Probably black or dark green, but again, they weren’t sure.”

“Probably to carry his fingers,” I said. “I guess a pocket just doesn’t cut it. Too much chance of them falling out.”

Nobody balked at what I’d said, everyone carrying on with what they were doing. A dark sense of humor was a must if you wanted to survive in this game for longer than two minutes, and unless they were fresh out of police training, they knew that. Sometimes it was the only thing that kept you sane. “What about our victim?” I asked. “Do we know anything about him yet?”

“Neighbors said he was quiet and mostly kept to himself. They know he was a lawyer but couldn’t say what type. Apart from work, he went out a couple of nights a week. Usually Wednesday and Saturday. They seemed embarrassed to admit they knew that. I guess they don’t want to come across as peeping toms. They didn’t know where he went, or whether it was alone or with friends or work colleagues.” Brownlow held up a driving license, letting it fall open so that a photograph stared back at me. “We found this in his office. Rupert Shaw. Age twenty-five.”

I took the driving license from him, holding it where Griffin could see it as I studied it. Apart from the date of birth and the photograph, there was nothing else of note, the address on it the one where we stood. He was a handsome man, and I made an effort to remember what he’d looked like, knowing that the sight awaiting me inside the bedroom would be a far less palatable one, and wanting to remember him as the man he once was before he’d made a fatal mistake. “Did the neighbors say anything else?”

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