Page 57 of Night Call

Johnny and Tay were busy hammering tacks into the grass, bickering constantly as a gust of wind threatened to send the tent flying into the air. Blake was about to hand his umbrella to Mark and help wrestle the thing back down, but they got a hold of it before further intervention was needed. Eventually, everything was in place and they had the beginnings of a crime scene.

“Yo, Smithy,” Mark called. “When’s the boss getting here?”

Blake’s eyebrow twitched. “On his way with Cait.”

“Reckon I’ve time for a cig?” Mark replied, popping the lid on his lighter.

Blake’s jaw ticked, and he could already feel his blood pressure starting to rise. “No.”

“Oh, come on. Just take over for a?—”

“No.”

Mark grumbled. “Miserable fucker.”

People were beginning to gather around the periphery of the field—joggers, dog walkers, commuters, more people trying to get in an early morning shift to beat the rush. The blue lights and uniforms really had an uncanny way of attracting the general public.

It had to bethere. It justhadto bethere, in the High Enfield Community Shifter Park. A place where people sunbathed, packs ran together and children played long into the summer evenings. There was a playpark and a string of restaurants overlooking the grassy field. None of that would ever be the same. Not whenthere had been a body discovered in the middle of the fountain, its blood staining the water a muddy brown.

Blake knew full well there were copper pennies lining the bottom of the fountain—his omega father had taken him there multiple times after school to buy an ice cream from the musical van. Now somebody would probably sell those pennies on eBay as a sick token of a murder scene.

They’d called him at 5:00 am and said another body had appeared. Another alpha. Another murder. He’d been sceptical at first, because uniform just loved to pull the ‘suspicious death’ card to get CID out of bed, but now, having seen the sorry state of the victim, it couldn’t be construed as anything else.

“Heads up. Forensics are here,” Mark said, shaking his pen whilst trying to fill in the wet scene log.

Blake watched as several white vans pulled up, their bright Crime Scene Investigation signs drawing the attention of the crowd at the other end of the park. The people moved, a few of them breaking into a jog as they scrambled to get closer to the vans. Journalists.Fucking death chasers.

Blake abandoned his umbrella and jogged across the wet grass. His leather shoes were sodden, and he was beginning to regret not putting on his combat boots and blacks.

Pember, Wallace, Duncan and Maya were just climbing out of the van when the group of journalists rounded the corner and hurtled down the road towards them. Blake snarled as he ducked under the scene tape.

“Back up,” he snapped, just as one of them shoved a recording device in Pember’s face.

“Young man! Anything to say about the incident? Who was the victim? How many stab wounds this time?”

Pember looked up at him like a rabbit in headlights, but Blake waved his clipboard and shooed them back up the road.

“Put the tape around the fucking van,” he snarled at a nearby officer. The poor bastard looked like he was about to shit himself. “And,you. Make sure these idiots don’t cross the cordon,” he shouted at another.

Duncan slid out the overhead canopy attached to the side of the van, giving them some respite from the rain. Pember said nothing as he pulled on his scene suit, pushed his hair back and snapped an elastic around a little ponytail at the back of his head. It suited him, and when he puffed out his cheeks with a look of anxiety, it made Blake want to reach out and touch him.

They’d ended the previous evening with an abrupt goodbye, neither of them making formal plans for the following day. Nor had Pember appeared on his patio the following morning.

“Morning, Sarge,” Wallace said, noisily pulling a metal briefcase out of the van. “Lovely day for it.”

Blake squinted up at the sky, the rain making his glasses foggy and wet. It was grey, unusually overcast for April, making it an absolutely abysmal day for a murder. Forensic integrity? Gone. Any hope of accurately establishing the time of death? Washed into the fucking fountain.

“Your Majesty,” Duncan said, giving a mock bow as he handed Blake another stack of papers. “It’s the forensic strategy. Well… not that we have much of a strategy, given that the rain’s probably washed away most of our evidence.”

A round of excited gasps came from the journalists, and Maya slapped his arm. “Keep your fucking voice down. The vultures are out.”

They kitted up quickly, which Blake found slightly amusing given that the officers who were first on scene may as well have wiped their own arses across the grass for all the forensic consideration they’d had. Still, they’d tried to save his life, which was something.

Pember lugged a huge metal briefcase case from the back of the van that had Water Examination Kit pressed into the aluminium. He was struggling to lift it off the shelf, so Blake reached up and slid it free.

“Thanks,” he said, reaching for the case, but Blake held it back.

“I’ve got it,” he replied, giving the omega a small smile.

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