Need You Dead

35 Friday 22 April

As the postmortem continued, with Dr Frazer Theobald moving at his customary slow — at times glacially slow — pace, Guy Batchelor stepped away several times into the tiny office, to make calls. He was trying to find a relative of Lorna Belling who could make the formal identification of her body, as well as assembling his enquiry team, but it wasn’t proving easy. She had a sister who was in Australia, whom he had managed to contact, but it would be at least two days before she arrived in England. And Lorna’s parents, who were on a cruise, had been contacted, but could not get back here until sometime after the weekend.

He appointed a crime scene manager, an office manager, a POLSA — police search advisor — a HOLMES team, an analyst, and the small group of detectives Roy Grace had requested, all but two of whom were available. The first briefing would be at 6 p.m. this evening.

He had already organized an outside enquiry team, and set their parameters. They were to speak to the landlord and the letting agent, if there was one; to all Lorna Belling’s neighbours in the building; to check any CCTV footage they could find in the immediate surrounding areas to see if they could place the husband around the flat; to try to make contact with her friends; and to contact her dead husband’s work colleagues to see if he’d disclosed anything to them. A search of the Bellings’ home was currently under way, and any computers or phones found there would be taken to Digital Forensics — formerly known as the High Tech Crime Unit — to be interrogated. Batchelor also instructed them to make sure they found the appointments book for Lorna’s hairdressing clients.

Determined to make a good impression in his first SIO role, he logged on to the Murder Manual, ticking through every rigid step of a murder enquiry, dutifully and laboriously writing his decisions down in his pale-blue Policy Book. It was the document with which all SIOs covered their backs — details of every decision you made, and the reasons. If an investigation ever went south and you were called to account, you had it right there, in black and white. And in this modern age of accountability in the police force, where you walked constantly on eggshells, it seemed at times, sadly, that covering your back had become almost more important than solving the crime.

He felt pleased that this one was falling into place. If the lab could follow up the fingerprints on the beer cans with DNA matches from around the tops of the cans and maybe on the cigarette butts — and add to that the husband’s DNA from the semen in Lorna Belling’s vagina — it would be strong evidence. Overwhelming.

Case closed.

Then his phone rang. It was Cassian Pewe. And he was surprised at what the Assistant Chief Constable was telling him. Equally, there was no way he could refuse.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, bemused, as he ended the call. ‘Of course we’ll look after him, sir. It will be a pleasure.’