Need You Dead

67 Monday 25 April

Above the piercing screaming of the petrified woman, and the much fainter sound of an approaching siren, Evie Leigh could hear shouting through her headset, an ugly, angry male voice.

‘You bitch, what you doing with that in your hand? Phoning the police — you think they’ll help? You’re better-off phoning a friend — or asking the audience, eh? Ask the audience, go on, ask them. Three questions — yeah? Is my husband going to kill me? Is my husband going to kill me? Is my husband going to kill me?’

On her screen, Evie saw the pink symbol of the car halt at the address; it was accompanied by the message she was always relieved to see. Officers at scene.

Usually that would be the end of her involvement, but not right now. No stranger to terror, she had been on the receiving end of calls from people in the middle of the night who had just heard breaking glass downstairs in their home; from a woman locked in the boot of a stolen car; from a mother whose baby had vanished from its pushchair outside a shop in a busy high street.

But nothing in all her experience was as heart-wrenching as this. She could feel the woman’s utter fear and, despite remaining steady herself, trying to calm the woman down and get her to think of any possible options, in her heart she wanted to dash from the Control Room to the woman’s home and do something, herself, to protect her from this bastard.

There were two other important reasons for keeping the line open. The recording would provide good evidence for anything that happened subsequently, including rebutting any allegation of excessive force by the police, and it would provide intelligence for other officers attending, as initially Charlie Romeo Zero Five would be too busy to provide much of an update.

There was a scream so piercing it sent shivers spiking through her.

Then again.

‘Pleeeeeeeaaaassssssssssseeeeeeee no, no, no, no!’

Then a terrible thud, followed by a scream of agony. Then another. Another.

Another.

A groan.

Another.

‘Trish?’ Evie asked, her own voice quavering. She was shaking. ‘Trish? Trish? Can you hear me, Trish? Trish?’

Matt Robinson had his door open before the car had come to a halt. He jumped out, with the wheels still rolling, his boots slipping on the wet pavement, the momentum unbalancing him and almost hurling him to the ground.

He ran round to the rear of the car, grabbed the yellow battering ram from the boot, then joined by his colleague, sprinted up the short path to the blue front door. In the distance he could hear the sound of an approaching siren, but it was some way off. He shot a glance at Juliet Solomon and she nodded, as if in confirmation. Without hesitating, he swung the heavy ram at the door, throwing all his considerable weight behind it, and stumbled over the sill as the door burst open, ripping away part of the frame with it.

As they entered the hallway, both shouting loudly, ‘POLICE! POLICE! THIS IS THE POLICE!’ they were confronted by a large, hostile brown dog, standing waist-height to Robinson and growling at them from what looked like the doorway to the kitchen.

Focused on the stairs, Robinson turned away from the dog, avoiding eye contact with it, but braced with the ram in case it came at him, and noticed his colleague taking out her pepper spray. He hoped the animal would stay where it was, not wanting to hurt it, and sprinted up the stairs, shouting out again, ‘POLICE! POLICE!’ Then, ‘Mrs Darling? Mrs Darling?’

At the top was a short landing, and as Juliet Solomon reached her colleague, the dog was standing at the bottom of the stairs barking at them excitedly, as if having decided this was now some great game everyone was playing. Neither police officer had to look far. Directly in front of them was a white door — or the remains of one. Its centre had been kicked or hacked out, making enough of a hole for a grown person to climb through. On the other side of it they could see a figure standing. A small, thin man in his early fifties, wearing a baggy knitted jumper and grey flannel trousers.

He was just standing, motionless, holding a wood axe, both hands gripping the handle, the way he might hold a barbell. There was blood on the blade and no expression on his face, none at all.

The floor and the walls around him that the two officers could see from the doorway were spattered with blood.

‘Drop your weapon!’ Juliet Solomon shouted, as Matt Robinson made an ‘ambulance urgent’ call on his radio.

There was no response from the man. He just stared blankly ahead, as if in a trance.

Outside a siren was coming closer.

‘Drop the axe!’ Solomon repeated, more loudly, and took a step closer to the door.

‘Are you Mr Darling?’ Matt Robinson shouted. ‘Where’s Mrs Darling?’

Again there was no response.

The dog was barking furiously again now. There was the sound of voices and the clump of boots downstairs. Robinson heard Ops-1’s voice on his radio, informing him that armed response officers were at the scene.

‘I’ll give you one more warning,’ Solomon shouted, increasingly concerned. ‘Put down your weapon!’

Very calmly and quietly, looking down at the blood-soaked floor, Seymour Darling said, ‘She didn’t give me any option, I had to do it. I needed to do it, actually. Sometimes in life you just have to do things. It is what it is.’