'Til Death (DI Steven Marr Book 1) - UK Crime Fiction Whodunnit Thriller (5 page)

Persuade me to stick around…

Marr couldn’t help but think of Sam and her flat the night before. Would she try and persuade him to stick around?

Was there really anything to stick around for?

They’d never talked about it. So what, exactly, was going on? Now there was a baby on the way, would Sam just let him go? The get out of jail free card?

Marr had a feeling he already knew the answer. But not because Sam was vindictive, and not because she was some loser: she was miles away from that.

No, Marr got the feeling Sam might think it was
wrong
for him to get away with it.

‘Did anyone know about your affair?’ he asked Stanic.

‘Affair?’

‘Fling, whatever you want to call it’.

‘No, no-one knew. We didn’t have any mutual friends. Just one of those things; I suppose I was lucky.’

‘Do you think Anna would have Anna have forgiven you?’ Marr asked, the question out before he’d thought about it.

Stanic raised his eyebrows.

‘Why do you ask?’

Marr shrugged, trying to look like it didn’t matter to him. After a moment, Stanic seemed to relax again.

‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter much now’ he said, ‘but I hope she would have. I really did love Anna. If I’d known we’d end up walking down the aisle I wouldn’t have touched Lucy. I just…it seemed worth taking the risk back then.’

Marr nodded, annoyed at himself for knowing what Stanic meant.

‘Where were you the night Anna was killed?’ Marr asked.

Stanic indicated the room they were sat in.

‘Here. Quiet night in.’

Marr said nothing, but retrieved a small black notebook from his jacket pocket.

Stanic nodded.

‘I know. No alibi. Sorry, I really…I just haven’t got anything close to one. You don’t think I did it, though, do you?’

It was a genuine question. Not an outright statement, or an attempt at persuasion.

Marr’s immediate impression was no. Stanic wasn’t a killer. Well, wasn’t a
murderer
at any rate: those ten years in the army probably weren’t spent building sandcastles.

For the moment, then, it paid to withhold judgement on him.

‘I can’t comment on that right now; I’m sure you understand.’

Stanic nodded, but looked disappointed. With most murders, the victim knew the killer: it was the husband, or the boyfriend, or the fiancée. Stanic probably knew that, and wanted to get Marr on his side.

‘Gregor, it would help a lot if you could provide any information, anything at all that could be useful to us. Can you think of any reason why Anna would have been out at Hendon House at that time of night?’

Stanic shook his head.

‘I haven’t got a clue. She didn’t text me to say that she was going there. You can check my phone: I haven’t heard from her for a couple of days. She wanted a little break before the wedding, you know: to make it that little bit more special.’

‘And you didn’t mind that?’

‘No, not really.’

‘And you can’t think of anyone she’d been arguing with? No disputes at work, no furious caterers who didn’t get the contract?’

Stanic shook his head.

‘Not at all. I mean, it was chaos. I guess most weddings are. But no, nothing like that. I won’t pretend I wasn’t glad to get away from it for the last couple of days, though. Nothing like sitting on your arse and watching the football for an evening or two.’

Marr smiled.

‘Don’t remind me’ he said.

‘United fan?’

‘For my sins. It’s tough this season; real tough. I don’t think having Giggsy around helps, either: it just reminds me of what used to be.’

‘Wouldn’t worry about it’ Stanic said, ‘I’m still not entirely over King Kenny leaving.’

They talked for a few more minutes about football before Marr made his excuses and left, still unsure about Anna Markham’s nearly-widower. He’d not seemed too badly shook up, but then he was exactly the sort of man who would bottle it all up.

The question, then, was just
how much
he was bottling up…

CHAPTER NINE

Marr’s mobile rang just as he was getting out of his car. It was Yovanovitch.

‘Doc’.

‘That’s a nice blue shirt you’re wearing, Detective’.

The doctor’s tone was chirpy, which worried Marr. The last thing he needed was a happy pathologist. Normally, it meant a complication, and the good doctor loved nothing more than a bit of schadenfreude – especially when it related to a case.

‘Liz bought the shirt, and yes I like scary movies’ Marr replied. ‘Where are you and what do you want?’

‘Step into my parlour’

Marr turned his head. On the other side of the car park, the doctor was standing by his car, nursing a takeaway cup.

‘Hope there’s no whisky in that,’ Marr said.

‘I should be so lucky. I thought you might want to hear some interesting news.’

‘Go on’.

‘Anna Markham wasn’t strangled.’

‘That was some weird blue make-up she had on.’

‘No, you idiot, I mean she didn’t
die
by being strangled. That was pre-mortem; the killer must have choked her unconscious before he stabbed her.’

‘Stabbed?’

‘A thin blade. Probably a kitchen knife, no longer than five inches. Which is enough to get the job done, as my wife likes to tell me’.

‘Thanks for the horrifying image. Why didn’t we see the wound before?’

‘It didn’t look any more than a nasty scratch, even when she was on the table. Deep, though: he hit the abdominal aorta. He must have thrown her in the river straight away: a few hours in the water would have been more than enough time for any blood to wash away, and as I said, it was a thin blade. And before you ask, no, the SOCOs haven’t had any joy finding a murder weapon.’

Marr nodded.

‘He either took it with him, or he threw it in any one of the hundreds of thousands of bins or streams in Essex.’

‘Well, I’m sure you and your team will get through them all by the time the next ice age rolls around.’

Marr was halfway through an expletive when a thought occurred.

‘Hang on. If it was one stab wound...’

‘Which it was.’

‘Then it must have been deliberate.’

‘I doubt he tripped and fell into her, Steve’

‘Shut up. I mean deliberate as in
trained
. How many stabbings a year end up in nothing but stitches? People see horror films and think that cutting through skin is like cutting through melted butter, and that it doesn’t matter where the knife goes in. So if you kill someone, first time, with a smallish blade…’

Yovanovitch nodded.

‘Cold blood. Intentional, and impressively accurate. This was pre-meditated, and if I had to guess I’d say that whoever killed her has probably killed before.’

Marr raised his eyebrows.

‘An ex-soldier, maybe?’ he said, retrieving his phone from his pocket.

CHAPTER TEN

Stanic had given up on work, for the day at least. It didn’t seem right to be working. It didn’t seem right to be doing anything. He was meant to be on his honeymoon, in bed with Anna.

He definitely wasn’t meant to be staring at a spreadsheet.

He checked his phone. Half past eleven. Not even half the day gone. He’d told his clients that he’d be unavailable, and they hadn’t really seemed bothered. The yearly accounts were all done, the bad panic of tax returns over for another eleven months.

Freelancing meant no safety net: that was the only downside to it, really. If you couldn’t work, you didn’t earn. End of. And clients came and went, on a whim a lot of the time. You couldn’t truly know where you’d be at the end of the month, let alone the end of the year.

Stanic’s thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell. At first, he thought it might be the cop, the second one who’d come round. The Inspector.

Maybe he’d had a breakthrough.

When Stanic got to his front door, though, he could see the outline of the visitor through the glass. It wasn’t the inspector.

His first thought was to not let her in. What if there was someone watching the house? What if the
cops
were watching the house?

Pausing, Stanic took a deep breath in, reminding himself that this wasn’t American TV, and there was virtually no chance he was being watched. He leaned forward and opened the door.

Caroline looked exhausted, and the skin around her eyes was red.

‘Hey’ Stanic said, trying to sound friendly without being too welcoming. The truth was that right now, Caroline was the last person he wanted anywhere near him.

‘Can I come in?’ Caroline asked.

Christ, she sounded defeated already. Not good. Stanic looked past her, up and down the road. There were no cars. It was a normal, quiet mid-week morning.

‘OK,’ he said, eventually.

Caroline walked in and sat straight down on the nearest armchair; the one that Stanic had been sitting on earlier.

‘That’s my chair’ he said, his cold tone even surprising him.

Caroline turned and looked at him, her face twisted in a snarl, her eyes wild.

‘Your fucking chair?’ she said, ‘
Your fucking chair
?’

She got up, her voice raising. Stanic tried to put up his hands to calm her down, knowing he’d made a mistakes, but it was too late. He really hoped that the nosey old boy next door didn’t have his hearing aid in.

‘FUCK YOUR CHAIR, GREG, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO? THEY’LL FIND OUT, YOU KNOW!’

Stanic knew that she was right. They
would
find out, eventually.

But the one thing he couldn’t do was panic, because what would that achieve? It was better to be calm and rational. To deal with the problem.

He could worry about closure later.

But could Caroline ever be calm? She didn’t look it right now. She was hysterical and disbelieving: a woman who’d lost her best friend, her support network. Stanic tried to remind himself that hysteria always died off, eventually. Caroline would calm down.

And then, she would be brave. She would have to be very brave.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Anna Markham’s parents lived in Needham Market, a small town around twenty-five miles from Colchester. Marr decided he had more than enough time to get there and back before the end of the day, so he set off, heading east on the A12.

The drive was uneventful, the journey ten minutes quicker than he’d expected. Marr called ahead to make sure the Markhams would be in, and sure enough, someone was waiting for him as he pulled up outside the house.

Michelle Markham was in her late-forties, but she didn’t look any older than thirty-five. She was trim, dressed in a plain white t-shirt and black jeans, her blonde hair cut short.

She invited Marr into the living room, where he took a seat on a comfortable looking sofa. Within seconds, he knew he’d been had: the sofa was shallow. He felt like he was sitting on a bus-seat.

He must have grimaced slightly, because Michelle gave him a sympathetic smile, then flashed the offending sofa a look of irritation.

‘Yes; it is a bit like being in a dentist’s chair’ she said, before heading off to make some tea.

Marr looked around the living room, searching for anything out of the ordinary, but finding nothing. Aside from the other chairs, there was a dark wood bookshelf piled high with romances and thrillers, any spare spaces filled up with silver sports trophies. Judging by the shiny figurines of bowlers mid-way through their action, Anna’s dad had been a keen cricketer in his youth.

The only other noticeable thing was the pile of bridal magazines on the coffee table. Magazines that Marr guessed hadn’t been read recently.

Marr had been dealt his share of grim cases, but he’d never been able to adjust to being around parents who’d lost their children. It was so against nature. Fathers shouldn’t bury daughters, mothers shouldn’t bury sons. All that time, and nothing to fill it with.

There was a picture of Anna on the wall; Marr guessed from her graduation. Michelle and a man that Marr assumed was Anna’s father. A happy and smiling trio. Looking at John and having seen Michelle, it was obvious where Anna’s looks had come from. John’s hair was already greying in the photo, but his jaw was square and his eyes a fierce blue.