Persons Unknown: A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick 2018. Susie Steiner

other than what is said.

      ‘You are so down with the kids,’ he’ll say to her when she puts some kind of easy-listening mum-pop on the iPod.

      Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy. What is that? Lines from Twelfth Night embedded in her brain. Funny that she’d resented all the drumming and drilling at school, the tittering and yawning in uniforms as lines were delivered by lacklustre boys and girls leaning back in their chairs. The essays on Coriolanus or Much Ado. She hadn’t realised those lines would be the ones to comfort her most in the second half of her life. Perhaps the teachers knew; had thought to themselves, ‘You’ll thank me one day.’

       Davy

      It’s good to have Manon back, he thinks, striding across the police station car park towards the featureless grass expanse of Hinchingbrooke Park. He plans to cut through to the wooded area where the body has been found – quicker than trying to walk the enormous curve of Brampton Road. That road is gridlocked with rush-hour traffic, the headlights of school-run mums and commuters out of Huntingdon. Only around five-ish – an unusual time of day for someone to meet a violent death. And opposite a school, too.

      He’s anxious to get there, to be the first. He breaks into a jog. In the distance, he can see blue lights illuminating the trees in a rhythmic sweep, the flash of a couple of fluorescent jackets.

      It’s good to have her back, but Manon has to understand that things have changed. He isn’t her DC any more – she can’t sit in a car the way she used to and bark orders at him. He’ll likely be leading this case – not as SIO, that’ll be Harriet – but on the ground, running the constables. The thought makes him jog faster. He wants to get there, get started. But his excitement – or is it a stitch? – is tugged at from below by something like aversion. His body pushes forward but his inner self pulls back. He can’t do it. He isn’t up to it. He’s been over-promoted by the super, who thinks of him as a son.

      Davy is panting (it’s a wonder he passed his last bleep test); his heart knocking with impatience to master the scene, and with fear also. He might be unmasked at any moment.

      ‘The shallowness deep within,’ Manon said, ages ago now – just after his promotion – when he’d discussed his Imposter Syndrome with her. ‘You’re not the only one, you know.’ And he’d wondered whether she meant, ‘You’re not the only one who thinks you’re a useless twat.’

      Why does he keep thinking about her? He wishes she was here, that’s why. She seems a more substantial person than he does. He slows to a walk because the stitch is really painful now. Even more substantial these days: her breathing laboured, her breasts enormous. He doesn’t want to be one of those men, but it’s like trying to pretend you’re looking out to sea when there’s a vast mountain range right in your sightline.

      He comes alongside the body. Looks around him. Harriet’s not here, nothing’s started yet. Within half an hour this place’ll be crawling with uniforms. Looking down, he sees the clothing has been cut open so paramedics could work on the victim’s chest – white shirt, suit jacket, wool coat, Ozwald Boateng written on the purple shimmering lining. The eyes are open, mouth too, the chest caked in dried blood and the small incision of the wound itself, evidently from a knife, like a cut in an uncooked joint of pork. Small red opening in waxy yellow flesh.

      Davy looks around him again.

      He crouches down unsteadily, and a gust of wind nearly pushes him on top of the corpse. He puts a hand out to balance himself. You don’t want to contaminate the scene – isn’t that the first rule, the only thing they drum into you at training? Keep your hands in your pockets.

      If only he could cop a glance at that wallet that he can see poking out of the purple silk lining – then he could get started. If he could get a name off a bank card, an ID, then the story can start and this is a whopper. This one’ll be all over the news. The pressure, he can feel it already popping at his temples, is going to be massive. Keep your hands in your pockets, Davy Walker.

      ‘What the fuck are you doing, Davy?’ It is Harriet.

      He jumps up. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I’m not doing anything.’

      ‘Yeah, well, step away from the evidence until SOCO gets here,’ she says.

      ‘Know who he is?’ Davy asks.

      ‘Not yet. But he’ll still be dead in an hour after forensics have got what they need so there’s no need to be patting him down.’

      He takes a step back.

      ‘We need to cordon this section of wood, make it wide,’ Harriet says. ‘Where’s your notebook, Davy? C’mon, or do you not want to run this scene? First priority is hands-and-knees search for a weapon. No point getting the dogs out, too many people around. But we do need community policing down here – I want the public reassured by not being able to move for police officers. We need a community inspector to go into the school, talk to the head, make sure all the kids get home safely. Same at the hospital.’

      ‘We should check Acer Ward,’ Davy says.

      ‘Yes, good thought. See if you can track down the consultant psychiatrist, ask him if they had any psychos go walkabout this afternoon. I didn’t just use that word, by the way.’

      ‘What about an ARV?’

      ‘No, leave them out – what can armed response do, realistically? Let’s not blow the budget. I want scene guards on the cordon, not the idiots we had on the last one. There’s a lot of footfall, I don’t want this scene contaminated, OK?’

      ‘Who found him?’

      ‘Judith Cole, over there,’ Harriet says, nodding towards a woman whose hair is matted against her head with blood. It’s smeared down her cheek and has soaked the collar of her coat. She has the distant look of a person who has yet to take in what has happened to her. Someone – a paramedic, probably – has placed a foil blanket over her shoulders of the kind used by runners at the end of a race.

      ‘She’s significant, obviously – last person to see him alive. We need her clothes for forensics.’

      ‘Why is there blood on her face and hair?’

      ‘She cradled the victim, tried to listen to his last words apparently.’

      Davy is writing furiously, his hand cold and shaky. Harriet doesn’t stop, rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Also at the hospital, let’s check to see if anyone’s self-admitted. Knife wounds.’ She nods at the executive detached homes curling around the cul-de-sac adjacent to the school. ‘Over there, Snowdonia Way, that’s where I want house to house to start. And we can warn them to be vigilant while we’re at it. Set up a roadblock. We want witnesses, people who were driving in this direction.’

      Davy is writing down Acer Ward while his brain tries to keep a tab on the subsequent items on the checklist. Nothing must fall off the checklist. He’s thinking Snowdonia Way, that was next, then – what? – something to do with clothes.

      At the same time some other part of his brain is thinking, this isn’t a tidy one: not the usual kind of murder where the person who did it is lying smashed next to the victim or is making a cack-handed run for it towards a waiting panda car or where their perp is just, well, obvious because of the backstory: in a relationship with the victim, threatened them with it last time, just did a massive drugs deal and owed someone money. Sent a text saying, ‘I’ll get you, you’re for it.’ Their perps, often, were not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier and the cases were tidy. Dirty but clean, as in ring-fenced, not leaching towards the executive new builds of Snowdonia Way with their gas barbecues and two-car garages. Davy feels the anxiety reach its fist around his stomach.

      ‘So that woman Judith