Free Fade to Black by Steven Bannister

couple of notes, answered a question, and hung up, staring at the floor for a moment, digesting the information she had been given. The body of a young woman had been found in a laneway off Earl’s Court Road. The PC said that the Scene of Crime team had been dispatched. The PC had hesitated and then said that according to the initial report, there were aspects of the scene that were ‘disturbing’. Allie assumed this meant ‘beyond the ordinary’. They were all disturbing in her book.
    Operations had asked whom DCI St. Clair would like to attend the scene. She advised that Detective Constable Mathew Connors was on call. Allie had written down the exact address of the crime scene and decided to check it out as well, even though it was after midnight. Earl’s Court wasn’t far away from her apartment—maybe fifteen minutes, maybe less at this time of night.
    Excitement and dread coursed through her in equal measure. She trusted DC Connors, but did not want the first case on her watch to be mishandled. She cursed that she had not arranged to bring a pool car home. It was a perk of the new job, but she’d forgotten about it when she had been talking to the guy from administration earlier that day. She threw her father’s book on top of her desk and looked out her window as she ran for her motorcycle gear. It was raining.
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Seven
     
    Earl’s Court, Thursday 12:20 a.m.
     
    Twenty-six-year-old DC Mathew Connors made a sound like a fur seal as his beef curry from earlier in the evening involuntarily heaved from his stomach, splattering down into the darkness of a drain hole. The murder at 21 King’s Lane was unlike any he had seen. He had greeted the grim-faced SOCO moments earlier with a cheery ‘good evening’ and immediately regretted it. Sergeant George Houghton had been ashen-faced and Mathew knew he had attended many, many crime scenes in his thirty-something years on the force. George had wordlessly led Mathew down the winding lane, pointed to the corner, and walked away.
    Sweating and heaving, Mathew now knew why George hadn’t lingered. Wiping his mouth with his now sodden, stained handkerchief, he backed away from the scene. He ducked under the blue and white barrier tape and hurried back out into the steady rain. He reached the point where the lane intersected with Earl’s Court road, across from the normally busy Tube Station. He needed to breathe cold, wet air and regain control. Images from the lane raged through his brain. He looked up, startled, as DCI St. Clair coasted her motorbike to a halt beside him. He hadn’t expected her.
    The rain fell heavier. Allie St. Clair maneuvered her bike under the canopy provided by the now closed Chinese restaurant bordering the lane. Fixing the stand and stowing her helmet, she peered down the length of the cobbled-stoned lane to the arc lights at the end. She looked at Mathew Connors, who had not spoken.
    “That bad, eh?”
    He retched again. “Christ almighty,” he squeaked. St. Clair felt the stirrings of real concern now. Connors was young, but he was an experienced officer. She decided to abandon any further attempt at conversation.
    She approached the tape, but was intercepted by Sergeant Houghton, his right arm extended towards her. “Are you sure you want to go down there, girly?”
    Girly?
    Fortunately, Allie knew George well and he had always called her that. It had ceased to be offensive years ago, particularly after they had worked on a number of cases in which George had proven a compassionate, competent officer. He was, at base, a kind man who had no pretensions to advancement and no time for ‘yuppy bullshit’ as he called it. He was old-school, honest and a complete chauvinist, as were most of his contemporaries.
    “I have to look, George. Connors is badly shaken… I guess you noticed that?”
    “He has every reason,” George said, looking away. “It’s the worst I’ve seen. Can’t say any more than that.