‘Uh … sure,’ she said, scrambling for her bedside cabinet. She hoped she had a condom; it had been so long. God, what if they were out of date? Surely the date was just advisory anyway. If she didn’t check then it didn’t matter.
She found an unopened box and threw it at him. He opened it and pulled out the condom, quickly pulling his pants down and putting it on. She lifted her backside and shimmied her underpants off too. This was really happening. He lay on top of her again and his face hovered above hers. They both held their breath as he pushed his way inside her. His blond hair tickled her face with every thrust. She lifted her hand and tucked his hair behind his ear, it felt strange, synthetic. She would ask him about it after and they would laugh, she would tell him that she didn’t care about his hair, she loved him for him. Now that she had properly met him she didn’t feel silly for calling what they had love. They’d already been talking online for so long, and knew so much about each other. She did love him.
‘Is this OK?’ he asked.
She felt his hand on her throat and nodded; they had talked about this online. She knew the safe word – something else they had discussed. He was gentle anyway, no pressure at all.
‘You can be rougher if you want.’ She felt his hand close around her throat as he pushed harder into her. She wanted a little danger, something a bit less conventional. They were perfect for each other, this was exactly what she had wanted, exactly what she had told him she wanted.
She started to feel dizzy, combined with the arousal she really was flying now; climax was imminent but she needed to breathe. She didn’t have the courage to see it through. Maybe next time. She imagined the weeks they would spend tangled together between the sheets like this. There was no need to hurry.
‘Yellow,’ she said.
‘Just a little more. Trust me,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘Yellow!’ she said again. That was the safe word, wasn’t it? Wasn’t this the end of it? Wasn’t he supposed to stop now? Instead his fingers dug into her neck even harder than before. She was finding it harder to breathe; she started to pound her fists against him but he just carried on. His grip tightened and she felt the tears streaming down the sides of her face. His thrusting was more aggressive now and she wasn’t enjoying this anymore. She could hear a faint muttering coming from him; she was too disoriented to make out the words, but when she focused enough to see his eyes there was no warmth there, just malice.
‘Stupid fucking bitch.’ She heard his last words and the sound of him laughing as she slipped into unconsciousness.
DS Imogen Grey and DS Adrian Miles pulled up outside the pale green house on Colleton Hill just outside Exeter city centre. Standing in front of them was a row of picturesque terraced cottages facing a thicket of overgrown bushes and brambles, some evergreen and some not so much. From the ground floor Imogen imagined you could pretend you were right in the countryside in the summer. The street was almost hidden from the big red-brick blocks on the other side of the greenery.
‘Ready to go?’ she asked Adrian, who was wearing his ever-present glazed look. The look of someone who was trying to adjust to life without someone else. Someone trying to pretend they weren’t grieving. He obviously hadn’t been sleeping; he was probably drinking too much again. She couldn’t ask him if he was all right because that wasn’t how this partnership worked. He would talk to her if he needed to, she was confident of that.
‘Yep, let’s go.’ He turned the engine off. They got out of the car and looked at the front door, which was being guarded by a uniformed police officer, PC Griffin. He nodded at them both.
‘What’s the story here then?’ Imogen asked the officer.
‘Young woman, Erica Lawson, didn’t turn up for work yesterday or today. When the boss finally got in touch with her ICE contact, her sister, she came to the house and let herself in. Found Erica upstairs on the bed, called the police immediately.’
‘Did she touch anything in the house?’ Imogen asked.
‘A couple of things, said she let the cat in before she went upstairs and when she saw the body she threw up in the toilet … so she flushed it.’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ Imogen rolled her eyes.
‘Then she washed her hands and face in the bathroom sink. They’ve taken her to the hospital to get checked out. She’s pretty shaken.’ PC Griffin screwed up his face as he spoke.
‘Jesus.’ Imogen sighed before pulling her gloves out of her pocket and entering the house, Adrian behind her.
Inside, the cottage itself was quaint and traditional in its decoration. There was a smell though, a sweet, unpleasant smell that caught in the back of Imogen’s throat. The floral sofa was adorned with a crochet throw and in the centre of the floor was a jute oval rug under an Ercol coffee table. It was all retro shabby chic, duck egg blues and cowslip yellows. The walls were filled with photo frames, with lots of pictures of two women on various holidays together. Presumably the victim and her sister. Imogen was hit with guilt for being angry with the woman who had contaminated the crime scene. Sometimes you had to try to remember that it was more than just a job, that there were people involved, family, loved ones. Maybe she needed a holiday. Case by case, she could feel her empathy eroding.
She gave herself a shake; it must just be tiredness. When this case was over she might see about having a few days off.
They made their way up the narrow staircase in silence, aside from the creaks and groans of the floorboards. Imogen took a deep breath before entering the bedroom. Time to meet the victim.
The body of Erica Lawson lay on top of the covers, fully dressed. At a first glance, you might think she was asleep; her arms were folded across her waist, almost like the classic image of Sleeping Beauty. But when they got closer, it became evident that the woman’s eyes were open and her body had started to decay.
Imogen had seen a few petechial haemorrhages in her time, enough to know that this was a case of strangulation: the red dots around Erica’s eyes caused by the explosion of the tiny blood vessels that link the smallest parts of your arteries to the smallest parts of your veins. Ignoring the body, the room seemed to be incredibly clean and tidy, immaculate. If there was anything out of place, it wasn’t at first obvious. It was cold though, very cold. The window was open. Imogen made a mental note to double check the sister hadn’t opened it. Maybe whoever did this wanted to confuse the time of death.
They would have to bring the girl’s sister back from the hospital when she was feeling up to it to check if anything had been disturbed. That would happen after the scene had been processed by the crime scene technicians who were all bustling around the room, quietly placing evidence markers and taking photographs.
‘What do you think?’ Adrian said, breaking her train of thought.
‘Well it’s staged, that much is for certain.’
‘Agreed, obviously.’
‘Very controlled.’
‘Look at the buttons on her blouse,’ Adrian said.
‘What
