A Body in My House

The Woman in the Kitchen The woman was lying between the kitchen table and the island, one arm extended towards a chair as though she had been trying to pull herself upright. Gareth saw her before he saw the blood. He had come in through the front door with his overnight bag still over his shoulder, called Sophie's name, and followed the strip of light beneath the kitchen door because someone had left every other room dark. For a second he thought she had fallen. There was a chair tipped back on two legs against the radiator and a pale shoe near the bin. The woman wore dark trousers and a cream jumper. Her hair had fallen across her face, hiding everything but her mouth, which was slightly open. He took a step towards her and the shape on the floor rearranged itself into something he could no longer misunderstand. Blood had collected beneath her side and spread across the pale tiles, some of it smudged in an arc where her hand had moved. He dropped his bag. The strap caught on his coat sleeve, pulling him round so awkwardly that he nearly fell against the table. 'Hello?' he said. 'Can you hear me?' There was no movement. He lowered himself beside her and reached for the wrist nearest him, then changed his mind because her hand was wet and he couldn't keep his own fingers steady. At her neck he thought he felt something, although he couldn't tell whether it was a pulse or the pressure of his fingertips. The first-aid course he'd done two years earlier had taken place in a training room above the warehouse, with a plastic dummy that stayed obligingly still. He tried again. 'Come on,' he said, more to himself than to her. 'Please.' There was something projecting from the side of her jumper. He stared at it before understanding that the fabric had folded around the handle of a kitchen knife, one of the six from the wooden block beside the cooker. They had been a wedding present, outlasting three kettles and a dishwasher, and he knew the slightly squared-off shape of the handles without needing to see the blade. It was hidden from him. He did not touch it. He found his phone in his coat pocket, dropped it and had to feel under the table for it. The screen showed 19:33 as he dialled 999. He had checked the car clock when he parked, and knew there were only a few minutes between getting out and this call; he could not account for them in any order that made sense. 'Which service do you require?' 'Ambulance. And police. There's a woman in my house. She's been stabbed.' He was still on his knees beside her, with the phone braced against his shoulder because he didn't trust himself to hold it steady. He had to give the address twice because the first time he said the postcode of their old flat. The operator repeated the correct street and asked if the woman was breathing. Gareth bent until he was close enough to smell shampoo beneath the blood and the ordinary kitchen air. Her jumper did not rise, however long he watched it. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'I can't tell.' 'Is the knife still there?' the operator asked. When Gareth said yes, she told him to leave it there and guided him through checking whether the woman was breathing normally. He put the phone on speaker beside the fruit bowl. Trying to position her without disturbing the knife, he slipped on the wet tiles, caught her hair beneath his wrist and eased it free. The operator's voice stayed level even when he interrupted to explain what he'd done. 'What's your name, sir?' 'Gareth. Gareth Hurst.' He said the surname again, more distinctly, when he heard his own voice shaking on it. 'All right, Gareth. Help is on the way. I need you to keep listening to me.' He began compressions because that was what she told him to do. The woman's body felt smaller than it looked. His arms were straight, his weight in his shoulders, and he counted when instructed, losing the numbers twice. The operator brought him back to the beginning without comment. Gareth had never seen a person injured this badly. The nearest thing in his life had been his father slipping on ice outside the supermarket and breaking a wrist, an accident that had involved a great deal of embarrassed swearing and a paper cup of tea in A&E. He found himself expecting this woman to make a sound, to object to being handled by a stranger on the kitchen floor. The front door moved against the draught. He stopped, thinking somebody had entered, and the operator called him back to the phone. 'Yes. Sorry. I'm here,' he said, putting a hand down beside the speaker to steady himself. She told him to keep going until the ambulance crew took over. Gareth moved his knees clear of the damp patch on the floor and started counting again, hoping the operator would stay with him through every number. He worked until his arms burned. At some point he looked towards the back door. Its glass showed only the dark garden and a reflection of the kitchen. His own reflection was bent over the woman's body, the shoulders of his coat broad and unfamiliar. There was nobody outside that he could see. The ambulance crew arrived first. A man and woman came down the hallway carrying bags and asked Gareth to move. He stood with his hands held awkwardly away from his body while they took his place. 'How long has she been here?' one of them called to Gareth. 'I don't know. I just got here.' He tried to make that clearer for the paramedic. 'I was only in the kitchen a few minutes before I rang. She was already on the floor.' 'What time did you find her?' 'About half seven. Just before I rang. I was in Bedford. I've come back from work.' He heard the male paramedic make a quick assessment and use words he understood individually but couldn't put together. His colleague opened another pack and asked Gareth whether he was hurt. Looking at the blood on his cuff, he told her it wasn't his. She asked him to wait outside the kitchen. 'Can you tell me if she's going to be all right?' he said as he backed away from the table. The paramedic paused with both hands occupied. 'We need to work, Mr Hurst. Someone will speak to you.' She turned back towards her colleague before he could ask anything else. A police car stopped outside, the blue lights washing across the frosted panel beside the front door. Gareth had left the hall light on, and in that light he saw a narrow line of blood down the side of his trousers. He went to wipe it with his thumb, then stopped. The first constable to enter saw him do it. 'Are you Mr Hurst? I'm PC Nolan. Is anyone else in the property?' 'I don't know.' He heard how that sounded. 'I mean, there shouldn't be. My wife isn't here. I called her when I came in but she didn't answer. No, I shouted. I haven't phoned her yet.' 'We'll check. For now, stay with my colleague.' Nolan indicated the younger officer waiting at the bottom of the stairs, then stepped aside to make room for another member of the ambulance crew. A younger officer guided him towards the sitting room, then thought better of it when Gareth put a hand on the doorframe. He looked at the mark he had left on the white paint. The officer saw it too and asked him to remain in the hallway. He fetched a dining chair from the far side of the room without asking Gareth to help. There were little drops on the heel of one of Gareth's shoes. He could see them because the chair was positioned opposite the hall mirror. The house was familiar from this particular angle: the coat hooks Sophie had insisted they install lower than Gareth wanted, the small tray for keys, the picture of a beach in Barcelona above the telephone socket they no longer used. He had looked at it every morning before work without ever properly noticing the water. Sophie had bought the photograph from a stall near the harbour and carried it on the plane inside a magazine, complaining about the price and refusing to let him fold it. He wondered whether she had been home after he left on Wednesday. She often stayed late at the training centre on Fridays, though by this time she should have finished. 'Is Sophie your wife's name?' the younger officer asked. 'Yes. Sophie Hurst. She's an administrator at a training centre in town.' The details came readily; they were the ones he gave when booking something for them both. 'Do you know where she is this evening?' 'Work, maybe. She's not been answering.' Gareth took out his phone. There was an unread message from a client asking about a revised price for a cleaning contract. Above it were two messages to Sophie from the drive home: one to say he had stopped for petrol and would be a bit later, the second a question about whether she wanted anything from the shop. Neither had been read. He showed the officer the screen. 'I thought she'd be here.' 'Could you tell me her number?' The younger officer had his notebook ready, though Gareth thought he'd already given the number to somebody at the door. 'We'll want to establish she's safe.' Gareth gave the number again. A car passed slowly on the road outside, its tyres making the familiar crunch across a sunken drain cover. Through the shared garden wall came the muffled theme tune of the television programme Mrs Gibbons always watched on Fridays. Someone opened and shut the back door, and he turned at once, still half expecting Sophie to walk into the hallway with her work bag and ask why there were so many people in the house. 'Can I wash my hands?' he asked. The constable said someone would arrange it, but for now his clothing and hands needed to stay as they were. Gareth studied the blood on his palms and the pale strip where his watch had moved up his wrist. He could remember moving the watch out of the way, but he was no longer certain whether he had done it before or after the operator told him to start the compressions. 'Will you need me to tell somebody exactly what I did?' Gareth asked. He could remember the woman's hair catching under his wrist, although already he was uncertain which hand he'd used to free it. 'Yes, we'll go through everything,' the constable said. 'You were following the ambulance call handler's instructions?' 'I tried to. I lost count twice, and she told me to start again. I'm not certain I did the rest properly.' He could still feel the pressure of the woman's ribs beneath his hands, and that was making it difficult to remember the operator's instructions in order. 'You did what you could.' The constable wrote Gareth's answer down before asking anything else, taking enough care with the wording that Gareth waited to see whether he would write down the part about losing count. By eight o'clock, another police car had arrived. Two officers went upstairs, checked the bedrooms and bathrooms, then reported the property clear. An officer at the back door asked for the name of the woman next door. Gareth could not at first remember whether Mrs Gibbons had an e or an i in her surname. He could remember the age of her terrier and that she put both bins out on Wednesday even though only one was collected. He explained how to reach her over the fence. He wanted to go into the kitchen again. The paramedics were still there; somebody had opened the window above the sink. Gareth could see part of their movements between the wall and the doorway. His bag lay on the floor where he had dropped it, one zip partly undone and a corner of his pale blue work shirt visible. The woman had been in his house while he had sat in a service-station forecourt near Luton, burning his mouth on coffee. He tried to picture her walking through the hall, whether she had knocked, whether someone had let her in, but all he knew of her was the single angle in which he had found her. A male officer in a darker jacket sat on the bottom stair rather than standing over him. He introduced himself as Sergeant White and took Gareth's full name and date of birth, then asked who owned the house. Gareth told him it belonged to him and Sophie jointly; they'd lived there eight years and had no children. White wrote the details down with the unhurried care of someone recording a minor collision. 'And you don't know the woman in the kitchen?' White asked, glancing up from his notes. 'No. I've never seen her.' Gareth thought of the training centre, the women Sophie sometimes mentioned from work, but there wasn't a face he could connect to the one on the floor. 'Are you sure she isn't someone you've met locally, or through work?' White asked. Gareth said he was. 'All right,' the sergeant told him. 'Don't try to guess. If something comes to you later, that's when you tell us.' 'Do you know who she is?' Gareth asked. White shook his head and said they were working on an identification. Gareth had expected the paramedics to know, or to find something obvious in the kitchen that gave her a name. He found himself looking at the doorway again, as though it might have been written somewhere inside. Gareth nearly said that perhaps she had come for Sophie, but he had no reason to believe it beyond the fact that he had never met her himself. The sergeant asked which way Gareth usually came home from Bedford and whether he'd stopped anywhere. Gareth described the station near Luton where he'd bought fuel and an indifferent coffee, putting the receipt in the door pocket of his car. He was halfway through explaining the roadworks near the slip road before realising that the sergeant only needed to know the route. The sergeant let him finish. A paramedic came out of the kitchen carrying a bag. She and the sergeant spoke in lowered voices out of Gareth's hearing. The second paramedic stayed behind for a few more minutes, then appeared in the hall without her equipment. She approached Gareth and said they had been unable to revive the woman. He looked at her face and waited for the second half of the sentence. When it did not come, he asked if she was sure. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'There was nothing more we could do.' He thanked her. The word came out as it would have done after someone carried a parcel into the house. She glanced at his hands. 'Has somebody checked you over?' Gareth said he didn't need anything. The young constable spoke up and said they would take care of him. The paramedics left, their ambulance easing out without its siren. The officers moved differently after that. They kept to the hallway or walked where someone directed them; nobody picked up Gareth's bag. A uniformed constable took over the entry sheet at the front door, recording each person who crossed the threshold. Sergeant White asked Gareth to confirm, as carefully as he could, whether he had disturbed anything else. Gareth mentioned the chair, the phone under the table, the woman's hair, the compressions, the knife he hadn't touched. He had to describe the sequence twice. He wanted to be exact, and every time he tried he became less sure where his left hand had been. At five past eight Sergeant White said an investigating officer was coming. The police would need to keep the house secure, preserve Gareth's clothes and arrange somewhere for him to wait. Gareth asked again about ringing Sophie, but White wanted the contact coordinated with the officers already trying to find her. He didn't say she'd been reported missing, and Gareth was unable to make himself ask the question outright. The heating clicked on, working to the Friday timetable Gareth had programmed when they put in separate room controls. He sat with his hands between his knees while two officers checked the entry number on the scene log. He could no longer see his bag or the pale shoe beyond the kitchen door. He found himself looking down the hallway anyway.