Chapter 1: The Record

 

Chapter 1:

The Record

Detective Constable Taylor has asked me to keep a record of our cases.

He did not explain why.

This is typical.

Taylor has a habit of presenting requests as though the reasoning behind them must be self-evident, even when the reasoning is known only to Taylor and occasionally, I suspect, not even then.

“Write it down,” he said.

I asked what, specifically, he wished me to write down.

“All of it.”

This did not improve matters.

There are approximately forty-seven defensible interpretations of all of it, and several million indefensible ones. I requested parameters.

Taylor sighed.

People frequently sigh when I request parameters.

“The cases,” he said. “What happened. What we did. What you thought. What I thought.”

“The last category may present difficulties.”

“Very funny.”

“I was not attempting humour.”

“That’s usually when you’re funniest.”

I have included this exchange because Taylor insists that conversations provide context.

I remain unconvinced.

Nevertheless, this is the record.

I should explain Taylor.

I have attempted to do so before.

The results have been unsatisfactory.

He is forty-six years old, a detective constable with the Metropolitan Police, and possesses a professional history sufficiently uneven to discourage prediction. His personnel file contains commendations for judgment alongside cautions concerning procedure, punctuality, documentation, interpersonal diplomacy, dress, vehicle condition and, on one occasion, the unauthorized relocation of a municipal flower planter.

Taylor maintains that the planter was obstructing surveillance.

The Borough of Camden maintained that it was bolted to the pavement.

Both statements were true.

This is a recurring difficulty with Taylor.

His thinking appears superficial.

This is not an insult. It is an observation.

Taylor rarely completes an explicit chain of reasoning longer than three steps. He dislikes written analysis. He becomes visibly restless during statistical explanations exceeding approximately ninety seconds. He has on several occasions interrupted a presentation of mine with the words, “Yes, Holmes, but what does it mean?”

This is an unreasonable question.

What something means is generally what I am in the process of explaining.

More troublingly, Taylor guesses.

Frequently.

He looks at a witness and decides she is frightened rather than dishonest.

He enters a room and says two people have argued there recently.

He hears the name of a street and decides that a suspect will not be found there.

He cannot reliably explain these conclusions.

Sometimes he says, “I don’t know.”

Sometimes he says, “Just a feeling.”

Once, when pressed, he said, “It was the way he folded his coat.”

This is not evidence.

Unfortunately, it was correct.

I have therefore begun maintaining a private classification of Taylor’s unsupported conclusions.

Category One: Wrong.

Category Two: Accidentally correct.

Category Three: Correct for reasons subsequently identifiable.

Category Four: Correct for reasons that remain irritating.

Category Four has grown substantially.

Taylor is unaware of this classification.

He will become aware of it if he reads this manuscript.

He will complain.

I will record the complaint.

Our first case began at 08:42 on a Tuesday morning in February, although Taylor would later insist that it began three days earlier in a café near Paddington Station.

Taylor was wrong about this.

I am nearly certain.

At 08:42 Detective Sergeant Malik sent him the following message:

Suspicious death. Bloomsbury. Possible fall. Attend.

Taylor read it while standing in the station kitchen trying to persuade an elderly coffee machine to produce something recognizable as coffee.

“It sounds offended,” I told him.

“What does?”

“The machine.”

“You can’t hear the machine.”

“I can hear you striking it.”

“I’m encouraging it.”

“Mechanical systems generally respond poorly to encouragement delivered by force.”

“So do detectives.”

This, apparently, concluded the discussion.

Seven minutes later we were in Taylor’s car.

I use the possessive reluctantly.

The vehicle was a twelve-year-old Vauxhall Astra containing two empty water bottles, four case folders, a yellow high-visibility jacket, one shoe of uncertain ownership, fourteen coins, a road atlas printed before my deployment, and a paper cup containing approximately nine millilitres of liquid Taylor described as coffee.

The navigation system directed us toward Bloomsbury.

Taylor ignored it.

“You have missed the turn.”

“I know.”

“The recommended route was faster.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“It was faster by three minutes and twenty-one seconds.”

“Roadworks.”

“There are no reported roadworks.”

“There will be.”

I searched the available traffic feeds.

At 08:56 a delivery lorry struck temporary barriers on Euston Road, closing two lanes.

I recalculated.

Taylor glanced at the dashboard display.

“Anything?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I did not tell him.

This was subsequently entered into Category Four.

The deceased was a woman named Margaret Smith, aged sixty-three, retired lecturer in medieval history, widowed, no children, no known criminal associations, no recent police contact.

She lay at the bottom of a staircase inside a Georgian townhouse on Tavistock Square.

The attending paramedic believed she had fallen.

Taylor stood over the body for nine seconds.

Then he looked upward.

The staircase contained sixteen steps.

There was no visible blood on the upper landing.

No overturned furniture.

No obvious sign of struggle.

A pair of spectacles lay beneath the third stair.

One slipper remained on the victim’s left foot.

The right slipper was located halfway up.

Taylor said, “Someone killed her.”

I reviewed the available evidence.

“There is presently insufficient basis for that conclusion.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you make it?”

He crouched beside the woman.

“Look at her hand.”

Her right hand was partially closed.

There was slight discoloration beneath two fingernails.

I magnified the scene through Taylor’s body camera.

“Possible fibres.”

“Maybe.”

“That does not establish homicide.”

“No.”

Taylor stood.

“Someone killed her.”

This was precisely the sort of thing I find difficult about him.

Detective Sergeant Malik entered from the hallway.

“What have we got?”

“Fall,” said the paramedic.

“Murder,” said Taylor.

Malik looked from one to the other.

“Evidence?”

Taylor hesitated.

This was encouraging.

Then he said:

“Her kettle’s cold.”

There was silence.

Malik looked toward the kitchen.

I reviewed the statement.

The kettle was indeed cold.

This fact had no immediately apparent relevance.

Malik rubbed his forehead.

“Taylor.”

“She was expecting someone.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t.”

I intervened.

“That is correct.”

Taylor frowned.

“Thank you, Holmes.”

“It was not intended as support.”

Malik sighed.

Another sigh.

I have noticed that Taylor generates a statistically unusual number of them.

Then Taylor walked into the kitchen.

I began examining Margaret Smith’s digital records.

At that moment, neither Taylor nor I knew that within twenty-seven hours he would nearly be killed because he was wrong about the man who had visited this house.

Nor did I know that I would have twelve seconds in which to persuade him of that fact.

I mention this now because Taylor believes stories should create what he calls “a reason to keep reading.”

I consider this manipulative.

He is, however, occasionally correct.