Page 43 of No Safe Place
She was with a younger man, also in white overalls, who smiled at Callum and held up a DSLR camera with an apologetic shrug.
Callum looked down at his hands, then held them out in front of him.
The man walked over with a rustle and put the camera to his face, and the detective stayed in the doorway. Callum closed his eyes as the shutter sound started, willing himselfnot to count how many photos he was taking. Trying to dampen down the panic that was still beating below his breastbone.
‘Turn them over for me. That’s it.’
More shutter clicks.
Callum wanted to ask someone if Sam was okay – if she was still alive, but if he opened his mouth, he’d immediately throw up.
He’d retreated into the house as soon as he heard the sirens, but left the door open as an invitation. The first police there had asked him questions and he’d stuttered out answers.
I didn’t see anything.
I don’t know who stabbed her.
I tried to help.
‘Can you stand up for me?’ The man reached out to put a hand under his elbow, but Callum flinched away.
He took photographs of Callum’s torso, then picked up the bags. Not clear plastic bags, like you saw in detective programmes on TV. Paper bags, like you’d get at a farm shop.
Callum followed his instructions. Pulled his T-shirt over his head, dropped it into the first bag. His trainers went into the second. The man smiled at him encouragingly, like he was a toddler undressing himself before bed.
Before Callum took his jeans off, he pulled out his phone from one back pocket, and his small red Moleskine from the other. The man had to go and find more bags for those, smaller ones. Then his jeans went into the third large bag, and he sat down on the sofa in his boxers.
The skin of his chest was stained lightly red in some places, where the worst of the blood had been, but otherwise it was clean. Under the bare seventy-watt light bulb the bloodstains up to his elbows looked comical, like part of a gory Halloween costume.
‘Can I have a shower?’ he asked. His voice was a croak.
The forensics man turned to the woman.
‘We’ll get you cleaned up at the station, Callum,’ she said gently.
The man took a step back, collecting up the bags of his belongings.
‘I can’t leave.’ Callum’s voice cracked. ‘I can’t leave the house.’
‘I’m afraid you can’t stay here, Callum,’ the detective said. Field – that was her name. She moved into the room, to allow the photographer to get past, and then it was just them. ‘This is a crime scene now, and we need to do everything we can to catch whoever hurt Sam.’
He had to leave the house.
A breeze lifted the curtains up into the air.
He had to leave the house.
‘Is she dead?’ he asked, in a whisper.
Field shook her head. ‘No, Callum. She’s with the paramedics now.’
Sam was alive.
‘You recognised Sam, didn’t you, Callum?’ Field asked. ‘How do you know her?’
He couldn’t concentrate.
He was going to be taken away.
