Born in a Burial Gown (24 page)

‘Downstairs now, boss. Just waiting for your nod,’ Jiao-long said. He looked pleased to be out of the office.

‘Good. Tell him to come up. I’m going for a quick look round now. No one else is to go in. Matt, make sure we set up entry cordons. Two, please. One here at the door and an outer one downstairs. Longy, get a list of residents; the rest of you, start knocking on doors. I want to know what the rest of the building knows. And someone take William’s statement. By the looks of things, he’s got a bit of a thing for her so may know a bit about her movements and habits.’

Fluke struggled into the paper overalls and covered his shoes with the protective slippers. Putting on his face mask, he entered the flat. There was a worn and sad “Welcome” mat on the inside. The walls were painted a neutral cream. He knew, from his old flat, that most building companies used cream. It showed empty rooms at their best, apparently. The landlord obviously hadn’t bothered to change the colour scheme.

The first room off the hall was the kitchen, and Fluke saw the coffee grinder immediately. He laughed. It was exactly as Lucy had described; like a small sausage machine. He couldn’t believe their conversation two nights ago had paid off. He owed her a great deal. He’d ring her later and tell her.

He opened the fridge to check something. He knew it would be there but wanted peace of mind anyway.

The bag of coffee from Watts sat on the top shelf. The same blend as he had in his own fridge.

He opened the bag. Shiny brown beans, waiting to be ground. He thought about them and felt a little melancholic. The care and attention of the coffee farmer; the way they’d been carefully picked, dried and sold to a trader. How that trader had sold them on and eventually, probably three or four stages later, they’d found their way to a gourmet coffee shop in Carlisle. Bought by someone who appreciated them. And now they were evidence in a murder investigation. It didn’t seem fair. He put them back so they were in the right place for the videos and photographs.

The rest of the fridge was bare. No milk, she probably took her coffee black. He opened the cupboards in the kitchen. Nothing of interest. Some stock ingredients: rice, pasta, tinned tomatoes, a half-eaten packet of crisps. Nothing that couldn’t be found in a million homes across the country.

Fluke wandered round the rest of the flat. It was tasteful but impersonal. The only thing that wasn’t generic was the coffee grinder. No photos, no flowers, no ornaments or pictures. He’d have to check to see if the flat was rented out furnished or unfurnished. His money was on furnished, it looked like the flat-packed stuff you got from Ikea. Not bad quality but you wouldn’t spend too much money on it. The TV was a flat-screen but fairly basic. No satellite dish, no DVD player.

He entered the bedroom. The bed was made up with a plain cover. There was a glass of water on the bedside cabinet. A charger for something was plugged into the wall. He opened the bedside cabinet. There were a number of books in there and an e-reader, which would possibly explain the charger. He checked. It fitted. There was another charger, the lead neatly wrapped around the plug. He’d check if it fitted the mobile they found with the body later.

He opened the wardrobe and found it half-full of expensive looking clothes.

The curtains were shut and Fluke lifted them to see what she’d have been able to see. Something out of place caught his eye. There was a small pile of coins on the window ledge. He looked across at the other window and saw there was another pile there as well. Two-pence pieces, carefully balanced on top of each other. Fluke made his way out of the bedroom and checked the rest of the windows. They all had piles of coins on them.

On a hunch, he walked back to the front door and lifted the welcome mat in the inner hallway. He thought he’d heard something as he stepped on it. He lifted it up. There was broken glass underneath. A broken light bulb unless he was mistaken. Thin and curved. Very fragile. Noisy when stepped on, especially in the confined space of a hall.

Coins on window ledges. Glass underneath the mat, covering the flat’s only entrance. Crude, but extremely effective anti-intruder devices, designed to alert whoever was inside that someone was trying to get in.

All he knew about Samantha told Fluke that there would also be an external device. A device to tell her that there was already somebody inside waiting for her. She was too careful for there not to be one.

He went back out onto the landing she shared with William. Towler had cleared it to make sure the inner cordon was secured. He was on his own.

Fluke groaned involuntarily as he got down on his hands and knees. He found he was doing it more and more. He knew it wasn’t just his age – he was still only forty – but that his body was just weaker now, plain and simple. He hoped that some of his strength would return in time but he knew he’d never quite be the same again. A serious illness, the inevitable march of time and a secret only he knew about.
Still
, he thought,
I’m too young to be feeling this old.

He knew from his Northern Ireland training that security devices were invariably at ground level. They were easier to set up and harder for casual observers to see.

In the movies all you needed was a folded up piece of paper wedged into the doorframe – if the paper’s on the floor, the door’s been opened. But Fluke knew that, in reality, that would be far too easy to spot, far too easy to replace and everybody knows the trick anyway. It was the same with a strand of hair. Fluke thought that if she had an external device, it would be far more subtle. Something that wouldn’t look out of place. He cast his eyes over everything at ground level but couldn’t see anything. He stood back up and checked the top of the doorframe. Again, nothing.

He stepped back, still convinced he was right. If she was being hunted, as was still reasonable to assume, he knew she’d have some way of telling if someone was already inside. She wouldn’t go to all the effort of plastic surgery, false names and counter-surveillance precautions just to walk into a trap.

There were two options: either a device that he couldn’t see, or the killer had removed it and taken it with him. Fluke doubted the second. Why would he bother? Removing it before she arrived was the same as triggering it, and removing it after he’d killed her served no purpose. There was a third option: that she didn’t have one, but he dismissed it immediately. There was something there, he just hadn’t found it yet.

Fluke stepped back to get an overview, to look round the rest of the landing, see if there was anything different about her entrance compared to everyone else’s. The door was the same colour as William’s and the same as those he’d passed on the way up; dark blue. Each spyhole was in the same place and the flat numbers all came from the same pack. Even the external doormats were the same; a dark brown that the landlord probably hoped wouldn’t show up dirt so he wouldn’t have to replace them, there to encourage people to wipe their feet before standing on his carpets, no doubt. There was a light on each landing, equidistant between the two flats.

Fluke stared at the open doorway, convinced he’d missed something. He heard someone coming up the stairs and held his hand up to stop them. He wasn’t ready to share the scene yet.

Fluke knew he stood the best chance of catching the killer if he could get inside Samantha’s psyche – if he could think like her.

Find out how the victim lived and you’ll find out how they died.

He tried to imagine how she’d have done it. It would have to be quick to set up; she wouldn’t want anything that kept her out on the landing for too long. It would need to be just as quick to check, as well as being completely reliable. It would have to work every time, to fail even once would be unthinkable. Fluke started again. But everything was made of solid stuff, designed to withstand a transient population. No room for individual expression anywhere on the outside. The only thing they could even move would be the doormats. Everything else was fixed solidly in place.

He sighed. It was time to let the SOCO unit in to process the flat.

He hadn’t seen anything obvious to suggest it was the murder site but he instinctively knew it was. It had to be. Science would prove him right. It was time to add chemicals and powders and special lights to things.

As he moved away from the door, he moved the mat slightly with his foot. He paused. It was heavy-duty, designed to get mud and grit off shoes and boots but Fluke had moved it by accident, far easier than he should have been able to. The friction of his shoes had been enough to move it as he turned. Frowning, he bent down and lifted it up at the corner. It had been modified. It had been hollowed out. Scraped and cut away from all but the edges. A rough job, but effective. What was originally a heavy-duty item was significantly lighter. From the outside it looked like all the rest in the complex. With the inside removed it left a gap of at least half an inch, the half-inch she needed.

Underneath the mat were some crisps. Two of the crisps were crushed into several small pieces. This was it, this was her alarm system. Cunningly simple and incredibly clever.

It also explained why the bag of crisps hadn’t been finished. Fluke was a crisp addict and knew there was no way he could open a bag and not finish it. Family size ones yes, single bags, not a chance.

‘Clever, very clever,’ Towler said, appearing at his side and instantly recognising what he was seeing. They stared at her ingenuity in silence.

‘Who are you, Samantha?’ Fluke said, eventually.

He couldn’t be sure if it had been broken before they got there or whether the size twelves of armed response had crushed it. There was no way of knowing but if she’d arrived back and saw broken crisps there was no way she’d have entered that flat. She’d expect to see them unbroken, dreading the day she didn’t.

‘But which cleverer bastard circumnavigated it?’ Towler said, verbalising exactly what Fluke was thinking.

Fluke was using the same crime scene manager, Sean Rogers, and they quickly devised an evidence recovery strategy. It was far easier when there wasn’t a body, no pathologist to wait for and argue with.

Fluke needed to see blood. There wouldn’t be much but with a gunshot to the head there would be some. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye but it would be there. If there was no blood, it wasn’t the murder site. And if it wasn’t the murder site the investigation was effectively over.

They agreed which route would be taken by the SOCO team and put down stepping plates. A tech went first and videoed the flat, quickly followed by the photographer who snapped everything that Fluke and Rogers thought relevant. Next, they went in with Luminol spray. Fluke knew that when Luminol came into contact with blood, the haemoglobin oxidised and went through a chemiluminescent reaction, a reaction that would be visible in the dark.

The curtains were drawn and the blinds pulled down. With the flat in darkness, Rogers sprayed each room methodically. Fluke followed him. The reaction would only last for thirty seconds but that would be more than long enough.

There was nothing in the hall and nothing in the kitchen. Rogers sprayed the bedroom and again there was nothing. The small bathroom was the same. There was only one room left.

The living room.

As soon as Rogers sprayed the room, Fluke saw it. There wasn’t much, a few flecks on the carpet, spread over a circular patch a yard in diameter, but it was enough. Flecks that glowed. Beautiful and eerie at the same time. Mesmerised, Fluke stared until the luminous blue light faded, eventually disappearing.

As the room returned to darkness, Fluke felt a lurch of excitement. Up until then, he’d been three steps off the pace in the investigation. Everything they’d achieved had been through sheer luck, it seemed.

But regardless of how they’d got here, he was standing where the killer stood and where Samantha had died. He’d taken a massive step forward.

I’m coming for you
.

Fluke had his murder scene.

***

Fluke left Rogers to process the flat. He and his team would go in when the forensics were secured. He went outside to ring Chambers and tell him they’d found the murder scene. Chamber’s frustration at the lack of pace in the case seemed mollified with the latest news. In fact, Fluke was surprised at the way Chambers had spoken to him. Gone was the antagonism, he actually seemed happy for once. Fluke didn’t like it.

After he’d finished, he wandered over to where FMIT had gathered. Alan Vaughn had been to the nearby Sainsbury’s to get food for everyone. Fluke looked at the selection on offer. He’d been to the reduced section judging by the yellow stickers plastered over the price labels. A man on a budget. Fluke grabbed a duck in hoisin sauce wrap and ate it, leaning on Jiao-long’s car, washing it down with a bottle of water. He refused the bag of crisps he was offered and noticed Towler did the same.

Fluke idly listened to Vaughn and Towler arguing about the reduced-price food.

‘Frugal my arse,’ Towler said. ‘You’re a fucking tight bastard, mate. That’s your problem.’

Fluke smiled. Some things never changed.

He’d just finished his wrap when Rogers came back out. ‘We’ve done a preliminary sweep, sir. Your team can go in now, but there’s something you need to see.’

Fluke nodded his thanks and prepared to go back inside, but Vaughn signalled he wanted a word first.

‘We’ve just taken William’s statement, boss. I asked if he’d ever seen her put down crisps, to see if there was anything to support your theory or whether she was just a minger.’

Fluke let the remark go. Vaughn was obsessed by tidiness, probably the only one in the team who was. A ‘clean freak’, Towler called him. Fluke was neat, but ex-forces neat, more functionary than aesthetic. His desk was organised chaos at times but he knew where everything was. Towler was a disaster. Anything you gave him was lost as soon as he put it down. The rest of them were somewhere in-between. ‘And?’ he said.