Stop Dead (5 page)

Keith shook his head in bewilderment.

‘She’s not back till tomorrow.’

‘What?’

‘Jenny’s gone to see her sister in Luton and she won’t be back till-’

Dave’s face turned a shade darker. He inched forward. Keith took an involuntary step back so that his infuriated neighbour stood poised with one foot on the threshold.

‘I’m not interested in your wife. What’s she got to do with it? I’m talking about your car, parked right across my garage door and –’

Keith shook his head again.

‘But Jenny’s taken the car and she isn’t back till tomorrow.’

‘I’m talking about the Mercedes.’

‘What Mercedes?’ Keith frowned. ‘I haven’t got a Mercedes, it’s a Vauxhall.’

He gave a rueful smile.

‘I wish it
was
a Mercedes.’

Dave took a pace back to stand squarely on the step outside.

‘Well, some selfish bugger’s gone and left a dark green Mercedes right outside your lock up and it’s blocking my garage. I need to get my car out, I’m due in Bedford at nine and if I don’t get off soon, I’m going to be late.’

‘Well, it’s not mine and I don’t know whose it could be.’

‘I’ll have to call and tell them I can’t make it for nine,’ Dave grumbled. ‘But you’d better do something about getting that Merc moved. It can’t stay there.’

‘Not sure what I can do.’

‘Call the police. Report it. Or get onto a garage, I don’t care. Just get it moved.’

Disgruntled by the encounter, Keith returned to his breakfast. What the hell did Dave expect him to do about some wretched Mercedes? It wasn’t his responsibility. But as he munched cold toast and sipped lukewarm coffee, he had to agree that his neighbour had a point. If Jenny couldn’t get the car in the garage they’d have a problem parking. They paid a fortune to use that garage. By the time he finished his breakfast, he was as outraged as Dave. He went storming round the back to see what was going on. He hoped the Mercedes would have gone, but rounding the corner into the narrow access lane he saw it, gleaming dark green, positioned right across the front of his garage, its boot jutting out past Dave’s garage door.

‘Bugger!’

He felt his heart begin to race.

‘Selfish bloody bastard.’

No one with a scrap of decency or common sense would park like that, blocking access to someone else’s garage. Such stupidity suggested the car had been stolen and abandoned there, in a quiet corner off the main road. Joyriders. Kids, most likely. All the same, Keith hesitated about calling the police straight away. They might want to talk to him and it was already quarter to eight. If he hung around much longer he would be late for work. It was a smart car and there was a chance the owner had been too drunk to drive home and had left it there for the night intending to return for it during the day, in which case the problem would simply go away. He decided to give it a day, and get onto the police if the Mercedes was still there that evening when he returned from work.

After a difficult day at work, Keith was in no mood for any more aggravation, but the dark green Mercedes was still parked right outside his garage when he arrived home, gleaming in the moonlight. Although he couldn’t have said why, he had an uneasy sensation something was wrong. Frowning, he approached the vehicle for a closer look. He couldn’t see anything through the tinted side windows. Moving to the front he peered through the windscreen. It looked as though a man was sitting slumped in the driver’s seat. Keith ran round and tapped sharply with his knuckles on the driver’s window.

‘Oi! Wake up!’

Stepping back, he noticed a trickle of dark oil had oozed into the road from the bottom of the driver’s door. It appeared to be leaking from behind the door, nowhere near the engine. In the meantime, there was no response from inside the car. Keith must have been mistaken. Frustrated, he went home to have something to eat and think about what to do. As if his day hadn’t been bad enough, he saw a dark smear appear on their new beige hall carpet. He must have trodden in the oil leaking from the Mercedes. Slipping off his shoes he went into the kitchen. Before he did anything else, he opened a beer.

He almost knocked the bottle over when his mobile rang, startling him. It was Jenny.

‘How are you doing?’

‘Fine,’ he fibbed.

It was almost true. He would soon have the oil patch cleaned up, and the owner of the Mercedes was bound to come back for it and drive off before long.

‘How about you?’

Jenny chattered for a few moments about her trip.

‘I can’t wait to see you,’ she finished.

‘Me too.’

He gulped down the last of his beer, promising himself another one after he had sorted out the hall carpet. Clutching a wet rag and a bottle of washing up liquid he dropped to his knees and scrubbed wretchedly at the stain, hoping he could clean it up before Jenny saw it. After a moment’s furious exertion, he sat back on his heels and a worried frown spread across his face. The patch had altered as he rubbed at it, turning from black to blood red.

With a burst of energy he sprang to his feet and ran into the kitchen. He rummaged frantically in the drawers where he knew Jenny kept a torch. At last he found it. Torch in hand he pulled on his trainers, grabbed his keys and ran outside to circle the green car, careful to avoid treading in the dark slime again. To begin with, all he could see was the reflection of the torch beam, and the shadow of his staring face behind it. He left it until last to go round to the front of the car and shone the torch through the windscreen. There was definitely someone in the driver’s seat, his head hanging forward so his face was hidden. Keith gazed at the stranger’s grey hair and shivered.

‘Hey! You in there!’

His voice trembled and the torch shook in his hand. The sleeper didn’t stir. Keith tapped on the windscreen, then went around to the side of the car and rapped more forcefully on the window nearest the man’s head. He returned to the front of the car, trying to ignore the obvious. An inert figure, blood red liquid.

‘Wake up! Wake up! You in there!’

Behind him a window was flung open and someone called out.

‘Oi! What’s all the racket? Put a sock in it, mate.’

Keith switched off the torch and ran back home.

On the point of calling the police Keith paused, phone in hand, wondering if he was overreacting. But there was no getting away from the suspicion that there was a dead body in a car outside his garage. Feeling lightheaded, he opened another beer. He had to call the police.

‘Police please. And – can you hurry up. This is serious.’

In a trembling voice he gave his name and phone number.

‘There’s a body, at least I think there is, someone dead, in a car outside my garage. He’s been there all day. He isn’t moving and there’s blood on the ground. It’s dripping out of the car.’

‘Blood dripping out of the car.’

His words repeated by the calm voice at the other end of the line made them sound far-fetched.

‘Yes. I trod in it. I thought it was oil –’

He shook with relief when the operator took his address and told him a patrol car was on its way. As he waited for the police to arrive, he wondered if they would want to know why he hadn’t called them in the morning, when he had first become aware of the Mercedes parked outside his garage. He was asking himself that same question, wondering if the body in the car had still been alive then. If he had acted promptly, he might have saved a man from bleeding to death.

G
eraldine was at her desk when Nick Williams arrived on Tuesday morning.

‘Right,’ he said briskly, ‘I don’t know about you but I’ve been thrown straight back in. Hopefully –’

He broke off as her phone rang. After taking the call Geraldine replaced the receiver with a rueful grin.

‘Oh well, that was the duty sergeant. I’m off.’

She stood up.

‘Catch you later,’ he said with a smile.

The bulky figure of Detective Chief Inspector Reg Milton was standing in the Major Incident Room, waiting for silence. Stuck behind a desk most of the time his athletic frame was beginning to run to fat, but he held himself with the confidence of a physically powerful man. Despite the grey streaks in his hair, he looked like a man in his prime.

‘You all know me,’ he began.

When Geraldine had first met him his clipped upper class accent had come as a surprise.

‘A man’s body has been found in a car somewhere just off the Caledonian Road.’

He read the address aloud and paused briefly, glancing round the room to check that he had everyone’s attention.

‘The body was discovered in a vehicle parked outside a row of lock up garages at the back of the houses. It was found by one of the householders, Keith Apsley. We’ll need to question him, and talk to the neighbours, find out if anyone noticed anything unusual. The Assessment Team have confirmed that we’re looking at murder. Scene of crime officers are at work checking the car and we’re conducting a thorough search of the area for a weapon. Credit cards in the wallet in the victim’s pocket give us the name Patrick Henshaw, although he hasn’t yet been formally identified. The car was registered in the same name. Any questions?’

No one spoke.

‘Right then, let’s see what we can find out.’

Geraldine was pleased that Detective Sergeant Sam Haley was working with her again. After a rocky start, their professional relationship was developing into a firm friendship. Sam was usually optimistic, but this morning her features were twisted into a scowl.

‘Well, this is going to be a complete waste of time,’ she grumbled as she drove Geraldine across London towards Caledonian Road. ‘The body’s gone to the morgue so what exactly are we expecting to see, apart from an empty car parked outside a locked garage in a street packed with nosey bystanders hoping to see a murder victim?’

Geraldine didn’t answer. They drove in silence to a quiet side road not far from their destination, where a sign on a lamp post displayed a list of complicated parking restrictions.

‘How the hell is anyone supposed to make head or tail of that?’ Geraldine asked.

‘Perk of the job,’ Sam replied, pulling up right beside one of the notices.

The day was overcast and it was threatening rain as they stared along the street of well-maintained terraced brick houses. There were no front gardens but many of the houses displayed brightly painted window boxes and plants in large pots in the narrow paved strips that served as front yards. The scene had a comfortable air of normality – apart from the forensic tent and a team of uniformed police officers making their way painstakingly along the street. Geraldine and Sam donned protective gear and entered the forensic tent, where a dark green Mercedes was being closely examined by scene of crime officers. It looked like a gigantic green slug with white larvae crawling over it. Geraldine walked slowly around the car. The side windows were heavily tinted, obscuring the interior of the vehicle. Through the windscreen a scene of crime officer could be seen inside the car, carefully collecting evidence samples. Reaching the driver’s door she peered at the seat, which was soaked in blood. The inside of the door was also drenched in blood, which must have sprayed there as the victim lay dying. Behind the front tyre a thin stream of blood had trickled under the door and onto the road.

‘There’s a hell of a lot of blood,’ she muttered.

‘Yes, it looks as though the victim bled to death,’ a scene of crime officer agreed cheerfully, pausing in his work and twisting his head round to talk to her.

‘Is there any sign of a murder weapon?’

‘Not yet. We’ve been conducting a search of the area but nothing’s been found so far. We might still come across something but my guess is the killer took the weapon away with him.’

‘We know the car was registered in the victim’s name. So if Patrick Henshaw was attacked in his own car, how did his assailant get to him? The window wasn’t broken. He must have opened the door.’

She frowned, trying to work out what had happened.

‘Perhaps he was abducted,’ Sam broke in with sudden enthusiasm. ‘It’s an expensive car. He must’ve been a seriously wealthy bloke. It could’ve been a kidnap attempt gone wrong. Henshaw opened the car door, a couple of men jumped him, one of them drove while the other was restraining him in the back, only things got out of hand –’

‘Like your imagination,’ Geraldine interrupted her quickly. She was pleased to see that the sergeant’s usual good humour had returned, as she smiled at Geraldine’s gentle reprimand. Sam was never bad-tempered for long.

‘For a start, the victim was in the driver’s seat. Apart from which we’ve seen nothing to indicate any attempted kidnap. Keep it real, Sam. Anything’s possible at this stage,’ Geraldine continued. ‘So let’s not muddy the water by allowing our imaginations to run away with us. We’re here on a fact finding exercise so let’s focus on the job and gather as much information as we can while we’re here.’

‘But you told me yourself facts alone aren’t enough. We have to envisage the bigger picture. I’m not imagining, I’m
envisaging
.’

Geraldine felt faintly uneasy that her young sergeant seemed to remember everything she said. Of the two of them she was the senior officer, but there were times when the responsibility of knowing that Sam took her words so much to heart made her uncomfortable.

‘That’s true, Sam, but without facts we don’t have anything to base our theories on. We can’t just come up with ideas from nowhere.’

‘Righty ho.’

‘How long is this going to take?’ Sam enquired after a pause.

‘Do you have somewhere you need to be?’ Geraldine asked sharply.

She had never had reason to doubt her sergeant’s commitment before.

‘I want to look around a little longer and then see if the witness who found the body is home. Is there a problem with that?’ she added, seeing Sam grimace.

‘No, but – it’s just that I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. I wouldn’t mind, only it’s hard to focus when you’re starving. It’s distracting.’

Geraldine couldn’t help laughing.