The Murder House (15 page)

‘Who knows?' asked Davis with a shrug. ‘If this investigation starts to flounder – and it might, considering that we have a victim who no one's missed for two weeks – then anonymous tip-offs might be a godsend.'

‘I'm sure you've all heard about the Orchard Street murder,' said Wright as he briefed his shift that morning. ‘The victim's some foreign geezer named Marko Kovac, who had his head smashed in. Very nasty. Obviously, we've got a lunatic on the loose, so I imagine there'll be plenty of overtime for those who want it.'

I listened in disbelief. Kovac? Who the hell was he? What had happened to James? Had they gone to a different house, and there'd been
two
murders in Orchard Street? Or had they just got it wrong? I was confused, but forced myself to listen.

‘It was horrible,' Wright was saying, shaking his head. ‘One of the worst cases I've come across – blood all over the floor, trailing under the sink …'

‘The sink?' I blurted. What was this? James had died in the sitting room. There was no sink in the sitting room, and there hadn't been any blood, either.

Wright smiled, pleased someone was giving him an opportunity to elaborate. ‘The stiff was in the kitchen, wrapped in black plastic. Well, you can imagine what the heat and black plastic do to a stiff.'

What was going on? Black plastic? I hadn't done anything with black plastic! Had someone come along and tried to clear up after me? But why? And what was I going to do? Tell Superintendent Taylor that the crime scene wasn't the one the killer had left? Or was I right with my first thought – that this was a murder in a different house?

‘I heard someone was sick,' Paul Franklin said innocently.

‘Bloody Oakley!' muttered Wright venomously.

‘
Oakley
was sick?' asked Franklin, startled. ‘I thought it was—'

‘What number in Orchard Street?' I blurted, loudly enough for people to turn and look at me. I hastened to explain. ‘I walk to work that way, and—'

‘Then go and suck up to Oakley by telling him so,' snarled Wright unpleasantly. ‘He wants a uniform to guard the house, so you can tell him you're it. I'm sure we can manage without our
graduate
today.'

‘Bastard,' I heard Paul whisper behind me. ‘Ignore him, Helen. He's just riled because it was
him
who threw up over the crime scene, so he's taking it out on you.'

I didn't give a toss about Wright's gastric inadequacies, or, for once, the fact that he
always
took his bad temper out on me. I just wanted to find out what the hell was going on with my murder.

Oakley was at the post mortem, so DI Davis took Anderson to guard the crime scene. Feeling a certain empathy with a fellow female officer, she asked how Anderson liked the job, but Anderson wasn't particularly forthcoming. Davis had seen her around the station, and had been with her during the Noble operation, but this was their first real conversation.

Davis was a pleasant woman in her forties, who had reached her exulted rank without becoming bitter, angry or jaded. She had three teenage daughters who kept her feet firmly on the ground, and a large yellow dog that demanded daily walks, which kept her fit while also letting her mind wander to aspects of life unrelated to criminal investigations.

She glanced at the quiet, unassuming woman next to her and tried again. Oakley, whose judgement she respected, liked Anderson, so she clearly had something to offer.

‘I heard you passed your sergeant's exams.' Anderson smiled politely, but still didn't speak, so Davis continued. ‘You've been in the job for, what, five or six years? How come you're not on the graduate entry scheme?'

‘I didn't want to be in charge of situations I'd no experience of,' replied Anderson in a way that suggested it wasn't the first time she had fielded that particular question. ‘It's better to work your way up through the ranks on merit, not because you've got a degree.'

Davis nodded approvingly. ‘So why has Barry Wright got it in for you?' she asked bluntly.

‘I was born a woman and I went to university,' replied Anderson. ‘That's all.'

‘You don't have to put up with his crap, you know. You can do something about it.'

‘I don't want to be branded as a whiner. Besides, he'd deny any accusations I made and things would be worse than ever. He's been in the job for twenty years, so I don't see my word being taken over his.'

‘Perhaps,' conceded Davis. ‘But you shouldn't let him get away with it if it bothers you.'

‘It doesn't,' said Anderson defiantly and a little unsteadily, so that Davis knew that it did. ‘And who knows? Maybe I'll apply for a transfer soon. Anything going in CID?' She gave the DI a quick smile, to let her know the question wasn't serious.

Davis laughed. ‘Well, you'll come with plenty of experience at guarding crime scenes,' she said, pulling up outside the house that was surrounded by fluttering blue and white tape, and where marked and unmarked police cars deprived the residents of their usual parking spots.

‘It's number nine,' said Anderson in a low voice.

‘That's right,' said Davis, climbing out of the car. ‘Number nine.'

I couldn't believe it! It
was
the same house. I recognized the unkempt garden and the unruly hedge. And, of course, there was the number. James had invited me to number nine, and I had murdered him in number nine.

I forced myself to get out of the car and walk up the short path to the door, remembering the last time I'd made that trip. It'd been dark then. It was light now, with the golden sun of August beginning to blaze.

The front door was open, like a sinister black slit that led to hell. DI Davis went in through it while I hovered in the garden, not sure what to do. I'd been trained to keep off crime scenes, and warned countless times about evidence lost under curious feet. My instincts were contradictory – to run inside and try to find out what was going on, or to race away from the garden, Bristol and my life in general while I still could. Then Davis beckoned.

‘If you're going to join CID, you should take the opportunity to get a bit of experience of the way major crimes are investigated,' she said. ‘SOCO worked all night, and they're just finishing. Put these on and don't touch anything. You don't want to do a Wright.'

‘A Wright?' I asked stupidly, taking the paper shoe-covers and gloves she handed me.

‘Contaminating the crime scene,' she elaborated. I smiled, because she expected me to.

I put the elasticized covers over my feet and donned gloves that were too big. I can't tell you how difficult it was to walk through the door, but I did it, even though my heart was hammering so hard I thought it would explode. Once I was in, though, I found myself relaxing a little. It was so different from the last time I'd been there – now it was light, full of people and business-like voices – that it almost seemed like another place. It occurred to me that leaving a fingerprint here and there might not be a bad idea – it would be assumed that I'd ‘done a Wright', and any other trace evidence they found from me would be discounted. I decided to consider it. After all, I was going to be there all day.

Davis went down the hall to the kitchen where the SOCOs were packing up. I could hear them speaking quietly, as though out of respect for the dead. Fortunately, I knew the dead wasn't still there. He was at the mortuary, being pared open with the pathologist's knives. When would they discover it was James, and not the Albanian academic? I anticipated it would not be long now.

I didn't follow Davis to the kitchen, but stopped at the sitting room and took a couple of steps inside. Yes, there was the nasty beige carpet, and the scruffy sofas and chairs. And there on the floor was the fluff that James had been picking up when I'd hit him. I looked around, seeking signs that a man had died there. There was nothing, not even an indentation in the carpet or a stain from the saliva that had dripped from James' mouth. There was no rock either, although I wasn't sure whether or not this was a good thing.

When I'd hit James – as far as I could recall – there was a soggy crack, like an egg dropping on a stone floor, only heavier, deeper and louder. Perhaps an ostrich egg might make the right kind of noise, with its thicker shell and greater contents. But there hadn't been any blood, because my blow hadn't split James' skin. Wright had claimed there'd been blood everywhere. What was right: his observations or my memories?

I rubbed my pounding head. And how had the body gone from the sitting room into the kitchen? Had I done that, in the moments immediately after the murder, when I'd been dazed and frightened? And had I then blotted it from my mind? Had I rolled the body in plastic, intending to return later and get rid of it? If so, my fingerprints would be all over it.

I looked at the mantelpiece, which was grey, white and silver from fingerprint dust. The rocks were still there, sitting in a line, and a police photographer was taking snaps of them. I noticed an ominous gap where one was obviously missing.

‘In here, Helen.'

Davis was calling. I reluctantly left the sitting room and made my way to what everyone thought was the scene of the real crime. My legs felt as heavy as lead, and I could smell the stench of decay, even though the body had gone. It hung in the air, like mist, penetrating and polluting everything. I could taste it, feel it scorching my nostrils. I knew it would be seared into my memory forever.

When I reached the kitchen I remembered the characterless little room with its white chip-board cupboards and its cheap yellow vinyl. There was a small table at one end, with two folding chairs, and the sink was under the window. On the floor near the sink was a long, dark stain, which was a blackish-plum colour, yellow-gold at the edges. It didn't look like blood. Was that what Wright had seen? Had it come from James' shattered head? Or had it oozed from his ears or his mouth as he was moved? I looked closer. It looked sticky, and was set at the edges, like blood mixed with lemonade and left to dry. There were clots of something dark in the middle.

‘Bodies leak after death,' explained a SOCO, mistaking my horrified perusal for professional interest. ‘Tissues, like the brain, begin to liquefy and gasses cause the intestines to swell. It's like a volcano, with pressure building up, and it's got to come out somewhere, so it does – through various orifices, which I'm sure you don't need me to list.'

‘No,' I agreed fervently. ‘So, it's not blood?'

‘The blow that killed him didn't break the skin, so there wasn't any blood for us to find, more's the pity.'

‘Is it?' I asked nervously.

‘Oh, yes.' The man was enjoying sharing the secrets of his horrible trade. ‘When a victim is hit and the wound bleeds, you get what we call splatter marks. These droplets – which can sometimes be very fine, and other times a real fountain – make distinctive patterns when they land, so we can tell where a victim was killed, how hard he was hit and even the order the blows came in. But we can't do that here.' He sounded disappointed.

‘What
can
you tell?' I asked, trying to sound coolly professional.

‘It's hard to say at this stage.' The SOCO began to pack small bottles into a bag. ‘There are fingerprints all over the place, but that's to be expected in a kitchen. We'll run them all through the computer to see how many belonged to Kovac … to the victim, and see what we're left with. Since this house is rented to lots of people for short periods, eliminating them and identifying a culprit is going to be a nightmare.'

‘What else, besides fingerprints?' I asked numbly. There was no point trying to contaminate the scene if all the relevant surfaces had already been dusted.

‘We've found fibres from what will probably turn out to be clothes. We've got cutlery, glasses and cups to test for saliva – DNA, you know. We've taken swabs from every available surface. You name it, we've done it. With a murder, we can't be too careful.'

‘True,' agreed Davis, who had been listening as she looked around the room. ‘And you lot can do wonders with it all these days. We're placing a good deal of hope on what you find.'

‘We'll do our best,' said the SOCO proudly. ‘It's not easy to commit murder in the twenty-first century, you know. We
can
now solve crimes that would have been impossible a decade ago.' He gave me a conspiratorial grin. ‘We'll get this bastard. I don't have any doubts on
that
score.'

I felt as though I was about to do a Wright.

A post mortem was never a pleasant thing to witness, and one on a body that should have been buried or cremated days before was worse than most. Evans chewed gum in an attempt to combat the stench, but Oakley had visions of molecules of corruption drifting in the air and becoming caught in it. The notion of anything from the corpse entering his mouth was something he didn't like to dwell on. He wore a surgical mask and breathed through his nose as shallowly as possible.

The pathologist was Ben Grossman. Due to retire soon, he was a genial man whom the police liked, as he didn't patronize them or try to distress them with gruesome procedures. He had worked in the mortuary used by New Bridewell for as long as Oakley could remember.

The post-mortem room had recently been refurbished, and boasted gleaming white walls and a hard grey floor with drains, so it could be hosed down at the end of the day. Custom-built lights, a camera and microphones hung from the ceiling, and there were three metal trolleys, each of which held a body; more were stored in large metal drawers in an adjoining room. Stripped of clothes, the Orchard Street corpse was a dark, blackish colour with hints of green. Its stomach was vastly distended, and its lower limbs swollen from the fluids that had pooled there.