by Ali Gunn
Stryker rolled his eyes and reached into his pocket for his freshly printed warrant card. It was pristine and official-looking unlike his old one for West Yorkshire Police which was faded and looked a little like a library card. He flashed it to the man.
The man’s expression flipped from angry to panicked. ‘I ain’t a squatter, honest, guv’nor. I’m a property guardian.’
His accent was so thick it sounded like he said “proper tea garden”. Stryker scrunched up his face until the penny dropped that he meant property guardian. Property guardians weren’t a thing up north, as empty offices were usually damp and derelict, and often inhospitable. In London’s ultra-prime bubble, property guardians lived in temporarily empty offices and other buildings to prevent squatters and criminals moving in.
‘You here earlier tonight?’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I was. This gon’ take long? Want to step inside away from’t rain?’ He mock-shivered to emphasise his point.
As the wind howling made it hard to hear the man, Stryker was only too happy to accept the invitation. He followed him inside. The front door was locked with a pin code which the man shielded from view with a hairy hand.
Stryker didn’t know what to expect inside. It was obviously an office building but without its occupants, it felt more like a warehouse full of dusty, unloved desks and bundles of cables.
‘Upstairs,’ the gruff man said cheerfully. Being inside had immediately lifted his mood.
There was a lift, and Stryker moved to hit the call button.
‘I would na if I were ye. Empty building, innit? Don’t want to be stuck in t’ lift with nobody around t’ get us out.’ He bounded up the stairs two at a time, Stryker trailing in his wake.
The man climbed effortlessly. By the sixth floor, Stryker was starting to feel it in his legs, and yet his host bounced along as if his shoes were sprung.
The top floor looked much like the ground except for the absence of tables and chairs. A large mattress, which had seen better days had been thrown in one corner. Next to it were two suitcases, both open, piled high with what appeared to be everything the gruff man owned: gym clothing, towels, and tighty-whitey underwear. There were two suits on top of the pile, both very smart, and next to the cases was an array of smart leather shoes. There was even a fake Breitling Navitimer sitting inside one of the shoes.
‘Not bad, eh, this place? Two hundred quid a week, and I get to use their old projector for me movies.’ He beamed, and proudly cast a hand towards an old office projector that sat atop a pile of cardboard filing boxes. It was pointed at a blank wall.
He crouched down and sat at the foot of the mattress which was covered by a thick, quilted duvet. The man patted the spot next to him as if to invite Stryker to sit down. Now that they were inside with proper lighting, Stryker realised that the man was not half as handsome as he had appeared in the moonlight. What had appeared to be flawless skin revealed tiny indented scars, a telltale hint of childhood chickenpox. Stryker shuddered. The man’s lazy eye stared creepily out the window in the direction of the crime scene.
‘No thanks,’ Stryker said. ‘I’ll stand. What’s your name?’
‘Suit yerself, big man,’ he said. ‘Rekshun, Andrew Rekshun. Me friends call me Drew.’
Stryker pulled his notebook from his pocket and wrote the name down. ‘Have you lived here long?’
‘Not long,’ he said simply.
‘How long is not long?’
He gave a sharp intake of breath and then paused as if counting. ‘Four months on Sunday. ‘Spect they’ll be wanting me t’ move on soon.’
‘Move on?’
‘Aye. Sooner or later, someone’ll want t’ rent this place as an office again, and I’ll be off t’ next one.’
‘Sounds stressful. You said you were here tonight?’
‘All evening,’ Drew said proudly. ‘Been working on me novel. Want t’ read it?’ He leapt up to fetch a copy of the manuscript from the nearest suitcase.
‘No, thanks,’ Stryker said far too quickly. Drew’s face grew dark. ‘I mean I’m on duty. Otherwise, I’d love to.’
His damage control was too late. So much for the rapport stage of the interview. He cut to the chase.
‘A woman was murdered, and her body dumped nearby tonight. Did you see anything?’
‘Might have,’ Drew said. He waved the folder containing his manuscript around. ‘It’s a crime novel, ya know. Be real good to get an actual copper’s opinion.’
‘After I solve this case, I might have time to help,’ Stryker said. He had no intention of actually reading whatever drivel the man had thrown on the page.
Drew’s smile returned. ‘Then yeah, I think I did. I heard a car outside.’
‘That’s not unusual, is it?’
‘Naw, but it was loud. Thought I heard a boot slam. Didn’t pay it much attention mind you.’
‘You didn’t investigate at all?’ Stryker asked. Drew had come quickly to the front door when he’d noticed Stryker peering through the window.
‘Nah. I was up here,’ Drew said, leaning back and surveying his domain. ‘I was on me way back from the khazi when your shadow crossed me window. I looked through the slats ‘n’ yer little cherub face appeared.’
‘So you didn’t see anything?’ Stryker said.
‘Didn’t say that, did I? I looked out when the boot slammed a second time. Saw a car speeding off.’
Stryker’s eyes lit up. ‘What make was it? What colour? Did you get a registration plate?’ Dreams of solving the crime in record time came to Stryker as he asked his questions at his signature rapid-fire speed.
‘Twas blue, I think,’ Drew said. ‘Or black mebbe. Not a car person I’m afraid, ‘n’ I only saw it fer a split second.’
Stryker slumped, deflated. Blue or black. That was half the cars in London.
Chapter 7: Home, Sweet Home
Elsie hadn’t been surprised to see such a swanky address on Layla’s driving licence. Layla lived in leafy Fulham, a suburban part of west London dominated by yummy mummies in yoga pants, and dreamy daddies donning papooses. Elsie supposed the upmarket address went hand in hand with Layla’s SQ Private Bank debit card.
Nearly three-quarters of an hour after finding the address, Elsie pulled into the right road. She cursed the precious time they’d lost waiting for the damned poker game to finish. It was well after sunset and Elsie had to squint through the darkness to make out the house numbers.
As she drove past home after home with Christmas trees in the window and lights around the eaves, she muttered “number twenty-eight” under her breath. One house even had a giant inflatable snowman up on the roof where it swayed in the wind. The sole exception to the merriment was Layla’s home. It was a broad semi-detached townhouse set over three floors with a single driveway out front with nothing parked in it. Elsie swung in and killed the engine immediately. Once she was out of the car, she glanced back to admire her parking. Perfect.
There were no lights on inside number twenty-eight. The curtains in the front bay window were drawn tight, and Elsie could see a wedge of leaflets stuffed halfway through the letterbox.
The key was chunky and old-fashioned, probably original, and a perfect match to the equally old-fashioned keyhole. Elsie twisted it forcefully to unlock the door which creaked slowly open as it met the resistance of a small pile of junk mail. Once she was inside, she fumbled around in the dark for a light switch. A sickly yellow bulb, the old energy-inefficient kind, flickered to life with a low hum.
Mess. Mess everywhere. The façade of a beautiful home had given way to what Elsie’s mum would have called “Marylebone chic”, a house which looked beautiful on the outside but was decrepit on the inside.
No doubt it had once been a handsome family home. A layer of dust covered the hallway. Even the pile of leaflets from pizza companies and estate agents on the hall table had a thin film upon it. It was as if the victim hadn’t really lived there at all. A door on Elsie’s right w
as cracked open. She peeked through and could see a living room with two torn-up sofas, but precious little else. For now, she ignored the lounge and progressed down the hallway. Stairs on her left rose towards the first floor.
The hallway was the long and narrow kind, typical of these old Victorian terraces. Wooden boards creaked underfoot as Elsie gingerly navigated towards the rear of the house, every step kicking up a small cloud of dust.
‘Ah-ah-ahchoo!’
Nobody had been in this end of the house for a long time. At the far end of the narrow hallway, Elsie found the kitchen, a tiny galley-like space. She shivered as she entered the room. It was draughty in the way only an old, unloved house could be. The sink was piled high with mismatched crockery. From the smell, Elsie knew that it had been there a while. She pinched her nose and drew closer. There was mould everywhere – black, green and brown. How on earth anybody lived like this was unimaginable.
Elsie beat a hasty retreat down the corridor, this time heading for the stairs. As she ascended, she noticed there was less dust here as if there had been greater footfall upstairs than down.
The bannister was worn, and Elsie was reluctant to lean on it lest it give way. There hadn’t been much work done to the property in some time, and it wouldn’t surprise her to learn that the fixtures were as old as the house. At the top of the stairs, she found a small bookcase on the landing. It was a young woman’s bookcase full of life-affirming tracts on being a modern woman, with a scattering of romance. The books were arranged by the colour of their spines rather than alphabetically or by subject. While it was pretty, it would be almost impossible to find a specific book without searching extensively. It spoke of a mind preoccupied with form over function.
To her left, Elsie found a bathroom. This was much cleaner than the kitchen with bright spotlights that flickered briefly. The LEDs certainly weren’t original; Elsie could see a circular patch of plaster infill where the original ceiling rose had once been. As dilapidated as the downstairs had been, someone had taken the time and money to modernise the upstairs. The bathroom counter had a large sink on one side. On the other, boxes were piled up almost to the ceiling. It seemed that Layla Morgan was a make-up addict with plastic tubs filled to the brim with more cosmetics than Elsie had seen in her life, much of it unopened and left inside Sephora-branded shopping bags. Evidently not only did the victim have good taste but she was also well-travelled; the nearest Sephora store was probably in Paris. Layla had amassed such a collection that Elsie doubted it could have been accrued in just one trip. The contrast was readily apparent. The victim had lived in a pricey postcode, had been well travelled, banked with the most prestigious of banks, and enjoyed the finest of luxury make-up, yet she had lived in squalor. Elsie turned her attention to the chipped sink and an enormous mirror hanging above it. There were motivational messages scrawled all over the mirror in lipstick. Love yourself. Tomorrow is a new day. Fake it until you make it.
Confident that the bathroom had little else to reveal, she went in search of the master bedroom. Three doors – and three obviously unused bedrooms – later, she finally stumbled into an opulently oversized master bedroom that dominated the third floor. It was here that Layla Morgan had evidently spent the overwhelming majority of her time. As Elsie eyed the sumptuous bed, she wished she could teleport herself home and lay her head on her own pillows. It was barely eight o’clock in the evening and she was already ready for bed. Not that a nap would help. That was the nasty thing about chronic fatigue syndrome; she woke up just as tired as when she went to sleep.
Gone were the musty smells and the peeling paintwork. Here everything was without compromise. Layla’s taste erred on the Versace-esque with Baroque gold leaf wallpaper and oodles of old dark wood which only worked thanks to the outrageously oversized bay window. It was stylish in a very brash, overstated way. If it had been Elsie’s place, she’d have gone for a lighter touch to make use of all the natural light. The bay windows opened out to the south. Elsie could just imagine how the daylight would stream through to make the gold wallpaper sparkle. The overstated style screamed money and lots of it.
The wardrobe cemented this opinion. Virtually all the clothing within it was designer. From established labels such as Gucci and Jimmy Choo through to the cutting edge of the London fashion scene, every piece was well chosen with a rainbow of colours and styles that gave no clue as to their owner’s tastes. The one thing that they all did have in common was size. Everything was tiny. Layla Morgan was a very slender English size four, and the variety of international labels reflected that; size zero on the American labels, size thirty-two on the European scale. It was a punishing wardrobe that would rarely permit a glass of wine or a slice of cake.
‘Who were you, Layla Morgan?’ Elsie mused aloud. The young woman had lived a very solitary life. There were no photos, no mementoes, and no signs of friends or family anywhere in sight. Every surface in the bedroom was clean but for a little dust which might have been tracked in from elsewhere in the house.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Layla’s home was the absence of any sign of a man. Here she was, young, beautiful, and stylish, but with no sign that any man had ever made it into her bedroom. There were no men’s shirts in the wardrobes, no stray cufflinks on her desk, and the bathroom down the hall was free of men’s deodorant. Perhaps she preferred women? Elsie pondered. The neatly hung size four clothes could belong to two similarly pint-sized waifs. Again, the bathroom pointed the other way; there had been only one toothbrush in the cabinet.
The desk drawers were the first place that Elsie found a hint as to who Layla was. Like Elsie, she had stuffed documents away out of sight and out of mind. The top drawer was full of glossy magazines, the kind that were more advertisement than content with vague sales pitches for perfumes that offered no clue as to how they smelt. Nothing of note there. Elsie wasn’t going to judge a woman for picking up a trashy magazine or ten. The second drawer was much more interesting. It was chock full of crumpled receipts, invoices, and bank statements, none of which were recent. Elsie plucked out one of the bank statements, decanted it from its envelope, and began to read through.
‘Blimey!’ Elsie muttered as her eyes scanned through page after page of line item accounts. There were payments in – albeit few and far between – but it was the “Out” figures that astounded her. Layla Morgan was spending a fortune on clothes, shoes, and international travel. Her outgoings were those of a movie star while her income was akin to that of a road sweeper. Elsie checked a few more statements to see if the earlier months were the same. As she worked backwards, she found the balance figure growing. It seemed that Layla had once been in possession of a good fortune which had slowly been eroded by gregarious spending. Perhaps, Elsie mused, she’d inherited both the house and enough money to open an SQ Private Bank account.
At the very bottom of the drawer was a moleskin notebook with “In” and “Out” figures for every day going back for years. At first, Elsie thought that these numbers too were part of Layla’s financial records, but the numbers were much too high – approximately fifteen hundred in and fifteen hundred out every single day. She might be spending fifteen hundred quid a day, but she sure wasn’t earning that much. Elsie was stumped until she noted that each daily total was be made up of three numbers. It was only then that the penny dropped. One number for each of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Layla had been compulsively counting her calories, and, judging by the years and years of numbers, she was obsessed with her weight. It lined up with the waif-thin corpse and the much-too-slender clothing in the wardrobe. Layla was the kind of woman who thought that if thin was beautiful, thinner was even better, and she’d taken it to the extreme. With just a few pounds more on her frame, she would have been genuinely stunning. Elsie struggled to reconcile the gaunt, bony frame of the dead girl with a modelling career. Surely the industry didn’t expect models to be that thin?
Something wasn’t right. It felt as if Layla had never had a single
visitor. No friends, no family, not even an address book and certainly no landline telephone for it to sit beside. All the post had been of a business nature – bills, adverts, and correspondence from HMRC. Usually finding next of kin was a cakewalk. It wouldn’t be this time. They’d have to go back to the old standby of obtaining the deceased’s phone records and looking for who Layla had called the most. Elsie made a mental note to delegate that job to Matthews. She hated dealing with phone companies as they almost always demanded a warrant which was a pain in the backside to sort out. No magistrate would refuse. It was just a lot of very boring paperwork that was now within Elsie’s prerogative to delegate. Formal death notification needed to take place as soon as possible.
As Elsie backtracked to the hallway, she took in the cavernous space. It was almost empty. Only a bookshelf lined the wall, and that too was nearly empty, unlike the smaller bookcase that Elsie had seen on the stairs. Elsie couldn’t imagine knocking around such a huge house all on her own with not so much as a cat for company. She certainly wouldn’t buy such a grand old home just to live in on her lonesome, and if she’d inherited it then it would surely be on the market post-haste especially if Layla was as broke as her bank statements suggested. She added “research Layla’s homeownership” to Knox’s to-do list. Who knew when Knox would deign to show up to work? Knox was going to be a pain to manage as she had no interest in being a team player.
There was only one way to deal with that: Elsie had to give her the dross work with clearly defined outcomes, the work which was either done or it wasn’t. If it didn’t get done, Knox would be fired post-haste. There was no point carrying dead weight on the team for any longer than necessary. Perhaps Elsie should have seen it coming; there was a reason the rest of the Murder Investigation Teams hadn’t wanted her.
Elsie trekked back down the stairs and once again took in the musky, dust-ridden atmosphere on the ground floor. Officially Layla Morgan was an aspiring model for the most glamorous fashion brands on the planet. Unofficially, Elsie thought, she was a broke pretender with anorexia living off what appeared to be a fat inheritance while feigning success.