Eight
The room Dominic had rented for himself was in a semi-detached house on Rosehaugh Road in Merkinch.
Merkinch, the old ‘Isle of the Horse,’ was very much a working class area but compared to equally economically deprived areas around Glasgow, it wasn’t an outstandingly bad neighbourhood. Yes, it had its share of drug and alcohol related crime and yes, burglaries and muggings and assaults were not uncommon, but it was also home to a lot of decent, law-abiding people.
Dominic’s semi had been one of the many council houses built in the area, up until the tenants had purchased it under the now defunct ‘right to buy’ scheme. After waiting the obligatory five years, so they didn’t forfeit their discount, the new owners had then sold to a private investor for a good profit. I’d been happy to see the end of the right to buy scheme a couple of years earlier. Almost half a million council homes around Scotland had fallen into the hands of private owners during the years that the scheme had been running and we were really feeling the effects of that now. Waiting lists for affordable social housing were getting longer and longer, due to the shortage of available properties, and who knew when construction would catch up with demand again.
The new owner, by turning the living room into a bedsit, had rented out the three rooms available in the property for years before selling it on to another ‘buy to let’ investor. I found out later, from Shay, just how large the profits that such investors had been making were. Demand for cheap housing was high and the rents they charged were below average, even if they were still higher than council rents. The current owner of this particular house had accumulated half a dozen properties in the same manner and was making a very decent income from them.
That Monday morning, staring at the place through a dismal fall of icy sleet, all I could see was that the house was run down and neglected. Judging by the bleak stretch of patchy grass out front, none of the current tenants seemed to care much for gardening. I guessed the landlord must pay someone to mow that occasionally even if they didn’t seem to have spent any other money on the upkeep of the place.
“Let’s wait for it to ease off a bit before we go knocking,” I suggested. “We’ll get soaked if we go out there now, especially if they take their time answering the door.”
The upstairs blinds were still closed but the downstairs front room window was just covered by the net curtains, letting in daylight but maintaining privacy from anyone walking past. It was still coming down heavily a few minutes later when Shay’s next text came in. He’d tracked down the owner/landlord for me and sent me their details. I called the given number.
“Mr Philip McAvoy? Good morning. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Keane and I’m calling about a tenant of yours, a Mister Atovura Dominic Chuol. I believe you rented him a room on Rosehaugh Road last November?”
“Dominic? Aye, Inspector, that’s right, I did, but he’s no a tenant of mine any more. The fella up and left a couple of weeks ago.”
“Would it be possible for you to meet us at the property, Sir? We’d like to talk to the other tenants and look at Dominic’s room, if we may. You see, I’m afraid Mr Chuol’s body was discovered last Thursday and we’re currently conducting a murder investigation.”
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence while he thought about that.
“The room’s already been packed up, ready for the next tenant,” he finally told me, “but aye, I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“That would be appreciated. Thank you, Mr McAvoy.” I hung up and looked at Caitlin. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes. Hot drink?” I fished my thermos and espresso machine out, and Caitlin reached for her own flask of tea.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said a while later as she blew at her cup before sipping carefully. “Either Dominic went missing between the Friday he last worked and the Monday he failed to show up, or something prompted him to quit and stop answering his phone.”
“If he went missing that weekend, that’s quite a gap between then and the time he was most likely killed in,” I argued, playing devil’s advocate. The same, uneasy thought had been preying on my mind too. “There’s at least a week to fill in there, because it didn’t rain between the time of the murder and the discovery of the body.” That last cold, dry snap had lasted from Saturday the nineteenth, through to yesterday, the twenty seventh. “Do you think that the killer might have been holding him somewhere for all that time?”
She shrugged. “I’m thinking that it’s a possibility. We’ll have to see what his housemates can tell us. Alternatively, he may just have decided he’d had enough of Inverness, or been ill, or off on a bender or any number of other things that we have no way of knowing yet.”
“Yeah, you’re right there. I don’t like the thought of it though. It’s one thing to grab someone, drive them out to the woods and kill them, but to hold them, for days, without being discovered… that takes a whole different level of planning.” I drank down my coffee and got a second one going. It was a pity this gadget couldn’t produce doubles, but that was a minor issue. I compulsively checked my emails again while I waited for it to start pumping out my second dose. Nothing in from forensics yet.
“You’d need a place of your own or somewhere you were sure nobody would go,” Caitlin mused aloud. “And you’d need to keep them quiet. So either gagged and totally restrained, or sedated, unless the place was soundproofed. That doesn’t seem like the sort of thing an unstable psychotic could pull off easily.”
“No, but a lot of psychopaths could. And some psychoses can be very specific. A lot of people manage to live with certain delusions, and even hallucinations, for years without anyone realising there’s anything wrong with them.” I drank down my second coffee and put everything away again. Five more minutes, if McAvoy arrived on time. The sleet was finally easing off a bit again too.
Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, a little white VW caddy van pulled in and parked in front of us. The man who climbed out of it was a heavyset, overweight man of around sixty with a beer belly to rival the one that Bill Rogerson had been sporting. His hair was almost white, shot through with streaks of grey, and the dome of his head was bald. We climbed out to greet him.
“Mr McAvoy? I’m Inspector Keane, and this is my colleague, Sergeant Murray. Thank you for coming, Sir.”
He eyed us coldly. Not a fan of the police in general then? Well, the feeling was mutual. He had a mean look about him, mainly in the narrowed eyes and pinched mouth. He was about five feet seven and had the reddened, bumpy nose and cheeks of a heavy drinker.
“Aye, well, I know how this sort of thing goes. If I didnae cooperate, it’d be warrants and investigations and God knows what sort of harassment and charges you’d be throwing at me… and murder is murder. If we’re paying for a police force, they might as well do something useful for a change.” I didn’t allow my neutral expression to change, but Caitlin’s scowl seemed to please him.
“Shall we get on in then?” I suggested mildly, and he grudgingly led us up the little path to the front door before knocking heavily three times. I could hear voices arguing upstairs and then the sound of footsteps coming towards the door.
A woman in her mid-twenties opened it, and I could smell the sweaty odour coming off her from several feet away. She was dressed in a pair of filthy jeans and an equally grubby sweatshirt. Her long brown hair clearly hadn’t been brushed, let alone washed, for quite some time, and her sallow face and unhealthy complexion told their own story. I wondered what her drug of choice was. Decent food was clearly not a top priority for this girl when it came to deciding how to spend her income.
“Debbie,” Phil McAvoy greeted her with a twitch of a smile, as she scratched idly at an eczema covered wrist. “How are you today then, hon?”
“No so bad thanks, Phil. What brings you here?”
“These police officers want to talk to you and Sharon about Dominic. It seems we were wrong about him after all. He’s turned up dead and they’re saying
he was murdered.”
Her eyes widened slightly in vague interest.
“Oh, aye? Get into a fight, did he? I wouldnae be surprised. I always said he could turn violent, didn’t I? That quiet act of his didn’t fool us. Gave me the creeps alright he did.” She edged backwards so we could all get in and I found myself standing on a grubby, sticky piece of old carpet in the hallway as Caitlin closed the door behind us.
“Is Sharon in?” Phil asked as he shepherded Debbie along the hallway which could have used a good cleaning. A fresh coat of paint was long overdue too, by the looks of the yellowing walls.
“Aye, but she’s still sleeping. I’ll go and give her a shout, shall I?”
Sleeping? But I’d distinctly heard two voices while we were waiting outside.
“Aye, you do that hon. I’ll just show these two Dominic’s room while we’re waiting.”
Debbie nodded and headed off up the stairs at the back of the hallway and McAvoy pulled out a bunch of keys and opened up the door on our right.
“Like I said, the room’s already been packed up ready for the next tenant,” he told us and pushed the door open.
The room we walked into was quite spacious, for a bedsit. There was a single bed and a wardrobe in the far right corner, and a couch, coffee table and TV taking up the middle space, all old and worn. A kitchenette area on the right was equipped with a microwave, a kettle and a small, under the counter fridge.
The place looked a lot cleaner than the hallway had and smelled better too. I noticed a little plug in air freshener in a socket down by the skirting board next to the wardrobe. It looked like someone had recently given the carpet a good cleaning too and I doubted that was Phil McAvoy’s doing. Slum properties like this one got minimum investment from their owners.
“It looks like Dominic bought himself a couple of appliances and things,” I commented as I opened up the microwave. “This looks almost brand new. So does that lightshade.” I gestured at the ceiling. “Bare bulb before, was it?”
“Aye, he kept the place nicely, I’ll give him that, and I doubt he’d have wanted to use the kitchen more than he had to. The girls can be a messy pair at the best of times.” I could imagine! I opened up some cupboards, all empty. Caitlin was doing the same with the TV unit and the wardrobe.
“Where did you put Dominic’s things?” I asked, and McAvoy gestured at a couple of bulging bin bags in the corner.
“He didn’t leave anything but some clothes and bits and bats. He didn’t have much.” Caitlin and I pulled on gloves and went to examine the bags. As we’d been told, there was nothing in them but clothing, footwear and a couple of books. Nothing valuable. A search of various pockets produced a couple of receipts.
“Looks like he bought himself a nice little laptop in December,” I said, looking up from where I was crouching. “I don’t suppose you found that here, Mr McAvoy?”
He just shook his head. “Maybe he took it with him, or sold or pawned it.” He shrugged and I let it pass.
“What happened to his kitchen things? I imagine he’d also have some basics in here. Plates, bowls, mugs, cutlery?”
He scowled down at me. “Aye. I moved all those to the kitchen when we packed the room up. He could have got them back if he’d come looking for them.” I nodded.
“And you can produce a copy of the rental agreement? And records of his deposit and rent payments? Were those monthly or weekly?”
The scowl deepened.
“Monthly, in advance.”
“So he was paid up until the end of January? I’m afraid I must be missing something here Mr McAvoy. Why has this room been packed up?”
For an answer, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through his messages before handing it to me. A message had been sent from Dominic Chuol’s phone on Saturday the twelfth. ‘Phil, I’ve been offered a better job in Glasgow and have to leave. Please take this as my two weeks’ notice. You can refund the deposit to my account. Thanks.’
I took my own phone out and snapped a picture of it.
“But he left these clothes and other possessions behind,” Caitlin commented. “Didn’t that strike you as at all unusual, Mr McAvoy?” He just shrugged again.
“Not really. He wouldn’t be the first tenant I’ve ever had who left a pile of unwanted junk behind for me to deal with.” We had everything neatly folded away again by then. The bags would be coming with us, of course. There was a slight chance that forensics might be able to find something useful among those belongings.
When I looked, the pedal bin by the kitchenette had been emptied, so we wouldn’t get anything from there. We moved over to the couch and lifted the cushions off to feel down the back but didn’t find anything. I walked around to the back of it and tipped it backwards so Caitlin could check underneath.
“Nothing but what looks like a little white pill. It must have rolled under there.” After snapping a picture, she pulled a bag out of her pocket and dropped it in. It might have been an over-the-counter painkiller but we’d need to get it checked. I eased the sofa back down as she straightened up again.
The sound of footsteps descending the stairs pulled our attention back to the doorway and sure enough, Debbie appeared, trailed by a bleary eyed, black haired little thing. The new girl was still wearing smudged eye makeup from the day before but she looked to be in much better physical condition than her housemate and she was certainly much cleaner. A male voice called something down the stairs.
“Go on back to bed, Brad,” Debbie called back up. “This is none of your business.” She glanced at me. “Just a friend of mine, Inspector. He doesn’t live here, and he didnae know Dominic. This here’s Sharon.”
“Aye, Sharon Watson,” her companion confirmed. “Sorry to keep you waiting but I’m working nights just now. I work at the twenty-four-hour Asda down by Fairways.” I gave her a friendly little smile.
“That’s quite a bus ride. It must take you nearly an hour to get home.”
“Aye, it would, but my pal gives me a lift, mostly. They give us the same shifts when they can.” She lifted a hand, stifling a yawn. “Debbie said Dominic had been murdered?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so, Miss Watson.”
“Poor devil. You’ll be wanting to know when we last saw him then? Do you mind if we move this to the kitchen? I could do with a coffee.”
The kitchen really was a mess. I found myself wondering if they waited until they ran out of crockery before they bothered to wash anything. Half a pan of rapidly drying mashed potato was still sitting on the cooker, and there was a rather smelly chicken carcass on a plate on the worktop. Neither looked anywhere near fresh.
Debbie and Phil went to sit at the table while Sharon put the kettle on. That table could do with a good scrubbing too, as could the worktops and the floor. This place was a real pigsty.
Debbie, upon being prompted, remembered seeing Dominic on the evening of Thursday the tenth when he’d got in from work. No, she hadn’t heard him get up for work the next morning and, as far as she knew, he hadn’t been back to the house since then. Sharon told us she’d heard him leave on the Friday morning, because she hadn’t got to sleep herself before he left.
“I was working from twelve ‘til six a.m. that week too and he usually headed out at about quarter to seven. I don’t think he did come back either, unless it was just to grab some things and go again, because he wasn’t around all Saturday. And Phil here came on the Sunday to let us know that he’d left. I can’t pretend we were sorry to hear it either.”
“Why was that?” I asked. “Did he cause you any trouble while he was here?”
“No,” she admitted reluctantly, “but it’s unnerving, sharing a place with a strange man… especially a foreigner like him.” She didn’t need to be more specific than that. It was quite obvious that they’d both objected to the colour of his skin. I tried not to let my disgust at their bigotry show. “We’d much rather have had another girl in.”
They both gave Phil a meaningful
look, but he just shrugged. Not his problem. Tenants came and went. As long as they paid their rent and didn’t cause trouble, the rest of it was no concern of his.
“Did either of you get to know him at all, while he was here?” Caitlin asked.
They hadn’t. Apart from the odd ‘hello’ in passing they’d pretty much managed to ignore him and it sounded to me as if he’d had no interest in trying to make friends with either of them.
“He kept to himself and he was quiet,” Debbie reluctantly admitted. “Apart from the usual daily hassles about having to wait for the bathroom, or the cooker or washing machine, we all got along okay I suppose.”
“Did he ever have any friends over?” I asked. Two head shakes there.
“Not that we ever heard. He sometimes went out for a bit, on a Friday night, but he was usually back in under an hour.”
It seemed that we weren’t going to get much useful information out of these three. From the shifty glances the girls sent Phil’s way every couple of minutes, I was pretty sure that they’d looted Dominic’s room between them, but there wasn’t any way I could prove it. After reminding Phil McAvoy that I’d like copies of Dominic’s rental agreement and payments to be emailed to me and handing him my card, we collected the bin bags and got out of there into the clean, cold air as fast as we could.
“That place was rank!” Caitlin said disgustedly as we put the bags in the boot. “That chicken carcass must have been there a few days from the smell of it.” I closed the boot and climbed back in on the passenger side, reaching for my water bottle.
“Mmm,” I agreed after rinsing my mouth out. “I don’t envy anyone having to share a place with that Debbie girl. I’m guessing any cleaning that gets done is mainly Sharon’s doing, on her days off. If I were her, I’d have started looking for another place to live a long time ago.”
She nodded her silent agreement.
Death in the Black Wood Page 7