Whitely nodded.
Eddie laughed. ‘Good luck.’
‘Eddie, what–’
Eddie saw the nuances of fear in Whitely’s eyes and wondered why he didn’t just barge past him and get the hell out of here; he had been relieved, after all. Instead, he sighed. ‘Follow me.’ Eddie dropped his kit and marched back up the stairs, across the stepping plates and into the bedroom.
Whitely stood at his side. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Murder-suicide.’
‘Half right.’ Eddie turned to leave.
‘Has he left a note?’
Eddie made it to the landing again. ‘Why would he?’
Whitely gently grabbed Eddie’s arm. ‘Please,’ he said.
Eddie looked again at James Whitely; only this time, he didn’t see a brave American Marine, instead he saw a frightened kid, who was well out of his depth and didn’t have a hope in hell of impressing those who’d sent him here. If it had been a straight suicide, he could cope, no doubt. But now with murder thrown into the equation, he would struggle. ‘It’s not a murder-suicide, Whitely. It’s a double murder dressed up to look like a murder-suicide.’
Whitely didn’t even make it to his next sentence, a question: How the hell do you know that? before the door opened and a giant scene suit with a tiny head stuck on top squeezed into the hall.
‘Fuck,’ Eddie whispered. ‘McCain.’
‘Eddie?’ McCain’s head swivelled left and right.
‘What?’
McCain looked up the stairs. ‘Why are you still here?’
Behind McCain, another scene suit, this one considerably smaller and clutching a clipboard, followed him in.
‘What is this?’ Eddie shouted. ‘You lot run out of offices? This is a–’
‘Shut it! And grab your kit and handover to MCU.’
Eddie ground his teeth, could feel the heat growing in his chest.
‘Eddie was just updating me, Mr McCain,’ Whitely said.
‘Yeah, well, he’s finished updating. Eddie?’
Eddie thumped down the stairs.
The clipboard looked nervous and said, ‘I’ll wait outside, Peter.’ She turned and left before McCain could say anything.
And then Eddie was there. ‘What’s your problem, eh?’
‘Same as always, Eddie: you. Now get your kit–’
‘There are two bodies here–’
‘I don’t care if there are 200 bodies. It’s major crime’s problem, so get out.’
‘You don’t understand.’
McCain sighed through the mask. ‘I don’t need to understand, you prick. I need you at an armed robbery in Gipton. This scene has nothing to do with you anymore. How many more times!’
‘So, what are you doing here?’
‘Making sure you leave. I know how anal you can get about a job.’ He took hold of Eddie’s arm, and Eddie stopped dead.
He looked at McCain’s chubby hand, and then he looked at McCain’s sunken eyes. ‘I’ll count to three.’
McCain’s hand dropped away. ‘I want you breaking speed limits in five minutes.’ He turned and left the house, and for a moment, Eddie closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply, tried to contact his inner self and calm down.
‘I’ll break your fucking legs in five minutes,’ he whispered, watching McCain rolling the scene suit off his rotund body, hoping he’d fall flat on his arse. The svelte lady, probably from the professional standards department, put down her clipboard, approached McCain, and they began talking, McCain nodding Eddie’s way every now and then.
Whitely came down the stairs, and the place was quiet again now, quiet enough to hear the kid’s scene suit rustling. ‘I’m going to have to call my gaffer,’ he said. ‘No way can I do this on my own.’
‘Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be on your own if he’d piss off.’
‘Thanks, but I don’t want to get you in any more bother.’
‘You’d think we worked for competing companies, Christ’s sake.’
‘So, just quickly, what makes you think it’s a double murder?’
Eddie turned his attention away from McCain, looked back at the kid, and eventually said, ‘Four things, initially. There are drag marks leading to his feet–’
‘Eddie!’ McCain shouted.
Eddie grabbed the door, yanked it wide and screamed, ‘Will you just fuck off!’ And then he was out of the house, scuttling down the driveway, almost running in his haste to get to McCain. McCain saw this and tried to get out of his suit even quicker but snagged a shoe and went down heavily on his backside. Several neighbours laughed. The PCSOs laughed.
Eddie did not laugh. He stood before McCain and said, ‘This job is about to go tits-up because of you, you prick.’
‘I have my orders!’ McCain almost screamed.
Eddie straightened. ‘Well, shove your orders right up your arse.’ Eddie began walking towards his van.
Whitely called from the house, ‘Eddie, you forgot your kit.’
‘Put it on eBay.’ He opened his van door.
McCain got to his feet. ‘Eddie, you get–’
‘And shove your job up your arse too. Plenty of fucking room for it.’
McCain got his wish after all; within five minutes, Eddie wasn’t just breaking speed limits. He was obliterating them.
7
—One —
Eddie sat in the van, listening to the radio operator getting more and more wound up by the steady influx of jobs and the distinct lack of CSIs she had available to deal with them.
‘Bravo-Seven-Two?’
That was Eddie’s call sign. He ignored her.
‘XW to Bravo-Seven-Two, receiving?’
He sighed, pressed the button. ‘Seven-Two.’
‘Seven-Two, are you free for details of a robbery in Gipton?’
‘No.’
‘Can you give an ETA, please?’
‘No.’
‘Seven-Two, CID are asking for CSI urgently please. Can you take details?’
Eddie ignored her.
‘Eddie, take details now!’ That was McCain.
Eddie pressed the button. ‘You take details. I’m going home to curl one out and file my corns.’
He turned the radio off, stared at the steering wheel and listened to the exhaust ticking as it cooled down. There through the windscreen, a bunch of officers climbed into a van and sped out through the iron gates of a main police station slowly crumbling into decay.
He’d calmed down considerably on the journey back from Alwoodley and the copper’s apparent suicide. But not enough to change his mind about what he was going to do. What was the point of the Major Crime Unit sending in a kid who couldn’t handle a major crime? It didn’t make sense. And what made even less sense was the First Attending Officer had neglected to find the second body. Christ, it wasn’t as though it was buried under the floorboards or anything quite so cryptic – it was lying in bed!
But the icing on the cake, the pinnacle of all the foolishness that was running rampant throughout his own part of the police community, was the startling ineptitude of his supervisor to listen to sound advice and prevent a dire situation getting any worse. ‘Prick,’ he said again.
But there was more to it than he could nail down right now. What was the point of being tremendously unhappy in your work if all it did was enable you to exist, to enable you to come to work? Surely he’d be better off not coming to work and actually be happy for a change? And that prompted another question: even if he didn’t have all this to contend with, would he really be a happy man then?
Eddie was not a happy-go-lucky kind of man; he never whistled while walking along, he never hummed a tune in the shower, he never rattled the change in his pockets. He was a deep thinker, and the more he thought about things, the worse they appeared, until they became almost insurmountable. Life was just too much of a struggle without adding this kind of burden to it.
And that was why he climbed out of the van and headed into the station for one last time.
&n
bsp; — Two —
As he walked the corridor towards the CSI office, Eddie constructed a wall inside his mind. It was tall and it was robust, and it was there to deflect any pleas that might come his way from Chris, the area forensic manager, the man who was in charge of the Eastern CSI hub, the man who was in charge of McCain.
On the other hand, he thought, there may be no pleas at all; instead, there might be deafening cheers. Either way was fine.
Eddie punched through the door and made straight for his desk, reaching into his jacket pocket for the van keys.
‘Back early, Eddie,’ Chris said. A phone behind him began to ring.
‘I’m leaving.’
Chris leaned against the doorframe of his office. ‘Again?’ he smiled but it was lost.
‘Here’s the van keys, my radio, my locker key, my ID card.’ He pulled his wallet out, tossed the card on the desk. ‘You can keep whatever’s in the locker, sell it, burn it, whatever you want.’
‘What?’
‘My kit is still at the scene. Give it to my replacement.’
‘Whoa, hold on, mate–’
‘I don’t want a conversation about it. I’m leaving. Nice knowing you.’
‘Is this about McCain?’
‘He’s just one small turd in a giant shit factory.’
‘He phoned me, told me what happened at the suicide.’
Eddie stared at the ceiling. ‘Apparently, he didn’t tell you what happened, then.’
Chris walked across the office. ‘What do you mean?’
Eddie took off his police jacket, threw it on the desk. ‘Because it wasn’t a suicide.’ He pulled on his coat. ‘For the last time, for the record, for posterity, it wasn’t a fucking suicide!’
A second phone began to ring. Chris picked it up, put it back down again. ‘If you know something that might help–’
‘Bollocks. That scene was pulled right out from under me, handed to a kid who was quaking in his boots, and I tried to tell McCain what was happening, but all he did was bawl me out. So, don’t come that shit with me.’
Chris held out his hands, palms towards Eddie. He was missing his right thumb; hacked off by a murdering psychopath a couple of years ago. It shocked Eddie each time he saw it, but it didn’t seem to bother Chris too much these days. ‘Calm down, Eddie.’
‘Piss off with your calm down. I’m not talking about it anymore, I’m off.’
‘You can’t just go like this.’
‘Host a leaving party if you want, but I’ll be busy washing my hair. Don’t bother with a whip-round or a card, eh.’
‘You have to give notice.’
‘I hereby give notice–’
‘Eddie! You have to give a month’s notice.’
Eddie smiled at Chris as he slammed his desk drawer. ‘So, sack me.’ He headed for the door.
‘Think about what you’re doing. Think about what you’re giving up–’
‘Okay, I’ll indulge you, shall I? What am I giving up? I’m giving up working seventy-hour weeks; I’m giving up being ordered around by that egotistical arsehole who’s forgotten what it’s like at the pointy end these days; I’m giving up rushing from one fucking job to another because we suddenly lost a shit-load of staff when the government “restructured” us.’ He smiled then. ‘But, anyway, look on the bright side, I’m giving someone a job. There, everyone’s happy.’
Chris closed his eyes and said dejectedly, ‘I need it in writing, mate.’
The phone began ringing again. Eddie stopped; he bit his tongue, trying to prevent the impetus he had nurtured during his walk up the corridor, the brick wall he’d built, from slowly crumbling like the station around him. He swiped the ringing phone off the desk and headed for the white board at the head of the office. He picked up a red pen and scrawled, ‘I quit.’ And signed it, ‘E. Collins.’
‘Look, why don’t you take the rest of the day off and just give it some thought.’
Eddie headed for the door just as McCain walked in through it. Suddenly, his impetus returned. ‘No need.’
Chris said, ‘Eddie–’
‘I’ll mail you a letter.’
McCain stopped and stared. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The writing is on the wall, tosser,’ Eddie pointed back over his shoulder. ‘Haven’t you got a robbery in Gipton to go to?’
8
Eddie pulled up well back from the cordon and climbed out. The traditional throb of police activity was all around him, except since he was here last time – only an hour ago – it had doubled in intensity.
He could see CID cars littered around, parked half on the residents’ driveways and half on the road; marked vans canted at strange angles on the grassed verges. And right in front of his car was a BBC outside broadcast crew. Amazing how these things got out so quickly.
As he walked towards the scene tape, he took out a cigarette and watched the clusters of coppers and CID embroiled in whatever it was they did at scenes like this. Certainly house-to-house will have been carried out by now, or maybe they’re still under way with it, he thought, and they’ll be securing the property round the back, working out shifts and personnel, and, of course, since they now obviously thought the scene more than just a murder-suicide, they might even be considering armed officers to float invisibly among them.
Either way, with the number of officers standing idly around, it looked like the old police adage was still very much alive: hurry up and wait.
But as he neared the cordon, some of them looked at him. And for the first time in years, Eddie Collins felt like an outsider. Working for the police was a strange experience. There were seven or eight thousand of them in West Yorkshire, and he knew maybe a couple of hundred or so by sight and only a handful by name, but no matter where in the county he went, he could rely on a nod and a smile and conversation, if he felt that way inclined. He was part of the club, one of the in-crowd, nothing too secret to share.
But now that he was lighter by a warrant card, the doors to that club were closed. He could expect nothing more than common courtesy from his thousands of ex-buddies now, and that was an eerie feeling. He wondered if he’d be able to get close enough.
Eddie flicked his cigarette into the gutter and nodded at the approaching PCSO.
‘Eddie, what’s up?’
‘Nip and get James Whitely for me, would you?’
‘The CSI?’
‘Yeah,’ Eddie said, almost bitterly, ‘the CSI.’
‘I can book you in, if you want to come inside?’
Eddie smiled. Wouldn’t be saying that if you knew my employment status. ‘I’m on my way home, just wanted a quick word.’
The PCSO disappeared, and Eddie looked around at the interested neighbours who gathered in clumps for a gawp and a natter as though all this was a day out at the seaside for them. He wondered how many knew of the secrets inside that rather pleasant detached house. How would this upmarket neighbourhood react to having a murder house in their very private little street?
Whitely walked briskly – as briskly as a scene suit would allow – over towards Eddie, ripping his mask off and sweeping the hood back over cropped hair that glistened with sweat, a “phew” hovering on his dry lips. ‘Thought you had a robbery to go to.’
‘Did you work it out?’ He nodded to the house.
Whitely looked around as though about to impart some earth-shattering news. ‘Frankly, no, I didn’t. I’ve been concentrating on photography.’
‘What? Haven’t you even studied the scene? Aren’t you curious?’
‘Of course I am, but I have to get the photos done for a–’
‘Briefing, yeah, I know.’
‘Why do you think it’s a,’ he lowered his voice, ‘a double murder?’
‘Lots of things. The front door was unlocked.’
‘So?’
‘You going to kill your wife and then top yourself, you don’t want granny from next door walking in to borrow a cup of sugar as you’re tying the
noose, do you?’
‘Suppose.’
‘So, he let the murderers in. The murderers let themselves back out.’
Whitely clicked his fingers. ‘No note!’
‘They don’t always leave one anyway, especially if their mind’s all over the place.’ And I should know; he thought, remembering his own brief flirtation with a noose – actually a vacuum cleaner flex – a couple of years ago. ‘So, don’t let that sway you.’
‘You said murderers. Plural.’
‘And the rope is foreign to the scene. Everything in that house is less than six months old. Nothing is dirty or well used; no way would he have a shitty old rope just lying around.’
‘He might have brought it with him.’
‘Where from, work?’
‘Look,’ Whitely said, ‘he didn’t work regular hours at the local nick, if you know what I mean.’
Eddie looked away. It began to make some kind of sense to him now; having been ejected from the scene so that Major Crime Unit could take over. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘If that means what I think it means, you’d better make sure you’re fucking thorough in there.’
‘I will. What else?’
‘Don’t forget the marks on the landing floor; drag marks. The landing will powder up pretty good, but get some oblique light on there, first job.’
‘Okay.’
‘And look at his wrists; his hands were bound, there are marks on them – low copy swab them. And then look on the handrail below the attic hatch, there’s a footwear mark there.’
‘Might have been his.’
‘Nope. Not his, I checked.’
‘But you hadn’t even powdered it up, how could you tell–’
‘So, powder it up. It’s an Adidas.’
Whitely stared in wonder at Eddie; even his perfect teeth saluted. ‘How the…’
‘Right, I’m off.’
‘What?’
‘I have a life to plan.’ Eddie turned and began walking away.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Whitely called.
‘I’ve resigned.’ Eddie lit a cigarette and walked away.
‘No way! And you came back here?’
No Time to Die_a thrilling CSI mystery Page 4