Wishful thinking, I suppose. I knew my period of grace couldn’t go on forever.
Oakley was pleased with himself. By interviewing the volunteers at the M Shed, he’d discovered that a gang of youths had taken to hanging around. At first, the volunteers had been delighted that local lads were taking an interest in their heritage, but their optimism had been misplaced, and familiarity had made the kids abusive and cheeky. Eventually they’d been banned from the museum, although they’d continued to lurk around. Then they’d disappeared and hadn’t been seen for several weeks.
From descriptions, Oakley had identified one of the boys as Nick King, a twelve-year-old offender from Hartcliffe. Nick had previously confined himself to burglary and joy-riding, although there were a couple of pending charges for suspected criminal damage. His brother Shane had had a brief moment of fame when he had drowned the previous month.
Oakley paid Nick a visit and found him in the garden shed, surrounded by equipment identical to that used to start the fire at the M Shed; there were burns on his hands, and his eyebrows were missing. Nick denied any involvement, but his accomplices quickly cracked. When the boys’ homes were searched, a good deal of stolen property was recovered, so that a number of burglaries were able to go down as ‘solved’ and New Bridewell’s crime statistics received a welcome boost.
Only one lad eluded Oakley’s net. That was fifteen-year-old Wayne King, Nick’s cousin. With sullen spite, Nick told Oakley that Wayne had goods from other crimes, and that he sold them by phoning up different fences. Oakley thought a schoolboy ringing around to get the best offers on stolen equipment was a sad reflection on society.
By five o’clock Oakley decided that he’d put in a good day’s work and would treat himself to an early finish. There was a quiz at his local pub that night. He wasn’t very good at quizzes, and usually only knew the answer after someone else had given it, but he enjoyed them anyway. He’d asked Catherine to go with him, and was pleased when she suggested a meal afterwards in a new Balti place in Clifton.
He put his head around the door to the radio room to tell John ‘Jeeves’ Jeavis that he was going home, but that Evans was on duty until eight. Jeeves gestured at his computer screen.
‘Fourteen outstanding calls,’ he grumbled. ‘Eight burglaries, including one that came in at nine thirty this morning. Two disturbances, probably domestics. A missing granny. A dog that’s frothing at the mouth. A bad smell coming from a neighbour’s house. An abandoned car. And there’s nobody free.’ He turned hopeful eyes on Oakley.
‘I’m going home,’ said Oakley firmly. ‘But Evans will take a couple of the burglaries. Give him the one that came in this morning. Getting a plain-clothes man might stop the complainant moaning about the long wait.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Jeeves, as though bargaining was an option. ‘You’ve got to drive down the A4 to get home, right? Make a detour up Goldway Road and phone in the registration of that abandoned car. Then it’s only a hop and a skip to Orchard Street, where you can put the lid on this neighbour’s dustbin.’
‘I’m going home,’ said Oakley again. ‘Have a nice weekend.’
‘Come on, Guv,’ begged Jeeves. ‘We give you Helen Anderson whenever you want an extra body. It’s payback time. Do us a favour. Please?’
‘Goldway Road?’ asked Oakley reluctantly, knowing the radioman was right. ‘You just want a registration number? Not a report?’ He sensed he was making a mistake, but how could looking at an abandoned car interfere with his night out?
‘And then stop off at Orchard Street and have a word about this smell. You call in the details and I’ll do the rest. Thanks, Guv.’
Traffic was murderous along the Hotwells Road, and Oakley was relieved to get away from the crawling line of cars and lorries that inched their way along the north bank of the Floating Harbour. The nearby river, with its grey-brown, glistening mud fringes, stank as it always did during hot weather, and the sun beating down on the car made Oakley feel as though he were being cremated. Not for the first time that summer, he wished his car’s air conditioning worked.
He found the abandoned car and passed its details to Jeeves, then drove to Orchard Street. A short, officious-looking man in his mid-sixties was waiting. He had a fringe of white hair around a balding head, and large, purple lips, like split plums.
Oakley flashed his warrant card. ‘Was it you who made the call?’
‘They needn’t have sent an inspector,’ said the man, aggrieved. ‘A constable would have done. I just want someone to break down the door so that I can get into the kitchen. I’m having a barbecue tomorrow.’
Oakley raised his eyebrows. ‘And you plan to use the steaks from your neighbour’s freezer?’
The man scowled. ‘There won’t be any steaks in that freezer! Meat is expensive, and no one’s going to leave it behind when they go. No, all I want to do is empty the bin or the fridge of whatever’s causing the stink. I can’t have a barbecue with that pong, can I?’
‘Have you tried asking your neighbours yourself, Mister …?’
‘Smith. Dennis Smith from number seven. And I haven’t asked because I can’t. A rental agency leases it on a short-term basis to visiting university types – foreigners mostly – only there’s no one there now and there doesn’t seem to have been for a while. Summer, I suppose: they’re all on holiday. I tried calling the agency, but I suppose they’ve knocked off early for the weekend.’
‘So, there’s definitely no one there?’ asked Oakley, determined not to be caught peeping through the windows if some eccentric academic from Mother Russia was in residence.
‘I told you, no,’ said Smith impatiently. ‘Are you going to break the door down or not?’
‘I can’t smell anything.’ Oakley cursed Jeeves for landing him with this one. The police didn’t have the authority to break into houses for the reasons Smith was giving, and it was going to be a case of telling him to call the agency on Monday. He sensed Smith wasn’t going to like it.
‘It’s at the back,’ snapped Smith. ‘I’m not going to have a barbecue out the front, am I? I’d have every Tom, Dick and Harry pinching my sausages. Come with me.’
Oakley recognized the smell the moment he stepped into Smith’s kitchen, and it grew stronger when he went into the garden and stood on tiptoe to look over the wall.
‘When did you first notice it?’ he asked, wondering why Smith had waited so long.
‘I’ve been away – the Algarve for two weeks with the missus. We just got back this morning. She’s lying down upstairs, but I wanted to get the smell sorted out before tomorrow. I’ve got my son coming with his family, and I’ve invited Mrs Greaves and her boy from number eleven.’
Oakley scrambled over the wall, still cursing Jeeves. Finding dead professors was uniform’s privilege, and it wasn’t one of the jobs he’d missed when he’d made the transition to CID. He swore when he ripped his trousers on a sharp piece of trellis.
‘Been meaning to get that fixed,’ said Smith helpfully.
Oakley jumped down and peered through the kitchen window, then backed away hastily at the sight that greeted him. ‘Jesus!’
‘Break a window,’ suggested Smith. ‘It’s the fridge, is it? Doctor Kovac must’ve left something in it when he left two weeks ago, and it’s gone off.’
‘Smells like it’s Doctor Kovac who’s gone off to me,’ muttered Oakley.
I was taking details of a car theft when Jeeves announced on the radio that he needed someone to deal with a body in Orchard Street. I felt as if I was being sucked inside a vacuum, and I couldn’t breathe. The man whose vehicle had been stolen continued to talk at me, but I didn’t hear a word. Fortunately, he was one of those people who just wanted to rail, and he barely looked at me as he continued to hold forth.
No one answered for a minute, then Wright came on the radio, calling for me. My stomach did a double flip. Dear God, no! Please don’t let him give me this one. Not this one. The thought was so appalling
that I thought I’d just toss myself on the railway line if he did. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be the one to take the call when James was discovered. Not even in my darkest imaginings.
I didn’t answer the radio. Wright called again, irritation thick in his voice. The complainant was looking oddly at me, so I went outside and answered, clicking my thumb up and down on the transmit button as I did so, so I’d be difficult to understand.
‘Sorry, sarge. Bad connection.’
‘PC 7029 will be there in five minutes,’ said Wright. ‘He’ll drop you in Dean Lane, where you can walk to three of these burglaries. They should keep you busy until we knock off at ten.’
He signed off, and I leaned against the wall, legs shaking with sick relief. I was reprieved. But for how long?
A body that was stinking up someone’s house was a lot more interesting than the other calls on offer that evening, so Barry Wright decided to take it himself. He hadn’t been to a really grisly death for about a year, and another tale of maggots and liquefied brain would be good for his repertoire. He had seen all there was to see, so Oakley’s stiff held no terrors for him.
He smiled to himself as he drove, wondering if the CID man had thrown up. He hoped so – it would make a good tale to tell the lads in the pub. He felt like the cavalry going to the rescue, as Oakley was obliged to wait before he could do anything – police officers were open to accusations of theft, so it was force policy to enter houses in pairs in such situations. He didn’t hurry, although he usually liked an opportunity to use the blue lights. It would do Oakley good to kick his heels.
He arrived eventually and parked in a way that would make passing difficult for other drivers. No one was likely to complain about a police car, despite the doleful look given to him by the pompous little man with the big purple lips.
‘What we got, Neel?’ he asked, strolling nonchalantly towards number nine. He took a deep breath. ‘Do I detect Pong de Stiff?’
‘No, that’s the river,’ replied Oakley, straight-faced. ‘The serious smell is around the back. Mister Smith says that the house was last occupied by a Doctor Kovac from Albania. Mister Smith’s been on holiday for the last two weeks—’
‘The Algarve,’ supplied Smith helpfully. ‘The missus and me.’
‘Prefer Majorca myself,’ said Wright jovially. ‘Fewer dagos there, if you know what I mean.’
‘No,’ said Oakley coldly. ‘I don’t.’
‘I don’t suppose you do,’ said Wright, giving Smith a conspiratorial wink.
It wasn’t the time or the place to tackle Wright’s bigotry, but Oakley determined to blast the man at the soonest opportunity. ‘Apparently, Kovac said he was going home at the end of July, but Mister Smith is uncertain exactly when, and no one can be sure he went.’
‘Nice man, Doctor Kovac,’ said Smith. ‘Not like some that come here – all snooty and never so much as a wave. But Doctor Kovac always stopped to pass the time of day. He gave me an Albanian sausage while he was here this last time.’
‘He stayed here more than once?’ asked Oakley.
‘This was his fourth visit. It’s a pity he’s dead. He was all right.’
‘Enough talking,’ said Wright abruptly. ‘Where’s the stiff? Round the back? Shall we shimmy over the wall?’
‘The body is in the kitchen,’ said Oakley curtly. ‘But I think I can open the front door with a credit card, which means we can secure the house afterwards. And we don’t know it’s Kovac yet, so let’s not jump to conclusions.’
‘Of course it’s him,’ growled Wright, watching Oakley fiddle with the door. ‘Who else can it be? We’ve got a stinking stiff and someone not seen for two weeks. So don’t practise your fancy analysis crap on me. Go home, Mister Smith. We’ll take it from here.’
Oakley regarded Wright balefully as Smith left. ‘You need to work on your people skills, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘And dispense with the racism, too, if you don’t mind.’
‘Racism?’ demanded Wright indignantly. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘What are you talking about, sir,’ corrected Oakley, deciding that if Wright didn’t understand why he was being called a racist, there was little point in discussing it. He turned back to the door.
Wright glowered. ‘Nice little talent you’ve got there, sir. Where’d you learn that, then? Calcutta?’
‘The gutters. Same place you learned your manners,’ retorted Oakley, unable to help himself. ‘There. We’re in.’
‘Bloody Nora!’ exclaimed Wright as he followed Oakley along the corridor to the kitchen. ‘Jesus bloody Christ!’
‘Go outside if you’re going to be sick,’ said Oakley sharply, noting that Wright’s face was pale and sweaty. ‘We don’t want regurgitated sausage and chips in here.’
‘I’m going to open a window,’ muttered Wright thickly. ‘Shit!’
‘Don’t touch anything,’ snapped Oakley, bending over the shape on the floor and batting away flies to prevent them from landing on him. Wright ignored him and reached for the window latch. ‘I said leave it! This is a murder enquiry. I don’t want you fouling the scene. And I meant what I said about you throwing up.’
Wright’s hand froze mid-air. ‘Murder?’
‘Use your eyes, man! Someone has wrapped this poor devil in black plastic, and the back of his head is smashed in. I don’t think he did it himself.’
Wright turned back towards the window, intending to open it because his need for fresh air was stronger than his training not to meddle with a crime scene. His foot skidded in fluid that had leaked from the body and he stumbled. He put out a hand to save himself and landed heavily on the plastic-clad figure, causing a spill of maggots to sprinkle across the floor.
Oakley sighed impatiently as Wright retched. ‘For God’s sake! I told you to go outside!’
NINE
Once Oakley had made a call to Jeeves, a smoothly run machine went into action. Scene of Crime Officers – SOCOs – arrived, along with photographers and a police surgeon. Wearing overalls, paper shoes, gloves and masks to prevent contaminating any forensic evidence that might be found, Oakley watched the SOCOs open drawers and cupboard doors, but there was nothing to be found that could confirm the identity of the man in the kitchen – if it was a man, of course. They would have to wait for the pathologist to tell them that.
Like Wright, Oakley had seen more than his share of bodies, but dismissed the much-favoured advice of breathing through his mouth. He breathed through his nose, preferring to smell the stench than to taste it. Wright lurked near the door, and Oakley suspected his unprofessional vomiting would not feature in any story he would later tell his cronies.
While he waited for the SOCOs to finish their preliminary work, Oakley pondered what he had seen of the house. It contained basic furniture, kitchen utensils and clean linen, but nothing else. Surely Kovac would have had clothes, toiletries and other personal items – according to Smith, he had intended to stay at the house for three weeks – so where were his belongings? Had they been stolen by whoever had wrapped him in plastic? And if so, why? Oakley sincerely hoped there would be something in the victim’s pockets that would help, because it was clear that the house would have little to tell them.
He peered into the kitchen where the pathologist was kneeling. It was small, with cheap, off-white cupboards and yellow lino, probably chosen in an attempt to brighten what was actually a dismal little room. Underlying the stench of putrification was a sort of mustiness, suggesting the house was damp and underused. There was a stain on the ceiling that told of a leak from the bathroom above. The place was seedy, and he wondered what impression of England its foreign visitors took home with them.
Mr Smith had looked up the name of the rental agency and Oakley had relayed it to Jeeves on the chance that it might be one of the premises protected by an alarm to the police. If so, there would be a key-holder – an employee reachable after hours. Unfortunately, Academic Accommodations had no such contact, and there was
little point in leaving a message on an answering machine.
Smith’s house was attached to number nine, so he was the one most likely to have seen or heard anything. Unfortunately, as he and his wife had been on holiday when the murder had taken place – it did not need a pathologist to tell Oakley that the victim had been dead for more than the time since they had returned – they could tell the police nothing about the murder itself. Oakley went to number eleven, which was next door but separated from the murder scene – and the smell – by a small garage. The Greaves family lived there – mother and son. A dark-haired, tired-looking woman opened the door in response to his knock.
‘It isn’t Mrs Smith, is it?’ she asked worriedly, standing aside to let him enter a brightly decorated hallway. ‘I thought she looked peaky when she got back from the airport, and I told her to lie down.’
‘It’s a problem with number nine,’ said Oakley, showing her a warrant card that she barely glanced at. ‘Do you know if anyone’s been staying there recently?’
‘Doctor Kovac,’ replied Mrs Greaves. ‘But he went back to Albania at the end of July. There hasn’t been anyone since, and the lights have been off.’
‘When was the last time you saw lights?’
She looked flustered. ‘I don’t pay much attention to dates. But there haven’t been any for a couple of weeks. Not since Doctor Kovac left.’
‘Did you see him leave? With his suitcases?’
‘Well, no, but he told me he was going at the end of the month, because his family planned to spend August at the seaside in Albania.’
‘Do you have his address in Albania?’
‘No, we only exchanged a few polite words when we saw each other out front. Mister Smith might know it, though. Doctor Kovac liked him – he gave him a sausage. Has something happened to him? Is he a drug smuggler? There’s lots of that going on these days.’
The Murder House Page 10