The Murder House

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘I only wish we had that kind of power,’ sighed Oakley. ‘Perhaps he realized that the case isn’t as straightforward as he hoped, and buggered off before he could make a fool of himself.’ Or before he could make an enemy of Yorke, he thought.

  Michael still smiled, but his eyes were hostile. ‘I wouldn’t like to learn that the police had anything to do with it. Neither would my brother.’

  Oakley met his gaze. ‘I think we’d better end this conversation now, before I feel obliged to arrest you for threatening behaviour.’

  Michael backed away, raising his hands in the air. ‘See you in court.’

  Oakley stared after him thoughtfully. It was the second time the Yorkes had suggested the police had something to do with Paxton’s odd disappearance. What was going on?

  It was a scorching hot day, the sort when everyone should be at the beach or relaxing with friends. I certainly shouldn’t have been standing guard at the house where James had died, trying to find a spot that was in the shade so I wouldn’t fry.

  DI Davis had left when the SOCO had finished his lecture, and the forensics team had gone shortly after that, locking the door behind them. They had really known their business, and it showed that it’s getting harder and harder to get away with murder these days. But I was going to be the exception. There were certainly some unsolved murders and James’ was going to be one of them. They didn’t even know who he was, and the Kovac thing would lead them off in entirely the wrong direction.

  But what about the black plastic? I’d been confused and frightened after the murder. Could my horror really have caused me to blank out what I’d done? I closed my eyes and replayed it yet again. I recalled staring at James for some time, watching him breathe. Then I’d started for the door, but had gone back to make sure there were no witnesses. I shuddered. I don’t know what I’d have done if I had found someone.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Inspector Oakley’s voice pulled me so suddenly from my musings that I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. ‘I thought you might like this. It’s hot out here.’

  He gave me an ice cream, chocolate-covered with nuts on the outside. I grinned weakly, trying to look grateful, while wondering how I was going to eat the thing without throwing up. Part of what was making me feel sick was the smell of Oakley himself. I’d been a police officer long enough to recognize the rank stench that clung to him. He’d been at James’ post mortem.

  ‘Nothing’s happening here,’ I said, pulling off the wrapper and trying to think of something other than James lying naked on a steel table. I could throw the lolly away when Oakley had gone. It would melt, and no one would know. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him I didn’t want it, but I certainly couldn’t eat the thing. ‘SOCO left a couple hours ago.’

  ‘And you drew the short straw and got to stand guard. I wondered who’d land that job. I should’ve known. How long are you here for?’

  ‘Rest of the shift, as far as I know. I don’t mind.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ Oakley said irritably. ‘I don’t want dehydrated officers fainting and letting the murderer get into the house. Or the press. I’ll make sure you have a break, even if I can’t get you out of a second stint.’

  I started to tell him that I didn’t want one – that I’d rather be alone with my thoughts than taking burglary reports or arresting smirking juvenile shoplifters at the shopping centre, but he opened the door and went in without listening. He called over his shoulder that I should finish my ice cream before following, indicating that he wanted me to join him there. I estimated the time it would take me to eat it before flinging it in the hedge and stepping inside.

  He was in the hall with his hands in his pockets. It was hot enough that anyone wearing a jacket would roast, so he was in shirt sleeves. It was a white shirt, nicely ironed, and he’d loosened his blue tie. He looked cool and relaxed. I noticed for the first time that there was silver in his black hair, and that his teeth always looked so white because his skin was a lovely golden colour. I hoped it would be him who arrested me if the affair turned out badly. Or Clare Davis. Either would be kind and fair.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, when he just continued to stand there.

  ‘Trying to get a feel for the place. I couldn’t do it last night. First, Wright was all over it, telling me how to catch the killer, then SOCO was here. Now it’s empty, it feels different.’

  ‘How?’ I asked suspiciously. Did he think he was going to catch me by trying to imagine what had happened?

  ‘Well, for a start, I can hear next-door’s television. That means the walls are thin, and if our victim was killed after an argument, the neighbours might have heard something.’

  ‘But the ones at number seven were away,’ I pointed out, repeating what I’d heard during the morning. ‘They only got back yesterday.’

  ‘True. But a screaming row would’ve been heard all down the street, even with the windows closed. It’s a quiet road. There isn’t much traffic, and there don’t seem to be any noisy kids, even though it’s the school holidays. So, I don’t think he was killed after a fight – well, not a loud one, anyway. I suppose there are always the quiet, menacing ones to consider.’

  Was my last discussion with James a quiet, menacing one? I supposed it was. Neither of us had raised a voice. It had all been normal volume, very controlled, very dignified. All the menace had come from him, of course. None was mine, until the rock came into play. I wondered again where it was. Had I got rid of it? Or did I have someone else to thank for that – the person who had wrapped James in plastic?

  Then a blinding realization came to me. I hadn’t done that – one of Yorke’s friends had. He’d come to see if James had managed to get the false statement put in the court file, found James dead and decided to get rid of the body, lest the crime was traced back to his boss. I suddenly remembered the statement lying on the sofa where James had tossed it. It wasn’t there now, and I was certain SOCO hadn’t found it, because someone would have said so. I felt dizzy with relief. I wasn’t losing my mind after all. Someone had been in the house between me and the police.

  But was I right to be relieved? After all, Yorke wouldn’t be pleased that someone had killed his crooked lawyer, and he was a dangerous man. Yet twelve days had passed since the murder, and I’d been careful to ensure that no one had seen me near the house that night. I knew I hadn’t been followed, so I was probably safe. Wasn’t I?

  ‘We don’t have a precise time of death,’ Oakley was saying, ‘and we don’t know whether our victim was killed here. Enquiries in the street haven’t gone well. How can they, if we don’t know what dates we’re talking about?’

  ‘You have a rough idea,’ I said, able to be consoling now. ‘You know Kovac was last seen on Monday, July the thirtieth, when he told the neighbour at number eleven that he was leaving the next morning. If he didn’t leave that Tuesday, it must have been because he was dead. Therefore, he died sometime between that Monday evening and the next day – probably the first half of the day, as no one leaves to go on a long journey late at night.’

  And I knew Kovac had gone by the Tuesday evening, because he certainly wasn’t there when I arrived. Obviously, James had waited until the Albanian had left before using the house. I was quite pleased with myself. If I managed to make Oakley believe the killing occurred on Monday or early Tuesday, he wouldn’t be looking for an alibi from me on Tuesday night.

  ‘I know there’s a body of opinion that thinks we’ve got a dead Albanian on our hands, but I’m not placing any bets. It might be someone else.’

  Damn him! ‘A tramp?’ I suggested, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  ‘Not wearing a nice suit and good leather shoes.’

  ‘And there was no identification on the body?’ I asked. ‘No wallet or mobile?’

  The mobile, of course, was my biggest worry.

  ‘I wish,’ said Oakley. He walked into the kitchen and stood still again, hands in his pockets as he l
ooked around slowly. Then he donned a pair of gloves and began to open various drawers and cabinets.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘The murder weapon. It’s got to be something heavy with a flattish bottom, perhaps like a heavily dented skillet.’

  I joined in the search, grateful that he was so wrong. I suppose he thought James had been killed in the kitchen, and was hung up on the idea that the murder weapon had to be some kind of cooking utensil. I realized then that when the police have little to go on, things like where the body was found start to take on unwarranted significance. I could see how easy it would be to lead an investigation astray by over-interpreting, or drawing the wrong conclusions. If I were ever involved in another, I’d know what mistakes not to make.

  I’d heard Oakley was tenacious, and now I saw it for myself. He examined every utensil in the kitchen, working methodically from left to right. When he finished there, he moved to the sitting room, where his eyes immediately lit on the stones that adorned the mantelpiece.

  ‘Ha!’ he muttered, as he took one down and turned it over in his hands. ‘Something heavy and irregular that won’t leave splinters or fibres.’ He turned to me, his eyes gleaming. ‘I think we’ve found our murder weapon.’

  ‘That?’ I tried to make myself sound dubious. ‘It wouldn’t be heavy enough.’

  ‘Not this one, perhaps.’ He was already picking up the others one by one. The gap where my stone had sat didn’t escape his attention. He stared at it for a long time, before moving to the one next to it. When he finished, he turned to look at me. ‘Perhaps the killer took it with him.’

  He was half right. The killer hadn’t taken it – that I knew for a fact – but Yorke’s men might have done, along with James’ wallet and mobile. What had they been thinking? Had they imagined that there might be something on the rock that would associate them with the murder? Had James been alive when they’d arrived, so they’d finished him off, lest his arrival in a hospital raised awkward questions? Still, the absence of the murder weapon was a great weight off my mind.

  ‘Perhaps it rolled under the chairs,’ I suggested, trying to sound helpful.

  He regarded me doubtfully – we both knew that SOCO would have looked already, but he obligingly got down on all fours and lifted the seat cover to peer underneath. I knelt, too, and raised the skirt of the sofa, confident nothing would be there. I was almost sick when I saw my purple rock, complete with a couple of James’ hairs still stuck to it.

  TEN

  For the second time in that nasty brown and beige sitting room, I was frozen to the spot in horror. My rock had obviously been kicked or bumped under the sofa by mistake, probably by whoever had put James in the kitchen, as SOCO are pretty careful about where they step. It sat there, practically with my name written on it. Suddenly, I wasn’t at all sure that you couldn’t get fingerprints from rocks. I dropped the cover, aiming to distract Oakley until I could get rid of it. I’d been stupid – I’d trusted a gang of criminals to clear up my mess, when I should have been thinking for myself.

  ‘Well done!’ came Oakley’s delighted voice. ‘You should be in CID! I’ll make sure people hear about this.’

  He crawled across to pull the sofa cover back up. I scrambled to my feet. I could make an end of him just as easily as I had James. I could hit him with one of the other rocks, then go and stand guard at the front door, with the rock – both rocks – in my pockets as though nothing had happened.

  Then I pulled myself together. I wasn’t that sort of killer. I’d dispatched James because he’d driven me to it. Oakley was just doing his job, and it had been my fool idea to look under the bloody sofa, although I suspected he’d have found the rock sooner or later, given his careful search of the kitchen. The discovery of the murder weapon might not lead to me anyway, and at least I’d get to know whether the evidence was likely to be damaging. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.

  ‘I don’t know how SOCO missed this,’ Oakley was saying. ‘Still, there’s no harm done, as it’s been under these covers. Any trace evidence the killer left will still be on it.’

  ‘Good,’ I said weakly.

  ‘I’ll get an evidence bag.’ Oakley jumped to his feet and hurried out to his car.

  I snatched up the stone and rubbed it all over with my gloved hands. At first, I considered wiping it on my trousers, but the fibres from a police uniform would be easy to identify. Nothing would come off rubber gloves – which is why we wear them – and hopefully, they’d smudge and confuse any prints I might have left. James’ hairs came off, floating gently downwards to land on my shirt. Repelled, I brushed them off. When I heard Oakley’s footsteps coming back, I shoved the stone back and stood innocently by the window.

  ‘There were hairs on this a minute ago,’ he said in surprise. ‘I’m sure there were.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked, crouching next to him. ‘Perhaps they blew off when you let the cover down. The draught must have dislodged them.’

  ‘Damn! I thought I’d let it down carefully.’ He began writing details on the evidence bag, then took a couple of photographs while I held up the cover. Finally, he picked up the stone and placed it in the evidence bag. It was done. Oakley had his murder weapon.

  ‘I’m surprised at SOCO,’ he said. ‘They’re usually very thorough.’

  ‘They probably concentrated on the kitchen. After all, that’s where the murder took place.’

  ‘Not necessarily. It could have happened anywhere. In fact, given what we just found, I’d say it’s more likely that he was bludgeoned in here.’

  I felt like throttling him, exasperated by his caution and attention to detail. Wright wouldn’t have been so difficult to manipulate.

  ‘Look,’ I said, lest he wondered why I was trying to mislead him. ‘There’s a hair. Perhaps that’s one of the victim’s.’

  ‘It might be,’ he agreed, collecting it carefully and putting it in another bag.

  He got down on his hands and knees then, and spent a long time going over the carpet inch by inch, discovering another three hairs as he did so. I comforted myself by thinking that if one was mine, then at least I had a valid excuse for it being there. He’d asked me to come in, and people shed hairs all the time. He might even have found one of his own.

  He gave me my rock to hold while he went outside and hailed Paul Franklin, who was doing house-to-house enquiries – working all along Orchard Street to ask if anyone had seen anything suspicious – with one of the female DCs. He told Paul that he was taking me back to the station for something to eat, since I’d been on guard duty for five hours already. Had it really been five hours? In some ways the time had gone quickly, while in others it felt as if I’d been there all my life.

  Oakley radioed Wright and told him that he’d replaced me with Paul. Wright was furious, and said that standing guard wasn’t hard – and that Oakley could get me a sandwich if he was worried. Oakley told him that finding the murder weapon should have some kind of reward. The radio went silent, with Wright doubtless fuming that such a glorious discovery should have fallen to me and that it should be announced publicly on the airwaves.

  Oakley seemed almost jaunty as he started to drive back to New Bridewell, and I had the feeling that he was delighted to have riled Wright. There was bad blood between them, and I hoped I wasn’t going to be used in whatever battle they were waging against each other.

  Oakley didn’t take Anderson straight to the station. He drove to the mortuary first, to ask Grossman whether the stone was the murder weapon. She followed him through the thick plastic doors of the loading bay where bodies were delivered, and he sensed she was dragging her heels. He knew how she felt – he hadn’t been keen to see his first murder victim either. It wasn’t the fact that the sight might be distressing – far worse things happen in traffic accidents that police have to attend – it was witnessing how easy it was to snatch away a life. In this case, a single blow.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. �
�He’ll have been put away by now. You won’t have to see him.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replied in a brittle voice.

  ‘The head wound wasn’t particularly bad,’ he went on. ‘The worst part is that he’s been left for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘I’ll have seen worse,’ she said, although her face was pale, and he suspected she hadn’t.

  As it happened, he was wrong about the body. Grossman was still working on it, and it lay on a table with its chest cracked open and its innards in buckets below. The whole place reeked, and Anderson stopped dead in her tracks.

  ‘It doesn’t look like him,’ Oakley thought he heard her murmur. He took her elbow, concerned by her sudden pallor.

  ‘Doesn’t look like who?’ he asked kindly.

  ‘I mean it doesn’t look like a man,’ she whispered.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t look like a woman,’ said Oakley, wondering what she was talking about. The body was naked, and it didn’t take an anatomy student to tell the difference.

  ‘She means it doesn’t look human, Neel,’ explained Grossman, looking up from his work. ‘Take the poor lass outside and give her a glass of water. This isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and you know I don’t approve of “who can stomach the grossest corpse” games in my mortuary.’

  ‘Sorry, Helen,’ said Oakley as he guided her out. ‘I thought he’d have finished by now.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, although he had never seen anyone so white. ‘I’ll wait outside. It’s hot in here.’

  It was actually very cool, a temperature designed to suit the dead, but Oakley didn’t contradict her. He sat with her on a low wall outside, afraid to leave her until some colour had come back into her cheeks. They waited in silence, until she took a deep breath and smiled wanly.

  ‘Sorry, sir. I’m fine now.’

  Back in the building, Oakley presented the bagged stone to Grossman, who compared its ragged surface to the bruises on the body’s head. He looked at it from several different angles, muttering to himself. Not for the first time, Oakley wondered whether the pathologist was too old for the exacting work that was required of him. Eventually, Grossman straightened, smiling like a benign grandfather.