by Casey, Jane
‘Come and have a look anyway.’ He pushed past us and went into the sitting room. ‘Can I let these officers see the victim in here?’
‘Help yourself. He hasn’t moved.’ The nearest SOCO was bearded and paunchy with drooping eyes that looked like they’d seen too much. Specifically, too much of Andy Bradbury.
‘He was asleep, looks like. The TV was on in here when the first responders arrived.’ It was still on, showing baseball from Japan. Niche programming, I assumed. Opposite it on the sofa lay a large-framed man that I recognised as Jurgis, but only with some difficulty. His face was pulled out of shape by the damage done to his head. The back of his skull was more or less gone. Blood and brain matter had sprayed across the cardboard boxes that I had noticed on our previous visit, and one SOCO was meticulously recording each gobbet of tissue, each fragment of bone.
‘That’s our mate Jurgis, isn’t it?’ Derwent said to me.
‘I’d have said so.’ I looked at Bradbury. ‘We only got his first name, I’m afraid. Did you find any ID for him?’
‘There was a passport for a … Jurgis Jankauskas.’ He read it out of his notebook again, mangling it more than a little bit.
‘Sounds about right,’ Derwent said. ‘She wouldn’t have had any reason to use a false name for him when she was talking to us, would she?’
‘Probably not. You never know, though.’
‘Looks as if they were up to all sorts of bad behaviour. She might have made a habit of lying,’ Bradbury offered. ‘Especially knowing you were coppers.’
‘Possibly.’ Derwent was looking irritable. He had liked Niele, liked her more than he wanted to admit, and calling her a lying criminal was a bad way for Bradbury to ingratiate himself with the inspector. Even if it was true.
I hurried in with, ‘That name looks like a good place to start, anyway. There’s a lot of damage, isn’t there? What ammunition were they using?’
‘Hollow point.’
‘Not messing about, then.’
‘Not at all.’ Bradbury leant forward, angling his pen towards what had been the roof of Jurgis’s mouth. ‘He was lying with his mouth open. The barrel of the gun would have been where my pen is – bit closer, probably. Pull the trigger –’ he mimed it ‘– guaranteed kill shot.’
‘Is that what the pathologist said?’ Derwent asked.
‘Er, yes. It is.’ He seemed a little bit disappointed to have to admit he hadn’t worked it out for himself.
‘Do you think he was the first victim?’
‘Probably not. I’d be inclined to think your lady was the first. They came in through the back.’
‘And she was in the kitchen?’
‘Sitting at the table, it seems.’ He went back out into the hall, without waiting to see if we would follow. Derwent hung back to let me go next, which was unusually chivalrous for him. I didn’t make the mistake of looking sympathetic, but I wasn’t exactly keen to see Niele’s body either – not having seen what had happened to her large friend – and I dragged my feet as I went down the hall. The kitchen was as bleak and unloved as the rest of the house, with cheap white units and dated appliances. A couple of the doors were damaged, showing the chipboard under the veneer. Not the best quality, and not well treated either. There were crumbs on all the work surfaces, stains on the floor and an overflowing bin in the corner. The sink was piled high with pots and pans soaking in cold, greasy water, and the top of the cooker was a disaster area, plastered with layers of burnt food.
‘Is this really how criminal masterminds live?’ I said to Derwent over my shoulder. Bradbury answered, though.
‘These were foot soldiers. They do the work and send the money home. I bet all of them had nice houses in Lithuania. They put in the time here for a few years, then retire and live in the lap of luxury.’
‘You sound like you know all about it,’ Derwent said.
‘I worked on an organised crime unit for a bit. We had a lot of trouble with them.’ Bradbury shook his head, then pointed down at the floor. ‘This is your witness, isn’t it?’
She was behind the table where she had fallen, sprawling on her side, her legs bent. Her face wasn’t damaged at all, but in death she had the creepy perfection and pallor of a mannequin. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing.
‘Has she been examined by the pathologist?’ Derwent asked.
‘Yes, but he put her back the way he found her. He’s got a thing about leaving the scene intact as much as possible.’
‘Useful.’ Derwent crouched down, staring at Niele’s body, which was dressed in jersey trousers and a strappy vest. She had Ugg boots on her feet and I thought she would have chosen to die in more elegant shoes, if she’d had the chance to dress for the occasion. ‘She wasn’t asleep.’
‘That’s why we think she died first.’
‘She was painting her nails.’ I had already seen the uncapped varnish bottle on the table, the cotton wool and remover set to one side with an orange stick and emery board. Thorough, meticulous, perfectionist: it all fitted with the impression I’d formed of her. Looking at her hands, I saw she had been halfway through the first coat, a stinging fuchsia pink. The unpainted nails were a dull blue by now. ‘Was the TV on in here?’
‘The radio. Someone’s turned it off since we got here. God-awful stuff – some pirate channel with Eastern European pop.’
‘Maybe she was homesick,’ I suggested. No one responded. ‘What time do you think it happened?’
‘Late. Between midnight and two, we think.’
‘She was a night owl, then.’ Derwent was still staring at her.
‘So it seems. The other victims were all asleep.’ Bradbury shrugged. ‘We know they were alive at midnight because a neighbour came round to complain about where one of the men had parked – the guy was blocked in and he needed to move his car.’
‘What gives you the two-hour window?’
‘The pathologist suggested it.’
‘Is that it?’ Derwent looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘They can’t usually be so specific. Sounds like crap to me.’
‘Hardly.’ Bradbury squared up to him. ‘He’s basing it on the facts. Body temperature, mainly.’
‘I’ve always been told that’s unreliable, especially in this sort of weather.’ I knew Derwent was thinking of Glen Hanshaw, who would hem and haw about providing a time of death until we were tired of asking.
‘Well, there’s also the fact that we got tipped off by an anonymous caller who rang in at four and said they’d been dead a couple of hours, so we’ve got that to corroborate it.’
‘Is that how you found out? A call? So someone wanted you to know about the deaths.’ I looked at Derwent. ‘That’s not usual, is it?’
‘Not with a professional hit. But maybe they needed the message to get out there. Killing them all like this – it’s a bit extreme.’
‘What sort of message, though?’
‘A warning to anyone else, perhaps. Don’t try and play with the big boys.’ Derwent sighed. ‘Guns and drugs and stolen gold. The fucking glamour of it all would make you throw up. What a waste.’
I knelt beside him to look more closely at Niele’s body. ‘Shot in the chest?’
Bradbury nodded. ‘One shot.’
‘No misses.’ Derwent’s face was grim. ‘Professional standard of shooting. She’s still holding the brush. She didn’t have time to do more than look up. They must have blasted her as soon as the door was open.’
‘At least she wouldn’t have known what was happening. She probably wasn’t afraid.’
‘That girl wouldn’t have been afraid of anything.’ Derwent tilted his head sideways, staring at her for a long moment. Then he stood up. ‘It’s a shame, that’s all. Where did you find my card?’
‘In her room. Do you want to have a look?’
‘Might as well.’
‘The other three bodies are upstairs too.’ Bradbury headed out of the kitchen, striding jauntily. ‘You can have a look at them befo
re you see her room.’
‘Do we have to?’ Derwent muttered. Out loud, he said, ‘Not sure there’s much point, mate. We didn’t meet anyone else when we were here.’
Bradbury was not the sort to be put off. ‘Worth a squint, probably. You never know.’
I shared a woebegone look with Derwent. We trudged into the hall, up the stairs and through three more crime scenes featuring bodies in various states of undress and disarray, along with a large number of policemen and forensics investigators, none of whom seemed particularly pleased to see Bradbury. The first had been asleep in a single bed that took up most of the tiny room he occupied. The bullet had entered his head just behind his left ear and buried itself in the mattress. The room was stifling and a plywood wardrobe blocked half of the window. The wallpaper was almost hidden behind pictures of naked women, some torn from magazines, some advertising the dubious delights of the local prostitutes, the kind you found in phone boxes.
‘Cheap décor,’ Derwent commented.
‘This is how I imagine your flat looks.’
‘Oh, thank you very much.’ He scanned the display. ‘Why is it you just can’t get tired of looking at tits?’
‘I think I could.’
‘Do you mind looking at the body?’ Bradbury sounded fed up. Derwent looked at him instead, a long look that would have made me squirm. Yet again, I stepped in to keep the peace.
‘I don’t recall seeing this man before.’
‘Me neither,’ Derwent agreed.
‘Next one, then.’
It was a bigger room and a bigger man, a giant who made Jurgis look positively fragile. Two shots this time, one to the stomach, one to the chest.
‘Overkill. One would have done it.’ Bradbury shook his head, as if deploring the waste of a bullet.
‘I wouldn’t want to risk him getting up, would you?’ Derwent leaned over to look at the man’s face. He had died with a frown, his brow furrowed, his face puffy and sullen. ‘Not one I know.’
‘Me neither.’
‘He had guns under his bed.’
‘I’d let him mind my gun, if I had one. Better than a safe any day.’ Derwent turned to examine the room. ‘No sign of a burglary.’
‘No. We were the ones who searched the place. It was a kill job, pure and simple. Or they found what they wanted without having to hunt for it.’
‘My money’s on the former, for what it’s worth,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well I won’t bet the house on your opinion if you don’t mind. I might wait to see what more experienced officers have to say.’
Bradbury was fast becoming one of my least favourite colleagues, and there was competition for that slot. I stepped away from the bed. ‘They did what they came here to do, did it well, and made sure you found out about it sooner rather than later. After you, I bet they tipped off the media.’
‘They were here not long after we arrived,’ he admitted.
‘I’d feel a bit manipulated if I were you. You’re just tidying up someone else’s mess.’ Bradbury opened his mouth to argue but I raised my eyebrows. ‘Next one?’
It turned out the pathologist was still with the last victim, so we were allowed to glance in and duck out again having denied all knowledge of the man in question. He was young and fair-haired, with a crucifix around his neck on a gold chain, and he had been naked and asleep when his life ended. There was something vulnerable about him, something that reminded me of the boys who had died in the Range Rover in Clapham. I shook my head as I turned away.
‘What’s wrong?’ Derwent asked.
‘He’s too young to be dead for a row that probably wasn’t anything to do with him.’
‘Don’t be fooled by the pretty face. He was probably a violent thug.’
‘You’d like to believe that.’
‘I would. I wish all murder victims were criminals. It would make it that bit easier to do this job.’
‘Finding it tough?’
‘Today, yeah.’ Derwent looked exhausted, I thought, his eyes puffy from lack of sleep. ‘And I could do without the fucking tour guide.’
Bradbury had lingered in the room behind us to ask the pathologist a few questions about the fifth victim, receiving monosyllabic answers. He joined us in the hall.
‘Ready to see Niele’s room?’
‘About half an hour ago.’ Derwent rolled his head around his shoulders, stretching his neck. ‘I told you that would be a waste of time.’
‘You never know.’
‘Bullshit. I knew it before I started. Do you get paid by the hour or something?’
‘There’s no harm in being thorough.’ Bradbury pointed past Derwent. ‘That’s your witness’s room in there.’
‘Finally.’ Derwent barrelled through the door, then stopped. ‘All right, guv?’
‘Josh.’ I recognised Godley’s voice before I saw him, leaning over an open drawer with a couple of T-shirts in his gloved hands. The room was spotless but not luxurious in any respect. The bed was iron-framed and narrow, and the walls were bare, painted white. It was austere in the extreme. I remembered that Kennford had described it as being studenty, and felt inclined to agree with his opinion.
Derwent didn’t seem to have noticed anything except the superintendent. ‘What are you doing here? How did you even know about it?’
‘It seems to be gang-related. I was informed about it as a matter of course, given the other investigation.’
‘Who informed you?’
Godley frowned. ‘I fail to see why it matters, Josh.’
‘Sorry, we haven’t been introduced.’ The DS oozed past me. ‘Andy Bradbury. I know who you are, of course.’
‘Good.’ Godley looked at him without enthusiasm. ‘Are you running this case?’
‘I’m in charge of the crime scenes. I’m here to make sure everything is done properly.’
‘That sounds like a fine and important job. Please, don’t let us distract you from it.’ Godley smiled pleasantly, but he wasn’t going to let the other officer stay and Bradbury knew it. Muttering something about checking up on the pathologist, he left, not bothering to say goodbye to Derwent or me.
‘Thank Christ for that. I bet they did leave him here to mind the crime scene. I’d put him in charge of counting the paperclips if I had to work with him.’ Derwent stretched up like a meerkat to peer at what Godley was doing. ‘What have you got there?’
‘Nothing much. I’m just searching the room.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘This and that.’ Godley must have been aware that his reply fell a bit short of the politeness for which he was famed. ‘A phone, mainly.’
‘Isn’t it downstairs?’ I frowned, trying to remember what had been on the kitchen table. It was like a parody of the party game where you have to remember what was displayed and what’s gone missing. I was sure the phone had been lying beside the bottle of varnish on the table.
‘There was one. Not the right one, though.’
‘Do you want any help?’ I asked.
‘By all means.’
I started to check the bed, lifting pillows and the duvet to make sure it wasn’t hiding anywhere obvious. Derwent stood for a moment, watching us, then left the room without further comment. I heard him going downstairs and wondered what he was doing. Behind me, Godley had moved on to the wardrobe and was opening bags.
‘Is this a business phone or something?’
‘Could be.’
‘Do you know what model it is?’
‘Not a clue.’
I ran my hands under the mattress, sliding them along. It would be near the edge, I thought, recalling Niele’s immaculate manicure. She wouldn’t want to go digging for it every time it rang. At the foot of the bed, I touched something metal and drew it out carefully.
‘Bingo.’
‘You found it?’ Godley put out his hand. ‘Good girl. Give it to me.’
‘Shouldn’t I bag it up?’ I stared up at him. ‘It’s evidence no
w, isn’t it?’
‘I need to check something. Make sure it’s the right one.’ His hand was still outstretched and I couldn’t see a way to say no without fatally harming my career prospects. I put the phone into his palm and watched as he pressed buttons. ‘No password. Good stuff.’
He turned away from me then, hiding the phone from me with his body. I looked past him to the mirror that hung on the wall and watched him running through menus. It was the address book he wanted, it transpired, and I could feel my eyes getting wide as he checked through the list of contacts, deleting two. My boss or not, there was no way I wasn’t going to challenge him.
‘That’s not right, is it? You shouldn’t be doing anything to the phone.’
‘Don’t worry, Maeve. It’s fine.’ He tucked it back where I’d found it.
‘Are you leaving it there? Why aren’t we recovering it? It’s evidence.’
‘Let’s leave it for Bradbury’s team. They get depressed if they don’t find something.’ He put his hand under my arm and guided me out of the room, towards the stairs. ‘Good work, Maeve.’
‘Was it?’ I pulled away. ‘We didn’t exactly finish, did we? I hadn’t looked in the bedside table.’
‘Leave it for Bradbury,’ Godley said again. ‘It’ll do as it is. Besides, I’ve got to go.’
I dearly wanted to demand to know what he had been doing, and why, but I knew I wasn’t going to get a satisfactory reply. We collected Derwent on our way out and the two of us stood to watch Godley’s departure. The Mercedes had been double-parked, as if Godley had been in too much of a hurry to find a proper space. He nodded to us before driving off, and I thought he seemed pleased with his morning’s work.
‘We should go too.’ Derwent’s face was expressionless.
I frowned. ‘Is that it?’
‘What more do you want?’
I waved a hand in the direction Godley’s car had taken. ‘That was odd, wasn’t it? I mean, not usual.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘What do you think––’
He interrupted. ‘Don’t ask me. Don’t mention it to me again. It didn’t happen.’