by Tim Sullivan
Copyright © 2020 by Tim Sullivan
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
THE CYCLIST
TIM SULLIVAN
For Bella and Sophia
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Also by Tim Sullivan
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
'Excuse me? How long before my men can get back to work?' Cross didn't answer but instead looked away at the green, bloated face of the young man in the bucket of the nearby JCB digger. Wrapped in a sheet of builders' polythene, he had been stored in a row of garages that were in the process of being demolished. Blood and bodily fluids, released post mortem, were pooling in the creases of the polythene. It looked like a vacu-packed piece of meat on a supermarket shelf. The man's eyes had the dull, lifeless look of a fish that had been on ice at a fishmonger's for too long. The garages were behind a set of 1950s high-rise council flats in Barton Hill. Full of the promise of a better life back then, they now were a depressing blight on the landscape.
Cross turned back to the contractor and studied him for a couple of seconds. He was a ruddy-faced man in a waxed Barbour coat. He looked like he spent a lot of time outdoors, when he wasn't shining the backside of his trousers on a bar stool at his local pub. Cross noted the use of "my men", designed to give himself some sort of elevated status.
'There's a dead man over there. A young man. Murdered would not be a too far-fetched deduction, even at this early stage,' Cross said.
'I know and I'm sorry about that, but I need to get on,' the man replied.
'We'll need a statement from you and all the workers who were on site this morning. Then they can go home,' Cross said.
'Go home? What are you talking about?' the man spluttered.
'There's been a murder. What was your building site has, by the very presence of a corpse wrapped in polythene in the bucket of one of your diggers, become a crime scene. So unless your workforce has an interest in police procedures and forensics, I would be grateful if they could vacate the scene, as soon as they have given their statements. If they are interested, they could stay and observe from behind the tape,' Cross said.
George Cross, that is Detective Sergeant Cross of the Somerset and Avon police force, to give him his full title, wasn't in the least bit surprised by the man's apparent insensitivity to the young man's recent demise. His bizarre belief that work could go on as normal, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, was not uncommon with people in such situations.
What the contractor was struggling with was the fact that the policeman's offer to stay behind and observe didn't come across as the least bit ironic. It was as if he genuinely believed some of his workers might have a secret fascination for the workings of the police in a murder case. Which, he wasn't to know, Cross actually did. He was attempting to behave politely and normally with this man, along the lines his partner DS Ottey had been trying to teach him. Cross was incapable of irony and sarcasm. The contractor turned to DS Ottey, who was standing nearby, for help.
'Let's start by getting your statement down,' she said, pre-empting anything further he might say.
Cross walked back over to the corpse. He was more interested in the environment around it than the corpse itself. He'd have a closer look at that in the morgue.
'Mr Morgan, how long have these garages been out of use?' he asked.
'Officially just over a year. But people have been using them illegally; some for storage, some for fly-tipping. We even had a couple of junkies living in one of them. Pain in the bloody arse. No respect for private property,' Morgan complained.
'You brought the date of the demolition forward,' Cross stated.
'Yes, permissions came through five days earlier than expected. How did you know?' Morgan asked.
'I checked the Council Planning Notice before I came. Any particular reason for changing the date?'
'I just wanted to get on with it, that's all,' Morgan replied.
DCI Carson, Cross and Ottey's direct boss, had assigned the, by now customary, minimal number of resources to the investigation. This wasn't so much because murder was no longer considered to be a serious crime, but was due to the fact that continual cuts had meant that there weren't enough people around to man a murder investigation properly. Cross couldn't understand why Ottey remonstrated with Carson every time this happened. It seemed pointless to him. Cross would secretly have preferred to conduct these murder enquiries on his own, even though he knew this was completely impractical. It was useful to have people available to pursue any lines of enquiry he came up with. But essentially he liked to work in a solitary fashion. He didn’t have to be constantly monitoring his own behaviour to others when he was on his own.
He certainly couldn't be entrusted with leading a team. It had been tried once, with catastrophic results which almost led to his resignation – such was the pressure of having to deal with other people reporting to him. He was best-placed to come up with a plan of action for them all to follow. His partner Josie Ottey, a mixed-race single mother of two, would then lead the team and implement his plan. Exactly, and to the letter – which was, she found out early on, the only way it could work. She had been partnered with him despite much protest on her part. Now she found herself constantly being his apologist and interface with the rest of the department. Being his interpreter was not why she'd joined the police. Cross was at best socially awkward, at worst bloody rude. But the fact of the matter was that he was an exceptional detective. So obsessed was he with the minutiae of every case, stuff that others, including herself, would often ignore; such was his rigour about detail, and obsession with logic, routines, patterns of behaviour and any anomalies within them, that he had the highest conviction rate in the area. His social awkwardness and lack of empathy were also particularly useful tools in the interview room, she had begun to learn. That, together with the fact that it seemed to be a place where he felt completely comfortable. Suspects were unnerved by his demeanour and often made the mistake of letting it encourage them to under-estimate him. It was a mistake they would invariably come to regret.
Carson addressed the "garage murder" team, as he had labelled it, in the open area. He had a predilection for giving the cases they worked on some sort of colloquial title, as if it gave them an air of notoriety.
'So, the first thing we need to do is identify the victim,' he said, unnecessarily in Ottey's opinion. 'He had no ID on him, no wallet, no phone, driving licence, engraved watch. Absolutely nada. Obviously we'll try fingerprints and DNA, but unless he's in the system, or served in the military, that will probably lead us nowhere.'
Ottey found these meetings both patronising and infuriating. Aside from stating the obvious, it was as if Carson was convincing himself, as well as the others
, that he was in charge and had a purpose in the investigation. But he was repeating the information to the very people who had given him that information in the first place. Cross, on the other hand, didn't mind this so much. He thought it useful to remind the team of their tasks and the fundamentals needed in solving any murder. He had no problem with the mundane nature of it all. Besides, it gave him time to think, as the facts were laid out verbally in front of him.
'Josie, what does George think?'
He asked this as if Cross wasn't in the room. Alice Mackenzie was a trainee Police Staff Investigator. She had found this type of thing strange when she first joined the unit six months before. But she saw that everyone else took it in their stride. She learnt that Cross didn't like to talk in front of several people, if he didn't have to. So Ottey would relay to everyone what he was thinking; he’d informed of her of this before the meeting – she was no mind-reader. As things went, when working with Cross, Mackenzie soon discovered it was one of the less odd things she had to deal with. She was still finding her way round working with him. Trying to interpret what he wanted – although to be fair he was so precise and literal in his instructions that "interpretation" was maybe stretching it a bit – and possibly most important of all, not taking offence at his manner and tone.
‘I have no thoughts as yet,’ said Cross, answering for himself.
'Should we be looking at the contractor?' Carson asked.
'It seems highly unlikely that he would hide a body in a place he was about to demolish and therefore uncover,' Ottey answered.
'Unless he thought that was a way of getting rid of it,' Carson replied.
'He didn't strike me as being that obtuse,' said Cross.
‘He also called it in,’ added Ottey.
'Double-bluff? Thinking we would think that?'
Cross didn't answer. This wasn't because he thought, as did everyone else in the room, that it wasn't worthy of an answer. It was because a question hadn't actually been asked and, therefore, an answer wasn't required.
'Right then, let's do this!' Carson proclaimed.
This annoyed Ottey for two reasons. Firstly, they had been "doing it" before Carson had interrupted and insisted on an unnecessary meeting. Secondly, he said it at the beginning of every investigation, without fail. It was as if he thought he was the desk Sergeant in Hill Street Blues, who repeated, at the end of roll call every morning, "Oh, and let's be careful out there". As a kind of afterthought. Carson was obviously trying to give himself some sort of weird slogan. She could swear he'd actually said it in an American accent on more than one occasion. So she often did this – to make herself feel better. Pathetic really, she knew, but anyway, she stopped his authoritative exit by saying, 'One more thing, sir.'
'What?'
'How did it get there? The body. Who put it there? When and where?'
'Sure. We should check past ownership of those garages.'
'We'll get Alice onto it,' she said.
Cross had been back to the crime scene a couple of times. Once, that afternoon, and then again later, after sunset. He wasn't looking for clues. He was just taking the whole thing in. Observing. He often spent time observing people. Sometimes from Tony's café, where he would have breakfast every morning. He was a bit of a student of human behaviour. Not because of his work but because he learnt from it. He tried to observe, to understand the way people worked, in an attempt to fit in himself a little more easily. It had mixed results, but as he was fully aware he didn't have an innate, natural understanding of people and their behaviour, he thought this was possibly the best way to learn.
He was particularly interested in the block of council flats that overlooked the partially demolished garages. There were rows of balconies leading to people's front doors. Some were house-proud and had changed their front doors for something different – to make them stand out from their neighbours. Some used the balcony immediately outside their flat to have plant pots, hanging baskets and window boxes – although as they weren't on actual windows, he thought they should be more accurately described as "planters". There were several comings and goings. Children playing football, and when the inevitable happened and it was kicked over the balcony, arguing as to who should retrieve it. Quite a lot of deliveries. That was something that had changed over the years. Internet shopping meant that there was a constant flow of delivery vans pulling up outside. Deliveroo riders bringing takeaway pizza. Carers and district nurses dropping in on their clients.
A woman smoked outside her front door at regular intervals, occasionally talking to neighbours above and below her. She smoked, watched and thought. Cross wondered whether it was a self-imposed "no-smoking-indoors" ban. She had an impressive array of healthy plants clustered around her part of the balcony. He thought this implied a sense of house pride and purpose. To make the best of what she had. But maybe the plants were the work of a partner or husband who was actually the one who couldn't abide smoking in the flat. His father, Raymond, had kept a collection of house plants when Cross was younger. He was fairly sure they were still there, buried under the avalanche of hoarded possessions Raymond had built up over the years. He had a distinct memory of his father painting the leaves of a rubber plant with nail-varnish to make them shine. Cross was disappointed as a young boy that, no matter how long he waited, however much he carefully watered and nurtured the plant, there was no evidence of any rubber ever being produced. It was only years later that he learnt a rubber tree was something entirely different.
He came to the conclusion that this woman liked to get out on the balcony periodically – maybe for a break from her domestic situation indoors. But there was something about the way she looked around that made him think she enjoyed seeing what was going on. Having a natter. Keeping abreast of things, elbows on the balcony. It was a routine, something that kept her going. Kept her sane. He was fairly sure she made mental notes of absolutely everything she saw, no matter how trivial. Nothing happened around that housing estate without her knowledge.
'How long have you lived here?' asked Cross from the end of the balcony, as he approached.
'Shh…,' she said. 'I have some really annoying neighbours. They'll use any excuse for a row.'
'I apologise,' said Cross. She actually looked a little older, close up. Maybe late forties. She'd started forming those thin vertical lines on her top lip, from years of smoking.
'Sorry, what did you say?' she asked.
'I asked how long you'd lived here.'
'You're the detective,' she said. So she'd spotted him earlier.
'I am.'
'I've lived in the area all my life. In these flats coming up for twenty years.'
'Have those garages always been disused in your time here?'
'Yeah.'
'Do you remember them from when you were a child?'
'Sure, they were used a lot then. Mostly for storage, but a couple had been knocked together and a couple of car mechanics worked out of them,' she said.
'Really?'
'Yeah, they had all the gear. Did MOTs and that.'
'They seem a little small for that,' Cross observed.
'I guess so, but they were always busy. Had loads of cars parked up outside. They had an inspection pit and lift, can you believe? In the end they wanted to build a paint shop in another of them, but the council wouldn't let them. So they moved. Shame really. They added a bit of character to the place.'
Chapter 2
'You don't have to show me that every time you come in here,' said the pathologist as Cross waved his warrant card at her, for about the hundredth time. He looked at the plastic sheeting which had been removed from the body and put to one side.
'Plastic sheeting commonly used by builders, decorators, that kind of thing,' said the pathologist. 'But then you already knew that.'
Cross didn't contradict her, but instead turned to the body on the slab and looked closely at the face. There was a large bruise and cut on the left side, across the jaw.
'Clean. Could be a fist from a large male, or an object. Can't tell you precisely yet.'
Cross liked this about Clare. She was not one for making assumptions. She needed hard evidence before making a pronouncement. Some pathologists were far too willing to suggest a theory which could send detectives off on the wrong track for days.
'But it was the injury to the back of the head that killed him,' she went on.
'Any idea what caused it?'
'Probably something he fell onto. Something pretty hard. With an edge.'
'So he's hit... with a fist – or something – then he falls and cracks his skull.'
'In all likelihood, yes, but I will need to confirm.'
'An accident?'
She didn't answer; just gave him a look. It was one he was familiar with from her. It said "you should know better than to ask theoretical questions. I deal in hard medical evidence, not hypothetical fantasy".
'Anything else?' he asked.
'Nothing of note. Except he has some scars on his forearms.'
Cross looks at the scars for a moment.
'Burns?' he asked.
'Could be.'
'May I?'
She sighed. He always did this, without fail. She didn't know why he bothered to ask. As he asked, he was looking in the direction of her box of latex gloves, which meant that he wanted to have a closer look at the body. She always felt it was an implicit criticism of her work.
'Of course.'
Cross examined the body carefully, his face quite close to it, not at all squeamish, taking in every detail. Then he stood, took his notebook out of his pocket and started scribbling.
'Did I miss something?' the pathologist asked wearily.
'As a matter of fact, you did,' he replied. It was not meant to be critical, but she could be forgiven for thinking it was. 'He has very low body fat, disproportionately muscular thighs, distinct tan lines on his upper arms and on his thighs just above the knee. No callouses on his hands though. And he's a regular sunglasses-wearer.'