Death is the New Black

by Dominic Piper

  When Sara and I get out of the lift on the ground floor, the reception staff are friendly and accommodating. They all seem to like her. This could be because of her looks and personality, it could be because they know who she is, or it could be that they’re embarrassed about possibly cocking up with security and having the police here asking questions.

  On the way down, Sara told me that when they found out about her intruder problem, the head of the building’s security told her that he and his colleagues would be doubling their routine checks on all of the floors. It was the least they could do. I don’t know what they thought about it all, but it seems like they took it seriously and on face value. Maybe they had to, or maybe it wasn’t their job to speculate on other possible causes.

  ‘Hello, John,’ says Sara to the security heavy I saw earlier. ‘This is Daniel Beckett. He’s a private investigator working for me and he’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s OK.’ John stares at me and immediately wishes me dead. ‘Daniel, this is John Kimmons. He’s in charge of security for the block and was the person the police spoke to.’

  John Kimmons and I shake hands. Like many men before him, he attempts a bone-cruncher, but I let him get away with it. I don’t want to alienate him quite yet.

  Sara returns to the lift. The blonde receptionist smiles at me and I smile back. The young guy notices the smile between the receptionist and me and looks downwards, his lip curling slightly and his left eye twitching. John Kimmons beckons me and I follow him to a small office to the left of the reception area.

  We sit down opposite each other and I attempt to get a quick reading on him. He’s closer to sixty-five than the fifty I’d guessed at earlier. Close-cropped white hair and a pristine uniform that’s trying not to look like a uniform. He’s suspicious, surly and looking down his nose at me. His eyes are dead, humourless and even though he’s looking at my face, I can tell he’s taking in everything about me. He’s almost certainly ex-police, which could be useful.

  ‘So what can I do for you, Mr Beckett?’

  ‘I’m sure you know that Miss Holt has reported several instances of intrusion. I’m sure you also know that the police have been here and have found no evidence of a break-in of any sort.’

  He snorts. He’s definitely ex-police and contemptuous of the two detectives that looked into this.

  ‘Those two wouldn’t have found anything if her front door had been hanging off its hinges.’

  ‘You used to be a police officer.’

  He looks shocked. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘The same way you know I wasn’t one.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Tell me how reception here works.’

  He rolls his eyes and takes a deep breath. ‘Two staff on twenty-four-seven, receptionist here nine to five, a different receptionist at weekends. The receptionist deals mainly with maintenance requests, contacting contractors and admin work of all types. There are three security shifts, ten pm to six am, six am to two pm, two pm to ten pm. The desk out there is never left unattended.’

  ‘What about if one of you goes to the toilet?’

  This gets an almost-grimace out of him. ‘Then they do it as fast as possible, Mr Beckett.’

  ‘So generally speaking there are at least two people on reception all of the time.’

  ‘That is correct. Toilet breaks allowing, of course.’

  ‘And if one of you gets sick or goes on holiday?’

  ‘Since I’ve been here, we’ve usually been able to get one of the others to cover. The overtime’s good, particularly for unsociable hours. If that wasn’t possible, we’d go to a reputable agency.’

  ‘When was the last time someone was off sick or on holiday and you had to do that?’

  ‘Not since I’ve been here.’

  ‘And how long have you been here?’

  ‘Five years, three months, sixteen days.’

  ‘And this is the only way into the block.’

  ‘There’s a room at the side for maintenance equipment storage which is locked all the time. Even if you got in there, it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a dead end. Designed that way when they built the place. This block was built in 1979 and they made sure that it was secure. The architects knew all the tricks. You probably noticed the sheer walls and lack of obvious drainpipes. Believe me; no burglar could scale those walls. Reception is the only way in.’

  ‘What happens if someone loses the electronic pass key that gets them past the reception turnstile?’

  ‘We get them another. The code on the old one is nullified on our computer system straight away, so if someone finds it they can’t use it. There’s no clue on the passkey as to where it came from, anyway. Until a new one arrives, we buzz them in manually. When people move in here, we take two photographs of them and those are on the reception computer. As soon as someone uses the passkey on the turnstile, their photographs pop up on the screen.

  ‘There are some people you don’t see very often; they might use their flat as a pied-à-terre, for example, so it’s useful to have a photographic record of what they look like. We take new photographs every two years; people dye their hair, grow beards, get fat.’

  ‘When was the last time someone lost a pass key?’

  He purses his lips and looks up to his left. ‘Probably three, three and a half years ago? Something like that. Doesn’t happen often.’

  ‘Do you have some sort of master key to the flats here that the owners don’t know about?’

  His eyes widen. ‘Absolutely not. There’d be trouble if we did and they found out about it. Hell to pay. Women, in particular, don’t like the idea of someone being able to gain access to their flat, however benevolent their intentions. These are property owners, not tenants.’

  ‘What would happen if one of the flats caught fire?’

  ‘Then the fire brigade would smash down the windows and doors and attempt to put the fire out with water from hoses, Mr Beckett.’

  I can tell he’s getting impatient with me. ‘How are the windows cleaned?’

  ‘We have a contractor do that. Four times a year. Trusted company. Rope access from the roof. There are pulley locks which are in my safe, so unauthorised people can’t use the gear. If they did, we’d know immediately. It’s quite noisy. At night it would be bloody impossible. It’s quite a skill. An amateur could end up killing themselves.’

  I rest my head on my hand. I was hoping to get a coffee out of this, but I don’t think that will happen. ‘Would you say, then, from your past experience in the police force and from your experience of working here, that it was impossible (I leave a little dramatic pause here) for anyone to have broken into Miss Holt’s flat?’

  I can tell he doesn’t like dealing in such certainties and watch his eyes as he mulls this over for a few seconds. He takes a deep breath. ‘I wouldn’t say anything was impossible, Mr Beckett; just very, very, very unlikely.’

  ‘What would you think of the idea that this was all in her mind?’

  I’m taking a gamble asking him this, but I think it’s worth it. If nothing else, his facial reaction will tell me what he thinks. I continue to keep my eyes on his. He looks up and to the left. He’s not going to give me a quick reply.

  ‘I’m not a psychiatrist,’ he says, finally. ‘I don’t know or understand the ins and outs of why someone might report crimes that hadn’t happened. Having said that, I have come across it. Usually, it’s because the person who reports the imagined crime is trying to cause trouble for someone else, trying to pin something on them if you get my meaning. People occasionally report crimes that haven’t happened for financial gain, though I can’t see how that would work in this case.’

  ‘From the times you’ve had any contact with her, and I know they would have been brief, would you say, in your opinion, that Miss Holt was a candidate for that sort of behaviour?’

  He thinks about this for about ten seconds, as if he’s collating all the encounters he’s had with h
er. ‘Seems sensible enough. Sunny disposition, though that can mean nothing. If she can afford a flat in a place like this then she’s doing well, as far as I can make out. She’s some sort of clothes designer so Helen tells me.’

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘Receptionist. So an arty type. Seems a little brittle, maybe a tad neurotic, no boyfriends that I’ve ever seen, though that can mean nothing. No visitors of any type, in fact. No family as far as I can make out. Of course, I’m not here all the time.’

  ‘Could I have a look round the outside of the building with you, if you’re not too busy?’

  ‘If you think it’ll help. Not much point, though.’

  We stand outside the front of the building. Mr Kimmons points up at Sara’s flat on the eleventh floor. ‘See, for a start, most burglars would never even think about breaking into a flat that high up. Too much personal risk, too great a chance of being caught, too much skill required.

  ‘If you’re up that high and someone points at you and shouts, where the hell are you going to go? Are you going to jump? I don’t think so. Most burglaries happen on the ground floor and on the first floor of a building. Basement flats are favourite, too.’

  ‘What about cat burglars?’

  He snorts. ‘Don’t really exist anymore. Each generation of buildings are constructed while keeping that sort of thing in mind, so your cat burglar has sort of died out as anti-burglary architecture and design improved. I’m sure there are still some around somewhere, but I was in the Met for thirty years and I never once heard of one being apprehended.’

  ‘Let’s say I was really motivated to get up there. Let’s say there were five million in diamonds up there or something.’

  ‘From here? From the front? No way. Quite apart from the fact you’d be lit up by the spotlights, or, in the daytime, detected by security or spotted by passers-by, there is nowhere for you to get a grip. The whole frontage looks very ornate, but it’s actually very flat and it’s made that way on purpose, as I told you earlier. OK – you could probably use pitons and hammer them into the grouting like you were some bloody mountaineer or something, but now we’re in the realms of fantasy, and bloody noisy, conspicuous and time-consuming fantasy at that.

  ‘While we’re fantasising, the only other thing that springs to mind would be a grappling hook, fired from a crossbow or whatever and powerful enough to land on the roof, but then this is reality, not Batman.’

  ‘And to add to that,’ I say, ‘I couldn’t see any evidence at all that someone had come in through the windows. Can we go around the side here?’

  This is the side of the building that Sara’s bedroom looks out onto. At this stage, I’m not really looking for someone being able to break in through the windows. Not anymore. I’m looking for another way in. If I wanted to get into Sara’s flat through her front door, it would be easy, whether she was inside with the security chain on or whether she was at work. The problem now is how you would get inside without going past reception and would it be possible at all. If it doesn’t seem possible, then I may have to think the worst about Sara’s story, at least about this part of it.

  Mr Kimmons points upwards. ‘These are generally the bedrooms on this side, though not in all cases. Some people don’t like their bedrooms overlooking the garden next door and have their main bedroom where Miss Holt has her living room, even though most of the rooms at the front have a bloody great fireplace in them. Also, each one of these flats is laid out slightly differently. Don’t ask me why.’

  Once again, the brickwork is the same as at the front; impossible to scale and even though you wouldn’t be seen by the occupants of the house next door, you’d have to walk past reception to get down here and your movement down this side of the building would trigger three bright motion sensor security lights, according to Mr Kimmons.

  ‘Are these security lights checked regularly?’

  ‘Every Tuesday. Bulbs replaced every six months whether they need to be or not. All the motion sensor lights are linked to our computer system. If one of them comes on, the computer behind the reception desk shows a little triangle sign and makes a bleeping noise that you can’t miss. Bloody annoying it is. The security lights used to come on if a bloody cat went past, so we had them adjusted.’

  ‘So to get round here,’ I say, ‘you’d have to walk directly towards the main entrance, as there are walls and shrubs either side of the path. Presumably you’d be seen by one of the reception staff.’

  ‘Little bit more to it than that. Keep it under your hat, but there are three pressure sensors under the concrete. Every time someone walks down that path, we get another little warning noise in reception. It happened when you arrived, for example, though I’d already seen you hanging around outside.’

  ‘Is it the same for the other side of the block?’

  ‘Exactly the same. No access except by approaching the main entrance and turning left. You’d have to walk over the same pressure sensors and if you went down the side, you’d get the same number of security lights coming on, unless you were a cat.’

  ‘Can I look round there anyway?’

  ‘If you must.’

  My neck is starting to ache from looking upwards. This side of the block is much the same as the other.

  ‘These windows would generally be the bedroom windows of the people on the other side of the block, like Miss Holt’s neighbour,’ I say.

  ‘Correct. Though for some reason, the flats on the left side of the block are not a mirror image of the ones on the right, if you see what I mean. For example, their bathrooms and toilet windows are on the back of the building, whereas Miss Holt’s bathroom window looks out onto the garden of next door’s house.’

  I couldn’t see a way to the back of the building on the other side. It just seemed to end in an enormous brick wall, definitely unscalable and about forty feet high. Here, however, there’s a very sturdy-looking metal security gate. It has tough steel bars about six inches apart and a solid grey metal grill behind the bars. The top of the gate is crowned by a row of nasty-looking metal spikes which curve outwards and there’s an unbreakable-looking rim gate lock keeping it shut.

  This would not be impossible to get past. If it were me, I’d save myself the trouble of getting impaled on the spikes and attack the lock. With the right tools, you could open it in two minutes. The only problem would be the fact that you wouldn’t be able to get down here in the first place without someone noticing.

  ‘Can we go through here?’

  ‘Nothing to see, really. Just a big metal fence and behind that is a service road for the ordinary houses on this side. It’s where you put your bins out if you live in one of them.’ He smiles. ‘I don’t mean that you live in the bins. Ours are collected from the front so there’s no access to the road from this property. The reason there’s a gate in the first place is because of the electric stuff around the back. Once or twice I’ve had to allow an electrician access. The last time was eight months ago.’

  ‘And you would accompany the electrician.’

  ‘Always. Me or one of my colleagues.’

  He produces an enormous bunch of keys from somewhere and unlocks the gate. I notice he has an Alberto Vargas key ring. As we walk around the back of the block, it becomes dramatically darker and quieter. There’s a thick layer of bright green moss growing on the floor and that’s probably what’s causing the earthy damp smell.

  The fence in between the block and the service road is tall, but it’s not that tall, perhaps eight or nine feet. This means that the flats, which start on the first floor, don’t have their view hampered. The gap between the fence and the back of the building is about seven feet. Like the security gate, the fence has vicious outward facing metal spikes to prevent anyone climbing over from the service road.

  Down the opposite end of the building from where we’re standing, there’s an old-looking brick wall covered in moss, lichens and ivy. That would belong to the house next door. It’s higher than the securi
ty fence at the back, but not by much.

  At the base of the building, there’s a big, dirty, grey box covered in electrical hazard signs. Emanating from this box is a network of white plastic cable coverings. These are firmly fastened to the brickwork every fifteen inches by four small screws or rivets.

  One of them travels vertically up the wall in a straight line and stops three feet below and a little to the left of what must be a bathroom window on the first floor. The coverings then continue horizontally to the left and right, forming an irregular T shape. Then, they just terminate, presumably at a point where the electrical cables enter the building directly and don’t need further protection from the elements.

  These cable coverings are five inches wide and two inches deep, and the plastic is smooth and shiny. They’d be difficult to get a grip on, but not impossible, as long as you didn’t have to do it for too long. I feel my fingers twitch involuntarily as I imagine what it would be like to scale this wall using only these plastic coverings for support.

  I look down and to my left. There’s a barely discernible area near the cable box where the layer of moss has been repeatedly and haphazardly disturbed in several places, revealing the rich black soil beneath.

  Got you.

  10

  BREAKING AND ENTERING

  John Kimmons nods his head up and down and allows himself the luxury of a quick chortle. He’s never been so vindicated in his life.

  ‘Those two clowns didn’t even think it was worth looking out here. I asked them if they wanted a tour of the grounds and they just laughed, condescending little pricks. It was bad enough in the old days, but they still don’t take women seriously, do they. I bet they were having a good laugh on the way back to the station.’

  ‘To be fair, they did make two visits.’