Strike a Match (Book 1): Serious Crimes

by Tayell, Frank

  “As in insects?” she asked.

  “As in electronic listening devices,” Mitchell said. “I don’t know if there were any in that room, but there might have been.”

  “Why?” she asked, confused.

  “That scene was staged. Badly staged. It’s almost as if whoever did it had never been to a crime scene before. First of all, Mr Gupta had no ammunition in his pocket, nor a holster for the revolver. Second, the gun was in his right hand. That pocket watch was in his right-hand pocket. Taken with the ink stains on his left hand, I’m certain he was left-handed. Third, there was no blood on the floor, just a lot of scuffmarks through the dust. Fourth, there were no discernable prints on the knife or the revolver. Fifth, remember how the bodies were positioned? We are supposed to believe that Gupta was stabbed while sitting down. With that wound it’s highly unlikely. On being stabbed he then shot Clipton. Taking the entry wound, exit wound, the hole in the back of the chair, and the stippling around the wound, he was sitting down when he was shot. And it was from point blank range, not by a man seated on that sofa. To summarise, in order for this crime to have played out the way we are supposed to think, Clipton stabbed Gupta. Gupta then pulled a revolver out of his pocket. He pushed Clipton into the chair and shot him. Then, as he staggered back to the sofa, he paused to clean up any blood he dripped onto the floor. He switched the gun from his left hand to his right, and then he died. Or, more plausibly, they were both killed by someone else.”

  Ruth ran through that explanation. “And you think they were recording us with electronics? Why?”

  “Turnbull was killed in custody. This is our first official case, and the victim happens to be Clipton. His body is found relatively close to the city, yet at the same time outside of anyone else’s jurisdiction. The body is in one of the few properties where it was certain to be discovered. Not just that, but the killer knew exactly when the scavengers would arrive, and that they wouldn’t disturb the crime scene.”

  “Who did it?” Ruth asked.

  “I don’t know, and we’re not going to find out here. Riley, I want you to speak to the Marines in the depot, and then talk to the train station staff. I doubt Gupta or Clipton came through here, but someone had to scout out the location. Perhaps they were lazy enough to use a train. Then go and see the commissioner. Tell him we’ve found Clipton, but leave it at that for now.”

  “And you?” Riley asked.

  “We’re going to do what they expect us to do. We’ll go to the boarding house and find out who Mr Gupta was.”

  “And then?” Riley asked.

  “We need help, and if we can’t trust our colleagues, we’ll have to rely on those we know to distrust. Go to Isaac. We’ll meet you there.”

  Chapter 12

  Grief

  “You can tell a lot about the people who live in a house by their front garden,” Mitchell said. They were on a pleasant, tree-lined but leaf-clear street to the west of the main commuter station. “And the key feature about these houses is that there’s no hedge, wall, or fence dividing them.”

  “Do you think they’re all boarding houses, owned by the same person?” Ruth asked.

  “The six terraces either side of the road are. I’m not sure about the detached houses at the end. Or perhaps it’s two people who each own one side of the road. But it doesn’t look like a collective.” He pointed towards a woman, kneeling in the garden outside the door to number eight.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “Are these boarding houses?”

  “They are,” she said.

  “Including number twelve?”

  “That’s right,” she said, standing up. “Why?”

  “Do you live here?” Mitchell asked.

  “I’m the owner. What’s this about?”

  “Do you know a Mr Rahman Gupta?”

  “Yes? Why? What’s happened?” Her tone switched from wary to frantic.

  “I’m very sorry to inform you that he’s dead,” Mitchell said.

  The woman’s face collapsed, and for a moment Ruth thought the woman would follow.

  “How did it… how?” she whispered.

  “Perhaps we could go inside,” Mitchell said.

  The woman nodded and led them towards the nearest door. She paused halfway along the front hall and glanced down at the muddy path she’d tracked along the scrubbed floor. She shook her head and led them into the kitchen.

  “Please, sit down,” she said. “I can make you some tea?”

  “There’s no need. What’s your name, ma’am?” Mitchell asked.

  “Garland. Ingrid Garland,” she said.

  “And you own these houses?”

  “The entire row. My mother owned the house before. We took in refugees, you know? And that became…” She sighed. “How did he die?”

  “We’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report before we can say,” Mitchell said.

  “But was it… was it an accident?”

  “It’s too early to say,” Mitchell said. “When did you see him last?”

  “Two days ago. He didn’t come home that evening, or last night. But he often sleeps at work.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “The chemical works. He’s quite important there,” she added.

  “How long has he been a tenant?”

  “Oh, for nearly fifteen years,” Garland said.

  “That’s a long time,” Mitchell said. “He never wanted a place of his own?”

  “He had one. A farm. Him and his brother and sister. It’s about thirty miles away. It’s why he kept a room here. He’d work at the factory some days, but often finished after the last train. Sometimes he’d sleep at work, and sometimes he’d come here, and other times he’d take a few days off and go back to the farm.”

  “The chemical works didn’t mind?”

  “Mind? About five years ago, he told them that he sometimes woke in the middle of the night with an idea but forgot it by the time he’d found the box of matches. They had electricity installed before the week was out. He’s that important to them, but he’s diligent, too. He works twenty-hour shifts, and I think he’d work longer if he could. Worked.” She sniffed. “He took me there, to his farm. Such nice people, just like him.”

  “Did he have many visitors?” Mitchell asked.

  “Here? No. There was just—” She stopped.

  “Just who?” Mitchell pressed.

  “I was going to say there was just him and me.”

  “You were close?”

  She shrugged.

  “No one came looking for him over the last week? No late night callers or anything out of the ordinary?” Mitchell asked.

  “No, why?” she asked.

  “It’s a routine question,” Mitchell said. He took out the keyring. “Can you identify the keys?”

  “That one’s for his room, and that’s for the front door.”

  “Thank you. We should take a look at his room.”

  It was immaculately tidy, about twelve feet long by twenty feet wide, but seemed larger due to the sparse furnishings.

  “A bed, a desk, a wardrobe, a shelf. I’d say this room was rarely slept in, even when he was here,” Mitchell said. “But it’s been dusted to within an inch of its life.” He ran a finger along the edge of the single shelf. “There’s not a speck of it. The wardrobe has… three pairs of trousers and five shirts. A raincoat. Underwear. Socks. Hat. Scarf. Two pairs of gloves. That’s it. Other than the scarf and hat, which are a bright reddish pink, it’s all subdued colours and old fabrics.”

  “Not hardwearing clothes,” Ruth said. “That confirms what Ms Garland told us.”

  “How did you come to that conclusion?” Mitchell asked as he bent to peer under the bed.

  “There’s a large garden outside that’s halfway between an allotment and a field. Except for a few chairs underneath the trees, it’s all been ploughed, dug, or planted. I’d say that everyone who lived here must spend some time working outside.”

&nb
sp; “Except for Mr Gupta,” Mitchell said. “And there are no chemical stains on his clothes. No jackets either, so he didn’t have to dress up for work. Maybe he changed there.”

  “Or he wasn’t employed at the chemical works, and there is no farm for him to disappear off to,” Ruth said.

  Mitchell pulled a book off the small shelf above the desk, flicked through it, and handed it to Ruth. “Here,” he said. “It looks like a journal. Look for anything incriminating. A sketch of a banknote or something.”

  Ruth turned a page, and then another. “You think there will be one?”

  “Not really, but we have to look.”

  Ruth flicked through the book. It was three-quarters full, the handwriting was small, the letters carefully formed, but all were of the same hand.

  “It’s not really a journal,” she said. “There are no dates. It’s his thoughts and ideas, and a list of problems and how to solve them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything,” Ruth said. “Everything. This page is about increasing the yield of wheat. The next page is… I think it’s about how to build a better light bulb.” She turned another page. “And this is just a lot of formulas. No, wait. He’s scrawled something about diesel in the margin.”

  “Let me see.” Mitchell took the book, glanced at the page, and handed it back. “That’s a calculation on the time and cost of producing bio-diesel, and the net increase in food production it would bring on a hundred-acre farm.”

  “How do you know that?” Ruth asked.

  “Because I’ve seen that before, or something similar. During the first winter after The Blackout, everyone wanted to know if we could get the tractors running again. But we needed every calorie we had to stay alive. If the climate was different, or if we’d been more geographically spread out, or if we’d not had the steam trains, or if the roads weren’t packed with all those stalled cars… It happened the way it did.” He turned a page, and then another. “No pictures. A few doodles. But nothing obviously incriminating.”

  “Why are you looking for pictures?”

  “Because we’d certainly notice if an entry about counterfeiting had been written in a different hand,” Mitchell said. “However, we might assume a drawing of a twenty-pound note was done by Mr Gupta. Remember that the killer assumed we’d fall for the staged crime scene. But there’s nothing here.” He picked up three letters from the bookshelf. “All of these are written by a woman named Clementine. Return address is Away Farm. Probably a sister, or a sister-in-law, perhaps? Not a wife or a girlfriend, but someone to whom he was close. It’s all about farming. Very bucolic, and all dated within the last two weeks. Check the tacks on the carpet.”

  “What for?” she asked.

  “Are they new, or newly scratched? Does it look like the carpet has been removed?”

  Ruth knelt down near the door, combing through the thick pile.

  “It seems Ms Garland’s account of her lodger tallies with what we’ve found here,” Mitchell said. “Did you find anything?”

  “No. Do you really think it likely someone would remove the carpet to hide some clue?”

  “Probably not. They’d leave it somewhere obvious. But there is a reason Mr Gupta was killed. We didn’t find it on his person. We haven’t found it here. We’ll try the chemical works next, and then the farm. That reason is key, I’m sure of it.”

  He pocketed the journal, and they left the boarding house.

  The chemical works was a short walk from the boarding house and was one of the few larger factories situated in the town itself. The giant red and blue ‘Satz!’ signs either side of the wrought iron gates were a familiar sight from every tin of ersatz tea Ruth had ever opened.

  “We’re here to see the director,” Mitchell said to the guard standing in a small sentry box by the gate.

  “And do you have an appointment, officer?” the guard asked, with a theatrical glance at the book in front of her.

  “It’s official police business,” Mitchell said.

  “Oh, really?” the woman replied.

  “All right, look,” Mitchell said, stepping closer. “We can continue this back and forth for a bit, but at the end of it, you’ll either open that gate or I’ll arrest you for obstruction. Why don’t you save us some time, and yourself some trouble, and tell your boss we’re here regarding Mr Gupta.”

  The guard gave Mitchell a resentful glare, and threw another at Ruth for good measure, before leaving her box and heading into the building. She wasn’t gone long.

  “Someone will be out shortly,” she said before pointedly turning her back on them.

  Mitchell nodded his head towards the gate, and they walked away from the sentry box. Ruth looked up at the chimneys towering over the beige painted building.

  “What was this before it was a factory?” she asked.

  “A soccer pitch,” Mitchell said. “You see over…” He turned around, squinting at the redbrick buildings opposite. “Well, I don’t remember which ones, but the chemical labs started off in those houses. It was after the meningitis outbreak. That was the final straw. We had cholera and typhoid, flu and pneumonia, and then there were the everyday infections that everyone seemed to get. People were dying all the time, but when the children started to die, thousands at a time, that’s when something had to be done. We went to the old pharmaceutical labs to find the formulas. Not all of us made it back.”

  “You mean you?” Ruth asked. “You went?”

  “Me? Yes, among others. Don’t look so surprised. Because of my proximity to Isaac, and because he’d had that message about the cargo ships, I found myself in the room where the decisions were made. I wasn’t sitting at the table with the admiral and the PM, but I was there, and so I fell into policing. There wasn’t much investigating to do. There were crimes, of course, but they were the kind where it was obvious who’d done it, or where you knew from the outset you’d never prove who had. With more time on my hands than those working a plough, I was volunteered whenever someone was needed to go to the wrong side of the Thames. Anyway, they built the labs in those houses and recreated the vaccines, but there’s only so much you can do in a converted terrace, so we built the chemical works. At first for the vaccines and antibiotics, but we soon had a stockpile, so they started on aspirin and the like. Then it was paint, gunpowder, fertilizer, bleach, toothpaste and, well, it’s a marvel how much of what we call civilisation is dependent on chemistry. It certainly made the difference between survival and living.”

  “Would you need a chemistry lab to make ink for printing banknotes?” Ruth asked.

  “Yes, and that’s exactly where my thoughts were going, but hang on. Someone’s coming.”

  A squat, bow-legged man waddled towards them from the main building.

  “I’m Mr Worley,” he said, as the guard opened the gate. “Have you found Rahman?”

  “Was he missing?” Mitchell asked.

  “Why else would you be here?” Worley replied.

  “Can we go inside?” Mitchell asked.

  “What’s happened?” Mr Worley asked.

  “I’m afraid Mr Gupta is dead,” Mitchell said.

  Worley’s face went slack, almost as if every muscle relaxed at the same instant. “Dead?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Mitchell said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “We are.”

  “I mean, are you sure it’s him?” Worley asked.

  “Yes, sir, we are. Can we go inside and talk?”

  “I… Yes. Yes. You… yes,” he murmured. “How?” he asked as he led them towards the building. “How did it happen?”

  “We’re still investigating,” Mitchell said, “but it appears to be murder.”

  “Murder?” the man almost squawked the word in surprise, as he stopped and stared at them.

  “What was your relationship with the man?” Ruth asked.

  “What? Oh, I was his supervisor,” Worley said. “I’m deputy director, in charge of research.”<
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  “What kind of research?” Mitchell asked.

  “Every kind,” Worley said.

  “Perhaps we can see his lab?” Mitchell asked.

  “Yes. I will have to inform the board, I suppose.”

  “Mr Gupta was that important?” Ruth asked.

  “Dr Gupta,” Worley corrected her. “And he was very important.”

  “Indispensable?” Mitchell asked.

  “I hope not. This is his lab.”

  Ruth had only the haziest of notions as to what a laboratory should look like but glassware and jars of chemicals featured prominently. This room had nothing but blackboards, whiteboards, and long sheets of paper pinned to the walls. There were three desks in the middle of the almost empty space. One piled with loose sheets of paper, the other two creaking under the weight of scores of well-thumbed textbooks.

  “What exactly did Dr Gupta do here?” Mitchell asked.

  “He preserved the future,” Worley said. “Every breakthrough that was about to happen before The Blackout, every theory, thought, and idle speculation, it all comes here. Dr Gupta was one of the scientists sorting through it, cataloguing it, ensuring that as we rebuild we don’t waste time reinventing that which was already discovered.”

  “That doesn’t sound like chemistry,” Ruth said.

  “It’s not. People think of this as the place that makes their tea, paint, and soap, but it’s far more than that. We are the repository of knowledge, the guarantors that as we recover, we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.”

  “But specifically, what was he working on?” Mitchell asked.

  “Something to do with friction. I don’t know precisely what, except that the research notes he was working on originally came from Cambridge. I’m not a scientist, you see.”

  “But you were his supervisor?” Ruth asked.

  “Precisely. I made sure he had anything he wanted. Water, tea, pens, paper, what have you. If I could understand the work he was doing then I would have a room like this of my own.”

  “And when did you last see him?” Mitchell asked.

  “Let’s see. Well, yesterday, at about three. Perhaps a little earlier.”