The place smelt stale, understandable, I suppose, as it had been shut up for several days. The way a home smells though can immediately tell you a lot about the people who live there. It was clear that Davies had smoked, liked fry-ups and, in either kitchen or bathroom, a drain was blocked.
‘I take it we can touch things,’ I said.
‘Carrick didn’t say anything about SOCO not having completely finished. Nor does their report and although I remembered to pick up a couple of pairs of gloves I shouldn’t imagine we can take the place apart.’
‘Why can’t we if they haven’t?’
‘I like your reasoning. How can we if they haven’t?’
Exasperated, I said, ‘What did they tell you on the training course?’
‘We didn’t cover it.’
‘They always seem to yank everything out of cupboards on the telly.’
‘Yes, but this isn’t Frost or Morse, is it? This is me getting the old heave-ho if I screw up.’
I was beginning to yearn for our MI5 days. I said, ‘I suggest we have a good look at everything but leave it exactly as we find it. And stop worrying – it’s probably my fault for suggesting you tread lightly.’
It was too much to expect that we would find anything that would be a further insight into Davies’s criminal past. The information in the case file was basic but sufficient; he had served two years for GBH – the sentence possibly a light one because he had vented his wrath on a mobster wanted by the police, who had promptly arrested him in hospital – and six months for being in possession of a firearm, a sawn-off shotgun. He had been implicated in several other crimes, including attempted murder, but there had never been sufficient evidence to bring a strong case against him. There was a note in Carrick’s handwriting to the effect that Davies had worked as a ‘casual’ for various underworld outfits, as a driver, wielder of baseball bat for intimidation purposes, thug in attendance, whatever was required.
We split up and I had a quick look in the kitchen, the source of the smell, I immediately discovered. There was a pile of dirty crockery in the sink standing in a puddle of putrid water, a dishcloth steeping in this resembling a decomposing sea-slug. I pulled the plug out but the water stayed exactly where it was. The rest of the room was not much better but I searched everywhere. I even looked in the fridge-freezer and cooker. In one of the wall cupboards hidden behind cans of baked beans I found some cash, two hundred pounds in fifty-pound notes. I was convinced that the spaces beneath the units had already been searched but got down on my knees, unclipped the boarding and looked anyway. There was a lot of dust and fluff but nothing else.
‘Just some money,’ I reported to Patrick on my way past the bathroom door. He appeared to be dismantling the front of the bath.
‘Genuine or counterfeit?’ he queried.
I went back in the kitchen, cursing myself for not having checked more closely. ‘It looks all right to me,’ I called. ‘No, it’s not. The notes all have the same serial number. Do you have any plastic evidence bags with you too?’
He had remembered those as well and the notes were carefully placed in one. We then went over the bedroom and living room, grubby but tidy, even shaking out magazines and old newspapers to see if anything had been concealed between the pages. It seemed to take a very long time. Luckily for us Davies had had few possessions other than his clothes, most of which would have been quite expensive, some weight-training equipment kept in the spare bedroom, and a top-of-the-range home-entertainment system with extensive CD and DVD collections, mostly of the head-banging variety.
I had volunteered Patrick to go through the contents of the chest of drawers as rummaging through strange men’s underwear has never been quite my thing. He found a few porn magazines and some more money, legal tender this time. Then he turned his attention to the apartment’s walls, looking behind the two mirrors and three pictures on a quest for a safe, but found nothing. All the carpets were well fixed down so it was unlikely that any floorboards had been taken up in order to hide things in the space beneath.
‘An anonymous kind of life,’ Patrick commented. ‘No photos, letters or records of any kind, just a few paid bills. Not even a birth certificate. You know, there’s no mention of any search of a garage in the file with regard to Davies, only to the Manleys’. Theirs just held empty boxes and a couple of old bikes.’
‘We’ll have to follow that up – I thought everyone here had a garage.’
‘So did I. There must be a cache of his personal stuff somewhere. In London, perhaps – in a suitcase on top of a wardrobe at a crony’s place.’
We locked up, resealed the door and went across the landing to the Manley’s home.
It quickly became apparent that here we were faced with something very different; the Manleys had lived surrounded by a glorious muddle. Their possessions seemed to be fighting to escape from every confinement, some succeeding and spilling out on to the floors. The police search had not helped matters and as we entered the living room the vibration of our footfalls caused a tottering pile of books to avalanche from a shelf and crash on to a sofa.
‘It’ll take all day to go through this lot,’ I said in despair.
‘You wanted to join the cops,’ was the uncompromising reply.
We repeated the previous procedure; I started in the kitchen, which smelt faintly of fresh paint, Patrick the bathroom, doing the smaller rooms first. The job was more pleasant than the previous one in that the place was fairly clean but the amount of stuff meant it took a lot longer. I learned to exercise caution as every opening of a cupboard or unit was likely to precipitate a mass breakout by the contents. Finally, after three-quarters of an hour, I had made huge improvements in the stowage arrangements but found absolutely nothing of interest.
‘There’s a picture of them on their wedding day over there,’ Patrick said when we met up again in the living room. ‘He didn’t appear to be in the police then – unless he didn’t want to get married in uniform.’
All the clutter – beneath and around which, as Carrick had said, there were some fine old pieces of furniture – yielded very little of interest. Like the other residents of the converted mill, the Manleys were the first owners of the flat, solicitors’ letters and other documents confirming that they had moved in during March the previous year. They had come from Hammersmith, West London. There was no record of Christopher Manley ever having been in the police, something I think the pair of us had taken for granted. Had Carrick actually checked?
‘There are pay chits here,’ Patrick said suddenly, delving to the bottom of the box file we were going through. ‘Well, well, he worked as a guard for one of the security companies connected with Heathrow Airport.’ He ruffled through the slips of paper. ‘For three years at least.’
‘Policeman sounds better than security guard if you’re moving to a slightly select village,’ I observed.
‘Yes, but where did these folk get the money from, eh? These flats must have cost between two hundred and fifty and three hundred thousand pounds.’
‘Perhaps they won the lottery.’
‘What, all of them?’
‘They might have been in a syndicate.’
‘I agree, but how do you explain the fact that Davies appears to have been keeping an eye on the other two – even working for them?’
‘You get targeted by quite strange people if you’ve come into money.’
‘They could have chosen to remain anonymous. And, by all accounts none of them enjoyed living here.’
‘Patrick, people do move to the countryside and then realize it’s not for them.’
He gave me a sideways look. ‘You’re playing devil’s advocate.’
‘No, I’m just trying to look at things from all angles. We don’t know that the Manleys were criminals.’
‘But the circumstances do point to people removing themselves from circulation and keeping their heads well down. It’s worth checking if there were any significant thefts from warehous
es at Heathrow while Manley was working there.’
I remembered something. ‘Christopher Manley’s body had what Rapton thought was white emulsion paint in the hair and beneath the fingernails. Someone’s been painting in the kitchen – the ceiling looks freshly done.’
‘I would have thought the place was a bit new to require painting.’
‘Perhaps there was some kind of culinary disaster.’ All too vividly I could recollect leaving the lid off the blender and having home-made soup dripping from the ceiling.
I left Patrick to it and went into the master bedroom. There were no surprises in either of the fitted wardrobes; everyday, dreary even, clothing all smelling a little fusty, shoes in heaps, a few travel brochures, umbrellas and an old walking stick. The chests of drawers followed the same pattern; no jewellery to speak of, greyish undergarments (I left Manley’s to Patrick), washed-out sweaters, a couple of cardigans, a whole drawerful of gloves, scarves and hats. This woman had not spent any money she might have had on her appearance.
We had not found anything much that related to Janet Manley herself and I did not feel that I was violating her privacy, or memory, as I opened an Edwardian writing box I noticed on a bedside table. Perhaps it had belonged to her grandmother.
The box was not in very good condition. When opened it formed a sloping writing surface covered with red leather, the gold tooling on it almost worn away in places. Both halves of the box had compartments beneath them and at some time a repair to the broken hinges of these had been attempted with sticky tape, now disintegrating. In the front section, nearest the lock, was a tray for pens and it had a tiny ‘secret’ drawer beneath it in which was a very old and broken pearl necklace.
The shallowest compartment contained birth, marriage and death certificates, mostly referring to Janet Manley’s parents and grandparents. I paused, beguiled by her maternal grandfather’s occupation; tram driver. The Manleys’ own marriage lines were there: they had wed in London, his occupation noted as central-heating engineer. It did not look as though he had ever been a policeman.
The other, deeper, side of the box held very little, a couple of Victorian postcards, a few letters from an aunt in the States dated over twenty years previously, a few old buttons, a St Christopher medal and a little notebook containing pressed flowers.
Did these people have a family? I wondered. Nothing had been said about next of kin and there were no birth certificates in the box to confirm the existence of any. No photographs of babies or children anywhere in the flat, come to think of it.
There was what looked like black dust in the bottom of this section of the box. But it was not ordinary household dust as it was far too dark in colour with a few larger particles. Carefully, I pushed some into a little heap, took a pinch of it and dropped it into a sample bag.
It looked a bit like tea.
Seven
‘So what the hell’s the significance of tea?’ James Carrick said. ‘It would appear to be similar to the stuff in Barney’s coffin, old and dried out. We might have a link but I’m damned if I can see how. The lab’s getting quite excited about it and has sent it off to a boffin at Kew but I don’t see how knowing whether it’s PG Tips or Earl Grey is going to help us at all. However, I’m willing to try anything if it solves a case.’
It was later that same day and we had just met Carrick, who had forgiven us, Patrick having convinced him that there had to be some kind of connection between the murders and the other cases and written up a report of our findings, such as they were, to give to him. The sample of dust had been taken to the lab.
Handing over the case file Patrick said, ‘There’s no mention in that of a search of Davies’s garage.’
‘No, he’d rented it out to another of the flat owners. It should have been mentioned.’
‘D’you want us to go and talk to Shaun Brown?’
Carrick hesitated, then said, ‘He ought to be eliminated from enquiries, if nothing else.’
‘Does he have a record?’
‘It’s not a name that springs to mind. You’ll have to check.’
Lynn Outhwaite appeared, obviously looking for someone. ‘Superintendent Gillard, there’s a Mr Hurst at the desk asking for you.’
‘Tamsin Roper’s boyfriend.’ Patrick reminded Carrick. ‘Other than the Dewittes, who are abroad and have been for some time and are therefore out of the investigation altogether, he’s the only one who was at the mill last week I haven’t spoken to.’
‘Good of him to come and find you,’ the DCI commented, gave us a tight smile and departed.
‘That man’s going to start drinking soon he looks so wretched,’ I hissed in Patrick’s ear as we retraced our steps to the front of the building. ‘We shouldn’t have countermanded his orders.’
‘If he hasn’t already.’ Patrick stopped in his tracks. ‘Shall I chuck it in?’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘I’ll talk to Hurst, as he’s waiting, before I make any decisions.’
Owen Hurst was not at all as I had expected, being short, dark and bearded, reminding me irresistibly of Toulouse Lautrec.
‘I thought I’d pop by, seeing as you’d expressed an interest in talking to me,’ he began in a deep, pleasant voice after Patrick had thanked him for coming. ‘Must confess to being curious, having never been inside a nick before.’ His brown eyes twinkled.
‘You should have joined the army instead,’ Patrick said, straight-faced. ‘Then you’d know exactly what they’re like.’
Hurst laughed and continued, ‘The ship’s alongside at Pompey in refit but I’ve had no end of trouble with a tooth lately and having been on leave for a few days had to have the bloody thing out the day before yesterday so was sent back on leave for the rest of the week. General anaesthetic,’ he went on to explain in case we thought him a wimp. ‘Jaw op, stitches, that kind of job. Tamsin’s looking after me.’ He touched one side of his face, which did look a bit swollen.
We were talking in one corner of the general office as Patrick had not been allocated a room of his own. He said, ‘I wanted to ask you if you’d seen or heard any unusual activities last week at the mill, on the Thursday night or very early Friday morning.’
‘Well, I might have done, actually. As Tamsin probably told you we went out for something to eat – after I’d dosed myself up to the eyeballs with painkillers and some antibiotics an emergency dentist had given me. We got back around eleven. The tooth gremlins were hard at work again by then so I took some more painkillers and prepared to doss down on the sofa. Couldn’t sleep. It was stuffy so I opened a window for some fresh air. At one thirty – I looked at my watch – I heard a couple of cars start up. Thought it a bit odd because the place is normally like a tomb at night. Then I heard voices, they were talking over the sound of the engines. Just a few words and then they drove off.’
‘Could you recognize the voices?’ Patrick enquired.
‘No, but I reasoned that it wasn’t Tamsin’s neighbours across the hall as from what she’s told me about them they don’t behave like that. Besides, I think Pascal told Tamsin that Lorna’s car was being repaired as she’d had a minor bump. It must have been the people below us. Not the retired couple on the ground floor obviously and the other people, Dewitte I think their name is, have been abroad for yonks. But the really odd thing is that about ten or fifteen minutes later I heard another car start up and drive away, so who that was is anyone’s guess.’
‘You didn’t get up and look out?’ I said.
‘No, you don’t bother unless it gets to be a real nuisance, do you?’
‘Did you hear anyone returning?’
‘No, must have dropped off after a while. And of course I didn’t check in the morning. I mean, it didn’t seem to matter at the time.’
Patrick said, ‘Can you remember whether the vehicle that left after the others was a petrol or diesel model?’
‘Petrol, I think.’
‘Anything else about it? An old ba
nger or a more expensive-sounding car? Or the kind of thing a young man might own with twin exhausts and spoilers that gets driven into the ground?’
‘Oh, fairly smooth. A saloon car of some kind.’
To Patrick I said, ‘The Brandons can’t have had visitors because Mrs Brandon is recovering from shingles. That can be contagious and she wouldn’t have felt like socializing anyway.’
‘It’s not impossible that someone who wasn’t supposed to park there did, for a short while. We shall have to talk to some more people,’ Patrick replied, and then asked Hurst, ‘I suppose you didn’t hear any movement, or people shouting, in the flats below yours, before the cars started up?’
‘No, everywhere’s very well soundproofed.’
‘Had you ever spoken to the Manleys, or to Davies?’
‘I don’t think so. I’m not at the mill very often and I’ve only known Tamsin for four months or so.’
‘Would you mind making a short statement along the lines of what we’ve discussed and signing it before you go?’
‘Not at all. Glad to be of help.’
‘I’ve rung every meat-packing plant, sausage and pork-pie manufacturer in the Warminster area listed in the Yellow Pages trying to track down Shaun Brown and drawn a blank,’ Patrick reported a little later. ‘He doesn’t have a criminal record. He’s probably back doing casual farmwork as he did during past winters for Stonelake.’ He thrust back his chair and stood up. ‘This is like throwing stones in a pond and not even getting ripples.’
‘You’re probably stirring up the bottom, though,’ I said. ‘I suggest we go out into the big blue yonder and ask at a couple of farms in the Hinton Littlemoor area. Farmers know everything that’s going on in the rural community.’
‘Then talk about chucking it all in?’ he queried with a rueful smile.
‘If you want to.’
He pecked my cheek and we went out.
It was sobering to discover how many farms that Patrick could remember from his younger days were no longer in existence; the land sold off, the houses now private residences, holiday homes or, in one case, an exclusive restaurant. Finally, we struck lucky, driving down a lane having seen a sign on the main road with WITHINGTON JERSEYS painted on it.
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