The front of the room was twice the height of the back. Wide wrought-iron stairs curved up to a balcony which ran the entire width, giving access to all the upstairs rooms. A sheer window wall in front of the balcony flooded the whole area with light.
The corpse lay at the foot of the stairs. A man in his mid-to-late twenties, wearing a pale gray dressing gown, his legs akimbo on the tiles, head twisted at a nasty angle. Some blood had dribbed from his nose. It was dry and flaking now.
There were three air-conditioning grilles set in the edge of the balcony. One of them was right above the corpse, blowing a stream of the frosty air directly over him.
“He fell down the stairs?” Alison asked.
“Looks like it,” Rex said.
“So was it a fall, or a push?” Amanda wondered out loud.
“I had a quick look around upstairs,” Rex said. “No sign of any struggle. The main bed’s been used, but everything seems to be in place as far as I can tell.”
Amanda wrinkled her nose up. There was a faint smell in the air, unpleasant and familiar. “How long’s he been here?”
“Possibly a day,” Rex said.
Alison gestured at the window wall. “And nobody saw him?”
“One-way glass,” Amanda said. It had that slight give away gray tint. She stared through it, understanding why the apartments had been built here. The last of the rainclouds had drifted away, allowing the hot sun to shine down. It was a magnificent view out over the junction of two broad rolling grassland valleys. In the distance she could see an antique windmill, its wooden sail painted white. A long communal garden stretched out ahead of her, a paddock beyond that. There was a circular swimming pool twenty meters away, surrounded by a flagstone patio. Wooden-slat sun loungers were clustered around stripy parasols.
“All right,” she said wearily. “Let’s do the preliminary assessment.”
Alison opened her cybofax. “When was the body discovered?”
“Approximately 8:45 this morning,” Rex nodded toward the cleaning woman. “Helen?”
“That’s right,” the woman stammered. “I saw him—Mr. Tyler—as soon as I came in. I called the police right away.”
Amanda pursed her lips and knelt down beside the body. The handsome face had quite a few resonances for her. Byrne Tyler. She remembered him mainly from Marina Days, a soap set amid Peterborough’s yachting fraternity—though 90 percent of it was shot in the studio with the all-action boating sequences cooked on a graphics mainframe. That had been five or six years ago; Byrne played a teenage hunk crewman. But he had left and gone onto star in action-thriller dramas and interactives. Pretty bad ones if she remembered her tabloid gossip right. There would be media attention with this one.
She stood up. “Helen, was the door locked when you arrived?”
“Yes. And the alarm was on. I have the code, and my palm is one of the keys. Mr. Tyler was happy with that. He was a nice man. He always gave me a Christmas bonus.
“I’m sure he was lovely. Did you do all his cleaning?”
“Yes. Twice a week. Tuesday and Friday.”
“Which means he could have been here since Tuesday. She rubbed her arms, trying to generate some warmth. “Rex, go see if the air-conditioning was set like this or it’s glitched. Alison, look around for empty bottles, or anything else,” she said pointedly. It could so easily be an accident. Drunk, stoned, or even sober, a fall could happen. And God knows what a showbiz type like Tyler would take for amusement in the privacy of his secluded secure home.
Amanda went upstairs to check the main bedroom. The door was open, revealing a huge circular waterbed with a black silk sheet over the mattress: there was no top sheet. An equally large mirror was fixed to the ceiling above it. She shook her head in bemusement at the stereotyping. Exactly the kind of seduction chamber a list celebrity sex symbol was expected to have. She remembered most of his scenes in Marina Days involved him being stripped to the waist, or wearing tight T-shirts.
Apart from the offensive decor, there was nothing overtly suspicious. A slower look and she realized the sheet was rumpled, pillows were scattered about. She stared. One person wouldn’t mess up a bed that much, surely? On the bedside cabinet was a champagne bottle turned upside down in a silver ice bucket, a single cut-crystal flute beside it.
When she went back downstairs, Rex told her the air-conditioning was set at maximum. Alison was wearing plastic gloves; she held up a clear zip bag with a silver-plated infuser in it.
“Damn,” Amanda grunted. “Okay, call the scene-of-crime team, and forensic. Let’s find out exactly what happened here. And tell the uniform division we’ll need help to cordon off the area.”
Forty minutes later, Denzil Osborne drove up in the forensic team’s white van. Alone. Amanda always found Denzil immensely reassuring. It was probably the phlegmatic way the forensic officer treated crime scenes when he arrived. Nothing ever fazed him.
“Where’s the scene-of-crime team?” she asked as soon as he eased his huge frame out of the van.
“Vernon says he wants hard evidence there’s been a crime before he’ll authorize that kind of expense.”
Amanda felt her cheeks reddening. All those orders she’d snapped out in front of Alison were making her look stupid now, empty wishes showing where the true authority in the police force lay. England’s police had got rid of the PSP political officers observing their cases for ideological soundness, only for the New Conservatives to replace them all with accountants. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
“And the uniform division?”
He winked broadly. “You’ve got Rex, haven’t you?”
“Sod it,” she snarled. “Come on, this way.”
Denzil took one look at Byrne Tyler’s sprawled body and said: “Ah yes, I see why you wanted forensic now. Of course, I’m no expert, but I think he may have fallen down the stairs.”
She stuck her hands on her hips. “I want to know if he was pushed. I also want to know if he was even alive up on the balcony when it happened.”
Denzil put his case on the floor beside Tyler, and lowered his bulk down next to it, wincing as his knees creaked.
“And you should lose some weight,” she said.
“Come horizontal jogging with me—I’d lose kilos every night.”
“That’s sexual harassment.” She just managed to keep a straight face in front of Alison.
He grinned wildly. “Yes please.”
“Just tell me what happened here.”
Denzil opened his case, revealing a plethora of specialist ’ware modules. He pulled on some tight plastic gloves before selecting a sensor wand which he waved over the dead man’s face: then he stopped and peered closer. “Ah, a celebrity death. Best kind. Did you see his last? Night Squad III: Descent of Angels. Saving the world from card-carrying terrorists yet again. There was some cool helijets in that. They had nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers; cut clean thorough buildings.”
Chuckling, Denzil resumed his scan of Tyler’s face. “Shame about the air-conditioning,” he said. “I can’t work a simple temperature assessment on him.”
“That’s what made me wonder,” Amanda said. “If he did get pushed then we won’t be able to pinpoint the time very easily.”
“Hmm. Maybe not pinpoint, but let’s try something a little more detailed.” Denzil replaced the sensor wand and took another cylinder from his case. It had a needle fifteen centimeters long protruding from one end, which Denzil slowly inserted into Tyler’s abdomen then withdrew equally carefully. “Anything else immediately suspicious?”
Alison held up the zip bag with the infuser, and another bag with vials. “We think he was infusing this. Probably syntho.”
“Where have you been, young lady? I’ll have you know, it’s dreampunch this season for the glitterati. Couple of levels up from syntho, it’s supposed to stimulate your pleasure center and memories at the same time. Every hit a wet dream.”
“Can you walk around when you’re tripping it
?” Alison asked.
“Okay, good point. They normally just crash out and drool a lot.”
“I’ll need DNA samples from the bed as well,” Amanda said. “I think he had someone up there before he died.”
Denzil gave her a curious look. “Vernon won’t give you the budget for that kind of workover. I’m just authorized for a body analysis, determine cause of death, that kind of thing.”
“Just do what you can for me, okay.”
“Okay. CID’s paying.” The cylinder with the needle bleeped, and he consulted the graphics displayed on its screen. “According to cellular decay, he died sometime on Wednesday night, between 2200 hours and 1:30.”
“That’s a big window. Is that the best you can give me?”
“I always give you my best, Amanda. That’s the preliminary, anyway. Let me get him into the lab and I can probably shave half an hour off that for you. The delay and this bloody arctic temperature doesn’t help.”
Amanda stood up and turned to Alison. “There’s some reasonable security ’ware here. See what kind of records are available for this week, especially Wednesday evening. Rex, take a full statement from Helen, and let her go. And I want this place sealed as soon as the body’s removed. We’ll get authority to run a proper site examination eventually.”
“You really think this was a murder?” Denzil asked.
“Too many things are wrong,” Amanda said. “Somebody told me once: there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
Inspector Vernon Langley was putting his jacket on when Amanda walked into his small shabby office. He took one look at her, slumped his shoulders and groaned. “I’m due out for lunch,” he said defensively.
“I was due a scene-of-crime team,” she shot back.
“All right.” He sat back behind his desk and waved her into a spare seat. “Amanda, you know we’re severely restricted on how much we can spend on each case. Some syntho-head fell down stairs. Bag him up and notify the relatives.”
“I think he was murdered.”
Vernon grimaced. “Not the air-conditioning, please.”
“Not by itself, no. But Denzil scanned the control box. No fingerprints. It had been wiped clean with a damp kitchen cloth.”
“Means nothing. The cleaning lady could have done that on her last visit.”
“Unlikely. Vernon, you just don’t have the air-conditioning on that cold, not for days at a time. I also had Alison check the security ’ware. A car left at 23:13, Wednesday night—a Rover Ingalo registered to Claire Sullivan. It’s loaded into Church Vista Apartments security list as an approved visitor for Byrne Tyler, so the gate opens automatically for it. Alison’s mining the Home Office circuit for Sullivan now.”
Vernon scratched at his chin. “I took a look at Denzil’s preliminary file; time of death is very loose. This Sullivan woman will simply claim Tyler was alive when she left.”
“Of course she will,” Amanda said with a hint of irritation. “That doesn’t mean we don’t ask her.”
Vernon looked unhappy.
“Oh, come on,” she exclaimed.
“All right. I’ll give you the time to interview her. But you don’t get anything else without a positive result.”
“Well, hey, thanks.”
“I’m sorry, Amanda,” he gave her a resigned smile. “Things just ain’t what they used to be around here.”
“Someone like Byrne Tyler is bound to have crime insurance coverage. We’ll get the money to investigate properly. It won’t even come out of your budget.”
Vernon’s mood darkened still further. “I’m sure he has coverage. Unlike seventy percent of the population.”
Alison had tracked down Claire Sullivan’s address, which was in Uppingham. She had also prepared quite a briefing file for Amanda, most of it mined from tabloid databases.
Amanda let the probationary detective drive to the Sullivan bungalow as she scanned the file on her cybofax. “Tyler was engaged to Tamzin Sullivan?”
“Yep, Claire’s big sister. She’s a model, got a contract with the Dermani house. Mainly on the back of the publicity she and Tyler were getting. They’ve hit the show-biz party trail extensively since the engagement was announced. You open your front door in the morning, and they’ll be there for it. On their own, neither of them was important enough to get an image on the gossip ’casts; together they rate airtime. It helps that they have the same management agency.”
Amanda looked at the image of Tamzin the screen was showing, posed for a Dermani advert, bracelet and earring accessories for a stupidly priced couture dress. The girl was beautiful, certainly, but it was a lofty beauty implying arrogance.
“So what’s her little sister doing at her fiance’s house in the middle of the night?”
“One guess,” Alison said dryly. “I always used to be jealous of my sister’s boyfriends. And Byrne was no saint. I didn’t load the real gutter-press reports for you, but they say he got fired from Marina Days because he couldn’t leave the girls alone.”
Amanda scrolled down the file to Claire. The girl was eighteen, a first-year medical student at DeMontfort University. Still living at home with her mother. The university fees were paid by her father as part of a child-maintenance agreement. He lived in Australia. Amanda skipped to the mother: Margina Sullivan.
Pre-judgment went against the nature of Amanda’s training, but Margina’s record made it difficult to avoid. She had three children, each with a different father each of whom was wealthy enough to support their offspring with independent schooling and an allowance. The Inland Revenue had no employment record for Margina Sullivan. Her tax returns (always filed late) listed a couple of small trust funds as her income source. She owned the bungalow in Uppingham where she lived along with Claire, Tamzin, and Daniel, her nine-year-old son; but her credit rating was dismal.
By the time they arrived at the address, an image of Margina had swollen into Amanda’s mind, hardening like concrete: aging brittle harridan.
The Sullivan bungalow was just beyond the center of town, in the middle of a pleasant estate dominated by old evergreen pines which had survived the climate change. The wood and brick structure itself was well-maintained, with glossy paintwork and a roof of new solar panels, but the garden clearly hadn’t seen any attention for years. Two cars were parked outside: a BMW so old it probably had a combustion engine, with flat tires and bleached paintwork hosting blooms of moss; next to it was a smart little scarlet and black Ingalo, a modern giga-conductor powered runabout that was proving popular as a first car for wealthy young trendies.
Margina Sullivan opened the door. Amanda assumed they had caught her going out; she was wearing some extravagant dress complemented by a white shawl cardigan. Heavy makeup labored to re-create the youthfulness of what was undeniably an attractive face. Not a single bottle-red hair was out of alignment from her iron-hard curled beret style. She put a hand theatrically on her chest when shown Amanda’s police ID card and oohed breathlessly. The phoney concern changed to shock and barely concealed anger when Amanda regretfully informed her of Byrne Tyler’s death. Margina hurried over to the drinks cabinet and poured herself a large Scotch.
“How am I going to tell Tamzin?” she gulped. Another shot of whiskey was poured. “God in heaven, what are we going to do? Starlight was paying for a bloody wedding exclusive, not a funeral.”
A curious way of expressing grief, Amanda thought. She kept quiet, looking around the lounge. It was chintzy, with lavender cloths covering every table and sideboard, tassels dangling from their overhanging edges. Figurines from the kind of adverts found in the most downmarket weekend datatext channels stood on every surface. Tall, high-definition pictures of Tamzin looked down serenely from each wall, campaigns for a dozen different fashion products. Amanda would have liked to be dismissive, but the girl really was very beautiful. Healthy vitality was obviously The Look right now.
Claire and Daniel came in, wanting to know what was happening. Amanda studied the younger gir
l as her perturbed mother explained. Claire didn’t have anything like her elder sister’s poise, nor was there much resemblance—which was understandable enough. She had sandy hair rather than lush raven; her narrow face had a thin mouth instead of wide full lips; and her figure was a great deal fuller than that of the lean athlete. Nor was there any of Tamzin’s ice-queen polish, just a mild sulkiness.
Daniel was different again … wide-eyed and cute, with a basin-cut mop of chestnut hair. Like every nine-year-old, he could not stay still. Even when told of Tyler’s death he clung to his sister and shivered restlessly. The affection between the siblings was touching. It was Claire who soothed and comforted him rather than his mother. Amanda’s attitude hardened still further when Margina went for yet another shot of whiskey.
“Where is Tamzin at the moment?” Alison asked.
“Paris,” Margina sniffed. “She has a runway assignment tonight. I must call Colin at Hothouse—they’re her agents; he can arrange for her to be flown home. We’ll release a statement on the tragedy from here.”
“A statement?”
“To the media,” Margina said irritably. “Hothouse will see to it.”
“Perhaps you should call the Hothouse people now,” Amanda said. “In the meantime I have some questions which I need to ask Claire.”
Margina gave her a puzzled glance. “What questions?”
Amanda steeled herself. This wasn’t going to be pleasant. She could do the preliminary interview with the girl here or at the station. Either way, Margina, and after that Tamzin, would find out why. I’m not a social worker, she told herself. “We think Claire might have been the last person to see Mr. Tyler alive.”
“Impossible,” Margina insisted. “You said he died at home.” She rounded on Claire. “What does she mean?”
The girl hung her head sullenly. “I saw Byrne on Wednesday evening.”
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection Page 43
