by Keith Nixon
The victim’s flat was just around the corner from the lift. Gray wouldn’t be surprised if the machinery could be heard day and night. The front door leant drunkenly against the corridor wall. Bent hinges, splintered wood, and some black boot marks said it had been kicked down to gain entrance. Gray wondered whether the act was one of benevolence or opportunism. The corridor was suspiciously empty. Not a good sign.
At the entrance, Gray accepted a pair of blue overshoes from a fully kitted out Scenes of Crime Officer and slipped them on, swaying as he did so, stubbornly refusing to put a hand out to steady himself. One foot, then the other. He removed his coat and replaced it with white overalls. He pulled the hood up over his greying hair. Once he put on a face mask, and a pair of latex gloves which obscured nibbled nails and torn cuticles, he was good to go.
Inside was a hive of practised activity. Forensics mingled with CID as they swept the flat for evidence. The party was in the living room, at the end of the corridor which sliced through the flat like an ambulatory highway, off which there were doors to a bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and two bedrooms.
He paused on the threshold for a moment, glanced around.
The interior smelled damp. There were lingering brown stains where the ceiling met the wall, a green bloom of mould in the corners. The furniture, what little there was, was shabby and worn. Light came in through a pair of grimy full-length glass doors that opened onto a precariously narrow balcony.
The only CID presence came in the form of the underfed detective constable, newly shunted over from uniform. The DC was in conversation with a SOCO in front of the balcony. Gray interrupted, ignoring the SOCO’s impotent glare: “Where’s DI Hamson?”
Detective Inspector Yvonne Hamson was Gray’s long-suffering boss, the one who had to put up with all his quirks because nobody else would. She’d be the Senior Investigating Officer.
“In one of the bedrooms, sir.”
“Point me in the right direction.”
“DS Fowler said I was to find him first when you eventually turned up. His words, sir, not mine.”
“Okay then, get him for me instead.”
“Sir.”
“Hang on,” Gray put a restraining hand on the DC’s arm, “are our people going door-to-door?”
“Not yet.”
“Get them bloody moving, then. Find out if anyone saw or heard anything.”
“Yes, sir.” The DC’s eyes spoke volumes: it was a futile gesture. There would be no witnesses, no statements, no helpful off-the-record tips. There never were. And although Gray knew that was the case, due process, even if it had the relative value of a flatulent bowel movement, must be followed.
Needled by the continued presence of the SOCO, Gray turned and barked, “Haven’t you got work to do?” The SOCO moved away without comment. “Thought he’d never clear off.”
“He was a she, sir.”
“Really?” Gray shrugged, unaffected by the faux pas. “It’s hard to tell who’s who in these gimp suits.”
The DC skedaddled, returning quickly with his man. Thankless mission accomplished, the DC drifted away, exiting the discussion.
Detective Sergeant Mike Fowler was medium everything – height, build, and looks – but possessed a sharp brain, a quick mouth, and a tendency to speak bluntly with often intentional side effects. Fowler was one of those guys who was perfectly happy to censure, but hated the tables being turned.
“How’s it going, Mike?” Of the two men, Gray was senior, a time-served thing, and a state of affairs which rubbed Fowler up the wrong way.
“We’ve only just started. So far it looks like Piccadilly Circus. SOCO turned up a load of fingerprints.”
“How many?”
“Dozens, apparently.”
“They could have had a party, I suppose,” said Gray, which elicited a shrug from Fowler. “What else?”
“A couple of bedrooms, neither in a particularly pristine state.”
“Anything major turned up?”
“Depends whether you count mistletoe as evidence of the century or not.”
“Mistletoe?”
“Right in the middle of the floor.” Fowler pointed at the psychedelic carpet.
Gray didn’t know what to make of it. “Is that all?”
“No.” Fowler held up three fingers, ticked them off one by one. “Traces of what looks to be cocaine.” He indicated a glass-topped table from a bygone era. It was covered in fingerprint dust.
Number two. “A suicide note. Weighed the letter down with a glass so it wouldn’t blow away when the balcony door was opened.”
“Now there’s preparation for you. Where is it?”
Fowler disappeared briefly to find the evidence. Gray glanced out the balcony window; saw brown sea and grey sky. He wasn’t a fan of heights so this was as close to the balcony as he’d go.
Fowler returned with a single sheet of A4 in a clear plastic bag. It would have been photographed in situ before being bagged and sealed. The jagged edge along the top of the sheet led Gray to think it had been torn from a pad.
It took Gray a few moments to decipher the shaky scrawl. Fowler was incorrect. There was no justification in the letter, simply a statement of intent. A desire to end it all expressed via a handful of dashed off words and signed Nick.
Probably tears, was all Gray could think when he reached the final full stop, which looked like a Rorschach blot. He felt like crying himself.
A lab test would confirm or deny Gray’s suspicion, not that it mattered. The truth was he could sympathise with the lonely and tired Nick who’d decided the injustices of the world were too much to bear.
Gray fully understood the pain but was certain no light at the end of the tunnel and no afterlife of angels and virgins existed. Who could believe that?
He asked himself the question for the millionth time – why hadn’t he ended it all? His subconscious immediately shunted the same old response to the front of his brain.
Unanswered questions.
Ultimately, he couldn’t understand why he or anyone else would just give in, even though people made the choice every day. People he’d known. And now this Nick among their unfathomable number.
And what would happen when he had his answers? No idea. Maybe he’d take a dive too. Or step in front of a bus, or maybe drink himself into oblivion. But that was something to consider only when there was clarity, not before.
“You should see the bedrooms,” said Fowler.
Fowler led Gray back along the corridor. He pointed to a door on the right and Gray poked his head around the jamb. It was dim in the room, thin curtains firmly closed. An air of decay hung here too.
“Have SOCO been through here?” said Gray. When Fowler nodded, Gray stretched out a hand and flicked on the overhead light. The bulb was one of those weak power savers that took forever to illuminate, and over the course of several minutes brightened to the output of your average pound shop candle.
Gray spent ten seconds examining the interior twice, once more than was required. The room was at best functional, at worst deprived. A plain, rectangular profile, badly painted magnolia walls bereft of decoration, not even any marks from artworks that may have once hung there. A double bed dominated the room and a low chest of drawers filled the narrow gap between mattress and wall.
“Not my idea of home.”
Gray maintained a tactical silence, reflecting that his own accommodation was almost as spartan. Instead he turned his attention to the drawers, slid open the first then the second. He found dust and condom packets, a few unwrapped, just the foil left. Gray looked at Fowler for comment, but Fowler was quiet for once.
Gray switched to the bed. The duvet was askew, rucked, grimy. Maybe the occupant had just got up. With finger and thumb he drew back the cover. The sheet below was old, worn, and stained. Gray dropped the bedding.
“It’s a knocking shop?”
“Maybe, hard to say.”
“Perhaps the kid was here losing his
virginity? He brought some mistletoe along as a bit of a joke?”
“You tell me.”
“It’s possible, given the fingerprints. Where are all the women, though?”
“Why does it have to be women?”
Gray couldn’t be bothered with a discussion on sexism and equal rights, checked his watch instead.
“Is this your number three?” asked Gray.
“No. You’ll need to talk to the boss about that.”
“Why?”
“Because she said so. I’m just the junior DS around here.” Fowler bared his teeth in a failed attempt at a self-deprecating smile. “Ah, speak of the she-devil.”
DI Hamson – tall, elegant, and well-defined – chose that moment to enter the living room. Her gaze landed heavily on Gray with an expression that said, “Finally.”
A phone rang. Gray’s. A bright tone that sounded completely out of place in this decrepit flat. Gray scrabbled in his pocket, pulled out his mobile. Once he’d have felt embarrassed being the centre of attention. Now he was accustomed to being stared at, usually in sympathy, sometimes in magnanimity, often in vexation.
“DS Gray.”
“Sol, it’s Jeff,” said Detective Chief Inspector Carslake.
“Carslake,” he mouthed to Hamson in an attempt to stem her apparent anger, holding up a finger to say he’d only be a moment. Hamson threw him an irritated look and crossed her arms.
“Where are you?”
“The Slab.” Gray identified the brutalist block by his nickname for the place.
“The jumper. What do you think?”
“Not entirely sure. Possibly suicide. We’ve found a note.”
Carslake sighed. He did that a lot, like life was a regular disappointment. “Nothing certain, though.”
Suicides had been faked before and would be again. “I know. That’s why Forensics are here.”
“Keep an open mind.”
“Of course.”
“Has the pathologist been?”
“Yes, Clough’s having his tête-à-tête with the corpse now.”
“Okay, good.” Gray knew it wasn’t. Carslake wasn’t a fan of the doctor. The man was too dour, apparently. And Clough didn’t drink, a behaviour Carslake treated with a deep suspicion. “I could do with you back here as soon as you can. There’s something I’d like to discuss.”
Although Gray was keen to avoid the inevitable ruckus at the cordon, Hamson would be keen to know what Carslake wanted with him. The perils of the organisational structure. He’d need to play it carefully, as usual.
“I’m almost finished here. Half an hour okay? It’ll take me that long to walk.”
“Perfect. There’s no need to rush the execution.”
“Execution?”
“Just my little joke.” It clearly wasn’t. “Talk to Hamson first. Then find me in my office.”
Where else?
Gray rang off and stuffed the mobile back into a pocket, doubts crowding his mind. What did Carslake want? And why was Hamson even more tense than usual?
“Morning, Yvonne.”
“It’s Ma’am,” said Hamson, agitated. “How many years have I been your boss?”
“Three. So you should know by now.”
Hamson bit back a reply. It wasn’t as if this was the first time they’d had this discussion. Gray wasn’t big on rank, even though Hamson was. Which just made him all the more likely to wind her up about it. Most of the time she took it as a joke. Not today.
“Door-to–door is underway,” said Hamson to Fowler who was enjoying the spectacle. “Give the PCs a hand.”
“Hold their hands, more like,” said Fowler, though he did as he was told.
Once Fowler left, Hamson’s next question was as certain as death and taxes. “What did Carslake want?”
It aggravated Hamson that her boss spent significantly more time with her subordinate than with her. Although Hamson was senior in rank she was junior in years – Gray and Carslake went way back. Close friends at the beginning, although a distance had steadily grown between the men over the years, starting with Tom’s disappearance.
“I’ve been called back to the station,” said Gray. “Carslake told me to speak with you first.”
“I should bloody well think so. You’ve got some explaining to do.”
“What about?”
Hamson pulled a bagged mobile from her pocket. An old one, scratched and worn. “Recognise this?”
Fowler’s item number three.
Ah, shit.
“It’s a Nokia,” he said.
“Clever. Anything else?”
“Should there be?” He hoped there wasn’t, but knew there would.
“It was found down the back of a chair in the living room. Nothing in the memory, except for two numbers. One of them is a dead end. Probably a burner that’s been discarded by now.”
“The suspense is killing me, Von. Who’s the other number?”
Hamson pressed a button on the kid’s mobile. Almost immediately Gray’s phone began to ring in his pocket.
“Yours.”
Three
Hamson showed him the mobile. She was correct. It really was his number in backlit green, identified above with the legend HELP.
“I don’t understand,” he lied.
“That makes two of us. So you know nothing about this?”
“I’ve never seen him before today.” That was the truth, at least.
“Well, he knows you.”
“Knows of me.”
Hamson stared at Gray. He hoped he remained outwardly expressionless as his consciousness churned. He needed to get out, to think. Too much was hitting him at once.
“Do you mind if I catch up on all this later? Carslake’s waiting for me,” said Gray by way of explanation.
“There’ll be questions to answer.”
“I’m sure.”
“As the DCI’s decreed it, not much I can do to stop you, is there?”
“Not really.”
Hamson jerked a thumb at his escape route. “Go on, then. Piss off.”
“Ma’am.”
On the way out, Gray peeled off his overalls and overshoes and slapped them into the open palm of Brian Blake, the increasingly overweight and balding Crime Scene Manager who possessed more than a touch of the superiority complex.
“You didn’t check in with me,” complained Blake. Procedure dictated he keep a list of everyone at the scene. Blake was the go-to guy, a position from which he generated plenty of self-rewarded kudos.
“I’m leaving anyway,” said Gray, just to needle him. From the expression on Blake’s face, it had the desired effect.
“You leave everything to us, then. As usual.”
Gray threw Blake a sloppy approximation of a salute, enjoyed the scowling response and left. Once he’d reclaimed his coat, Gray negotiated his way back to the lift and pressed the down button.
Once the doors closed, Gray spent the brief descent silently screaming, knuckles between his teeth. But by the time the lift bumped to a halt and the doors heaved open he’d managed to compose himself.
Gray stepped into the foyer, then out onto the pavement where it was still cold and crowded with onlookers.
The constable on the cordon nodded as he lifted the tape. Gray manoeuvred past the spectators. He spotted Scully interviewing a willing participant, his digital voice recorder, what used to be called Dictaphones, stuffed under a bulbous nose.
The reporter must have felt eyes on him because he glanced over. The glance became a stare. Scully wiggled his hand by his ear, thumb and little finger extended in an approximation of a phone. Gray responded with a two-finger salute.
Gray had hitched a ride down from the station in a patrol car. He could easily pull one of the constables away to provide a return trip, but he needed the time to himself.
A brisk walk along the seafront, occasionally buffeted by the sharp wind, did little to blow away the cobwebs. The buzz of traffic and the squawk o
f gulls weighed on him. His spirits were heavy enough at the best of times. The nearing Christmas cheer, the twinkling of lights, and the repetitively chirpy music that flooded out from every doorway he passed did little to help.
Gray wanted to make a phone call. He knew his mobile number had been passed on to the kid, but he couldn’t believe Pennance had been so stupid as to allow it to be stored in a phone where it could be found. Where it was found. Given his experience, Pennance should have known better.
Gray had two numbers for Pennance: the deactivated burner also listed on Nick’s phone and Pennance’s work number. Because of who he was and the nature of their relationship, Gray would have to wait until Pennance deigned to get in contact.
Instead he fixated on the great and the good of Margate. Focused on the detail to keep his thoughts from the dead kid.
A young man oblivious to everything but his smart phone.
Two men, similarly bearded, walking their dog together.
An old man riding a bike in shorts and flip flops weaved between the men. Gray noticed he wore a toe ring, of all things.
The smell of vaping smoke. Strawberry mint?
Gray passed the Turner Contemporary art gallery on the last few hundred yards to the station, a steep ascent up Fort Hill after the relative flat. The museum looked like the design was scrawled on the back of a cigarette packet, mostly because it had been. In fact, the scribbled design was temporarily displayed inside, protected by a glass cabinet. As if someone was going to steal it. Gray had seen it on his one and only visit. At least he hadn’t paid out of pocket – it was free admission.
Even so, given the choice, Gray would rather step inside the cast concrete construct and gape at inexplicably expensive modern art than speak to Carslake. But orders were orders. He entered the squat, two-storey building by the front door, delivered a quick nod at the apathetic Sergeant Morgan, a man with a large gut and a small moustache, and descended into the depths of the station.
Four
“You can go straight in,” said Sylvia in a tone that conveyed both superiority and derision in equal measure. As if she was the one who decided Gray’s movements.
