Bones in the Nest (7 page)

Gav offered to finish off filling out the paperwork, while Sean drove round to the twenty-four-hour garage on the dual carriageway to fetch a couple of coffees. He needed the sugar more than the coffee, but it was the best way he knew to digest four sachets. The full circus had arrived by the time he got back: three squad cars, with their lights still going, and the Crime Scene Incident van, all parked up at the foot of Eagle Mount Two. An audience of women and children, still in nighties and pyjamas, was scattered along the walkways of the low-rise flats.

One end of the tower block was cordoned off behind blue and white tape and there were three uniforms stationed at each corner. One of them was PCSO Carly Jayson, Sean’s partner on his old beat. She was chatting with two little girls in rabbit onesies. As he watched, she lifted up her hat and ruffled her short, spiky hair. The girls laughed. He was surprised these children were up and about so early, but it had been a warm night and promised to be an even hotter
day. The kids said something and Carly shook her head. He wondered if she’d told them what was behind the cordon.

Gav got into the car and helped himself to a coffee.

‘Cheers!’ He peeled back the lid, inhaling the steam. ‘Forty minutes to go: then we can down tools. I’ve given the tear off sheets to CID, but the sergeant wants us to stay put until the end of the shift, just in case, so I suggest we sit back and enjoy the show.’

Sean lowered the electric windows and the smell of bacon frying and a faint of whiff of dog shit competed with the aroma of the coffee. A black Range Rover pulled up and a man and a woman in suits got out. They headed for the service door, where a uniformed constable was guarding the entrance.

‘Reinforcements,’ Gav said. ‘They’ve brought them in from Sheffield. DCI Sam Nasir Khan and … I don’t remember her name. But he’s the one you have to watch.’

‘Oh,’ Sean said. He watched DCI Khan stride ahead, long legs like a cricketer.

The door opened and the two detectives stopped in the doorway, talking to someone inside. The woman said something to the constable on guard, who looked over to where Sean and Gav were waiting in the car.

‘What d’you reckon, Gav?’ Sean said.

Gav shrugged. ‘Drugs probably. There’s a load of gear coming in from Sheffield. No really big players round here, just these kids, getting in over their heads.’

‘You PC Denton?’ The constable who’d been guarding the service door was leaning in at Sean’s window.

‘Yeah.’

‘CID wants to talk to you. Sergeant says you know the building. The Indian one wants to look at the access points.’

‘I think you’ll find he’s Pakistani, of Kashmiri heritage,’ Gav muttered under his breath.

Sean’s legs were shaking, as if his body didn’t want to go back inside the building, while his brain was telling him it was all part of the job. He looked in through the door. An arc light flooded the stairwell and a white-suited forensic investigator was standing over the body, back turned.

‘Hang on a minute! Stay where you are. We haven’t got all the prints from the lower steps.’

He knew the voice immediately. Lizzie Morrison had worked the case that inspired him to take the leap from community support to constable. He hadn’t seen her since. She’d gone down to London, he’d heard, shacked up with some bloke, but here she was, back on his patch. His stomach flipped.

‘If we take the lift, sir, we can come in above the stairwell,’ he addressed DCI Khan. He kept his voice low, not wanting Lizzie Morrison to hear him. Not yet.

‘All right with you ma’am, if we cut round and come in above you?’ Khan’s voice boomed off the concrete.

‘Yep. Fine. Keep your eyes open, just in case I’ve missed something.’

She was staring intently at the ground as she spoke. Sean couldn’t imagine that Lizzie Morrison would miss anything at all.

One of the Crime Scene Investigators passed them some plastic shoe covers. Sean backed out of the service door and led Khan around the building to the main entrance.
The battered stainless steel lift didn’t look promising. Sean pressed the call button and they put the shoe covers on. At first nothing happened, then a rattling whine from above them announced its arrival. It was cleaner than he’d expected, as if someone had recently scrubbed the floor with bleach. The smell of disinfectant intensified once the doors were closed and he was glad when they reached the second floor landing. There were four front doors leading off it. The fifth was a fire door.

‘Here,’ Sean said, and pushed it open.

They ducked under the incident tape and the voices of the CSI team came up from below to meet them.

‘Slowly. Eyes open,’ Khan led the way.

The stairs, like the lift, were surprisingly well looked after. The usual dusty corners of fag ends, crushed cans and old crisp packets had been swept up. Eagle Mount One, where his dad lived, never smelt this fresh, but here it looked as if a mop had been passed over the concrete and the handrail was smooth and clean. Something caught his eye. He stopped and bent down to get a closer look.

‘There’s a thread, some sort of cotton I think.’

It was hooked in a gap where one piece of the metal handrail had been soldered onto the next. Khan passed him a specimen bag without speaking. Sean’s heart was racing and he hoped his fingers weren’t going to shake. He could see which way the thread had snagged, so he used the open bag like a glove, pulled the thread back on itself and freed it from the jagged metal. Then he turned the bag round and trapped it like a tiny, precious snake. A gift for Lizzie Morrison; he hoped she’d like it.

They’d reached the last few steps before the first floor landing. On the next section of the staircase, another CSI was taking footprint patterns. It was Donald Chaplin. Sean heard him humming something that sounded like the tune from a car advert. Chaplin looked up and read his expression perfectly.

‘Verdi’s “Requiem”. The
Agnus Dei.
“Lamb of God” to you,’ Donald said.

Khan cleared his throat and Donald didn’t say any more, just went back to what he was doing and carried on humming his tune, as if he’d never broken off. Sean looked beyond him to the victim below, the body curled like a baby, a white plastic sheet placed across to hide the worst of the wounds. Sean could see how the blood had pooled in front of him like an oil slick.

‘Someone’s going to have his DNA all over their feet. They didn’t even try not to step in it,’ Khan said.

A trail of marks led towards the first floor landing. It was clear in the bright glare of the arc light that they were footprints. Each was labelled with a little white flag. The door to the first floor flats was propped open and he could see where the prints stopped abruptly at the doorway. Beyond the floor was clean.

‘How long has he been here?’ DCI Khan said.

Lizzie looked up and Sean instinctively stepped into the shadows behind the detective. This wasn’t exactly the right atmosphere for a reunion, but he still had the thread sample to hand over.

‘The pathologist reckons about eight or nine hours,’ Lizzie said. ‘There’s no ID on the body. The call came shortly
after five this morning from the woman at flat three. A Mrs Armley. It’s not clear what took her so long to call it in.’

‘I think we’ll pay her a visit,’ Khan said, picking his way around the prints. ‘I’ll take the constable, he’s got a friendly face.’

Sean held up his plastic bag for Lizzie. Those familiar eyes were looking right at him. Her hair was tucked inside her white hood and he wondered how she’d got it cut under there, whether she still had the long dark bob that used to curl over the collar of her blouse.

‘Found this,’ he said. ‘Could be something. Looks like denim, maybe?’ He fought the urge to grin at her.

‘Sean?’

‘Police Constable Denton, if you don’t mind.’

‘Bloody hell. You did it! I knew you would.’

She had been the first to encourage him to apply for police college, to move up from PCSO to fully badged officer, but by the time he’d qualified, she’d disappeared to London. Khan turned round at the doorway to the first floor landing and Sean thought he saw the flicker of a smile, but it didn’t last.

‘Are you coming? We’ve got a statement to take.’

‘Thanks,’ Lizzie said. She took the bag and held it up to the light. ‘I see what you mean. It’s not quite white, more like a very pale blue. We’ll get it sent off. Check out Mrs Armley’s coat hooks while you’re in there. See if she’s got a denim jacket she does her cleaning in.’

Inside Mrs Armley’s flat, it was clear she wasn’t the denim jacket type and it seemed unlikely she’d leave a single thread of anything where it wasn’t supposed to be. All her furniture
was in perfect condition; spotless as the day she’d bought it. Mrs Armley herself was about five foot tall and looked like she was in her early sixties. She was wearing a brown, nylon housecoat buttoned over her thin frame.

‘I told the young lady to let me know when they’ve finished,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it a good going over.’ Her voice was soft, Irish underneath, but as if she’d been in Yorkshire for a long time. ‘I’ll have to get started soon, if I’m to get it all done today.’

‘There’s no need Mrs Armley,’ Khan said. ‘We’ll send out a specialist cleaning team. It’s very unpleasant.’

‘I quite agree. But I can’t be waiting around. If the day warms up any more, we’ll have bluebottles before we know it. And you know what that leads to, don’t you?’

The two men shook their heads.

‘Maggots.’

DCI Khan looked around the room, taking in every detail. The walls were white, the woodwork even whiter. There were no paintings or ornaments on display, except in a glass-fronted cabinet where a set of ornate, crystal glasses stood next to a pair of school photos. Two young boys, slim and freckled, with red hair and blue eyes. Sean knew the uniform. It was the Catholic high school that his own school used to fight on a regular basis.

Khan cleared his throat.

‘Is that what you’re worried about? Maggots? Now, I have an idea. Why don’t you come with us, and we can take some information down at the station? Then you don’t have to worry about the mess and it’ll all be cleared up by the time you get back.’

‘Oh no. That’s not what you do. That’s most irregular. I’ve seen it on the television. You’d only do that if I was a suspect, and I’m not a suspect am I?’

‘We just want a statement, and we want to do things properly. Our cleaning team will come, but they can’t come yet, because we’re not ready for them.’

‘Is it still there?’

‘It?’

‘The corpse.’

‘Yes. The victim’s body will be removed soon.’

‘The sooner it gets cleaned up the better. Disgusting …’ her legs folded under her as she sank down onto a brown velour settee.

‘Are you all right?’ Sean instinctively bent towards her. She was staring into space.

‘I don’t like to go out. I stay in, you see. It’s my nerves.’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Armley …’

‘I know you. Don’t I?’ She looked at him sharply.

‘It’s possible, I …’

Khan cleared his throat, as if warning him to say nothing.

‘I know,’ she smiled. ‘You look like that one off the telly. I don’t go out much. I’m phobic. But I like my programmes.’

‘Mrs Armley. We need to talk about the man out there on the stairs, about what’s happened.’ DCI Khan was pacing now, not that the room gave him much scope to pace.

‘Was it a man?’ she said. ‘Or a boy, do you think?’ She looked straight at Sean.

‘Sorry?’

‘I saw someone running. And I wouldn’t say he was much more than a boy. A fast runner.’

‘Can you describe him?’ Sean asked.

‘Dark.’ She dropped her voice to a stage whisper and nodded in Khan’s direction. ‘Like him.’

Sean winced.

‘When was this?’ Khan said.

‘Last night.’

‘But you only called us this morning.’

‘I saw him running. And I said, there’s someone up to no good. Then I couldn’t see him any more. I lost sight of him. This morning there was all this mess, footprints outside. I always wake up early, wake with the dawn. Anyway, I thought it was mud so I started to clean it up, then I stopped, when I saw …’ She fanned her face with her hand.

‘But what about last night?’ Khan said.

‘I didn’t hear a thing.’

‘And what did you see, Mrs Armley?’ Khan said, looking out of her window, as if it would all replay in front of him and tell him what he needed to know.

‘I’ve told you. I saw the boy running and then I lost sight of him.’

‘Who was he running from? Did you see anyone else?’

‘No. There was nothing else.’

When they got back outside, Gav was standing by the squad car looking at his watch, but Khan took no notice. He turned to Sean.

‘Do you think Mrs Armley was telling the truth?’

Sean was surprised the DCI was asking his opinion.

‘About what, sir?’

‘Any of it.’

‘Something odd about the way she described the body. She said “it”. Then she talked about seeing a boy running.’

‘But only after I’d told her it was male.’ DCI Sam Nasir Khan sighed and rubbed at a crease between his eyebrows. ‘I think we might need to get her in for a proper chat, which is going to be a nightmare if she really is agoraphobic.’

‘There’s not much soundproofing from the stairwells to the landings,’ Sean said, recalling the sound of footsteps running up and down, voices calling out in the night, which had punctuated his dreams as a child. ‘Unless they’ve done some improvements in the last few years, she must have heard something.’

‘Is that so? Let’s test that idea.’ Khan started to walk towards Eagle Mount One. ‘Come on, you know your way around. Let’s get out of the SOCOs way and find a flat in one of the other blocks. They must be pretty much the same. We’ll see just how soundproofed they are.’

Sean looked back at Gav.

‘I’ll be right here, son,’ Gav said quietly. ‘Just remind him there’s no budget for overtime.’

Khan was already heading up the path to the block.

‘I’ll go inside,’ he said, ‘you imagine someone’s stabbing you in the privates and we’ll see if anyone comes to save you.’