Alex Gray - Sleep like the dead

It was a short ride across town to Scott's house, a small terraced property in the suburbs that was remarkable only because of the manner in which its owner had died.

The crime scene tape was still tied across the pathway, supposedly keeping anybody from nosing around. It hadn't, of course.

Images of the house had been circulated around all the tabloids, though now it was old news and there was no sign of any reporters hovering in the vicinity.

'Okay, here we are. Gloves on. Keys at the ready,' Cameron grinned. It was important not to contaminate the scene in case further forensics were required so both men put on a pair of latex gloves before leaving the pool car.

As it was a week day the neighbourhood was virtually deserted, a British Telecom van being the only other vehicle parked in the street. Omar Fathy looked around him as Cameron fiddled with the keys to the front door. It was such an ordinary looking place, every garden neat with well-trimmed hedges or low stone walls.

The hanging baskets at the neighbouring doorway were full now, their colours a blaze of crimson geraniums and bright blue lobelia in contrast to the victim's home. There was a patch of lawn, fairly recently mown, but no baskets or tubs full of flowers and only a few shrubs placed next to the garden path. Filling a garden with annual plants was often a woman's pleasure, Fathy thought. It had certainly fallen to his mother to choose what flowers their gardener was to plant each year in their extensive grounds. Something missing, Lorimer had said. Well, a woman's touch out here was missing at any rate, but they already knew that, didn't they? he thought as he followed DS Cameron into the darkened hallway.

Cameron stopped suddenly then flicked on the light switch.

'That's where he was killed,' he said, pointing to a patch on the carpet just feet from the front door.

'He opened the door and was shot right away?' Fathy asked.

Cameron frowned. 'From where the body was it looks as though he had taken a couple of steps backwards before the gunman shot him. That's what ballistics have told us, anyway.'

'Right,' Fathy nodded, then stepped gingerly to one side as the other officer sidled past the spot where the man had died. He shuddered despite the warmth in the house. A man had died just there; one moment he'd been a living breathing person and the next all that remained was a piece of dead meat for the pathologists to pick over.

Fathy exhaled, his eyes fastened on that spot on the carpet, unaware that he had been holding his breath.

'The main room is through here and the kitchen off to the back of the house. Two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs,' Cameron said, waving a hand as he entered the living room.

'You'd make a great estate agent, Sergeant,' Fathy chuckled and was gratified to see the senior officer smile in reply.

'Well, maybe we should look at the house with different eyes. As if it's a place we would want to buy. What d'you think?'

Fathy shrugged. Whatever the DS wanted was fine with him.

The main living room had been split into two distinct areas, one with a two-seater settee and a matching easy chair facing a large screen television and the other housing a small square dining table with four chairs. The furnishings were fairly bland, to Fathy's eye; mid-brown laminate flooring and a marled beige throw over the darker brown sofa. Everywhere he looked it was the same; plain tones of beige or brown except for the black television screen dominating one corner of the room.

'And no plants. Nothing living here at all,' Fathy remarked as he moved from the main room into a kitchen that was almost clinical, the cupboards a stark white against dark grey granite worktops. !

'Kept the place really tidy, so maybe he didn't have much time for plants and stuff cluttering it up,' he murmured to himself. 'What's in the cupboards?' he asked himself, opening one after the other.

The detective constable raised his eyebrows as he caught sight of the contents; rows of jars neatly labelled, tins of food stacked in perfect symmetry. He wiped a latex-covered finger across the floor of one cupboard and was unsurprised to see it come away with not a trace of dirt or dust.

Kenneth Scott had been a fairly young man, he reminded himself.

Most of the young men Fathy knew were too busy enjoying themselves to become obsessed with having a perfectly neat and tidy home. The young officer felt a sudden sadness for the victim: what sort of life had he had? Too much time on his hands by the looks of it, if he'd always kept things in such meticulous order. He hadn't had much of a life at all, it seemed. No wife to clutter the place up with knick-knacks, no sign of any bottle racks full of booze to entertain pals of a Friday night.

'Come on upstairs,' he heard Cameron calling. 'See if you can make head or tail of this.'

Fathy left the kitchen and took the few steps through the living room back into the hall then climbed the steep staircase to the upper level. A single window at the top should have let the light in but the blind had been kept closed for some reason. Fathy stretched out one hand and pulled on the blind cord, letting in a stream of sunshine. Dust motes hovered in the air as though suddenly released and the young detective stopped for a moment, considering the man who had been killed. He'd been in his pyjamas, hadn't he? He would have stood on the very step Fathy was standing on now, making his way downstairs to answer the front door. Was that how it had happened? Fathy gave himself a shake as he entered the victim's bedroom.

'Look at this,' Cameron declared, standing beside a neatly made bed.

Fathy stared at his DS then looked around the room. What was it he was supposed to be looking at? The place was as tidy as the rooms downstairs. No clothes were lying on the back of the chair by the window, not even a dressing gown. That was hanging on a hook behind the door, he saw as he continued to turn around, examining the room. 'Tidy beggar, wasn't he?' he offered.

'You don't see it, do you?' Cameron said at last. 'Think back to all the scene of crime photographs you've seen so far.'

The young detective constable frowned in concentration then shook his head.

'The bed,' Cameron said at last, an eager light in his eyes.

'Look at it.'

Fathy looked, thinking about the night Scott had been killed.

Then it dawned on him.

'It's made.' He looked up, bewildered. 'Someone's made the bed!' he exclaimed.

'Aye, took your time to see it, though, didn't you?' Cameron smiled ruefully. 'Entire crime scene's supposed to be left exactly as it was found. Any copper knows that. So, who's been in to do a wee bit of housekeeping?'

Fathy stared at the bed. Not only was the coverlet smooth, but there was a crease folded under the bump where the pillow lay.

'You think someone has been in?'

'Certain of it. We're going to have to get the fingerprint lads back here pronto. And see if we can find out from the neighbours who else had a key to this house.'

'Maybe he's got a cleaner who comes in,' Fathy suggested.

'Could be. I'm reasonably tidy but I can't say it's anything like my own place,' Cameron said ruefully. 'Never seem to have the time to keep it as orderly as this. Maybe you're right. Maybe someone does come in. But why wouldn't any of the neighbours have told us?'

'And if he didn't have a cleaner, if he kept the place as spick and span as this, maybe it tells us something about him.'

'Aye,' Cameron agreed. 'If he was ex-navy or something you might understand it. Someone who was used to keeping things in a really meticulous fashion. But maybe it says something about his personality. I don't know…' he tailed off thoughtfully. 'Point is, someone's been in here without our authority and we'll need to find out who that was.'