Peter James - Dead Like You

They climbed out and the Constable, a respectful old-school officer, briefed them pedantically on what he had found earlier this morning when he had attended, and informed them that SOCO was on its way. He was not able to add much more to the details Alcorn had already given Grace, other than the fact that the woman had arrived home and apparently had deactivated the burglar alarm when she entered.

While they were talking, a small white van pulled up and a senior SOCO, a Crime Scene Manager called Joe Tindall with whom Grace had worked many times and found more than a tad tetchy, climbed out.

‘Friday,’ the Crime Scene Manager muttered by way of a greeting. ‘What’s with you and sodding weekends, Roy?’ He gave Grace a smile that was incubating a leer.

‘I keep asking offenders to stick to Mondays, but they’re not an obliging lot.’

‘I’ve got tickets to Stevie Wonder at the O2 Centre tonight. If I miss that my relationship is kaput.’

‘Every time I see you, you’ve got tickets to something, Joe.’

‘Yeah. I like to think I have a life outside of this job, unlike half my colleagues.’

He gave the Detective Superintendent a pointed stare, then produced a clutch of white paper suits and blue overshoes from the rear of the van and handed them out.

Roy Grace sat on the rear sill of the van and slowly levered himself into the one-piece. Every time he did this, he cursed the designer as he wriggled to get his feet down through the trousers without tearing them, then worked himself into the arms. He was glad not to be in a public place, because the suit was almost impossible to put on without making a spectacle of yourself. Finally, grunting, he stooped down and pulled on the protective overshoes. Then he snapped on some latex gloves.

The Constable led the way inside and Grace was impressed that he’d had the good sense to mark on the ground with tape a single entry and exit route.

The open-plan hall, with polished parquet flooring, elegant metal sculptures, abstract paintings and tall, lush plants, was something that Cleo would love, he thought. There was a strong, pleasant smell of pine and a slightly sweeter, muskier scent, probably from pot-pourri, he thought. It made a refreshing change not to walk into a house that smelt of curry.

The Constable said he would come upstairs, to be available to answer questions, but he would not enter the bedroom, to minimize the disturbance in there.

Grace hoped that the officer, being this forensically aware, hadn’t trampled all over it when he had responded to the emergency call earlier. He followed Alcorn and Tindall up a glass spiral staircase, along a short galleried landing and into a huge bedroom that smelt strongly of perfume.

The windows had curtains like a fine white gauze and the walls were lined with fitted wardrobes with curtained glass panels. The double doors of one of them were open and several dresses on their hangers lay fallen on the carpeted floor.

The centrepiece of the room was a king-sized bed with four tapered wooden columns rising from it. An unwound dressing gown cord lay around one of them, and a striped man’s tie, knotted to a plain tie, around another. Four more ties, knotted together into two doubles, lay on the floor. The cream satin duvet was badly rumpled.

‘Mrs Pearce was left gagged and tied by her wrists and ankles to each of those posts,’ the Constable said from the doorway. ‘She managed to free herself at about half past six this morning, and then she called her friend.’ He checked his notebook. ‘Mrs Amanda Baldwin. I have her number.’

Grace nodded. He was staring at a photograph on a glass-topped dressing table. It was of an attractive woman, with sleek black hair clipped up, wearing a long evening dress, standing next to a sharp-looking guy in a dinner suit.

Pointing at it, he said, ‘Presume this is her?’

‘Yes, chief.’

David Alcorn studied her too.

‘What state was she in?’ Grace asked the Constable.

‘Pretty bad shock,’ he replied. ‘But quite compos mentis, considering her ordeal, if you know what I mean.’

‘What do we know about her husband?’

‘He went away yesterday on a business trip to Helsinki.’

Grace thought for a moment, then looked at David Alcorn. ‘Interesting timing,’ he said. ‘Might be significant. I’d like to find out how often he goes away. It could be someone who knows her, or who’s been stalking her.’

Turning to the Constable, he said, ‘He was wearing a mask, right?’

‘Yes, sir, he was – a hood with slits cut in.’

Grace nodded. ‘Has the husband been contacted?’

‘He’s going to try to get a flight back today.’

Alcorn went out to check the other rooms.

Joe Tindall was holding a compact camera up to his eye. He took a 360-degree video of the scene, then zoomed in on the bed.

‘Did you attend alone?’ Grace asked the Constable.

He cast his eyes around the room as he spoke. On the floor lay a pair of cream undies, a white blouse, a navy skirt and top, tights and a bra. They weren’t strewn around the room as if they had been torn off the woman; they looked as if they had been stepped out of carelessly and left where they fell.

‘No, sir, with Sergeant Porritt. He’s accompanied her and the SOLO to the Saturn Centre.’

Grace made a brief sketch plan of the room, noting the doors – one to the hallway, one to the en-suite bathroom – and the windows, all as possible entry/exit areas. He would require careful combing of the room for fingerprints, hair, fibres, skin cells, saliva, semen, possible lubricant traces from a condom, if one had been used, and footprints. The outside of the house would need to be searched carefully also, especially for footprints, and for clothing fibres that might have come off on a wall or a frame if the offender escaped via a window, as well as for cigarette butts.

He would need to write out and give Tindall his recovery policy on how much of the contents of the room and the house and surroundings he might want bagged and tagged for lab testing. The bedding, for sure. Towels in the bathroom in case the offender had dried his hands or any parts of his body. The soap.

He made notes, padding around the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There was a huge fixed mirror facing the bed, put there for kinky purposes he thought, not disapprovingly. On one bedside table were a diary and a chick-lit novel and on the other a pile of IT magazines. He opened each of the wardrobe doors in turn. There were more dresses hanging here than he had ever seen in his life.

Then he opened another and, breathing in a luxurious rich scent of leather, he encountered an Aladdin’s cave of shoes. They were racked floor-to-ceiling on slide-out drawers. Grace was no expert on ladies’ footwear, but he could tell at a glance that these were serious and classy. There had to be more than fifty pairs in here. The next door he opened revealed another fifty pairs. Followed by the same behind the third door.

‘Looks like she’s a high-maintenance lady!’ he commented.

‘I understand she has her own business, Roy,’ David Alcorn said.

Grace silently chided himself. It had been a stupid comment, the kind of sexist assumption he might have expected from someone like Norman Potting.

‘Right.’

He walked over to the window and peered out at the rear garden, a handsomely landscaped plot, with an oval swimming pool, beneath its winter cover, as its centrepiece.

Beyond the garden, visible through dense shrubs and young trees, were school playing fields. Rugby posts were up on two pitches and netted football goals on a third. This would have made a possible access route for the offender, he thought.

Who are you?