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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Glass Wall
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‘Lividity over the chest and abdomen indicate that the body was left face down on a solid surface for a period of well over two hours after death and before immersion. So we can exclude drowning from the actual cause of death.
‘We'll look at the head injury. Can I have him turned over?'
The boy's water-bloated features had sickened Zyczynski. She had a poignant image of him in the hospital bed, vulnerable but trying to act cool, as kids do when burying emotion. To see him now was worse than expected. And now, when he was laid face down, the shattered skull made the breath catch in her throat.
The examination proceeded at a brisk pace, Littlejohn as ever interspersing his commentary with rumbles of song, half-voiced and half lost in his beard. There were more negatives: no possibility that injuries were self-inflicted; no needle marks apart from where, in hospital, the wrist cannula had been inserted for the IV, and a single puncture when his blood was tested; no river water in the lungs, therefore, again, no case of drowning. There was no evidence of long-term drug abuse and homosexual activity.
Littlejohn looked up and stared pointedly at his audience. ‘The present anal tearing was recent.'
‘Rape?' Beaumont demanded harshly.
‘Certainly rough handling,' the pathologist allowed. He grimaced ironically at the over-eager DS. ‘We have nothing to indicate whether consent was given or not.'
Z felt a surge of anger. She drove her fists deep in the pockets of her jeans and blinked hard to keep her eyes from brimming. If it was Allbright who'd done this to an innocent she couldn't hate him enough.
There was more to endure as Littlejohn opened the body. A young boy she'd briefly met and felt some sympathy for became dehumanized before her eyes. Despite the chill conditions of the room she felt stifled and longed to get into the outside air. But at last it was over. No startling new discoveries. They must wait a day or two for the lab's toxicology report, which would possibly confirm what was discovered from earlier samples taken in the ITU. Micky had been found with a mixture of drugs in his bloodstream, which included smack and ecstasy.
Outside, it was already dark, frost making the lights seem even brighter. They stood in a subdued little group. Centrally Yeadings huddled, bear-like, in his winter crombie. ‘Better get off home now while you can,' he advised. ‘We'll meet up for an 8.30 briefing in the morning. DI Salmon will task the extended murder team.'
 
Keith rang through to ITU at about four, and it was Alyson who took the call. ‘I've dropped in to take Audrey home, but there's time to snatch a coffee first. Can you take your break now?'
‘In ten minutes?'
‘Splendid. Thanks.'
I shouldn't have agreed, Alyson thought. This is getting addictive. Another
last time.
She fixed it with Bernice, went down by the stairs and found Keith at a corner table in the staff diner with two cappuccinos. He was contrite.
‘There have been so many loose ends to tie up before I take leave that I couldn't even get round to seeing Emily. Another day would have helped, but Audrey's desperate to get home.'
‘That's all right,' she told him. ‘If Emily needs anything I'll give Dougie a ring. She won't care for the substitute but I'll try to explain.'
They drank their coffee in silence, surrounded by the subdued babble of staff chat and the scraping of chair legs on the wood
block floor. Then, ‘I think I need your advice,' she said. ‘Well, not so much advice, because I may not take it. Opinion, certainly.'
‘I'm intrigued.'
So she told him about Sheena's unexpected failure to turn up, and how she'd had to call Ramón in.
She paused before diving in. ‘I'd like to take him on full-time. He seems so much more reliable, but he has a bar job at the Crown and it's live-in. It means he'd lose that. There's room enough for him at Emily's and it would be good to have someone else always on hand. What do you think?'
Keith frowned. ‘I can't say, because I've never met him. You should really find out much more about his background. You say he's a foreigner. Has it struck you his papers may not be in order?'
‘He's Spanish I think, so, as an EU citizen, there should be no difficulty about a work permit. He seems a private sort of person. I doubt he'd get under my heels.'
There was a silence while Keith considered the pros and cons. It would halve the weight of duty Alyson was labouring under, but having an unproved man move in presented unknown risks he didn't want her to take.
‘You're uneasy because he's male,' she said. ‘Look, nowadays men and women are flat-sharing on an equal basis all over the place, and it's taken for granted. And if I'm in charge, the boss figure with power to sack him, he's not going to take advantage of the situation, is he? In any case he may turn down the offer out of hand.'
It was clear she'd made up her mind already, had merely used him as a sounding board. All the same, he wanted to protest.
She rose to go. ‘I have to get back. By the way, we still have your scarf. You left it behind. If you ever get out shopping or whatever, drop in and pick it up.'
Shopping: all he was reduced to now. It angered him, and he simply nodded as she took her departure.
 
Allbright hardly needed the solicitor with him. His stonewalling had Salmon fuming inside. Micky was a young vagrant he'd felt sorry for and so offered him somewhere to stay. After that, ‘No
comment'. They had reached a solid impasse when a constable knocked on the interview room door and handed in a note. Superintendent Yeadings had phoned in the salient points of the post mortem findings.
Salmon clucked with satisfaction.
‘There have been developments,' he told the man opposite. He stood up.
‘Stanley Allbright, I am arresting you on suspicion of the sexual assault of a minor.'
A summons to Kidlington to consult with the ACC (Crime) kept Yeadings from Tuesday morning's briefing. Without him his Major Crimes team assembled in the CID office to compare notes before joining what Beaumont termed ‘the rabble' of their extended murder-case personnel. Most of the chatter ceased on the instant as the DI and his two sergeants entered the prepared Incident Room.
News carries fast in an Area station, and expectations were high since a suspect was already cooling off in a cell between questionings. By five that afternoon the twenty-four hour rule would apply: he must be either charged or released. Nobody had any doubts about which way it would go.
‘Right,' DI Salmon snarled, facing the crowded room and identifying himself.
‘As you should all know by now, we are concerned with the violent death of a thirteen-year old boy, Michael Kane from Wimbledon. It's to be a full scale murder hunt and there's plenty of hard graft for every one of you. Our victim's on the books as a runaway and a drug OD who discharged himself from the General Hospital Saturday, stealing another patient's clothes. He was still wearing them when his body was recovered from the river by the boathouse yesterday morning, less the shoes. But the lad didn't drown. Somebody clocked him from behind and split the skull. The blunt instrument hasn't yet been found.
‘All the stolen clothes were several sizes too large. The shoes would have been almost impossible to walk in naturally for any distance. They haven't turned up among Micky's own clothes at the house of the present suspect, so we can't prove he ever went back there.
‘I want those shoes found.
‘It's likely that between leaving hospital on Saturday afternoon and being pulled out of the river on Sunday morning he returned to the house where he had been in hiding for an unknown period during the week he was missing from home. And where – ' he glared round the room -‘it appears he was sexually abused.
‘A warrant has been obtained overnight to search that house and all property belonging to one Stanley Allbright. That includes his car and motor cycle which scientific officers are already examining. We shall also be tooth combing the stationery warehouse where he's employed as night stock-controller, its precinct and all vehicles used by that company. The place will be sealed until the examination is completed and all the workers questioned.
‘We also need to speak to hospital staff and any patients who may have seen the boy leaving the hospital; likewise shopkeepers and anyone about at the time he would have been crossing town at dusk. So oddly dressed, he'd stick out like a nun at a Wembley Cup Final. Copies of his photograph in school uniform will be available at the end of the briefing. Everyone is to take one.'
He glowered round the assembled uniform and plain clothes officers. ‘We want no slip-ups on this, no half-done jobs. Every smallest scrap of information is to be passed in, irrespective of your private opinion of its worth. No matter what grotty rubbish you have to turn over, it is to be done thoroughly. This kid comes from the Met's patch, so their eyes are going to be glued on every move you make or clue you fail to suck up.
‘Allocations are the responsibility of Sergeant Wimpole; and Sergeant O'Neill is Office Manager of the Incident Room. I shall be leading the active investigation, under Superintendent Yeadings as SIO. Any questions?'
The abundance of information must have floored them. Or maybe the DI's aggressive manner put off anyone willing to put up a hand and volunteer as bright boy of the class.
‘What d'you think?' Beaumont asked Z as they filed out.
‘Comprehensive,' she allowed. Privately she considered Salmon had missed a chance to appeal to family men with kids of their own, and present a more sympathetic image of the dead boy. But then, sympathy was a word that never got within a mile of the man.
 
Next it was Beaumont's turn to sit in with Allbright who had dismissed his brief as useless, relying on his own ability to repeat, ‘No comment' until decision time on charging him. Z, familiar
with the DI's stated dislike of women trailing around getting in the way, had no difficulty persuading Salmon to let her follow up a line of her own. She began by calling again on Micky's parents at their hotel to make sure they understood the outcome of the post-mortem examination. She knew Yeadings himself had already visited them with a woman constable to break the findings gently.
Z found them still at late breakfast, dazed by events but holding themselves together. They were pathetically grateful to see her again. ‘There's no useful purpose to be served by staying here longer,' Hilda Kane said, ‘so we've decided to get back – back home, and try to take up our lives where we left off. Thank God for work. Maybe we can bury ourselves in that.'
‘I'll be in touch with your local police,' Z told her. ‘I know they'll keep you in the picture, and I'll phone you myself on any developments.'
‘We want this fiend put away for a very – long – time, ' the man said grimly. ‘I'm only sorry they've not brought back hanging.'
Z nodded sympathetically. ‘There shouldn't be any further disturbance for you at home. I suppose the local police searched thoroughly through Micky's things there once he'd been placed on the Missing Juveniles list?'
‘Took his bedroom nearly to bits.' Today Micky's father was asserting himself.
‘I remember you said Micky spent a lot of time up there. Did he use a computer for his school work?'
‘All the time. Hid his head in it like an ostrich. Surfing the net and all that, as kids do nowadays. Don't know why I ever bought him all those useless encyclopedias.'
‘Did the Met – the police – take the computer away for examination?'
There was an awkward silence. ‘They did suggest it. Well,
demand
it, really.' Now he sounded embarrassed.
‘But I couldn't let them have it. Micky had entered a lot of information for me on it. Private stuff, to do with the business. So I took the whole workstation downstairs and told them it was our family computer which Micky just used for school essays. So
it's still with us, only I put it back in his room, because it's of no use to me, unless I learn how to work it. Of course Mother's a dab hand, uses one all the time at school for preparing lessons and keeping records. But she wouldn't have time to take on my affairs as well.'
And perhaps for that the boy was dead. Z took a deep breath. There was no call to hammer the point home.
‘I'm sure you'd master it in no time,' she consoled him. ‘And you could speed the process by joining an adults' IT evening class.'
‘Do you think so? Yes, I might try that. Something to – to fill the time, you know.'
‘I'm wondering,' Z said. ‘Since he was surfing the net, we could use it to discover his pet interests. And perhaps he joined a chat line, as many students do, for an exchange of ideas. There may be friends he's made that way who knew what was in his mind at the time he decided to go away. It could provide a clue to what he went looking for.'
‘But not what happened to him! He didn't deserve that. No child ever does!' His mother's anger broke through at last, but her husband was still groping for information.
‘You mean it's all still in the computer? Everything he was working on?'
‘Yes, for anyone who knows how to get it out.'
‘Do you?'
‘I think so. Unless he's used some very obscure password to secure his private zone. And in that case, we do have experts who can get through to it. Of course there's still all your business stuff in there …'
‘Oh that doesn't matter. Not now. But, at the time, handing the computer over seemed an invasion of privacy. We didn't know how serious it would all become.' His voice broke. ‘I've been foolish withholding it. After I'd moved it to my own room I couldn't admit I'd lied to the police.'
‘Suppose I drive back after you and take a look? Or bring it back here for our computer experts?'
They looked at each other. Hilda's mind was already made up.
She nodded at her husband.
‘Right,' Zyczynski said. ‘What time were you thinking of leaving?'
 
Oliver Markham hadn't been enjoying his start in the new job as much as he'd expected. So far it had consisted of hanging about to keep observation on what appeared to be an empty house. He craved action and, if possible, opposition. He sat slumped in the passenger seat of Tam Godfrey's Ford Mondeo, glowering through the frosted mist while the other man, dour and uncommunicative, sucked at boiled sweets and read a magazine on antiques.
‘You get a lot of valuable old stuff to deal with, then?' Markham demanded finally to break the silence.
Godfrey grunted. ‘There's no harm in hoping.'
That seemed all he was prepared to offer. Except that, reminded of the other man's presence, he held out the limp bag of sticky sweets, appeared unaffected by Markham's scornful rebuffing of the gesture, and resumed his reading.
This was one godawful waste of time and ability, Markham fumed. He was eager to wade in, challenge the wretched defaulter with a list of accumulated debts, lean on him a little as a matter of principle and set about distraint of his goods to an appropriate value.
Today no amount of knocking on the paint-blistered front door had raised any reaction from within the Victorian terraced house, but Godfrey was adamant that the man was at home, declaring that he ‘felt it in his water'. Markham, having overindulged on strong coffee at breakfast was rather differently afflicted, and the need to correct this was from minute to minute more pressing. Eventually he eased himself out of the car. ‘Taking a turn around,' he told the other, and set off down the alley at the side of the house. Turning left, he found a pathway between the two rows of back-to-back houses and duly relieved himself.
Zipping up, his body temperature having plummeted witheringly, he peered through the dilapidated fence of the house he took to be that of his quarry. At that moment a dark-clad figure climbed through a first-floor window and let himself down over
an extension roof into the yard. There he pulled a pedal cycle out from under a tarpaulin sheet and set about trundling it in Markham's direction.
The necessary paperwork was, of course, in the car. Boiling with frustration, he had to retreat, noting in which direction the cyclist set off at speed once he reached the outer alley.
Markham hurried back to inform Godfrey. Their pursuit was balked by the one-way road system the town council had in their wisdom imposed, and which the cyclist was able to flout by using pedestrian paths. It took several circuits of the town centre before they again sighted the escapee, coming on him face to face and swerving to cause him to wobble off into the gutter. His expletives, as he picked himself up and brushed off his knees, were repetitive and obscene.
‘Oh Lordy,' Godfrey said, mildly exasperated, ‘we've got the wrong bugger. This is our man's brother.'
The fiasco didn't improve Markham's enjoyment of the hunt. They waited a further three-quarters of an hour with himself posted in the cold to keep an eye on the rear of the premises.
‘Right,' Godfrey finally decided, ‘he's holed up for the day, with little brother sent out for the shopping. But with his known nocturnal habits, we'll get our chance later.'
In offering the job, Baldrey had made no mention of hours of work. Glumly Markham now faced the prospect that they were possibly unlimited and mainly of the unsocial kind.
Godfrey broke for lunch at 1.15 after a visit across town to a housewife in a more upmarket road. Her original fine of £30 for illegal parking, plus a late payment charge on the court fee, plus the company's fee for debt collection, plus Godfrey's personal commission on fruitless visits to date had run the debt into what she saw as astronomical figures.
‘Plus Value Added Tax at 17.5% on the lot,' Markham joined in, taking grim pleasure in dealing the final blow. ‘In all, that comes to £468.88.'
Appalled, she wailed like a banshee. No way could she screw this amount out of her monthly housekeeping. And she dared not tell her husband. He'd scalp her.
‘Sorry, love,' Godfrey commiserated. ‘It don't just go away if you ignore it. Next time best tell your hubby right at the start before it mounts up.'
Staring as she twisted her hands together trying not to blubber, Markham decided he remembered her from his usher's days. Her or a dozen other stuck-up, over-painted tarts exactly like her. At last he could draw some satisfaction from what he was doing. No longer impotent to implement the decisions of the court, he now wielded real power. Momentarily at least it seemed worth sacrificing the robes of officialdom.
Again Tam's decision was to return in the evening, by which time the stupid cow should have warned the husband that settlement was overdue and the final amount still climbing. Which obligation lessened the heart-warming sense of achievement; but Markham decided the encounter deserved some reward. He suggested a liquid lunch in the nearest bar.

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