‘You could be right,’ Henry agreed. He rubbed his face and looked around the room again. Nothing particularly caught his eye, but he did have that uneasy feeling again that something was missing from the whole set-up.
Working on the assumption that the killer would have walked from the door straight to the desk, a matter of six feet, and may have left some evidence on that journey, Henry and Hall avoided this route and edged their way around the perimeter of the room, sticking close to the walls until they arrived at the wall behind the desk, the one splattered with blood, brains and cranium, behind the body.
The swivel chair had been upended, and was lying on its side like some strange, stranded sea creature and the body also lay on its side at an angle to the desk, almost in the recovery position, one knee drawn up, arms pointing forwards. But there would be no recovery from this position.
Henry swallowed as he slowly bent his knees and settled on his haunches, inspecting the back of the man’s head. He could not yet see the face properly. He blinked as he thought of the damage the bullet must have done, spinning through the guy’s brain.
‘Recognize him yet?’ Hall asked hopefully.
‘Not from this angle.’ He pushed himself up. Because of the position of the body, they could go no further in this direction without actually stepping over it, which would have resulted in lost evidence as they would have been forced to step in blood. For Henry to see the man’s face, he had to edge back around the room and come in from the other side. He told Hall to backtrack to the door, where they both paused.
‘So the killer — or killers — possibly known to the deceased, comes up the stairs after having been invited in, comes down the hall, maybe with the deceased. Perhaps the deceased is already sitting at his desk, waiting for the killer, or he plonks himself behind the desk after entering the room with the killer, who he has just let in. Whichever, he is sitting at his desk and the killer then shoots him in the head, spreading most of his grey matter across the back wall, knocking him out of his chair.’
‘Fair supposition,’ Hall said.
Henry tried to imagine the scene, which wasn’t too difficult. He took a few seconds to take it in, measuring the angles, working out what might have happened.
‘OK, got that,’ he said and was about to move past the door and sidle around the edge of the room to come in to see the victim from the opposite direction when the noise of footsteps on the stairs made him pause and look back down the hallway. ‘I said no one else should come up here,’ he shouted. His mouth was still open with the last word when the paper-suited figure of the deputy chief constable appeared on the landing. ‘Ma’am,’ he added.
‘Oh, sorry, am I not allowed up here?’
‘Everybody but the deputy chief constable,’ Henry said. ‘I didn’t expect you.’
She walked towards him, paper suit billowing out, far, far too big for her, giving the impression of a Teletubby bearing down on him. ‘I’m hands-on as you know,’ she said, reaching him, then looking beyond into the room and seeing the wall of blood. ‘Jesus,’ she gasped, recovered and said, ‘What’ve we got, Henry?’
He detailed where he was up to, the deputy nodding and listening carefully.
‘… so we’re just going to have a look at the guy’s face.’
‘And we don’t yet know who he is?’ Cranlow asked. She saw Henry and DC Hall exchange a glance.
‘Not yet formally identified, ma’am,’ Henry said, turning and walking around the outside of the room with Hall in tow. Two and a half walls later, Henry’s knees cracked as he bent down and examined the man’s face, amazed by the smallness of the entry hole just above the bridge of the nose, in contrast to the size of the exit wound.
The dead man’s cheek was resting on the thin carpet. His mouth slopped open, drooling thick globs of blood. One eye was fully open, the other half closed, as if he was trying to wink, and his features had been horribly distorted by the impact of the bullet, reminding Henry of the way that G-forces work on a person’s face.
He could not see the face clearly. The light was poor and the body was lying in the shadow cast by the desk and he didn’t want to touch or move it. A lot of work had yet to be done and he didn’t want to spoil anything.
Henry twisted his head and shoulders, trying to get a better view without getting any closer than necessary.
He glanced around at the two people behind him, both attempting to do the same thing, neither seemingly affected by the sight of such a violent death. The three stooges came to mind and he wondered how long it would be before they all fell over or started poking each other in the eye. He knew he should have had the courage to tell Cranlow to leave, then there would have only been a comedy double act.
A penlight torch appeared in the deputy’s hand, which she offered to Henry.
‘This help?’
‘Cheers.’ He twisted it on and shone the beam into the dead man’s face.
The light did help.
‘Bloody hell!’ he said sharply.
‘See, I knew you’d know,’ Hall said.
‘Who is it, Henry?’ Cranlow asked.
Henry said nothing, but shone the torch into the face again and peered as closely as he dared.
Despite the way in which the features had been misshapen, despite the back third of the head being missing, Henry recognized the man on the floor. He glanced quickly at Hall, who gave him a knowing wink.
‘You were right, I do know him.’
‘Henry!’ Cranlow said, almost stamping her feet in annoyance. ‘Will you please let me in on this little secret?’
‘This guy is an ex-Lancashire detective who was basically drummed out of the force maybe twelve years ago, and I’ll bet this is the perfect example of that old saying relevant to a murder inquiry — find out how they lived, find out why they died.’ He stood up. ‘This is the body of Eddie Daley.’
Seven
‘He was a sleazeball cop,’ Henry explained, ‘and I’ve no doubt he was a sleazeball ex-cop too, and because of that I’m pretty sure this won’t take long to bottom,’ he finished confidently.
‘You sound quite heated about him,’ Angela Cranlow said.
They had driven — separately — from the crime scene down to the new police station in the Whitebirk area of Blackburn and were walking from their parked cars to the police staff entrance. They had divested their paper suits, handing them to a Crime Scene Investigator to be bagged and tagged. Trevor Hall had remained at the scene to await the arrival of the pathologist, then to accompany the body to the mortuary in order to maintain the chain of evidence.
Cranlow slid her swipe card down the slot, the door buzzed and they entered the station, which was all white walls, glass and modernity; a complete contrast to the Victorian monstrosity that had been left behind in Blackburn town centre which, for some bizarre reason, Henry preferred. Maybe it was its sense of history he missed, because this new place, flanked by car dealerships and DIY stores, had no character to it. It was just another fancy office complex that just happened to house the police.
‘I am,’ he said, but did not expand. It was quite obvious to Cranlow that something about Eddie Daley had touched a raw nerve in Henry. She didn’t pursue him, just yet, but her curiosity was well-whetted, and she surreptitiously watched him as they strode down the corridor to a witness interview room near to the custody complex. ‘She’s down here somewhere, ma’am,’ Henry said, referring to Jackie Kippax, who they had come to see.
As they turned into the custody area, an interview room door opened and a crime scene investigator emerged carrying her bag of tricks and a cluster of paper and clear plastic evidence bags. Henry knew the CSI and that she had been dealing with Kippax.