‘Would you mind if I had a look at Danny’s room?’ Hart asked.
Mrs Masseter jerked out of a reverie, and smiled as though she was glad to do so. ‘You can have a look, and welcome, but if it’s his papers or anything to do with his protests you’re interested in, you won’t find anything like that. Your lot have already got them.’
‘My lot?’
‘The police. A policeman came that same day and said they wanted all his papers and his computer. It was quite late when he came. Mike – my husband – had just gone, and I thought it was him come back when the doorbell rang. But no, he’d gone off home to be with her. Said she’d be upset, though what she’d got to be upset about I don’t know.’
‘This policeman—’ Hart prompted.
‘He was one like you,’ Mrs Masseter said, and as Hart was thinking he must have been black, she added, ‘not in uniform, I mean. A plain-clothes one, a detective, whatever you call yourselves.’
‘Did he give his name?’
‘Yes, it was Inspector something.’ She frowned. ‘I’ll think of it in a minute. It was an ordinary name, like Black. I think it began with a B. Or a G. Was it Green? Anyway, he said he wanted Danny’s things, and he went upstairs, and come down with all his papers in plastic bags – two lots he had to do, to take ’em all. And he took Danny’s computer – not the television bit, but the box bit that sits under his desk.’
Hart had a bad feeling about it. It was just not the way things were done. She got out her brief and showed it to Mrs Masseter again. ‘Did he show you his identification, like this?’
‘No, he just said he was Inspector whateveritwas – was it Sampson? No, not Sampson, but something like that. Strong, was it? Anyway, he said could he have Danny’s papers.’
‘Did he say why he wanted them?’
‘Well, no. I suppose it was some police thing. I mean, Danny wasn’t in trouble. I suppose it was because of the accident he wanted them.’
Hart rolled her mental eyes. ‘And you didn’t ask to see his identification?’
She frowned a little. ‘Well, it would’ve been rude, wouldn’t it? Like calling him a liar. Strong. I’m sure now he said his name was Strong – Inspector Strong.’
‘But if you didn’t see his ID, how did you know he was a policeman?’ Hart asked in despair.
‘Well, he said he was. Anyway, who else could he have been?’
Who indeed, Hart thought. ‘Would you mind if I just had a look at his room anyway?’
‘No, dear. You go ahead. It’s the one at the front.’
Hart climbed the narrow, cardboard stairs, turned carefully on the midget-sized landing, and took the one step necessary to bring her to the open bedroom door. The room was about eleven foot square, with a window on to the street, and a street lamp directly outside which must have flooded the room all night with yellow light through the thin curtains. They were patterned with lions, and matched the duvet cover on the single bed under the window, smoothed out and pulled taut by a mother’s hand. There was no dust anywhere, the carpet had been hoovered, and there was very little lying about. Either he had been a very tidy boy – boy? He was nearly thirty, she reminded herself – or his mother had put everything away.
The walls were bare except for two posters neatly put up with Blu-tack, one of an African elephant on the veldt, the other the famous view of the earth from outer space, all blue and white and romantic.
Along one wall was a cheap desk unit with shelving above and a wheeled office chair in front of it. On the desk the VDU, keyboard and printer sat forlornly, their wires fed down the trough cut in the back and leading to nothing but the footprints in the carpet where the box had stood. She couldn’t know, therefore, anything about the computer, but the printer was a very good one and the screen a new-looking nineteen-inch flat. In contrast to everything else about this house, it looked as though nothing had been stinted on the IT front.
But all the shelves and the drawers were empty. ‘Inspector Strong’ had taken no chances and cleared everything out. At the end of the desk there was a CD player with speakers, but there were no CDs anywhere to be seen. Strong must have taken those as well, perhaps on suspicion that a computer data disc might be hidden among them.
There was hardly room for anything else, except an upright chair with a haversack resting on it. Hart looked inside just in case, but it was empty except for half of a Snickers wrapper and a box of Bluebell matches. She lifted up the liner at the bottom and searched in the corners of the pockets, but there was nothing there but ancient crumbs and fluff. And that left only the beside table on which stood a bedside lamp with a frieze of cut-out elephants round the shade, a travelling alarm clock, a set of house-keys attached to a rubber fried egg, a water flask on a strap of the sort runners carry, and a paperback book. Presumably it was what Danny had been reading in bed.
Hart picked it up. Elephant Song. Either Inspector Strong hadn’t seen it – which was possible because it was behind the flask and not visible until you reached the table, and he must have been in a hurry – or he hadn’t thought it important. She flicked through to see if anything had been scribbled in it, but the pages were clean. But there was something – a piece of paper, folded into a long thin strip as though it was being used as a bookmark. She opened it out. It was a printed letter from Reading Borough Libraries. The following book(s) are overdue. Failure to return the book(s) may lead to increasing fines.
There was only one title: Analysis of Risks Associated with Nuclear Submarine Decommissioning, Dismantling and Disposal. Unsurprisingly, it had an asterisk beside it and was marked ‘Special Loan – Reading University Library’.
Well, how’s about that for light bedtime reading, Hart thought to herself. She turned the paper over. On the blank back of the form, in a scrawly, unformed handwriting in blue biro, was a sort of list.
Clydebrae
Scottish War Museem St Vincent St
Clyde Maritime and Shipping Museem (Govan)
public records office Argyle St
universty? Meekie book
Hager Loch (Museem?)
Then a word so scrawly she couldn’t read it properly. It looked like Newark. And at the bottom, scrawliest of alclass="underline" cad ber.
Hart grinned to herself. He couldn’t even spell Cadbury’s, the dipstick, never mind know where the factory was!
She took the piece of paper with her and left the sad, empty little room to its thoughts.
Mrs Masseter looked up eagerly when she stepped off the bottom of the stairs. ‘All right, dear? I’ve kept it nice and clean and tidy, not that there’s much left since your Inspector Strong came. I’m just boiling the kettle again – you’ll have another cup?’
‘I found this in a book beside Danny’s bed,’ Hart said, showing her the paper.
She turned it automatically from the written to the printed side, and unexpectedly blushed. ‘Oh, I know, there’s been another of them just this morning. Asking for their book back, and I don’t know what to do – that inspector must have taken it with the other books because it’s nowhere in this house, that I do know. But if it’s a library book he oughtn’t to keep it, did he? I don’t want to get into trouble about it. Could you ask him to send it to them, dear? Only I don’t know where he is or anything.’
‘There’s some writing on the other side,’ Hart said patiently. ‘Can you tell me if that’s Danny’s writing?’
‘Oh, yes. Just some of his nonsense.’
‘Would you mind if I kept it?’
She looked doubtful. ‘Well, if you think it’s important. Only there’s the library book to think of.’
‘I’ll have a word with Reading Library,’ Hart promised, and Mrs Masseter’s face cleared like fast-forwarded clouds parting.