‘No sign of sexual activity, though.’
‘Not according to the PM report.’
Lucy stood. ‘Right, let’s check the other rooms. See if he snuck back in here and rewrote his prayer.’
20
Twenty minutes later, they were back in the master bedroom.
The Dunk had returned to his spot in front of the patio doors, being all starry-eyed about the balcony and the view, doing far too much wistful sighing for a grown man. His already dirty beatnik outfit had picked up an extra layer of dust and fingerprint powder, fading everything to a mottled grey.
Lucy stared at the stained patch of wall above the hollow bedframe.
If the words ‘HELP ME!’ really were important to the Bloodsmith, why wouldn’t he come back and rewrite them here? He must’ve known that the crime-scene cleaners had scrubbed it away with industrial-strength bleach. Didn’t even have to visit the sites to know that — soon as the police guard had been removed from the cottage where Abby Geddes was killed, the press swooped in with their cameras and Dictaphones. That empty, rat-gnawed room had featured on the front page of every newspaper in the country. His prayer was gone, but it mattered enough to make him rewrite it in that manky attic bedroom.
So why not here?
Three bedrooms, one bathroom, two en-suite wet rooms, a kitchen, study, and lounge. No sign of ‘HELP ME!’ in any of them.
Maybe he couldn’t get in?
Yes, but he would’ve taken keys to the apartment, wouldn’t he?
Lucy flicked through the file, but there was nothing in it about missing keys. Then again, how would the search team know how many spare sets Jane Cooper had?
‘Pfff...’ She placed the folder on the bed.
‘You know what I think?’ The Dunk still had his nose pressed to the glass, like an urchin outside a sweetshop. ‘I think we, the people, should be allowed to occupy places like these. You can’t sell your overpriced flat? It’s sitting empty? Good, honest, working people should be able to move in.’
‘Then why would anyone ever build flats like these again?’
‘Maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe they should build places that normal folk can afford, instead of pandering to super-rich tax-dodging bastards.’
Lucy peered into the bedside cabinet.
One drawer for socks. One for pants. One for bras. All spilling out over the sides like their owner’s innards.
‘Seriously, Sarge, there’s so much income inequality in the country, and they’re building places like this to sit empty, because some hedge-fund tosser has decided it’s a quick way to make a buck when property prices go up? Makes you sick.’
Wonder why the search team put her clothes back in the wardrobes? They didn’t bother with Jane’s underwear, so why her clothes?
Lucy stood.
Knowing O Division, there would be some bras and pants missing. Bet any sex toys Jane had hidden in her bottom drawer were long gone, too. That kind of thing probably went for a lot of money on the Dark Web, to sickos who collected serial-killer memorabilia.
The Dunk waved his arms about. ‘We’ve got people dying, homeless, on the streets, and what, three-quarters of this building has never been occupied?’
She crossed to the nearest wardrobe. It wasn’t a cheap mirror-doored job, it was a bespoke wooden one, crafted to fit the space perfectly, with drawers and racks and rails. Jane’s shoes were in a pile on the floor, and so were her jeans and jumpers, but the stuff on the coat hangers was all where it should’ve been. Maybe not hung up in any sort of logical order — more crammed back in at random. No system to it. As if it was OK to mix up colours, basics, formal, and casual all in one disorganized lump.
‘We’re never going to have equitable distribution of opportunity, till we have equitable distribution of wealth.’
Some nice stuff in here. She checked the labels on a couple of cocktail dresses: one from Dolce & Gabbana, the other Prada. Gucci leather trousers that probably cost more than Lucy made in a month. Eminently nickable, but somehow they and everything else had escaped the long sticky fingers of the law.
Which made it all the more suspicious that they’d been hung back up after the search team had gone through everything else like a threshing machine.
‘And we’ll never have equitable distribution of wealth as long as we’ve got overprivileged posh twats running the country.’
Lucy bent down and shoved her hands in between a cashmere dress and a silk jacket. Like the pans in the kitchen, both still had the price labels attached. She pushed them apart.
‘They don’t give a toss, Sarge, because inequality works in their favour. The whole sodding system’s corrupt and it’s the poor that get beaten about the head with the shitty end of the stick every single time.’
‘Dunk?’
‘The whole class system only exists to keep the poor in their place. These posh—’
‘Dunk!’ Lucy unhooked the jacket and hurled it onto the skeletal bedframe. Did the same with the dress.
‘Sarge?’
‘Get the SEB over here, now.’
‘You mean the Forensic Services Scene Examination Resources, right? They’re—’
‘Now, Constable!’
Shirts, blouses, slacks, skirts: they all went flying, till she’d made a gap in the wardrobe three feet wide. And there, right at the back, still partially hidden by the remaining clothes, were two words, written in big, dark-brown, dripping letters: ‘HELP ME!’
The Dunk stood in front of the living-room window, one finger in his ear as he curled over his phone. ‘Uh-huh... Yeah, OK.’
Lucy left him to it, heading out into the hall instead.
In a normal house, there would be a coatrack by the front door, but Jane Cooper’s place had a cupboard instead. Hiding away any potential messiness. Inside was a collection of remarkably cheap-looking coats and jackets — compared to the stuff hanging in her wardrobe.
A thin cabinet was mounted on the cupboard wall closest to the front door. It opened to reveal rows of hooks, about a third of which held various keys, all with labelled fobs. A big bunch marked ‘SHOP’. Two sets of Aston Martin keys marked ‘CAR’. A small bunch marked ‘HOLIDAY COTTAGE (CORNWALL)’ and another marked ‘HOLIDAY COTTAGE (SPAIN)’. And two identical single keys marked ‘HOUSE’.
Not ‘HOME’, ‘HOUSE’.
They were those fancy-pants security keys — the ones that didn’t have serrations on the blade, just little dimples that matched up with whatever fancy-pants locks they had in a fancy-pants apartment like this one.
A row of empty hooks sat beneath the last row of keys. One would be for the set the Dunk had unlocked the door with, three-quarters of an hour ago. One for the keys the Bloodsmith used when he came back to rewrite his votive prayer in the back of Jane’s wardrobe.