‘Sarge?’ The Dunk trotted along behind her, already breathing hard as they hit the second landing. ‘DI Tudor, do... do you think he... think he... pfff...’ Puff, pant. ‘Can we slow down a bit?’
‘We’re on a deadline, Constable.’ Around the corner, onto the third floor.
‘Yeah, but... do you think... the Boss... is going to blame... blame me?’ Sounding like a broken steam train now, falling further and further behind. ‘Cos it’s not... not really my... fault...’
By the time she’d reached the fifth floor there was no sign of him, just the sound of peching and heeching echoing up the stairwell, accompanied by the slow scuff of shoes.
Lucy leaned over the handrail. ‘COME ON, SLOWCOACH!’
‘Arrgh... Stitch. Stitch...’
Four doors led off the landing, but only one of them, 5C, still had fragments of blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape attached to the frame. Someone had removed the little plastic plaque that had once sat above the letterbox. Maybe a souvenir for sickos to buy on eBay. God knew, if you were into serial-killer memorabilia, Oldcastle was like a cash-and-bloody-carry.
The door to flat 5D creaked open and an old lady squinted out from a shadowy hallway, bringing with her the scents of lavender and shortbread. A black cat wound itself around her legs like a small hairy tentacle. ‘You kids aren’t allowed to play in the stairwell!’
Lucy dug out her warrant card. ‘Police. We’re here about Craig Thorburn.’
‘Oh, you’re back, are you?’ She pulled out a pair of smudged glasses and gave Lucy’s warrant card a good looking at. ‘It was terrible what happened to poor Craig. Terrible.’
‘Has anyone else visited his flat? You know, recently?’
‘Lying in there, dead as a dog, for three weeks. They said the smell was quite something, but I lost mine in the second wave. Covid.’ Tapping her wrinkly button-mushroom nose. ‘So I never noticed. It comes in handy when you live with lots of students, I suppose. Being all sweaty and smoking weed and whatnot.’
‘A man, or a woman. They might have had keys to Craig’s flat?’
‘Oh God... Argh... Dying...’
‘Don’t get me wrong, students are fine, really.’ The old lady smiled, face creasing like a shammy leather. ‘I mean, I enjoy a good spliff as much as the next person, but the music they play is awful. Whatever happened to Led Zeppelin, or Rainbow, or the Sex Pistols? Why does it all have to be so bland these days?’
Ah well, it’d been worth a try.
‘OK, sorry to bother you.’
A sweaty heaving lump staggered up the last flight of stairs onto the landing, then stood there, one hand against the wall, holding himself up as he coughed and wheezed.
‘I think your friend could do with a decent burial, dear.’
Lucy gave the Dunk a poke. ‘Keys?’
‘In... in... in here...’ He doubled over, one hand still clutching the wall, the other holding the folder out.
She dug into it, finding a Yale key in a clear-plastic evidence bag.
The old lady shuffled forwards, voice cranked up in volume, as if the Dunk was deaf instead of hideously unfit. ‘DO YOU WANT A GLASS OF WATER?’
Lucy pulled on a fresh pair of nitriles, unlocked the door, and stepped into a small hallway.
Gloomy in here, and stale-smelling, that lingering odour of industrial bleach seeping through from when the cleaning crew must’ve got rid of the blood.
A pile of mail sat on the bare floorboards. She stuck the folder under her arm and scooped it up, flicking through envelopes and fliers. Junk, mostly: leaflets for takeaways, affordable funeral solutions, double glazing, please vote for me, have you seen my cat? Three official-looking envelopes turned out to be threatening letters from the Royal Caledonian Building Society, demanding to know why Craig Thorburn wasn’t keeping up with his mortgage payments. They were a bit late for that.
Halfway down the hall, a coatrack bulged under the mass of about a dozen jackets, all piled up, three or four on each hook. Two pairs of muddy trainers on the floor beneath them. The search team would’ve been through all the pockets, but Lucy had another trawl, just in case, coming up with the usual collection of pens and scraps of paper and receipts and fliers for the Samaritans.
Three doors led off the small corridor, all closed.
The first opened on a room barely big enough for the double bed that’d been squeezed in there. Clothes lay strewn across it, the built-in wardrobes — much cheaper-looking ones than Jane Cooper had in her swanky Castleview flat — hollowed out and empty. No hidden messages in there.
Door number two revealed the bathroom where Craig Thorburn had breathed his last. The stench of bleach was strongest in here, a large clean patch on the tiles above the bath showing where they’d got rid of the Bloodsmith’s message, plea, prayer... Taking the grout from a mould-darkened grey to dirty ivory instead.
Lucy stuffed the fliers and letters into her jacket pocket, pulled the folder out from under her arm and rummaged for the crime-scene photographs. Held up the wide shot, so it more or less lined up with the room.
Craig Thorburn lay on his back in the bathtub, head and right arm hanging over the side. His hand was open, the palm facing towards the camera, a small purple bruise visible in the crook of his arm. That would be where the eighteen-gauge needle had gone in. But it faded into insignificance compared to what had happened to Craig’s torso. Chest split open, the contents sagging into his gaping stomach.
Urgh...
She stuffed the photo back in the folder and sank down onto the closed toilet lid. Shut her eyes and breathed for a moment, till the stench of bleach and pain made her stomach clench.
Nope. Sod this.
Lurching out into the hall and through the final door.
It was the largest room in the place, with a living area on one side and a galley kitchen on the other. The search team had left all the kitchen cabinet doors open, their contents stuffed in willy-nilly, without any apparent thought or order.
A tatty old couch sat side-on to the room’s only window — a view out over a rectangle of dying grass, featuring four sagging whirligigs, and off towards another bland beige housing scheme. Lucy lowered herself into the couch, setting the frame and springs creaking.
She sat there, not moving, till her churning innards stopped threatening to spatter the threadbare rug with a mixture of bile and coronation chicken.
Wonder what Dr McNaughton would make of that? Never been sick at a crime scene before — not since she was a probationer, anyway. And a lot of what she’d seen over the years was just as bad as anything the Bloodsmith did to his victims. But now, somehow, even the photographs were enough to set her off. Definitely had to ask McNaughton, after she’d finished beating him to death with his own severed genitals.
The Dunk slumped into the room, all pink-faced and shiny. ‘The lovely Mrs Pearce is making us a nice cup of tea.’ He collapsed onto the sofa next to Lucy with a dying-beanbag whoomph. ‘Why does everywhere have to be up so many stairs?’
She slapped the folder against his chest. ‘Read.’
‘Let me get my breath back!’ Wheezing for effect. ‘Nearly had a heart attack, coming up here.’
Lucy abandoned him on the sofa and wandered around the living area instead. In addition to the half-dead couch, there was a smallish TV, a decrepit sound system with an ancient MP3 player plugged into it, a wooden stool with half the paint flaked off, and a sideboard squatting on four fat little legs. There was more junk mail piled up on top of it, along with a couple of opened letters. That would be the search team again. At least they’d done a tidier job than they had in the bedroom.