She stuck her hands on her hips. “I want to know if he was pushed. I also want to know if he was even alive up on the balcony when it happened.”
Denzil put his case on the floor beside Tyler, and lowered his bulk down next to it, wincing as his knees creaked.
“And you should lose some weight,” she said.
“Come horizontal jogging with me—I'd lose kilos every night.”
“That's sexual harassment.” She just managed to keep a straight face in front of Alison.
He grinned wildly. “Yes please.”
“Just tell me what happened here.”
Denzil opened his case, revealing a plethora of specialist 'ware modules. He pulled on some tight plastic gloves before selecting a sensor wand which he waved over the dead man's face: then he stopped and peered closer. “Ah, a celebrity death. Best kind. Did you see his last? Night Squad III: Descent of Angels. Saving the world from card-carrying terrorists yet again. There was some cool helijets in that. They had nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers; cut clean thorough buildings.”
Chuckling, Denzil resumed his scan of Tyler's face. “Shame about the air-conditioning,” he said. “I can't work a simple temperature assessment on him.”
“That's what made me wonder,” Amanda said. “If he did get pushed then we won't be able to pinpoint the time very easily.”
“Hmm. Maybe not pinpoint, but let's try something a little more detailed.” Denzil replaced the sensor wand and took another cylinder from his case. It had a needle fifteen centimeters long protruding from one end, which Denzil slowly inserted into Tyler's abdomen then withdrew equally carefully. “Anything else immediately suspicious?”
Alison held up the zip bag with the infuser, and another bag with vials. “We think he was infusing this. Probably syntho.”
“Where have you been, young lady? I'll have you know, it's dream punch this season for the glitterati. Couple of levels up from syntho, it's supposed to stimulate your pleasure center and memories at the same time. Every hit a wet dream.”
“Can you walk around when you're tripping it?” Alison asked.
“Okay, good point. They normally just crash out and drool a lot.”
“I'll need DNA samples from the bed as well,” Amanda said. “I think he had someone up there before he died.”
Denzil gave her a curious look. “Vernon won't give you the budget for that kind of work over. I'm just authorized for a body analysis, determine cause of death, that kind of thing.”
“Just do what you can for me, okay.”
“Okay. CID's paying.” The cylinder with the needle bleeped, and he consulted the graphics displayed on its screen. “According to cellular decay, he died sometime on Wednesday night, between 2200 hours and 1:30.”
“That's a big window. Is that the best you can give me?”
“I always give you my best, Amanda. That's the preliminary, anyway. Let me get him into the lab and I can probably shave half an hour off that for you. The delay and this bloody arctic temperature doesn't help.”
Amanda stood up and turned to Alison. “There's some reasonable security 'ware here. See what kind of records are available for this week, especially Wednesday evening. Rex, take a full statement from Helen, and let her go. And I want this place sealed as soon as the body's removed. We'll get authority to run a proper site examination eventually.”
“You really think this was a murder?” Denzil asked.
“Too many things are wrong,” Amanda said. “Somebody told me once: there's no such thing as coincidence.”
Inspector Vernon Langley was putting his jacket on when Amanda walked into his small shabby office. He took one look at her, slumped his shoulders and groaned. “I'm due out for lunch,” he said defensively.
“I was due a scene-of-crime team,” she shot back.
“All right.” He sat back behind his desk and waved her into a spare seat. “Amanda, you know we're severely restricted on how much we can spend on each case. Some syntho-head fell down stairs. Bag him up and notify the relatives.”
“I think he was murdered.”
Vernon grimaced. “Not the air-conditioning, please.”
“Not by itself, no. But Denzil scanned the control box. No fingerprints. It had been wiped clean with a damp kitchen cloth.”
“Means nothing. The cleaning lady could have done that on her last visit.”
“Unlikely. Vernon, you just don't have the air-conditioning on that cold, not for days at a time. I also had Alison check the security 'ware. A car left at 23:13, Wednesday night—a Rover Ingalo registered to Claire Sullivan. It's loaded into Church Vista Apartments security list as an approved visitor for Byrne Tyler, so the gate opens automatically for it. Alison's mining the Home Office circuit for Sullivan now.”
Vernon scratched at his chin. “I took a look at Denzil's preliminary file; time of death is very loose. This Sullivan woman will simply claim Tyler was alive when she left.”
“Of course she will,” Amanda said with a hint of irritation. “That doesn't mean we don't ask her.”
Vernon looked unhappy.
“Oh, come on, ” she exclaimed.
“All right. I'll give you the time to interview her. But you don't get anything else without a positive result.”
“Well, hey, thanks.”
“I'm sorry, Amanda,” he gave her a resigned smile. “Things just ain't what they used to be around here.”
“Someone like Byrne Tyler is bound to have crime insurance coverage. We'll get the money to investigate properly. It won't even come out of your budget.”
Vernon's mood darkened still further. “I'm sure he has coverage. Unlike seventy percent of the population.”
Alison had tracked down Claire Sullivan's address, which was in Uppingham. She had also prepared quite a briefing file for Amanda, most of it mined from tabloid databases.
Amanda let the probationary detective drive to the Sullivan bungalow as she scanned the file on her cybofax. “Tyler was engaged to Tamzin Sullivan?”
“Yep, Claire's big sister. She's a model, got a contract with the Dermani house. Mainly on the back of the publicity she and Tyler were getting. They've hit the showbiz party trail extensively since the engagement was announced. You open your front door in the morning, and they'll be there for it. On their own, neither of them was important enough to get an image on the gossip 'casts; together they rate airtime. It helps that they have the same management agency.”
Amanda looked at the image of Tamzin the screen was showing, posed for a Dermani advert, bracelet and earring accessories for a stupidly priced couture dress. The girl was beautiful, certainly, but it was a lofty beauty implying arrogance.
“So what's her little sister doing at her fiancé's house in the middle of the night?”
“One guess,” Alison said dryly. “I always used to be jealous of my sister's boyfriends. And Byrne was no saint. I didn't load the real gutter-press reports for you, but they say he got fired from Marina Days because he couldn't leave the girls alone.”
Amanda scrolled down the file to Claire. The girl was eighteen, a first-year medical student at DeMontfort University. Still living at home with her mother. The university fees were paid by her father as part of a child-maintenance agreement. He lived in Australia. Amanda skipped to the mother: Margina Sullivan.
Pre-judgment went against the nature of Amanda's training, but Margina's record made it difficult to avoid. She had three children, each with a different father each of whom was wealthy enough to support their offspring with independent schooling and an allowance. The Inland Revenue had no employment record for Margina Sullivan. Her tax returns (always filed late) listed a couple of small trust funds as her income source. She owned the bungalow in Uppingham where she lived along with Claire, Tamzin, and Daniel, her nine-year-old son; but her credit rating was dismal.