Down Among the Dead Men (10 page)

The street outside is still bustling with activity. Civilians too, not just the coppers and technicians, of whom there are many. Curtains are more than twitching. Neighbours in tracksuits and slippers gather in doorways and discuss the possibilities in the hushed, excited undertone that comes with violent death.

A uniform standing at the garage entrance lifts the white flap guarding the scene from prying eyes and, ducking under, they almost run straight into the pathologist.

'Evening, Fergie,' says Frank. The Scot glances at his watch.

'You mean morning.'

Frank sighs. This isn't one of those love-hate things with Ferguson. He just straight-out hates the stringy Glaswegian vampire.

'Would it kill you to cheer up a bit? Is it a Scottish thing or just you?'

'Just me. The rest o' Scotland never stops singing and dancing wee merry jigs all the livelong day.' His face expressionless, Ferguson gestures towards the garage. 'He's all yours until they bring him into the Royal. I'm offski.'

'Hold on, I need to know what you know.'

'He's dead,' says Ferguson. 'Same as her upstairs. Time of death from what I can measure here is between three and, say, nine yesterday morning.'

'Saturday?'

'That's what I mean by yesterday, DCI Keane. It goes Friday, Saturday, Sunday . . .'

'I mean it was early hours on Saturday, not early hours on Friday?'

'Correct.'

DS Cooper is moving from one foot to the other.

'You need the toilet, Theresa?' says Harris. Cooper stops moving.

Ferguson takes his car keys from his pocket and jangles them. 'Look,' he says. 'I know you got here late but DS Cooper didn't and I certainly didn't.' Ferguson begins speaking as if to a dimwitted foreigner. 'I. Have. To. Go. Now.' He brushes past Keane and points at Cooper. 'Your lassie here will fill you in on what I know. I've already given her the gist. I've got a long night of sleeplessness lying ahead and I'd like nothing better than to stand here repeating myself – honestly, I would – but with three autopsies in the morning, not including your two, I really do have to fuck off.'

He gives a sort of rictus grimace that might have been a smile and stalks towards the crime scene barriers.

Frank turns to Cooper. 'Lassie?'

Cooper shakes her head and moves inside the garage.

The dead man is hanging from a metal strut which supports the angled roof. He is grey-haired, around Keane's age, naked. His feet dangle a short distance from the smooth concrete floor of the neat, car-free space.

Cooper points to a single wooden chair sitting against a wall, perhaps six metres from the dead man. It looks like it has been placed carefully in position. There is nothing in the room other than a plastic bin containing various brushes and brooms and a rack of outdoor shoes. Frank bends to look at two patches of loose earth scattered on the concrete floor of the garage about two metres apart.

'Well, it's not going to be as straightforward as we imagined.' Harris is looking at the chair.

'It's possible he kicked it and it slid into that position,' says Frank, rising slowly, his hands on his thighs. He doesn't think that for a moment but the encounter with Ferguson has left him prickly and argumentative. More argumentative than usual.

'You think so?' says Cooper.

Frank shakes his head. 'No, not really, Theresa. But it is possible.'

He gestures towards the small crumbs of dirt on the floor. 'Any ideas?'

Cooper shakes her head. 'Came in on a car?'

Frank doesn't say anything. He's got an idea about the patches of earth – mud is a useful tool – but it can wait until they've seen everything. If he's right, it does mean they're dealing with a very interesting individual.

Frank walks slowly around the dangling body. Someone had put him there. Someone who had put the chair back against the wall. But this isn't what Cooper's bottling up. There's more.

'Come on then, Miss Marple,' Frank says, motioning Cooper towards the body. 'Let us in on your and Fergie's little secret.'

Cooper can't help herself. She smiles and points at the corpse. 'You'll need a ladder to see it.' Cooper looks round. 'Ferguson had one in earlier. Not sure where it's got to.'

'Oi,' says Frank to the uniform at the doorway, and the copper fairly bounces up. Frank nods in the general direction of the road. 'Go find a stepladder.' As the uniform gets to the door Frank raises his voice. 'Don't use anything from the house. Use one of ours. There should be one hanging about somewhere.'

Harris is peering up at the hanging man. Even without the ladder she's already spotted what Cooper is talking about. She doesn't say anything and Frank notices her tact in allowing Cooper her moment in the sun.

A couple of minutes go past during which Keane and Harris examine the dead man from all angles while Cooper watches. The uniform returns with a flat-topped metal toolbox.

'Couldn't find a ladder, sir,' he says, holding out the toolbox. 'Thought this might work?'

'Yeah, fine.' Frank pulls out a sheet of plastic from a pocket and places it on the floor to one side of the hanging man. 'Put it there, son.'

The uniform places the toolbox down carefully and moves back. Frank tests the strength of the lid with his foot. Satisfied he won't be sent crashing to the floor, he steps onto the toolbox and finds himself at eye level with the victim.

'You see it, right?' Cooper is eager. Frank can see what she's talking about. Set close to the rope that bites into the man's neck are two tiny circular red blisters.

They've all seen the marks before and it changes everything.

Twenty

'Have you spoken to Caddick?'

Frank, Harris and Cooper are back upstairs in the teenager's room. The marks on the dead man's neck have made finding Nicky Peters a priority and turned the murder-suicide investigation into a double homicide.

Maybe triple. Frank's not ready to slide the Peters boy into the slot marked 'suspect' just yet. It's going to be a very long night.

All the MIT detectives have seen marks like that before. Two raised red blisters about a thumb length apart. Whoever strung Paul Peters from his own garage ceiling had been able to do so because Peters was in no position to resist.

He'd been tasered.

A taser placed against the neck in DriveStun mode would, in most cases, render the subject unconscious. In police hands the charge is seldom repeated in case it overloads the system and kills someone. Here, that hadn't been a consideration. Subduing the victim would be of paramount importance. Dead or unconscious, it didn't matter, as long as Paul Peters was out of the game. It was entirely possible, suspects Frank, that when the path report comes back they'll find Peters was hung post-mortem. The taser is making all of them adjust their preconceived ideas about the apparent simplicity of the case. See? Menno Koopman's voice echoes in Frank's head.

McGettigan's already been called back in to do a more detailed photographic record of the bedroom, which is now beginning to assume greater importance in the case.

'Caddick's going round the boy's friends. The uncle's given us some possible names and we'll get some when the tech boys look at
his Facebook account.' Theresa Cooper glances in the direction of the computer on Nicky's bedroom table.

'We'll leave it open?' It's a question from Harris, and Frank can see it's got under Cooper's skin.

'Of course,' says Cooper, working hard to keep any trace of sarcasm from her voice. There's no need to tell a seasoned copper like Cooper about keeping a victim's Facebook profile open. The network has become a powerful tool for MIT. For everyone in law enforcement. Frank reflects on the struggle in previous years to get people to carry ID cards. The same people who couldn't contemplate the infringements of carrying an ID card are happy to upload any amount of personal data, lists of friends, phone numbers, emails, to a freely accessible system. Facebook. The policeman's friend.

'I'd ask Gerry to do the tech work,' Frank says to Cooper, softening Harris's edge. 'He's good.'

'OK. He's actually doing it, sir. I already made the request.'

Harris is opening the boy's cupboards. 'Nothing jumping out,' she says. Frank grunts and Cooper says nothing.

'I need to coordinate the coroner's office,' says Cooper. She waves her clipboard in the vague direction of the door. Frank nods. 'And you'll need something for the press in the morning, Theresa.'

'You finished in here?' Harris's voice comes from deep inside the depths of the wardrobe but there's no disguising her tone of disbelief.

'Yes, DI Harris,' says Cooper. 'Would you like a list of contents?' Cooper flicks through her clipboard and starts reciting.

'All right, Theresa,' interrupts Frank. He juts his chin towards the door and makes a shooing motion. 'Point made.'

As Cooper exits, Harris emerges and gives Frank a hard look.

'Cut it out,' he says. He's had enough of this playground shit. 'The attitude's got to stop, Em. Cooper's done nothing wrong and we both know your argument isn't with her, right? I know that it's me who's the target – although as I remember it took two of us on Thursday; no one was putting a gun to your head – but it can fucking stop right now, got it?'

Harris opens her mouth and then closes it again.

'Don't make me make you.' Frank puts some iron in his voice. 'Be professional. That's an order. This is a murder investigation and
you're bringing your personal life onto the job.' Frank drops his voice to make certain no one can overhear and fixes his eyes on Harris. 'I won't hesitate in making life miserable, Em, if you keep this shit up. Me, I can understand – no, that's not true, I can't, but who gives a fuck? – but the case and colleagues are off limits.'

For a moment there's nothing. Then Harris holds up an apologetic hand.

'It's not you, Frank. Well, it is, sort of.' She drops her voice even further, conscious of the house full of whispering technicians. 'It's complicated. I don't know why what happened on Thursday happened, but I'll try and not let it get to me on the job, OK? The thing with Linda will take a bit of thinking about. And I'll fix things with Theresa.'

It's all he's going to get and she dives back into the stale air of the wardrobe.

Frank breathes out slowly. He's got a headache coming on and the events of Thursday and Friday are starting to get a bad smell. He doubts either he or Harris have heard the last of it. Frank massages his brow with latex-tipped fingers and switches his attention back to the job in hand.

In contrast to the decor in the rest of the house, the bedroom is dark and brooding – deliberately so. It's been put together carefully. Nicky Peters is giving a very clear indication of, if not who he is, then of who he would like to be. The walls are painted deep red and covered in a thick layer of posters, party flyers, photos and ephemera, one wall completely dominated by a movie poster.
Donnie Darko
.

Even though there are what seem to be hundreds of images on the walls, they all seem to have been carefully chosen and placed. There is no sense of chaos, even though that may have been the boy's intention. An image shows a youth hurling a petrol bomb at a line of riot police but Frank notes that it has been precisely and neatly laminated, as have several others. It's as though the boy's innate tidiness will not submit, even in rebellion.

Frank moves along the walls. Girls in underwear. Drawings. The Japanese tsunami. John Lennon. The Ramones. Some current bands he doesn't know. Some art prints that don't look like art.
Ticket stubs from Creamfields. More movie posters, smaller than
Donnie Darko
. Indie flicks, mostly horror. Frank takes out a small notebook and writes
check content of movies/MO?
There is a bookshelf heavy with film and movie books, and with novels that might have been chosen by a set dresser wanting to indicate sensitivity in a teen character.

Next to the bed is a stacked metal cabinet, exactly like a single stand of school lockers. The four doors have locks but are open. Inside are DVDs, letters, souvenirs, school stuff. One shelf contains a series of green A4 folders. Frank lifts one out and sees it's a film script.
N Peters
listed as writer. He reads a few lines and puts it back. He has no way of telling if it's good. Someone will have to read all of them and give him the short version.

Taped to the back of the locker stack is a matchbox with a tiny lump of weed inside. There are a couple of Rizla packets on another shelf. Underneath the bed Frank finds a small bottle of vodka poking out from between a loose pile of books. Somehow, Frank doesn't get the feeling that Nicky was a drinker. The bottle, the weed, the Rizlas, all have the sense of being placed in position to be found by anyone giving the room more than a cursory glance.

Props.

Might be something and it might be nothing.

'Boss.' Harris is standing at a chest of drawers in the corner of the room. Frank notes the 'boss' but doesn't react. He moves across and looks over Harris's shoulder.

She's holding a receipt from an electronics supplier in Austria.

For a taser.

Twenty-One

'Time for a coffee, Frank? You look like you need one, old son.'

No, I fucking don't
.

In fact, Frank had slept well after a tiring Sunday and had thought he was looking in pretty good shape, all things considered. Obviously not, if Charlie Searle's crack was accurate.

'Yeah, sure, sir.' Frank turns and follows Searle's broad back down the corridor towards the bank of lifts. Superintendents requesting coffee expect one response.

Monday morning and Frank's only ducked into Canning Place to pick up his reading glasses before sliding back to the MIT operations room at Stanley Road. Running into Charlie Searle on today of all days, as an investigation starts to pick up traction and Frank's needed in fifty different places, is a bit of bad luck.

'I'm a caffeine addict myself,' says Searle as he presses the up button. There is a pause as they stand there and wait. The big feller's smiling but it's about as reassuring as the curve on a scimitar. Searle's got a face that always reminds Frank of a soap actor. His chin is a shade too firm, his posture a touch too perfect, something generic about his every expression and physical attribute. 'Three before lunch or I'm fit for nothing.' Searle's carrying a clutch of blue-bound folders under his arm. He taps them and lowers his voice conspiratorially. 'If it wasn't for coffee I don't think we'd have a departmental budget this year.'