STRANGE BODIES (a gripping crime thriller) (18 page)

‘Good lad, well spotted. Since you’re the next best thing we have to an art expert I’ll get you to help Sergeant Fraser with the inventory.’

Nick continued, ‘You sure you want to stick around, Verity? This is all pretty routine stuff. I’ll be heading upstairs to the crime scene as soon as I get the rest of this stuff unwrapped … goodness me, just look at that!’ He was looking at the contents of the package he had just unwrapped. ‘A set of forger’s pens. I suspect the rest of these bundles will contain specialised papers. These must be very old … no one uses this stuff now. Kept for sentimental reasons? And what’s this at the back … a sealed envelope with something metal? Well, I’ll be … a key, an old fashioned key. What could that be for?’

‘It looks like a safe key. See the writing on the barrel,
Fasse-Drune
? That’s a company that used to specialise in underfloor safes quite a few years ago. If there is one here it would have been installed at least fifty years ago.’

‘I think we’ve got enough to be going on with for now. I don’t want to spend too much time on this and anyway all this stuff needs to go to the lab for checking. I’ll hang on to this key and come back later when this mob has finished. I can’t really imagine an old safe would have any great importance in the current investigation but it needs to be looked into. Oh, the professor …’

Oscar was still sitting in the kitchen. ‘Hello, do you think I could go home now?’

Adams looked embarrassed. ‘I do apologise, Professor. I must admit I almost forgot you were here. Yes, of course, go home. I’ll come and see you before I leave.’

He said goodbye and headed for the back door. ‘I’ll pop over the fence—easier than going around the front and there are reporters out there now.’

‘Shit,’ said Adams as he strode out to the hall. ‘Fraser, you there?’

‘Yessir.’

‘Get on to the station, North Sydney. Get some uniforms down here. I want barriers up, keep the press and public at bay. Use my name. They give you any trouble, ask for CS Greene.’

He went back to the kitchen where Verity was sitting at the table.

‘Now I think we might just put you over the fence to join the professor. It’s impossible out the front. Will you go next door while we finish up here? You can wait for me there.’

‘I’d rather go home but I’ll call and see if he wants my company.’

She called him and they spoke briefly. ‘He’d be delighted to have me.’

He looked at her. ‘Verity, you … I ... ‘ He took a step towards her, reached out and ran a gloved finger down the side of her face, and said softly, ‘You’re inside my head and I’ll have to do something about that, very soon.’

She held out her hand then realised she was still wearing the thin gloves too. She stripped them off and stuck them in her bag. Nicholas took his off then grasped both of her hands.

‘Will you wait for me, Verity? I’m not sure how long it’ll be … at least another hour.’

‘I don’t have much choice really. I can’t get to my car from here while those vultures are out there.’

He brought her hands up to his lips and brushed a mere touch across her knuckles. She blinked once and smiled slightly.

A voice from the kitchen doorway interrupted the moment. ‘Sir, the police you asked for are setting up barriers. Did you want to talk to them?’

‘No, I’m sure they know what to do. Now I’d like you to get on with the inventory.’

‘Yes, sir. No problem.’

Adams sat down at the kitchen table to make a few notes, but came to after a few minutes when he realised he’d been lost in space. Pulling himself together with a start, he went out to the hall and into the smaller gallery where Fraser was sitting on a stool in front of a display cabinet.

Nick wandered over to the window and looked out.

‘The locals have got that lot under control. Where’s DeLuca? I sent him to give you a hand.’

‘There were a couple of news ‘copters buzzing around earlier but they were told to sheer off after ten minutes and, wonder of wonders, they did. Yes, DeLuca reported to me and I sent him to the main gallery. Last time I looked he was drooling over some Norman Lindsay nudes.’

‘Found anything missing yet? Anything of interest to us? There are three rooms full of this stuff by the look of it.’

Fraser pointed to a minicomp on his knee. ‘I scanned everything into this and DeLuca’s. The original inventory is now sealed and put back in the study. Any sign of a will?’

‘No, not in that safe. We found an old key that Verity says is probably another safe, a floor safe. She recognised it as from a company that used to specialise in concealed safes. I think we’ve got enough to be going on with for now. I’ll worry about that later and I’ll have to find out who his lawyers were. Let’s head upstairs and see how they’re getting on.’

Commander Adams made his way upstairs to the bathroom where the forensics chief was still working. One wall was all mirror tiles which gave a slightly distorted view of the rest of the room. A pale faux marble vanity with two basins carved into it stretched across one wall with dozens of fancy looking bottles, lush plants and some glass sculptures along its length. A shower area, big enough to hold a party in, was off to one side behind a glass screen and a massive spa bath sat in the centre.

‘Anything you can tell me yet, Dr Norris?’

‘Well, Commander, I’ll need to confirm but I’m detecting prints of someone wearing high heeled shoes. A bit hard to see but the scope picked them up. I’ll put this up and you can see the pattern.’

He flicked the images up on a patch of bare wall and a seemingly jumbled pattern of footprints appeared, superimposed on the white floor tiles of the bathroom.

‘This technique assigns different colours to the different sizes and age of prints and I’ve worked out by elimination which ones belong to whom and the timeline. Now on the bottom, the oldest ones, we have high heeled shoes in red; there is also a bare footprint in tan that seems to be on the same timeline. Next we have some identical boot prints, police issue but different sizes, looks like a twelve and a fourteen so men’s. Those are blue. My best guess is they correspond to the sergeant and the officer with him. Over that we have smooth prints—I’d say they belong to the orderlies from the morgue; they wear those disposable overshoes or booties. They’re the green ones.

‘Now we go to holo … we separate the layers and look at it all in a three dimensional display. If you look at the bottom layer it doesn’t make much sense as an accident. See, there’s only one bare footprint, but there are a number of the high heeled ones. This is only a wild guess, Commander, but I’d say our high heel wearer is a tall woman, judging from the shoe size. Now the floor was cleaned earlier that day—talk to Jameson about that, he checked the cleaning robot’s memory and there’s a faint residue of the stuff that was used. That’s how we got these prints so clearly.’

‘So what are you telling me? Does this confirm the man was murdered?’

Norris blinked a few times, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and looked at the Commander with a look of surprise. ‘Well, of course. There’s no way that man ended up half in the bath without having taken several steps to get there, not even if he tripped and fell. See the single bare footprint is just inside the door, just the ball of the foot and a toe.’

‘Let me guess. Levinsky was subdued, maybe sedated in the bedroom or hallway, stripped then carried into the bathroom by a tall, strong woman wearing high heeled shoes, or maybe a man dressed as a woman. Making sense so far?’

‘Yes. And good point, it could be a man. Then I’d say he or she rested him to get a better grip before taking him over to the bath. According to the photos taken at the time, there was no sign of violence on the body just a large bump on the head where you would expect to find it if he had indeed tripped and fallen. Look, I’ve got the copies here. Not the best quality but they weren’t treating it as a murder at that stage.’ He projected the pictures on to the wall.

Adams looked at the footprints again then walked through the scenario himself. ‘Yes, I can see it now. She straddled him here at the side of the bath and hoisted him up, whacked his head here. He must have been really out of it, no sign of struggle. Drugged? Any sign of that? Then what? Bashed his head on the side of the bath—any trace evidence there?’

‘I’ve done some swabs and I’ll have a look at them in the lab. There was some tissue, some blood, but that’ll all be his. Maybe it was a bloke, y’know, a man in drag—have to be a pretty strong woman to carry him and do all this. Mind you he wasn’t exactly a giant.’ Norris squinted at his notes, tilting the screen for a better view. ‘According to Sergeant Mostyn’s estimate he was about 65 centimetres—that’s what he put, but what he meant was 165. So about 165 centimetres, weighing in at seventy-eight kilos.’

DI Gold came to the door and said, ‘Sir, we’ve finished up here. Nothing in the bedrooms. Clothes still on a chair in the main bedroom, neatly folded. It looks as though someone did a search through the drawers and cupboards, maybe looking for valuables? Nothing in the other two bedrooms, just a bed in one, not even made up. Second smaller bathroom completely bare. The other bedroom was used for storage by the look of it, empty bar a few paintings leaning against the wall … that’s about it.’

‘Okay, we’ll pack it in for now. What is it—six-thirty? We’ll get back in the morning. Bathroom sealed, please.’

He turned to Norris. ‘Can you contact the morgue, see what’s happened to the body? Ask Dr Rainbird for another autopsy, a very thorough one this time. I’ll send an authorisation through.’

‘Yes, good idea, Commander. He works fast so there might be some more results for you by tomorrow afternoon.’

Adams had a quick look in the other rooms on that floor, made sure all the windows were locked then made his way down. The men had been joined by Fraser and DeLuca and had assembled in the hallway, ready to leave.

‘All secured?’

A chorus of yesses, then Fraser said, ‘Should we keep the barriers up, sir.’

‘No, they can go now. I want two uniformed officers here at all times, one on the front door overnight. The other one can patrol front and back. Full floodlights on the back and front gardens, all internal alarms activated. Anything in the least suspicious I want to hear about it.

‘Thank you all for your excellent work this afternoon. Sergeant Fraser, set up a meeting in our conference room for ten, please, everyone there. I’ll be back here first thing in the morning and I’ll ring in if I need anything. Otherwise, we’ll meet at ten.’

Chapter 27

Adams knocked on the front door of the professor’s house and a few seconds later Oscar let him in.

‘Verity and I were looking at an old movie from the twenties, that’s the nineteen twenties. It’s not very good quality unfortunately, but she said she can enhance it for me.’

They went into the untidy study where Verity was curled up in an old armchair. She looked at them both and smiled. ‘So, all finished next door? Can you tell us anything yet?’

‘I can tell you, Professor, your instincts were correct. We’ve established beyond a doubt that Solomon Levinsky, whatever his identity, is a murder victim. Killed by someone, a woman probably, wearing high heeled shoes.’

Oscar sat down abruptly then gestured for Nicholas to take the other armchair.

‘You mean that prostitute killed him? Oscar told me he’s been seeing them for a year at least. So why would one of them kill him now?’ Verity asked.

‘I doubt she did, the real one, I mean. There was another death … a young woman was found in an alley the day after Levinsky died. She had no ID and she’d been beaten badly. I think she may have been the one who was supposed to visit Levinsky, probably ambushed on her way there and someone else took her place. I suspected something like this and I asked Greene to get someone to check for any young woman killed around that time.’

‘Was it really a woman, do you think? Or a man dressed up?’ asked Verity.

‘Well, the glimpse I had definitely looked like a tallish woman. I only saw her for a couple of seconds but she had a very womanly shape,’ said the professor. ‘I heard her speak and it did sound like a woman’s voice.’

Nicholas said, a little wearily, ‘I’ve set the wheels in motion. I checked out that angel name you mentioned, Professor. There is a private club called Blue Angels that arranges outcalls to its members—Mr Levinsky was a member. DI Jacobsen knows the place and had a word with the owner who was surprisingly co-operative, he said. One of their young ladies, Sienna Starr she called herself, a dancer and occasional, er, escort, hasn’t been seen since last Wednesday, the night she was due to visit our late friend. This corresponds with the ID of the unfortunate woman in the morgue. We’ve asked for the ME, Dr Rainbird, to do the post-mortem.’

At Verity’s questioning look, he said, ‘He also did the Richardsons.’

The professor looked unhappy. ‘I can’t believe this all happened next door. I’m not stupid enough to think I could have done anything to prevent it.’

‘I know. One does wonder—it’s only human. In my job I always wonder if there is anything we can do to make a difference, or are we just holding back the tide.’

And now, Verity, time to go home,’ he continued, ‘we can get your car if you like … the hordes have gone. Or I can bring you back here in the morning for you to pick it up as I’ll be heading here anyway. I think that might be best.’

On an impulse Verity hugged the old man. ‘Thanks for the old movie, Oscar … I see what you mean about Louise Brooks now. I’ve transferred it to my comp and I’ll see what I can do with it. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, Professor Morgenstein,’ said Adams, shaking hands. ‘You’ve done your friend a great service by insisting he was murdered. He may get some sort of justice when we catch the killer.’