The Sound of Broken Glass (14 page)

“Besides,” he went on a little hurriedly, “the bruising was deep in the tissue. Most autoerotics just get carried away—and usually the deaths are hanging accidents—but whoever did this really meant to do damage. And there was no evidence of anal penetration or sexual activity of any kind.”

The older man who had been so comfortably reading his paper in the next booth stood up, giving them a disgusted glare, and walked out.

“Oh, dear,” said Gemma, glancing round to make sure there were no other patrons within hearing distance. “I'm afraid we've just ruined that poor man's breakfast.”

“As long as he doesn't complain to the management.” Rashid's grin was unrepentant.

“Any findings on the ligature?” Gemma asked, leaning a bit closer and keeping her voice down.

“Some luck there. First, he was gagged, but not tightly. There was a little chafing at the corners of his mouth, but no tearing, and no bruising of either lips or tongue.”

“Would the gag have been enough to keep him from crying out?”

“He could have made some noise, but probably not anything intelligible.”

“There was no one else in the basement rooms. And there's a TV behind the reception desk,” Gemma mused. “I'd bet the night manager keeps it on for company.”

“Which would have masked any sounds from downstairs, especially with the interior fire doors closed.” Rashid moved his coffee so that he could flip through the report, although Gemma was quite sure the gesture was no more than habitual. She'd never known him to have to check a fact. “I did find some interesting fibers,” he went on. “Lodged in the corners of the mouth, a very fine silk blend. Pale gray. And in the ligature bruising on the neck, a few bits of a fuzzy wool-acrylic, some fibers navy, some maroon.”

Gemma frowned, digesting the information. “I'll see what the SOCOs turned up as soon as I get into the station. The fuzzy stuff could have come from something that shed in the room as well.” She sipped her cooling latte, which now tasted of scalded milk. “Anything interesting from the tox screen yet?”

“Blood alcohol was fairly high. He certainly shouldn't have been driving. And although his judgment was almost certainly impaired, I expect he could have still put on a pretty good front.” Rashid glanced at his watch, then downed the rest of his coffee in one long swallow. “I'll have more for you on the tox results in a couple of days, but I'd better get on to Tooting Bec. An elderly man dead in his home, but the medics found an empty bottle of sleeping pills, so the coroner will need a postmortem.

“Oh, one more thing,” Rashid added as he rose. “The SOCOs checked with me on the victim's blood type. That spot of fresh blood on the sheet? It wasn't Arnott's.”

Getting Doug in—and out of—Melody's little Renault Clio had been a bigger undertaking than she had expected. Even after she'd slid the passenger seat all the way back, he'd had to grab the car's roof and lever himself in, grimacing as he positioned the unwieldy surgical boot in the foot well.

“Sorry, sorry,” she'd murmured as she eased the car into traffic, hating the sight of his white face and clenched teeth.

Fortunately, the Sunday-morning streets were as empty as they were ever likely to be, and it wasn't far from the hospital to Putney. He'd needed her arm to get out when they reached his house, and that had made him grumble under his breath.

“You'll get better at it,” she said, walking beside him as he hobbled up to the front door. “Are you sure you don't need a crutch or something?”

“No, they said I just had to stay off it as much as possible the first day or two. I don't need a bloody crutch or a cane, thanks very much.” He fumbled the key in the lock, then stepped into the house with an obvious sigh of relief.

Melody had to bite her lip when she followed him into the sitting room and saw the overturned ladder and the spilled paint decorating not only the drop cloth but the surrounding carpet, like a monotone Jackson Pollock painting. “Good thing you'd decided to rip the carpeting out,” she said only half jokingly. They'd discovered that beneath the worn brown flat-weave carpet, the original Victorian floorboards were in almost perfect condition. “Don't worry. I'll help you clean it up later.”

She uncovered the armchair Doug had protected with a sheet and pulled up an ottoman. Both were finds from the Chelsea auction house they'd visited on several occasions, and she was glad they'd escaped unscathed. As Doug sat heavily in the chair and propped up his foot, she fetched his laptop, his phone charger, and the telly remote, putting them on a side table.

Surveying him with satisfaction, she said, “All comfy now?” then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Food. I forgot about food. Do you have anything in the house?”

“I thought we'd be going out yesterday, so I was going to do the shopping today.” There was a tinge of self-pity in Doug's answer, but she couldn't really blame him.

“I can dash round the corner and get you an Egg McMuffin from the McDonald's,” she offered.

Doug made a face. “No, I'm fine, really. They fed me something horrible in the hospital first thing this morning.”

“Cup of tea?”

“No. You go on,” he insisted. “I know you're late as it is. And thanks, Melody, really.”

“Okay,” Melody agreed, reluctantly. “But I'm going to pop in again after the briefing.”

He flapped a hand at her in a half wave, and when she looked back from the door, his eyes were already closed.

To Melody's relief, when she arrived at the station, Gemma was just hurrying in the door to the CID suite. “Boss. Glad I'm not the only one late,” Melody whispered.

“
We've
just seen Rashid,” Gemma muttered back as their boss, Detective Superintendent Diane Krueger, turned to look at them with disapproval.

“Nice of you ladies to come in this morning.” Superintendent Krueger had not made any casual concessions to Sunday—she wore a charcoal pin-striped suit with a knee-length skirt, and had her thick brown hair pulled into a neat French twist. “I've got a media interview in an hour, and I'd like to have something to tell them. Or at least know what not to tell them.”

Krueger was a striking brunette in her midforties, slender, with a face that both still and video cameras liked. Melody knew that Gemma, who was a bit self-conscious about her North London accent when she heard it recorded, was always happy when Krueger volunteered for media duty.

Shara MacNicols, there before they were, gave them a smug look. She was seated in front of a computer monitor at one of the suite's long worktables, the pile of Arnott's DVDs beside her. Melody hoped she'd been watching them with the sound turned off.

“Sorry, guv,” Gemma said to the superintendent. “We've just been meeting with the pathologist. He got the postmortem done ahead of schedule.” As she and Melody slid into seats at the conference table, she went on, “Surely we want to say as little as possible. As in, ‘London barrister found dead in suspicious circumstances near his Crystal Palace home. Police await coroner's ruling.'”

“Thank you, Gemma. I'll be sure to let you know next time I need help with a press release.” Krueger sighed and relented a little. “Of course we'll try to keep this as low key as we can, at least until we have a better idea of what we're dealing with. But there's a very active virtual forum in the area, and a member reported police activity at the Belvedere Hotel. A newspaper stringer picked it up, talked to the staff, and Bob's your uncle. The journos are already camping in front of the station, and I can't keep them from talking to the hotel staff. By tonight we're going to be front-page and the ten o'clock news. I'd like to have something a bit more definitive to tell them.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Gemma knew the super was right.

Crossing the room to the whiteboard, Krueger stood with marker in hand, ready to add to the information already posted. “So, what did the delicious Rashid have for us?”

“Vincent Arnott was strangled, as we assumed,” said Gemma quickly, aware that Melody was not in the loop. “Rashid said it was done from behind and that it was not self-inflicted. There was no sign of sexual assault or activity.”

She went on to detail Rashid's findings of the two different fibers, the gagging, and the fact that the spot of fresh blood had not belonged to the victim. “His alcohol level was high but not enough to incapacitate him. He did, after all, walk into the hotel and pay for the room, and there were no signs of further alcohol consumption.”

Krueger added key points to the board. “The lack of sexual activity doesn't mean we can rule out some sort of bondage nutter. Shara, is there anything on those videos to suggest he was into cross gender?”

“Not so far. Women wearing cheap dominatrix gear, tying up middle-aged men and telling them to be good little boys. Pretty pathetic, really.”

“I assume you'd recognize
expensive
dominatrix gear if you saw it?” asked Krueger. It was their guvnor's idea of a joke, and when they all smiled obediently, she continued. “We'll see if forensics can get a DNA profile from that blood spot. Maybe some perp will conveniently pop up in the database. If not, we'll at least have something that might link a suspect to the scene, if—let's make that
when
—we do turn up a viable suspect. In the meantime, do we know anything about Arnott's work situation?”

“I've got the home number for his chambers clerk,” said Gemma. “I'll see if I can set up an interview for today.”

“What about the CCTV?” Krueger consulted her notes. “You had that pulled, I think, Melody.”

Crossing to one of the computers, Melody logged into the case file. As she brought up the CCTV footage, she said, “Unfortunately, we've only got a camera covering the pub. There was nothing along Church Road by the hotel.”

“So Big Brother is not everywhere,” said Krueger. “Unfortunate indeed, in this instance.”

Melody turned the monitor and they all gathered round the screen. “Damn,” she said when the sequence began. “It's like bloody pea soup.” The angle of the camera just caught the front of the White Stag, the intersection, and a few yards of Church Road, but the swirling fog would have made the location unrecognizable if one hadn't already been familiar with it.

Melody fast-forwarded and they watched the frames jump. Groups of people entered and left the pub's front entrance, moving in jerky quick time, like an old silent film. The digital counter clicked towards eleven o'clock, and suddenly there he was.

Arnott, recognizable in a break in the fog by his shock of silver hair. Melody slowed the tape, then backed up. There, again, Arnott exiting the pub, and now they could see that there was another person with him. But the figure was smaller, and shielded from the camera by Arnott's body. The couple moved away quickly, even in real time, and vanished from view a few yards along Church Road.

“That's definitely Arnott,” said Melody. “But I can't even tell if that was a man or a woman with him.”

“Back up just a couple of frames,” Gemma asked, then frowned as she watched the sequence again. “A woman, I think. There's something slightly possessive about his posture, and something in the way she—if it is a she—moves . . . ”

Melody started to back the tape up once more, but Gemma said, “No, go on. Let's see what else there is. All we know for certain now is that Arnott did leave the pub with another person, probably a woman.”

The tape ran on, and almost immediately, another group of people came out of the pub, milling about for a moment before splitting off in different directions, some to the left towards Westow Street, some to the right towards Belvedere Road. One, presumably male, with hood up and head down, crossed the intersection, but the fog swirled in and obscured him after that.

Then, from around the corner, where Melody remembered the pub had a side entrance, came an instantly recognizable figure. Andy Monahan, in a dark peacoat, head bare, guitar case over his shoulder, pulling an amp on a trolley. And with him, a thin, dark-haired young man carrying a longer, thinner case and pulling an amp as well.

A white Ford Transit van pulled up, and when the heavyset driver got out, Melody realized she'd seen him in the group that had walked towards Belvedere Road. He conferred with Andy and the dark-haired bloke, then disappeared towards the side entrance and returned carrying a drum kit. All three loaded equipment into the van, then seemed to argue for a few moments.

Then the drummer—or so Melody assumed—got into the driver's side, the dark-haired bloke got into the passenger seat, and their doors slammed shut with what seemed unnecessary force. The van sped away, leaving Andy Monahan standing with his guitar at the curb. A moment later, a Mini Cooper pulled up. Andy leaned in the window, apparently conferring with the driver. She saw him shake his head and gesture, as if reluctant or unhappy. But then he got in and the Mini zipped round the corner into Westow Street and disappeared.

Melody sat back, feeling a rush of relief she wasn't sure she could justify. “That seems to bear out what Andy—the guitarist—and his manager told me yesterday. Still, I'll confirm the make on the manager's car. And I'd like to talk to the other members of the band. They were arguing about something, and I want to know what it was.”

Kincaid rang the bell at Doug's house in Putney, stamping his feet against the cold, for the day had set in crisp and—for the moment—clear. He held a paper bag from which rose the enticing aroma of hot beef burgers from the Jolly Gardeners just up the road.

He was about to ring again when he heard Doug shout, “Coming. I'm coming,” then the lock clicked and the door swung open.

Surveying his erstwhile partner's rumpled hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and booted foot, Kincaid said, “You do look a sight.” He held up the bag. “I thought you might like some lunch.”