landing. Moving forward, their hearts hammering against their chests, they felt a current of cold air coming towards them.
Signalling to Trave to get ready, Quaid flattened himself against the wall behind the door and gently pushed it open, and Trave found himself looking down the length of an empty corridor lit by a single overhead light to where a metal curtain rail had been pulled down onto the carpet and a second door stood wide open to the night air. Quickly he ran to the end and then came to an abrupt halt. Outside, snaking down to the ground below his feet, a black iron fire escape clung to the back of the building like some parasitic creature missing its head and tail.
Trave shone his torch down into the shadows but saw nothing except the outline of a row of squat municipal dustbins behind a railing near the bottom of the ladder that looked for a moment like a line of men at a bar. Everything was silent — the killer was long gone. That much was obvious.
‘What can you see?’ asked Quaid, coming up behind Trave as he was examining the outside of the door frame.
‘Whoever it is got out this way-’
‘I know that.’
‘But I don’t think this is how he got in,’ said Trave, finishing his sentence.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘There are no signs of forcible entry, and the key’s in the door,’ said Trave, pointing. ‘And I don’t think the killer put it there.’
‘Why not?’
‘I just don’t see him going round the flat looking for it when he knew someone had seen him. He’d have been too desperate to get away.’
‘Maybe he knew where to look,’ said Quaid. ‘He certainly knew where to find the fire escape.’
‘Yes, but I don’t think that means he’s been here before,’ said Trave. ‘Most of these Victorian apartment blocks have fire escapes like this at the back.’
‘Well, aren’t you the expert?’ said Quaid sarcastically. And then apologized immediately when he saw how Trave recoiled, obviously offended. He hadn’t had Trave working for him that long, but there’d already been several cases where his assistant had noticed something that seemed minor at the time but turned out afterwards to be important. Quaid was an arrogant man, but he was clever enough to realize that two sets of eyes were better than one. After all, what did it matter who saw what, provided Quaid got the credit for solving the case afterwards. ‘Come on, William, have a sense of humour,’ he said, clapping Trave on the back. ‘I expect you’re right. Our dead friend probably had the door locked — unless he was too busy with his books and got absent-minded, which is always a possibility. Have you seen how many he’s got? The flat’s stuffed to the rafters with them. Come and take a look.’
Trave followed Quaid back down the corridor to the living room. The inspector was right. Books were everywhere, lined up horizontal and vertical on overloaded shelves or piled in precarious leaning towers on tables and chairs. From a side table over by the window, Trave picked up a copy of Hitler’s
There were papers too, all covered with the same distinctive spidery handwriting, and yellowing articles cut out of newspapers. There didn’t seem to be any surface in the flat that wasn’t covered in some way.
‘Christ, he’s got more books than the bloody public library,’ said Quaid, whistling through his teeth. ‘You’d need a compass to find your way round here.’
‘No, I think that he knew where everything was. Or almost everything,’ Trave said meditatively. It was almost as if he were speaking to himself.
‘So you think there’s method in the madness, eh, William?’ Quaid observed, eyeing his assistant with interest and glancing back round the jam-packed room.
‘I had an uncle who lost one of his legs in the last war,’ said Trave. ‘He didn’t do anything except read.’
‘Like you,’ said Quaid with a smile.
‘Worse. His house was just like this, and yet when he wanted to show me something in one of his books, he could lay his hands on it in a minute.’
‘Well, good for him,’ said Quaid. ‘But why did you say “almost everything”? What was that about?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe it’s nothing. It’s just these papers on the floor here, they’re different somehow,’ said Trave, pointing to a small heap of documents near his feet that were lying on the carpet in the space between the desk and the fireplace.
‘In what way different?’
‘They look like they’ve been thrown there, maybe from off the desk. They’re not stacked up like the other papers.’
‘Yes, maybe you’re right,’ said Quaid, looking down. ‘Good work, William. You’ll make a decent detective yet. Okay, leave everything where it is for now. We need to get back downstairs. We can bring the daughter up here when she’s back on her feet — see what she says; see if anything’s missing. You can carry her if you like,’ he added with a grin as he went out of the door.
Trave shook his head and gave a weary smile. He’d already picked up on his boss’s irritation at the way he’d helped the bereaved woman downstairs, but what was he supposed to do — leave her to faint on top of her father’s corpse?
Carefully he replaced
Downstairs, Trave went to check on the dead man’s daughter and was pleased to see that she’d recovered her senses while he’d been away. She was sitting up on the sofa where he had laid her before he went upstairs, sipping from a glass of brandy that the old lady must have given her. There was even some colour in her pale cheeks.
Reassured, Trave returned to the hall, where Quaid was standing by the remains of the woman’s father.
‘There’s no point waiting for a doctor,’ said Quaid, sounding typically decisive. ‘We know he’s dead and we know what killed him, so we’d better get on with finding out who did it.’
Trave knew in the immediate sense that ‘we’ meant him. It was his job, not Quaid’s, to handle the dead and go through their possessions. So he took out his evidence gloves, pulled them carefully over his hands, and began methodically to go through the dead man’s pockets, doing his best to keep his eyes averted from the mess of shattered bone and blood that had once been a human face.
‘What’ve you got there?’ asked Quaid, watching at the side.
‘A wallet,’ said Trave, holding up a battered leather notecase that he’d extracted from inside the dead man’s jacket. He took out his torch to shine a brighter light on the contents. ‘There’s an ID card in the name of Albert Morrison, aged sixty-eight; address 7 Gloucester Mansions, Prince of Wales Drive, SW11,’ he went on. ‘Plus three pounds ten shillings in banknotes, a ration card, and two ticket stubs. Oh, and a piece of paper — same inside pocket, but not in the wallet, folded into four. There’s a bit of blood on it, but you can read what it says: “Provide detailed written report. What are the chances of success? C.” And there’s a name written underneath with a question mark — Hayrich or Hayrick, maybe.’
‘Never heard of him,’ said Quaid.
‘I think it’s all the same handwriting — same as on the papers upstairs,’ said Trave, peering closely, ‘but the name’s a bit of a scrawl, like it’s been written in a hurry, sometime after the sentence, I’d say.’
‘All right, bag it. Is there anything else?’
‘A few coins in the right trouser pocket; a couple of keys on a ring. That’s it.’
‘Okay. Let’s go talk to the daughter, see if she knows something. There’s no point standing around doing nothing, waiting for the death wagon to get here.’
‘Are we still taking her upstairs?’ asked Trave.
‘Yes, why not?’
‘I just don’t want her to see her father again, that’s all. I don’t think she can take much more.’
‘Fine,’ said Quaid impatiently. ‘Get a sheet or something. The old woman must have one spare.’
