‘What’s that?’
‘Looks to me like the feet of a tripod. Could be a surveying instrument, I suppose, or a camera tripod.’
‘You mean they may have taken pictures of her?’
‘It’s the right position, yes.’
There was silence as they took this in.
‘She lived next door,’ Brock said finally to the scene manager. ‘I’d like to take a couple of your people in there with me. And you’ll want to have a good look in the back garden. They seem to have forced an entry through the back door, but it’s not clear how they got through the fence. Maybe over the wall from her yard.’
‘Right.’
‘Come on, Kathy,’ Brock said grimly and led the way up the stairs. In one of the rooms above they found Tevfik Akif sitting on a pile of bricks, and had him repeat his story, then they collected two of the SOCO team and fresh protective gear so as to avoid the risk of cross-contamination with the house next door. They went out the back way, across the duckboard path to the rear lane, and into Betty’s yard. Immediately they saw the broken pane of glass in her back door, which was unlocked.
The house was cold and very still, and a faint smell of fried onions hung in the air. While the two SOCO women went to work in the kitchen, Brock and Kathy moved on into the interior. The furniture was old and heavy and dark, like heirlooms from an earlier generation, and everywhere there were dolls, forlorn and abandoned, staring accusingly at the intruders. Nothing seemed disturbed downstairs, and they continued up to the bedroom floor. They found Betty’s bedroom at the rear, facing onto the lane. The bedclothes were thrown back, an electric underblanket still switched on. There were pieces of a broken china vase in a corner, and a damp stain on a rug beside the bed.
They continued from room to room, but nothing else seemed disturbed. The victim had had a bath, it seemed, brushed her teeth and gone to bed. Then someone had broken into her house.
‘Poor Betty,’Kathy breathed.‘She said she was afraid of a monster, just like Tracey.’
They opened the front door and were about to start searching the well leading down to the basement when they both noticed the looping letters of new graffiti on the footpath outside Betty’s house: ‘this is real’. At the same moment, a belligerent voice barked at them from the neighbouring house.
‘What d’you think you’re up to?’
Reg Gilbey was standing at his open front door, peering at them suspiciously in the grey morning light. His eyes were bleary through the thick lenses of his glasses, his sparse grey hair sticking up in wispy clumps as if he’d only just got out of bed. He was wearing a heavy cardigan with frayed cuffs and his baggy trousers had been darned at the knee with a thread several shades too dark, as had his thick socks. In one hand he was cradling a fat black cat and in the other he held a lighted cigarette.
‘Morning, Mr Gilbey,’ Brock said. ‘Remember us? Metropolitan Police, DCI Brock and DS Kolla.’
‘What’re you doing in Betty’s place?’
‘We’d like a word with you,’ Brock replied.
As they came up Gilbey’s steps Kathy said, ‘That’s Betty’s cat, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, woke me up this morning, mewing at the back door. Greedy tyke. What d’you want?’ He backed reluctantly into his hallway as they followed him in.
‘When did you last see Betty?’ Brock asked.
Gilbey pondered, thought processes apparently sluggish. He cleared his throat with a rasping gurgle and Kathy caught a strong whiff of whisky along with the tar. ‘Yesterday evening. Brought me a pie she’d baked. We ate it together with a glass of vino. Why? What’s the matter?’
This unexpected glimpse of domestic harmony between the two neighbours surprised Kathy. ‘I thought you two didn’t get on,’ she said.
‘There was that big crowd in the square, all those weirdos. Made Betty nervous. Scared her cat. What’s it to you, anyway?’
‘I’m afraid we have bad news about Betty, Mr Gilbey. She’s been found dead.’
Gilbey stared at her, then at Brock, face blank.‘Dead?’ he said slowly, as if the word meant nothing to him. The cat sensed something and leaped abruptly from his arm. ‘Betty?’
‘Let’s sit down in the kitchen,’ Kathy said. She steered him towards the open door at the end of the hall where she could see a pine table and chairs. Along the way the cigarette dropped from his fingers and Brock, following behind, picked it up. He doused it in the kitchen sink, next to the remains of a home-baked cheese and onion pie and an empty bottle of wine, and ran a glass of water for the painter, who had removed his glasses to rub his eyes. The frames were old and worn, Kathy noticed, heavy plastic, like a museum piece from the 1960s. She wondered if Gilbey, presumably a successful and prosperous man, looked so resolutely down at heel by choice or through self-neglect.
‘How did she go?’ Gilbey grunted after taking a swallow of water, hand trembling.‘Was it her heart?’
‘We’re not sure at the moment exactly how she died.’
Gilbey picked up the evasion in Brock’s answer and said sharply,‘She didn’t hurt herself, did she?’
‘No, she…’
But before Kathy could go on, Gilbey interrupted. ‘Who found her then?’
‘A builder. She was found in the basement of one of the houses they’re doing up.’
Gilbey’s brow wrinkled in astonishment.
‘When did she leave you last night?’
‘I don’t know… ten, ten-thirty. When the crowd began to break up. But how…?’
‘Was there anything specific about the crowd that bothered her? Did she mention anything?’
‘Not really. They just made her nervous. When they began to drift away she said she’d go home and run a hot bath. How did she come to be in the building site, for God’s sake? It’s locked up at night, and she didn’t get on with any of those men.’
‘We’re not sure at the moment. Did you hear anything unusual last night, after she left?’
‘Well… yes, I did. Some time after midnight, getting on for one, I’d say, I was getting ready to turn in. Her bedroom is through the wall from mine. I heard a thump from next door, and I wondered about it. She could be a clumsy old cow, knocking things over. In the end I did nothing.’
‘You know the layout of her house then?’
‘Course I do, we’ve been neighbours for thirty-five years.’
Brock’s phone rang and he listened for a moment, then murmured, ‘Right, I’ll be over in a minute.’ He rang off and said,‘I’m going back to the scene, Kathy. You finish up here with Mr Gilbey, will you?’
He left by the back door while the old painter lit another cigarette with an unsteady hand.
‘Do you want to lie down, Reg?’ Kathy asked, wondering if she should get a doctor.
‘No, I’m all right.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me that might help us?’
‘How did she die then?’ he asked.
‘It seems she was hanged.’
‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’
‘Can you think of anyone who’d want to do that?’
He shook his head distractedly. ‘She could be cantankerous, of course, accusing people of wanting to steal her things, stuff like that, but I never took it seriously.’
‘Did she have anything particularly valuable?’
He pondered, taking a faltering drag on his cigarette. ‘Never saw her wear jewellery, and she never had much cash. As far as I know, the only things of value that her husband left her apart from the house were his paintings. He’d been a bit of a collector, and his father before him.’
‘And they were valuable?’
‘The best English artists of the time: Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Sutherland, several Henry Moore drawings- stuff like that, all very solid, bought through reputable galleries. I know she’s sold a few of them over the years. I’m not sure what’s left.’
‘Later on, when the scientific people have finished, I’d like you to come next door with me and have a look to see if you can spot anything missing.’
He shrugged.‘If you want.’
