that mean there’s been a goat up here, too?”
“Oh, it’s probably some bored packing clerk’s idea of a joke,” said Bryant, unconvincingly. “How are you settling in?”
“I can’t do any work without at least some rudimentary equipment. I thought we had it bad at Mornington Crescent but this is infinitely worse. Look at this.” He indicated a dark gap beside the ratty armchair he had placed in the corner. “There’s a hole that goes all the way down to the basement. The floor’s rotten. Suppose I fell through it? The place isn’t fit for habitation.”
“We needed something near the site that was instantly available, and this was all I could find,” Bryant explained. “I’ll tell you what – why don’t you work from home for a few days?”
“Oh, no, I’m not falling for that old trick. I need to be here, where I can keep an eye on you. God knows what you’ll get up to otherwise.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to make the best of it.” Bryant dragged out the pieces of his pipe and began to fit the bowl to the stem.
“You are not going to smoke that in here!”
“Actually, I thought the scent of my Aromatic Rough Cut Full Strength Navy Shag might dispel the smell of damp. I’m glad you popped by, Raymond. I was about to come in and see you. I am the bearer of good news. We have an identity for the body in the freezer. His name’s Terry Delaney and he lives just a couple of streets away, in Wharfdale Road. He was arrested on a D and D some years back, but no charges were pressed. He listed his profession as a builder. There’s nothing else on file, but that’s enough.”
“So they did have his prints, after all. How did you get hold of them?”
“Oh, I didn’t. Kershaw used the St Pancras office to request them. Longbright and Renfield are on their way right now. I’m not sending anyone in alone where there may be organised crime involved.”
Land was relieved. “Then all we need to do is round up his mates. He probably crossed his drug dealer. We could get a lock on a couple of suspects by nightfall.”
“Let’s not jump the gun, Raymond.” Bryant tamped his pipe and lit it. “I have a feeling things aren’t going to be quite so simple as you’d like.” Bryant held in his head the image of a murderer dressed in the skin of a stag, but decided not to share it with the detective inspector for now.
¦
Jack Renfield’s shoulder did the trick. Terry Delaney’s landlord lived in Holland, and the woman downstairs had no spare key, so there was no choice but to break down Delaney’s door. Renfield had played rugby until a back injury had put him out of the game, and was easily able to smash the lock apart.
“Blimey.” Longbright stepped into the hallway and tried the overhead light, but the bulb was broken. “Someone’s had a real go at this place.”
The apartment had been ransacked. Progressing from room to room, the detectives were shocked by the scale of the destruction. Every sofa cushion, mattress and seat had been slashed open and picked apart, every cupboard emptied and its shelves removed, every stick of furniture disjointed. A shelf contained books on the history of King’s Cross, but every copy had been tipped down and torn apart. The carpets had been pried up and the floorboards examined, and some of the bathroom tiles had been removed. In the main bedroom even the wall radiator had been taken off, and yet there was order here. The dissection had been carried out with elaborate care; the component parts were laid in careful rows as if they were all to be reassembled.
“Whoever did this expected Delaney to have hidden something well,” said Longbright.
“What did they expect to find inside a chair, for God’s sake?”
“Drugs? High-denomination banknotes?” Longbright suggested.
They tried the bathroom. Longbright watched as the sergeant removed the side panel of the bath and rolled under it with a torch. “No blood on any of the surfaces, but I think Delaney was murdered here.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The bath’s been cleaned by an expert, but he forgot to empty the U-bend trap. Hang on.” Renfield rooted about. “There’s a piece of shredded paper towel inside, looks like it’s absorbed blood. I can’t see it clearly but I can smell it.”
He slid back out covered in dust balls, and tapped the side of his thick nose. “Never lets me down, this. Banbury might be able to fish whatever it is out without it breaking apart, but I shouldn’t think he’ll be able to perform much useful analysis on it.” He set the drain trap to one side for bagging. “The killer didn’t cut Delaney’s head off here. That would have emptied blood all over the apartment. This is just a small amount.”
In the kitchen, Longbright pulled a folded newspaper from the cascaded spice pots and sugar bags on the counter. It was a copy of the
She went through the ransacked jackets and jeans in the bedroom wardrobe, and found an Oyster tube pass tucked inside a plastic sleeve. “Hey, technology we can deal with,” said Renfield, bagging it. The card would show when and at which station it was last used. “There’s more.” He dug into the jacket and produced an employee photocard.
“You sure this bloke’s involved with organised crime?” asked Longbright.
“Why?”
She examined the laminated square. The head shot showed an innocuous, pleasant-faced shaven-headed man in his early thirties. There was a softness in his eyes that somehow suggested he was a husband and father. “Delaney just doesn’t look the type to me. He’s got a kid, a little girl. There’s a picture of her in the bedroom.”
Renfield snorted. “You can’t be sure who’s a villain these days. Says he works at a painting and decorating company in Highbury.”
“Let’s go and talk to the downstairs neighbour,” Longbright suggested.
¦
“I can’t tell you anything about him because I don’t know anything,” said Mrs Mbele as she tried to claw her young son back from the precipitous drop of the stairs. “He was here before me, friendly enough but silent as the grave. You’re lucky to get two words out of him. A bit of a loner. Divorced.”
“Did you ever see him throw a moody, keep bad company, get drunk?” asked Longbright, thinking of the D&D charge.
“No, a bit wobbly a couple of times coming up the front steps late but nothing to give you trouble. These floorboards creak and you can hear everything that goes on overhead, so it’s good to have someone nice and quiet here. Why? Has something happened?”
“When did you last see him?” asked Renfield.
“About two weeks ago.”
“Exactly two weeks? Morning or afternoon? Think for a moment, please. This is important.”
“I think it was the Monday morning before last.”
“Coming in or going out?”
“Going out. I suppose he was going to work, ‘cause he always left early during the week. We stayed at my sister’s that night so I didn’t see him again.”
“How was he?”
“Same as always. Smiled and gave my boy a little wave, went out the front door. I never encouraged him to be friendly.”
“Any particular reason why not?”
“He’s a bit rough, you know? What you call salt of the earth. I once heard him swearing on the phone to a mate. I didn’t want my boy picking anything up. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very nice man, works long hours, always pleasant.”
“Ever have any mates around here, did he?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Mrs Mbele picked up her scrambling son and threw him onto her shoulder like a cat. “Sorry, I’m not being very helpful, am I?”
“Any women?”
“One, quite young – not his wife, ‘cause he showed me a photo of her.”
“What did she look like?”
Mrs Mbele thought for a moment. “Ordinary,” she said finally.
“Amazing how people share the same house for years and know nothing about each other,” said Renfield as
