the waist, or wearing tight T-shirts.
Apart from the offensive decor, there was nothing overtly suspicious. A slower look and she realized the sheet was rumpled, pillows were scattered about. She stared. One person wouldn’t mess up a bed that much, surely? On the bedside cabinet was a champagne bottle turned upside down in a silver ice bucket, a single cut-crystal flute beside it.
When she went back downstairs, Rex told her the air-conditioning was set at maximum. Alison was wearing plastic gloves; she held up a clear zip bag with a silver-plated infuser in it.
“Damn,” Amanda grunted. “Okay, call the scene-of-crime team, and forensic. Let’s find out exactly what happened here. And tell the uniform division we’ll need help to cordon off the area.”
Forty minutes later, Denzil Osborne drove up in the forensic team’s white van. Alone. Amanda always found Denzil immensely reassuring. It was probably the phlegmatic way the forensic officer treated crime scenes when he arrived. Nothing ever fazed him.
“Where’s the scene-of-crime team?” she asked as soon as he eased his huge frame out of the van.
“Vernon says he wants hard evidence there’s been a crime before he’ll authorize that kind of expense.”
Amanda felt her cheeks reddening. All those orders she’d snapped out in front of Alison were making her look stupid now, empty wishes showing where the true authority in the police force lay. England’s police had got rid of the PSP political officers observing their cases for ideological soundness, only for the New Conservatives to replace them all with accountants. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
“And the uniform division?”
He winked broadly. “You’ve got Rex, haven’t you?”
“Sod it,” she snarled. “Come on, this way.”
Denzil took one look at Byrne Tyler’s sprawled body and said: “Ah yes, I see why you wanted forensic now. Of course, I’m no expert, but I think he may have fallen down the stairs.”
She stuck her hands on her hips. “I want to know if he was pushed. I also want to know if he was even alive up on the balcony when it happened.”
Denzil put his case on the floor beside Tyler, and lowered his bulk down next to it, wincing as his knees creaked.
“And you should lose some weight,” she said.
“Come horizontal jogging with me-I’d lose kilos every night.”
“That’s sexual harassment.” She just managed to keep a straight face in front of Alison.
He grinned wildly. “Yes please.”
“Just tell me what happened here.”
Denzil opened his case, revealing a plethora of specialist ’ware modules. He pulled on some tight plastic gloves before selecting a sensor wand which he waved over the dead man’s face: then he stopped and peered closer. “Ah, a celebrity death. Best kind. Did you see his last?Night Squad III: Descent of Angels. Saving the world from card- carrying terrorists yet again. There was some cool helijets in that.
They had nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers; cut clean thorough buildings.”
Chuckling, Denzil resumed his scan of Tyler’s face. “Shame about the air-conditioning,” he said. “I can’t work a simple temperature assessment on him.”
“That’s what made me wonder,” Amanda said. “If he did get pushed then we won’t be able to pinpoint the time very easily.”
“Hmm. Maybe not pinpoint, but let’s try something a little more detailed.” Denzil replaced the sensor wand and took another cylinder from his case. It had a needle fifteen centimeters long protruding from one end, which Denzil slowly inserted into Tyler’s abdomen then withdrew equally carefully. “Anything else immediately suspicious?”
Alison held up the zip bag with the infuser, and another bag with vials. “We think he was infusing this.
Probably syntho.”
“Where have you been, young lady? I’ll have you know, it’s dream punch this season for the glitterati.
Couple of levels up from syntho, it’s supposed to stimulate your pleasure center and memories at the same time. Every hit a wet dream.”
“Can you walk around when you’re tripping it?” Alison asked.
“Okay, good point. They normally just crash out and drool a lot.”
“I’ll need DNA samples from the bed as well,” Amanda said. “I think he had someone up there before he died.”
Denzil gave her a curious look. “Vernon won’t give you the budget for that kind of work over. I’m just authorized for a body analysis, determine cause of death, that kind of thing.”
“Just do what you can for me, okay.”
“Okay. CID’s paying.” The cylinder with the needle bleeped, and he consulted the graphics displayed on its screen. “According to cellular decay, he died sometime on Wednesday night, between 2200 hours and 1:30.”
“That’s a big window. Is that the best you can give me?”
“I always give you my best, Amanda. That’s the preliminary, anyway. Let me get him into the lab and I can probably shave half an hour off that for you. The delay and this bloody arctic temperature doesn’t help.”
Amanda stood up and turned to Alison. “There’s some reasonable security ’ware here. See what kind of records are available for this week, especially Wednesday evening. Rex, take a full statement from Helen, and let her go. And I want this place sealed as soon as the body’s removed. We’ll get authority to run a proper site examination eventually.”
“You really think this was a murder?” Denzil asked.
“Too many things are wrong,” Amanda said. “Somebody told me once: there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
Inspector Vernon Langley was putting his jacket on when Amanda walked into his small shabby office.
He took one look at her, slumped his shoulders and groaned. “I’m due out for lunch,” he said defensively.
“I was due a scene-of-crime team,” she shot back.
“All right.” He sat back behind his desk and waved her into a spare seat. “Amanda, you know we’re severely restricted on how much we can spend on each case. Some syntho-head fell down stairs. Bag him up and notify the relatives.”
“I think he was murdered.”
Vernon grimaced. “Not the air-conditioning, please.”
“Not by itself, no. But Denzil scanned the control box. No fingerprints. It had been wiped clean with a damp kitchen cloth.”
“Means nothing. The cleaning lady could have done that on her last visit.”
“Unlikely. Vernon, you just don’t have the air-conditioning on that cold, not for days at a time. I also had Alison check the security ’ware. A car left at 23:13, Wednesday night-a Rover Ingalo registered to Claire Sullivan. It’s loaded into Church Vista Apartments security list as an approved visitor for Byrne Tyler, so the gate opens automatically for it. Alison’s mining the Home Office circuit for Sullivan now.”
Vernon scratched at his chin. “I took a look at Denzil’s preliminary file; time of death is very loose. This Sullivan woman will simply claim Tyler was alive when she left.”
“Of course she will,” Amanda said with a hint of irritation. “That doesn’t mean we don’t ask her.”
Vernon looked unhappy.
“Oh,come on, ” she exclaimed.
“All right. I’ll give you the time to interview her. But you don’t get anything else without a positive result.”
“Well, hey, thanks.”
“I’m sorry, Amanda,” he gave her a resigned smile. “Things just ain’t what they used to be around here.”
“Someone like Byrne Tyler is bound to have crime insurance coverage. We’ll get the money to investigate properly. It won’t even come out of your budget.”
Vernon’s mood darkened still further. “I’m sure he has coverage. Unlike seventy percent of the population.”
Alison had tracked down Claire Sullivan’s address, which was in Uppingham. She had also prepared quite a briefing file for Amanda, most of it mined from tabloid databases.
Amanda let the probationary detective drive to the Sullivan bungalow as she scanned the file on her cybofax. “Tyler was engaged to Tamzin Sullivan?”
