“Sounds good to me. Just give us your credit account details, we’ll invoice you.”
Wilson’s smile was tolerant. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. We like to see first hand what our money is being spent on.”
She gave Vernon a tight you’re-kidding-me look. He smiled in retaliation. “Mike Wilson will be assigned to your team for the duration of the investigation.”
“As what?”
“I have worked on a number of police cases,” Wilson said. “I appreciate you don’t want what you regard as outside interference-”
“Bloody right I don’t.”
“-however, the facts are that I can offer immediate access to considerable specialist resources such as forensic labs and database mining, which the police have to outsource anyway. And I’m certainly happy to finance any reasonable police deployment, like the scene of crime search. That goes without question.”
“How active do you see your helpful role?”
“I only offer advice when I’m asked for it. It’s your investigation, Detective.”
Her terminal bleeped for attention. Mike Wilson and Vernon Langley watched expectantly. Without making too big a deal of it, Amanda sat behind her desk and pulled the call through. It was Denzil.
“I have good news and good news,” he said. “From your point of view anyway, if not Byrne Tyler’s.”
“What did you find?”
“Narcotic toxicology was minimal, except for a very recent infusion of Laynon. Our boy was improving his bedtime performance that night, but nothing more. But there were plenty of residual traces. He’s a regular and longtime user of several proscribed drugs. However he didn’t have enough of anything in his bloodstream to impede locomotion or cause disorientation at the time he died.”
“The champagne?”
“Minimal alcohol level, he couldn’t have drunk more than half a glass.”
“Thanks, Denzil. What else?”
“Dried saliva trails on his skin. And small scrapings of skin under two fingernails.”
“They must be from Claire.” She glanced up at Mike Wilson, raising an eyebrow. He gave a small bow.
“Run a DNA comparison for me, Denzil.”
“Yeah, I heard we got money.” His image vanished from the screen.
Wilson gave Vernon a meaningful look. “If it is the sister, the tabloid channels are going to have a feeding frenzy.”
Amanda made an effort at conversation on the drive up to Bisbrooke. It wasn’t that Wilson was unlikable; but her instinct was that he had no place on the investigation. Of course, intellectually, she appreciated his presence was due to social injustice rather than politics. External funding was a factor she would have to accept, especially in the future.
With the body gone and the air-conditioning back to normal, the apartment had lost its cheerless quality.
Two scene-of-crime officers were moving methodically through the ground floor, examining every surface with a variety of sensor wands. Rex was out in the courtyard, taking statements from the neighbors.
“What do you need to move for a prosecution?” Mike Wilson asked as they took a look at the cast-iron stairs.
“Basically, a lack of any other suspects. I expect the prosecution service will accept she changed the air- conditioning. She is a medical student, after all.”
“So you’ll interview his friends to see if anyone threatened him?”
“Friends, his agency, people he worked with. The usual. I’d love to try and track down his supplier, as well. But that would really cost you-they don’t exactly rush out of the woodwork at times like these.”
He gave a small grin. “I know.”
“Previous case?”
“Crescent insures a lot of celebrity types. Having dealt with them before, I can see why we set the premiums so high.”
“Really?” Amanda was wondering if he was going to let any gossip loose when her cybofax bleeped.
Denzil’s face appeared on the screen with an indecently malicious expression. “What?” she asked cautiously.
“The saliva is Claire’s. The skin under the fingertips is not.”
“Oh bugger,” she groaned. Even so, some part of her was glad Claire had possibly been cleared.
Although she was still convinced the girl was hiding something. “Run a match through the central criminal records at the Home Office.” She didn’t even consult Mike Wilson with that one.
“Already running,” Denzil said. “Plot getting thicker, huh?”
“Yeah, right.” She ended the call.
Wilson was looking up at the top of the stairs. “So what do you think? Skin scrape from whoever pushed him.”
“Looks that way. One last desperate grasp as he started to fall.” She walked over to the red outline of the body on the terra-cotta tiles, and turned a full circle. “So what else have we got? No sign yet of a forced entry, which implies either the security ’ware let them through or it was a professional hit and they could burn through the system without a trace.”
“Pushing someone off the top of the stairs isn’t a widely used assassination method. It’s heat-of-the-moment. Which fits.”
“Fits what?”
“Someone turned up just after Claire left. A friend, or someone he knew. He let them in. There was an argument. It would also explain the air-conditioning. If it was a professional hit, then whoever did that wouldn’t need to confuse the time of death, it wouldn’t matter to them. For some reason, our murderer still cares about messing with the time.”
“Still doesn’t fit. If it was a friend, then the security ’ware would have an admissions record. There was nobody.”
“We’d better have it checked very thoroughly, then. Get into the base management program and see if there’s any sign of tampering.”
Amanda nodded. “You have somebody who can do that?”
“Oh yes.”
“While they’re at it, make sure they enhance the surveillance picture of the Ingalo when it left, I’d like to confirm no one was inside along with Claire.”
“Fair enough. What else do you need?”
She gestured out of the window wall. “Unless it was a real professional who yomped in over the fields, the only way to get here is to drive through the village. And believe me, that’s not so easy. Bisbrooke is small, and confusing. The villagers would know all about strange cars. I want a door-to-door enquiry asking if any of them saw anything that night, any cars they didn’t recognize, as well as full interviews with the neighboring apartments.”
“That’s a lot of labor-intensive groundwork. Could we just wait and see if the DNA register comes up with anything first?”
“Okay. We need the other angle anyway. This will give us some time.”
“Other angle?”
“The motive, Mike. Personal, or financial, or professional jealousy, what-ever…We need to start the good old- fashioned process of elimination. So, you get your expert here to examine the security ’ware, and I’ll get back to the station and give Alison a hand with Tyler’s finances.”
It was late afternoon when Alison slapped a hand down on her terminal keyboard with a disgusted sigh, canceling a search program. “He doesn’t have bloody finances, you’ve got to have money for that. All Tyler has are debts.”
Which wasn’t strictly true. Amanda glanced at Tyler’s bank statement again. To think, she always worried about her monthly salary payment arriving in time to satisfy her standing orders and credit-card bill. Some people obviously operated on a higher plane. Although he owed close to quarter of a million New Sterling, the banks just kept extending his credit limit. Why he didn’t pay it off she couldn’t understand. His cashflow was more than adequate. Of course, neither she nor Alison could track down where half of the money actually came from, and in
