“We’ll get him,” Mike Wilson said. “It’s just a question of time now.”
“Yeah, right.” She switched on the power cell, and drove off. “Sorry to waste your time, Greg.”
“I don’t think you did,” he said cautiously. “There’s something not quite right about the crime scene.
Don’t ask what, it’s just a feeling. I just know something’s wrong there. It might come to me later; these things normally take time to recognize. Can I give you a call?”
“Please!”
“Thanks. So what’s your next step?”
“Work through his friends and acquaintances, and the girls on the crystals. See if any of them recognizes the murderer. Just a hell of a lot of datawork correlation, basically.”
Making sense out of Byrne Tyler’s twisted finances was one of Amanda’s biggest priorities. She had emphasized that often enough to Vernon and Mike Wilson, both of whom assured her of their total agreement. But there was no accountant waiting for her on Monday morning when she arrived at the station. Mike Wilson was in full apology mode, explaining that the person he had asked to be assigned to the Tyler case was finishing off another audit. “But he’ll have completed that by tomorrow at the latest.”
“You mean he’ll be here tomorrow?”
“I would assume so.” He handed her a memox crystal. “Peace offering. This came in from Tyler’s agency. It’s an index of all his professional contacts, people he’s worked with over the last eighteen months. They’ve also got records of his crankier fans.”
Amanda gave the crystal a mistrustful glance; the number of people they were going to have to interview was expanding at an exponential rate. She went into the office to see what progress Alison had made identifying the girls on the memox crystals.
It was considerable. Amanda’s eyebrows quirked several times as she ran down the list. For an ex-soap star he had an astonishing sex appeal. How he got to meet so many women in such a short time (during his engagement), and have such a success rate was beyond her. Sure he was boyishly handsome, and kept himself in top physical shape…They started to draw up an interview schedule. Most of it would have to be done over the phone; the preliminary inquiry, anyway.
Vernon called her into his office at 8:40, requesting a full briefing. He was appearing on Radio Rutland soon to explain the case to the public. The police station had been receiving a steady stream of requests from the media, which had doubled sinceStarlight ’s interview and pictures of a mourning Tamzin had appeared on the datatext channels last night.
There wasn’t much she could give him. They certainly weren’t going to announce the failure of the characteristics assembly program to find the murderer. Vernon would just have to stick to confirming the investigation team was “progressing”; that anything else at this time could prejudice the case. He departed for the studio, fidgeting with his tie and collar.
Greg Mandel called her mid-morning, and asked to have a look around the apartment again. She agreed to meet him up there, glad for the break. The women on Alison’s list that she’d called so far were uniformly apprehensive when they found out what the enquiry was about, brittle facades hiding real fear of discovery. It was a shabby process, leaving her feeling depressed and less than wholesome.
Greg’s big EMC Ranger was waiting outside Church Vista’s courtyard gates when she arrived.
“Any clue what you’re looking for yet?” she asked when they went inside.
“Sorry, no. I guess I’m just here chasing phantoms.” He tapped a finger on the rim of the glass and wood door leading out to the courtyard. “Logically, we ought to start with the point of entry. Do you have an idea where the murderer came in?”
Amanda flipped her cybofax open, and consulted the report from the scene-of-crime team. “No.
According to the security ’ware logs, the main door here was opened at 21:12 hours with a duplicate card issued by Tyler, that’s two minutes after the ’ware recorded the Ingalo driving in through the gates-which matches up with Claire’s arrival. Then it was opened again at 23:09, from the inside, when she left.”
“What’s the security system like?”
“Good quality ’ware, standard application. All the doors and windows are wired up, and the log function records every time they open and close; motion and infrared sensors, voice codeword panic mode with a satellite link to a private watchdog company. I’d be happy here.”
“Sounds foolproof.” Greg walked across the ground floor to the big window wall. Broad patio doors were set into it, to the left of the stairs. “What about this one?”
“It’s a manual lock, you can only open it from the inside. There isn’t even a catch outside.” Amanda glanced at the log again. “That was closed from 1900 hours onward.” She followed after him as he went into the kitchen, which overlooked the courtyard. All the marble worktops were clean, there was nothing out of place, no food stains, tall glass storage pots of dried pasta unopened, spice jars full; even the line of potted ferns on the windowsill were aesthetic, healthy and well-watered. It was as though the whole place had been transplanted direct from a showroom. The band of windows above the sink had two sections which could open. Both had solid manual-key security bolts. Greg didn’t even have to ask.
“They haven’t been opened for ages,” she told him. “Not since June, actually.”
There was a cloakroom next door; emerald-green ceramic tiles halfway up the walls, cool whitewashed plaster carrying on up to the ceiling. A hand basin at one end, toilet at the other with a small window just above it, four panes of fogged glass. Greg went over and looked at it. The top half of the frame was open a crack, its iron latch on the first notch. When he lifted the catch and pushed it open further the hinges creaked, protesting the movement.
“My cat couldn’t get through that,” Amanda said.
“Fat cat,” Greg replied. “What about upstairs?”
Main bedroom, the bathroom, and both guest bedrooms all had wide windows equipped with security bolts. Out of the ten which opened, the security bolts were unfastened or loose on three, leaving just the standard latch to deter burglars.
“How would they get up to them?” Amanda asked skeptically when they finished checking the last guest bedroom.
“I’ve used wallwalker pads in my army days,” Greg said. “And I’m not sure how strong those trellises outside are, maybe they’d act like a ladder.”
“Security log says they stayed closed. You want me to run forensic checks on the external wall?”
“Not particularly. If you have the technical expertise to circumvent window sensors, then you can walk straight in through the main door.”
Amanda’s cybofax bleeped. She accepted a call from Mike Wilson. The accountant definitely wouldn’t be available before Wednesday-did she want to wait, or get someone else in? One was available for Tuesday, but Wilson hadn’t worked with him before. Amanda scratched irritably at her forehead; as Crescent was paying, she wanted results quickly, and, to her, one accountant was no different from any other. She said to get one in for Tuesday morning, first thing. It didn’t matter who.
“No progress on finding a match for the murderer’s face,” Mike Wilson said. “And you won’t believe how many of Tyler’s showbiz pals have had discreet trips to the surgeon. It doesn’t help our visual comparison programs.”
She finished the call and went off to find Greg. He was downstairs again, crouching over the red body outline. “I’ve been thinking about motive,” he said. “All we’ve come up with so far is jealously.”
“The accountant’s in tomorrow-maybe we’ll find a big debtor.”
“Could be, except the kind of debt that drives someone to kill isn’t normally one you’ll find on the books.
And killing someone means you never get paid.”
She glanced around at the paintings. Tyler had spent a lot of money on them, no matter how questionable his taste. “You think they stole something?”
“We know it had to be a professional who broke in here. It could have been someone trying to reclaim a debt the hard way. Maybe the death was an accident after all. What we have is a burglar who hadn’t done enough research on his target to know Claire was making nighttime visits. I mean, they certainly kept it quiet enough. Tyler was awake when he wasn’t supposed to be.”
“Could be,” she said.
“Crescent Insurance must have a list of his paintings; it’s simple enough to check they’re all here.”
