‘What do you mean?’
‘He was here last night, but he left before lockup time.’
‘Lockup time?’
‘Eleven at night, we padlock the door.’
‘Draconian,’ Larry said.
‘That’s what Bob wanted. It can be rough around here; best to keep the druggies out, or else they’ll be causing trouble.’
‘You mentioned Big Greg? What’s his full name?’ Larry asked. He had spoken to the others in the hostel, at least those that the uniforms had managed to get some sense out of, and none had been able to help.
‘Big Greg, that’s all any of us know. He’s here every day for a meal, sometimes spends the night here.’
‘Alcoholic?’
‘He’s a strange character,’ Katrina said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Apart from his appearance, you’d not understand why he’s on the street.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s educated, polite and speaks well, better than anyone in here, even better than Bob.’
‘Drugs?’
‘He doesn’t even smoke. Bob never knew much about him, though they used to talk occasionally. Big Greg would help out here sometimes, although he could smell. I doubt if he had taken a shower for a long time.’
‘I thought Bob Robertson was a stickler for hygiene,’ Larry said.
‘If they were staying the night. If it was just a meal, he’d turn a blind eye. And besides, Big Greg would help out the others on the street: read their letters if they ever received any, advise them on how to deal with welfare, even arranged for one of them to be admitted to the hospital for a hernia operation.’
‘I thought Bob did that.’
‘He did, but Big Greg could do it better.’
‘Where do I find him?’ Larry asked.
‘He moves around. He’ll be here for a meal later on.’
***
The team returned to Challis Street. Gordon Windsor and his crime scene team were still at the hostel, wrapping up their activities. Bob Robertson’s body had been removed and sent to Pathology. Two uniforms were stationed at the hostel awaiting the arrival of Big Greg, an important person as far as Larry Hill could see.
Whoever the mystery man was, he appeared crucial to moving the investigation forward. Katrina Ireland had given as much information as she could, but she had been inside at the time when Robertson had died, and according to Windsor, a significant amount of force had been required to wield the pole that had crushed the dead man’s skull. Windsor, as always, made his preliminary evaluation at the crime scene, although the Homicide team knew that if he made a statement, it was invariably validated later by Pathology.
‘We need to go through what we have so far,’ Isaac said. As the senior member in the office, he was also the senior investigating officer. For him this meant dealing with DCS Goddard, which he did not cherish, organising the team, which he enjoyed, and dealing with the paperwork, an activity that left him cold.
He regretted that his seniority confined him to the office more often than he liked, and he wanted nothing more than to be out there with Larry Hill, his DI, probing here, asking there, attempting to unravel the fiction from the fact.
‘No one saw anything,’ Wendy said, pleased to be back in the office. She was no longer always gasping for a cigarette after kicking the habit of a lifetime. It had been hard, and the nicotine patches had helped, although a cancer scare, eventually discovered to be a false alarm, had firmed her resolve. Wendy missed her husband, but he had suffered from dementia at the end, and Bridget, a few years younger than her, had kicked out her live-in lover after he had started to throw his weight around, expecting her to wait on him hand and foot. Purely platonic, Wendy told the plain nosy if they ever asked about her and Bridget sharing a house.
Wendy turned a blind eye if Bridget brought home a man, but it was not frequent, and there was certainly never a man in his underwear sitting across from her at the breakfast table. Sometimes, Wendy would hear her friend and her paramour in the room two doors down from her bedroom, and sometimes regretted that she did not feel the passion, but it was not a big issue. Wendy knew that a cigarette would have been preferable to a sweaty man anyway, not that that option was available either.
And besides, she wanted to stay with the police force, and it was becoming harder to pass the medicals. Apart from arthritis, her breathing was laboured due to insufficient lung capacity, the effect of forty cigarettes a day for nearly thirty years. She could feel that there had been an improvement in the six months since she had finally kicked the habit, and each day without fail she’d be out of the house at six in the morning for a walk around the block, no more than twenty minutes, but it was helping. However, with another murder, six in the morning would indicate the time to leave for the office. Isaac, their DCI, always preferred an early meeting to plan the day’s activities, and this time, a friend of his had died.
She knew that the man would be upset by Robertson’s death, not that he’d show it, but he was a sentimental man, a man she admired greatly. She remembered when they had first met, fifteen years previously, when she had been newly transferred to Challis Street from a police station to the north of London, and back then he had been in uniform, the same as her. Even then, he had been a good-looking man: tall, dark and handsome the apt description. Many times, she and Bridget had joked about his love life, and how they wished it was them on his arm instead of the invariably attractive female. They had enjoyed those nights out together, joking, romanticising, getting
