He set down thebag and pulled out a large rusting crowbar. After a deep breath and afinal check to make sure that he was truly alone, he placed the crowbar in thecrevice beside the lock. Before he had even applied the slightestpressure the door creaked open, slowly but noisily.
Morton staredincredulously through the small gap that had opened up. It was never agood sign in films when a door creaked open to reveal a dark unwelcomingroom. On the plus side, he seemed to recall that it wasn’t illegal toenter a house where the door had been left open. And it wasn’t as if hewas going to steal anything. Well, maybe a little of Dunk’s flaky skinbut that was hardly the crime of the century.
He gentlypushed the door open with his foot. With a bit of daylight streaming in,it wasn’t quite the uninviting killer’s workshop that he had feared it mightbe. It was just a normal, if slightly run-down, lounge. It actuallyreminded him of Peter Coldrick’s house with its assortment of dilapidated furnitureand rubbish strewn everywhere. The only addition were the multiple copiesof The Sun and Nutz magazine, scattered liberally around theroom. It shouldn’t be hard to pick up a DNA trace of Dunk among allthis crap, Morton thought.
He reluctantly closedthe door and stood for a few moments, waiting for his eyes to adjust to thesubdued lighting. Within a couple of minutes he was able to see thattucked at the end of the lounge was a tiny kitchen. To even describe itas a kitchenette would be an over-exaggeration. A stand-alone cooker waspiled high with a variety of crockery and saucepans, their contents in variousstages of decomposition. It was book-ended by a fridge-freezer and a sinkwith another pile of dirty plates and pots. It didn’t surprise him thatDunk was a bit of a slob; it kind of went with the territory of a murderingthug.
Mortonapproached the sink and immediately recoiled at the disgusting stench. Aplague of fat blue bottles that had been contentedly feasting on a putrefied plateof mess were disturbed by his presence and began pinging around his head.
With a painedgrimace, Morton delved his hand into the abyss and pulled a wine glass from thesink. His disbelief that Dunk would even know what wine tasted like wasconfirmed by a perfect pair of rouge lip prints around the glass rim. Helooked around the room but couldn’t see anything else remotely female. Hesuspected that whoever the lips belonged to didn’t actually reside here. Whathad Guy said? That Dunk’s wife or girlfriend had once worked atCharingsby? Something along those lines. Then a thoughtoccurred to him. What if the lipstick marks belonged to OliviaWalker? He considered the implications of this as he rooted in the sink,retrieving a pint glass containing the last dregs of beer with the words‘Stella Artois’ emblazoned on the side. It had to be Dunk’s. Mortoncarefully placed the glass in his bag and moved into a short dark hallway thatfed into two rooms: a bathroom with predictably blackened, grimy grout andbroken tiles on the wall and a small simple bedroom containing a double bed, achest of drawers and small volcanoes of clothes dotted around the floor. This house was doing nothing to improve his opinion of Dungeness.
Then he noticeda large mahogany and glass gun cabinet mounted to the wall. Morton took acloser inspection. The velvet-lined case had capacity to hold four guns:only three were present. Which either meant, as he suspected all along,that Dunk had murdered Coldrick or that Dunk was currently roaming the Kentishcountryside with a – what was it Juliette had called it? – ‘regular shotgun’.
As he gazedaround the room, Morton suddenly realised that he was taking an inordinateamount of time over the simplest of tasks; he just needed to get Dunk’s DNA andget out. He didn’t need to be dawdling around like he was consideringbuying the place. He hurried over to the bed and, from the tell-taleconcave impression in the pillow scraped a few hairs and pieces of dandruffinto a plastic bag. That had to be enough of Dunk’s scalp to get aresult.
Morton took onefinal look around the room, then cautiously opened the front door. Nosign of any murderous yobs. Or bent police chiefs. Or gummyneighbours. All was still and silent in Dungeness.
Safely insidethe Mini with the doors centrally locked, Morton took a moment to breathedeeply. He’d done it. Now he needed to get to Euston in recordspeed. Dr Baumgartner’s train would be leaving for Birmingham in twohours' time.
Morton predictably had to park a millionmiles away from Euston. He might as well have parked in Croydon. Heran through the heaving station, pushing past crowds of people, desperatelyhoping that he wasn’t too late. He glanced up at the huge yellow andblack digital display which presided over the gates that led to the waitingtrains. The train for Birmingham was due to leave in three minutes. They’d arranged to meet outside WH Smith’s but Dr Baumgartner wasnowhere to be seen.
Mortondesperately flicked his head left and right, craning his neck around the hordesof people trooping through the station.
He was fastrunning out of time.
Looking back atthe time table display, he noted the platform number for the Birmingham trainand made a run for it. As he neared the ticket barriers he wondered if heshould get all Hollywood cop about it and leap over the barrier yellingsomething about him being a forensic genealogist and ‘would somebody stop thedamn train’. Not really his style. Fortunately for him, a petiteAsian lady had wedged open the disabled ticket barrier and was fixated by ayouth in absurdly tight jeans and spiked purple hair staggering towards thetrain.
Morton ran pasther, easily breaching the ticket barrier, where he caught sight of DrBaumgartner, hanging his upper torso from the nearest train door and wavingwildly.
‘DrBaumgartner!’ Morton greeted.
‘Thought youweren’t going to make it,’ he replied.
‘Here,’ Mortonsaid, thrusting his holdall into Dr Baumgartner’s
