when he had walked along the same hallway, the first detective at Billy’s house. It didn’t look much different. Memories flickered and imposed themselves on the scene. The large window looming at one end, the once-white carpet covered in dirty footprints and spilled wine stains. There was a bar on one side, with lager pumps on the granite surface and optics for spirits pinned to the wall. The television seemed to dominate the room, and there were beanbags strewn around. This was the party room. Just like last time, except that it had acquired more grime. And like last time, once the party ended, when Alice was found, everyone left.
Sheldon closed his eyes for a moment as he saw the tell-tale blue shimmer on the wall. The door that led to the pool room.
He opened his eyes and walked slowly towards it. The memories of a year earlier came faster this time. As he approached the door, the light from the pool shining through the glass, he saw his hand reaching for the handle as if he was looking through a haze, his clothes different, the sleeve of his jacket navy blue, not the grey suit he was wearing. He had gripped the chrome handle sharply, really just expecting another room, but instead he had seen Alice.
She was in the water, close to the bottom, her arms out, flaccid, distorted as he looked down on her, her hair fanned out. She reminded him instantly of his own daughter. Her hair was the same colour, her build similar. His stomach rolled as he saw that it was someone just like Hannah. Except that Alice was naked.
He opened the door again. The pool was still there. It ran the length of a brick extension, with large windows all around. There was a large tiled area at one end, with a jacuzzi. The pool was tiled in bright white, except for the six numbers that were set out large in dark blue on the bottom. Billy’s winning numbers, his life defined by six balls that rolled out of a machine one Saturday evening. It didn’t look quite as clean though. The jacuzzi was empty and there were some broken tiles along one side of the pool.
The gentle shimmer of the water transfixed Sheldon as he thought once more about Alice.
Alice Kenyon had been a nineteen-year-old economics student, part of a group of young women with high prospects, but like most young people, they wanted to enjoy themselves. Billy Privett’s parties had become the talk of the area, with private security paid to keep out the uninvited. The guests were Billy’s friends, plus any hangers- on that Billy picked up during the evening, along with any pretty young woman who wanted to have free booze and drugs.
The rumours quickly became legends, with nude pool parties, orgies in the bedrooms, and drunken stock car races in the back garden. The police were called often in relation to noise; mainly from the cars he raced and crashed in the field he owned at the back. Sheldon once heard about a young female officer who went to the house because of a noise complaint, and when she walked into the pool room, she was the only person wearing clothes. It was only her pepper spray and baton that kept it that way.
Then one night changed everything.
Someone had called the police anonymously, said that something had gone wrong at the party. Sheldon went with a young cadet. The house had been insecure; the gate unlocked, the front door open, and when they’d crept through the house, it had been deserted. There had been a clean-up though. The dishwasher had been full of glasses, and if there had been DNA on them to establish who was there, it evaporated with the steam that rushed for the ceiling as Sheldon opened it to check.
And in the pool, there had been Alice, her body just brushing the numbers etched into the tiles.
Sheldon had dived in to pull her out, but his attempts to resuscitate had been futile. Alice was dead. It wasn’t the body that had fuelled his anger though. It was how the investigation floundered that had got to him. He had started to lose sleep, waking up in the middle of the night, sweating, clutching at his chest.
He was dragged back to the present as Tracey appeared behind him.
‘It’s too warm in here,’ she said.
Sheldon agreed and nodded, his forehead moist, his shirt stuck to his chest. ‘I think it’s supposed to make everyone get naked.’
He backed out of the pool room to make his way to the stairs, edging past Christina, who was still on the bottom step, her chin resting on her hand.
Sheldon remembered which was Billy’s room. He glanced into some of the others on the way, and they were pretty much unchanged. Some were set out with soft chairs and large screens, while others were party rooms, with floor cushions and red cloth covering the window. Christina’s was different. It was tidy, with cosmetics and perfumes lined up in front of a mirror.
Billy’s room was just the same as it was a year earlier. There was a large round bed in the middle of the room, with a mirror attached to the ceiling above it, the bed covered in red silk sheets. It was a cliche of luxury, more sleaze than style. The computer was on a desk next to the bed, and when he gave the mouse a nudge, the screen came to life.
He sat down to start browsing as Tracey went through his drawers.
He went to the emails first, but as he scrolled through, he saw nothing of interest. It was mainly racist jokes circulated amongst friends and confirmations of purchases. There was nothing to help in the documents folder either, just invoices that had once been received as attachments and a few manuals for the gadgets he had around the house.
Sheldon was just about to go to the pictures folder when he heard Tracey whistle. As he turned round, she was holding a piece of paper.
‘It seems that Billy wasn’t all heart,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
Tracey showed him a piece of paper that was ragged along the edge, as if it had been torn out of a notebook, with a list of names with numbers alongside. ‘It looks like a dealer list.’
As Sheldon looked, what he saw was all too familiar, because a list of names and numbers usually meant one thing: a list of drug debts.
‘So Billy was charging for whatever people were taking on party nights,’ Sheldon said. ‘No longer the generous millionaire.’
Tracey nodded. ‘It looks that way. He might have put pressure on the wrong person.’
Sheldon sighed. ‘We’ll have so many lines of enquiries that we’ll need a road map soon.’
He turned back to the pictures folder. When he clicked on it, he saw that it was organised into party dates. He clicked on one, and it was what he expected. Men leering at the camera, drinks in their hand, some women giggling, and as Sheldon scrolled through, the women ended up naked. The men became more exuberant as the photographs progressed, the women more vacant, with the latter ones being the most graphic. It seemed that Billy was more interested in taking pictures than he was in taking part.
Sheldon scrolled backwards, wondering if Billy had got blase as the months wore on, that whatever he had removed from the computer a year earlier, when they were investigating Alice’s death, had made its way back onto it. It was just the same. There was no folder for the night of Alice’s death, or for the few weeks before then. It had made it hard to find out who had been going to Billy’s parties just before Alice died. A young woman had died, and all Billy could think of was to remove evidence.
There was a noise behind him, a slight cough. When he looked round, he saw that Christina was watching him.
She leant back against the doorjamb. ‘I’ve remembered some of the names.’
‘Tell me at the station,’ Sheldon said, and as he walked towards her, she held out her wrists mockingly, as if she was about to be arrested.
Sheldon ignored her and brushed straight past. He wasn’t in the mood for games, and there was something about Christina that troubled him, except that he couldn’t quite work out why.
Charlie’s hangover started to clear as he walked back to the office with Donia. He had been too harsh on her. She was just a kid, and he had been like her once, filled with eagerness about a legal career. It was the way his life had turned out that had killed the dream, which wasn’t her fault. And he could tell from the occasional grimace that she just wanted to sit down and take off her shoes. They looked brand new, and her heels were probably shredded. There was a time when work experience was just that, a taster. Now, the kids treated it like a job interview, and
