Robinson Micah Seven Five

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-908600-29-5
Verlag: Inspired Quill
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 348 Seiten

'Trust ye not in a friend, put he not confidence in a guide.' - Micah, Verse 7 Chapter 5
When a sunny morning presents an unnamed corpse stuffed into a black carrier bag and dumped outside a local charity shop, Detective Inspector Jack Munday and his team scramble to piece together the man's identity. The trail leads them into the excesses of London's highly paid bankers, where a lifestyle of drugs, sex, risk-taking and flamboyant living come easily.

Doing his best to keep his messy personal life from affecting his job, Munday works to uncover the surprising past of a now-powerful cohort, whose present mission is to keep the Detective away from uncovering the uncomfortable truth behind the uncharitable murder.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Robinson, Howard

Leseproben

Chapter Four
Blue and white police incident tape ran from one street lamp around two others and back across the front of the St. Margaret’s Hospice ‘Nearly New’ shop, “all paperbacks only 50p”. It fluttered gently in the late summer breeze, the sun bouncing harshly off the white panels, projecting back a light that made it difficult to focus on the scene at hand. The early morning mist had already burned off. It was going to be another scorching day. A white screen, which had been hastily erected around the front of the shop, protected the scene from prying eyes, although a small group of mainly middle-aged women continued to huddle outside the taped area and speculate eagerly among each other in hushed undertones. A uniformed constable I vaguely recognised nodded as we reached the edge of the cordon and then waved us through. Harry parked the car haphazardly at an angle out from the curb. I pulled a pair of Ray Bans out of my inside pocket, slipped them on and focused through the polarised lenses as I climbed out. The pathologist, Dr Andrew Cook, was already at work as we manoeuvred ourselves into the confined space behind the white screens. He was balanced on his haunches, his back to us, huddled over a stack of black plastic bags, his gloved hands cradling a human head that was slumped almost lazily out of the bag nearest to him. I have known him for years and yet know nothing about him at all. He’s just one of those people that never allows you to get close. I watched in morbid fascination as he first inspected every inch of the corpse’s head, running his fingers through the hair, staring into the forced-open eyes, laying the head to one side and then the next before gently rolling the bag down to reveal the neck and the top of the naked torso. He carried out his responsibilities not only professionally and methodically but also with a relish that on occasions drove right up to the boundaries of taste and sometimes beyond. He always put it down to little more than an enthusiastic and professional pride in his work. I decided long ago to give him the benefit of the doubt, not only because I couldn’t ever muster the enthusiasm to do what he has to do in order to earn a living, but also because he’s the best in the business. He sighed a little as he stood up and removed his cream linen jacket, reflecting the fact that he had been locked in an unnatural and uncomfortable position for too long. A large oval sweat patch cast his light blue, double-cuffed shirt into a much deeper shade across the back. He shook each leg in turn and then stretched each shoulder, when there hardly looked the room to do either. He brushed the jacket down, folded it neatly and then hung it from one of the poles that supported the white screen, before climbing awkwardly into the standard-issue white overalls to be used at a crime scene like this. It was then that he noticed me for the first time. “Terrible business, Jack.” He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed multiplying beads of sweat away from his increasingly reddening brow. “Aren’t they all?” “It’ll be a while before I can tell you anything for sure.” “Usual pack-drill,” I replied. “We’ll wait until the PM’s finished if we have to, but anything you could send us on our way with would be gratefully received.” He nodded and smiled again. “I understand.” The smell of heat and death didn’t mix well and as Andy Cook returned to his haunches for a closer examination of the cadaver, I saw little point in merely watching over his shoulder. I had never rated pathology as a spectator sport. I pushed the flap of the white screen aside, my eyes readjusting again to the brilliance of the sunshine. If anything it was hotter outside than under the screen, but a different kind of heat. Inside it had been moist and humid, outside it was an airless, claustrophobic heat that latched on to any part of exposed flesh and began to sear it. I looked around. It was a pretty, quiet spot. The charity shop sat in the middle of a traditional parade: a newsagent, a small convenience store, a florist, and a sub-branch of a High Street bank. To the right, more shops followed the road as it meandered up a gentle hill; to the left it led towards leafy, affluent housing. And in front was The Green, neat and tidy, with benches beside flowerbeds for people to while the hours away by watching the world go by. I looked around and tried to lock the image away, visualising how, on a beautiful, warm, late summer’s day, someone chose a spot like this to unceremoniously dump a man’s body and leave it for others to find. Spotting the growing huddle of onlookers, an enterprising ice cream van had stopped and opened for business on the edge of The Green, a luminous poster in the rear window advertising “ice-cold drinks” at some vastly inflated price. A young uniformed constable, barely old enough to shave, seemed about to quash the man’s entrepreneurial spirit when I pulled some coins out of my pocket to exchange for a Diet Coke. I don’t know if the constable was intimidated by my rank or just had a sudden change of heart, but seeing me hand over the money stopped him short of moving the van on and resorted instead to issuing a slightly conceited warning. I smiled and winked at the van driver as the constable turned away. He just shrugged his shoulders. “Kids,” he said, “they think they know everything.” “You weren’t down here yesterday were you?” “Sorry, mate, no.” He sounded almost disappointed. “Is it a bad do?” “It’s never a good one when we’re around.” He pulled the cold can out of a rusting refrigerator before wiping it dry with a dirty white and orange towel. “Rumour says there’s a body in there.” The ice cream man filtered out change from a battered biscuit tin and laid the coins in the upturned lid to check the amount. “Rumour’s right,” I smiled, sliding the coins into my pocket without confirming that the change was correct. “Do you do this pitch often?” “Not as much as I used to. I try and hover around the bigger shopping areas mainly. Funny thing is, though, I did think of coming down here yesterday.” Hilarious, I thought. But it had been worth a shot. I turned and walked back towards the crime scene, glancing to my left at the huddle behind the tape. I raised my can in a mock toast and asked if they were “enjoying the show”. Instantly, the huddle turned in on itself, like a small animal in some act of self-preservation against the threat from an external predator. Harry Duggan came up alongside me. I offered him the Diet Coke and he took a swig. “Looks like you’re in there,” he laughed, gesturing towards the women. “Trust me, that’s the very last thing I need.” I took the can back and gestured down towards the pavement and curb. At first I don’t think Harry really knew what I was pointing at. “You know, the body had to have been moved here by at least two people, maybe more.” He waited for further explanation. I let another mouthful of Diet Coke travel south before continuing. “I mean, even if he’s not a big guy, he’s still a dead weight. That makes him hard to get rid of anyway. Plus, think about it, I stick three things in my bin bags at home and they tear or split and I’m left picking crap up off the floor in my dressing gown. They just couldn’t have pulled a bag with a thirteen stone man in it from the curb to the shop, not without tearing the bottom of the bin bag on the pavement. And that would mean risking having the body splayed out on the pavement for everyone to see.” “So he must have been carried?” “Absolutely. Now, what sort of things do people donate in these bags?” Harry warmed to the task. “Clothes, shirts, old records, paperbacks, that kind of thing.” “Right, so all stuff that you can just throw into a bag, chuck into your car and then just drop off as you’re passing.” “Guess so.” “So, it’s not going to be often that someone would donate something so heavy that it needs at least two of them to carry it from the car. Agreed?” “Agreed.” “So when you get uniform to do their house-to-house and street interviews, let’s get them asking if anyone saw people struggling with what they thought was just an extremely generous donation.” Harry wrote it down in his notebook, as if it were too difficult to remember without assistance. “Another thing. Check to see if anyone along here has got security cameras and get the films for yesterday, and see if there are any speed cameras nearby and let’s have a look at the images from those.” He nodded. My last few words were obliterated by the over-polite coughing of the young police officer with the ice-cream vendetta. “Sorry to disturb you, Inspector, but the pathologist has asked to have a word.” Cook had stripped off the overalls and was rolling his shirtsleeves back down when Harry and I re-entered the screened-off area. The sweat patch on his back had expanded round to the front of his shirt, along either side of his neck and in two large swathes under each arm. He seemed oblivious to the fact. The body was still in position, its head, neck, left shoulder, and left arm exposed. “Look, like I said earlier, there’s not too much that I can tell you until I get him back to the mortuary…” “But?” Cook crouched again and gestured for us to join him down by the body. The surgical gloves gave his fingers an unnaturally pale pallor. He gently moved the head away from us to expose uneven bruising around the...