On the other side of the canal, Flyte was making her way down the darkened brick passageway from the canal into the estate. Her ankle was sending up a thump-thump of pain, and there was more rubbish underfoot which slowed her progress. Emerging from the passage, after her eyes had adjusted to the sinister tangerine glow of the security lights, she peered up at the estate. A sprawling seventies monstrosity about ten stories high, it stood on concrete stilts with one central stairway and lift shaft. Facing it, across a narrow roadway, was a row of lock-up garages stretching for some hundred metres, which would have been let to residents, for parking or to use as overflow storage.
She felt a rising sense of excitement. A chest freezer in a lock-up garage would be the perfect place to store a body for eight years without fear of discovery. Only when the estate had emptied of tenants and demolition loomed would its disposal have become urgent. She swung her beam back up the passageway; armed with a proper torch it would take less than two minutes from here to the waterfront, even dragging a body.
But which of the garages? There must be a couple of dozen and she couldn’t see any light leaking from any of the doors up ahead.
Double-checking that her phone was on silent, Flyte started out cautiously down the line of garages, hugging the half-metre that was in shade and careful to minimise the tap of her heels on the concrete underfoot. The only sound here was the distant background hum of the city that never disappeared, even in the small hours. She realised with a pang that she missed the silence of the countryside, above all, missed being able to see the stars, hidden by the ever-present corona of light that hung over the city.
In between the concrete stanchions in the gloomy undercroft to her right, she made out a jagged silhouette of domestic waste left by the previous tenants. Then her eye snagged on something even deeper in the shadows. Something white and angular. Leaving the lee of the garages for a moment, she went closer to investigate.
It looked a lot like a chest freezer.