The house in Oswestry was worth considerably less than the one in Exeter. It was a good size, but not quite as striking as the dream house Reece had bought with Angela Corrigan. The door of the modest 1940s semi-detached opened and a young man answered. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty.
‘I’m DS Grey and this is DI Walsh,’ Imogen said, holding up her warrant card.
‘You’re here for the search? My dad has just gone down into the cellar with one of the police officers. Do you want me to get him for you?’
‘Thanks, if you can just show us the way,’ DI Walsh said.
‘Sure, just follow me.’
They walked past a police officer doing a deep scan of the walls using a hand-held Doppler radar device. Reece Corrigan had the means to make a body disappear with relative ease. The chances of him leaving the body in the house he used to live in were slim; however, it was one of those things they couldn’t ignore. The timing of him leaving the town and moving to Devon was suspicious, as though maybe time had run out for him there. Knowing what had happened to Simon Glover, they couldn’t take a chance on this. No stone would remain unturned.
They followed the young man into the cellar, where his father stood looking over the room with concern.
‘Hello, Mr Parkin. Thank you for letting us conduct this search. I am DI Walsh and this is DS Grey,’ Walsh said.
‘Anything I can do to help. My wife is on the force and so we are more than happy to assist.’
A man approached them.
‘I am DS Ali Hasan. Welcome to our corner of the world. We’ve been going at this for a couple of hours but so far nothing. If the radar doesn’t find anything then as a last effort, we will bring in the cadaver dogs. Sometimes they find things the radars don’t and vice versa.’
‘Thank you for having us,’ Imogen said before turning to Mr Parkin. ‘Is your wife here?’
‘No, she stayed in New York. We were visiting her sister over there and I didn’t think it was fair to ask her to come back when all you needed me to do was let you in. My son came back with me as well, to give his mother some alone time. She’s had this holiday planned for months and you know what a pain it is switching holiday when you’re in the police.’
‘We really appreciate this. Did you ever meet Mr Corrigan, before you bought the house off of him?’ Walsh asked.
‘I did meet him once, yes. I can’t say I liked him much.’
‘Did you meet his wife?’ Imogen asked.
‘No, I’m sorry. He showed me around the place and it was everything we were looking for. We snapped it up because of the lower asking price. My wife fell in love with the garden particularly.’
‘Did you question why they were so desperate to move out quickly?’ Imogen said.
‘It was worth more than we paid for it. He wanted a quick sale. We even knocked him down a little and he still went for it. I’m afraid we didn’t much care why he was doing it. He didn’t even seem remotely fazed. My wife wanted to push it down even more, but I thought we had tried our luck enough. We paid about thirty grand under market price and ten years ago, that was a significant markdown.’
‘Do you know if Mr Corrigan had had any work done on the place before he left?’ Imogen asked.
‘Well, this cellar hadn’t long been done. Do you really think that there’s a body here?’
Imogen shot DS Ali Hasan a look.
‘We don’t know. All we can do at this point is look. Your cooperation is definitely going to speed up the process,’ Walsh said, trying to comfort the man.
‘Will you have to dig up the foundations?’ Mr Parkin said.
‘Depends on the foundations. They start with ground-penetrating radar and then go from there. As long as it’s thin enough, the radar can usually get a pretty good read on what’s underneath. If there is any digging or drilling, you will be asked first and you will be compensated for any damage to the property. Apart from the cellar, is there anywhere else that you can think of?’ Walsh said.
‘No, I mean there is a sizeable garden out back, but it’s very well established. The garage we had converted doubled the size of the kitchen. The builders had to reinforce the foundations; they would have found something then if there was anything there, I think. Whatever you need to do, you just go ahead. I would rather we knew for sure.’
Imogen nodded to Walsh to one side, indicating she wanted to speak to him away from prying ears.
‘What do you think?’ Imogen said.
‘Sounds like Corrigan wanted to get out of here fast,’ Walsh said.
‘My thoughts exactly. Let’s hope the radar gives us something we can nail this piece of shit on,’ Imogen said.