Chapter 22

We made Peterborough in just over two hours in the Renault Scenic rental car. Alice complained that we should have gone in her Saab seeing as she had a satnav which might have made finding Jack Dawe’s address easier. I protested that we had my computer map which I’d printed off Streetmap UK and confessed to her my fear of losing my map-reading skills.

‘I think you’ve already lost it,’ she said. ‘We just turned left there when we should have gone right.’

‘You were holding the map round the wrong way.’

She giggled. ‘And I think you’re talking bollocks.’

‘No change there then.’

I turned the car round in the narrow street, and we went back past the T-junction where I had gone left instead of right. We took the next right into a no-through street of cramped, brick, two-up two-down terrace houses and cruised slowly, Alice reading off the numbers until we came to the dead end right outside the house belonging to the ex-investigator.

‘That might be useful,’ I observed. ‘As it’s at the end of the terrace, it’s got a back entrance.’

‘Surely you wouldn’t consider breaking and entering, would you?’

She said it so sincerely I thought she was serious until I noticed the slight smile on her face.

‘First of all,’ I said as I parked the car, ‘let’s see if he’s home.’

When we knocked, the bang sounded alarmingly loud in the quiet street. We waited, staring at the drab and greying net curtain in the front room window. I bent over and peered through the letter box, but all I could see was a gloomy hallway, a door on the right near the stairs, and a door at the end, presumably leading to the kitchen. I knocked again, lightly this time, because there was no way he wouldn’t have heard my first knock, and I didn’t want to alert the street to our presence.

Alice shivered. ‘It doesn’t look like anyone’s home. And it’s ominously quiet.’

‘Ain’t nobody here but us chickens,’ I sang softly.

‘What?’

‘Heard it on The Muppet Show.’

‘I almost regret asking.’

‘With my daughter when she was nine or ten.’

I saw the wistful look in Alice’s eyes, and I knew the allusion to my harmonious family life had aroused in her a memory of her tragic circumstances, reminding her of what might have been.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a look round the back.’

Halfway down the narrow side entrance was a tall gate. I tried the latch, expecting it to be bolted on the other side, but it opened, creaking on rusty hinges. We passed a back window which looked out onto the alley, which was also masked by a net curtain so dirty it was almost opaque. The back garden was mostly overgrown grass and there was a small shed at the end. As we came around the side, we saw there were two doors, one was the back entrance and the other looked like a door to an old outside privy. I rapped on the back door with my knuckles, just in case Dawe was home and asleep after a night of binge drinking. After all, his father had told me he was depressed. Depressed and scared, so who could blame him if he drank himself legless in the local pub.

Alice suggested we try the back door. I expected it to be locked but it opened, leading us into a small scullery-kitchen, containing a manky gas cooker next to an old fashioned white sink, piled high with dirty crockery, next to a wooden draining board. We had gone back in time. The house was circa 1930s and didn’t look as if it had been improved in any way since then. I wondered why the back door had been left unlocked, and saw there was an ordinary key in the lock, not a Yale type, so leaving via the back door would mean taking the key from the inside, and locking it from the outside before leaving. Either Jack Dawe was still here, or he had gone out the back door, leaving it open. Which was not what a frightened man would do.

We crept quietly up a step and into the next room, which had a hideous green-tiled fireplace with a two-bar electric fire in the grate, in front of which sat an old easy chair with wooden arms, the varnish faded, and the stuffing of the cushions frayed and torn. A hideously-patterned square Formica table stood by the window, and the matching chairs had tubular yellow metal frames and padded plastic seats, most of which were split.

‘Surely he can’t have lived here,’ Alice whispered. ‘I got the impression he was a bit of a high-flyer.’

‘Not any more.’

‘But this house, it’s - ’ She struggled to find the right words.

‘Maybe he inherited it from his granny or someone. And now he needs it as a safe house. Come on, let’s take a look around.’

There was hardly any room to move in the front room, it was crammed with junk like a second-hand shop, bursting at the seams with heavy oak furniture, ugly and cumbersome items, wartime utility mainly, with no sense of style. Stuff that had no value, except maybe if you were looking for properties for a wartime film set. It smelt damp and musty in there, and the threadbare carpet looked as if it was caked with dust.

I looked at Alice, pulled a face, then pointed upwards. Stairs creaking loudly, we climbed the short staircase to the landing. There was a bathroom just as you reached the top, the door was open revealing a chipped-enamel bath, with maroon-coloured stains, over which stood a monstrous gas heater. There were two rooms up there, and I chose the one at the front of the house, which was probably the master bedroom. As soon as I walked in and smelt the sickly odour of putrefying flesh, I knew what I would find.

His body was sprawled across the filthy bed, his head lolling at an angle, covered in a plastic bag tied tightly around the neck by a belt. I saw Alice falter and put a hand to her mouth as she gagged. The fetid room was dark, the heavy curtains closed, the only light coming from a six inch gap in the middle, throwing a sliver of light across the body. The face inside the bag was grim, bloated and hideous, a mask of horror. He wore a short sleeved shirt, and I forced myself to step closer to peer at the putrefying flesh of his arm. It didn’t look as if rigor mortis was long gone, and the decomposition was fairly recent, otherwise the stench would have been far worse. I’m no expert in these matters, but I knew enough to guess that he death occurred maybe two days ago. Bedclothes were strewn all over the floor and there was an upturned bedside table and lamp on the floor.

Alice looked as if she was about to pass out, so I opted to speak to her, forcing her to reply. ‘If you were a copper, what would you make of this?’

She swallowed hard before answering. ‘The belt around his neck looks very tight. The way the buckle’s been slotted neatly into a notch. I wouldn’t think that would have been easy to do - not as you find it harder to breathe. But then I can only guess. How can anyone know what it’s like?’

‘What else can you see?’

‘Why are the bedclothes strewn everywhere? If he killed himself he would have just laid down on the bed and done it, wouldn’t he?’

‘Of course. But it looks as if there was a struggle.’

‘But why wouldn’t... I mean, if it wasn’t suicide, why would the killer leave everything looking as if there was a struggle?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe he wasn’t trying to make it look like a suicide. Perhaps he didn’t care what the crime scene looks like. The walls in these houses must be quite thin, so he decides to use what he thinks is a quiet method of killing.’

‘But Jack Dawe made it hard for him. Put up a fight.’

‘Yes, and from what you told me, he was ex-army, so he must have been reasonably tough, even if he was out of condition. But we can only guess about what happened. The only ones who’ll get nearer the truth will be crime scene officers and forensics.’ I took a deep breath and almost gagged on the pungent stink of decaying flesh. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. There’s nothing we can do now.’

As we walked on to the landing I patted all my pockets. ‘Why is it you can never find a hankie or tissue when it’s needed.’

She took a packet of handy tissues out of her handbag and gave them to me. ‘Will these do?’

‘Thanks. It’s to wipe prints off the door handles.’

‘Yes, I think I could have worked that out for myself.’