Keira Quinn’s flat wasn’t what Wendy would’ve called luxurious. Ambassador Court was a stone’s throw from the town centre, which was about the only thing it had going for it.
The flat was small, cramped and dirty. It seemed as though Keira had done her best to keep it tidy as best she could, but the rising damp, peeling plaster and grubby decor seemed to indicate that the landlord had been less than attentive in his duties.
Aside from a decent-sized flat-screen television, Keira Quinn seemed to have lived a fairly simple and modest existence. Wendy knew that a flat in Ambassador Court would cost around four to five hundred pounds a month in the current market.
DS Steve Wing was looking into her financial affairs, but Andy Quinn had mentioned in the car on the way to the mortuary that his ex-wife didn’t have a full-time job. If Keira had been in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance — something Steve would be able to ascertain — she’d only get £73 a week, which would barely cover her rent, let alone anything else. And due to the government’s stringent restrictions on out-of-work benefits she’d have to jump through all sorts of hoops and meet eligibility targets on job applications.
Wendy looked out of the living room window at the street below. The traffic was, as usual, backed up from the town centre and the noise was audible throughout the flat. So much for peace and tranquility, she thought.
Culverhouse was busy looking through the opened mail which’d been stacked neatly on the small drop-leaf dining table. There seemed to be nothing particularly interesting; a mobile phone bill for £28.30, a letter from a local jeweller’s advertising a closing-down sale and a request for her to come and give blood next month. Wendy chuckled at the dark humour. Keira Quinn had given more than enough blood last night.
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Culverhouse said. ‘Absolutely nothing here to tell us who she was or what she was up to. No payslips, no photos, no bills lying around other than the mobile phone one.’
‘Maybe not everyone’s as disorganised as you,’ Wendy said with a smile. ‘If she lived a fairly simple life there’s no reason why she should have loads of paperwork lying around the flat. Probably enough time to keep it tidy, too, if she wasn’t working.’
‘Just seems a bit odd to me,’ Culverhouse said. He had an uncanny way of dropping a little seed of a hint into conversations, knowing full well that it would germinate in the other person’s mind and end up having to be addressed anyway, whether they liked it or not.
‘Maybe she kept it all digitally. It’s not a massive place, so maybe she just liked to keep everything tidy and minimalistic. Many people do. Anyway, if she wasn’t working, what sort of paperwork would she have? Gas, electric and water are probably all online. Mine are, as is my mobile phone bill. I think the only bill I get through the post is the council tax once a year.’
‘Yeah, but no junk mail, nothing?’
‘She might be on the Royal Mail list.’
‘That doesn’t mean a bloody thing. I’m on it and I still get half the Amazon fucking rainforest through my letterbox every week.’
Wendy chuckled inwardly, having had an unavoidable image of groups of local youths signing Culverhouse up for every imaginable piece of junk mail in existence.
The forensics team had already been to the flat to check for any signs of forced entry as well as to test for blood stains and any other signs that Keira had been killed in her flat. Everything seemed to indicate that she hadn’t been.
‘Always amazes me how tidy they leave a place, that lot,’ Culverhouse said. ‘You know, they could just say they’ve been to a scene and done their swabs and shit and no-one would be any the wiser. Makes you wonder.’
Wendy chose to ignore his comment, assuming it to be another attempt at being inflammatory.
They spent fifteen minutes looking around the flat but could find absolutely nothing of interest. That, in itself, was something of interest as it seemed that Keira Quinn lived a far simpler life than even the most minimalist of people. The flat was almost eerie — a complete lack of personal touches. It seemed to Wendy to be more like a show home than somewhere that people actually lived.
Uniformed officers had spoken to the occupants of the neighbouring flats to see if anyone remembered seeing her coming or going over the past couple of days but none of them were able to provide any information. A number of neighbours confirmed that Keira did live in the flat and that they tended to see her regularly, which put paid to the nagging doubt in Wendy’s mind that the flat didn’t even look lived in. Perhaps she was just an incredibly neat and organised person after all.
But that didn’t help them in terms of uncovering clues which could lead them towards discovering who might have wanted to kill her. Other than her mutilated body, Keira Quinn seemed to have managed to stay more or less untraceable, even in death.