Getting a search warrant was routine, a matter of finding a magistrate who was at home and prepared to sign the papers since it was outside court hours.
‘Do we suspect there’s evidence of an offence in there?’ Liv asked me as she filled in the form.
‘From the way Roddy wouldn’t let us into the house? Definitely.’ I sounded sure. In truth, though, my main reason for wanting to get into his house wasn’t so much recovering evidence as it was a way of reminding him that we were waiting for him to talk to us, and we weren’t going to give up until he told us everything he knew. If his housemates were inconvenienced in the process, that was a bit of extra pressure to pile on him.
‘You – you can’t do this,’ Roddy said helplessly as a search team marched into the hallway of his house carrying an array of containers for any evidence we might find. There was a theatrical element to it and I hid a smile. I’d told them to make a big entrance and they’d done me proud. ‘You can’t just come in here,’ he blustered.
‘This piece of paper says we can.’ Liv handed it to him. ‘Now I might have that sit-down, since I’ve got in here at last.’
‘I’m sorry about leaving you on the doorstep. I’m sorry about all of this.’ He looked as if he was on the verge of tears. ‘Do you have to do this? Really?’
‘We wouldn’t be here otherwise,’ I said briskly.
‘You only wanted to talk before. You didn’t say anything about searching the house.’
‘That’s right. But the circumstances have changed.’
‘What do you mean? I don’t know what happened to Paige. I don’t know anything about how she died or who killed her. You have to believe me.’
‘Mate.’ A figure appeared in the doorway behind him, a dark-haired man about the same age as Roddy, but otherwise as different as it was possible to be. He was thin, with the leanness of a keen runner, and close-cropped hair. His suit was impeccably tailored, unlike his housemate’s. His skin was sallow and his light-brown eyes were shrewd under straight black brows. ‘You don’t have to say anything, Roddy. Not a thing.’
‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced,’ I said. ‘Detective Sergeant Maeve Kerrigan.’
‘Orlando Hawkes.’ He held out a slim hand and gave me a handshake that was so firm it very nearly qualified as assault on a police officer.
‘Do you live here, Mr Hawkes? Which is your room?’
‘The big bedroom at the front.’ As he said it, footsteps overhead told me that the search team had entered his room. He grimaced. ‘Do you have to search it?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Lando, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Roddy was babbling, now, distressed. His friend stopped glowering at me for a moment.
‘It’s OK. It’ll be fine. Sit tight. This is all a game.’
‘It’s very much not a game,’ I said tightly. ‘A woman died.’
‘Nothing to do with us.’ Orlando leaned against the doorway and folded his arms, trying to look as if he was unconcerned though I felt his attention was on the movements we could hear from above us. ‘You’re wasting your time.’
‘Are you a member of the Chiron Club too?’
His eyelids flickered, a reaction he wasn’t quite quick enough to conceal. ‘I don’t need to answer your questions either.’
‘I think you just did.’ I smiled at him. ‘And where’s the third musketeer?’
‘Luke’s away.’ Roddy looked at Orlando. ‘It’s OK to tell her that, isn’t it?’
His housemate shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t say another word, mate. Let her figure it out for herself.’
‘Fortunately, I’m good at that.’ I pulled my search gloves out of my pocket and started to draw them on. ‘Thank you for your help, gentlemen.’
I’d expected the house to be both untidy and in need of a good clean, given that three men in their twenties lived there, but the living room was immaculate and so was the kitchen.
‘We have a cleaner,’ Orlando drawled when I commented on it. He was sitting at the kitchen table, watching me search, tilting his chair at a dangerous angle. ‘She pops in twice a week.’
‘She does our ironing too.’ Roddy now blushed every time I looked at him, something that I was starting to find irritating. ‘Well, mine and Lando’s. She doesn’t do Luke’s.’
‘Why not?’
‘Luke does his own cleaning and ironing.’ Orlando rolled his eyes, as if the very idea was bizarre. ‘He didn’t see the point in spending money on a cleaner. But, you know, Maggie’s got to have some dosh to send home to Poland and I don’t want to spend the weekend pushing the vacuum cleaner around so it all works out.’
Roddy made a swift movement to quell his friend, obviously uneasy about how he was speaking to me. It didn’t bother me, though. If anything, Orlando was overdoing the drawling privilege, which meant he was trying to distract me, which meant there was something in the house for me to find. I smiled at both of them sunnily and headed up the stairs to find out how the search was progressing up there.
Liv emerged on to the landing from the bedroom at the back that I knew belonged to Roddy. I glanced through the door. A signed England rugby shirt was framed on one wall and the bedclothes were Union Jack themed.
‘Nothing in bedroom one,’ she announced.
‘Nothing you wouldn’t expect to find, anyway.’
‘He’s not exactly challenging the stereotypes,’ she whispered with a grin. ‘Anyway, they’re still working through bedroom two. We haven’t started on bedroom three, the one belonging to the missing housemate.’
Bedroom three was the smallest, more of a box room than a bedroom. ‘I’ll take a look,’ I said. ‘It looks like a one-person space.’
Liv considered it. ‘You might just fit two people in there, but you’d have to be really good friends. And there definitely isn’t room for me in my current condition.’
I edged in, pushing the door open as far as it would go to make the most of the space. In fairness to self-sufficient Luke, he kept his part of the house neat and tidy, though the room was so small that even one thing out of place would have made it feel messy. There was nothing in it but a narrow wardrobe, a small chest of drawers and a single bed made up with plain white cotton bedlinen. A square mirror hung over the chest of drawers; it was the only thing that you could describe as remotely decorative. There were no pictures or posters on the walls. The only colour came from a tier of wall-mounted shelves at the foot of the bed which were loaded with books arranged by subject, and – I looked closer – further categorised in alphabetical order. So Luke was orderly in his habits and tidy, as well as frugal and absent, and favoured non-fiction over fiction.
I started with the drawers, working through them methodically and finding nothing too remarkable. Considering the single bed, he was well supplied with condoms, I thought, moving a second box of twelve aside to get at the passport underneath it. I flicked to the picture page and raised my eyebrows: floppy brown hair, blue eyes, cheekbones that could cut glass and a mouth made for trouble. He was twenty-five and not even the rigorous requirements of the passport office could hide the fact that he was outrageously handsome.
‘Too young,’ I murmured, taking one last look.
‘What did you say?’ Liv poked her head into the room.
‘Nothing.’ I waved the passport at her. ‘Taking a look at Luke.’
She twitched the passport out of my hand and frowned at it. ‘Pretty boy. Luke Gibson. You know, something about him is really familiar.’
‘Do you think so?’ But even as I said it, I was wondering if I’d seen him somewhere before. I should remember him if I’d met him, I thought; he had the sort of face that was hard to forget. I slid the passport back into its place and carried on, checking the pockets of the three suits hanging in the tiny wardrobe. He didn’t have much in the way of casual clothes and I guessed he’d packed most of them for his break. Orlando had yawned his way through telling me that Luke had had a few days off work and was visiting a sort-of girlfriend in Edinburgh, though he was due home the next day.
‘She’s rich as sin, gorgeous, absolutely filthy, and thinks he can do no wrong.’
‘She sounds lovely,’ I said sincerely. ‘So why is she only a sort-of girlfriend?’
‘Luke likes to keep his options open.’ Roddy, wide-eyed and pink as ever. He sounded reverent when he talked about Luke. Poor Roddy, plain and rich and shy, saddled with two housemates who were far more attractive and confident than him. Maybe he had wanted to impress Paige, I thought, rolling a couple of dumbbells out from under the bed with some difficulty so I could check there was nothing hiding behind them. Maybe she had coaxed him into talking out of turn, and he’d regretted it as soon as he opened his mouth. Maybe I could charm him into telling me what he’d told her, though I didn’t want to play that kind of game with him. It felt manipulative.
I was about to announce that Luke’s room was clear when it occurred to me to check behind the door. A plain backpack was squashed against the wall: black nylon, unmarked, unremarkable in every way. It was well-used, though, the material shiny in places from wear and tear. I picked it up to make sure it was empty, more out of habit than anything else. Nothing inside the main compartment. Nothing in the big pocket on the front. I unzipped the smaller pocket above it, noticing a sweet smell as I did so. Perfume, heavy on the roses. Could the bag belong to the Edinburgh girlfriend? Or someone else who didn’t mind the single bed if she was sharing it with Luke?
There was nothing in the small pocket but a few coins and a white card the size and shape of a business card. I pulled it out and glanced at it casually, then looked again, with my full attention this time. Not a business card; a loyalty card that was almost complete. Nine stamps were filled in. The tenth would secure a free coffee from Carlo’s, Royal Hill, Greenwich, a long way from where I was standing in Fulham.
I spread out an evidence bag and turned the whole backpack inside out.
‘What have you got?’ Liv peered over my shoulder.
I unzipped the small secret pocket right down at the bottom of the backpack and pulled out a credit card wrapped in paper secured with a rubber band. Scrawled across it in pen, in straggling capitals, were the words: EMERGENCY USE ONLY.
‘Whose is that?’
I snapped the rubber band off and slid the card out of its paper covering. She read the name on the front of it.
‘Paige Hargreaves. That’s her card?’
‘And her bag.’ I folded it into a second evidence bag, careful to include the one I’d flattened out in case I’d shed any trace evidence. ‘I think Mr Gibson has some explaining to do.’