2
The PC on the door knew who Cox was before she told him. Well, of course he did.
As she signed in, he gave her the details of the case. William Radley, sixty-eight. Ex-copper. Found dead that morning. The name rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure why.
It was a big place, a Victorian townhouse in a leafy bit of Ealing. High ceilings, she noted as she made her way through the hall. Wood floors and a staircase you could drive a Routemaster up.
‘This his place?’ she called back.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘On a police pension? Must’ve made some sound investments.’ A businesslike nod. ‘Thanks, Constable.’
A white tent was being put up in the long back garden. Cox stood for a moment in the roomy kitchen (Belfast sink, marble worktops, a set of expensive and well-used cast-iron pans) and sized up the situation. Through a rose-trellis to the left she could see the neighbours – a constipated-looking middle-aged man and a woman with steel-grey hair wrapped in a fierce bun – gawping at the scene. A few uniform were standing around, looking bored. A female sergeant was talking to a man in a well-tailored dark suit who, with a cursory assessment of their body language (her talking more, nodding a lot; him brusque, authoritative, inquiring), she judged to be a superior officer. Didn’t recognize him, though. Wasn’t CID. That rang alarm bells. MI5? GCHQ? Trouble, anyway.
He turned and saw her as she stepped out through the French windows on to the lawn. Smiled fleetingly and extended a hand. His handshake was firm and brief.
‘Sam Harrington,’ he said. ‘Ministry of Justice.’
‘DI Cox.’ She looked at him meaningfully. ‘So, to what do we owe this honour?’
Harrington laughed lightly. Not buying it, Cox thought.
‘Just a formality,’ the MoJ man said, absently smoothing a lapel. ‘Bill Radley was quite high up at the Yard. We have to make sure everything’s done by the book.’
Thanks for the vote of confidence, she thought. ‘Sure. So what’s the story?’
‘Hard to be sure at this stage, of course – but it looks a lot like suicide.’
‘Suicide?’ Then what the hell am I doing here on my bloody day off? she thought bitterly. Then the self-awareness kicked in. Come on, DI Cox, be honest – would you really rather be watching feeding time at the penguin pond right now?
She half-turned, looked up, taking in the layout of the house and garden. The back wall, thick with drab winter ivy, rose up three storeys to a shingled mansard roof. A balcony jutted from a second-floor room – a bedroom, she guessed. Must be a hell of a view from up there.
Turned back to Harrington. Something here didn’t feel quite right; something about this set-up – something she couldn’t put her finger on – was making her uneasy.
‘What’s the family situation? Next of kin?’
‘No family that we know of. Radley never married.’
Confirmed bachelor, as the newspaper obituaries used to say, with a nod and a wink.
‘Okay.’ She nodded, gestured towards Radley’s body – they’d put up the tent, and it lay under a sheet, parallel to the house, one arm flung out. There were dull burgundy blood-spots on the paving stone near the dead man’s head. ‘Shall we take a look at him?’
Harrington, thin-lipped, nodded grimly. Left it to Cox to bend down and draw back the concealing sheet.
William Radley – AC Radley, or DC Radley, or whatever he’d been at the Yard – was a slightly balding, grey-haired, middle-aged white man. No surprises there, Cox thought drily. His face, baggy and pale, was composed, perhaps slightly puzzled. Someone had closed his eyes, but hadn’t bothered to cover his modesty where the navy-blue dressing-gown had flapped open. The dead didn’t need dignity, thought Cox. Patches of purple lividity were already pooling in his buttocks and thighs. The back of his head was a pulpy, red mess, gummed to the spotted paving stone with viscous, part-congealed blood.
Looked about right for a head-first fall from three floors up, Cox thought grimly.
‘Who found him?’
‘Chap in the house opposite.’ Harrington nodded towards the bottom of the garden. ‘Heard a bang just after nine this morning, saw him lying here. Called the police.’
‘Hmm.’ Cox replaced the sheet, straightened up. Harrington, she noticed, was looking pretty green about the gills. ‘I’m going to take a look inside.’
The MoJ man nodded mutely. As she turned away, she saw him press a handkerchief to his mouth.
It was warm in the house, but you couldn’t call it cosy. She moved slowly through the kitchen and the hall, turning through the first door she came to into a dark-panelled dining room. The table and six chairs – oak, she thought – shone in the subdued lighting; the smell of furniture polish made her eyes sting.
For an older man living alone, Radley had kept the place immaculate. Every picture dust-free and straight on its hook; every book square on its shelf. The sitting room was the same. The TV and DVD remote controls might have been positioned on the coffee table with a set square. Well, he was a copper, Cox thought. Meticulous.
Back into the hall, up the wide staircase.
The first floor seemed a little more lived-in. Toothbrush and shaving things left by the bathroom basin (sink dry, she noted, shower screen too); shirts drying on a rack in the guest bedroom. A small study – computer, two filing cabinets, bookcase – was decorated with framed photographs of Radley dinner-jacketed or in full uniform, grinning beside various public figures. Home secretaries, lord chancellors, local MPs, anti-crime campaigners. In the pictures he looked engaged, genuine, his wide smile easy and unforced.
An old snap from a long-ago ACPO conference rang a bell in Cox’s mind. She’d been there – Brighton, had it been? Bournemouth? – and, now that she came to think about it, she’d met William Radley there. The memory flared brightly from somewhere in her subconscious. Only briefly, long enough to exchange a few words of small talk, but she remembered the man’s easy-going charm: ‘Call me Bill,’ he’d said, and never mind the badge of rank on his shoulder. That had been in the good years, what the papers later termed, with more than a hint of schadenfreude, her ‘meteoric rise’.
The second floor of the house was divided into two big rooms, one either side of the steep staircase. On the right, facing south, was a bare-planked artist’s studio, flooded with pale light from three tall windows. There were two large canvases set on wooden easels, one bare, the other a half-finished watercolour, a landscape – to Cox’s eye, it looked pretty good.
Radley, she thought, had had nothing to fear from retirement. His books, his paintings, his love of food and friends – he’d built himself a life, a good life, on leaving the force. Not like Dad, Cox thought bleakly. DS Colin Cox had clung on to his going-nowhere career as long as he could, and been pensioned off at sixty-five. He’d found nothing to replace policing in his life – found, in fact, that policing was his life. Nothing she or Mum could say seemed to help. It wasn’t that he wasn’t kind, that he’d stopped loving them, caring about them, both of them, and Matthew, too – it was just that he seemed to have lost his way and could never seem to get back on the right track. He’d shrunk from the world outside; settled into his chair in front of the telly and waited for it all to be done with.
Was it really a year ago? Cox thought, moving from the studio out on to the landing. A year ago that the end finally came for DS Cox (retd). Mum’d been off visiting her sister in Kent. Cox had been roused from sleep by a phone-call at 3 a.m.: her parents’ neighbours complaining about the TV blaring all through the night. Turned out he’d had a stroke; with no phone to hand – he couldn’t be doing with new-fangled nonsense like mobiles – he’d grabbed for the TV remote and squeezed the volume button until his strength gave out.
Too little, too late. His body was cold when Cox found him.
She shook her head, tried to shake away the memory, to focus, as she pushed open Radley’s bedroom door. The coldness in the room made her blink. The balcony door, of course: it was still open. The well-made maroon curtains stirred in the breeze. The duvet was thrown back, and Radley’s size 13 slippers were on the floor by the bed. Nothing out of the ordinary.
So Bill Radley just woke up this morning, got out of bed, opened the curtains and jumped out of the window?
Cox circled the unmade bed and stepped gingerly out on to the little balcony. Took a breath and looked down. Only three storeys but Christ it looked like more, down to the garden, the trembling white square of the tent – and, beneath it, the bloodied body of Bill Radley. Her head spun; she’d never been good with heights.
As she stepped back into the room, the door from the landing opened, and Harrington stepped inside. He greeted her breezily: ‘Find anything interesting?’
She replied with a non-committal shrug.
Harrington, one hand in his trouser-pocket, began poking desultorily around the room. Pulled open the drawer of the bedside table; peered into the empty tea-mug by the bed; picked up one of Radley’s slippers and ran his thumb absently over the nap.
‘You’re disturbing a crime-scene, Mr Harrington,’ Cox said sharply.
He looked up guiltily. Dropped the slipper as if it had suddenly turned white-hot.
‘Sorry. Didn’t realize it was a crime-scene.’
Cox eyed him sourly for a second.
Then she moved back to the double-glazed door that opened on to the balcony.
‘Have you been out here?’
‘Lord, no.’ Harrington laughed urbanely. ‘No head for heights, I’m afraid.’
Cox gritted her teeth.
‘Have you ever attended at a suicide? A suicide by jumping?’
‘Nope. Not really my field. I assume you have?’
‘A few, yeah. And you know what they had in common?’
‘A dead body?’
She let his facetiousness slide.
‘Exactly. That’s exactly the point. Jumpers, more than most other suicides, want to make sure. No second thoughts, no turning back. This’ – she gestured to the little balcony – ‘is what – maybe twenty feet? Hornsey Lane Bridge it isn’t. It’s not a sure thing, Mr Harrington. You’re as likely to break both your legs as be killed. Or end up in a wheelchair being fed through a tube.’
‘Could it be that, at the time of his suicide, poor Mr Radley was in no fit state mentally to carry out such calculations?’
Again Cox forced herself to ignore the faint note of mockery in Harrington’s voice.
‘It’s possible,’ she nodded. ‘But look at this place. Nothing here suggests a man who’s lost his grip on reality. Everything neat as a pin downstairs. The garden’s been well cared for. And look at his painting.’
‘Come on. Weren’t all the great painters raving madmen?’
‘This isn’t the home of a man who’s got nothing to live for,’ Cox insisted.
Harrington followed her as she made her way back downstairs.
‘I’m not jumping to any conclusions,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘But I want to at least wait until we get the forensics report before I rule out anything suspicious.’ She collared a passing constable. ‘Are forensics here yet?’
The young PC looked at her in surprise.
‘Ma’am?’
‘Forensics. You know, the guys in facemasks and white jumpsuits. Have they arrived yet? They should be here by now.’
The PC opened and shut his mouth and glanced appealingly over Cox’s shoulder. She heard Harrington clear his throat.
Oh, here we go …
‘The thing is, inspector, we decided not to bring forensics in on this one.’ Harrington, moving past her, patted the young copper on the shoulder. ‘Thank you, constable. On you go.’ Turned to Cox. His expression gave nothing away. Either he’s a hell of a poker player, Cox thought, or he’s as clueless as I am.
‘It seems pretty open-and-shut,’ he said calmly. ‘William Radley killed himself. No need to waste scarce resources and call out overstretched personnel on a –’
‘Whose decision was this?’
He shifted uncomfortably. ‘I – this was my call.’
‘I’d ask you what exactly you’re trying to achieve here, Mr Harrington,’ she said acidly. ‘But it’s clear to me that we’ve wasted enough time here already. I’m overruling you.’ Turned away before he could answer. Called back the young PC – told him to bring in a full SOCO team, ASAP.
‘And while you’re at it,’ she added, pulling out a business card and handing it to him, ‘get in touch with this guy, Don DiMacedo at Quantum Data. Don’t let him fob you off – I don’t care if he says he’s busy, tell him to call DI Cox as a matter of urgency.’
The PC hurried off. Cox lowered herself on to the bottom step. Ran a hand through her hair, blew out a breath.
‘Well, that’s me told,’ muttered Harrington, a little coldly.
He moved away, sauntering hands in pockets through to the kitchen. She heard him call to someone to fetch him a cup of coffee.
Hell, maybe it was a suicide, she thought. Maybe Bill Radley had more going on than we know. Maybe he really did just wake up today and think: That’s it, I’m done.
God knows, everyone had rough mornings – mornings when the world is just too much to handle.
Or is that just me?
She stood, smoothing her suit trousers. Whatever – she was a copper, after all. What kind of copper walks away from a dead body on the say-so of a pen-pusher from the MoJ?
And it wasn’t as though she had nothing to go on. She made her way outside, into the garden. There was someone she needed to speak to.
The uniformed sergeant to whom Harrington had been speaking was sitting on a garden bench, reading through her notes. She looked up as Cox approached. Recognized her – stowed her notebook, got to her feet.
‘Ma’am.’
‘Sergeant – Adeola, right?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘DI Cox, CID. You should know that SOCO are on their way, sergeant – let me know if our friend from Whitehall gives you any trouble. And for God’s sake, get him a pair of latex gloves and some bags for his feet.’
‘Will do, ma’am.’
‘Harrington said it was a neighbour that called in the body?’
‘That’s right, ma’am.’ Adeola snapped open her notebook. ‘A Mr Jefferies. Number 54. Reportedly saw the body and dialled 999.’
‘And asked for the police? Not an ambulance?’
‘I thought that was funny myself, ma’am. But I guess Mr Radley being who he was, Mr Jefferies thought the police ought to know.’ She shrugged. ‘People make bad decisions in emergencies.’
‘Okay. We’ll come back to that. Now – has anyone talked to the cleaner.’
A blank look.
‘What cleaner, ma’am?’
‘There’s not a speck of dust on that ground floor, sergeant. Kitchen surfaces gleaming, floors swept, wastebins emptied.’
‘Maybe he just enjoyed housework. Some retired men do.’
‘Yes, but it’s a different story upstairs. Clean enough, I suppose – but not a professional job. Mug of tea by the bed, bathroom in need of a scrub.’
‘But no one’s mentioned a cleaner, ma’am.’
‘I don’t suppose anyone’s asked. Who was first on the scene?’
‘I responded to the 999 call. But Mr Harrington was already here when I arrived.’
‘Okay. Look, I could be wrong – but have someone look through his papers, call the local agencies. I say there was someone here this morning – someone who only did half a job, because halfway through they came across Bill Radley lying in the back garden with his head caved in.’
‘Then why didn’t they phone it in? Why did they just leave?’
‘That’s what we’re going to find out, sergeant.’ She turned at the sound of footsteps: Harrington, striding towards them across the lawn. A bit pink-faced.
‘Still here, inspector?’
‘Very much so.’ She gave him a hard smile. ‘Just so you’re in the loop, Mr Harrington: I’m about to order a door-to-door, three streets in each direction. Sergeant Adeola, I want full statements – and I mean full – from anyone who’s seen or heard anything, anything at all, that might help us. Keep me posted. I’m going to have a talk with this Mr Jefferies.’
Harrington made an impatient grimace.
‘I’m sure this officer has many more important things to be dealing with,’ he said. ‘Honestly, inspector, don’t you think this is overkill for a straightforward suicide?’
‘It would be, for a straightforward suicide,’ Cox nodded. ‘Now what I need you to do, Mr Harrington, if you can, is put a blackout on this. No press, no media of any kind, nothing on or off the record – total lockdown.’
‘Look, inspector, if you’re trying to make a point –’
‘I’m not trying to make a point.’ Cox cut him off bluntly. ‘I’m telling you this isn’t suicide, straightforward or otherwise. I’m telling you we’re dealing with a murder.’