Death Call Page 2

  ‘Mr. Gibson, I’m Detective Dan Carroll, and this is Detective Grant. We spoke earlier on the phone.’

  ‘Of course,’ Gibson replied. ‘Now what’s all this about?’

  ‘Firstly, I wonder if you would tell us where your wife works.’

  ‘Oh my God, she’s okay isn’t she? There hasn’t been an accident or anything, has there?’

  ‘Not exactly, Mr. Gibson, I’m sure your wife is just fine.’

  ‘Look, are you going to tell me what the hell all of this is about?’

  ‘We are investigating a murder at number 14 Horseferry Road, and we are interested in hearing where you were between ten and twelve this morning.’

  ‘A murder? In my house? Who, I mean, what happened? I’ve been here all morning,’ Gibson said, trembling a little. ‘Who’s been murdered? How did they get into my house?’

  ‘That’s what we are here to establish, Mr. Gibson. You have witnesses that will confirm that you were here all morning?’ Grant asked.

  ‘Naturally,’ Gibson replied.

  ‘When did you take lunch, Mr. Gibson?’

  ‘Erm, one to two. I had lunch with a colleague. Look, who’s been murdered?’ Gibson asked, the colour now gone from his cheeks.

  ‘We haven’t positively identified the victim yet, sir.’

  ‘But it’s not my wife, right?’ said Gibson, looking ever more worried.

  ‘Has your wife got brown hair, Mr. Gibson?’

  ‘Yes, why are you asking me that?’

  ‘The woman found murdered in your house was blonde. Now, may we please have a contact number for your wife?’

  Gibson looked stunned. After all, it wasn’t every day the cops turned up at your workplace telling you that someone had been murdered in your house while you were at work. He complied with Grant’s request and scribbled down a number.

  ‘She’s a Commodities Buyer in a firm just down the road with Osborne King & Associates. She should still be at her desk.’

  ‘May I use your phone, Mr. Gibson?’ Grant inquired.

  ‘Of course,’ Gibson said, as the thought of a dead blonde woman in his house came to rest in his mind. The questions came streaming to his brain like smoke clouds from a funeral pyre.

  ‘What was the woman doing in my house? Who killed her?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘That is precisely what we are going to find out, sir. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to ask you one or two questions. Think seriously before you answer.’

  Gibson nodded.

  ‘Are you now, or have you recently been, having an affair or seeing other women?’ Carroll asked his nonplussed interviewee.

  ‘What on earth! No, I most certainly have not. I’m a happily married man....’

  ‘How long have you been married, Mr. Gibson?’

  ‘Two years. Why?’

  ‘Is this your first marriage?’

  ‘It’s my second. My first wife and I were divorced three years ago. I really don’t see what relevance all of this has, detective.’

  Grant had just gotten through to Samantha Gibson. She had been in the office all day and had lunch with a friend. She went very quiet when Grant told her the reason for the call, and where they now were. Mrs. Gibson demanded to speak to her husband, and Grant obliged, passing the receiver.

  Carroll gave Grant a look that was returned knowingly. The picture was too clean. The couple were nervous. It was obvious to Carroll, if not Grant, that the Gibson’s had absolutely nothing to do with the murder. Their surprise at the mention, and horror at the thought of a murder taking place in their house was extremely obvious. If there is one thing a trained detective knows, it’s when someone is lying. The Gibsons were as honest as they needed to be, and had more or less just proven that. Grant would continue working on Mrs. Gibson for some time, but Carroll knew it was time to move on. Whatever flaw of fate brought the dead woman to number 14 Horseferry Road would reveal itself in time, Carroll thought, as he turned to speak to Gibson.

  ‘Mr. Gibson, we’ll be leaving now. I suggest that you book yourself and your wife into a hotel for the next couple of nights. Our forensics people will be examining your house. If you need anything, there’ll be an officer on duty there. Just explain who you are and what you want. Unfortunately you won’t be allowed into the living room. Any questions?’

  ‘When do I get my house back? I can’t spend the rest of the week living in a hotel, Mr. Carroll....’

  ‘Our forensics people should be finished by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. However, we may need to have further access to your house for some time, while the investigation continues.’

  ‘In the meantime, Mr. Gibson,’ Grant added, ‘we may come back to ask you some more questions.’

  Gibson sat back slowly in his swivel chair, a neatly mixed look of relief and disgust sweeping across his face. Relief at being as far away from his house as he now was, relief at not being told he was a suspect, but perplexed disgust at the thought of a young blonde woman, somehow murdered, lying dead in his living room. The thought of spending a night or two in a hotel was a welcome one after what he had just heard.

  Grant had decided to return to the squad room and bring the case files up to date. He had invited Carroll to come along, but Carroll had other things on his mind. If the householders were at work, he thought, how did the woman, and presumably her killer, gain entry to the house? He decided to have another look.

  The constable on duty outside number fourteen knew Detective Dan Carroll by reputation, if not by experience. Everything he had heard about Carroll seemed to be exaggerated attempts to somehow give him the reputation of a complete bastard and hard man.

  Carroll thought it part of his job to insult the newer recruits in uniform. He was responsible, he thought, for giving them a taste of what rank actually meant. It had taken him time to get to the rank of Detective Sergeant, and he would use his rank as and when he felt the need. His doctrine of ‘do as I say, and not as I do’ was one that he impressed on every accepting and awe-struck young bobby. The older uniforms just ignored him – occasionally to their peril. Today though, Carroll was in more of an inquisitive mood than an aggressive one.

  Entering the house, Carroll put on his second pair of eyes. The pair that saw why things were the way they were, why things were where they were. It came naturally to him. The upturned chair in the living room suggested a slight scuffle, nothing serious. After all, everything else was still standing in the room, including some rather tacky African ornamental busts that were situated on the mantelpiece.

  Carroll remembered seeing the white, silky blouse of the victim on the living room floor. None of its buttons were missing, he thought, making his way to the bathroom. If the woman was raped, then surely her clothing would have been ripped or at least missing a few buttons? She must’ve taken the blouse off willingly, he thought, surveying the room.

  The bathroom was white. So white that it almost hurt the eyes. Two toothbrushes stood guard by the wash hand basin, along with a near-empty tube of toothpaste, that had as its companion, a couple of cheap-looking condoms in different flavours and colours. Not, Carroll thought, what you might expect to find in the bathroom of a married couple.

  Retreating down the stairs, Dan moved out to the kitchen at the rear of the house. It was an old kitchen and, by the look of the place, the Gibsons appeared to be in the middle of a restoration job. Examining the kitchen window, Carroll found several chips of paint that had come loose. It was as if the window had been forced open – though it wasn’t immediately noticeable. It would’ve been easy to force the window, he thought, looking at the near rotted wooden sash window-frame before him. This is where the killer got in, he thought, pleased with his discovery.

  Chapter 3

  Grant was interested to hear what Carroll had to say upon his return to the squad room. He was sure that the forensic science people wouldn’t have missed the things that Carroll had found. It was, after all, their job. Carroll quickly replied, saying that the pain
t chips from the window frame were still on the kitchen floor, and that the condoms were still on the bathroom sink unit. Surely the forensics people would’ve removed them if they had searched these areas already? Grant begrudgingly agreed, suggesting a quick call to the forensic science laboratory to see what, if anything, they had established.

  It was six in the evening when Grant was told in no uncertain terms that the science lab was closed for the night. There was nothing left for them to do except go their separate ways homeward.

  As Grant went to get his jacket from the back of his chair, his mobile began to ring. Pulling it out of his pocket, he hoisted the thing to his ear and listened.

  ‘Samuel? I know you’re listening. I want you to baby-sit for me tonight. Samuel? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Victoria, I can hear you,’ Grant replied, hearing his wife’s voice for the first time in nearly two weeks.

  ‘I’m going out at eight thirty, so I want you to be here by around eight, okay?’

  ‘You could’ve given me a little bit of notice, Victoria....’

  ‘Are you or are you not the father of my three children?’

  ‘You tell me. Who is it this time? Your African king, is it? Or is it your Yardie ‘gangsta’ boyfriend?’

  ‘That’s really none of your business. I’ll see who I want to see. And, by the way, you should be receiving the divorce papers in the next few days. I’ve had my solicitor working on it.’

  ‘I just can’t...’

  ‘You just can’t do anything right, can you Sam? The only thing you’re good at is that bloody job of yours. Well, you’ve made your choice, and now you’ve got to live with it. I want the papers signed, sealed and delivered this week, okay?’

  ‘Look, can’t we talk this thing through?’

  ‘I want you here at eight. I don’t want to be late getting out. We can talk about it later in the week – not that there’s anything to talk about.’

  ‘Don’t push me on this, Vicky....’

  ‘Or what? You’ll send the goon squad around to arrest me? Grow up, Sam. Now, are you going to come and see your children tonight, or do I have to hire a babysitter?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Don’t be late,’ Victoria said, hanging up.

  Six years of marriage, three children and a beautiful house. All going down the tube. Grant was, above all else, a family man. At least in his own mind. His estranged wife, Victoria, would have called the cards differently. To her, Grant was no more than an absentee father and part-time husband, always out working on some case or other with precious little time to spend with his children. Samuel could also see this aspect of himself, and he didn’t like it one bit. He had tried to change over the last few years, but the previous Christmas had been too much for him, too much for Vicky. The job, he had admitted to himself on more than one occasion, was more fulfilling than his marriage had ever been. The only thing that got to Grant was that he had three children who needed a father, and he wasn’t there for them. He’d done the best that he could for the six years they were together, even buying a house in the north London area of Holloway. It had taken him two years to get enough money together for the deposit, and for most of that time he was begging for overtime from his boss. But Victoria never understood, never appreciated his efforts. At least that was the way that he saw it.

  The times when he’d come home at twelve or one in the morning, tired from office work or sitting in an unmarked car doing a surveillance job, didn’t seem to matter anymore. Sure, he was still paying the mortgage – and rent on a flat in Dalston – but he didn’t have as much time as he wished he could have with his three kids.

  The idea of their mother stepping out on the town with other men while he was still married to her, drove him crazy. What was worse about her new ‘man-friends’ as she liked to call them, was that they were little more than boys in his eyes. Boys who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. One, a Jamaican man of around thirty, was known to Grant through his dealings with the police. He had been suspected of many things in the past, but nothing had ever been proven. Not that Grant hadn’t tried his damnedest to ensure a conviction for something. The very thought of this man, a criminal in Grant’s eyes, moving in on his family, drove him to despair.

  He had tried every trick in the book when it came to wooing back Victoria, but all were to no avail. There was nothing he could do in her eyes to make up for the past few years of neglect. The prospect of spending the rest of his life seeing his children at weekends, while another man slept in his marriage bed, was more than he could stand. What was worse was the thought of having to continue paying the mortgage on the house he had bought for them. Grant would, in effect, be paying another man’s rent while the guy screwed his wife. There was no justice when it came to relationships, he thought, driving through the rain to his flat in Dalston.

  The emptiness of the place hung over him like a guillotine waiting to fall on a condemned man. His last meal always seemed to be of the frozen variety, too. Five minutes in a microwave and PING! instant dog food waiting to scald your mouth. Grant had never really taken to cooking and was now suffering as a result.

  The absence of a vice in Grant’s life left him watching TV and reading books, where other men might have gone to the local boozer or, like many of his brothers, roll a nice fat joint of the best Jamaican weed. But drugs and drink weren’t his thing. Instead, it was frozen food and soap operas. He didn’t know which was worse; the wooden acting in the soap operas or the cardboard taste that all microwave food had. But then, it wasn’t something that he was inclined to dwell on.

  Tuesday morning, Carroll was late again and Grant was eager to get going. His blood was still boiling from the night before, having had a small run in with his wife’s Yardie boyfriend. He had driven up to the house, honked his horn, and Vicky had run around getting ready like a seventeen year old going on her first date. It was a sickening sight for Grant. It was hard to believe it was the same woman who was bitching at him on the phone earlier in the evening.

  The fingerprint people had been on to the CID squad looking for Carroll and Grant first thing on the Tuesday morning, having what they regarded as an almost positive identification of the woman found dead in Horseferry Road. The fingerprint technician, Hughie Osborne, gave her name as Joanne McCrae. He had said there was a file on computer, and that they should look it up if they wanted to know more. To that effect, he had left them her last known address, social security number and date of birth. That was all that was needed to get a good background on someone.

  When Grant received the message on his arrival, he had gone straight to the National Criminal Records’ computer terminal in the squad room, punching in the young woman’s details. Within a minute, the following details had sprung up on-screen:

  Name: Joanne McCrae

  D.O.B: 5 April 1969

  N.I. number: NY3 4BCA

  Last address: 33 Thatcher Towers, London EC2

  Convictions: Soliciting in King’s Cross area.

  Carroll arrived looking suitably hungover and parked his rear end in a chair beside Grant.

  ‘Howya Tonto!’ he smiled.

  ‘Do you think you could ever manage to get in on time?’

  ‘Whaddaya got?’ Carroll asked.

  ‘The National Identification Bureau records for our victim.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Yeah, Osborne left us a message with her details. All from a set of fingerprints. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?’ Grant said with a wry smile.

  ‘Amazing. Well, let’s see who she is then,’ Carroll said, squinting at the computer screen.

  ‘You need glasses, man.’

  ‘I need a fucking holiday. That’s what I need.’

  Carroll read down through the records, picking out her previous convictions and noting her last date of arrest. It was quite some time ago. There had been no sign of her on computer or in the eyes of the police for over a year, but she must’
ve still been on the game. There was no other explanation for her turning up naked and dead in a strange house. Carroll had had a gut instinct that she was a whore from the first moment he saw the body, but had dismissed it, as he had been taught. Gut instincts were no match for hard evidence. This time, however, his guts had been right.

  Joanne McCrae’s post mortem examination was due to take place in the afternoon down at the city morgue, but before then, Carroll wanted to find out where Joanne had been employed in the last year. It was fairly obvious that she must have been operating in the area up to the time of her death, so it should not be too difficult finding where she had been working from, he thought, turning to Grant.