He turned to the boy with acne, who looked very sick and seemed less excited than the others, which Strike felt indicated a level of maturity.
‘Call the police. Tell them—’
‘I said,
‘Just a moment, madam—’ Strike lowered his voice. ‘Tell them two people have been murdered and give them the add—’
‘I ain’t stayin’ if the police are comin’,’ said the boy in the WACKEN hoodie, and he set off at a jog, pushing the neighbour aside as he went.
‘Oi!’ she said, glaring after him. ‘What’s that smell?’ she added, striding closer.
‘Give the police the address,’ Strike continued, still talking to the boy with acne. ‘Then go down and wait, so you can show them up here –
This, of course, was an entirely empty threat, but it did the job; both boys shoved their phones back into their pockets.
‘I
‘There’s been an accident,’ said Strike, as the three youths headed back towards the stairs. ‘The proper authorities are being notified.’
‘But—’
Strike stepped back inside flat 39 and closed the door in the woman’s face.
No matter that he’d seen plenty of bodies in his life, decaying corpses held no attraction for Strike. Nevertheless, he pulled his coat lapel up over his face to block out the worst of the carrion smell and returned to the sitting room, determined to make the most of the ten or fifteen minutes he was likely to have before the police arrived.
Another glance at the bodies confirmed his opinion that they’d been dead for days, even though putrefaction had undoubtedly been hastened by the gas fire. Todd, he observed, had a head injury, in addition to having been knifed several times in the abdomen and neck.
Strike looked around the small, fairly bare room. The woodchip wallpaper was peeling in places. The TV was at least ten years old. A large, angled, solid crystal paperweight lay on the floor, covered with dried blood and a single grey hair. Otherwise, there was no sign of a struggle.
Strike went to check the rest of the small flat. The bathroom wasn’t overly clean, but showed no traces of blood. Nancy’s bedroom was cluttered, untidy and smelled unsavoury. The next room was crammed with junk, but the single bed, with its disarranged duvet, suggested that Todd had been sleeping there. A corner of a book was visible beneath the pillow, which Strike moved to expose the title:
A distant siren was growing steadily louder. Strike could hear voices outside: more neighbours were coming out of their flats, massing like coffin flies. Pulling his coat lapel back over his nose, Strike headed out of the flat in time to see the flashing blue light enter the dark forecourt.
Strike’s professional life had more often seen him as interrogator rather than interrogated, but in recent years he’d found himself on the uncomfortable end of a police interview far more often than he’d have liked. Admittedly, there’d been occasions when he’d been there as a victim – the previous year he and Robin had been shot at, and the year before that an explosive device had been sent to their office – but this was the third occasion on which Strike had turned up a corpse in London, and that was without taking into account the two that Robin had found. Considering the matter impersonally, he could understand why the Met might be getting touchy about what was starting to look like a predilection, rather than happenstance.
