Death's Door

Forty-seven

When Steele collected him from his apartment building DC Griff Montell looked a different man from the one he had encountered on his arrival at the office. He was clean-shaven and well scrubbed. He had changed from the previous day’s clothes into black cords and leather jacket, worn over a white shirt that looked as if it might have been taken from the packet in which it had left Marks amp; Spencer. Only his brown-tinted sunglasses offered any hint that he might be feeling less than fresh as a daisy.

‘Do we know where Amy’s salon is?’ he asked, as he slid into the passenger seat beside the detective inspector.

‘Yes, it’s along Raeburn Place, just before you get to Edinburgh Accies’ rugby ground. There’s a big clue. It’s got “Mervyn” over the door.’

Steele found a parking place in the side-street beside the sports ground. As he had said, the hair salon was only a few yards away. As they entered they saw a girl’s back, as she bent over a customer, rubbing so vigorously at her head that Montell winced. At first he thought that she was Amy, until she stood straight and he realised that she was older and taller.

As they stood in the doorway a man came towards them, tall, slim, in his thirties and wearing a violet smock that almost reached the ground. ‘Good morning, officers,’ he said. ‘I’m Mervyn. What can I do for you?’

Steele smiled. ‘It’s that obvious, eh?’

Mervyn eyed Montell up and down. ‘You don’t look like the public-health department, that’s for sure.’

‘We’d like to see Amy Noone, please.’

‘So would I. I’ve got four clients in already, and she hasn’t turned up. I know she was upset yesterday, but I really need her.’

‘Has she called in sick?’

‘No, and that’s the bugger of it. She doesn’t seem to be at home. I called her half an hour ago, but got no answer. Her big fat boyfriend doesn’t know where she is either; I rang him too. He told me that they had a drink last night, and that it seemed to cheer her up a bit.’

‘Indeed? Well, thanks, er, Mervyn. We’ll go and check her place anyway, just in case she was in the toilet when you rang her. When we find her we’ll give her a lecture about responsibility, and advise her to get along here, pronto.’

‘Don’t be hard on her,’ said the hairdresser. ‘She’s never let me down before, and she really was in a state when she heard about Zrinka and Harry.’

‘We’ll be gentle as piglets,’ Steele promised him.

Amy Noone’s tiny apartment was in a cul-de-sac off a side-street from Comely Bank Avenue. Once it had been a garage, or even a stable, but in common with most of the buildings of its type in Edinburgh, it had been converted for human habitation. It was one floor up, but the entrance was at ground level, with a buzzer and intercom. Montell leaned on the button for a few seconds. They waited, but no sound came from the speaker grille.

‘No luck,’ the DC exclaimed. ‘Maybe she’s gone home to her mum for a day or two. Come on, Amy,’ he called out, ‘you’re holding up our investigation.’ He thumped the black door with the side of his right fist. It swung open.

‘Jesus, Griff,’ said Steele, ‘you haven’t broken the bloody lock, have you?’

Montell peered at the door frame. ‘No, boss, I haven’t; it must have been on the latch.’

‘Careless,’ the inspector murmured, ‘or. . Let’s take a look.’

A short narrow staircase, with rails on either side, rose up to the little flat. Steele led the way, opened the door to the living area, stepped inside and stopped in his tracks. ‘Aw, fuck!’ he moaned.

Amy Noone was lying on her back in the centre of the room, facing the morning sun and bathed in its light as it streamed through a big dormer window. She was naked, and her face was peaceful, as if she was in a dreamless sleep. Her dark hair, which had been in a ponytail when they had visited her the day before, was loose and neatly arranged, allowing them to see that it was streaked with honey-blonde highlights. Her arms were stretched out by her sides, palms down.

‘The bastard,’ Montell hissed. ‘This is just too much.’

Steele saw that behind the glasses his eyes were squeezed tight shut. ‘Hey,’ he said gently. ‘Hold it together.’

The DC nodded. ‘I will, boss, don’t worry. But you and Tarvil were talking to this kid only yesterday, and now look at her. Why the hell did he need to kill Amy? She wasn’t an artist.’

‘Neither was Harry.’

‘His body was hidden. Amy’s is laid out just like the other two.’

‘Yes. Now let’s stop making assumptions and get back to being professional about this. Don’t move; stay exactly where you are and look around. What do you see?’

Montell did as he had been ordered: slowly, carefully, he gazed round the room, doing his best to take in every detail. ‘I see a pink towelling dressing-gown, thrown over one of the dining chairs. There’s a T-shirt on top of it, and a pair of pants on the floor beside the gate-leg.’

‘Yes, go on.’

‘I see two mugs on the work surface, next to the sink beside the kettle, and a jar of coffee with the lid off. And a spoon. There are coffee granules spilled on the work surface.’

‘What don’t you see?’

The detective looked around the room for a second time, and then a third. ‘A bed,’ he replied eventually. ‘This is a studio apartment, she was in her night clothes at one point before she took them off, but I don’t see her bed.’

‘No,’ said Steele, ‘because it folds up into the wall, there, between those two cupboard doors. See? The legs are hinged and they tuck away too, but you can see four marks on the carpet where they stand when it’s down. She didn’t undress for this guy, Griff; probably the opposite. She dressed to let him in, and he stripped her again, after she was dead.’

‘How did he get in?’

‘He talked himself in.’

‘Or she knew him.’

‘Maybe,’ Steele conceded, ‘but if she knew him, would she have bothered to put her bed away? Take a good look at her hair; the ends are still wet. Go into the bathroom; touch nothing, but go and look.’

Montell stepped over to the studio’s only other door and opened it, then looked inside. ‘The shower’s been used today,’ he called out. ‘There’s a damp towel on the floor, and a plastic cap.’

‘Yes, now go and take a look at her T-shirt. I would, but I want to keep movement in here to a minimum: it’s a confined space.’

‘Okay.’ Steele waited. ‘There are damp patches on it.’

‘I thought there would be. Are you getting the same picture as me? Amy’s just got up. She’s had a shower, being careful to keep her hair as dry as she can. She’s a stylist: she won’t do her own hair; she and her colleagues will go to work on each other’s after the salon closes. Trust me on this: I’ve been out with a couple of hairdressers in my time, and both of them asked where my shower cap was.

‘She’s almost finished drying herself,’ the DI continued, ‘when the buzzer goes. She answers it, and the killer’s there. She lets him in, but not before she’s put on the T-shirt, her knickers and the dressing-gown, and pushed the bed back into its alcove. He talks to her for a bit. She’s just up and hasn’t had breakfast, so she asks him if he’d like a coffee. He says, “yes, please,” so she goes over to the sink, fills the kettle, and she’s spooning coffee into the two mugs when he shoots her in the back of the head. He strips her, lays her out like this and then leaves.’

‘God,’ Montell whispered, ‘it’s like we were in the room when it happened, watching it.’

‘I wish we had been,’ Steele murmured. ‘Then we could have stopped the fucker.’

‘Why’s she naked? Neither Stacey nor Zrinka were.’

‘He did them in public places. He didn’t have time.’

‘And Padstow had already seen them naked.’

Steele scratched his chin. ‘I was at both post-mortems. Stacey Gavin was a pretty girl, but her body wasn’t especially attractive. She had a thick waist and a big brown mole on her side, below her left breast. Zrinka had a figure like a model, but it was disfigured by a vivid appendectomy scar. On the other hand, Army’s flawless; she’s unmarked, and her skin’s like fine china. Maybe he has a thing about perfection. Or maybe the sod just wanted to see Army naked, to humiliate her for her open dislike of him.’

‘Wouldn’t he have been taking a hell of a risk, calling at that time of the morning? A lot of people must have been going to work. There’s a big chance he’ll have been spotted.’

‘Not as big as you think. The salon doesn’t open till ten, remember, and it’s just round the corner. He could have sat here, waited till it was quiet and then made his move.’

‘Would she have let Padstow in? She didn’t like him.’

‘That’s what she said, but you never know, that may have been loyalty to her friends.’

‘Let’s go back to the why, sir. Why kill Amy? What reason could there have been?’

‘The most obvious one is that she would have been a key witness in any trial. She was the only person who could have stood in the witness box, pointed to Padstow and identified him as the guy who was chucked by both of the female victims, then followed into Zrinka’s affections, and bed, by Harry Paul.’

‘In that case, is there anyone else who could identify him? Zrinka’s mother, for example?’

‘She never met him. They only spoke on the phone. But Russ and Doreen Gavin did. Griff, let’s back out of here, get uniforms to seal the place off, and call in Arthur Dorward and his fine-tooth combers. Once that’s under way, we need to get to South Queensferry, not just to talk to Russ Gavin but to make sure he and his wife are still in one piece. I’m going to send a car there right away, but meantime, without alarming her if I can avoid it, give her a call.’