Private London

Chapter 14

Adrian Tuttle, A tall, gangly, floppy-haired man in his late twenties, pushed the passenger door of my car shut with a bit more force than he probably intended.

It slammed closed. The sound of it echoed all along the street.

‘All right, Adrian,’ I said. ‘Take it easy. You sign on for Private, you’re on call twenty-four seven. Love life always takes second billing. It’s in your contract.’

‘What love life?’

I looked at my watch. Adrian had had to cancel a date when the call from the Met had come in, but I had no intention of missing mine.

Adrian was Private’s forensic photographer. He had his own company car waiting for him but had failed his driving test six times. His luck with the ladies was equally as spectacular. Wendy Lee, his line boss, a five-foot bundle of Chinese energy and an ex-Forensic Science Service pathologist, had called in from Holborn. Her car had broken down so I’d agreed to drive Adrian to the crime scene and meet there. I didn’t fancy his chances taking a taxi through London traffic on a Friday night. Official business meant I could put the detachable blue light on the roof of my BMW 4x4, blast the siren and cut through the commuters like a hot knife through butter.

I could have got one of my operatives to take him, but I like to go out with my agents in the field regularly. Let them know we are a team at Private. Besides, if I’d wanted to be a desk-jockey manager shuffling paper I would have joined a bank. But that night I’d told Wendy I’d swap her taxi for my car and leave them to it. Forensic examinations were definitely not on my agenda for the evening.

Ahead of us the familiar blue lights of parked police cars flashed, and yellow tape blocked the public from the crime scene that lay beyond it.

‘She could have been the one,’ continued Adrian morosely as he unzipped a large carry-case.

‘You’ll get another chance,’ I said, slapping him on the back as he stepped into his scene-of-crime overalls. ‘There’s someone for everybody, you know. Even you.’

Most people assumed that the white-suited forensic photographers and videographers seen on the TV news photographing and recording crime scenes were members of the police force. And sometimes they were – but sometimes they weren’t. The Metropolitan Police, and the other forces throughout the country, also used independent companies. Like us.

The forensic division of Private London had a contract with the Metropolitan Police, purely in the photographic area. Forensic pathologists themselves were still under the direction of the Forensic Science Service, which was an agency of the Home Office working with the police.

Adrian’s boss Wendy Lee had been a popular and highly respected pathologist at the FSS before I recruited her to head up Private’s forensic unit. Some cases required independent forensic analysis before they came to court – and the resources that Private offered Dr Lee tempted her away almost as much as the far higher salary I dangled under her nose. We gave her access to the kind of superior technology that the Met could only dream about.

The detective in charge at the scene, DI Ken Harman, nodded to me as Adrian and I walked up. We’d worked together before.

‘Dan.’

‘Ken.’

We shook hands briefly. And he held up the tape for us to cross under.

POLICE – DO NOT CROSS THE LINE

Somebody had crossed the line, though, I thought ironically as I straightened up again on the other side of it. As ever, it was the smell that hit me first.

Someone had crossed the line big time.