The Doll's House

88

It was the smell that hit you first. An overwhelming smell of damp, spiced up with bad drains and the thick smell of fried food. DC Sanderson stepped out of the mouldering living room and poked her head into the kitchen – she immediately noted that the ceiling was coated with years of grease and cigarette smoke.

The Kurdish family who lived in this sorry excuse for a flat eyed her suspiciously, saying little. Sanderson presumed they were illegal immigrants but wasn’t going to push it. They didn’t look like scammers and certainly hadn’t washed up in the land of milk and honey. She wondered if they had lived in better conditions at home, but decided against asking them.

Sanderson wasn’t here to cause them trouble – she had bigger fish to fry. For the last two hours, she and a taciturn DC Lucas had supervised a Hampshire-wide sweep of Simpson’s properties, knocking on doors, inveigling their way inside, asking questions of the suspicious occupants. The task was so vast that Sanderson and Lucas had put themselves on the frontline as well. Sanderson had offered to do their rounds together – for company and security – but Lucas had declined.

‘We can get through them quicker if we split up.’

Sanderson agreed, pretending to take her reasoning at face value. But she knew something else was going on. DC Lucas had overplayed her hand in bossing Sanderson around, claiming a superiority that never really existed. And things had changed a lot in the last day or so. DS Fortune had been largely absent, appearing distracted even when he was in the office, whereas Helen Grace seemed to be ever present, driving the investigation forward. This put Sanderson at a distinct advantage, being a long-term ally of DI Grace, and Lucas very much in the shade. If Lucas was bright she would be making strides to befriend Sanderson – perhaps even going as far as to apologize – but Sanderson suspected this was not in her lexicon. Too young and too insecure to show weakness.

So they did their rounds alone. The Kurdish family’s command of English was limited, so after a few fruitless questions, Sanderson completed her tour of the flat. There were far more people living here than was safe or probably legal – a whole extended family crammed in to four cramped rooms in conditions that could not even be described as basic. Simpson had complied with some of the legal obligations required of him as a landlord. The doors were fire doors, there were fire detectors in every room – including the bathroom, which was often skipped by cost-cutters – and the tenants did have a proper tenancy agreement. But that was the limit of the love and attention Simpson lavished on his tenants. Without exception, the flats Andrew Simpson owned or ran were hovels – there was no other word for them. Wallpaper had long since peeled off, the floorboards were increasingly exposed as the dirty carpets wore away, the light bulbs hung naked and unadorned in cheerless rooms.

Not for the first time that day Sanderson was assailed by feelings of guilt – guilt at her good fortune. She wasn’t rich, but she had a decent flat, a little car, nice clothes – all the trappings of a modern, urban lifestyle. These poor people had only poverty and degradation. She felt ashamed that they had travelled so far and found only this. But mingling with her guilt were feelings of anger too. Anger towards Andrew Simpson. Many landlords were guilty of neglect, but this was on a different level. She knew he was unpleasant, grasping and grubby – but even so Sanderson was shocked to realize that this man was prepared to treat fellow human beings as little more than animals.