“Yes, after I rang you, but his door was locked, so I came down and waited for you by the front door.”
“Do you have a key for upstairs, Ms. Siddons?” Kennedy asked.
“No. At one point in our relationship we discussed exchanging keys, but we both agreed that we preferred the extra bit of space and privacy, so we didn’t go through with the key swapping,” she replied immediately.
“Okay. I wonder, did you hear any doors shutting — either Adam’s upstairs or the downstairs front door?” Kennedy asked. Castle seemed equally interested in the answer.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Can you usually hear Mr. Adams or Mr. Branson when either of them closed their door?”
“Yes, when they’re closing them against the Yale lock, it does seem to take a little force to ensure they are securely closed.”
“And the front door?”
“Same again.”
“Did you have your radio or television on at the time of the disturbance?” Kennedy continued seamlessly. He obviously had a list of questions he wanted to get through, but his voice was so gentle it appeared everything was conversational rather than an official interview.
“No. As I said, the commotion started shortly after I arrived home. The whole thing lasted no more than five minutes.”
“Thank you, Ms. Siddons,” Kennedy offered, as he rose to his feet. “We’ll send in a WPC to be with you...”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll be okay. Darren will be home in a half-hour or so,” Judy firmly interrupted. She too rose to her feet. Castle followed suit, although his eyes didn’t once leave Ms. Siddons.
“Well, if you’re sure,” Kennedy replied, as he made his way to the door of her flat. “But I tell you what, we’ll leave a WPC for you just outside your front door — just in case you need her.”
2
A few seconds later, Kennedy and Castle were about to enter Adams’s flat.
“So, she’s obviously protecting the jealous boyfriend, then?” Castle offered confidently.
“What makes you say that, sir?”
“Well,” Castle began, carefully fingering the splintered wood on Adams’s fractured door post, “if you ask me, our boys obviously had to break down the door. That proves that it was locked from the inside, which proves that whoever closed the door would have had to slam it. As she’s already admitted herself, she can hear the door close when it’s pulled against the Yale.”
“Possibly,” Kennedy conceded, but sounding unconvinced.
“But you don’t think so?” Castle replied, quickly pushing the issue.
“It’s too early to tell.”
“But as well as lying about the door-slamming issue, don’t you think if she hadn’t been involved, surely she would have asked us if he was dead?” Castle continued.
Kennedy appeared to be considering this, the fingers of his right hand flexing slowly as he did so. Castle advanced his theory without waiting for Kennedy’s reply.
“Don’t you see, that’s it? She already knew he was dead. I thought those were very clever questions of yours about the doors — she obviously hadn’t considered you’d ask those questions, so she didn’t consider lying. If you ask me, she answered those questions truthfully, didn’t she? She and her boyfriend... Darren...” Castle paused here as if to emphasise how distasteful he considered the name, “went upstairs, murdered what’s his name...”
“Adam Adams.”
“Yes, they murdered Adam Adams. They had to slam the door forcefully and loudly after them in order for it to close properly from the outside. She returned to her flat to ring us and then lover-boy scooted off somewhere to establish an alibi.”
“Interesting, very interesting, and what do you think their motive might have been, then, sir?” Kennedy asked. They’d been hovering around outside Adams’s flat for a few minutes.
Kennedy wondered if Castle was trying to beat him at his own game; delaying, for as long as humanly possible, the examination of the corpse.
This was Kennedy’s least favourite thing in the whole world to do. After the first few minutes, when he got over the drama of loss of life, he was fine. But then, and only then, could he start to consider the corpse as evidence. To get to that point, he still had to crawl through the first few traumatic minutes (always extremely traumatic minutes) of the initial sight of a dead body.
“Well, what do you think this flat is worth, then?” Castle asked, as he confidently crossed the threshold of the apartment, viewing the hallway from floor to ceiling like an eager estate agent. “Five hundred grand? Yes? Maybe even as high as six hundred grand? That’s quite a bit of motivation right there, if you ask me. I’d lay my money that we’ll find Ms. Judy Siddons, even though she has an extremely beautiful body, has been lying to us through those equally beautiful teeth of hers. I’ll bet you she used that beautiful body of hers to charm herself into his will.”
“Hmmm,” was Kennedy’s only reply. He was growing restless and now wanted to get on with the rest of the investigation. He strongly believed that the hotter the trail, the stronger and more obvious were the clues.
“It’s all so sordid, isn’t it?” Castle continued, convinced he’d solved the case. “Why is it always the stunning women with the exquisite bodies who are mixed up in this sort of thing? I mean, it’s such a waste, isn’t it, Christy?”
“Well,” Kennedy replied, following Castle into the hallway of Adams’s flat, “let’s see what other clues we can find in here before we close the file too firmly.”
Adams’s flat was a hive of activity with the SOC officers, under the direction of Kennedy’s favourite bagman, Detective Sergeant James Irvine, professionally going about their business.
Again Castle blended into the background as Kennedy started to examine the room where Adam Adams had met his maker.
Adams was resting on his backside, his back propped up by the only clear (floor to ceiling) part of the wall in the sitting room cum study. You had to be fully in the room to see him, as he was partially hidden behind the door. His knees were bent upwards in an inverted V shape and his head and shoulders were leaning against them. His hands were outstretched on either side of him, palms facing upwards. He looked like a puppet whose operator had gone off on a coffee break.
Protruding from between his shoulder blades was the dark wooden handle of a knife; his blood-soaked white shirt a testimony to the effectiveness of the cold steel buried deep in his back. The angle of the knife in his back immediately suggested that the knife had entered the body from above.
Kennedy was sure it must just have been a trick of the subdued light, but it looked as if Adams had a gentle smile still visible on his white-grey face.
To the corpse’s left was a large orange-red sofa, heaped generously with matching cushions. Kennedy glanced along the length of the sofa and found betraying indents on the royal-blue carpeted floor, showing that the sofa had recently been moved about two feet farther away from the door and the space where the corpse rested. Next to the sofa was a chunky, square oak coffee table. Resting on the coffee table was a lamp; obviously it had fallen over in the move, the burning bulb proudly showing off the hideous brown-and-green patterned lampshade. The domino theory, triggered by the initial moving of the sofa, had resulted in one of the corners of the coffee table scraping the side of an oak rolltop desk. The desk was at ninety degrees to the sofa wall and positioned by the room’s only window.
Kennedy, hands protected with plastic gloves, examined the contents of the desktop. Centrally on the desk, and probably the last document to demand the attention of Mr. Adam Adams, was a property valuation on McGinley-and-Associates-headed paper.