The backyard was a treasure trove of broken and discarded objects piled high — old bicycle frames and prams, bald tyres, twisted coat hangers, cracked radios, TVs with broken screens, rusty iron bars, empty tins and plastic containers, and even a very heavy old machine that Sean identified as a typewriter. He’d seen one on a TV costume drama not so long ago. While they had sorted through the accumulated rubbish searching for anything worth keeping, Sean had noticed that the back door of the house was slightly ajar. Sometimes they had to break down boards to get into derelict houses, but this one seemed to be inviting them across the threshold. Luke was reluctant to go in at first, but Sean called him a yellow-belly and a scaredy-cat, and that stirred him into action, though he stayed well behind Sean.
The first thing they noticed in the gloom of the ruined kitchen was the smell, which Sean later described as rather like their toilet at home when his dad had just been after a curry from the Taj Mahal. It struck Sean as odd that the sink was still piled high with dirty dishes, but then people left all sorts of rubbish behind them when they moved on to better things. And if you had to move, why bother washing all your dishes first? Sometimes squatters came in and took over, but they were parasites, his dad said. Just in case someone was there, he called out, and got nothing but dead air in return. The place was deserted. Abandoned.
It was when they reached the living room that things got really interesting. And scary. It was hard to see anything clearly at first, as the tattered curtains blocked most of the evening light, but when their eyes had adjusted, the boys were able to make out the back of a chair with wheels in the centre of the room. Sean recognised it as a mobility scooter because his Uncle Ollie used one. He said it was due to his gammy legs, but Sean’s mum said it was because he was too fat and lazy to walk anywhere.
Luke hung back and said he thought they should leave, that someone must still live there; surely no one would abandon anything as valuable as a mobility scooter? But Sean said it might be broken, for all they knew, like the stuff in the backyard.
As Luke stayed behind in the kitchen doorway, Sean advanced alone towards the scooter. It wasn’t until he got around the side that he saw it was occupied, and his heart lurched in his chest. All he could see was a slumped figure, head to one side, and two fixed eyes, staring at him. Without a word, he ran, Luke only several paces behind him, and they didn’t stop until they reached the tree-lined safety of their own street just off Elmet Hill.
Chapter 4
By the time Homicide and Major Crimes were called to number twenty-six Hollyfield Lane, the main street of the estate on the north-western edge of Eastvale, the sun was low and cast long shadows on the road. The first officers to respond — PCs John Carver and Sally Helms — had followed procedure, securing the scene and calling for paramedics to verify that the victim was, in fact, dead. It was only upon discovering that the deceased appeared to be, on the say-so of the paramedics, the victim of a drug overdose, that DI Annie Cabbot and DC Gerry Masterson ended up there. As yet, the discovery wasn’t sufficiently major for them to drag Banks away from his evening out in Gateshead. Annie had enough rank to manage the investigation as senior investigating officer for the time being, and she would report to AC Gervaise as soon as she had gathered a few more facts at the scene. Drug overdoses happened now and then, even in more rural areas like Eastvale, and were rarely cause for a major investigation once the basics had been established.
The sprawling estate of decrepit terrace houses formed a no man’s land to the west, beyond the more upmarket detached and semi-detached houses that straggled up tree-lined Elmet Hill and its tributaries towards The Heights, Eastvale’s most desirable and expensive enclave. Because the Hollyfield Estate was earmarked for development, many of the buildings were already empty, their windows broken, roofs missing slates, their inhabitants long rehoused elsewhere. Though Hollyfield hadn’t earned quite as rough a reputation as the East Side Estate, it had certainly been one of the poorest parts of town in its day, a poverty that was only thrown into relief by its proximity to its more affluent neighbours to the east.
Sean Bancroft and Luke Farrar, the ten-year-old boys who had reported finding the body, were at home with their parents, and someone would talk to them later. First of all, the police needed to examine the scene.
The smell of decay assaulted Annie before she had even got through the front door. Fortunately, the responding officers and attending paramedics had been careful and sensible enough to disturb things as little as possible, and both Annie and Gerry kept their distance as they studied the corpse. The smell didn’t come from the dead man, though; he hadn’t been dead long enough for that. It came from the house itself — neglect, unwashed dishes, damp walls, rotting food, old socks and blocked drains.
The man appeared to be in his late sixties, though it was often hard to tell with a drug addict. He had long, straggly, unwashed hair, thinning at the temples and on top, and a bushy beard stained yellow around the lips. He was slumped sideways on a mobility scooter wearing baggy corduroy trousers and a threadbare pullover. His left sleeve was rolled up almost to the shoulder, and a needle dangled from a vein at the bend of his elbow. Lucky man, Annie thought. Not so many junkies as ancient as he seemed to be had usable veins left in such an easily accessible part of their bodies. From what she could see of his arm, it was scarred from previous injections, and at one point above his wrist, the skin bulged an angry red, a sign of infection from a dirty needle. The room itself was sparsely furnished, and what there was looked as if it had been salvaged from a scrap heap. The ancient wallpaper was faded and peeling from damp where the walls joined the ceiling. Wet patches dappled the walls, throwing out of kilter the symmetry of the flower pattern.
‘Was the overhead light on when you arrived?’ Annie asked PC Carver.
‘No, ma’am. I turned it on. Had to. I could hardly see a thing.’
‘That’s OK. I just needed to know. Have you searched the house?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ PC Helms said. ‘We had a quick shufty around, at any rate. Nothing. It’s all much the same as this room. More like a squat than anything else.’
Annie nodded and gestured for Gerry to check the place out, then she turned her attention back to the body. ‘Do you know who he is?’ she asked PC Helms.
‘No, ma’am.’
‘OK. There’s not a lot more we can do until we get Doc Burns here to check him out. Did the kids say the back door was open?’
‘Yes. No signs of a break-in. Neither there nor here at the front.’
Annie squatted and peered more closely at the corpse. She noticed the edge of a worn leather wallet sticking out of his hip pocket. She was already wearing her latex gloves. ‘Take note, constables,’ she said as she reached forward carefully, grasped the wallet between her index finger and thumb and slowly pulled it from the pocket. ‘In case it ever comes up, for any reason, I’ve removed his wallet from his pocket at the scene.’
PC Carver nodded and made a note in his book.
Annie smiled up at him. ‘You never know. Sometimes these little things make all the difference. Let’s have a look.’ She carried the wallet over to the table by the front window.
Gerry came back from upstairs in time to join the three of them. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Though there’s a mattress on the floor in each of the two bedrooms, and it looks as if someone’s been sleeping on one of them recently.’
Annie started to rifle through the wallet. It was certainly bare. ‘No driving licence,’ she said. ‘And no debit or credit or loyalty cards, either.’