He shook himself and reached for another handle.
135
When the door of the storeroom rattled from the outside, Dmitry froze. He was halfway through unloading a linen hamper filled with wine-and sauce-stained tablecloths and napkins. The hamper was what he wanted. A plastic tub on castors, it was plenty large enough to conceal-carry a body if he cracked a couple of the long bones to fold it inside. He didn’t think the body would object.
He waited utterly still, listening. And something in the quality of silence told him that whoever stood outside the locked door was listening too.
Dmitry relaxed slightly knowing they would tire first. He gave them nothing to sustain their interest, whoever they were.
After a moment or so he heard the grit of footsteps turning away, their muffled echo growing fainter. Another doorway, another rattle and pause. Check and move on.
Security guard maybe? Dmitry was unconcerned. He could handle the calibre of man who would work here. Especially one not high enough up the food chain to be trusted with his own set of keys. Either that or he was simply too lazy to use them.
Dmitry finished emptying the hamper, working quickly, leaving a few of the larger tablecloths in the bottom and adding some used towels from the washrooms. They would be more absorbent.
He grimaced. Damn Myshka and her temper!
In a pocket his iPhone began to sound. He dug for it, glanced at the display.
Speak of the devil . . .
“What is it?” he greeted, brusque.
Myshka showed her displeasure at his tone by a brief offended pause. “Where are you?” she demanded, matching him.
“Basement.”
“Well get back up here,” she said. “Quickly.”
He let his breath out through his nostrils. What do you think I’m doing—stopping for a cigarette break?
“I needed something to carry your—”
“Never mind that,” she growled. “The girl has found him anyway. She is with her boss—the old man. I manage to get out of there just in time. But if you hurry . . .”
Dmitry shoved the hamper away from him. “I’m on my way.”
136
It took Kelly a while to work her way down the building. Despite her words to Yana about fetching the cops—and the inevitable arrest which would follow—she had no intention of giving herself up just yet. Even allowing for shock and the obvious language barrier there were holes in the woman’s account that Kelly could have driven a bus through.
If Yana had locked herself in the bathroom as she’d claimed, where had the blood she’d tried to wash away come from? Indeed, why had she scrubbed herself clean in such an apparently methodical way if she was in shock and terrified? The woman herself appeared uninjured. And although she’d reacted to her husband’s body with apparent horror, Kelly was unconvinced by that. In her experience people lied a lot more readily than the physical evidence ever could.
In her brief examination of the private box she’d seen cast-off blood spatter across the walls and furniture. The voids and overlaps told her the beating had been prolonged and vicious. Without a more scientific analysis she could only guesstimate the point of origin but everything pointed towards the central conference table. There were enough small gouge marks and scratches on the surface to show that Warwick had probably been restrained there while he’d been worked over. It had not, she noted grimly, been a quick nor easy death.
And whatever she might say, Kelly suspected that Yana had been in the room while it had been happening.
Maybe she’d wanted to?
Maybe, she wondered with a sickened realisation, the beating had been for Yana.
She shook her head. She was allowing supposition to creep in and that was what had helped convict her six years ago.
Allardice made sure of that.
“I think you’re involved somehow, Yana,” she said out loud to an empty room, “but if you’re innocent I’ll do my damnedest to prove it.”
The question remained—who else had been in that room when Steve Warwick died? They had walked out dripping either Warwick’s blood or their own and summoned the lift at the end of the corridor.
And despite her determination to keep an open scientific mind, she couldn’t help the fear that unknown person might be Matthew Lytton. She told herself it didn’t matter but knew she was lying.
Kelly pressed all the floor buttons and held the doors open at each stop, bending to check the floor for any signs her quarry had passed that way.
By the time she reached the basement she was beginning to wonder if she’d missed it. Maybe they’d noticed the blood while they were in the lift and taken steps to stem the flow. In which case, the cast-off trail might be much less noticeable or have stopped altogether.
But as the doors slid open at the final stop she saw at once that this was not the case. If anything, the blood drops were larger and more frequent.
Compared to the luxurious decor upstairs the basement was utilitarian with no frills, lined by what looked like storerooms. The floor was painted concrete and the blood had disintegrated into satellite spatters as it hit and dispersed. Among the general stains and scuff marks ignored by the cleaning crew, it would not be obvious to the untrained eye.
She stepped out of the lift feeling a slight pang as the doors closed behind her, cutting off her escape route. The patches of blood were larger, Kelly saw, which the analytical side of her brain knew was simply down to the way it reacted to the roughened surface on which it fell. Nevertheless, her purely emotional side could not suppress a shiver.
The evidence led her to a doorway on the right. Kelly reached for the handle.
And stopped.
In the past she had worked the most horrific crime scenes but always with the knowledge that some other brave soul had been there first, cleared and secured the area. That whatever she found and documented was safe, in a way.
Now her brain raced ahead. On the other side of this door could be either another victim or a murderer. She had already been tried and convicted once. Did she really want to go leaving traces at another scene? Would anyone believe she had nothing to do with it? Her imagination rioted.
“Would you please explain to the court Miss Jacks why you decided to investigate this yourself instead of doing what any normal, sane, law-abiding person would do—staying well clear and calling the professionals?”