Never Apologise, Never Explain - James Craig [9]
‘The body’s in the kitchen,’ the techie explained. ‘Bassett’s in there too.’ Sylvester Bassett was a pathologist working out of the Charing Cross station so Carlyle knew him reasonably well. They had worked together three or four times during the last year.
‘Thanks.’ Stepping past the technicians and into the flat, Carlyle sniffed the air. There was the usual mix of cooking and people smells. There was no obvious scent of death, but that was not unusual. Death, in his experience, kept itself to itself.
The front door opened on to a hallway that ran the entire length of the apartment, leading to rooms on either side. Moving further inside, Carlyle noted a bathroom, a living room – where a big-boned WPC he didn’t recognise was babysitting some older bloke, presumably the husband – and two bedrooms. At the far end of the hall, on the right, he came to the kitchen. His first thought was that it was surprisingly large, easily twice the size of his own kitchen at home. There was a round dining table in the middle, surrounded by three chairs. Like the rest of the place, it had a wooden floor and the white tiles on the walls helped make the place feel clean and bright.
The man in the kitchen had his back turned towards him, but Carlyle instantly recognised Sylvester Bassett from his mop of curly golden hair (from this distance, you couldn’t see the grey), as much as his unfortunate dress sense which today meant a natty brown corduroy suit, pink socks and what looked like a pair of plum suede loafers. Carlyle could never understand why a middle-aged man would spend so much time and effort just to look so fey. Bassett had his head poking out of the kitchen window, which gave on to a fire escape at the back of the building. He was humming to himself and smoking a cigarette.
‘What have we got?’ Carlyle asked.
Startled, Bassett took a step backwards, banging his head on the window frame. Cursing, he rubbed his head with one hand, while stubbing his cigarette out with the other. Tossing the dog end out of the window, he turned to Carlyle and gestured at the body. It lay face down, half under the table, with a pool of dried blood surrounding the head and shoulders. Agatha Mills was – or had been – maybe 5 feet 1 or 2 inches tall, with grey hair. She was dressed in a blouse which had once been white, with a blue skirt that almost reached her ankles and a grey cardigan. ‘Smacked over the head with a blunt object,’ Bassett explained, ‘maybe a pot or a rolling pin.’ He glanced around the room. ‘Plenty of suitable things to choose from in a kitchen.’
‘Have we found the murder weapon?’ Carlyle asked.
Bassett pulled a packet of Benson & Hedges cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and started fiddling with it. ‘Not yet.’
‘Who’s the guy in the living room?’
‘That’s the husband.’ Bassett flicked open the cigarette packet’s lid with his thumb, then closed it again. ‘Mr Henry Mills. He’s in a bit of a state.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Been drinking.’
‘That’s understandable,’ Carlyle said reasonably. ‘But is he our man?’
Bassett smiled. ‘You’re the detective, Inspector.’ He finally pulled another cigarette from the packet and pushed it between his lips.
Carlyle scanned the kitchen again. Apart from the corpse and the congealing blood, everything looked perfectly shipshape. ‘Just asking your opinion.’
Bassett was now fumbling with his lighter. ‘Looks likely,’ he conceded.
Law of averages, Carlyle reckoned. Start with the most likely explanation and work outwards. Fucked-up families were what he did, after all. He took another look round. It was a well kitted-out kitchen with decent equipment: Miele and AEG machines rather than the buy-now, repair-later crap that most people usually bought. He clocked