Dead Of Winter (Willis/Carter #1)(6)
Ebony pushed open the first door. The room smelt musty; the walls looked clean. She worked her way down the corridor.
‘How many bedrooms you found?’ Carter called out to her after a few minutes.
‘Four up this end, Sarge, two en suite. All been slept in. They have a “lived-in” smell but someone’s gone to lengths to wash the walls.’
‘They got beds?’
‘Yes. The beds are still here. They look very clean. No mattress covers.’
‘This one hasn’t. Come and take a look.’ Ebony made her way back to where she’d left him. She crossed to stand next to him at the window overlooking the front of the house.
‘This is the biggest of the rooms, Sarge.’
‘Must be the master bedroom, Ebb. But why is there no bed in here and no curtains either?’ She followed his gaze down over the tops of the trees at the edge of the property: still dark silhouettes. The small digger had arrived and two officers were clearing a path to get it round to the back of the house. The dawn had just managed to take hold of the sky but it had a greenish hue; it was full of snow. In the distance was the glow of London.
He looked down at the floor. ‘Why is there lino in this room? And if you were going to have lino in a bedroom why would you choose blue? It’s like a dentist’s.’
‘It isn’t typical bathroom lino, it’s thicker, more expensive.’ Ebony paused. It was one of those times that she realised she knew something without knowing why. Because it meant something. It had meant something to her when the social worker gave her mother some money to furnish their council flat. That day they had walked around every cheap flooring place they could find and all she remembered was her mother’s growing disappointment. ‘We can’t afford that Ebony – not that lino anyway: it’s too expensive.’ She remembered the feeling of building anxiety: always watching her mother; always trying to keep her happy. Keep her under control.
‘There’s been a bed on here . . . you can see its imprint. A single bed – funny imprint it’s made. It’s been dragged maybe.’ He stood back to gauge the size. ‘Why in the biggest room do you put a single bed? Could be a kid’s room, Ebb?’ He looked around him. ‘But it would have to be a very tidy kid not to scuff the skirting, let alone put their hand marks on the wall.’
‘The walls have been washed, Sarge. You can still see the cloth marks. And this room doesn’t smell like the others. It doesn’t smell slept in.’
‘The smell of people gets in the carpets, in the walls. I know what you mean, Ebb. This room smells like new plastic.’
Ebony went into the en suite bathroom.
‘What’s it like in there?’ Carter called out. He knelt on the floor to measure the indentations where the bed had been.
‘It doesn’t feel like a woman’s bathroom, Sarge,’ she answered, standing in the white-tiled room. ‘It’s not pretty, just white: ultra clean.’ Ebony’s voice echoed. ‘And it doesn’t smell so much of perfume, more of mothballs, old-fashioned. The same smell as the bedroom.’ She stood looking around at the glass shelves on the walls. ‘Someone had a lot of things they needed to keep in here, off the floor – keep clean.’
Carter came to stand in the doorway. ‘Yeah . . . too clean . . . too sterile. What was that bloke’s name? The one who didn’t like germs?’
‘Howard Hughes?’
‘That’s it . . . maybe someone’s a Howard Hughes type. Everything has to be bleached and kept up away from contamination. I’m going to end up like him if I don’t watch it . . . already see the signs of it. Cabrina says it’s like living in a show home.’ He winked at Ebony. He could see by her face she didn’t know how to take him. He wondered if she ever opened up to anyone. ‘Let’s go and see if the SOCOs have finished downstairs.’
At the bottom of the stairs Sandford was packing his drill away. He glanced at them as they came level.
‘I’ll finish up here and get my initial report to you in a few hours,’ he said to Carter with a nod towards Ebony. ‘Don’t want to be long from here. There’s a lot of work still to be done.’
‘Good man,’ Carter answered.
Ebony noticed that Carter talked differently to people with posh accents. She wasn’t quite sure whether he was taking the piss or just feeling awkward. ‘We won’t be long either. We’ll finish looking around here and then we need to get back for the autopsies. Forensics might have got something by then.’
Sandford slammed his toolbox shut. ‘Maybe.’
They left Sandford to it and walked down the corridor that ran almost the length of the house. On one side was a formal dining room and a study, on the other a snug room and a second lounge. At the end of the corridor a large kitchen opened out and led to a conservatory on the left. A utility room was at the back and to the right of the kitchen, a Dutch airer hung empty from the ceiling above them, and a washing machine sat with its door open and a plastic basket on top, a strange reminder that there was normal life in Blackdown Barn. Through the utility room a cellar door was open.
Carter flicked on a switch that illuminated the stone stairs and they made their way down. The smell of damp hit Ebony as she descended. The cold chilled to the bone. Carter stopped at the bottom, a large bare space, pitch black in its corners beneath low rafters and in hidden alcoves. He gave a small two-footed jump. ‘New, solid floor. I can smell sweat, rubber in the air. Maybe they had a gym down here, Ebb.’