COLD BATH
Caroline Cummings strode angrily up to the outside door of the small block of purpose built flats, held her key fob against the security button and pushed the door open with a controlled viciousness. She was not usually aggressive and it had taken her a lot of effort to work up this rage. Optimistically she hoped it would not be necessary: realistically she knew it might be.
Her live-in boyfriend had been Jason Walters. She had finally ditched him and wanted him out. Exactly when he had ceased to be a boyfriend and become an unwelcome freeloading guest she wasn't sure, but it was at least a week ago and seemed like much more. She stormed along the entrance and up to the second floor, took her key from her handbag and opened the flat door. She was a little earlier than usual and she had seen none of her neighbours.
Caroline had left Jason that morning with an ultimatum get out of the flat before I get home from work tonight or I¹ll call the police. She hadn¹t said anything about the drug dealing Walters had been doing, but the threat was there.
It was nearly dark. She turned on the light and looked around the flat. There was no immediate sign of her former boyfriend and she half hoped he had gone. Some of his things were around the flat, however, so it didn't look as if he'd actually moved out. She went into the kitchen and turned on the kettle to make a cup of tea. Then she heard splashing from the bathroom. The storm inside her, which had subsided a little, began to rage again. The little turd had done absolutely nothing about moving out!
Detective Inspector Millicent Hampshire glanced at her watch as she followed DS. Lucy Turner, DC Matthew Bright and the uniformed officers into the second floor flat. Jason Walters hadn't answered the door, so they'd had to break the lock. The flat was in near darkness and quite silent.
"Damn, I think he's out," Millicent said, more to herself than Lucy.
"There's bound to be traces," Lucy reassured her.
"Take a quick look around," said Millicent. "You two," she said to a couple of the uniformed men, "search the bedroom for anything to nail him with. Matthew, nip downstairs and warn the man outside to keep an eye out for Walters."
She stood looking around for a moment. The living room was generally tidy but the table caught her attention. There was nothing on it but a vase of flowers and beside that a two-foot length of white thread. Millicent picked it up and examined it.
"What the hell is it?" she asked.
"Dental floss," Lucy said. "Somebody¹s got a big mouth," she added.
Millicent thought to herself that the dining table was an odd place for dental floss. Lucy was right though - you could floss a lot of teeth with a two-foot length of the stuff. She shrugged.
"He¹s not been gone long," Lucy called from the kitchen, "The kettle¹s still warm."
There was a pause as Millicent looked around the comfortable living room. "Here," Lucy called again from direction of the kitchen, "The bathroom door's locked."
Millicent followed Lucy's voice, through the kitchen, into the hall and tried the door herself. As the sergeant had said, it was locked. Millicent put her ear to the door. She could hear the extractor fan but no other sound. She rapped on the door. There was, perhaps unsurprisingly, no answer. Hampshire examined the door. It was an ordinary lever type handle, which moved freely. That implied a simple bolt was securing the door.
"We'll have to break it down," Millicent said and put her shoulder to it.
At the third attempt the doorframe splintered and the bolt came away. Millicent stood in the doorway rubbing her shoulder. Inside the bathroom was almost total darkness, for night had fallen completely. Millicent pulled the cord and the light came on. With the light the extractor fan started up again. Jason Walters lay face down in the bath, which was three-quarters full, shoulder length mousy-blonde hair floating in the bathwater. He was obviously dead.
Millicent dipped her hand in the water. "Stone cold," she said. "Lucy, call headquarters and get the Scene of Crime team and Doctor Millard out here. I think we'd better reign in the raiding party and let the specialists go over the place."
Millicent called the uniformed men. "I think we'd better wait for the specialist scene of crime team," she said. She picked up an empty plastic dental floss container from the bathroom washbasin carefully by its corners and popped it into a plastic evidence bag.
"Water in the bath is cold," Doctor Millard said. "No rigour yet. Body temperature has followed the water temperature, but I don't think he's been dead more than an hour at the most. Let's say four forty-five to five-fifteen."
"The lights were off when we arrived," Millicent said. "The place was almost in darkness and he'd have needed lights by five-ish."
"Fits," said Millard.
"Cause of death?" Millicent asked.
"Looks to me like he drowned, There's a bruise on the side of his temple and an even bigger one on the front. Neither was serious and he probably got them falling."
"Foul play?"
"No evidence of it. Of course someone could have held his head under water or something."
"In that case," Millicent mused, "How did the killer get out?"
"Through the fan hole," Lucy suggested.
"With bathroom door bolted from the inside, I'd say a fall is more likely," Millard said to her, with a slight smile. He presumed she was joking. So did Millicent, though she could never be absolutely certain with Lucy.
The ambulance men strapped Jason Walters' body to a stretcher and maneuvered it out of the bathroom, through the kitchen and out through the living room to the stairs. Doctor Millard said his brief goodbyes and followed.
Sergeant Hawkes, camera still in hand, emerged from the bedroom as D.I. Hampshire emerged from the kitchen. Hawkes held out an evidence bag containing several packets of white powder.
"Four bags of something he shouldn't have had," Hawkes said. "I think he must have been expecting customers, because he'd just finished weighing it, by the looks of it."
"I should think the uniform bloke downstairs will scare off the clientele," remarked DC. Bright, who had wandered back upstairs.
"Go back downstairs," Millicent told him. "Get yourself across the road and out of sight. Take the other two uniformed officers with you, get the vehicles moved round the corner and have them conceal themselves too. If anyone likely turns up, you can try and hold them for questioning."
Inspector Hampshire turned back to Hawkes. "Take this dental floss dispenser for fingerprinting as well," she said.
Hawkes looked as if he might argue or question it, but said nothing as he took the evidence bag from her.
"I wonder where the flatmate is?" Lucy remarked, coming from the kitchen.
"I was wondering that," Millicent said. "According to my notes the tenancy is in the name of Caroline Cummings."
"Does she work?" asked Lucy
"For Witchmoor Council, in the Planning Department," Millicent said. "No previous record and probably unaware of Walters' connections, at least at first."
"She must have her suspicions by now," Lucy said, glancing at her watch. "Regular hours at the Council: shouldn't she be home from work by this time?"
"I'd say so," Millicent said. "I think we'll get back to the station. I'll leave one of the uniform men here to secure the place and wait for Miss Cummings. We'll get her story in due course."
It was almost eight before Millicent got a call up from the front desk to say that the officer had arrived with Caroline Cummings. Lucy had already left, so she went down alone to talk to the woman. Witchmoor Police Station was purpose built only a few years ago, so the interview rooms are a little less cold and intimidating than they would be in an older building, but they are still plain and functional.
The girl who sat waiting looked as if she had come straight off the cover of ' Black Beauty '. She was of medium height, carefully made up and with wavy hair that shone as if it had been polished. Millicent didn't think the girl had known of Jason Walters' connections before he moved in so, while she kept a fairly open mind, she was inclined to be friendly towards her.
Millicent introduced herself and sat down. "You're aware of what happened to Jason Walters?" Hampshire began.
"I know that he's dead," the girl said. Her Afro-Caribbean accent was hardly more noticeable than Millicent's own very slight one. "They told me he¹d drowned in the bath, but nobody told me any details."
"We don't have much by way of details yet ourselves," Millicent said. "There's no need to formally record this interview," she continued. "I'd like to ask a few questions and we'll need to take a statement, but we're just collecting information at the moment."
Caroline Cummings nodded. "Ask away," she said.
"What time did you leave work today?" said Millicent by way of openers.
"I work flexi-hours. I'm not exactly sure of the time I left, but it was around five. Say, between ten to and ten past."
"Where did you go from work?"
"I intended going home, which is ten or fifteen minutes walk. I went into the supermarket near the roundabout."
"Mason's?"
"Yes. I was there a little while, then I ran into a friend at the checkout and we went for a coffee."
"Who was the friend?"
"June Sinclair."
"Where did you go for a drink?"
"There¹s a pub on that roundabout, the Hen and Chickens. I had a coffee there. June had a lager."
Millicent thought it all sounded reasonable so far. "What time did you leave the pub?"
Caroline seemed unsure. "About quarter past six, I should think."
"And what did you do between six-fifteen and turning up at your flat?"
"I went to the MacDonald's across the park and had a burger."
"You weren't planning to eat with Mr. Walters?"
The girl paused. "You may as well know, though it sounds callous under the circumstances "
"Go on."
"I asked Jason several times this week to move out. This morning I told him that I'd call the police if he hadn't moved out by the time I got home tonight. I suppose I didn¹t want to go home in case he hadn't moved out." She paused and then added, "He hadn't, had he?"
"Why did you want him out?" Millicent asked.
"I didn't like his friends." Caroline inspected her flawless nails carefully. "I was almost certain he was selling drugs or something similar."
"When did you start to suspect?"
"I'm not sure. I thought the last week or two he was up to something while I was out at work. Then I discovered he was selling something for which a lot of cash changed hands. It wasn't bulky so I put two and two together."
"You didn't see the stuff he was selling?" Millicent asked.
"No. That's how I knew it was something small, or small quantities of something."
"Ganja?"
"Come on," Caroline said. "It wasn't that. Everybody uses it. He didn't keep Ganja secret."
Millicent thought through what she had heard and decided that the woman's story was generally plausible. :I shall have to verify the various things you've told me, as far as I can, and we'll need to take a formal statement," she said. "I'll need to check with Ms. Sinclair. However, I think that's all for now."
Next morning the whole department was busy with more pressing matters than the accidental death of a known dealer and pusher with a previous record so, when Doctor Millard rang Millicent had to do a double take on the case.
"Walters? Oh yes. Anything else you can tell us."
"He definitely drowned," Brian Millard said. "One of the two bangs on the head might have been sufficient to knock him out, but nowhere enough to kill him."
"Could he have knocked himself out falling over?" Millicent asked
"Very likely, considering he was alone in a locked room," Millard said sardonically.
"Well that seems to wrap it up," Millicent said.
"I don't think his demise was any great loss to humanity, from what I hear."
"My job is to assess the evidence and judge whether there's a case against somebody," Millicent said. "We're not supposed to make that kind of value judgement about victims."
"Can't help it though," said the doctor, "Even if you try to be objective."
Millicent had to agree that it was sometimes difficult. She thanked Millard for the call and rang off. Then she called forensic.
"Hampshire here," she said. "I don¹t suppose you have anything on the Walters raid yet."
"The packets contained heroin," Hawkes said. "The plastic whatnot you gave me had the other prints we found in the flat besides Walters'. The girl's probably. No sign of any prints except those two."
Millicent decided to call in on the girl on her way home. She rang the bell and was let in almost immediately by Caroline Cummings.
"I¹d just finished tea," the girl said, switching off the TV. "You'd better sit down."
"I was hoping to catch you in," Millicent said. "I came round to let you know that we're closing the case, though you might see somebody from the drugs squad hanging around for a day of two, looking out for any of Jason Walters's former customers. We'll also need you and Ms. Sinclair to sign your statements."
"You've concluded that he fell and drowned himself, then?"
"Ah," the detective said. "I don't think that's what happened at all."
"What then?"
"I think it's probably true you gave Walters the ultimatum about getting out. You left work around ten to five and came straight home. You put the kettle on and made yourself a drink and then I think you heard Walters in the bath, went in and had a row. You hit him with something hard, probably a back brush. He fell and you walked out, you probably didn't even realise he was dead until you went back a few minutes later. Then you switched out all the lights and got out of the flat."
"What about the bathroom door?"
"That was the cleverest part of all," Millicent said. "I think you lined up the bolt, wrapped a length of dental floss around it, shut the door and used the floss to pull the bolt shut."
Caroline examined her nails, as she had done in the interview room.
"It works," Millicent added. "I tried it."
"I thought you said the bath water was cold."
"I didn't mention the bath water all," Millicent said. "Not to you, anyway. I suppose you emptied out the warm water and filled the bath again with cold to make him seem to have been dead longer."
"What now?" she asked, continuing the examination of her nails.
"Nothing," Millicent said. "Firstly it's one thing to know what happened, quite another to prove it to the coronor or a jury. Secondly, Jason Walters was toe-rag with a record you shouldn't have got involved with. He's not worth the effort of trying to prove you killed him. As a matter of interest, what did you see in him?"
'He was good in bed," said Caroline ruefully.
"At least he was good at something useful," Millicent said.
"What made you suspect?"
"You made yourself a drink, tea or something. The kettle was still hot and even the empty mug was still warm. The lights were out, but the bathroom extractor fan was still on, and it only stays on for five minutes or so after the light is switched off. And you left a two-foot length of dental floss on the living room table. Nobody has a mouth that big."
"Very observant," the girl said laughing nervously.
"We must have only just missed you," Millicent said.
"I heard you on the stairs and went up a couple of floors. I waited until you were inside, then I went down again and out at the back. "
"Why did you go to all that trouble when it was an accident?" Millicent asked.
"Black girl kills white boy. I didn't know who would be investigating. I didn't know it would be a black detective and I didn't know how a magistrate would react either. I might have been remanded in custody for months and lost my job."
"Hmm," said Millicent, seeing her point. "You do realise that I'm only closing the file because I don't think I can prove my version of events. I try never to let my prejudices influence an investigation and that's true of the vast majority of police, black or white."
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