Body Harvest (6 page)

Ennis Street looked familiar. Troy had probably never been there, but it was the standard design for Shepford’s third quarter. The neat detached houses were a uniform light brown colour, built from the same local stone. They were all similarly sized boxes, two storeys high with tiled roofs that sloped from left to right. Each had a small front garden and a larger one at the rear.

Troy pushed the doorbell at number fifteen. After a few seconds, the smart and sturdy man appeared in front of him. This time there was no cap, but he was
wearing tinted spectacles that also seemed out of place. ‘Yes?’ he said, glancing at the life-loggers attached to his visitors’ waists.

Troy asked, ‘Are you Dylan Farthing?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Good. Detectives Troy Goodhart and Lexi Four. We’ve got a few questions for you. Can we come in?’

Dylan stood to one side of the hall, next to a small table. ‘What’s this about?’

As they walked into the plain, spotless living room, Troy replied, ‘We’re looking into some events near the Rural Retreat Transplant Clinic – and we know you go there. We wondered if you’d seen anything useful to our investigation.’

With cropped fair hair instead of a baseball cap, he looked very different. ‘Like what?’

‘Well, first, perhaps I’d better ask why you go to the clinic.’

Dylan sighed. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Not to me,’ said Troy. ‘Sorry.’

He touched his dark glasses. ‘Why do you think I wear these? Why do I need a stupid cap outside? Why go to the clinic? I’ve just had a cornea transplant in my left eye and I have to protect it from sunlight.’

‘Right. But as you went to and from the clinic, did you see …?’

‘I saw hardly anything. That’s why I needed the operation.’

Troy expected Lexi to be sneering at him but, when he glanced at her, she wasn’t. She was gazing down at the freshly vacuumed carpet. Troy decided that a rapid retreat was the best policy. Heading for the door, he said to Dylan, ‘Well, I’m sorry to bother you. I wouldn’t have if I’d known about your condition.’

As they walked away, Troy waited for a cutting comment from Lexi, but it didn’t come. Inside the car, he said, ‘You seem … thoughtful.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And …?’

Plugging her life-logger into her laptop, she said, ‘I liked his carpet. Clean with a nice pile.’

‘So?’ Troy prompted.

‘We all leave clear footprints on a carpet after it’s been vacuumed.’

‘You recorded his?’

‘Larger than average, standard leather shoe.’ She showed Troy the imprint on the laptop screen. With her forefinger, she marked the position of the toe. Then she slid her finger across the image to the heel and a cursor followed her movement. She lingered for a moment on the back of the shoeprint. At once,
the measurement appeared alongside the cursor:
29.5 cm
. ‘Thought so,’ she muttered. ‘Size twelve.’

‘But not the same as the trainer near the bodies.’

‘No,’ she replied.

Troy regretted that majors and outers wore the same types and sizes of shoe – and walked in the same way. The two human races could not be distinguished by their footwear.

‘I’d write it off as a coincidence,’ Lexi continued. ‘But …’

‘What?’

‘There was a letter on the little table in the hall. Addressed to Farthing Family Butchers.’

‘He’s a butcher?’

‘Meaning he knows his way around a dead body. And he’s handy with a sharp knife.’

‘Tomorrow night feels right. I am content. I’m ready. Everything’s in place. It’s a good time to go.’

Troy sat back, checked what he’d written and smiled. ‘That’s a cat I’m putting among the pigeons.’

Lexi shook her head. ‘Sometimes you talk in riddles.’

‘It’ll force Charon Angel’s hand,’ said Troy, hitting the return key to post the comment online.

Replies began to arrive within a minute.

‘I implore you to seek help.’

‘What you’re thinking of doing is wrong. The taking of any life is against God’s law. Choose life.’

‘Forget the past. Whatever happened there is over. You must look to the future and recognize its potential. Start afresh.’

After three minutes came the message that Troy most wanted to see. Charon Angel wrote,
‘The day after tomorrow – or next week, next month or whatever – some full-of-life girl might step off the road in front of a speeding cab. You might have been the one person close enough to yank her back, to save her life. Perhaps she would have gone on to be a leading politician, making the world a better place. That’s what I meant about you – and everyone else – having unknown value. If you go ahead, your absence will change the way things are supposed to be. It’s a shame to deny the world your contribution.’

Troy let out a sigh and shut his eyes for a few seconds. ‘His tone’s changed,’ he muttered. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lexi replied, ‘But he’s in the clear. “It’s a shame to deny the world your contribution.” That’s no way for anyone to get their hands on your kidneys.’

Troy nodded slowly. ‘Unless Sergio Treize tipped him off. Warned him we’re watching. Now he’s coming over all innocent.’

‘That’s a bit devious.’

‘But possible.’

‘Maybe it’s just you getting desperate for a suspect,’ Lexi said.

‘Not desperate. Imaginative,’ Troy replied with a grin. ‘Don’t forget I’m the perceptive one.’

Lexi checked out an incoming message on her life-logger and then said, ‘We’ll see. Terabyte’s on his way.’

The computer technician had a real name but no one used it. A lot of the people who asked for Terabyte’s help didn’t even know what he was actually called.

He’d first made a name for himself at school. He’d won himself and every other student a two-day holiday in winter with an electronic attack on the building’s computerized heating system. One of his mates congratulated him a little too loudly for freezing everyone out of school. A teacher overheard and, from then on, everyone became aware of his special skills.

Now, at the age of seventeen, he was Crime Central’s best computer nerd. And Troy had asked him to gate-crash the administration of the suicide website.

He came into the room, sneezed, flung his hair over one shoulder and adjusted the glasses on his
nose. ‘I hacked into better-protected sites when I was ten,’ he said.

‘So,’ Troy replied, trying to control his rising expectation, ‘you’ve found out all about Charon Angel.’

‘Pretty much,’ he replied. ‘Her name is Sharon Angie.’

‘It’s a she?’

‘I haven’t seen a photo but Sharon sounds female to me. The site admin doesn’t have a lot on her, but she’s living in Switzerland. Way up a mountain in a village called Wengen. I’ve got her email address, not a house address. Or cottage, or whatever they have in Wengen.’

‘Anything else? How old is she? Has she been to this country?’

‘I trawled around. According to Passport Control, she’s never been here. She’s twenty-seven and she shops a lot online. I don’t suppose they’ve got supermarkets at the top of Swiss mountains. Again, no home address, but judging by what she’s been buying, she likes books on psychology and martial arts, music from Iceland, wine and car maintenance.’ Terabyte had a long and cute face. When his hair flopped forward, he gave the impression of a spaniel.

Troy’s shoulders dropped and his enthusiasm
faded. Terabyte had just blown his theory that Charon Angel was hunting body parts. She hadn’t even been in the country. What had happened to Troy’s usually reliable instinct?

‘I’m guessing I’ve disappointed you,’ said Terabyte.

Troy nodded. ‘That’s me done for today. I’ve got a shepherd’s pie waiting at home. With bucketfuls of brown sauce.’

Terabyte looked at Lexi with a grin on his face. ‘Us outers wouldn’t know if shepherds taste nice with or without sauce.’

Lexi gazed at her life-logger and groaned. ‘That’s another avenue blocked off. Only a couple of people have had hand transplants and they both check out. Done in genuine hospitals with genuine hands donated by genuine accident victims.’

With a wide grin, Troy said, ‘Nothing underhand going on there, then.’

Lexi groaned again.

Troy apologised for the joke. ‘I’m not surprised you didn’t turn anything up. It fits. If Dmitri got involved with some sort of medical black market, the
transplant wouldn’t be officially registered.’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s face it. Right now we’re a bit stumped with Dmitri and L4G#1. Let’s not make them brick walls for banging our heads against. Let’s tackle the major woman with the wrong heart, L4G#2.’ Troy was still pained to refer to two of the bodies by codes rather than names, but he had no choice until he discovered their identities. ‘I’ve been thinking about it overnight.’

‘Oh?’ Lexi took a careful bite out of a block of soft, decomposing cheese. It was casu marzu, crawling with live insect larvae. If jolted, the maggots would launch themselves about fifteen centimetres away and she’d lose their juicy flavour.

‘As far as we know, no one’s reported her missing. So, maybe she lived on her own. Why don’t we put out a call to shops and anyone who delivers things to people’s houses? Is anyone supplying things to what appears to be an empty house? Is stuff piling up at the door?’

‘Sounds reasonable.’ Fiddling with her life-logger, Lexi said, ‘I’ll do it.’

‘What about your spy cameras outside the transplant clinic?’

‘I looked at the footage last night and this morning – between meditations. Nothing iffy. No unmarked
vans pulling up to the doors. Just the comings and goings you’d expect for a legitimate health centre. Gianna Humble, Blade Five, nurses, cleaners, a couple of patients.’

Sucking on a chunk of mint chocolate, Troy nodded. ‘Imagine I run a shady transplant outfit. I’ve got some embarrassing bodies to get rid of. I might well do it near a proper clinic, so it got the blame if someone found what I’d buried.’

‘It’s a possibility, I suppose,’ she admitted.

‘Have forensics found anything interesting in all that stuff they took from the wood?’

‘Nothing that definitely links to the case.’

Goods had indeed piled up outside the large, posh house on the edge of Shepford. The trader who made the regular deliveries had recently become suspicious and had wandered round to the back garden. When she’d spotted a broken window, she’d reported it to Crime Central. At once, Troy and Lexi upgraded the low-priority incident at Olga Wylie’s house to the highest priority.

Troy almost tiptoed through the house. That seemed appropriate and respectful, in case he was now invading a dead woman’s personal space.

‘No evidence of anyone else living here,’ Lexi called out, less sensitive than Troy.

‘I think we can class Olga Wylie as rich and a loner,’ Troy whispered.

They were in her study – the room with a broken window. Lexi examined the dust on the desk. ‘There used to be something on here. Something about the size of a laptop. And, look, an electric cable for charging a computer battery. But nothing to plug it into.’

Troy nodded. ‘Someone broke in and took it, then?’

‘Maybe.’ Lexi bagged some dust because she knew it would contain human skin. With tweezers, she also picked up a hair with a root. She’d extract DNA from both.

‘Just like Dmitri Backhouse. No computer. If I’m right, it means there was something significant on it. When she died, someone got rid of it.’

‘I’ve got a visible fingerprint here,’ Lexi said. Checking on her life-logger for a few seconds, she added, ‘Eighty-four per cent match with L4G#2. It’s not perfect because the body was degraded. Assuming this,’ she said, pointing to the pattern in the dust, ‘belongs to Olga Wylie, we’ve got a name for our second body.’

Sad, but relieved, Troy nodded again. He requested Olga’s medical details and then soaked up the atmosphere while his partner went about her job. Not much seemed to have been disturbed. The burglar hadn’t ransacked the place. That suggested he or she came in for something specific – like Olga’s computer.

Lexi went over to the smashed window and peered closely at it. Then she examined the carpet underneath. Disappointed, she said, ‘I can’t see any blood, fibres or anything from the burglar. We’ll need a detailed search and special equipment. That might show up some traces.’

‘They’re like chickens. Not to be counted till they hatch.’

Lexi did not look up. ‘Don’t worry. If I don’t get anything on the person who smashed the window, I’ll find something else. All it takes is for me to be more thorough than the guy who broke in. Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll get the forensic team to go over the place millimetre by millimetre, if necessary. Every drawer, every nook and cranny.’

Troy didn’t know his partner very well yet, but he had every confidence in her already. He accompanied her as she went methodically from room to room, making notes, using her life-logger. Troy built up a
different kind of picture of Olga Wylie. There were no photographs on the walls, no signs of a fondness for family or friends. No signs of fondness for herself. There was one photograph of Olga. It was lying face-down in the living room. Along with the contents of her kitchen, it told Troy that she was an overweight middle-aged woman who ate too much junk food and drank alcohol. Perhaps her lifestyle had contributed to her ill-health. At least the photo confirmed that she was L4G#2.

When Lexi had been in every room, she stopped and said, ‘You know one thing we haven’t found?’

‘A computer.’

‘Apart from that.’

‘What?’

‘Her handbag.’

‘Handbag?’

Lexi smiled. ‘An essential piece of equipment for major women. They keep all sorts in them. Rummage in a handbag and you’ll find a forensic treasure trove.’

‘So, what do we do?’

‘We go round again – till we find it. And if we don’t, I put the whole team on the job. Come on. It’ll be tucked away somewhere, but easily accessible. Perhaps with her coats, so she could grab both at the same time.’

Lexi went out into the hall, examining every door, every surface, even tapping the walls and listening to the sound. She found what she wanted under the stairs. The wall panel sounded hollow. There was no obvious way into the cubby-hole, no handle. On the left-hand side, the door didn’t react to Lexi’s push. But when she touched the right-hand side of the panel, it sprang back smoothly.

Reaching inside, Lexi cried, ‘Hey presto! Coats and handbag. We’re in business.’ She put the embroidered bag down on a table, opened it and delved inside. As an outer, she could never leave fingerprints on evidence, but she used gloves to avoid contaminating it with flakes of her skin and smudging traces with sweat. ‘Here we go,’ she declared, lifting out a smartphone. ‘Not as good as a laptop, but I want Terabyte on this.’