Читать книгу Fifth Son - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 9

When Green arrived at the station the next morning, Brian Sullivan’s desk was deserted, but a young woman was parked outside his own office, clutching an envelope of material to her generous chest. She wore a hideous black and white checked pant suit and clunky black shoes and made no attempt to tame her frizzy red hair, but nevertheless, she managed to look cute. She looked about fourteen years old, although Green knew from her file that she was twice that.

Her baby blue eyes lit at the sight of him, and she stuck out an exuberant hand. “Inspector Green! Detective Sue Peters, remember?”

He took her hand in his, felt the smooth, firm pressure of her fingers. It lingered a little long, he thought, making a silent note to beware. He opened his door and nodded to her package. “You have something for me?”

“Yessir. The Sarge—Sullivan, I mean—told me to bring you this stuff. Thought you might like to see it.” She followed him inside, making no effort to detach the envelope from her breasts.

“And where is Sergeant Sullivan?”

“Got a call, went out to Ashford Landing.” Without an invitation, she kicked the guest chair out and plunked herself down in it.

Green surveyed the mountain of paperwork on his desk and the blinking message light on his phone. “What’s the material about?”

“Stuff from Ident, mostly pictures from the Ashford Landing scene. The Sarge said there wasn’t much new, but you’d want to look at it all anyway.” Still she clutched the material as if it were the Crown jewels.

He nodded to his desk brusquely. “Thank you. Just leave it there, I’ll look at it in a minute. Did the sergeant assign you anything else to do?”

Her lips curved up in a grin. “I’m working with Gibbsie, trying to find those three brothers. Quite the nice little riddle, eh, sir? Which one’s the guy who took the swan dive off the tower?”

Green glanced through his open door into the squad room to see Gibbs hunched over his computer, tapping furiously. “That’s the basis of a lot of detective work, Peters. The sooner we know who the man is, the sooner we can begin tracing his movements and figuring out how he died. You’d better go help, Detective.”

It took her a couple of seconds to get the hint, but finally she parted with her prize, dropped it on his desk and headed over to Gibbs. Green uttered a short, silent apology to the faithful, hard-working detective, waited until Peters was well out of sight, then snatched up the envelope.

Five minutes later, he tossed the reports aside with frustration. Sullivan was right; not much there. Yet even the lack of evidence was telling. Not the slightest trace of blood had been detected on the top of the tower, which made it unlikely that any of the victim’s abrasions had been sustained in a struggle up there. The contour and markings on the fatal head wound matched those of the rock beneath his head, confirming MacPhail’s theory that the fall itself was the cause of death. The small piece of fabric that had snagged on the parapet had been sent to the RCMP lab for formal analysis, along with the jacket from which it had presumably ripped, but Cunningham had found the torn section at the back of the hem where it seemed to fit.

Green fed the CD of crime scene photos into his computer and watched as his screen filled with meticulously ordered shots—overviews, middle views and close-ups of every single item of evidence found at the scene. Green studied the views of the body, trying to picture it in the physical surroundings of the church. The man lay on his stomach with his legs splayed and his head facing the tower. His head was twisted to one side, almost touching the stone base. Ident had done a very thorough physical search of the vicinity and had photographed a dozen cigarette butts, a decaying tennis ball, a few old candy wrappers and an ice cream cup. Everything looked at least a month old.

The next series of photos was a scrupulous record of the church tower, from each latent fingerprint on the ladder to the colourful collection of bird droppings on the parapet. The fabric from the jacket had been found on the top of the wall directly above the body. Green studied the photo carefully. The fabric had snagged on the inner corner of the wall where it had crumbled, leading Cunningham to speculate that in the act of hoisting himself up over the wall, the victim had pressed against the wall, dislodging some old mortar and tearing his jacket. Cunningham was still trying to match all the latents lifted from the ladder, but he was leaning towards suicide.

Green leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes, trying to visualize the victim’s last movements, but the photos weren’t enough. The suicide theory didn’t feel right yet. Once Ident had finished there, he needed to go to the scene, to walk through the steps the man had taken, in order to see the things he’d seen and imagine the thoughts he had. Maybe then Green would understand whether the man had jumped of his own accord.

Meanwhile, it was a waiting game while the detectives gathered facts, and reluctantly Green turned his attention to his mountain of paperwork. He was at it for less than an hour and had made his way through only a fraction when Bob Gibbs knocked diffidently on his door.

“Sorry, sir. Ah... Angela Hogencamp, the woman from the St. Lawrence group home, is on the line. Lawrence Pettigrew has disappeared. Are we going to send someone down to interview them?”

“Put her through.” Green shoved his paperwork aside with relief and snatched up his phone the moment it rang. The woman at the other end sounded as if she smoked two packs a day and had seen every depravity known to man. After preliminary introductions, Green asked her what she meant by “disappeared”.

“Six weeks ago. He didn’t show up for his meds and routine blood work.”

“Six weeks ago! Why was no one alerted?”

There was a chilly pause. “Who should we have alerted, sir?”

“The police.”

“Lawrence wasn’t in custody. He’s a voluntary patient living on his own, and he’s free to stop treatment any time he chooses. What’s the Ottawa police’s involvement, sir?”

Green rethought his approach, for he wanted cooperation from this woman, and right now she was in classic “coveryour-ass” mode. “I apologize, Mrs. Hogencamp. I didn’t mean to imply you were derelict in your duties. We’ve had an unusual sighting of a man who bears some resemblance to him. I know Lawrence was in hospital for close to twenty years, and I’m concerned he might not have the street smarts to survive on his own.”