Malice Aforethought Read Online Free PDF Page B

hands and knees with tweezers and dishes, Johnson wasn’t hopeful even of the clothing fibres and stray hairs they expected to pick up as routine trophies. Ted Giles, successful teacher, separated from his wife, and now murder victim, seemed determined to remain otherwise anonymous, even after death.
    They found no diaries, of course: Giles must have been a man who carried whatever appointments he might have in his head. There was a calendar beside the spotless electric oven with a few initials against particular dates; they would take this away in due course, but he doubted if they would be anything more than dental appointments, library book return dates, and family birthdays. Johnson already had Edward Giles down as a depressingly secretive man.
    He said as much to John Lambert when the chief arrived. ‘There’s a cleaner, of course; there bloody would be! Last came in on Friday morning,’ he said gloomily. The efficient daily help was one of the banes of his life. The Superintendent nodded, then looked around him like an eager sniffer dog. A quarter of a century of CID experience, of entering deserted rooms of all shapes and sizes, with an infinite range of decor and contents, had not removed the curiosity which was an essential part of the professional detective. He walked into each of the two neat bedrooms, then the bathroom, then the kitchen, all within thirty seconds and without opening a cupboard or a drawer. You didn’t tread on the toes of the specialists, and Johnson was a specialist whom he trusted absolutely to miss nothing.
    ‘ Too tidy, do you think, Jack?’ he said. ‘Could just be that he had something in his life to hide? Not necessarily criminal, but something he preferred to conceal from whoever came into his home.’
    Johnson was unconvinced. ‘He lived alone. No wife who might go through his pockets or smell his shirts in search of other women.’
    ‘But we don’t know yet who he brought here. He might have preferred to conceal parts of himself from his visitors. It’s a thought for your lads and lasses. Might help to keep them going through a boring day.’
    Johnson nodded dolefully. ‘We’ll bag the sheets and pillowcases and any soiled clothes, of course. Might just get DNA samples of someone if we’re lucky.’
    Both of them glanced without much hope at the open door of the main bedroom. They both knew without further words what he meant: if at some further stage of the investigation they were able to prove the presence here of someone who denied having ever set foot in the flat, it could well be significant. And particularly so if the evidence of DNA suggested also an intimate relationship where none had been admitted.
    Lambert sighed; such speculation was a reminder of how far away they were from any such candidates for the murderer of Ted Giles. He went out of the flat onto the landing outside. With its single long strip of carpet and its rows of shut doors, it was as clean and anonymous as a corridor in a private hospital. Lambert hesitated for a moment, then rapped sharply on the door immediately to the left of Ted Giles’s flat.
    At first, he thought no one was in. Then there were muffled movements and the door opened not more than eight inches. A broad face peered at him from beneath straight, greasy black hair. ‘I don’t buy nothing at the door!’ it mouthed.
    Lambert showed his warrant card, beckoned sharply to Bert Hook, who was emerging from the lift behind him, and said, ‘We need to speak to you. It won’t take long, Mr…?’
    The man refused the invitation to give his name, looked for a moment as if he would slam the door in their faces, then thought better of it. He snarled, ‘I got nothing to say. Not to the likes of you. I don’t deal with pigs!’
    The old attitude. Even the old words. Lambert put his face a little nearer, so that his grey eyes stared down into the watery brown ones beneath him. ‘Yes you do. Either here or at the station. When we’re