Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the door moved sweetly open. Suttle stepped out. The rain was lighter now, no more than a thin drizzle, and he went across to the rail, peering over. The blue shape of Kinsey’s shrouded body lay directly below, and Suttle stared at it for a long moment, trying to imagine how a fall like that could have happened. Kinsey was on the small side. Mounting the rail and throwing yourself off would have required a definite decision, not something that could have happened by accident.
    Suttle looked up again, trying to work out whether anyone might have witnessed what had happened. The balcony overlooked the entrance to the dock. According to the CSI, this was where fishing boats and water taxis and the ferry that crossed the river tied up. There was a line of working units on the dockside, rented by fishermen, with a terrace of 1960s-looking flats beyond. To the left, looking out over the basin of the marina, another row of properties had line of sight on Kinsey’s balcony. Suttle made a mental note, fixing the view in his head. He estimated at least thirty front doors. More priority calls for the house-to-house teams.
    He took a last look round. Kinsey’s watch had stopped at 03.04. At that time of the morning, of course, it would have been dark. He needed to check the harbourside illumination and whether the throw of light would reach up as far as Apartment 37. He sensed that a lot of these properties would belong to retired couples, wealthy enough to buy a share of a view like this. People that age often had trouble sleeping. Someone might have seen something, a flicker of movement, something unexplained. Worth a try.
    He stepped back inside, wiping the rain from his face. They already knew that the front door had been closed on the latch but not bolted inside. Now he wanted to know about the interior lights.
    The CSI shook his head. ‘Everything off.’
    ‘Including the bedroom?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Right.’ Suttle nodded. ‘So the guy gets up in the dark, comes through here, opens the exterior sliding door, finds himself on the balcony. Yeah? Is that what the scene tells us?’
    ‘Spot on.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘Fuck knows.’
    Suttle took a look at the other rooms. There were two other bedrooms, both en suite, and one of them appeared to have been used as an office: desk, filing cabinet, whiteboard on the wall. There was nothing on the whiteboard, and apart from a PC and a phone there was nothing on the desk either. This bareness extended to the rest of the apartment, and as Suttle did another walk-through he got an overwhelming sense of emptiness, of a life somehow on hold. When it came to furnishings and decor, this was a guy who’d stripped his surroundings down to the bare essentials. The stuff was functional, well made, served a purpose, but there were no pictures to brighten the bareness of the walls, no framed faces of friends or family, no hats doffed to any kind of private life. Even the fridge yielded nothing but a one-litre carton of milk, half a pound of butter, a Tesco fillet steak and a stalk or two of broccoli.
    Beside Kinsey’s desk, the CSI was checking the answering machine. Suttle threw him a look but he shook his head.
    ‘Nothing,’ he said.
     
    D/I Carole Houghton drew the Constantine team together at 10.07. Ellie had volunteered her office, plus a supply of coffees, and Houghton sat on the desk, letting her anorak drip onto the carpet.
    So far she’d managed to rally eight D/Cs. Nandy was looking for a couple more but they lived out of the area and wouldn’t arrive for at least an hour. In the meantime, she said, D/S Suttle had conducted a flash intel search of the apartment and drawn up a priority list of addresses for house-to-house. The duty Inspector at the local nick was preparing three rooms for Constantine and all of them would be operational by lunchtime. Depending on initial inquiries, the investigation might or might not transfer to the Major Incident Room at Middlemoor. At the