Buried (DC Jack Warr #1) - Lynda La Plante Page 0,50

bowl of sweets was momentarily confusing, until Jack saw the photos pinned to a wooden noticeboard. The warden had a football team of grandkids.

While the warden searched for the key that unlocked the box of keys bolted to the wall, Jack couldn’t help but focus on a large hole in the top of the right arm of the tatty armchair. He quickly decided that this hole had been made by hundreds of beer bottles sitting in exactly the same spot, over decades of TV watching. Through the uppermost, flowery cover on the armchair, Jack could see snippets of all of the previous coverings – a couple of velour patterns, fake suede, tartan, monochrome stripes, solid black – years of wear and tear that mapped this man’s life. Jack swore he could actually guess the moment that the warden started living with the woman he loved; that move from fake suede to velour was a declaration of his life-long commitment to her.

Laura watched Jack as he longingly stared, all gooey-eyed, into the Portakabin.

‘That’s what separates men from women,’ Laura whispered. ‘You see a man cave ‒ I see a shithole.’

As the warden led the way to Mike’s Portakabin, Jack could see he had something seriously wrong with his lower back. He stooped almost in half and paused every now and then to look up and see exactly where he was heading. Jack had offered to just take the key and unlock it himself, but the warden had insisted on escorting them to the door because he took his job very seriously and refused to allow any keys out of his sight. As they progressed at a snail’s pace, Jack got some background information.

‘How long’s Mike Withey had this office?’

‘Since 2003.’ The warden had a surprisingly high voice with a North London accent. ‘Business took a serious dip in the 2008 recession and I hardly saw any of these businesses for almost a year. Mike still kept his partner on, mind ‒ didn’t lay him off or anything like that. I think they go way back.’ Jack was just about to ask about Mike’s partner when the warden continued, unable to see Jack’s expression because his eyes were turned down towards the ground. ‘Barry Cooper, his name is. Nice and easy to remember, ’cos of the legend that is Gary Cooper. Barry’s been with Mike from the beginning. They’re not partners, strictly speaking. Mike employs Barry, but they’re clearly friends on account of the number of empty bottles I clear out of their bin. Proper boozers, both of them. Whisky’s their go-to drink, and cheap crap it is an’ all.’

The Yale lock on Mike’s Portakabin, and the wood on the door surrounding it, were both scratched from where the warden repeatedly missed the keyhole. Laura was pulling her hair out as he missed the lock with the key, time and time again. Once the door was open, he backed off, perched on the edge of a stack of tyres and waited.

*

Across London, Anik was feigning composure as he instructed a uniformed PC on how the search of Mike’s flat was going to go and what they were looking for. Ridley had gone back to the station, leaving Anik with this weighty responsibility. He waved the search warrant round ostentatiously and was a little bit disappointed that he had no one to actually serve it to.

Mike’s flat was a typical, grubby-looking bachelor pad in dire need of a very deep clean. The carpet was worn thin in a T-shaped pattern, showing that Mike walked most frequently from the kitchen, to his favourite armchair, to his bureau. The bureau was stuffed full of paperwork in no kind of order – bills, bank statements, ownership documents for a Range Rover and some payslips for Barry. This bureau gave Anik two vitally important pieces of information – Barry’s mobile phone number, and the only vehicle registered in his name.

Mike’s expendable cash each month amounted to nothing more than pocket money which, judging by the four empty whisky bottles down the side of his armchair, was mainly spent on booze. There was a block of several years when Mike’s bank transactions occurred in Spain rather than in the UK, so that was presumably where he was living.

The uniformed PC entered the lounge, holding an evidence bag containing an obviously well-used toothbrush with splayed bristles. Anik nodded his approval at the toothbrush being an appropriate DNA source.

‘Can you also bag all of this paperwork, please?’ Anik requested, waving