Brandon. There was a wallet, a handkerchief and a bunch of keys inside. Brandon opened it and removed the keys.
"You haven't seen me, have you. Sergeant? And you won't see me when I come back in a couple of hours, will you?"
The sergeant grinned.
"You couldn't possibly have been here, sir. I'd have been bound to notice."
Twenty minutes later, Brandon was parking the Range Rover outside McConnell's terraced house.
"Lucky for us McConnell happened to mention that the two blokes he shares the house with are away on holiday." He took a cardboard box out of the glove compartment and gave Tony a pair of latex gloves.
"You'll need these," he said, slipping a pair over his own hands.
"If we do get a search warrant, it would be a bit embarrassing when the fingerprint team turn up you and me as prime suspects."
"There's one thing I'm curious about," Tony said as Bran- don inserted the key in the mortice lock.
"What's that?"
"This is an illegal search, right?"
"Right," Brandon said, opening the door and stepping into the hall.
He groped for the light switch, but didn't turn it on when he found it.
Tony followed him, closing the door behind him. Only then did Brandon snap the light on, revealing a carpeted hall and stairs. There were a couple of framed posters of body-builders on the walls.
"So if we find any evidence, presumably it's inadmissible?"
"Also right," said Brandon.
"But there are ways round that. For example, if we find a bloodstained cutthroat razor under McConnell's bed, it will mysteriously find its way on to the kitchen table. Then we go to the magistrate, explain that we went to McConnell's house to check he was telling the truth when he said his house-mates were on holiday, and we happened to look through the windows and we spotted what we have reason to believe is the weapon used to kill Adam Scott, Paul Gibbs, Gareth Finnegan and Damien Connolly."
Tony shook his head in amusement.
"Bent? Us? Never, your honour!"
"There's bent and there's bent," Brandon said grimly. "Sometimes you need to give things a shove in the right direction."
Tony and Brandon moved through the house, room by room. Brandon was intrigued by Tony's method. He would walk into a room, stand in the middle of the floor and slowly scan the walls, the furniture, the floor coverings, the shelves. He almost sniffed the air. Then, meticulously, he opened cupboards and drawers, lifted cushions, examined magazines, checked titles of books, CDs, cassettes and videos, handling everything he touched with the care and precision of an archaeologist. Within seconds, his mind was busy, analysing everything he saw and touched, slowly building a picture in his mind of the men who lived here, constantly matching it against the embryonic picture of Handy Andy that was developing in his mind like a photographic print in developer fluid.
"Have you been here, Andy?" he asked himself.
"Does this feel like you, smell like you? Would you watch these videos? Are these your CDs? Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli? The Pet Shop Boys? I don't think so. You're not camp, I know that much about you. And there's nothing camp or chichi about the house. This place is so aggressively masculine. A living room furnished in eighties chrome and black. But it's not a straight man's house, is it? No girlie magazines, not even car magazines. Just body-building periodicals stacked under the coffee table. Look at the walls. Men's bodies, oiled and shining, muscles like carved wood. The men who live here know who they are, they know what they like. I don't think this is you, Andy. You're controlled, Andy, but not this controlled. It's one thing to keep yourself buttoned up, it's another thing altogether to be strong enough to project so coherent an image. I should know, I'm the expert. If you were as firmly rooted in your identity as the guys who live here, you wouldn't have to do what you do, would you?
"Look at the books. Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Stephen Gallagher, lain Banks. Arnold Schwarzenegger's biography. A couple of paperbacks about the Mafia. Nothing soft, nothing gentle, but nothing off the wall either. Would you read these books? Maybe. I think you'd like to read about serial killers, though, and there's none of that here."
Tony turned slowly towards the door. It was a small shock to see Brandon standing there. He'd become so absorbed in his scrutiny that he'd lost all sense of being in company. Watch yourself. Tony, he warned himself. Stay