Broken Homes

Self-Storage next door which would be handy if the cells ever got overcrowded.
    DCI Douglas Manderly was a copper in the modern mould, understated tailored pinstripe suit, brown hair cut short, blue eyes, an up-to-date mobile in his pocket. Sober, works late, drinks lager in halves and knows how to change a nappy. He’d be looking to make Detective Superintendent soon-ish but only for the extra pay and pension. Good at his job, I guessed, but probably not at ease with things that fall outside his comfort zone.
    He was going to love us.
    He met us in his office to establish his authority but stood and shook our hands in turn to evoke the correct collegial atmosphere. We sat in the offered seats and accepted the offered coffee and did about a minute and a half of the niceties before he asked us straight out what our interest was.
    We did not tell him we were witch hunting, as that sort of things tends to cause alarm.
    ‘Robert Weil is possibly connected with another inquiry,’ said Nightingale. ‘A series of murders that took place over the summer.’
    ‘Would this be the Jason Dunlop case?’ he asked.
    Better than just good at his job, I thought.
    ‘Yes,’ said Nightingale. ‘But not directly related.’
    Manderly looked disappointed. People have got the wrong idea about police territoriality – a full-scale murder inquiry is going to set you back a quarter of a million quid minimum. If Manderly could dump it on the Met then it would be our budget and our problem, not to mention it would improve his crime counting at the end of the year. He certainly didn’t want to assign one of his precious DCs to escort us around, but he wasn’t particularly pleased when Nightingale asked for PC Maureen Slatt.
    ‘That’s a matter for her line manager,’ said Manderly.
    Then he asked whether, given our interest, he should be looking for anything in particular.
    ‘You could inform us if you discover anything out of the ordinary,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘Does that include a body?’ he asked.
    Technically, you don’t have to have a corpse to convict for murder but detectives always feel better when they’ve found your actual victim – they’re superstitious like that. Plus nobody wants to think they might be blowing a quarter of a million only to have the victim turn out to be living in Aberdeen with an insurance salesman called Dougal.
    ‘Are we sure there was a body in the Volvo?’ I asked.
    ‘We’re still waiting on DNA but the lab has confirmed that the blood is human,’ said Manderly. ‘And that it came from a body in the early stages of rigor mortis.’
    ‘So not a kidnapping then,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘No,’ said Manderly.
    ‘Where is Mr Weil now?’ asked Nightingale.
    Manderly narrowed his eyes. ‘He’s on his way here,’ he said. ‘But unless you have something substantial to add to his interview I’d rather you left it to us.’
    Now that it was clear that we weren’t going to relieve him of this troublesome case he wasn’t going to let us near the prime suspect until he had that case tied up in a neat bow.
    ‘I’d like to talk to Constable Slatt first,’ said Nightingale. ‘I assume that Weil’s home has been searched already?’
    ‘We have a team there,’ said Manderly. ‘Is there anything specific you’re looking for?’
    ‘Books,’ said Nightingale. ‘And possibly other paraphernalia.’
    ‘Paraphernalia,’ said Manderly.
    ‘I shall know it when I see it,’ said Nightingale.
    The principal difference between town and country policing, as far as I could tell, was one of distance. It was thirty kilometres back up the A23 to Crawley where Robert Weil lived, which was further than I drove in a working week in London. Mind you, without London to get in the way we made it in less than half an hour. On the way we passed the spot where the accident had taken place. I asked Nightingale if he wanted to stop, but since Weil’s Volvo had already been towed we pressed on to Crawley.
    In the 1950s and ’60s the powers that be made a concerted effort to rid London of its working class. The city was rapidly losing its industry and the large numbers of servants who were needed for the Edwardian household were being superseded by the technological wonders of the age of white goods. London just didn’t need that many poor people any more. Crawley, which up until then had been a small medieval market town, had sixty thousand residents dumped on it. I say dumped but in fact they went