Dead Man's Time

voice. ‘You’ve reached Lester
Stork. I might be busy, I might be dead. Take a chance, leave me a message!’
    The three of them walked around the house, peering in the rest of the downstairs windows. They saw a small, empty kitchen, and tried the side door, but it was locked. At the rear of the house
the curtains were drawn. On the far side, where the garage was, there were no windows. Back around the front they stopped outside the porch. Roberts studied the locks on the front door. ‘Do
you have a spare key, Mrs Morgan?’
    ‘I do, but I’m not sure where it is.’
    ‘Would you mind if we broke in?’ he asked.
    She shook her head. ‘Go ahead.’
    He braced himself, then kicked the front door hard. It did not move. He tried again, even harder. Still it did not move. He frowned at his colleague. ‘Feels like it’s
reinforced.’ He went over to the window, pulled on a pair of gloves, then pulled out his baton and hit the glass hard. It shattered, a chunk of it falling into the sitting room. Then he put
his hand through, feeling for the latch. But could not move it. ‘Bugger!’ he said, then turned apologetically and said, ‘Forgive my language.’
    Carol Morgan grinned.
    ‘Window lock,’ he said. ‘Not making it easy for intruders.’
    ‘He must have fitted them himself,’ she said.
    He smashed out the rest of the glass with his baton, then climbed into the little room, which smelled like a million cigarettes had been smoked in it without a window ever being opened. A couple
of dull, framed horsey prints were on the otherwise bare walls. The furniture, on a threadbare carpet, was meagre and tired. He called out, ‘Mr Stork! This is the police! Mr Stork?’ He
waited some moments then walked through into the hallway. And stopped.
    It had been many years since Dave Roberts had last seen the old crook, but he had no difficulty recognizing him. Lester Stork, a wizened shrimp of a man, who might have been a jockey in a better
life, was dressed in a shabby herringbone jacket, crumpled cream shirt, grey trousers and cheap black shoes. He looked like he had been heading upstairs, but never made it. He lay sprawled across
the bottom steps, eyes wide open and sightless, dark-brown wig askew.
    The PC knelt, peeled off one glove and touched his face. It was stone cold. He felt for a pulse, even though it was obvious the man had clearly been dead for some hours. He checked his face
carefully and his position, looking for any signs that he might have died violently, but could see none. But the immediate thoughts going through his experienced mind were why had he shut the front
door behind him, leaving his van engine running?
    ‘Maybe the wind shut the door? But why would anyone arrive home close to midnight and go into his house leaving his van’s engine running?’ Dave asked.
    ‘You’d only do that, surely, if you were planning to go out again,’ PC Susi Holiday said, staring at the body.
    ‘So where is a seventy-five-year-old man going at midnight on a Sunday, in an old van?’ he queried.
    ‘Not clubbing, that’s for sure.’
    ‘Probably not to church either,’ Dave Roberts said. He radioed for their Sergeant to attend, then requested a Coroner’s Officer.
    While he was making his calls, Susi walked through into the room at the rear, little bigger than a box room, and switched on the light, and immediately realized why the curtains were drawn.
    There was a stash of antique items on the floor. She saw bronze statuettes; Chinese vases; a silver tea set; an ornate clock; several oil paintings; a gold plate. Immediately, well aware of the
major domestic burglary that had taken place in the city less than a fortnight ago, she pulled out her phone, selected the camera icon, and took a rapid series of photographs. Then she contacted
the Incident Room for an email address, and sent them with a brief note:
    Found this stash at a G5 of an old fence. In case any of it might have come from your Withdean Road robbery.

58
    ‘I do horrible things sometimes,’ she said.
    ‘Go on.’
    There was a long silence. After several minutes the Munich psychiatrist, Dr Eberstark, asked, ‘What kind of horrible things, Sandy?’
    She lay on the couch, facing away from him so they had no eye contact. ‘I put an advertisement in their local paper’s Deaths column that their baby had died.’
    ‘Roy Grace’s baby?’
    ‘His and his bitch girlfriend.’
    ‘But you’re not with him any more. It was your