Looking Good Dead

workload of officers. They had been nicknamed plastic policemen and were perfect for duties such as this.
    ‘You go up to the second floor,’ he said helpfully. ‘The stairwell and access have been checked – they haven’t found anything forensically appropriate.’ He talked as if he were running the show, Grace thought, privately amused.
    Entering the front, the place reminded Grace of every low-rent building he had ever been in: the balding carpet on the floor, junk mail spilling out of the pigeonholes, the tired paintwork and peeling wallpaper, the smell of boiled cabbage, the padlocked bicycle in the hallway, the steep, narrow staircase.
    A strip of blue, yellow and white Sussex Police crime scene tape was fixed across the door of the flat. Grace and Branson pulled their white protective suits out of their holdalls, put them on, then their gloves, overshoes and hoods. Then Branson rapped on the door.
    It was opened after some moments by Joe Tindall, clad in the same protective attire as themselves. It didn’t matter how many times Grace saw SOCOs at work, their hooded white outfits always reminded him of secret government officials cleaning up after an alien invasion. And no matter how many times he had seen Joe Tindall in recent days, he could not get over his colleague’s recent makeover.
    ‘God, we really get to meet in the best of places, don’t we, Roy?’ Tindall said by way of a greeting.
    ‘I like to spoil my team,’ Grace replied with a grin.
    ‘So we’ve noticed.’
    They went into a small hallway, and Tindall closed the door behind them. Another figure in white was on his hands and knees, inspectingthe skirting board. Grace noticed that a radiator had been unbolted from the wall. By the time they had finished in here, every radiator would be off, half the floorboards would be prised up, and even parts of the wallpaper would have been removed.
    A band of sticky police tape had been laid in a straight line down the centre of the hall, as the path for everyone to keep to. Tindall was meticulous at preserving crime scenes.
    ‘Anything of interest?’ Grace asked, glancing down at a ginger and white cat which had wandered out to look at him.
    Tindall gave him a slightly strange look. ‘Depends what you call of interest ? Bloodstains on a bedroom carpet that someone’s tried to scrub off. Spots of blood on the wall and ceiling. Car keys to a Mini outside. We’ve taken that in on a transporter – I don’t want anyone driving it and contaminating it.’
    ‘Good thinking.’ Immediately Grace logged that Janie Stretton clearly had not driven to meet her killer. At least that eliminated one enquiry line. He knelt and stroked the cat for a moment. ‘We’ll get someone to take you to your granddad,’ he said.
    Tindall gave him that strange look again. ‘Follow me.’
    ‘You must be Bins,’ Grace said to the cat, remembering Derek Stretton mentioning the cat.
    It miaowed at him.
    ‘Anyone fed this?’
    ‘There’s one of those automatic feeder things in the kitchen,’ Tindall said.
    Roy Grace followed the SOCO officer. In contrast to the exterior of the building and the shabbiness of the common parts, Janie Stretton’s flat was spacious, in very good order and tastefully if cheaply decorated. The hall and the living room off it had polished wood floors thrown with white rugs, and all the curtains and soft furnishing covers were also white, with the hard furniture a shiny lacquered black, except for six perspex chairs around the dining table. On the walls were black and white photographs, a couple of them quite erotic nudes, Grace noticed.
    To one side of the living room, in the recess of a bay window, was a small, rather flimsy-looking desk with a Sony laptop sitting on itand a telephone-answering machine combo. The message light was winking.
    There was a minuscule kitchen, an equally minuscule spare bedroom, then a good-sized master bedroom, very feminine-feeling, with the lingering scent of a classy perfume Grace vaguely recognized and liked. It was strangely poignant to think that the wearer was now dead and yet this part of her remained. The room was carpeted wall to wall in white and there was a large central blotch, a good two feet in diameter, then several smaller blotches around it. Bloodstains someone had scrubbed, unsuccessfully.
    Through an open door he could see into an en suite bathroom. He walked across, carefully skirting the bloodstains, and peered in. There was an