Superintendent Murray frowned. ‘Yes, we do. Has he lived in the area all his life?’
‘I’ve got DC Cooper and DC Jones both working hard looking into his background. As far as we know, he’s lived in Skellingthorpe for a very long time. We’re looking at the deeds to see when he purchased the house. He used to be the headmaster of Greenhill Secondary School.’
The superintendent’s eyebrows lifted. ‘A headmaster. Are we sure the victim is an adult?’
‘Raj thinks so. There’s always a chance that when he looks closer, he might get a different answer. But he believed that the skeleton belonged to a fully grown adult male.’
‘Right, well, thanks for the update. Let me know as soon as Raj is finished with the post-mortem.’
‘Of course, ma’am. You’ll be copied in on all the reports.’ DI Morgan stood up. ‘I have a feeling this case is going to be a complicated one.’
His boss sighed and said, ‘Let’s hope you’re wrong and we get some answers quickly. This is the last thing we need at the moment. I’ve got the assistant commissioner visiting us next week. I’d prefer to show him cases we’ve put to bed rather than one like this.’
DI Morgan gave her a sympathetic smile. Sometimes he was very glad he was only a detective inspector. It seemed the higher you got in the police, the more you had to say the right thing at the right time to the right people. He wouldn’t be very good at that.
He didn’t envy Superintendent Murray her job at all.
The duty sergeant was happy to point out PC Sanderson and PC Montgomery in the cafeteria for DI Morgan. The two officers were sitting at a large table, surrounded by their colleagues, who were listening avidly to Montgomery describe his grisly discovery. He was relishing the attention and seemed to have completely recovered after his bout of sickness.
Sanderson, in contrast, was clearly not enjoying being the centre of attention and hung his head, looking thoroughly fed up.
DI Morgan’s presence put an immediate stop to the conversation.
Montgomery looked up nervously. ‘Ah, DI Morgan, we were going to come and find you.’
DI Morgan looked at the trays on the table, which were littered with empty crisp packets and sandwich wrappings. ‘I’m glad you managed to eat lunch. I was informed you were very unwell at the scene this morning.’
The officer’s colleagues chuckled until DI Morgan sent them a warning look and they all scuttled away.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Sanderson said. ‘We really were going to come and see you after lunch.’
‘Firstly, you will not tell anybody else about this morning. We need to keep this out of the press, and thanks to you that task has just got a lot harder.’
Both officers bowed their heads as DI Morgan slid into a seat opposite them. ‘Right, tell me what happened.’
Sanderson did the talking, describing the events of that morning, clearly and accurately.
‘What puzzles me,’ DI Morgan said, ‘is why you went upstairs and looked in the suitcase?’
Sanderson and Montgomery exchanged guilty glances.
Finally, Montgomery said, ‘That was my fault. The old man told us not to go upstairs, and because he was so adamant, I knew he was hiding something.’
DI Morgan leaned back in his seat and scrutinised the two officers. They looked contrite, and without PC Montgomery’s inquisitiveness, the body may have gone undiscovered for another decade.
‘I want your reports written up and on my desk by the end of the day. And don’t forget, tell no one about this.’
‘Yes, sir,’ they said in unison.
When Karen arrived back at the station, she updated Rick and Sophie on Albert Johnson’s condition. ‘It doesn’t look good. He’s heavily sedated at the moment.’
‘So Albert isn’t actually in a coma,’ Rick asked. ‘They’re keeping him sedated with drugs?’
Karen nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. The medical staff seem very protective of him and aren’t happy with us questioning him anytime soon. But, of course, we don’t want to tell them the real reason we want to speak to him yet. The longer we have to get our ducks in a row before the press get wind of this, the better.’
As soon as the body in the suitcase became public knowledge, they’d need extra officers on the case just to cope with the flood of concerned calls from members of the public.
Sophie, who was sitting at her desk, spoke up. ‘They just see him as a harmless old man, I suppose.’
‘Well, to be fair, we don’t know for sure that he’s killed anyone,’ Rick said, leaning back against his workstation.
Sophie swivelled around on her office chair to face him. ‘Well, the skeleton hardly climbed in the case itself, did it? He can’t be completely innocent.’
‘Anyway,’ Karen said, interrupting the squabble before it got started, ‘we’re still waiting to hear back from Raj on the post-mortem. It looks like it could take a while to perform all the necessary tests. One thing I did notice at the scene was some bright-blue material with the body. I assumed it was something like a shell suit. They used to be popular back in the eighties. My sister and I had matching ones.’
‘Very stylish,’ Sophie said.
‘Don’t knock it. One day you’ll look back on your youthful fashion mistakes and feel the same sense of shame.’
Sophie laughed. ‘I’m sure I didn’t wear anything as bad as a shell suit.’
‘No, you probably didn’t. They were pretty hideous. Comfy, though. We wanted them for ages and were thrilled when we got them for Christmas along with our matching L.A. Gear trainers.’
Karen had forgotten all about the Christmas she and her sister, Emma, had unwrapped the shell suits, but now memories came flooding back. The crinkly material that rustled with every movement. Kiwi lip balm from The Body Shop, Exclamation perfume, and Bananarama on the radio.
‘So around the time you and your sister were feeling very trendy in your shell suits, someone was shoving our victim’s body into a suitcase,’ Rick said.
It was a sobering thought. ‘We don’t know for sure when our victim died,’ Karen said. ‘Those suits were popular in the late eighties and into the nineties, but our victim may have carried on wearing his for years.’
Sophie gave Karen a sceptical look.
DI Morgan came out of his office and walked towards the team just in time to hear Rick crack a joke about skeletons in the cupboard.
‘Perhaps you’d like to go to the hospital, Rick,’ DI Morgan said. ‘You can wait there until Albert Johnson wakes up and is able to answer some questions.’
Rick groaned. ‘That’s a punishment for the skeleton joke, isn’t it?’
The detective inspector simply raised an eyebrow.
Rick sighed and began to pack up his stuff. ‘Fair enough.’
DI Morgan crossed his arms and leaned against Rick’s desk. ‘We can’t miss an opportunity to talk to him. If he’s as frail as the doctors suggest, we could lose our primary suspect. Keep a look out for any suspicious characters hanging around. The note we found at the scene suggests Albert’s fall may not have been an accident.’
‘Will do.’ Rick shrugged on his coat.