Standing in the Shadows

ContentsCoverTitle PageChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14About the AuthorAlso by Peter RobinsonCopyrightAbout the Publisher 128 November 1980Let me start at the beginning. The first sign that something was wrong was the police patrol car parked outside the house, along with a black Ford Capri. The next thing I noticed was that the front door was wide open, and people I didn’t recognise stood talking in the hallway, one of them a uniformed police officer.I flew up the front steps two at a time and went in. Or tried to. Before I got far, the uniformed officer held out his arm to bar my way.“Oy, you can’t go in there,” he said. “It’s a possible crime scene.”“What do you mean? I live here.”He consulted his clipboard.“Name?”“Nicholas Hartley.”He screwed up his eyes and ran his finger down the list. It can’t have been that hard to find my name; there are two bedsits on the ground floor, two in the basement, two on the first floor and a one-bedroom flat at the top. Seven of us altogether. It was student accommodation.“Nicholas Hartley. First floor?”“That’s me.”One of the men he had been talking to was peering over the officer’s shoulder at the clipboard. “It’s OK, Glen,” he said. “Let him through.” Then he looked at me. “Come on, son, show me where you live.”“What’s going on?” I asked, but he just gestured for me to get going.The stairs creaked as we walked up, but other than that, the house seemed quite silent. I opened the door to my lowly bedsit, and the man followed me inside. Within moments he was joined by a colleague, and the room felt overcrowded. Both men were burly, like rugby players, one only slightly shorter than the other. But what he lacked in height he made up for in girth. He was balding and had a nose that had clearly been broken more than once. The other, who had led me up, was younger and slimmer, with cropped ginger hair and freckles. Both wore navy overcoats open over baggy suits, and their well-shined shoes were crusted with mud. I took off my parka and tossed it on the bed, along with my satchel. It was cold in my room, but I didn’t really have the presence of mind to bung a coin in the meter and turn on the gas heater that occupied the large, disused fireplace. I was discombobulated. No doubt that was their intention. They kept their overcoats on.“Mind if we come in, Nick?” asked Baldy.I was about to say that it didn’t look as if I had much choice, seeing as they were both already over the threshold, but I stopped myself in time. Somehow, I got the impression they wouldn’t have much of a sense of humour. Not on the job, at any rate, and they certainly acted as if they were on the job.“Do you mind telling me who you are and showing some identification?” I asked, shutting the door behind them.“Not at all.” Baldy took a wallet from his pocket and flipped it open. “DI Glassco, and my colleague here is DC Marley. Like him.” He pointed to a poster of Bob Marley I had on my wall.“A fan of his, are you?” asked DC Marley.“I like his music,” I answered.“Hmph. Give me the Beatles any day. Student, are you?”As Marley spoke, DI Glassco started conducting a casual search of my room, poking around in drawers, on top of the wardrobe, peeking behind the moth-eaten curtain that hid the kitchenette with its hotplate and sink. His movements made me nervous.“Yes,” I said. “I’ve just started my final year. What are you doing here? Have you got a search warrant?”“No, but if you like,” said DI Glassco, “I’ll stay here with you while DC Marley runs out and gets one.” They both stared at me, blank expressions on their faces.“Forget it,” I said. “Just hurry up.”“Why?” asked Glassco, lifting the edge of the mattress. “Got somewhere you have to be? Something you have to do?”“An essay to write,” I said.“Mind if I sit down?” Marley asked. “My feet are killing me.” There were only two small armchairs in the room, rescued from a local bonfire a year ago. Marley eased into one of them and gestured for me to take the other. “We won’t bite,” he said.I sat. Glassco leaned against the fireplace, tapped an Embassy Regal from a packet of twenty and lit it. I took my tin of tobacco from my pocket and started to roll an Old Holborn. I heard a thud from upstairs. Alice’s room.“What’s happening up there?” I asked, remembering the patrol cars outside.“Never you mind about that,” said Glassco. “We’re taking care of things. The uniforms are searching and protecting the scene till the SOCOs come.”“Scene? SOCOs?”“Scenes-of-crime officers.”“What scene? What crime?”“You know the lass who lived up there?”“Alice? Yes.” I noticed that he used the past tense, but the significance didn’t really dawn on me fully until later. At the moment, I was simply confused and stunned to find myself being questioned by the police. I had never had any sort of contact with the law before.“Know her well?” Glassco asked.I paused. “Her name’s Alice Poole. She’s a social sciences and politics student. Parents are quite well off. Own a brewery in Lincolnshire. That’s why she can afford the Penthouse.”“Penthouse?”“What we call it. The upstairs flat.”“Oh, I see,” said Glassco. “A joke, eh?”“That’s right.”“When did you last see Alice?”“Yesterday evening.”“What time?” “Around seven. I was just getting back from the chippy and she was on her way out.”“Off where?”“She didn’t say, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that she was going to her boyfriend’s place. Mark. They were supposed to be heading down to London for a demo this weekend. She was carrying a smallish rucksack. The weather was terrible, though. It was pissing down and the wind was blowing even worse than today. The roads were