Guilty Conscious by Oliver Davies (best ereader for students .txt) 📗

“Sir,” she answered from the doorway.

“We’re sure it’s Vinson?”

“The room is definitely his, sir, and the witness recognised the clothes. ID in his wallet, too, sir. It’s him.”

I nodded and reached out, taking the wallet in question and opened it up. A student ID was there, alongside a driver’s licence, debit card, a coffee card and a few notes of cash. He even had a trolley token in with his handful of copper coins. I put the wallet back and carefully looked over the body itself. He had a fancy watch on one wrist, the kind that looked like it would be worth more than my car, and a signet ring on his little finger. Looking around the room from where I crouched on the floor, I noted a laptop on the desk, a smartphone on the bed and a television in the corner. Not a robbery then, that much was clear to see. Mills carefully bagged up the laptop and smartphone, looking over the desk without moving much. A few textbooks sat on the surface, and fiction books hung around in various places. The walls were plastered with grainy photographs, posters, quotes and flyers, many of them now ruined by splashes of blood.

I stood up, knees aching, and walked around the room, looking at some of the photographs. Most of them Edward was in, or I assumed he was in. It was hard to recognise his face, to tell the truth. But he had pale blonde hair that showed in the photos. I recognised the girl from outside, Freya, in a few of them, along with some other young people, more students. His friends, I supposed. There was another, framed this time, on his desk. He was sitting between two older people, the woman with hair exactly like his.

“Parents?” Mills suggested, looking over my shoulder.

“I’d say so.” I turned away from the smiling faces, looking back at the floor. This much blood, you’d expect something else, footprints on the clean carpet or leading out into the corridor, but there was nothing. The lock on the door was fine, and there was no sign of a break-in through the window. Edward’s shoes were off, kicked over by the wardrobe, his back slung across the back of his desk chair, coat left where his phone was on the bed. It looked like he’d come back in for the evening, and whoever had come knocking, he must have known a little. Must have let them in.

“Electronics all here, watch still on his wrist, wallet full,” Mills muttered. “Not a robbery then.”

“Personal. Look at the state of him. This wasn’t an accident. Someone was angry with you, Vinson,” I muttered, squatting back down to the body. “Who was it? And what did you do to piss them off this badly?”

“Dr Crowe is here,” Smith called from the doorway. I stood back up and peeled my gloves off, striding from the room and the lingering smell of iron and death, taking in huge gulps of cold September air as I walked back out into the courtyard where Crowe and her team had arrived. She was pulling her white suit on, yanking the zip-up with an authoritative movement.

“Lena,” I greeted her.

“Thatcher,” she answered, flipping the hood up over her tufty blonde hair. She gave me an apologetic smile. “Thought you weren’t working tonight?”

“Sharp’s orders,” I told her, looking over my shoulder to the room. “Can’t blame her on this occasion.”

“That bad?” she asked, picking up her bag.

I nodded. “I’ll need as much as you can get on this one.”

Crowe rolled her eyes. “You mind actually letting me take a look at the body before you start pestering me for information?”

I smiled wryly and stood aside, sweeping my arm towards the building. She strode off, passing Mills as he stepped into the fresh air, a grim look on his face. He pulled his notebook out of his pocket as he walked, flipping it open to a clear page and began scribbling down thoughts as they came into his head.

“Edward Vinson,” he muttered as he wrote. “Student, nineteen years old.”

“Local,” I added. He looked up at me questioningly. “Address on his driver’s licence is on the other side of the city. I’m guessing it’s his family home.”

“Might be worth finding out if he has a car here,” Mills noted. I doubted it, a local student wouldn’t really need one, but I nodded back.

“No sign of a break-in,” he went on, back to his notebook. “No obvious valuables stolen unless they were after something else.”

“No sign of a murder weapon,” I added, disgruntled about it. From the look of him, I’d say something used something heavy to attack him, that wasn’t the work of fists or feet, but there was nothing left behind that stuck out.

Mills sighed and flipped his notebook closed. “I couldn’t spot any sign of CCTV in the building, but there’s some around.” He nodded to the buildings surrounding us, a few cameras hidden up in the roofs and rafters.

“We’ll get in touch with security,” I said. “See if they picked up anything useful.”

“We should get these to Wasco quickly, too,” Mills added, hefting the laptop and phone in his hand. “Get in touch with Vinson’s parents.”

I nodded, and my stomach grumbled. I’d had an early lunch, ridiculously early, to make the most of tonight’s dinner plans. Now I was hungry, and that wouldn’t bode well at all, especially with a witness to talk to. Mills dug his car keys from his pocket and tossed them my way.

“There’s a granola bar in the glove compartment,” he told me, handing me the laptop and phone as well. I nodded gratefully and took the evidence, ducking back under the tape and skirting around the gathered crowd to his car. I stowed everything carefully in the boot, then opened the passenger door and rifled into the glove compartment for the granola bar. True to Mills’s form, it had chocolate