The Reckoning by Jane Casey Read Free Book Online Page B

red-brick Victorian originally, but a 1980s refurbishment had distinguished the laundrette with blue plastic signing decorated with bubbles. The big plate-glass window was steamed up and I could hardly make out the shapes of the machines from where I was sitting. I could see how those inside might not have noticed anything strange taking place on the street, or in the offices above them. Even if they’d been looking.
    My eyes tracked upwards to the three windows on the first floor. Behind them lay the rooms where Ivan Tremlett had been tortured to death, but from the outside they were blandly anonymous. It was only with a second glance that the signs of an active police investigation became apparent. The windows were covered with makeshift paper blinds and the door was tied off with Police Do No Enter tape. The SOCOs had finished with it, though, and all was quiet. There was no sign of any police presence, apart from the two of us. Nor was there any sign of anyone showing any interest in the building, or what had happened there. Tremlett had lived and died in almost total obscurity, and I wondered what had brought his killers to the narrow, dusty door that led to his offices.
    We got out of the car and Derwent led the way across the road. Before we reached the pavement, a tall black man stepped out of the café next door to the laundrette, shrugging on a jacket. ‘DI Derwent? Henry Cowell, Brixton CID.’
    ‘Sorry for keeping you.’ Derwent shook his hand. ‘We got held up in traffic.’
    ‘Don’t worry. Sounds like you’re having a busy day. I’m glad it’s your job now, not mine.’
    ‘Yeah, you must be happy to have palmed this off on us.’
    I leaned around Derwent, who was obviously not planning to introduce me. ‘Maeve Kerrigan.’
    ‘Nice to meet you.’ There was more genuine warmth in the polite smile he gave me than I’d had from Derwent all day. We were about the same age as well as the same rank, but Cowell seemed relaxed at the prospect of briefing two strange officers, one of them an inspector. I doubted I would have been as confident. ‘Sorry it’s just me. My skipper was planning to be here but he got held up.’
    ‘As long as you’ve got a key, we’ll be all right.’
    ‘Not just one key.’ He held up a bunch. ‘Wait until you see this.’
    The door to the street didn’t present too much of an obstacle. One simple Yale lock was all that had stood between Ivan Tremlett’s building and the world outside. I followed Derwent and Cowell up the narrow, dingy stairs to the first floor and stopped on the small landing outside Tremlett’s rooms. ‘There are offices on the top floor, but they’re vacant,’ Cowell explained, as he sorted through the bunch of keys he held.
    ‘This is more like it,’ Derwent said.
    ‘Yeah, these are serious locks with security keys, not standard ones. There are bolts on the other side of the door. The landlord fitted the front-door lock, but Ivan Tremlett took care of this lot.’
    ‘Everything but a barricade,’ I commented. There was no sign on the door, no company branding. It was entirely anonymous and discreet, apart from the CCTV camera mounted above the door and the shiny polished locks at regularly spaced intervals. No letterbox. No peephole. No communication with the outside world.
    ‘You get the feeling Tremlett spent a lot of time looking over his shoulder,’ Derwent said.
    ‘Understandably.’ I pointed at the camera. ‘I take it that wasn’t any use.’
    Cowell looked up to where I was pointing. ‘It’s a live feed that goes to a website, not a TV. Tremlett had it up on one of his computers so he could see what was happening outside his door if he heard any strange noises. The signal is encrypted so only Tremlett could see it – not even the people who run the website had access to the images and they were real-time only. Nothing was recorded. We weren’t able to recover anything.’
    ‘And we don’t have the least idea how the