So you arrive. Then what?”
“The security guard was here.” Stanger said.
“Where here?”
“Outside the house.”
“In the yard you mean?” Each house, there were sixteen of them, eight on each side, sat back from the road. They all had neat metre high walls and dark wrought iron gates. A small patch of garden and a short driveway made of tarmac. Apart from the numbers the houses all looked very similar. Cream coloured with dark roofs and exposed brick detail here and there.
“No, he was in the street.” Stanger said. “I thought all this was in my report.”
None of this was in his report. “You know how it is when someone is acquitted. We have to go over the details.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“Do you know the guard?” Hazel said.
“Personally you mean?”
“In any way.” Hazel said. “The Keys is part of your patch, I just wondered how well you knew the guard here.”
“Oh. I don’t know them on a personal basis but I do know they have three guards. They rotate shifts. A week on, two weeks off. I expect they go somewhere else those other two weeks.”
“The security guard was Andrew Simpson.” Hazel said. Do you know him?”
“No, not really. No more than the other two.”
“OK so he was standing in the street, waiting for you?”
“Yes, under the street light.”
“I see.” The street lighting in the Keys was about the best anywhere in the city. There were a dozen of the Brite-White lamps which were a lot brighter than the old sodium lamps. These also had reflectors sitting on top of them to maximise the light and cut down on light pollution. “Had he been inside the house?”
“No.” Stanger said.
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what he told me.”
Hazel wrote this down. “What else did he tell you?”
“He said he’d seen Hannah McShane running from the house.”
“He mentioned her by name?”
“Yes.” Stanger sounded vaguely surprised at Hazel’s question.
“So he knew her?”
Stanger shrugged, “I expect so. I understand she was a regular visitor.”
“Did you know her?”
He shook his head.
“Who told you she was a regular visitor?” Hazel said.
“Well, I don’t know. Someone did.”
“Simpson?” Hazel said.
“He might, I don’t know.”
Hazel nodded as if she were satisfied with the answer. “You went into the house, of course.”
“I did. The door was open.”
“Wide open?”
“No, it was open, but it had been pushed back. It hadn’t latched or anything.”
Stanger said. “She must have pushed it closed when she ran out.”
“Yes.” Hazel said, “That would explain it.”
“She was in a hurry.” Stanger said.
Once more Hazel nodded, “Yes.” She said. Hannah McShane went to a house five hours before, at least, then committed a murder around two in the morning and hurried out. No doubt it made perfect sense. To someone.
“I found her dead.” Stanger said, “Ms Kelsey. She was downstairs in the living room.”
“Fully clothed?” Hazel said.
“Yes. She was slumped on the sofa.”
“Was the TV on?” Hazel said
“At two in the morning? What’s she going to watch at that time?”
Hazel said, “News channel….shopping channel…adult channel….” These days there was plenty of options. Hazel herself had watched a news channel or two during the odd sleepless night that people sometime get. “Or she could have been watching a DVD.”
“The TV wasn’t on.” Stanger said.
“How about the radio?”
Stanger shook his head.
“I see. So Gloria Kelsey was fully clothed, in her living room at two in the morning. Doing what?”
Stanger shrugged, “She had company. Hannah McShane.”
For five hours or more? Even Hazel’s sister didn’t come to stay until that time. No, this makes no sense. Hazel thought. “Good point.” Hazel said. She wasn’t sure where Stanger stood in all this. She didn’t see him covering up a killing, but she did see him, and others, covering up sloppy police work.
She continued, “You found the body and called for backup. Did you search the house?”
He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Why? The girl had already left.”
“Yes of course.” Hazel gave a weak smile. “Silly of me.” The girl, Hannah McShane, whom the security guard appeared to know, had run off. According to the security guard. Whom Stanger didn’t really know.
Maybe Stanger left the CID because he took too much on trust.
“Did Simpson come into the house with you?”
“No, he waited outside.”
Hazel nodded, “Did you stay in the house until backup arrived?”
“No, I went back outside.” Stanger said. “The dead body, you know.”
Hazel nodded, she had some sympathy for that view. Though not much for his lack of professionalism.
“Who was the backup?”
“Charlie White….Detective Sergeant White.” Stanger said. “We don’t have a big CID squad out here. Never needed it. It’s not like we get major crimes happening.”
Not unless you counted the seemingly endless severe beatings and occasional killings that used to happen in Riverside when Benny Jackson and Tony Usher were at each other’s throats.
“You
