and ambitious, but normally on the burglary team.
‘You’re the first inspector to arrive, sir.’
Sheldon nodded, just to stop the panic rising. This could become his case, but he had to control it.
‘So what have you heard?’ Sheldon said.
‘You won’t like it, sir.’
‘I don’t expect to like it,’ Sheldon said, the words coming out clipped and precise. ‘I said what have we got?’
A blush crept up the constable’s cheeks. ‘A male, dead, in there,’ and he pointed towards the hotel. ‘There was a complaint about noise, and when the duty manager went to the room, he found a body.’
‘Any word on who it is?’
‘The room was booked in the name of John Bull, so I heard, but that sounds like, well …’
‘Bullshit?’
‘That’s the one.’
Sheldon set off for the front of the hotel. He went to a plastic crate filled with forensic suits, hooded paper jumpsuits packed into plastic wrappers. He ripped at the polythene and slipped one on over his clothes. Once he had snapped on the face mask, he set off to join the small huddle of white paper suits just outside the hotel doors.
The crowd turned to look at him as he joined, and when they realised who it was, Sheldon spotted the exchange of glances, the raised eyebrows.
‘How bad is it?’ Sheldon asked.
‘As bad as anything I’ve ever seen,’ someone said. He recognised the voice, and the long dark lashes blinking over the mask. Tracey Peters.
Sheldon nodded, and tried a smile. ‘A bit different to looking at overturned furniture,’ he said, and then, ‘how much of a mess have the staff made?’
‘No one stayed long enough to get near the body. As soon as they looked inside, they backed away, screaming.’
Sheldon looked towards the building but didn’t say anything for a while. He looked up at the bedrooms. Someone was taking photographs with a phone. A tale for the dinner party.
‘Let’s take a look,’ he said, and walked around the small huddle. He heard the boots of Tracey Peters behind him.
He climbed the hotel steps quickly and went through the revolving door. His footsteps echoed in the marble lobby, a walnut reception desk in front of him, a brass plaque reminding him of the hotel name. Sweeping stairways curled upwards behind it, lined in plush wine-coloured carpets.
Tracey stepped in front. ‘It’s at the back,’ she said, and led him away from reception and through a long room filled with high-backed chairs and a large stone fireplace.
They turned into a long corridor lined by doors. There were plates outside some, remnants of room service. Neither said anything. All he could hear was the rustle of their paper suits. His eyes scanned the walls for any blood smears that might have been missed, but it looked clean. At the end of the corridor, by an open fire door, he saw the bright glare of arc lights coming from one of the rooms and the bustle of more white forensic suits.
The crime scene investigators stepped aside as he got near. One was dusting the glass on the fire door, hoping for a print. Another was swabbing the doorframe for DNA, in case someone grabbed the door on the way out.
‘Anything yet?’ Sheldon said.
The dusting stopped for a moment and the tired eyes of a middle-aged man turned to him. ‘Nothing much, sir. All the blood is on the bed. No footprints in the room. There were handprints, but they were smears, and so no good for getting any prints.’
‘I’ll need to speak to everyone who was using rooms along this corridor, and the night manager,’ Sheldon said.
‘He’s been trying to get in the way since we got here, worried about his business,’ Tracey said.
‘He’ll have to keep worrying,’ Sheldon said, and then went into the room. He shielded his eyes as they became used to the glare of the lights, and once he was able to take in the scene, sweat prickled across his forehead and his mouth filled with acid. He looked away for a moment and took a deep breath. Once he knew that he was able to look again, he slowly raised his head.
There was a man in front of them, lying spread-eagled on a bed, his arms and legs pulled to the corners and tied to the bed legs.
‘That’s some extreme sex game,’ Tracey said, and she pointed to a ball gag that was discarded in the corner of the room, a leather strap with a plastic ball in the centre. Sheldon thought he could see teeth marks in it.
Sheldon let out a long breath. ‘I don’t think he was enjoying it,’ he said, and took a step closer, leaving Tracey nearer the door.
The man was naked. He didn’t look old, the Maori tattoos that swirled down from his shoulders giving that away, but it was what was above his shoulders that made Sheldon wonder if he’d sleep again that night.
There was a shock of black hair on the pillow, slick with blood, because where the face had once been there was just the bright white of cheek and jawbones, streaked red by blood and remnants of torn flesh and muscle. The eyes were still in place, and teeth seemed set in some final grimace. The face had been cut away in a neat shield, as if a stencil had been used.
‘Why would someone do that?’ Tracey said.
‘It makes him harder to identify, but that can’t be the reason,’ Sheldon said, his voice quieter than before. ‘Is the face still here somewhere?’
Tracey shook her head. ‘Not in this room.’
Sheldon closed his eyes.
‘There is a bit more to this,’ he heard Tracey say.
Sheldon opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘In what way?’
‘I spoke to the police doctor when he left,’ she said, and then raised her eyebrows. ‘He thought that the victim had been alive when it started.’
Sheldon looked back to the body on the bed and shook his head. The constable outside was right. This was going to be a bad one.
Chapter Two
The noise started in his dream. There was a bird on a branch, bright red and blue feathers, chirruping at him, but then the bird faded and the room came into view.
He was in bed and the chirrups were still there, except that they were now electronic. He groaned and put his head under the pillow. It was the telephone. He could ignore it, just wait for the answer machine, but then he realised that he couldn’t let it do that. He might need the call.
He threw the pillow to one side and stumbled out of bed. The floor swayed under his feet. He tasted the booze as he exhaled, stale and unpleasant, and then he pulled the discarded T-shirt from the front of the clock radio. Eight o’clock. Later than he thought.
The phone
