Death Can’t Take a Joke. Anya Lipska

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СКАЧАТЬ workers around the scene. They were harmless rubberneckers for the most part, interspersed with the occasional tosser who objected to some five-foot-two-inch blonde girl with a Cockney accent withdrawing his constitutional right to walk where he chose. To be really honest? She liked dealing with these ones the best.

      Finally, the promised uniform had arrived from the nick.

      ‘You took your time,’ she said.

      ‘Oh, was it urgent?’ he replied, all innocence. ‘I had a croissant on the way.’

      She grinned: Nick Ferris was one of the good guys. Recent intake, with none of the ‘who do you think you are, missy?’ undercurrent she still sensed from some of the older uniformed cops.

      ‘NOT that way, sir,’ Kershaw told a master of the universe wearing a two-grand suit who was attempting a body swerve around her.

      ‘Have the silly bankers been giving you grief?’ Nick asked under his breath.

      ‘Nah,’ she said with a sigh of mock-disappointment. ‘I haven’t even had to get my stick out.’

      He produced a reel of police tape and they started to cordon off the scene.

      ‘What’s the story here then?’ Nick nodded towards the body, which the paramedics were in the process of shielding from view with a white pop-up tent. Kershaw shrugged. ‘No idea. Maybe the market turned and he was left holding too many yen.’

      In the tower reception, she’d found an upright fit-looking guy in his fifties with prematurely grey hair – unquestionably the head of security – rapping out instructions over his walkie-talkie. She flashed her warrant card and he introduced himself as Dougal Murray before ushering her through the metal security arch and straight into a lift.

      ‘The highest floor where witnesses saw something go past is the 49th,’ he told her in a no-nonsense Scots accent as they hummed skywards. ‘There’s only one level above that, so I’ve got my team questioning all the companies on 50 to establish whether they have anyone missing.’

      ‘What about visitors?’ Kershaw asked.

      He unfolded a printout. ‘All visitors sign in and out and are issued with a security pass,’ he said. ‘I’ve marked everyone who signed in to visit the 50th floor this morning.’

      ‘That’s brilliant,’ Kershaw said, eyeing him with admiration. ‘Are you ex-police by any chance?’

      ‘RMP,’ he said, sticking his chin out.

      Military Police. Kershaw grinned. With a bit of luck she’d have the jumper identified and be back at the nick in time for elevenses.

      Two hours later, it had begun to dawn on her that she’d be lucky to be back for afternoon tea. Nick the PC had searched the body but found no clues to his identity: no wallet, no Oystercard, nothing. She’d worked through the entire list of 50th floor office workers who’d swiped in that morning and found them all alive and breathing. And then she’d reached the end of the visitors list. That had produced one brief glimmer of hope – a guy who had apparently left after a 7 a.m. meeting but whom the system showed as still present in the building. But when Kershaw called him on his mobile, he’d discovered he was still wearing the pass round his neck. Muppet.

      And there was another problem. She and Dougal had made a full tour of the 50th floor and found the windows, which weren’t designed to be opened, sealed and intact. Above that there was only the roof, which was accessible via two flights of concrete stairs in the emergency stairwell. At the top, a push-bar fire door, of the kind you saw in cinemas, gave straight onto the exterior. Green and white letters spelt out the legend: ‘ALARMED DOOR – FIRE EXIT ONLY’.

      ‘You’ve checked the alarm was working?’ Kershaw asked. Dougal nodded.

      ‘Since it gives straight onto the roof I’d rather keep it locked,’ he said. ‘But health and safety won’t allow it.’ An arch of his eyebrow had told her what he thought of that.

      As Kershaw stepped outside, a cold wind had whipped the hair from her face and stung her eyes.

      They traversed the narrow walkway that skirted the building’s iconic pyramid-shaped glass apex, stepping around the steel gantries used to haul window cleaners up and down the 700-foot length of the tower. Halfway along the east side they came to a stop and peered over the edge. At the foot of the yawning cliff of glass, they could see a white dot on the pavement below – the tent covering the body.

      Kershaw buttoned her coat to the neck. Up here, the wind, barely noticeable at ground level, had a savage power. ‘I don’t get it,’ she told Dougal, raising her voice above the wind’s roar. ‘There’s no way to get out here without setting off the alarm.’

      He shook his head.

      She squinted down at the tent far below. ‘Just my luck to get an unidentified suicide on my last day.’

      ‘You’re on the move then?’

      ‘Yeah. I’m starting a new job up in Walthamstow. In Murder Squad.’

      ‘Congratulations.’

      ‘Thanks. But it looks like I’ll be spending my first few days trying to find out who this guy is.’ She worried at the nail on her little finger.

      ‘Can you not just leave the case to Docklands police?’ He pronounced it poh-liss.

      ‘Yeah, I could,’ she said, pulling a sheepish face. ‘But I’ve got this thing. Once I start something I have to finish it.’ From the set of her shoulders, Dougal could tell that the wee girl meant it.

      Kershaw’s dad used to tell her that she’d been that way ever since she was little. Not long after her mum died, he’d taken her fishing for the first time up at Walthamstow Reservoir. He said she’d taken to it right away, but the fish weren’t biting that day. One by one the other anglers packed up, and as the sun faded he wanted to call it a day, too. But nine-year-old Natalie wouldn’t leave. He’d tried everything, including the barefaced bribe of a visit to McDonalds. But she just kept saying: Not till I’ve caught a fish. By the time she bagged one – a respectable size tench – her dad was dozing on the bank and the moon had risen, spilling quicksilver across the water.

      Descending in the lift with Dougal, Kershaw fell silent, puzzling over the mystery of the falling man. To gain access to the roof he must have disabled the alarm – or got someone to do it for him. But given that he’d fallen at about 9 a.m., when loads of people would have been at their desks, surely somebody must have noticed a strange man prowling around?

      ‘I’m going to need to interview all your security staff,’ she told Dougal.

      He nodded. ‘Including the ones who weren’t on duty?’

      ‘Especially the ones who weren’t on duty. I think our chum might have got onto the roof during the night, when it was quiet.’

      By the time Kershaw had left the tower, dusk had fallen, bringing a penetrating chill to the air. The body and its protective tent had gone and a two-man unit from the local council were using high-pressure hoses to clean blood from the impact site. The wet pavement shone in the reflected glow of a thousand brightly lit offices.

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