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Connor studied the desk, but didn’t waste time on the papers littering its surface. Instead, he made his way through the house, searching each room for signs of life as he went. Minutes later, he joined Barnaby in the kitchen.
“Nothing,” Connor sighed.
“Nothing here either,” Barnaby reported.
“I am right. The man was a fraudster.” Connor swore.
Barnaby nodded. “We need to search every nook and cranny of this house. I have an uncomfortable feeling about this.”
Isaac came to join them. “I will take the bedrooms.”
“I will search the outbuildings,” Barnaby offered.
“I will start down here.”
“Don’t leave any stone unturned. I hate to say it but this strikes me as too similar to recent events in Smothey,” Connor whispered.
They all remembered the events in Smothey, and the poor homeowner who had been murdered by Sayers’ men because they had needed his house.
The men began to search the property. Their first perusal revealed nothing untoward. When the downstairs floors had been searched the men stood in the upstairs hallway, and turned their attention to the small square hatch above their heads.
This was, by far, one of the worst of Connor’s jobs. He hated being confined at the best of times, but to go into someone’s loft, whether they were dead or alive, left him feeling cornered in a way that was deuced uncomfortable.
“You first,” he growled at Barnaby, who grinned back at him.
Neither of them wanted to do this, but they needed to search the loft. Minutes later, Connor hauled himself into the darkened space after his colleagues. He immediately knew that something was wrong. They weren’t alone but there was no danger up there. Not now.
Mr Tate could pose no threat to anybody as dead as he was.
“Strangled,” Connor muttered as they studied the dark bruising around the dead-man’s neck. He had been bundled up in an old carpet and stuffed beneath the lowest eves. If it hadn’t been for his protruding feet they might never have found him.
“He has been here at least a day,” Barnaby growled in disgust.
“Can we get out of here?” Isaac demanded.
“Let’s take the body downstairs with us,” Connor replied. He glanced around the empty roof space. “Is there any sign of a ligature?”
The men searched but came up empty handed.
“The killer could have used anything,” Barnaby offered.
“It is telling that they have chosen to strangle him rather than knife him or club him over the head,” Connor sighed. “It may be some kind of link to the other murders Sayers’ gang have been involved in.”
Barnaby nodded. “Given that most of Sayers’ victims have been strangled, we can only assume that this is the murderer’s signature.”
“So the person we met was not Mr Tate. Did we meet his killer?” Connor went cold at the thought that Tahlia had been that close to someone so ruthless. He was glad now he had been successful in persuading her to allow him to accompany her to the meeting.
“It doesn’t make sense that a killer would murder Mr Tate, go to the effort to hide the body in the loft, but then wait around and pretend to be the victim. I mean, surely someone in the area would have seen him?” Isaac reasoned.
“A housekeeper answered the door,” Connor sighed.
“Was there anything unusual about her?” Barnaby asked as he watched Isaac moved to the loft hatch, stick his head through it and suck in several deep breaths of clean air.
“Apart from being rude, surly, and downright incompetent you mean? Downstairs is covered in grime. If she is the housekeeper she hasn’t done any cleaning in quite some time,” Connor replied.
“It is safe to assume that the man you saw is a fraudster, and the cleaner was someone connected to him,” Barnaby growled.
“She could have been a look-out,” Isaac said.
