MURDER IS SKIN DEEP, M.G. Cole [i can read with my eyes shut TXT] 📗

Nothing had changed. Even the two Hoy paintings were on the wall.

“Derek?” He yelled. “It’s DCI Garrick!”

No answer.

The square of carpet still hadn’t been replaced. He moved into the kitchen, noticing the lights had been left on.

“Derek?”

“I’ll check upstairs,” said Chib.

She hurried off before Garrick could caution her that it might be dangerous. He realised how bad that could sound in this day and age. He was sure Chib was more than proficient in self-defence, maybe more so than he was. He had trained on the streets, in the art of gouging and punching when your opponent wasn’t looking.

He tried the backdoor. Locked. From above came the sounds of Chib dashing from room to room, and he could just hear her calling for Fraser.

The kitchen counters were tidy, the sink empty. Garrick leaned against a cupboard as he took in the room, searching for anything amiss. He called Fraser’s mobile – and it rang in the kitchen. Fraser found it just behind the fruit bowl. He heard Chib hurry down the stairs and check the dining room. Then she reappeared in the kitchen.

“He’s not here.”

“He’s left his mobile.” Garrick looked back at the empty sink. He sniffed the air. There was a strong lingering smell. He turned his head in a slow circle, tracing the odour under the sink. He gingerly opened the cupboard.

Inside was a bottle of bleach, window cleaner, a packet of dishwasher tablets, and a bottle of turps. The dishwasher was alongside the cupboard, its wooden facade neatly blending it with the other work units. He opened it. Inside were a few cups, plates, and placed neatly upright amongst the cutlery: four paint brushes. He took one out and held it up so Chib could see.

“It seems we have a keen artist.” He indicated under the sink. “Turpentine to clean them. He’s been using oil paints.”

Chib’s eyes widened. “Fraser is Hoy?”

“That’s why he wasn’t in a rush to disabuse me of my idea about it being Terri.”

They walked into the living room, searching for fresh clues. Garrick looked down at the hole in the carpet, recalling the body lying there.

The man who looked like Fraser.

No. Not entirely. The watch marking on the wrist. The coroner said it had been too tight for comfort. The clothes not quite the right cut. He had been dressed to look like Fraser just before his murder. Then there was the paternity result.

Fraser had said the baby wasn’t his. He had been correct. He and Terri knew it was Oscar Benjamin’s. The paternity test confirmed that. Except the DNA taken for the test also matched that of the victim on Fraser’s floor.

It was Oscar Benjamin.

The two men had been roughly the same size. Fraser was prematurely white-haired, while Oscar was blond, hence the dyed hair. Side-by-side they looked nothing alike, but with a smashed-up face…

Garrick moved into the hallway. There was an empty coat peg and the rack of shoes under the stairs seemed to be missing a pair.

“Fraser’s done a runner,” he said.

He was about to return to the living room when he spotted the pair of green wellies with the shoes. Nothing unusual about that, except he couldn’t picture Fraser as the type to wear them. He doubted Fraser did his own gardening. He picked them up and examined the sole. Something glinted in the deep grooves. It was a single shard of broken glass.

Garrick hurried back into the living room, imagining the crime scene. He pointed to the broken door.

“Oscar Benjamin was already here. Beaten so badly that he was almost dead. Fraser broke the door himself to make it look like forced entry.” He saw Chib’s curious look. “There is a piece of glass in the wellies back there. Same sort that littered the carpet when I arrived. Forensics would have cleared every single shard by the time we let Fraser back in the house. So it shouldn’t be there.”

He stood at the end of the table and turned his hand into the shape of a gun, miming shooting the man. “Fraser kills him. The TV was on loud, to mask the gunshots. Then he leaves for the retreat, his alibi. He doesn’t take his own car because people might see him leaving. I bet there’s a gap in the fence that he can slip in and out of.”

“Which is why the bloke at the gate hasn’t seen him leave.”

“He walks to the station… no,” he corrected himself. “He’s got to have been seen to have left earlier. He would have bought the train tickets to get him to Hay, but somebody would have driven him.”

“Rebecca?”

Garrick shook his head. “My money’s on Huw Crawford.”

Chib reacted with surprise. “Fraser checked into the hotel under fake name…”

“And kept himself to himself…”

“Until he left. Then he made a scene. Shouted a lot.”

“Just so people would remember he was there and reinforce his alibi. He had left here with the intention of never coming back.” He pointed to where the body had lain. “Oscar Benjamin was dressed like him and with his face smashed up nobody would know the difference. He’d even dyed his hair to be the same.”

“And finding a dead man in his own house…”

“We wouldn’t waste time doing a DNA analysis of the body. We just assumed. If he hadn’t come back, then he could have got away with it.” Garrick paced as he laid out the timeline. “Nobody came and found the body. He had no friends. There’s a regular mailbox at the gate, so the postman wouldn’t come this far, so there was little risk the body would be found until he wanted it to be.”

“Which is why he ordered an Amazon package!”

“The body is discovered conveniently when he has been at the hotel for a day. The poor delivery guy, hearing the noise from the TV, seeing the broken window, stumbles over the body. The TV wasn’t to mask the gunshots, it was to draw attention to the murder. The