DI Bassett

I’m trying to keep an open mind about this one but something keeps nagging me, telling me I’m missing something. A dead body, looks like a suicide. Certainly the first two coppers on the scene thought it was. But I got a call from my DS about ten, saying that he’d talked it through with the SOCO and they both felt that it merited further investigation and would I come and take a look? Something about the blood splatter pattern. Something about the position of the hand around the gun. Something About Mary was beginning to grate on me anyway, so I left the wife and kids to the rest of the DVD and the last of the Chinese takeaway and headed on down to Clerkenwell.

Usual scene when I arrived. Blue flashing lights and a load of blue and white tape, stretched across the entrance to a tattoo parlour. DS Taylor shows me in. A small reception area lined with posters and photographs of famous clients. Ex-clients. One of them I used to know. Joe da Flo. Played with that band, VivaFish. Don’t hear so much about them now. I looked closely at his picture, remembering. Back in the day. That was a strange case.

To Alfie, No Fear, All Love, Joe da Flo. That’s what it said across the bottom of his picture in black felt tip. Alfie. Alfred Valentine Henry Dawkins. Tattoo artist, seemingly to the stars, judging by the framed rogues’ gallery. Alfred Valentine Henry Dawkins. The Deceased.

Just off the reception, there’s a room separated from the entrance area by a red velvet curtain. DS Taylor holds it open for me and we duck through.

Inside it’s like a cross between a dentists and a church with Aleister Crowley as the presiding minister. Fat candles on ornate candelabras and a large gilt crucifix stand among skulls and a couple of ceremonial swords. One wall’s lined with classical music CDs, another has an old tin sign advertising long-gone motorbikes besides which sits what looks like a German helmet from World War One. I double take as I realise that the helmet’s become a hat for another grinning skull.

In the middle of all this are three leather chairs, the sort you’d get to sit in whilst having a filling. Appropriate, jokes Taylor, reckoning that getting a tattoo must be like root canal work. And in one of the chairs sits Alfred Dawkins, half his face blown away.

He’s clutching a gun, a small army-issue pistol. Blood and brain have done a Jackson Pollack to the wall behind him. Drying blood patches on the floor. So it looks like a straightforward, if messy, suicide, right? Wrong. There’s something that doesn’t add up. The angle of his arm’s all wrong. The bullet’s gone into the side of his head. I’ve seen cases like this before, not many, but enough. Three or four. And the gun’s always been fired up into the mouth. No danger of missing from there, see.

I tell Taylor to get the forensics boys and girls and a photographer down here pronto. He says they’re on their way. I have a look around. There’s a few pieces of hi-fi equipment sitting on a wooden bench, old stuff, like it would be familiar with the eighties. A turntable. A CD player. A tuner. A cassette tape machine. The tape machine’s open. No tape.

A uniform comes in carrying two cups of coffee. He passes one to me, one to Taylor.

‘What do you reckon, Guv?’ Taylor asks, slurping noisily on his coffee.

‘I reckon it looks odd,’ I reply. ‘My antenna’s twitching, Taylor. And you know what that means, don’t you?’

‘A long night, Guv,’ Taylor replies.