Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
After popping into her flat to retrieve the key, Caroline went to the landlord’s door. She knocked loudly and waited a moment before unlocking the door.
“This doesn’t feel right,” she said, lingering in the doorway. “Gigi was probably right that he just forgot.”
“You said he didn’t answer his phone, either,” Lily said. With her curiosity piqued, she wouldn’t let Caroline back down now. “You’re being a good neighbour, checking on him. I’ll go in if you want.”
When Caroline nodded, Lily stepped inside and called out for the landlord.
No response.
She ventured further into the flat.
Keys for every flat in the building were on a labelled rack on the wall. Below it, a stack of unopened letters sat on a small table.
Caroline followed Lily along the hall.
At the doorway to the living room, Lily swore loudly. Caroline gasped behind her.
A fallen bookcase lay propped against the coffee table. Beneath it, surrounded by books and other items, was the lifeless body of the landlord.
“Oh, my god!” Caroline screeched, a little too close to Lily’s ear. “Mr Latham! Oh, my god!”
“That explains why he missed your meeting,” Lily mumbled.
“What shall we do?” Caroline’s voice was frantic. “We should help him.”
“I think it’s too late for that,” Lily said, a chill running up her spine at Mr Latham’s wide eyes, staring unseeing at the ceiling.
“I can get Mrs Patel,” Caroline said. “She could help.” She went back to the front door and called Mrs Patel’s name a couple of times, then returned to stand beside Lily. “Shall I go down and fetch her? I don’t want to leave you alone, but Mrs Patel is a nurse.”
“What’s going on?” a hoarse male voice asked. His string of swear words was much more colourful than Lily’s, but his Australian accent softened their delivery.
“Aiden,” Caroline said with a relieved sigh. “Could you get Mrs Patel? She’ll know what to do.”
“Unless Mrs Patel can raise the dead, I don’t think there’s much she can do,” the young guy remarked, taking a step closer to Mr Latham.
“He’s dead?” Caroline shrieked. “Are you sure?”
The tall, tanned blond guy, who Lily judged to be around thirty, nodded. “I’m not keen to touch him, but I think the fact that he’s grey and not moving is a solid clue.”
“Can you check?” Caroline asked.
He shrugged, then knelt beside the landlord and gingerly touched a hand to his cheek, then lowered his head until his ear hovered above the man’s mouth. “He’s not breathing,” he confirmed. “And I guess he’s been like this all night.”
“Poor Mr Latham,” Caroline muttered. “I should have come over last night when I heard that crash.” She looked frantically at the Australian guy. “Did you hear it too?”
He shook his head. “I was working. Didn’t get home until three.”
His eyes flicked to Lily, and she decided that was a good time for introductions.
“Aiden, is it?” she asked. “I assume you live next door?”
He nodded.
“I’m Lily.”
“I know,” he said, straightening up. “You’re Flynn’s girlfriend.”
“Yes. Do you know Flynn?”
“No, but you were all being pretty loud in the hallway yesterday. It was hard not to overhear.”
“Right,” Lily said, but her eyes went to a dresser on the back wall and the numerous packets of shortbread biscuits. So he had lied about them being homemade.
“Hello?” Mrs Patel’s voice came from the front door. “Was someone calling me?”
“We’re in here,” Caroline called back.
Mrs Patel’s eyes widened as she joined them in the living room.
“We just found him like this,” Caroline explained. “Aiden says he’s dead.”
Mrs Patel stepped forward and pressed her fingers to Mr Latham’s neck, then repeated Aiden’s action of putting her ear near his mouth.
“Definitely dead,” she confirmed.
“Can you do CPR?” Caroline asked.
“No. He’s been dead a while.” Tilting her head, she surveyed the scene.
“The shelves must have fallen.” Her eyes darted to the pointed corner of the coffee table.
“I guess he hit his head here. If you hit your head in the wrong place, it’s game over, I’m afraid. I imagine he’ll have died instantly.”
“I’ll call the police,” Aiden said, drawing his phone from his pocket.
Taking a few steps away from Mr Latham’s body, Lily pressed her fingers against her temples. Stay out of trouble, Flynn had said. That could only have been half an hour ago. Why did these things always happen around her?
Turning, she ran her gaze over the group of Flynn’s neighbours. Aiden was talking to the 999 operator, while Caroline began to sway on her feet.
“Are you okay?” Lily asked, instinctively taking the woman’s arm.
She nodded. “Just a little dizzy.”
“Sit down,” Mrs Patel ordered, pointing at the couch. “Lily, could you fetch her a glass of water, please?”
With a nod, Lily glanced around, spotting the kitchen through an alcove.
Taking a glass from the draining board meant she didn’t need to go hunting through cupboards.
The window behind the sink looked out onto a small road at the back of the building and a large block of flats opposite.
As she turned the tap off again, Lily frowned at a jar of dog biscuits on the windowsill.
Mr Latham didn’t have a dog, did he? Maybe they weren’t dog biscuits… just regular little biscuits shaped like bones? She pulled the lid off and stuck her nose in, then grimaced. Definitely dog treats.
Back in the living room, Mrs Patel sat beside Caroline on the couch. Aiden stood staring down at the dead body.
“Thank you,” Caroline said, taking the glass from Lily. “I felt funny for a minute, but I’m okay now.”
“Why don’t we wait for the police somewhere else,” Mrs Patel said once Caroline had taken a few sips of water. The words came out as a command rather than a question, and she helped Caroline up and led her out of the room.
Aiden continued his quiet survey of the scene. “It must have been an almighty crash,” he stated.
“I heard something,” Lily said, standing beside him. “But I was half asleep, and Flynn said the building is always noisy.”
“That’s true. Usually it’s Liam blaring his music or his mum shouting at him to shut up. Or that happy little dog – it can make a decent racket for such a small thing.”
Lily’s gaze lingered for too long on the sombre sight of Mr Latham. She had to look away quickly as her stomach lurched. “Did you know Mr Latham well?” she asked.
Silence hung, and she wasn’t sure Aiden was going to answer. “Strange man,” he finally said. “Hard to get the measure of.”
“How do you mean?”
“He could be charming, and sort of annoyingly accommodating, like nothing was a problem… but then sometimes he’d get shirty over nothing.”
“Like what?” Lily probed.
He shrugged. “There was an issue with the bins one time… they weren’t being collected and it’d been going on for a while. I offered to call the council and chase them over it. He got angry and told me if anyone needed to be in touch with the council it was him.”
“That’s odd.”
“Yeah. He put my rent up not long after that. Honestly, there was something shady about the guy if you ask me. I’ve been looking for a new place.” He turned away and headed for the door. “Maybe I don’t need to now.”
Left alone with the dead body, a chill rippled up Lily’s spine and her instincts screamed at her to get out.
Her eyes swept once more over the debris from the bookcases.
Dusty old hardback books mostly, plus a couple of cacti that had fallen from their pots and trailed soil across the beige carpet.
A burned-down scented candle lay on its side, and a blue vase and an ornate lamp had both stayed intact.
The bookcase itself was dark mahogany and leaned against the low table; the wall it had previously covered revealed a brighter patch of grey paint than the rest of the room.
Two holes in the wall showed where it must have been attached.
Presumably, Mr Latham had been trying to reach something and had pulled it down on itself.
No way it would have spontaneously toppled.
Looking at the dresser against the back wall, she had the bizarre urge to swipe a packet of biscuits. The thought made her bite down on a smile. Morbid situations did weird things to the mind.
Time to get out.
Except something caught her eye. Instead of moving away, she walked closer to the neatly stacked packets of biscuits.
Beside them lay two silver screws. Lily went to pick them up, but stopped before her fingers reached them. Feeling slightly ridiculous, she pulled a tissue from the box on the dresser and used it to pick up a screw.
After examining it for a moment, she walked to the wall and inserted it into the bracket, which she had to stretch to reach. It fit snugly.
That could be a coincidence. It was probably a standard sized screw. When the bookcase fell, the screws would have been ripped from the wall and probably strewn across the room somewhere. Or maybe they were still attached to the bookcase.
She checked. No screws.
That meant the screws holding it to the wall must be somewhere on the floor. When she couldn’t see them, she checked under the coffee table, then moved a couple of books.
There was no sign of them, but they could have landed anywhere. Maybe they rolled under furniture.
“Are you all right?” The gruff voice almost had her leaving her skin.
“Fine,” she said, enclosing the tissue and screw in her fist. “I felt weird about leaving him alone.”
“He’s dead,” Aiden stated flatly. “I can’t imagine he cares either way about having company.”
“No. Of course not.”
“We’re waiting for the police in Caroline’s flat, next door.”
“Thanks,” Lily said. “I’ll come and wait with you.”
She lingered while Aiden left again, then placed the screw back with the other one. If there was anything suspicious about them, the police would look into it.