Flyte

FLYTE

After leaving the hospital and Streaky had driven east then south through rush-hour traffic. They only had a stick-on blue light that looked like it came out of a Christmas cracker and so Streaky made liberal use of the horn and some rather unprofessional hand gestures to clear the way.

They didn't need the smug female voice on the satnav to tell them they'd arrived at their destination. The cherry-red air ambulance had managed to touch down on an unfeasibly small patch of open ground amid Stratford's high-rises, where it now crouched, blades motionless, looking like a prehistoric insect. It was guarded by a double perimeter of police tape manned by uniformed officers controlling a crowd of rubberneckers who held their arms aloft, phones angled towards a spot some fifty metres beyond. The focus of their attention: a white forensics tent that straddled pavement and road beneath the looming bulk of a skyscraper.

Spotlit in the golden rays of the setting sun, the tent would make a good image on social, thought grimly.

Streaky flashed his warrant card through the car window and the uniform guarding the access road lifted the tape to let them through. After parking up, they made their way over to the tent.

Opening the flap, Streaky ducked his head inside. Over his shoulder, could see the outline of a man in a dark suit, face down, who looked as if he were floating on a tide of his own blood – recognisable even in half-profile. The white-suited crime scene manager, whom she recognised as Tina Verity, emerged from the tent carrying an evidence bag.

She handed it to Streaky and could see it contained a burgundy-coloured EU passport with Greek lettering on the front, opened at the holder's page. ‘Georgios Alexander Angelopoulos,' said Tina. ‘Place of birth: Perdikia, Republic of Cyprus.'

Aka George, Bronte's father, as Craig had informed them on the phone.

‘Good of him to help us out with his ID,' Streaky grunted. ‘Any suspicious injuries on the body? Signs of a struggle?'

Tina shook her head. ‘Nothing obvious.'

‘Pathologist on the way?' asked Streaky.

Tina nodded.

He sent a meaningful look. ‘Belt and braces on this one.'

She nodded: a pathologist wouldn't normally attend the scene of a straightforward suicide, but after the police had so spectacularly dropped the ball after Bronte's death it was a sensible move.

Shading her eyes with a nitrile-gloved hand, Tina looked up to the skyscraper. ‘He fell from the garden area, eighteen floors up.'

Following her gaze, saw that a five-storey-deep slice had been excised from the building around halfway up, leaving the upper floors suspended from a slender cantilever, like a giant Jenga tower on the verge of collapse.

‘He left the keys to his Merc on a bench up there – and this.' Digging out her phone, she stripped off a glove and pulled up an image.

His car keys were set on a photograph, which showed Bronte as a child of perhaps nine or ten, on a beach, her little arms and legs stick-thin, her face split in a gap-toothed grin.

‘Is the garden accessible to the public?' asked .

‘Just to residents,' said Tina, ‘but anyway it was supposed to be closed when he fell, so .?.?. it's not clear how he managed to get out there without triggering the door alarm.'

‘Where there's a will.' Streaky shrugged.

As two paramedics ambled over with a stretcher – no reason to hurry – and Streaky made their way towards the building's foyer and took the lift up to the floor marked ‘Residents' Garden'.

‘What's your call on this?' asked Streaky, giving his pocket contents a thoughtful jingle.

narrowed her eyes before ticking off the options on her fingers. ‘One, he simply killed himself out of grief at losing his daughter. Two, he killed himself out of guilt because he was involved in Bronte's murder. Three, somebody else killed him because they found out he was involved.'

They found the double doors to the garden area open, noting the security keypad that controlled access, and ducked under the skein of police tape.

Leaning against the wall to pull on plastic overshoes, Streaky nodded. ‘My thoughts exactly. If it's one, then not our department. If it's two and he did murder his daughter it would mean Chrysanthi gave him a false alibi for that night. Not to protect him but so she could kill him herself, i.e. number three.'

They walked over to the parapet and Streaky frowned. ‘And she has the perfect alibi given she was eight miles away slashing her own wrists at the time. Unless she took out a hit on him.'

‘Does she strike you as the type to hang out with hit men?'

‘Not really.' Streaky shook his head. ‘Anyway, where's the motive? We already considered child abuse – i.e. George abused Bronte, she threatens to dib him in to the cops, tells Chrysanthi .?.?.'

made a sceptical face. ‘The abuse angle just doesn't add up. Bronte was far closer to him than she was to her mother.'

‘My money's on Occam's razor,' mused Streaky. ‘Faced with competing theories, always choose the simplest one.'

‘Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.'

‘Yep.'

Looking at the scene far below them – the sun glinting off the blades of the air ambo, the crowd waiting to catch its take-off – something caught 's eye. At the front of the melee of spectators, with the forensic tent and skyscraper in the background, identifiable by her pink hair, @Charly_Detective was filming her latest unmissable update.

Following her gaze, Streaky made a scoffing sound. ‘One person's tragedy is another person's clickbait.'