7 minutes

The steel rod was battering at the door, two of the beefier plods sweating as the ram swung back and forth. I thought about Ivica, down at the Crazy Loquat, off Old Compton Street. My watch said 9.31. The door sagged from the hinges and we were in. People talk about the smell of death: if it's recent the smell is just normal stuff; blood, shit, piss. What they really mean is the smell of decay. When the police arrive not 'just' too late – but too late by days or weeks. When I smell it, I always see the dead dog my brother and I found in the lane by the church, when we were kids. And there are always flies. There were flies in the flat, the buzzing more annoying than the touch of their wings on my face. I told the plods to stay out.

'9.32' , I whispered into the digital recorder pen.

The body was female or a cross-dresser. The clothes were not in any disarray, the skirt was down, no riding up over the legs. The blouse was a bit of a mess, but that had most likely been caused by the blows from the fire axe lying beside the body. I looked over at Vic, waited for the joke:

'Not suicide, then?'

'Killer's a bit of a prude though,' I said.

'How's that?'

I pointed at the dead woman's chest.

'I don't think the rest of her clothes should look so neat given the kind of attack it was.'

Vic grunted, probably couldn't think of anything funny to say.

Stepping round the body, I looked around the sitting-room. The flat looked cramped. Open doors led to a bedroom and a bathroom. The floor was covered in old vinyl records and their covers. Brenda Lee, Sinatra- before-he-became-a-bar-room-bore, stuff like that.

'Who's supposed to live here, Vic? Do we know?'

'Laura Hunt, funny name for a tom.'

'Probably not a real name, Vic.'

I kicked a Julie London cover over to one side, revealing a woman's handkerchief, miraculously clear of blood, unlike the album covers nearby. I used my recorder to lift it from the floor.

'Better wait for SOCO, guv,' Vic said, but he had a plastic bag open to catch the hankie.

'Who the fuck carries a handkerchief, nowadays?'

There was a retro-looking sideboard against the wall, all spindly legs and sharp lines. Something a mid-20th century designer believed was futuristic. It just looked dated. One of those clocks like a stylised sun hung over it. The long hand hovered three fifths of the way between the 6 and the 7.

All the clichés are true. The skin and the flesh does start to slough off, if the body stays undiscovered long enough - and that's why the most beautiful woman can end up looking like a melted waxwork. I walked over to the window, far in the distance there was a view of the river. Something an estate agent would be sure to point out, but a place like this rarely came on the market.

'Who owns this dump?' I asked Vic.

'Property company,' he took out a spiral bound notebook. Vic's 25 years old, but he thinks he's old school. 'Preminger Ltd.'

'And who is that really?'

'Stanislaus Kowalski.'

'One of the Poles. Who else?'

I turned away from the window. The doctor-on-call arrived. I knew him vaguely, someone to wave to in the Station yard or outside the court-room building. Not someone to have a drink with. He had on a cashmere overcoat. It covered his dinner jacket and those daft trousers with the pointless shiny stripe down the outside of the leg. He opened his mouth and I remembered why I didn't like him;

'25 to 10 on a Friday night, Jesus, I've got better things to do.'

'It won't take you long though, will it?' I said.

And it didn't, he pulled a netbook out of his doctor's bag, booted it up, typed up a report and for all I knew submitted it in under a minute. He didn't even look at the body. I suppose there wasn't any point.

'Let's scope the bedroom,' I said.

Vic and I fit either side of the bed, just. The mirror-fronted fitted wardrobes put paid to any room there might have been. The bed had a quilt, rather than any arrangement of sheets and expensive covers some of the working girls preferred. A rubber mattress cover poked out from under the not quite fitted sheet. Vic opened a wardrobe. Tailored skirt suits, blouses and dresses, some with polka dots.

'Weird,' said Vic.

'Niche market.'

He idly opened a drawer.

' 'Like BDSM,' he laughed, waving a ball gag at me.

We heard SOCO arrive in the living room.

'We'll leave plod in charge of the scene, Vic. Let's get a drink.'

'Naah, you go, guv.' he replied. Just like I'd known he would.

I looked at my watch. 9.38. I thought about Ivica in the Crazy Loquat. Dead bodies affect me like that.
I needed someone to pretend I was the greatest lover in the world.