‘Couldn’t he have tried another door?’

‘He was drunk and couldn’t be bothered, apparently. He dropped his keys through the letterbox and sent a text to Chau.’

‘Excuse me? Just when are you going to let us do our job?’ comes a man’s voice.

One of the builders, a stocky bald man with a large round head, breaks away from his colleagues and steps towards Archer and the Detective Sergeant.

‘Ma’am, this Colin Hunt, the site supervisor. These men are here to clear out the building for the council.’

‘Not today, Mr Hunt. I’m sorry.’

‘On whose authority?’ he replies with a sharp tone.

Archer presents her ID. ‘Detective Inspector Grace Archer. This building is out of bounds until I say so.’

‘I don’t see a search warrant.’

‘Mr Hunt, the inside of this building could provide vital clues to a serious crime. No one other than the Crime Scene Investigations team will set foot in there today.’

Hunt’s lips thin and he turns to leave, muttering under his breath.

‘Did you check if any of the other doors are open?’ asks Archer.

‘No, I wanted to keep Hunt and his crew away from the front door. They were about to break it open.’

‘Good work, Toze. Let’s take a walk around the back.’

Steel’s Lane runs parallel with Commercial Road and contains a row of yellow brick cottages on either side of the hospital car park at the rear. Across the parking area is a steel blue door, the back entrance to the building. Archer tries the handle but it’s firmly locked. There are weathered concrete steps leading down to the basement, where she sees a large sash window.

‘Now, why do you think the front doors were secured from the inside?’ asks Archer.

‘She was keeping someone from getting in?’

Archer peers through the dirty glass and sees a broken hospital bed and below the window a battered gurney. She takes a pair of latex gloves from her coat pocket, puts them on and pushes open the sash window.

‘Or perhaps someone was stopping her from getting out,’ says Archer. She closes the window back down and examines the locking mechanism. ‘It’s been forced open. You can see the scratches from a screwdriver maybe. Get SOCO to comb the place and put a uniform front and back. We’ll need a door-to-door on these houses also.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I need to head back to Charing Cross for now. Call me if you need anything.’

*

Something catches Archer’s eye before she enters the third-floor office. Pinned on a corkboard is a newspaper cutting. She feels her mouth drying as she reads the headline.

THE GIRL WHO SURVIVED REAPPEARS TO INVESTIGATE CREEPY CABINET KILLINGS