wordrobe

"lets look in the wardrobe first" says Jones

"How come" asks Holder

"Best place to look to get a picture of a person. You see how they want to be seen, how they see themselves and a hundred other things. Are their socks neatly folded, are their shirts ironed, is anything on the floor. How expensive are their jackets and how expensive are their underpants"

"Go on then, mr BBC 1, have a guess" says Holder

"Him, clothes hung in order, so T-shirts with T-shirts. Will be designer jeans, t-shirts with shitty slogans on and hoodys. Probably one suit, or else one pair of dockers and a single white shirt. No, not white, say, blue. Also, seperated out from the rest one set of jogging pants say, or running shorts something like that. Expensive trainers lined up neat, probably with their boxes. Her"

Jones pauses as if he is thinking, although he is not really thinking, he has seen enough of the clues around the place; the books and cds, the home office, the bathroom

"five our six black skirts and jackets, some sensible blouses, plenty of bras and knickers, anything racy will be at the bottom. I bet hers is less ordered than his"

Holder opens the left hand wardrobe first. It is on the worst side of the room, its facing the bedside table with a book about Tony Wilson on. His. There are some red hoodys, a couple of bodywarmers, some zip up fleeces, sweat shirts and skater jeans. The clothes on the right, the hoodys, the fleeces, the granddad shirts, give way to a single dusty suit. On the floor, at the back and beneath the suit is a pair of sweat pants.

"Bloody hell" thinks Holder though of course she is not going to say that

Her side is overfull with mostly sensible work clothes. Squished in on the right is an old wedding dress and then there are some jogging pants and sweat tops.

"come on lets go" says Jones. He is feeling sick again. He knows the sick will only be foamy spit but he doesn't want to retch in front of anyone. They say their goodbyes to the copper who looks as if he is going to have a nice sit down with a cup of char and the end of "real rescues", and outside, they fumigate the clean air with nicotine.

"Worth talking to the neighbours before we do anything else. After all, he'll be sedated to fuck"

"how did you know that, there? With the clothes?"

"Oh" says Jones. He grinds out the cigarette and looks at it sadly. "Is it too early" he thinks, though he needn't think. It's always too early, or else, never early enough.

"You could tell from his music collection, or their music collection that he was a bit of an anal twat, all cateogrised by genre. He had a home office, which meant he worked at home, which meant clothes he felt comfortable in. We know he was into acid house and rave, and so someone who knew who Pizzaman was would wear clothes which were too young for him, but expensive ones. Someone with tesco's finest moistureser would care about their appearance, so the keep fit clothes would be there. "

He pauses. If he lights another now, no, no, it really is too early

"But the way he slit his wrists was amateurish, slap dash. The type of person who can't even kill themselves properly is the type of person who quickly takes up an idea, but then abandons it when the consequence of the idea gets hard. He'd have seen his beer belly, felt disgust at the sign of ageing, tried to do something about it, but then given up when he realised how much effort it would be"

"And her?"

"Oh, her, she was just a guess" he lies. He doesn't want to be seen as too clever and anyway, it would do holder good to keep an open mind, to not know that Mary Smith's Marriage was in trouble.

"Lets go talk to the neighbours" says Holder. The street is half spy holed net curtains and half matress in the front lawn type houses.