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back here?’ he called.
    ‘I thought they’d thrown everything out,’ said Rafi as Bimsley tried the lid.
    ‘It’s got a padlock.’
    ‘Why would they lock it?’
    ‘Allow me. This is a job for a skilled professional.’ Bimsley eased his new friend aside and pulled out a set of slender keys, a memento of his days at the PCU. Deftly popping the padlock in a matter of seconds—an old party trick Arthur Bryant had taught him—he unstuck the lid.
    ‘Whoa.’ Bimsley backed away as the sour-sweet smell of putrescent meat filled the room, making them retch. ‘They must have left food in it.’
    Rafi took a look inside. When he did not speak but merely covered his mouth and stared back into the freezer, Bimsley came and followed his gaze.
    ‘Blimey, no wonder they kept it padlocked.’
    The body was that of a naked male in a bad state, knees bent to fit into the freezer. His hairless stomach was bloated by expanding intestinal gases, ruptured and blistered from attacking bacteria. Bimsley had seen plenty of frozen turkeys stacked in supermarket freezers, but the sight of a human being similarly arranged was made more grotesque by a further detail. The body was missing its head. The white knobble of the exposed spinal stump was as neatly carved through as any pork or poultry joint, even if the skin was marbled green and purple.
    The freezer had not been airtight. Bimsley could see that insects had already burrowed deep into the decaying flesh, and hastily closed the freezer lid before any more could be attracted. At this time of the year swarms of flies appeared because the shop was near the canal, and he was aware of the dangers of further contaminating the corpse.
    ‘Who had this place before you?’
    ‘This has nothing to do with me, I swear—’
    ‘All right, calm down, nobody’s saying it does, okay? Who had the place?’
    ‘I don’t know, some Nigerian guy. I didn’t deal with him, just the agent. Then it was empty for a while.’
    ‘So when did you first see it?’
    ‘About a month ago. I came here with my brother a few times, but I couldn’t always lock it up behind me. There’s somethingwrong with the door. I figured there wasn’t anything worth stealing.’
    ‘Does the agent know about the problem with the door?’
    ‘I don’t know—I just said I’d rent it, it was cheap, I don’t know anything about the building or who had it before.’ Rafi’s cheerful confidence had vanished. Now he was sweating and fearful.
    ‘This is going to put back the opening of your store a little,’ said Bimsley, digging for his mobile and punching out John May’s number. ‘It looks like you’ve got yourself a murder site.’
    ‘Oh, no.’ Rafi covered his eyes with his hands. ‘I’ll lose all my money. Couldn’t we just get rid of him? Who would know? I could call my brothers—’
    ‘No, mate, we can’t do that. I’m a copper. I have to call it in.’
    ‘I thought you were a casual labourer. You’re with the police?’ Rafi looked betrayed.
    ‘Well, I was until recently. I’m sorry.’
    ‘What will happen now?’
    ‘Someone from the Coroner’s Office will come and take the body away. Then I think the investigation team will want to find out what happened to the most important part of him.’

7
SHRINKAGE
    A lma Sorrowbridge longed for the clear skies, white beaches and warm salty sea breezes of her homeland, Antigua. Instead, all she saw when she looked out of the window in Chalk Farm on Thursday afternoon was a man trying to shove a sodden mattress into a van. In her garden, sooty rain pattered on a sprawling bush of half-dead rhododendrons, underneath which a stray ginger cat sat with trembling haunches, trying to pass a stool. Alma pulled her cardigan over her immense bosom and sighed. If there was one thing more depressing than waiting for spring to arrive in London, it lay in the other direction of her view, sitting by the gas fire in a ridiculously long scarf and a ratty quilted crimson