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"Disappeared?" I echoed. "Completely vanished," Dunsinan said around another forkful of dinner, "Three days ago. Didn't appear at the office at his usual time, according to our office assistant. He's a creature of habit, is Carsie Burnbank: always at his desk at nine sharp. But he wasn't there when I got in a bit later." Quite a bit later, I thought, closer to lunchtime, probably. But I said nothing and let Dunsinan continue uninterrupted. "Later on, I phoned his house. Thought he might be ill, or something. His wife said he had left at the usual time, in good spirits, noting worrying him as far as she knew. And Burnbank doesn't go out, ever - just a day at the office, then home for dinner and then tucks himself up with an improving book. So I've no idea what could have happened to him." "Have you been to the police?" I asked, frowning. "No." "Why not?" "Because there's something else, which might be related, might just be the reason Burnbank disappeared. And I feel I owe it to the old boy to find out a bit more before involving the cops." "Go on," I murmured, deadpan. "I was showing a prospect around a property we have for sale, later in the afternoon that Dunsinan vanished. I hadn't really started worrying about him, at this stage," he said, adding carefully, "It certainly made me worried afterwards." I said nothing; just looked at him steadily over the table. "It was one which had been on our books for quite a while. It didn't seem to want to shift and the owner didn't want to drop the price at all. So we had very few people interested, and I hadn't taken anyone there for a month. So I turn up there, with this prospect in tow." "Who's the john?" He snorted. "Actually, it was a dame," he said, "Name of Collace Burrelton. Just a casual customer, looking for a little place of her own. Think she was separated from her husband." He shook his head, then went on. "So we walk in to the apartment. It all seemed undisturbed, but there was a terrible smell. I thought a rat had died in there, or something. Didn't make a good impression on Ms. Burrelton; even less so when she opened the door to the bedroom. She screamed fit to break windows across the neighbourhood." He paused, looking at his place as if his digestion was suddenly giving him trouble. "There was a body, a dead body, on the floor. It was a human, dammit: naked, bound hand and foot, and not an identifying mark on him. Blood all over the place. Looked like some kind of ritual killing: a single wound to the throat, so that he bled like a pig." I was glad that I had managed to eat most of my own dinner by now. "Messy," I said, then added, "And you think that your partner Burnbank might somehow be involved? "Yes," he said carefully, "And I also think it might be a set-up."
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Part 6