After Scott’s body was found the police secured the house until the investigation was complete. During this time Scott’s sister, Kelly, asked if, when appropriate, I would go to the UK and arrange for Scott’s cremation and return the ashes to the US. I agreed to do that.
Toward the end of July the police allowed access to the house and said that Scott’s body would be released shortly. This fit in well with the reservations I had made on Virgin Atlantic for the flight to Heathrow, hoping that the police would wrap up by then.
On the morning of July 29th I headed for SeaTac airport to catch my flight to London. The following is from an email to my wife a couple hours later:
Pinch me…see if I am asleep and dreaming.
I made it to SeaTac after a rather bumpy ride in a bus that had about six inches of leg space. Was dropped at the Delta / Virgin Atlantic departure door. Walked in and looked to the right and left…there were dozens of check-in lines for Delta, with incredibly long lines snaking back and forth, and not a Virgin Atlantic sign to be seen. Walked a ways each direction and nothing. Got back to the door and stopped to get something out of my suitcase. As I was kneeled there a voice said questioningly Virgin?
I looked toward the outside wall and there were a few counters for Virgin Atlantic, with hardly anyone at them. And a Premium counter with nobody waiting. I answered in the affirmative and she motioned me over. Within a minute I had checked my suitcase and had the official boarding pass and was pointed to Gate S-09.
I walked toward All Gates and again, there was a line of several hundred people slowly shuffling forward. At the entrance to the line I kind of waved my boarding pass at a security lady and asked if this was where I entered for S gates. She glanced at the pass and said that I was pre-approved and to walk over to the wall and take the line on the right. I did and there were three people ahead of me in line.
In about two minutes I was at the head of the line. Showed my passport and boarding pass and was waved through.
Got to the first baggage inspection setup and there were two people in front of me. I was looking around for the bins to put my shoes and everything else in, but there were none. As my turn came I asked the woman at the machine where I should put my laptop and everything that was in my pockets…she said to just put them in my backpack. Did that and walked though the x-ray/sterilization machine. Came out the other side and my bag was ready to pick up. No comments, no questions.
I stopped a security guard and asked what was going on? What kind of new technology did they have to allow us to go through so easily. He laughed (I’ve never seen a Homeland Security guard laugh before). He said they change the routine every day, just not keep us on our toes. Some days it is the same as it used to be, and other days you just walk through like this.
Good start to the trip.
The flight from Seattle to London was at least as nice as you could expect any nine-hour flight to be…well…it was actually nicer. I strongly recommend the Virgin Atlantic Premium Class.
We landed right on time at 7:30 and it took only an hour to get through immigration and customs…about an hour less than last time I landed here.
Nigel had offered to pick me up, and kindly sent me a map of Heathrow that guided me to exactly the same spot where Scott met me a year ago. I called Nigel and he was just about to pull into the parking garage, where he could park almost directly above where I was standing. But I wasn’t sure which floor he was on, so I waited until he came down and then we took the elevator back up to his floor.
As usual the first time on any visit to a left-side country I walked to the right front door and started to get in. And as every other driver in the same situation Nigel suggested that it might be better if he drove.
Nigel picked me up at the airport and brought me to Scott’s house in Bath. Roy met us there and turned over keys to the car, the house, and the garage. We had a look around the house and Roy and Nigel got to know each other a bit, then Roy went next door to work on one of his vacant rental units, and Nigel and I started cleaning.
Although I’d exchanged emails and talked on Skype with Nigel over the years, I don’t think we had met face to face since 2012. It was a pleasure to see him again, but since Scott was the primary tie between us, it was also very sad, and we had to discuss our disbelief that Scott would intentionally kill himself and leave the dogs on their own.
Once we got past that we discussed what we could do going forward. We had discussed the idea of reactivating Info Express…it was essentially shut down as Scott was the only director, so when he died there was no director and therefor nobody authorized to make decisions. It is actually illegal in the UK to have only one director, but the government kept renewing his registration, so I guess this mess is their fault. We also talked about the electronic gear stored at Scott’s warehouse in St Davids, and the possibility that some of that could be added to the rental gear that was being managed by Unique. And, of course, we talked about Scott’s house in Bath, wondering whether it would be safe (health-wise) for me to live in for the next few weeks. Nigel had visited Scott there in April and thought it was a bit marginal then, and Roy had described its recent condition with dog poop scattered over three floors.
We had arranged to meet Roy at the house, as he had the keys. We got there a few minutes early and waited at the garages down on Holloway, the road below Calton Walk. Roy and Nigel knew of each other through Scott but had never before met. I did the introductions and we walked up the 44 stair steps to Calton Walk, and Scott’s front door. I didn’t realize at the time that climbing stairs was going to be one of my main exercises over the next three weeks.
Roy let us into the house and turned over the keys that the police returned. He then gave us a tour of the place, which he had kindly cleaned of dog poop. He helped us find cleaning supplies then went next door to work on his rental unit, coming back from time to time to check on us. When he noticed that the router for the internet connection to the house was missing he tracked down a spare among his stuff and plugged it in, so we had working internet access. Turns out the police had taken this to see if they could find evidence of anyone other than Scott using the connection.
We opened windows front and back on every floor and got some air circulating through the house, which helped a lot.
Nigel hung in there for several hours, doing a great job of cleaning the new bathroom on the top floor. I would normally call this the third floor, but in the UK this house has a ground floor, then a first and second floor. Funny how the little things make communication confusing sometimes. Another example is dates: to me today is 10/9/2018, but to someone in the UK it is 9/10/2018. So when doing dates for both places I now write October 9th, 2018.
While Nigel was scrubbing the bathroom, I vacuumed up many canister-loads (it was a small hand-held Dyson vacuum) of dog hair, One thing that was kind of strange was the big collection of trimmed dog hair in the bedroom that Scott was using for a den. There was a hair clipper and comb, and a lot of obviously cut black hair on the floor. I can’t imagine Scott leaving that there for days…so did he trim Patch the night he died?
Once the bathroom was clean Nigel ran me over to a hardware store where I picked up some more cleaning supplies, then we picked up a couple sandwiches for dinner. After eating he headed home and I cleaned up Scott’s bedroom, found a clean sheet (to lay my sleeping bag on) and covered the big blood stain on the floor with a piece of scrap carpet.
At this point the top floor was feeling habitable…at least for me…maybe ten years in the military lowers your standards a bit as to where you are willing to sleep.
After Nigel left I found a flat surface on which to set up my laptop and catch up on email. One of my first emails was to Detective Sharon Maggs, who is standing in for Detective Alastair Binnie who left on vacation a day or two before I got here and won’t be back until after I leave. Which is too bad, as I really wanted to meet and chat with him face to face. I told her I was available to accept Scott’s stuff as soon as she could arrange its return.
I also contacted Pure Cremations in Bristol and gave them the pertinent information and permission to go ahead with the process….and paid the bill.
There was about three months’ worth of mail that had stacked up since Scott died, and he had boxes of mail that were older than that. I had a quick look through that and could see that there was a lot of pertinent information to sort out.
The police took two of Scott’s newest laptops but left the two that he was using prior to those. I fired them up but couldn’t get past the login screen, so set them aside for future exploration.
Here are some impressions based on two full days of cleaning and organizing things.
From a lot of time spent with Scott in the past, I know he tends to hold on to just about everything that passes through his hands. He doesn’t usually use a wallet…instead he stuffs everything that would be in it, and everything he collects over a few days, into his two front pants pockets. He told me once that he did this because it is a lot harder for someone to get something out of an over-stuffed front pocket than to pick a wallet out of a back pocket or coat pocket. Every few days he empties his pockets, returns the base items (debit card, drivers license, some cash) to his pockets and puts the rest of the stuff someplace else…often in a small Ziploc bag. When I cleaned out the storage unit in Sequim where we stored a lot of his stuff from before the move to the UK I found thousands of these bags he collected from the 80s into the mid-90s when he moved to the UK and started storing new stuff here.
While cleaning this house I found a lot of old receipts in various bags and suitcases, but they were older…from before he moved back in here. I did find a handful or so in his nightstand, along with some coins. None of his ID or paper money were evident. It is quite possible that is in police custody…I will check.
There were half a dozen large shopping bags…the kind you buy and theoretically reuse, containing food…mostly snacks and dehydrated noodle packs. There were also dozens of the eco-friendly reusable bags scattered around…guess I can relate to not remembering to bring one along.
There are no cabinets in the kitchen…it was in the process of being renovated when Scott died, so stuff was just left on the floor in what I think would be the living room. There is also a small fridge with a microwave sitting on it.
There was a little food in the fridge…the only fresh food was bananas, which had turned black and then to stone (which surprised me). There were also four cans of gin-and-tonic…Scott liked to have a can of that in the evening.
In a box beside the fridge were 47 of the cardboard sleeves that are around the microwavable meals that he often ate…but none of those meals in the fridge. There was one empty one on the floor, and I imagine that dogs licked that clean early on. There was also a bowl on the floor…the only bowl, other than dog bowls, in the house. I assume that is what he ‘cooked’ the noodles in (they are the kind in a wrap, not in a cup you can pour water into). I found a box of flatware…service for four…that he had removed a small spoon, a fork, and a knife from. I found them scattered around…the fork and spoon on the ground floor, so maybe the dogs carried them down there.
Since Scott didn’t have a freezer, and the MW meals should be eaten or frozen promptly, he probably shopped for those every few days. He bought his food at Marks & Spenser, a kind of upscale store about a ten-minute walk from his house…though he usually bought a lot of stuff at a time so he probably drove.
There was a lot of dog food in the house…unfortunately not real easy for the dogs to get to. Though I am a bit surprised they didn’t get to any of the boxes of food that were in big shopping bags on the floor.