Poison

by Charlot King

  The Inspector grabs his paper back.

  “Hey. Don’t knock it. It helps me relax, and stops the onset of... you know...”

  Abley pauses. Elizabeth helps him out.

  “Alzheimer’s?”

  Elizabeth perches uncomfortably on the chair opposite, desperate for the Inspector to crack on with the investigation, she drums her fingers on the table and stares directly at him. Again, Inspector Abley knows the signs so doesn’t rise to them.

  “Cuppa?” Abley offers, as he plops two sugars into his own. Elizabeth frowns and continues.

  “I came to tell you I’ve spoken to Susan Bunt, Edward’s ex lover?”

  Abley, irritated replies, “What? I thought we’d agreed that you were not getting involved?” Abley doesn’t want to let her blind refusal to ignore his request rile him. Instead decides to share that he knows a thing or two about Susan Bunt too. “I think she may have eaten with him last night at The Green Magician. I’ve just got back from there.”

  Elizabeth maintains the drumming of her fingertips, still wanting Abley to crack on.

  “Yes she was with him last night. She admitted it to me. There is something which doesn’t make sense about it. She felt, fake. Don’t leave it too long. She looked like she was about to leave Cambridge.”

  Inspector Abley raises his eyebrows, she’s telling him how to do his job. This time he can’t help show his irritation.

  “I really wish you hadn’t called on her.” Abley puts on his most forceful voice, but Elizabeth knows he’s soft underneath. “You’re crossing the line again, Liz. Why are you doing this?”

  They both know.

  “Dr Bunt said she didn’t know about the death. Can you believe that?”

  Elizabeth picks up a chip, looks at it and puts it back down.

  “Hey! I had my eye on that one.” Abley stabs the chip with a fork and bites it in half, chewing. “And you broke it to her?” He shakes his head at her again. “How did she react?”

  Elizabeth wants him to get up off the chair and race out to talk to Susan Bunt now and can’t hide her impatience.

  “She seemed genuinely surprised, but as I said, she had bags in the hallway so I’m not sure I believed her. And she pushed me over as I left, desperate to get me out. I really think you should pay her a visit sooner than later. Otherwise what if she leaves?”

  Inspector Abley is now worried about Elizabeth.

  “What do you mean she pushed you? Are you okay? That’s assault.”

  “No, not really. I suppose I may have provoked her.”

  Elizabeth looks sheepish.

  “Elizabeth.”

  Elizabeth knows Abley is both worried and cross at the same time. He always calls her Elizabeth when he’s irritated. Just like her father used to.

  “I was seeing if she killed him.”

  Abley replies “We will pay her a visit, but I have to interview the Dean of King’s College, as well as talk to Edward’s brother-in-law. I hear he’s tipped to join the cabinet from the back benches.”

  Elizabeth doesn’t want to hear about that annoying man, replying “Dr Bunt knows him. Warned her off Edward apparently. Oily bunch, politicians. Power hungry, that’s all they’re in it for.” Elizabeth dismisses them, taking the pen from Abley and filling in five down in the crossword. Watercress.

  “We live in a democracy, Liz. That means whatever you think of them, we need politicians.”

  Elizabeth fills in another clue, six across. Skirt.

  “We do no such thing. We live in a media run society. Decisions made on a whim. They suppress us with gossip and trifle, so we don’t wake up to see what the establishment are doing. They are the pigs in Animal Farm. And that is being mean about pigs, who are much nicer than them.”

  “I’m sure the pigs don’t mind.” Abley looks at his bacon which he prongs on his fork. Elizabeth eyes the bacon.

  “What have they ever done to us? They are gracious, intelligent and compassionate creatures. And we factory farm them and submit them to torture and worse at the slaughter house where you can hear their screams for miles.” Elizabeth fills in another clue. Retirement.

  Abley, who was about to put a slice of bacon in his mouth, suddenly loses his appetite and clanks down his fork, wiping his mouth with a serviette.

  “Well, you might be right about that Smythe chappy, but I don’t want you putting his back up. He’s bound to have friends in high places; and we don’t want him to interfere before we find out what happened.”

  Elizabeth watches Abley sip his tea, hoping he’s heard the irony in his own words.

  “I should imagine speaking the truth will be something of a quirky rarity to him. If I see him I can’t promise not to put his back up, as you say. He is a most disagreeable fellow. But I will try not to, just for you. His sister, on the other hand, is almost too good to be true. She is yin to his yang.”

  Abley smirks, knowing Elizabeth has lined up all the suspects already and found them all guilty of something, like she always does.

  “So you don’t suspect her?”

  Elizabeth doesn’t like it when Abley twists her words. She fills in another clue. Pacemaker.

  “I didn’t say that.” Elizabeth picks a mushroom from the Inspector’s plate and pops it in her mouth. “There is something about her too. Can anyone be that much of a willow? Anyway, while I have been conducting all these interviews and holding down my academic duties, what have you been doing?”

  “Told you, I have just come back from shutting The Green Magician.”

  “May I look at the food samples?”

  “No. And I was doing that!” Abley says defensively, almost incredulous that she would ask and cross that she’s almost finished his crossword. He gets up and pushes the chair back towards the table and it makes that noise only metal on lino can make. Abley can see that Elizabeth is disappointed by his continual refusal to let her in on the case, so offers her a crumb of information.

  “Before The Green Magician we also checked out the boathouses. Nothing.” Inspector Abley turns to go back to work. Elizabeth follows him out of the canteen, commenting. “Are you going to waste perfectly good food now?”

  Inspector Abley looks at her wryly. They walk out of the police cafe together, and head down a long battle-ship grey corridor.

  “Did you come in to update your statement? You must do that.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Make sure you do.”

  A police officer hands Inspector Abley a letter. Abley strolls into an incident room, places it on the table and Elizabeth follows. He turns to gently ask why she’s still on his heels on this case.

  “Are you following me?” Abley looks at Elizabeth, but she impatiently waves him further into the room.

  “Look, we have our best officers on this case, Elizabeth.”

  There are a couple of police officers pinning things on a board. Abley stops trying to dissuade Elizabeth and concentrates on the job at hand. In front of him is a photograph. He points at it for her reaction.

  “His shirt has been torn, not hugely, but around the chest area.” Elizabeth observes the image, a close up of the tear. Quite surprised, she replies.

  “Goodness. Looks like a struggle occurred.”

  Abley points to another image.

  “We found some of the shirt on the Garret Hostel Lane Bridge as well. Look at the micro shards of shirt tissue blown up. It is unrecognisable here, but he definitely ripped it on his way into the drink.”

  Elizabeth is curious. “How did you know to check?”

  “We found a man’s glove on the bridge identical to another in the water for an opposite hand.” says Abley

  “Does that mean he was pushed? That he struggled not to fall?” Elizabeth replies.

  Abley doesn’t know but bluffs it out. “Quite probably.
Oh, and you were right about the red and black beaded necklace. It was somehow at one point attached to his jumper, as there was fragments of a bead in the weave of his shirt.”

  Elizabeth asks fervently. “What if it was Susan Bunt’s? She was hiding her neck and I definitely saw scratch marks. She was wearing a scarf to try to conceal them. What if he tore it from her trying to get a grip of something in a last attempt to save himself before falling in? I bet that’s what happened.”

  The Inspector raises his eyebrows, giving her a final warning.

  “Let’s stick to the facts.”

  At that moment a pathologist, Mr Leedham, walks into the room. A skinny little man with a bald head, dressed in a white coat with a row of biros in the top pocket in four different colours. He places some rather spangly orange glasses from his head down onto his nose and hands Abley a preliminary report.

  “Hello Inspector.” Mr Leedham says, then his eyes narrow. “Elizabeth Green, what a pleasant surprise. What is it, a year? Good to see you, though I’ll be honest, we have managed without you. Quite a surprise, no? Though it’s been a little quieter, less high drama.”

  Abley tries to cut the conversation.

  “Never mind all that. What does the post-mortem say?”

  Leedham smiles not up to the eyes at Elizabeth and takes her hand to kiss it, but she withdraws it and offers comment back to Leedham.

  “Your glasses, they’re so bright.”

  “Yes, you like them? I wanted to find some snazzy ones, you know. There’s still life in the old dog yet, and all the rest of it.”

  Elizabeth takes the glasses and genuinely looks at them with admiration.

  “I do. They’d be great to find in the dark.”

  Leedham smiles.

  “Exactly. Yes, thank you. Very useful when I’m reading before bed.”

  “And they’re so much better than that toupee you used to wear, Mr Leedham. It didn’t do anything for you, it looked like you were wearing a gerbil on your head. Much better au naturel.”

  Mr Leedham doesn’t know where to look, and takes back his glasses.

  “The report?” Abley nudges Leedham again to discuss the results.

  Leedham, still unsure whether Elizabeth was being nice or nasty, shakes his head and replies.

  “The time of death I’d put somewhere between eleven and one a.m.”

  Inspector Abley looks at Elizabeth knowingly.

  “I think Professor Green can help with a more precise time. Elizabeth will be making a new statement very shortly.”

  Elizabeth looks at Inspector Abley as if butter wouldn’t melt. Mr Leedham looks at the Inspector curiously, and Abley brushes over it.

  “Go on, Mr Leedham.”

  “Mr Wiley’s heart was slightly larger than normal, but that could have been because he was a bit of a sportsman allegedly. Something else though, much more interesting. His organs were failing, all at once. There’s no doubt about that. From the bile in the liver, the dark colouring in his kidneys and the burning and lacerations in the lungs. Not caused by water.”

  The room is quiet. This is new information. Elizabeth wastes no time in seeing if Leedham knows what he is dealing with yet.

  “What from? I mean, that would have to be either ingested or injected to cause something like that?”

  “Not sure. Running more tests. It could be auto-immune, we can’t rule that out.” Mr Leedham is far less interested in the rest he has to impart. “Apart from that, I found small traces of fish with scumbitoxin -.”

  Abley interjects.

  “We’re checking out all the food from The Green Magician, for anything suspicious. Should be able to cross ref that shortly. So that was what he ate last night.”

  Leedham responds to Abley, keeping it professional.

  “Scumbitoxin, can sometimes turn you red if eating duff sea food, open all the lesser blood vessels in your body so you look like a lobster. Not shut down your vitals though, but has sometimes been known to cause a severe change in blood pressure which can be serious. But I don’t think there were nearly enough traces of this for it to have caused what happened to the deceased. It wouldn’t affect the lungs either. The toxalbumin was there as well, as you know.”

  Elizabeth then interjects, desperate for more detail.

  “Toxalbumin is certainly a very interesting find. Which first? Which organ?”

  Leedham raises his eyebrows.

  “It was probably the heart which did it for him, but his liver was definitely failing second, after that the kidneys. There would have been a lot of respiratory problems caused by the burning in the lungs. As I said, it wasn’t the quality of the water that killed him, nor the amount in his lungs. The water samples tested remarkably clear. It is a good sign for the Cam to be honest. Do you know I saw a heron down on Riverside the other day?”

  “No, where?” Abley is a keen bird watcher, mainly on the golf course where he sometimes takes his binoculars.

  “Closer to the Elizabeth Way bridge. Just on its own. I watched it catch a fish. Remarkable.”

  Elizabeth inhales then exhales loudly, causing Abley to cut the conversation about wildlife.

  “Right, thank you Mr Leedham.”

  Elizabeth, keen to get Inspector Abley to make this a murder enquiry, moves the conversation on. “The symptoms would suggest that this was no accident.”

  Leedham is quick to clarify.

  “All I am saying is that he died from something other than water, other than drowning. Incidentally, there was cocaine in his bloodstream, though not enough to kill him.”

  Abley and Elizabeth are surprised but then think back to the little plastic bag in Edward’s hat, which the Inspector has already sent off for tests, and which he now confidently guesses will turn up the same substance. Abley would rather he spoke with Mr Leedham now in private and out of earshot of Elizabeth, so leans in quietly to Mr Leedham, in an attempt to have the final word.

  “We spoke to Edward’s head of department and he told me that Mr Wiley had just got back from a field trip to Africa. Could it have been a foreign pathogen?”

  Leedham replies to the Inspector louder than he had hoped, allowing Elizabeth to hear.

  “Yes, it could have been a foreign pathogen. If he’d been feeling rough, with flu type symptoms as well. Yes, quite possibly. We can certainly send off some samples to SOAS.”

  Elizabeth can see holes in this line of enquiry.

  “Mrs Wiley said he seemed perfectly well when she saw him earlier that day at breakfast. No one else has mentioned that he looked pale. In fact some said how tanned he was.”

  Leedham defends his last statement.

  “Pathogens take different lengths of time to run their course. It’s hard to rule out a virus or even a bacteria just because he was feeling fine in the morning. Some are super quick, but then you’d know more about it than I do, Elizabeth, isn’t that right?”

  Elizabeth tries to turn the sarcasm into a positive.

  “Are you asking me back, Mr Leedham?”

  Mr Leedham looks at the Inspector and back at Elizabeth.

  “Er, it’s not my place I don’t think, do you? I’m sure I’d love to, but it’s up to the Inspector which consultant experts he hires. I think the budgets are quite tight at the moment, aren’t they Inspector?”

  Elizabeth looks at Abley, but he cuts short the idea.

  “Elizabeth, it was you who followed me in here, asking all the questions. No one is asking you back. I know you’re interested in the case and you may be of great help to Mr Leedham here, ignoring the personal insults on his appearance of course. But we have things covered, and I’m asking you to go home. We don’t need you. That’s my final word.”

  Abley looks at Elizabeth hard and does not remove his eyes from hers until it has sunk in. Eventually Elizabeth releases her gaze an
d moves to the door. She can’t quite hide the stinging blow dealt by Abley’s exclusion. Tears gather but she stabs her fingers into the palm of her hands to control it and looks away. Abley has seen, however, and is immediately full of remorse by the harshness of his words, and in front of his colleague, and so as she leaves he follows her out. When he gets to the door she is already halfway up the corridor.

  “Elizabeth, I’m sorry. And make a new statement asap please. Do it with Sergeant Lemon.”

  But Elizabeth doesn’t look back, she just holds her left hand up to show no hard feelings. She has also managed to sneak away with the note that the constable gave to Abley just minutes ago in the corridor. Shocked to read its contents, Inspector Abley’s super is asking Abley to leave Jonathan Smythe-Jones out of this inquiry if possible, for he will soon be appointed either as Home Secretary or given another cabinet position. Elizabeth folds over the letter and leaves it at reception, asking them to return it to Inspector Abley, in the same breath as booking an appointment to see Sergeant Lemon.

  Before long Elizabeth has made it out of Parkside Police station and is standing in the middle of Parker’s Piece. The sky is overwhelmingly bright, with only puffy clouds drifting by. She sits on a bench to think. What is she doing? Nobody wants her on this case, in fact she’d guess they are doing everything to keep her off. But it’s eating at her, she can’t leave it alone. Is it Edward? She liked him very much and is still shaken by his passing. Why couldn’t she do anything to help at the end? She feels like she let him down. Or, is it the thrill of the puzzle? She’s not addicted to crosswords or sudoku. She doesn’t watch game shows. But when it is a matter of life and death, of human nature. Elizabeth can’t get enough, it’s as if she needs to understand why, to find her own peace. Elizabeth grows more determined while sitting on that bench. How dare people leave her out of things. She knows Edward was murdered now, is convinced of it. And he came to her. Why? Her suspicions are with Susan. Why is she running away? Elizabeth looks up and can see the cafe kiosk in the opposite corner of Parker’s Piece, with tables and chairs scattered for people to sit and eat ice creams. Thirsty, she watches the man make someone a noisy coffee. She gets up and heads in the opposite direction.