They put the heater back on, and were dozing in its desiccating warmth when the fist at their window made them both start. All John May could see was a pair of alarmed brown eyes peering through the furry tunnel of a green snow hood. He rolled down the glass.
‘Thank God,’ said the man, ‘nobody else will open their windows—there’s been a terrible—’
‘Wait,’ May shouted, ‘I can’t hear you. Go around the back.’ He climbed out of the van and plodded around it, cracking ice from the frozen rear door handle. The man in the green parka clambered up and shook down his hood. He was young, Chinese, frightened. If he noticed that he had been seated next to a gigantic gold-painted statue of Ganesh the Elephant God, he chose not to comment. ‘I’m in the Honda Civic back there. My engine stalled and the heater died,’ he explained. ‘I needed to keep warm but didn’t have any other clothes in the car with me. There was a truck behind me—I could vaguely see the driver in my rearview mirror—so I thought I’d ask him if I could sit in his cabin. The truck’s side windows were covered in snow and I couldn’t see in, so I tried the driver’s door. I’m sorry—’ The man fought down a wave of panic. ‘I need to call the police—my mobile has no battery left, I just needed to tell someone—’
‘It’s all right, you’ve found yourself a pair of police officers,’ said May.
‘He’s dead, lying across the seat; someone’s cut a hole in his throat. It must have only just happened, because blood is still pouring out. I tried to stop it, but didn’t know what to do.’ He held up a crimson left hand.
‘Was he alone? Did you see a passenger?’
‘No, but the door was swinging open. It hadn’t been properly closed. I must have only just missed him.’
‘It’s probably a good thing that you did. You’d better stay here while I go and look.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Bryant called from his base deep within the passenger seat.
‘It’s freezing out there, Arthur. You’re better off staying in here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. My blood is so thin I’m virtually reptilian. I haven’t felt anything in my extremities since I landed on my arse in the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. Besides, you need my help. You’re not as steady on your pins as you once were.’
‘I resent that,’ muttered May. ‘Come on then, just for a minute, but do your coat up properly.’
With the wind trying to whip the handle from his grasp, May had trouble closing the van door until their witness reached out to help him pull it shut. The detectives padded back along the column of stranded cars to the grocery truck, but any footprints that might have been left around it had already been obliterated by the gale. The snow coated their ears and eyes in feathered clumps. The mere act of breathing stung their noses and throats. The sky, the hills, the wind itself was white. The moorlands had been transformed into a blanched ice-desert, the trees bent low in frozen peninsulas of frost. May needed gloves and proper boots. His leather town shoes had become soaked in seconds. As he fumbled with the driver’s door, he realised he had already lost all sensation in his hands.
‘Oh, let me do it,’ said Bryant. ‘There.’ The door came open in a spray of crystal shards.
The driver’s body was splayed across the seat on its back with one arm draped across a distended stomach, the mouth agape, as in the throes of a nightmare. The interior of the cabin had been darkened by snow building up across the windscreen, but there was enough light to reveal the hole beneath the driver’s chin. In the freezing exposure of the cabin, blood had quickly coagulated and darkened across the upholstery.
‘Penknife or scissor wound,’ said Bryant. ‘Interesting.’
The dead man appeared to be in his mid-forties but was probably younger. He wore the blue overalls provided by his company. A badge read Bentick’s—We Deliver. ‘Dreadful skin, looks like he hasn’t had a drink of water in years,’ sniffed Bryant. ‘Subsisted on a diet of cigarettes, coffee and bad motorway food.’
May had forgotten to pack the Valiant, his trusted old cinema torch, but he was enough of a pessimist to still carry a pencil flashlight in his jacket. He shone it into the pale wash of light and picked up blood spots on the steering wheel, a streak across the base of the windscreen, a still-wet smear on the dashboard. ‘No struggle here,’ he told Bryant, ‘just surprise and collapse. He was attacked by someone who posed no threat. Someone he probably thought was a friend.’
‘The passenger. A hitchhiker, you think? He fled the scene pretty quickly. Blood on the passenger door handle. He won’t last long out there in the blizzard.’
‘Not unless he’s climbed into one of the other stranded vehicles. Someone else could be in danger. We need to get a description of him somehow. I can’t get much from the crime scene in these conditions.’
Bryant looked up at the windscreen. ‘I don’t understand. This window is snowed over. How could your witness have seen the driver through the glass?’
‘You don’t think that’s our man?’ asked May. ‘Why on earth would he have come to us?’
‘I don’t think he faked looking that terrified, John. We can’t trust what we see. Snow and wind can do anything to this landscape.’
‘Okay, let’s get back to the van. You’re starting to turn blue.’
They trudged back through the white valley of stranded cars. The rear door of the van stood wide, and without its heater running the Bedford had started to ice solid. Their witness was nowhere to be found. May took his mobile from the dashboard and got connected to the Plymouth constabulary.
‘They can’t get anyone to the area,’ Bryant was informed. ‘The Highways Agency has stopped all traffic because the winds are expected to stay at gale force tonight. They’re saying that as long as no-one’s in imminent danger we should just sit tight. They’ve got GPS and mobile tracking equipment, so they have a rough idea of how many people are stranded here. They’re going to try and drop in emergency supplies the moment the wind lets up.’
‘A snowbound murderer,’ said Bryant with relish. ‘It’s almost too good to be true. We know he’s stranded here with us, but what is he doing?’
Outside in the white corridor of the arterial road, twenty-seven drivers and passengers were marooned in their vehicles, spread over half a mile of inundated road. Johann moved among them, silent and trackless, prepared to pass from one warm haven to the next, desperately searching for a mother and her son.
27
THE ANCIENT CORONER
Dissecting the body of his former colleague was not only unethical, but a profoundly depressing experience. Kershaw pushed a blond lick from his eyes and set aside the scalpel, flexing his slender fingers. He looked down at the splayed body on the steel table. Even though the temperature in the converted gymnasium had fallen to around ten degrees centigrade, he was sweating. Finch would never have lived to see much of his retirement; the parts of his arteries that had not hardened were bubbled with developing embolisms. He must have suffered painful side effects, certainly enough to encourage the use of powerful painkillers. All the talk about finally being able to relax in his fishing hut in Hastings had been bravado, nothing more. The pathologist had known he was dying.
The thought recurred to Kershaw: Might he have arranged his own demise? If so, to what end? Bryant would doubtless suggest he had done it to annoy everyone.
He looked down at the old tyrant, laid out on the very dissecting table he had used for so much of his working life. Kershaw had once read that the body weighed infinitesimally less after the spirit had departed. The ancient coroner’s life force had clearly evaporated now, for he had been reduced to a papery dry shell, the cocoon husk of a departed creature. Facially, he resembled an etiolated Boris Karloff. His arms were traversed with a tangle of partially collapsed veins and blossoms of broken blood vessels, but there were no recent marks of violence other than the ones on his neck and chest, nothing else to suggest that a struggle had taken place.
Finch had admitted his attacker in
good faith, thought Kershaw, only to be surprised while his defences were down. If it wasn’t someone from the unit, it had to be Mills. Finch must have trusted the boy enough to turn away from him. The old man had been married, but never spoke of his emotional attachments. Was it possible he had a secret; could he have found the seventeen-year-old attractive, and acted inappropriately? He tried to recall any rumours he had heard about the pathologist, but came up with nothing untoward.
Kershaw rang the detective sergeant. ‘Are you still with Mills?’ he asked. ‘Think he’s on drugs?’
‘Absolutely not. Normal pupil dilation, clear speech, fast reactions, completely normal as far as I can tell. At least he’s talking now.’
‘Any idea how tall he is?’
‘About one hundred sixty-five centimetres,’ Longbright replied. ‘Why?’
‘Five five—he’s too short, Janice. Apart from the disparity between his visit and the time of death, the bruising angle is wrong. I don’t think he killed Finch. You didn’t find a small brown plastic bottle on him?’
‘Nothing in his pockets, but we know he took Finch’s notes, even though he won’t admit it. They may still be on site. He’s wearing her neck chain, says she gave it to him. A piece of cheap gold plate, but there’s a name engraved on it, Lilith Starr. Sounds made up. Mills says she kept a squat on the Crowndale Estate, where he lives.’
‘You think he’s just some opportunist thief who saw a girl he knew, followed the ambulance and plundered her dead body? Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you?’
‘Come on, Giles, there are crime victims in Camden Town who are stripped before they hit the pavement.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Have you finished?’ asked Banbury, averting his eyes. It was bad enough that Bryant had asked him to photograph the deceased girl’s neck, without him having to see the dead face of a former colleague.
‘Pretty much. You can come in now.’ Kershaw pulled a Mylar tarp over the body and clipped it in place. ‘I tested for naltrexone and morphine. There’s none in his body, but he must have been suffering periodic bouts of pain. He would only have lasted a matter of months.’
‘You think he knew that?’
‘He should have done—he was a biologist, although they’re notoriously neglectful about their own workings.’
‘Can I take another look around?’
‘Knock yourself out,’ said Kershaw, rubbing his eyes. ‘It’s gone eleven. I’m just about done here.’ He looked about the sparse room. ‘I don’t know—there’s some trace evidence we’ve missed—’
‘There’s always something more.’ Banbury peered out from behind a locker. ‘You can’t be expected to pick up on everything.’
‘That was Finch’s main criticism of me. He said I rushed things, missed obvious opportunities. I don’t want to make that mistake now. This is my chance to put things right.’
The empty space on the drug shelves nagged at him. He had seen the bottles lined up on them often enough, knew how much of a stickler the old pathologist had been about them. There could be other explanations; he might have accidentally broken it, or forgotten to get the naltrexone replaced after use.
‘Giles.’
The young forensic scientist turned around and saw what Banbury was holding up in his hand. ‘Where did you find that?’
‘Your missing bottle. It had rolled right under the desk. It’s been used recently.’ A syringe could be inserted through the plastic cap of the naltrexone to maintain sterility, but the bottle had not been completely emptied, and a small amount had leaked out. ‘When I photographed her, I noticed that the girl in the drawer had track marks on the back of her left leg. You don’t suppose he experimented on her by injecting this stuff?’
‘It wouldn’t react on inert tissue. You need circulating blood to carry chemicals into the system. The only other explanation is that the boy came here with the specific purpose of stealing drugs, and that he somehow used it on himself, but that makes no sense. So we have a fresh mystery.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Dan, unlocking the body drawer and pulling it out. ‘I think Mills came here to ensure that his girlfriend’s identity remained secret.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Banbury gingerly felt inside the body bag. ‘He took her neck chain and swiped Oswald’s notes. Suppose he followed her to the morgue for the express purpose of protecting her, even beyond death? Because there’s this.’ He pulled out Lilith Starr’s left arm and indicated a paler, scarred patch on the inside, just below her elbow. ‘She had a tattoo removed in the last year, not with a laser either.’ He pointed to a faint red-and-blue mark on her skin. ‘You can just see the edges of the original design.’
‘Something traditional. Looks like it might have been a heart with a banner,’ said Banbury, peering closer. ‘We’ll need to check the local tattoo parlours. I think there’s one right on the edge of the Crowndale Estate, and there are several basement joints in Camden Town, not all of them legal. Many of the artists have signature patterns. Maybe one of them will recognise it. Meanwhile, Mills has to remain our main suspect. If Oswald discovered who she really was, maybe it was a secret worth killing to protect.’ He answered his ringing mobile, then passed it over. ‘John May for you. He tried calling yours but couldn’t get through.’
‘I thought they were going to leave us to handle this,’ said Kershaw. ‘Anyone would think they were still at the PCU, not stuck in a bloody blizzard.’ He took the call, mainly listening to instructions. ‘He wants us to take a shot of Lilith Starr’s face and send it on to Colin and Meera. A job for you, I think. I’ll tell you what, though. Those old boys aren’t in charge of this investigation. It’s not something that can be handled from long distance. We’re right here, on the ground. They won’t be able to take the credit if we’re the ones who manage to sort it out.’
‘They’re not after credit, Giles,’ said Banbury. ‘They were already working with Oswald when you and I were at primary school. They want to do something for him. Show some respect for once.’ He was embarrassed by his colleague’s display of ambition. ‘I’ll get the shot.’
28
FORTITUDE
Princess Beatrice’s social secretary, Rosemary Armstrong, was an astonishingly angry woman. Among the things that angered her were socialists, untidiness, public transport, modern architecture, poor handwriting, economic migrants, curry houses, scruffy people who refused to better themselves, council houses, the residents of London, all of whom were rude and wanted something for nothing, foxhunt saboteurs, litter, shop assistants who spoke badly and people who didn’t carry fresh handkerchiefs. Most of all, she was angry about existing in a substratum of upper-middle-class folk who had not attained the higher rank of lords or ladies. To be so close to the wellborn and find the station forever out of reach was like a corrosive poison rotting her soul. To temper this pain, she indulged herself in things she liked, which included dinner parties, pearls, life peers, limousines, Victorian teddy bears, holidays in Barbados, decent society, big hats, matching luggage, flowers, traditional English cooking and Pulling Yourself Up By Your Own Bootstraps.
Perusing the schedule for the Princess’s visit to the PCU with distaste, she wondered if there was any way she might be able to get the trip cancelled, before recalling that the Princess was Oskar Kasavian’s second cousin once removed. The unit was apparently some kind of left-wing experimental think tank, and the thought of mingling with the personnel there made her hackles rise. Princess Beatrice had made some unfortunate remarks about the quality of British police recruits in the press, and it was to be hoped that her public appearance would repair some of the bad feeling, but Kasavian was on record voicing his hatred of such organisations; she wondered why he had been so insistent about fast-tracking the Princess on a visit.
She decided to give Leslie Faraday a call.
‘Mrs Armstrong, how delightful to hear from you.’ She could tell Faraday was wetting himself with exciteme
nt to receive a call from a lady positioned so close to royalty. ‘I well remember our meeting at the Café Royal Metropolitan Police Benevolent Society Dinner in September 1998, when my wife had the good fortune to win a year’s subscription to the Tatler on the tombola—’
Rosemary Armstrong hated being called a ‘Mrs’ when she should have been a Right Hon, and had no time for obsequious chitchat. She steamrollered over the minister’s pleasantries, cutting him off in mid-flow. ‘The Princess Royal’s visit to this police unit, I see it has been scheduled for Thursday afternoon from five P.M. until six P.M. The Princess is attending a dinner in Kensington at six forty-five P.M., so I think we can shave half an hour from her appearance, yes? So five. P.M. to five-thirty P.M., yes? And no formal presentations to staff, only the division heads, yes? We’d prefer not to have lilies or tulips in the presentation bouquet, best to stick with a small-bud pastel English arrangement. Get your florist to take a tip from Sissinghurst, which the Princess patronises. Still water and a selection of China teas during the photo opportunity; I’ll fax you a full list of requirements, yes? No “Meet the People” walkabouts, no presentation on the future of national policing, just a few opening pleasantries, a tour of the refurbished offices, “This is the operations room,” a quick demonstration of the latest technology, et cetera, photo opportunity and out, yes?’
‘Well, I suppose we can squeeze the schedule down to half an hour,’ said Faraday, who had no idea just how unprepared the unit was to receive royal visitors, ‘but I do think it’s a shame when—’
‘Jolly good, that’s all settled, then, yes? We shall have a chance to chat further on Thursday afternoon, no doubt.’ Over my dead body, you ghastly little man, she thought, replacing the receiver before he had a chance to reply.
In the white Vauxhall van, Madeline lay awake, holding onto the jammed door handle. Ryan was buried under her arm once more, snoring lightly, untroubled by the cold.
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