Ash & Bone

by John Harvey

  'Managed to pick me out okay, then?' she said with a grin.

  Most of the other customers either had small children clamouring round them or were well above pensionable age.

  The waiter appeared at Elder's elbow almost as soon as he'd sat down, and he asked for an espresso and a glass of water. Vanessa was tucking into a wedge of sticky straw-coloured pastry and drinking what looked like Coke.

  'So what do I call you?' Vanessa asked.

  'Frank?'

  'No rank or anything?'

  'Not any more.'

  Vanessa looked at him appraisingly. 'And they've dragged you out of retirement to give a hand?'

  'Something like that.'

  'Long as the bastard gets caught.'

  'Yes.'

  'Well, whatever I can do.' Pastry not quite finished, with an air of martyrdom she pushed her plate aside.

  'I knew Maddy a little back in Lincoln,' Elder said. 'But that was a long time ago. You can probably give me a better picture of what she was like than anyone.'

  'Where do you want me to start?'

  'Wherever you like.'

  For the next fifteen minutes or so, Vanessa talked and Elder listened, prompting her occasionally, but in the main content to sit and take occasional sips from his espresso.

  'Tell me a bit more about this Kennet,' Elder said, when she'd finished. 'Maddy seems to have gone out with him for quite a while.'

  'I don't know if there's a lot more to say. I met him a few times, seemed nice enough. Good-looking bloke, I'll give him that. Bit cocky, maybe.' She smiled. 'Not as bad as some.'

  'She liked him, though?'

  'I suppose so, yes. She'd never have gone with him otherwise.' Vanessa reached over and speared a piece of previously rejected pastry with her fork. 'To be honest, I think it was the sex as much as anything. I don't mean it was so great, not according to Maddy, anyway; nothing earth-shattering, not like Meg Ryan in that film, but, well, she'd not been with anyone in ages and I suppose…' Vanessa laughed. 'Well, I suppose it made a bit of a change. Made her feel good about herself, you know?'

  Elder thought he might.

  'And, from what you say, it just petered out?'

  'In a manner of speaking.' There was a broad grin on Vanessa's face.

  'You know how Kennet felt about that?'

  'He was fine about it, far as I know. No big scene or anything.' She shrugged. 'I don't think it was such a deal for either of them, not really. Not true love, exactly, you know what I mean?'

  Elder signalled the waiter for another espresso. 'These fears of Maddy's, that she was being watched. Spied on. You think they were real?'

  Vanessa smiled. 'Or was she just paranoid like the rest of us?'

  'If you like.'

  'No, I don't think so. Not Maddy. I mean, it might have got a bit exaggerated inside her head, but no, there was something behind it, I'm sure.'

  'According to what you said, it all started round about the time of the Grant business.'

  'More or less, yes. I suppose it did.'

  'This officer who was killed, Draper…'

  'Paul, yes.'

  'Maddy was there when he was shot, in the same room…'

  'Standing right next to him, close as I am to you now.' She leaned in to the table, as if to make her point.

  'It must have shaken her up pretty badly.'

  'It did, you could tell. Draper's wife and little boy, she was upset about them too. Went round to see them quite a few times.'

  'And she didn't talk much about it, other than that? It didn't seem to be preying on her mind?'

  'No. Not really, no. Though she did mention it, must have been the last time I saw her, last time we went out together, at least. About the inquiry, you know, into the shooting.'

  'What exactly did she say?'

  'Just they'd given her a pretty tough time, sounded like. Questions, you know. Maddy thought they were going to have her in again.'

  Elder made a mental note to check if that had been the case. He should read the report of the inquiry, certainly, maybe go and talk to the investigating officers.

  His espresso arrived, the waiter smiling at Vanessa, making conversation.

  Elder eased back his chair and loosened his tie. 'The night Maddy was killed, d'you think she could have been meeting someone?'

  Vanessa chewed on a strand of hair that had found its way into the corner of her mouth. 'I don't know who. And besides, why there?'

  'Perhaps it was convenient. Possibly, whoever it was, they didn't want to be seen.'

  'Married, you mean?'

  'Either that or someone she worked with.'

  'No,' Vanessa said. 'No way.'

  'Why ever not?'

  'It's something she was always hot on. God! She slagged me off for it enough times. Messing around on your own doorstep. Only leads to grief, she said. Course …,' looking at Elder now, 'how far that was based on personal experience, I've no idea. But she was dead right anyway.' Vanessa treated Elder to a salacious grin. 'Disaster every time. And besides, if it was serious, she'd have said something. A little hint, something. She wouldn't have kept it to herself.'

  'She seems to have played her cards pretty close to her chest where her ex-husband was concerned.'

  'That's different, though, isn't it?'

  'Is it?'

  'Yes. You know, husbands, wives, someone you're trying to pretend never existed.' Vanessa looked at her watch. 'I'd better go.'

  'Okay.' Elder pushed back his chair as she got to her feet. 'If you think of anything else…'

  'I'll call you,' Vanessa said.

  He remembered the number of his mobile at the third attempt and she wrote it down. She glanced back through the window from the street, red mouth and dark hair, a quick smile and then gone.

  Elder sat a few moments longer, collecting his thoughts, before heading towards the station.

  18

  Karen Shields was less than happy. Ferreting for a lost spoon that morning, she'd discovered a patch of damp the size of two large dinner plates on the wall between the cooker and the sink. Several shades of mottled grey, bubbling out from the plaster like an infection on the lungs. Then, when she'd poured milk from the carton into her coffee, instead of merging, it had floated in sour globules on the surface. And as if to cap it all, someone, using either a coin or a key, had scraped a wavering line along the near side of her car, where it was parked at the kerb outside. All this before eight o'clock.

  It only needed the assistant commissioner, of all people, to summon her to his office, which, of course, within fifteen minutes of her arrival, he did. Only to keep her waiting for another five minutes outside. Karen standing there in a blue-black trouser suit, the toes of her boots pinching slightly, one heel starting to rub. If she ever got as much as an hour to herself, there was a pair of red leather Camper boots she was longing to try and bugger the expense.

  'Karen. Excellent, excellent.' When Harkin finally ushered her in, he was in one of his annoyingly affable moods, all smiles and cliché. 'Just wanted to check, you know, how things were going?'

  Patronising was another word for it. She preferred him when he was in a temper; she found it easier then to respond.

  'Yourself and Elder, everything sorting itself out?'

  Karen undid the centre button of her jacket and did it up again.

  'No friction?'

  She thought she'd better say something. 'No, sir. None.'

  'You're sure? Because if —'

  'To tell the truth, sir, we've hardly noticed he's here.'

  'Stepping quietly at first, I expect. Tactful.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Because if there is anything, I expect you to bring it in here. Nip it in the bud before it takes hold.'

  Gardeners' bloody Question Time, Karen thought. 'Yes, sir,' she said. 'Though I'm sure there'll be no need.'

  She could just see herself running into the AC's office, like some snot-nosed kid, the kind that was always telling tales. Pl
ease, sir, Billy Bang's stolen my pencil case. Please, sir, Frank Elder's stolen my murder investigation. Don't even think about it. Anything that wanted sorting out, she'd sort it out herself.

  * * *

  Mike Ramsden was at his desk, chair hiked back on to its rear legs, using the end of an unravelled paper clip to clean his nails.

  'Any sign of him?' Karen asked.

  'Who's that?' Ramsden said.

  'Mike, don't play silly buggers. I'm not in the mood.'

  When are you ever? Ramsden thought. 'Okay, okay,' he said. 'He rang in, left a message. Wants us to get together this afternoon.'

  'What time this afternoon?'

  Ramsden shrugged his shoulders. 'Didn't say.'

  Karen swore and looked at the ceiling. What did Elder think? She was going to sit around cooling her heels till he condescended to grace them with his company?

  'Where the hell are Furness and Denison?' she asked.

  'Chasing down one of that last set of possibles the computer spewed out. Ealing somewhere. Some poor sod living in a bloody hostel. Waste of time, if you ask me.'

  'One of the last. How many does that leave?'

  Ramsden leaned across far enough to snag a sheet of paper. 'Two to go. Cricklewood and Dalston.'

  'Okay.' She tossed him the keys to her car. 'You can drive. We'll do Cricklewood first.'

  * * *

  Change at Camden and go back on the Edgware branch to Belsize Park and walk. The hospital was up the hill and then down again at the end of a roughly cobbled lane. Elder remembered these things without being able to recall precisely when he'd been there before or why. Not his part of London, after all.

  The pub on the corner was advertising its New Year's Eve party. Tickets in advance, only a few remaining.

  Inside the hospital the corridors were broad, the ceilings low, posters warning of the dangers of smoking and obesity hung on the walls, along with artwork, bright and gestural, from a local primary school.

  The pathologist was suitably cadaverous, with slender, reedy fingers and bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose; not for the first time, Elder wondered whether we chose our professions or whether, genetically marked, they chose us.

  'It's Maddy Birch you're interested in?' He spoke a precise, educated Scots that Elder associated, perhaps wrongly, with Edinburgh.

  'It is.'

  'You know the body's been released for burial?'

  Elder nodded. 'Like I said on the phone, I'm reviewing the investigation. I thought if you could spare me some minutes of your time…'

  'Fire away.'

  'You didn't find a trace of the attacker anywhere. No stray hairs, no skin, saliva, blood, nothing. That's right?'

  'Absolutely.'

  'How usual is that?'

  'What's usual?'

  'In your experience, then.'

  'In my experience, it's surprising. Unexpected.'

  'And does it suggest anything? About the attacker, I mean?'

  'Aside from the fact that he was scrupulous, meticulously careful?'

  'Aside from that.'

  One of the overhead lights was buzzing slightly; barely diluted, the smell of chemicals permeated the room.

  'Anything I say would be purely speculation. If anything, this sort of conjecture is far more your field than mine.'

  'Feel free to speculate away.'

  'Very well. It might suggest someone who, by instinct or by training, is highly methodical. Who, even though capable of great anger, is, nonetheless, able to exert an unusual degree of self-control.'

  'You're thinking of the rape, the nature of the wounds?'

  'Indeed.'

  'The rape itself, it took place while the victim was still alive?'

  'I've no reason to believe otherwise. All the signs of non-consensual intercourse were present — bruising, tearing. No semen, of course. Presumably a condom.'

  'And the weapon that killed her?'

  'Let's just take a look.' He reached for a set of photographs from a drawer. 'Some of the wounds, here on the arm, for instance, are slash wounds. Quite long, you see, but not so deep. Look at the tail there, indicating the angle of the blow, from above.'

  'Tall, then? Whoever this was? Taller than her.'

  'It's possible. But far from certain. She could have been falling, have been on her knees, he could have been standing above her. A host of permutations, I'm afraid.'

  'And these?' Elder asked, pointing to the torso.

  'Stab wounds. Quite different, almost certainly fatal. Both of them deep. And see here, where the opening of the wound is wider than the blade, the knife has been levered forward and back before being withdrawn.'

  'What about the knife itself?'

  'The blade was single-edged, you can tell from the square termination on the underside of the wound. To achieve this degree of penetration, almost certainly sharp at the tip. I should say a minimum of twenty centimetres in length, a good couple of centimetres across at the widest point.'

  'A butcher's knife?'

  'That sort of thing.'

  Elder looked at the photographs. Extreme anger and control. The ability to switch between the two. Facility, maybe that was a better word. He talked with the pathologist for perhaps ten minutes more, without anything new surfacing.

  'Good luck, Mr Elder.' When he bade him goodbye, the pathologist's hand was smooth and cold like porcelain.

  On his way back down the hill, Elder stopped outside one of several charity shops and browsed through two boxes of books. Tom Clancy. Jeffrey Archer. Several women called Maeve. No matter, he still had another hundred or so pages of his Patrick O'Brian to go.

  19

  There was a photograph of Maddy Birch on the wall, staring back at the camera, unsmiling; recent, Elder assumed, lines on her face she'd not have liked, the odd grey hair.

  Neither Karen Shields nor Mike Ramsden was on the premises; the message Karen had left was vague, they might be back, they might not.

  A detailed map showed where Maddy's body had lain, where her clothing, her possessions had been found. Elder remembered standing there that morning, the relative quiet in the midst of so much inner-city activity and noise; imagined it again as it would have been that night, that evening. Maddy waiting, shifting her sports bag from one shoulder to the other, glancing again at her watch, the hands luminous in the half-dark.

  Elder looked at the photographs once more, Polaroids taken at the scene. Maddy's arms were bare. No watch.

  DS Sheridan was ensconced behind several hundred megabytes of PC.

  'Sherry,' Elder said, 'disturb you for a minute?'

  Sheridan pressed 'save', removed his glasses and blinked. 'Go ahead.'

  'Her watch. Maddy's watch. Was she wearing one that evening? Do we know?'

  Sheridan shook his head. 'Nothing listed as far as I can remember. I can check, but no, I'm pretty certain.'

  'How many officers do you know,' Elder said, 'who don't wear a watch?'

  'Not to say she wore one off duty.'

  'In which case she'd have left it at home. The stuff that was in her flat, where's it all now?'

  'As far as I know, everything was packed up and sent to her mother.'

  'But there'll be an inventory?'

  Sheridan nodded towards the computer. 'On here somewhere.'

  'Check it out for me, would you? And maybe you could pass a message to double-check with the mother?'

  'Will do.'

  'Oh, and Sherry, one other thing. Maddy's arrest record. Anyone who's been inside and recently released. That's been checked, I suppose?'

  Sheridan nodded. 'One of the first things we did. Not sure offhand how far back we went, though. I can get you a list.'

  'Thanks. Let's make sure we looked at Lincoln as well. Someone she put down for a long stretch, maybe, who might have had reason to feel aggrieved, bear a grudge.'

  'Okay.'

  'Thanks, Sherry.' Elder rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. Get the wrong side of the office
manager, he knew, and you were pushing a boulder uphill from day one.

  * * *

  Steve Kennet was four storeys up, sitting astride a roof beam atop one of those late-Victorian semi-detached houses that, in Dartmouth Park, fetched upwards of a million and a quarter pounds, a million and a half. Elder shouted upwards, raising his voice above the distortions of a small transistor radio that was dangling from the scaffolding. After several moments of misunderstanding, Kennet came down cheerfully enough, wiping his hands on a piece of towel hanging from his belt.

  'How's it going?' Elder asked, nodding back up.

  Kennet's smile was honest and open. 'Should've been finished well before Christmas. Would have been if not for the weather. Two blokes I work with've already started on another place up Highgate Hill. Part of the old hospital. Turning it into flats.'

  'You don't mind if I ask you a few questions about Maddy?'

  'Still got nobody, huh?'

  'Not yet.'

  Kennet cleared his throat of dust and spat neatly into the side of the road. 'Go ahead.'

  Before sitting on the low wall outside the house, Kennet took a slender pouch of tobacco from the back pocket of his jeans, a packet of papers from the top pocket of his plaid shirt. His face and the backs of his hands were streaked with dirt and dust.

  Elder sat down alongside him.

  On the opposite side of the street, a young au pair went by pushing a small child in a buggy, talking excitedly into her mobile phone in a language Elder didn't understand.

  Methodically, Kennet began to roll a cigarette.

  'Maddy, how did you meet her?' Elder asked.

  'Usual way, in a pub. Holloway. She was there with that pal of hers. Vanessa. To be honest, that's who I was interested in first off. Vanessa. You've met her?'

  Elder nodded.

  'Then you'll know what I mean.' Kennet wet the edge of the paper with his tongue. 'Up front, I s'pose that's what you'd say. Not shy about coming forward.' When his lighter didn't work first time, he gave it a quick shake. 'I was with a mate. We went over and sat with them. His idea, really. After a bit, my mate drifted off. Vanessa, she was dead lively - she'd had a few, I dare say — whereas Maddy, mostly she was just sitting there, smiling a little, you know, not unfriendly, but not — what could I say? — obvious. What she was after.'