by CJ Hannon
‘But Martin was impaired?’
‘Yes.’
‘And where was Mrs Kitteridge while all this was happening?’
‘On a call-out, took Kathy with her. You know lambing and calving season is my favourite time of the year. Melody’s barely in.’
‘So, Martin operates?’ Collins says, getting her back on track.
‘Yeah, he gets me, me, to assist. I can shampoo and wash a dog, cut the hair off a cockapoo, trim claws, and all that. But be in an operating theatre and be useful?’
‘What happened?’
‘It was a disaster. I don’t know at what point he killed it, but even I could see he was being sloppy. His hands weren’t steady. He did make it to the intestines at least, and found the plastic bag. Martin took the plastic bag out and showed it to Austin.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘Martin was slurring, apologetic. Austin cuffed him, not particularly hard, but he was angry, shouting about smelling the booze on Martin’s breath.’
‘Did anyone else witness this?’
‘Hugh saw it all from reception. He’ll tell you same as me.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then Austin brushed past me, went into the theatre. Saw Lucky there all in a mess, dropped to his knees and bawled his eyes out.’
‘Extremely upset, it sounds like?’
‘I’ll say. Then he said, “Martin Kitteridge, you will pay for this”.’
On the way back to the car, Van Doren is quiet, thinking.
‘What do you make of that?’ Collins asks.
‘We’ll have to follow up… but maybe it’s just me. Do you think someone could commit murder because of losing their pet to negligence?’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ Collins says. ‘And you shouldn’t underestimate how much people care for their pets. He did supply the whisky bottle according to both Kathy Spellerman and Lydia Gregorivic.’
True enough. Her phone rings. It’s Critchlow.
‘Ma’am, we tracked down the wife. She refused to come in for questioning voluntarily.’
‘Really? Where is she now?’
‘We arrested her. She’s currently at the custody centre at Sussex House being checked in.’
Astrid raises her face to the sky and pinches the bridge of her nose. She should have told them to back off if she didn’t come in voluntarily. She tries to keep calm. ‘Can you get over to Dapper’s farm, check out her alibi as soon as you can?’
She hangs up. Tells Collins, ‘The clock is ticking, and we aren’t as ready as we ought to be.’
‘But she refused to come in. She basically asked to be arrested! Tenner says she’ll confess by the end of the day.’
‘God, I’d better tell Smithes.’ She puts the phone to her ear. ‘I hope for our sake you’re right, Collins.’
18
Melody
Melody presses her index finger onto the glass of the scanner. They already took her prints the night Martin died, why they need them again now is beyond her. Were she not experiencing arrest for the first time, she might have said something cutting about taxpayer inefficiency.
The custody officer, a pudding of a woman, scans her for metals and conducts a thorough search. For a moment it’s almost like she’s just going through airport security en route to St Lucia, to relive her honeymoon with Martin. Her belongings are even in a little black tray – including the envelope containing five thousand pounds in cash – and here the daydream ends. These things won’t be returned to her – at least not for a while – and are being bagged and labelled.
Would she like to inform anybody of her arrest?
Who would she tell? Ally already knows, Martin’s dead, who on earth would she call? Her indifferent foster mother, Jean, who she’d not spoken to in five years? Hugh or Kathy? God, the burning shame of it.
Would she like to contact legal counsel or have access to the duty solicitor?
Why? She’d not done anything wrong.
She is taken to a holding cell. St Lucia it is most decidedly not. A cream metal letterbox flap in what is probably Fencepost by Dulux. The bright blue easy wipe mattress that looks more like a crash mat is rather firm. There’s an echo of someone humming, a guard or another detainee.
The lidless stainless-steel toilet is bright in the caged strip lighting. It’d be just her luck to take a pee and for that letterbox flap to open or the door unbolt.
What was she doing here? Not only had she failed to pay Pug on time but she’d contrived to get herself arrested. She’d trust Ally with her life… but now, in a cell, with only a wall to stare at, doubt gives a little flutter of its wings.
An hour passes. A uniform comes in – thankfully not when she’s peeing – and leads her into a boxy room with a table and a camera in the corner. Detective Van Doren is there with another suit, older.
‘Mrs Kitteridge, take a seat. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Smithes, and I believe you’ve met Detective Inspector Van Doren already?’ His eyes are close to a Parma Gray by Farrow & Ball.
‘I have.’ So, this Smithes is Van Doren’s superior.
There’s a coffee in a paper cup on the table with a stirrer and a packet of sugar. She undoes the lid and the pent-up steam billows out.
DI Smithes reads out the time and date for the camera, and formally cautions her. He then offers her the chance to talk to a solicitor.
‘I don’t need one, I’ve nothing to hide.’
He asks her to go over her movements the day of Martin’s death. There must be some method to it, to compare her accounts, to get her to slip up but it seems an infantile approach. Outside the Kitteridge Practice to the police officer, in her own house to detective Van Doren and now here: her story is the same. Why would it suddenly change?
Van Doren, quiet until now, leans forward, wets her lips. There’s something intense about her. ‘Why did you refuse to come in voluntarily?’
‘I’m busy. A dead husband, a dead business, there are things to take care of.’
‘You do realise that in a court of law, a negative inference could be drawn from your refusal?’
‘Just tell me what you think you know and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.’
DCI Smithes crosses his arms with an amused look, but Van Doren’s cheek bulges where she’s pressing out her tongue. ‘Have you ever handled a snake, Mrs Kitteridge?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Care to elaborate?’
‘A couple of corn snakes, a milk snake I think once. As I told you before, we don’t handle exotics at Kitteridge’s. I’m a domestic and a large animal vet. I mean, honestly! What a waste of time.’
‘Excuse me?’ Smithes says.
‘These facile questions. What is it you think I’m going to say? Oh yes, detective I once saw a python and an anaconda at a zoo and then I decided to get my own venomous snake to play with. I shudder to think that my taxpayer money is wasted on these kinds of investigations.’
Van Doren is clearly annoyed. ‘Mrs Kitteridge, this is a murder investigation.’
‘No, it isn’t, Detective. It’s a Melody Kitteridge investigation when the murderer is out there somewhere!’ She points at the door for effect.
‘Mrs Kitteridge,’ DCI Smithes says. ‘Let’s keep calm, you can help us here. Let’s just recap the key facts, make sure we have it all straight.’
‘Whatever gets me out of here soonest.’
‘In your earlier statement, you stated that you had the only other key to Martin’s office, correct?’
‘Correct.’
‘Good. Now, who has access to the pharmaceuticals kept in your husband’s treatment room?’
‘Any of the staff with access to Martin’s room. They’re kept in a lockable cabinet but the key’s usually left in. Martin locks his door when he’s not in there. Though whether he always did, I couldn’t say.’
‘Good. See, we’re learning something. Now. The
whisky bottle. Traces of the drug Midazolam were found within it, which is one of the sedatives you keep in stock. Your prints were on the bottle, correct?’
‘I picked up the bottle and tipped the contents down the sink.’
‘You can understand how that might look?’ Van Doren says.
She rolls her eyes. ‘Unfortunately, there wasn’t a big red label on the bottle saying it was tampered with. How was I to know it was significant at the time? I didn’t even know he was dead! I can’t believe I have to listen to this nonsense.’
‘Mrs Kitteridge, by your own admission you were the only person with a spare key to the room. You had access to the Midazolam. Your prints were on the drugged bottle of whisky which you, yourself, said you tipped away. You are also a vet who could presumably handle a snake. All that. Then you refuse to come in voluntarily for questioning? What did you think would happen?’
Melody closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. These people.
Van Doren leans forward again. ‘We’re searching your house. If there is anything to find there, trust me, we will find it. This moment, right now, is your best chance to co-operate with the investigation. Tell us what really happened, for your own good.’
‘God. You really are a bunch of idiots, aren’t you? I wasn’t even there! I was on a call-out at Dapper’s farm! I called you in! Where does that fit into your theory?’
Back to Van Doren. ‘We’re asking the questions here Mrs Kitteridge.’
‘How much longer are you legally allowed to keep me here?’
‘We found five thousand pounds on your person,’ Van Doren says. ‘Care to explain?’
She tries not to, but feels herself stiffen. ‘Spending money.’
‘Or paying someone off? Someone who had done you a favour perhaps?’
There’s a knock on the door. Van Doren’s features contort in annoyance. One of the uniformed men who’d picked her up bends and whispers. Van Doren locks eyes with her, and Melody knows that whatever is being whispered is about her. Van Doren signals to DCI Smithes.
‘Mrs Kitteridge. Excuse us a moment.’
As if she had any choice.
She waits, staring into the barrel of the camera mounted in the top corner of the room. The coffee is lukewarm, but she swallows it down anyway. There was the proof, freshly ground beans just taste better, but she’ll take it. The clock on the wall says it’s coming up to midday. They’ll have to let her out soon, surely? So much to do.
The detectives return. Brisk. All business now.
‘You haven’t been entirely honest with us, have you, Mrs Kitteridge?’
‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘One of our constables has just been over to Dapper’s farm. George Dapper says you were never there on Friday night.’
Stunned, she cannot compute this error. ‘George Dapper is lying! I categorically was there.’
‘Oh, categorically? That’s fine then,’ Smithes says. ‘Why don’t you cut the bullshit, Mrs Kitteridge? You killed Martin, didn’t you?’
‘I loved Martin.’ She shakes her head. Why was George Dapper saying she hadn’t been there? ‘You’re just plain wrong.’
Detective Van Doren pins her with a stare. ‘Tell us about your relationship with him, why are we wrong? Help us out here, Mrs Kitteridge, because right now, things are looking pretty bad for you.’
19
Melody
Cambridge 2001
Pre-clinical. Betsy, her lab partner lowers the scalpel, hesitates.
‘Actually, you do it.’ She hands it to Melody. ‘I can’t. It’s just too much like Babe. I can’t get it out of my mind.’
‘No place for sentimentality.’ The foetal pig is about the size of an A4 page, legs splayed out and tied down to the tray, as if it were about to be cooked. The barrier is not mental, only physical; flesh, bone, connective tissue, organs all which yield under the correct instrument.
Melody’s gloved hand grips firmly, slicing straight and true. Two diagonal incisions towards the sternum, then a mid-line incision around the umbilicus. The flesh parts with a little pressure.
‘That’s good.’ Betsy says. ‘Now… pin the flap to the lower jaw.’
‘I know what I’m doing.’
Her scalpel cuts away easily at the fibrous jelly of connective tissue.
‘I think I’m alright now; I’ll do the next bit.’
Melody gives Betsy some space. With the surgical scissors, Betsy makes awkward transverse cuts to the bottom of the rib cage and to the groin. ‘And… what’s the next bit?’
Melody rolls her eyes. Trust her to get stuck with the only dunce in Cambridge.
‘Cut low on both sides of the thoracic cavity, and remove the chest plate.’
Betsy does a reasonable job of this, handing her the chest plate. ‘Are you going to the dinner and Dr Hutchence talk?’
She thinks of INXS. ‘Should I?’
‘You know, Melody, part of being a good vet is to be personable, and social, you have to deal with people too, not just animals. We have a module on our petside manner for a reason.’
She sighs, irritated, and saws through the trachea and oesophagus. As if she needed a lecture from Betsy on what made a good vet. All the more irritating because she probably has a point.
‘Fine. I’ll come.’ She peels up the trachea and cuts away at the connective tissue holding the organ block in place, makes an incision on the last intestine. ‘There.’
‘Nicely done.’ Betsy lifts up the organ block, places it on a new tray. The glistening organs wobble a moment.
They both stare at it.
‘And what’s on the menu at this dinner?’ Melody asks.
Prioress’s Room. Jesus College. The ceiling is wood beamed, the floor a rich oak. Oil paintings hang on the wall. The tables are arranged in a horseshoe. Cutlery gleams. Vases burst with constellations of pink Egyptian star clusters.
Cambridge. So in love with its own pomp, though she does appreciate the beauty. The course is first rate, the facilities first class and it had, in Queens, a superb teaching hospital. And if the reputational halo shed a little magic dust onto her shoulders too, well that could hardly hurt.
She hitches her dress a little higher on her shoulder. It itches. She’d searched the charity and thrift stores of Cambridge, and this grey knee-length was the best she could come up with on her budget. No time to wash it. It looked well enough in the mirror but the fabric was thick and cheap.
There’s a seat next to Betsy and she’s about to sit, but Betsy holds up a hand.
‘Melody, it’s boy, girl, boy, girl.’
She checks. Yes. That appears to be the pattern. ‘Why?’
Betsy shrugs, ‘Tradition, I suppose.’
She sits next to Betsy anyway, disrupting the pattern. Not because she particularly likes her, but she’s at least tolerable. Why risk the unknown?
There are only twenty-five, maybe thirty people at the dinner, but they’re all faces from her course. Hutchence sits at the head of one of the tables and to her surprise, is a woman. The INXS namesake perhaps had wrong-footed her into expecting a long haired, handsome Australian chock-full of inventive lyrics.
‘Lots of handsome boys here,’ Betsy mutters into her wine glass.
The black ties, slicked hair. Guffawing. She’d barely noticed any of them.
The waiter hovers the bottle of red over her glass. She darts a hand over.
‘Would you prefer something else, Madam?’
Madam? That’s what her foster mother, Jean, called her when she was supposedly being rude. Oh, you little madam. ‘What gins do you have?’
The waiter looks at the ceiling, as if the drink menu is printed there. ‘Tanqueray, Gordon’s, Plymouth, Bombay….’
‘Two ice cubes, Plymouth, tonic, squeeze of lime, slice of lemon and a few pomegranate seeds if you have them. Oh and a dash of Angostura bitters.’
She turns back to
the table, the boy sitting opposite her ‒ the man, she supposes ‒ has an amused grin on his face.
‘What?’
‘Good for you.’ he raises his glass. ‘To knowing what you like.’
‘I don’t know what you expect me to toast with, they’re mixing my drink now.’
‘You’re right,’ he says easily. ‘We’ll wait.’
Someone tongs a little roll of warm bread onto her plate. What will everyone do with it? Make their own sandwiches?
A salad arrives with something lettuce-like on it smothered in a white sauce and nuts. She takes a bite. The foul taste covered by the sweet sauce.
‘What is this?’ she whispers to Betsy.
‘Endive salad.’
‘It’s horrible.’
Someone snorts a laugh. At her?
‘I’m looking forward to going back into Queen’s to see some live animals next week.’ Betsy says between mouthfuls.
‘Perhaps you’ll see a live Babe,’ Melody tries.
‘Yes! That’d be nice.’ A smile. Melody had put it there. How interesting. She dips her bread in the sauce thoughtfully.
The main is pork belly, which causes much hilarity amongst the students. Yes, they’d dissected a pig earlier that day. But it wasn’t this pig. It wasn’t that ironic.
‘What’s really funny is that here we have a table of so-called animal lovers, and there’s just two, no, three, vegetarians,’ she says, emboldened by her little success with Betsy.
Cutlery chinks. Throats are cleared.
Once the plates are collected, and her second G & T sits in front of her – sans pomegranate seeds – Dr Hutchence gives her talk. It is fairly interesting, though essentially a précis of her article that had appeared in the Journal of Veterinary Science; a meta-study on the time lag of transferrable Homo sapiens treatments to the animal world.
They clap, the brown nosers simper, flatter.
What will dessert be?
A nudge.
‘He’s looking at you an awful lot,’ Betsy whispers in her ear, breath sweet with white wine.