Past Mortem

by Ben Elton

  ‘I didn’t know anything about any of that, Helen.’

  ‘No, you just knew about her tan and her hair and her tits.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The doorbell rang. Newson’s cab had arrived. At the door he kissed Helen goodbye.

  ‘That girl who had the period,’ he said.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’

  She didn’t reply before closing the door behind him.

  FOURTEEN

  Newson got home shortly after two in the morning, feeling very uncomfortable indeed. He had enjoyed the sex, he couldn’t deny it, but he’d definitely not enjoyed the sudden and intimate immersion in someone else’s life. Someone who, if he was honest, meant nothing to him any more. Helen was clearly an unhappy woman. Her life was difficult and her self-harm was evidence of a low and damaged self-esteem. He didn’t need that in his life. He had enough trouble maintaining his own confidence without seeking out the company of sad, embittered single mothers. He felt guilty because he’d had sex with her, and now he never wanted to see her again. He imagined she could get a lot of that sort of thing from men if she wanted.

  He had a long shower and thought about Christine and what Helen had said. It didn’t surprise him that Christine had been cruel to Helen. — She’d been cruel to him, dropping him after a week with the same casual presumption with which she’d picked him up. But beautiful people played by different rules. Surely everybody knew that, and if Helen didn’t then she needed to grow up. Newson couldn’t hate Christine. Christine was beautiful, and for a brief moment she had chosen him. For that he would always be grateful.

  Newson’s computer was on broadband and so constantly online. After his shower he noticed that he’d received mail. Despite the lateness of the hour he couldn’t resist going to his inbox, partly in fear that Helen might already have sent some grim accusatory post mortem on their evening together.

  There was nothing from Helen, instead two emails concerning the Farrah Porter murder. The crime had of course instantly become big news. The minicab driver who picked Newson up from Helen’s place had given him his copy of the late-edition Standard, and the MP’s death had been splashed across four pages. Newson knew that there would be immense pressure on him to come up with something fast.

  The first message was from Dr Clarke.

  Well, we are a brainy pair.

  The killer did indeed break Farrah Porter’s spine in order to paralyse her. He-did so by bashing it with a heavy instrument, probably a clump hammer, while she lay unconscious from the Rohypnol. I think he (or she) caused the injury with a single blow, which suggests either great skill -and steadiness or a lot of luck. I incline to the former. The only point I can raise to mitigate the horror of this case is that by breaking the woman’s back the killer rendered her largely insensitive to the pain of the acid-bleaching, although of course the mental agony would have been almost beyond endurance.

  Newson stopped reading and thought for a moment. This was an interesting point. The killer was not principally interested in inflicting pain. It was what he -was doing to Farrah Porter that counted — the bleaching, not necessarily the pain it caused.

  Next point You were right about the cause of death. He made her drink the Phenol BP acid. An extremely clever guess. Her insides were rotten with it.

  Newson took no pleasure or pride in his assumption. He knew he was on the trail of a single killer and he knew that this killer tortured first and then finished off the victim in a way that developed directly from the torture. But that was all he did know, and, as he had guessed when he stood before the corpse of Adam Bishop, more people were bound to die. How many was down to him. He felt utterly helpless.

  I’ve been experimenting with skin and acid in an effort to determine how long the killer worked on Ms. Porter. This is clearly not an exact science, since the victim’s skin was alive and I necessarily used a section of dead skin. Nonetheless I can make an educated guess that he let her soak for approximately one hour. During that time Porter was gagged with a cloth stuffed into her mouth — there’s soft bruising on her tongue and her throat Unfortunately I’ve been unable to retrieve any evidence of what the cloth was made of, so he must have cleaned out her mouth thoroughly. After the killer deemed his bleaching process sufficient he killed her by forcing as much as a pint of acid down her throat. She might have been able to scream briefly at this point, between the removal of the gag and the administering of the acid, but her larynx would have been dry and damaged. Nonetheless, perhaps a neighbour heard something. It’s not possible to say whether the killer dyed her hair and pubic hair before or after he killed her. Unlike skin, hair is basically dead cell matter and hence would react to the dye in a similar manner whether the victim was alive or not. There was a minuscule growth in the hair, creating tiny blond roots, but hair of course continues to grow after death so that tells us nothing either way.

  Newson knew the answer to this issue. He was certain of it. The killer dyed Porter’s hair before her death and made sure she saw it too. Having got Farrah Porter where he wanted her, he would have been anxious for her to understand every aspect of her fate. He could not leave her staring at herself as he’d done with Angie Tatum. Farrah Porter was a very different woman from Tatum. She was in demand, dynamic, busy, the centre of a vast, adoring circle both personally and professionally. She could not be left to die alone, staring at her ruined self; she would have been discovered in hours and saved to tell her tale. No, Farrah Porter was one that the killer had to finish off before he left, but Newson was in no doubt that she died in the knowledge that she departed her life with ginger hair.

  The second email was from the forensic laboratory at New Scotland Yard confirming that the pubic hair Newson had found on the soap had indeed come from the victim.

  Newson’s mind spun with the possibilities of what this might mean. It was such an out-of-character thing for the killer to have done. Normally he left no trace at all. In fact, that was perhaps the most compelling feature of all the murders. Why change now? Why be so careful to leave no sign of your presence save the corpse, and then deliberately plant this very specific clue? And then there was the killer’s shattered wineglass, and the Rohypnol bottle. Newson sensed that the killer was developing, heading for a change.

  He looked at the clock in the corner of his computer screen. It was late and perhaps he was no longer thinking straight. It was surely arrogance to imagine that the killer was talking to him? Yet he was a ginger and he was the only person making any connection between the murders. Perhaps the killer was giving him a pat on the back, encouraging him to keep going. But how would the killer know that he was making the connections? Were his emails being intercepted? Was he going mad?

  Finally, at three a.m., Newson went to bed. Despite the fact that only hours before he had been having sex with Helen Smart it was, as always, Detective Sergeant Wilkie who occupied his thoughts before he went to sleep. Perhaps this was the reason he was so determined to keep faith with his memory of Christine Copperfield. He did not care whether she had bullied Helen as a girl or not. She was beautiful, she was a woman and she was not Natasha Wilkie. Newson felt that as long as there was a corner of his mind in which there was room for a woman other than his secretly adored colleague, he was not without hope.

  FIFTEEN

  Newson needed all of his resources of fortitude the following morning as he approached the front entrance to New Scotland Yard. Ahead of him he could see Sergeant Wilkie being dropped off to work by the dreaded Lance. There she was, climbing girlishly from the pillion of his great big motorbike like a lovestruck teenager. Why, Newson wondered angrily, on top of everything else, did Lance have to ride a motorbike? Who did he think he was with his leather jacket and steel-capped boots? And his brawny forearm forever reminding the world that punk was not dead? Newson knew that he could never have a tattoo; tattoos would look terrible on his thin white arms. And were he to mount that big Kawasaki his fe
et would not even touch the ground. Not like Lance, sitting effortlessly astride the stationary machine; those long denim-clad, big-booted legs were all he needed to keep the gleaming black 1000cc of pure grunt upright while Natasha reached up to lift his visor and kiss him.

  Newson watched in agony as Lance grasped her slim waist, enfolding her body with a single, casual, proprietary arm and pulling her on to her tiptoes so that the short summer dress she was wearing rode up her body. Newson’s heart leapt as he devoured the sight of Natasha’s legs thus exposed, hoping that the rising hem would not stop its upward trajectory, until…Then his heart sank at the recognition of just how pathetic he had become.

  ‘Morning, Natasha. Morning, Lance,’ he said brightly.

  ‘How’s it going, geeza? Yeah, nice one. Whatever,’ Lance replied, fulfilling his entire conversational obligations in a single non-negotiable sentence. He gave Natasha a final squeeze, firmly staking his claim over her before adding, ‘Later, ‘Tash. Don’t be all night, eh? Else I’ll only end up going down the pub and eating no dinner, which is so not a good thing.’

  ‘I’ll be back by seven at the latest, gorgeous,’ Natasha replied.

  ‘Yeah well, watch out for them sickos. Don’t go coming back with no different-coloured pubes, eh? I’m serious, girl. I worry about you. It’s fuckin’ sick, all that.’ Lance glanced at Newson almost as if to suggest that somehow it was Newson who was responsible for the sick sights that Natasha was forced to witness in the course of her duty as a policewoman. He sparked his machine into life and roared off.

  Newson felt he had to say something. ‘Natasha. it’s completely out of order to discuss our cases when you’re off duty.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Ed, everybody does. How could you not?’

  ‘Very easily. The last thing we need is copycats.’

  ‘Lance isn’t going to tell anyone, is he? It’s all right for you — you go home alone, nobody asks you what you’ve been up to or whatever. Lance wants to know. What boyfriend wouldn’t? It’s too weird to say ‘Sorry, I’m not at liberty to discuss it.’ You can’t say that to your boyfriend, can you?’

  ‘Yes, you absolutely can.’

  ‘Yeah well, wait till you get a girlfriend and see how long you manage it.’

  ‘I have had girlfriends, you know. I was a copper when I was with Shirley.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And I did not share classified scene-of-crime details with her.’

  ‘Only because you never talked to each other. You told me that yourself.’

  Newson bit his lip. She was right, of course, it was easy for him. He didn’t have a girlfriend and when he had had one the relationship had been so tired that he might as well not have had it. The only thing missing from Natasha’s comprehensive understanding of his pitiable personal and social inadequacies was that she did not know that he was in. Love with her. He found it extremely difficult to thank heaven for small mercies.

  The entrance to New’ Scotland Yard was more crowded than usual. Farrah Porter’s murder was of course huge news. The press were desperate for information and had turned out in force. Newson hoped that he and Natasha might push their way through the throng unnoticed, but in the rarefied world of crime reporting Newson was already gaining a certain reputation. A number of the crime writers outside the famous glass doors had encountered him before, and always on tough, often high-profile cases. The physical characteristics that made Newson anonymous to most people made him distinctive to them. A youthful, mild ginger shorty heading up a Scotland Yard murder squad was always going to be remembered, and they already knew from his presence at the murder scene the previous day that once more Newson was in charge.

  ‘Inspector Newson,’ they shouted. ‘How did Farrah die?’

  ‘Was it political?’

  ‘We hear sex was involved! Was it a sex crime?’

  ‘We’ll no doubt have something to tell you in due course,’ Newson replied as he ushered Natasha into the building.

  ‘Wow,’ Natasha said once they were inside. ‘You’re really getting quite famous, aren’t you? How cool is that!’

  ‘I don’t know. How cool is it? Do you think it’s cool?’

  ‘Of course I think it’s cool.’

  ‘Oh, right.., good.’

  And it did feel good. Newson definitely liked Natasha to think he was cool.

  ‘Of course, if we don’t crack the case they’ll know it was you who screwed up and they’ll say you’re crap.’

  ‘Well, that’s the press for you. They build you up and they knock you down.’

  Newson’s first appointment of the morning was with Chief Superintendent Ward. Because of Farrah Porter’s profile, Ward had decided to speak to the press himself and wanted to be well briefed on the progress of the investigation.

  ‘Tell me exactly how far you’ve got,’ Ward demanded. ‘I’m not interested in theories or suppositions at this stage. We should keep that sort of thing to ourselves. The only thing you can safely give to a journalist is facts, and that’s what I want. What exactly do we know about the person who killed Farrah Porter?’

  ‘In terms of undisputable fact, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Newson was not surprised to find himself facing the press alone.

  ‘All that I can say at this stage,’ he announced, standing at the entrance to the building, ‘is that Ms Porter was murdered by a person or persons unknown and that we are pursuing a number of lines of enquiry. Thank you and good morning.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Natasha as he re-entered the building.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But I really think you should have done up your flies.’

  He looked. ‘I knew you were lying.’

  ‘Then why did you look?’

  ‘Because…I have a reason, but I’ve decided to withhold it.’

  They spent the rest of the morning together fruitlessly cross-referring the names and associates of Farrah Porter with those on the file of Adam Bishop the builder. Nothing matched.

  ‘Not really surprising,’ Natasha observed, ‘her being a posh-tot Tory superstar and him being a well-dodgy Tarmac cowboy. No connection. Sorry, but there it is.’

  ‘They both let the killer into their home and shared a drink with him. In my opinion, we now know how Adam Bishop ended up helplessly taped to his bed.’

  ‘You think Rohypnol?’

  ‘I’m sure of it, and I’ll bet the same goes for Warrant Officer Spencer and Bradshaw and probably Angie Tatum too.’

  ‘Well, it sounds more plausible than your last theory — that Bishop took his killer to his bedroom because he got his rocks off being repeatedly punctured with short spikes.’

  ‘It wasn’t a theory, it was a supposition.’

  ‘If Bishop’s killer did slip him a Mickey, then he’s a strong bloke. It wouldn’t have been easy to drag that man upstairs.’

  ‘Hmm, unless he or she had an accomplice, we’re looking for a fit man.’

  Around midday the first batch of transcripts of beat interviews pertaining to the Porter murder was delivered. Ever since the body had been discovered a large squad of constables had been roaming the surrounding area endeavouring to discover if anyone had seen anything suspicious. Of course, this being such a celebrated case, the press had already spoken to everyone but had found nothing of interest to print, so Natasha began leafing through the intimidating pile of paper with little enthusiasm. As expected, nothing had been turned up. What Natasha did notice, however, was the similarity between the way the dead woman’s neighbours described her and the accounts Adam Bishop’s neighbours had given of him.

  ‘She may have been the darling of the Tory Party,’ Natasha noted, ‘but she was not a popular bunny in her building.’

  Even a cursory glance at the transcripts revealed that Farrah Porter was in dispute with just about everybody who lived near her. The old couple. below her, who had lived in their flat for nearly fifty years. The
young marrieds above with their twin babies. The lady at the top who had the difficult job of chairing the residents’ association. They had all in their various ways made it clear to the interviewing constables that they were glad Farrah Porter was dead. Even the newspaper vendor on the corner of the street remembered her with nothing but ill will.

  ‘Everyone says she made their lives a misery…A right bully, in fact.’

  ‘Just like Adam Bishop.’

  ‘Yeah. Different class. Different sex. Same shit.’

  ‘Perhaps we should pop down to South Kensington and speak to these people ourselves.’

  They decided not to travel from New Scotland Yard by car because West London had recently become a designated traffic nightmare due to changes in the application of the congestion charge. They took the tube, and Newson noted that the station was plastered with posters for a pop concert due to take place in Hyde Park. It was to be a big eighties revival gig entitled ‘How Cool Were We?’ The whole of Duran Duran were top of the bill, supported by half of Spandau Ballet, two out of three Thompson Twins, one New Kid on the Block, all three Bananaramas (the second line-up rather than the original), four Specials, one Man At Work, a Flock of Seagulls and Dannii Minogue.

  ‘God, was Dannii Minogue going in the eighties?’ Natasha asked, looking at the poster as they descended on the escalator at St James’s Park.

  ‘Just. Not my eighties, the early eighties, the glory days of New Wave and New Romantics. She sneaked in at the tail end of the decade, riding in her sister’s slipstream. Quite a perky debut single, as I recall, called ‘Love And Kisses’. It might even have been 1990 — they cheat sometimes with these shows. It must depend on who they can get.’