Past Mortem

by Ben Elton

  Newson stared at the boy’s arm. He’d seen wounds like that before, hundreds of them. He’d seen them on the body of a dead builder in Willesden.

  The following morning Newson got up at three thirty in order to be in Glasgow in time to catch the first flight back to London. He sat in his room drinking tea, watching the glorious first light creep its way over the edges of the mountains. He had been writing a note for Craig.

  Dear Craig,

  You don’t really know me, but I know you because I recognize in you a boy I used to know. Me, in fact. I was very like you when I was a lad. Like you, I always tried to be pleasant to people around me, but I discovered as I think you are doing that not everybody is as nice as we would -like them to be. I don’t know how bad things are for you at school, but just in case the going is tough, I wanted to say something to you.

  The most important lesson that anyone can learn is to respect themselves. If you think of yourself as a victim, then the bad kids will see your weakness and treat you like one. It’s all down to you, Craig, because bullying is about power, and you have the power to beat them by simply maintaining your self-respect. Yes, of course they can hurt you physically, but a dog could do that and if you can just believe in yourself and your own inherent value as a person then eventually they will see that in the truest sense they can’t hurt you. They’ll realize that they have no real power over you and they’ll leave you alone.

  And that’s where the real challenge begins, because when the bullies do move on and you see another kid in trouble, you have to help them. I mean it, even if it means getting hurt. Stand up for the kid who’s in trouble. You’ll never ever regret it, I promise you. On the other hand, if you stand aside it’ll stay with you all your life. I stood aside once and Ill always be sorry. Of course I wasn’t strong enough to stop the bullying but if I’d just gone in there and stood beside that kid, his torment would have been halved. Find the power inside yourself, Craig. Are you going to be a victim or a hero?

  Natasha met Newson at the airport. As he emerged into the arrivals hail and saw her waiting he indulged in the fantasy that she was meeting him because she was his girlfriend and couldn’t wait to see him, rather than because she was his subordinate and tended to do the driving. Two days in Scotland certainly had not cured him of that.

  ‘You were right about the compilation albums,’ Natasha said, ‘although I don’t know where it gets us. Nothing from the Spencer case but the investigating cops in Kensington and Chelsea were pretty thorough and they noted that there was a cassette in Angie Tatum’s machine. It had been set on play and the tape inside was broken. The machine had an auto-reverse capacity and would have kept playing the tape back and forth over and over again, and in the end it just wore out. The volume was not set loud so no neighbours would have heard it. It was a compilation from 1984, Culture Club, Wham!, Tears for Fears, very much your era, eh?’

  ‘Terrific stuff.’

  ‘Not much fun for Angie Tatum, though, sitting listening to it, staring at her stitched-up lip, waiting to die.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course, it could have been set before. I mean, by Tatum rather than her killer.’

  ‘What? Run a tape on auto-reverse until it breaks? Hardly.’

  As they sat in traffic on the Westway Newson called Dr Clarke. The phone was answered by her husband, who said that she no longer lived at that address. He sounded tetchy and rude, not the sort of attitude Newson would have expected from a mandolin player, and refused to take a message. Next Newson tried Dr Clarke’s mobile, which was switched off, but he left a message and soon enough she called him back. They agreed to meet at her office.

  When Newson and Natasha arrived at Dr Clarke’s office she was just letting herself in. She carried a take-away coffee and looked tired and slightly unkempt, not at all her usual smartly turned-out self.

  ‘Yes, we’re having a few weeks apart,’ Dr Clarke admitted in what she clearly hoped was a matter-of-fact, noncommittal voice. ‘He has the children most of the time because, surprise surprise, the call for mandolin players is at its usual zero.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Newson, not really knowing how to respond.

  ‘Yes. So. Enough about me. It’s not interesting and it isn’t remotely germane. You say you have a murder weapon for the Bishop case. I’d be fascinated to know what it is.’

  ‘It’s one of these,’ said Newson, producing a small steel and copper instrument from his briefcase, a piece of equipment familiar to schoolchildren the world over. ‘A pair of compasses.’

  Dr Clarke stared with surprise and disbelief. ‘Oh, my God,’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s so obvious.’

  ‘Well, not really. It did, after all, take a genius to work it out,’ Newson observed.

  ‘No, it is obvious! A five-centimetre spike mounted on tiny shoulders four millimetres across. It’s exactly as I described to you and it could not be a description of anything but the business end of a compass. It fits perfectly.’

  ‘Well, I certainly think so.’

  ‘Our killer murdered Alan Bishop with a school compass!’

  ‘I’m impressed he found a use for one,’ said Natasha. ‘I carried mine in my pencil case for six years and I don’t think I ever got it out. I mean, how many times do you need to draw a circle?’

  ‘They’re not for drawing circles,’ Dr Clarke informed her. ‘They’re for creating right angles and bisecting lines.’

  ‘Another really useful thing you need constantly throughout your adult life,’ Natasha retorted.

  ‘They’re for stabbing people,’ said Newson. ‘Every schoolboy knows that, and so did our killer.’

  In order to be absolutely sure that Newson’s hypothesis was right, Dr Clarke measured the diameter and shape of the compass spike that Newson had brought and compared it to the notes she’d taken on the numerous wounds that had killed Adam Bishop. She had even created a three-dimensional computer image of the average shape of the holes she had found in the victim and by typing in the data on the spike she was able to create its virtual twin. Staring intently at the screen of her computer, she moved her mouse about until she had popped one into the other.

  ‘Perfect fit. Like a sword in a scabbard. Well done, Inspector.’

  ‘A bit of luck, really,’ Newson conceded. ‘I saw similar wounds to Bishop’s on the arm of a schoolboy.

  It turned out he’d been attacked by another lad with a compass.’

  ‘God, kids can be bastards, can’t they?’ Dr Clarke opined.

  And with that Dr Clarke bustled Newson and Natasha out of her office and rushed off to deal with a life that had clearly spun somewhat out of control.

  As Natasha and Newson drove back to New Scotland Yard they considered the significance of the new information.

  ‘It certainly justifies your going to Scotland,’ Natasha said. ‘I mean, you didn’t crack a German spy ring, but not bad all the same.’

  ‘As I said, a bit of luck, being there when that kid got bullied.’

  ‘Of course, the Bishop murder weapon being a compass doesn’t preclude the suspect’s being an angry business associate,’ Natasha said, but without much conviction. She knew that in the Tarmac community school compasses were unlikely to be a weapon of choice.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Newson replied, ‘but I’m absolutely certain that the compass was central to the motivation for the murder. It seems reasonable to at least experiment with the assumption that at some point in his life Adam Bishop himself used a compass in anger and that eventually it came back to haunt him.’

  ‘Well, the last time I laid eyes on one myself I was at school.’

  ‘Exactly. Me too. Of course he might have used one since. He was a builder. Builders talk to architects. Architects do geometry.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we’d better take a look at that.’

  ‘Otherwise, it’s a school thing. He stabbed some kid and now the kid has stabbed back.’

  ‘But Adam Bishop was fifty-five! Somethin
g like that would’ve happened over forty years ago.

  ‘The mills of God.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding small.’

  ‘Shit, Ed, you think someone waited forty years before taking revenge for being bullied?’

  ‘Perhaps. I know someone who waited twenty.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A girl I knew at school — ’

  ‘Christine? Your old pash?’

  ‘No, the other one. Helen.’

  ‘Ah, the one you titted off because the miners were losing their strike.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, if you must put it like that. I never knew it, but Christine bullied Helen and got some of her gang to stuff a tampon in her mouth.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘And now that Christine has decided to arrange a class reunion over Friends Reunited Helen has decided to tell the class all about it.’

  ‘Wow! Good goss! How did that go down?’

  ‘The reunion hasn’t been cancelled, so I suppose most people don’t see it as their problem.’

  ‘D’you think this Helen girl will go?’

  ‘No, I very much doubt it. She certainly didn’t say she was going.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course! You met her, didn’t you? So how did that go? Did you get any further then upstairs inside this time?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He said it, but he wasn’t quite quick enough. The tiny hesitation was enough to give away the truth.

  ‘You did! You did! You scored, didn’t you?’ Natasha exclaimed. ‘You pulled an old girlfriend over the internet!’

  ‘Look, we had dinner. Now, can we please move on — ’

  ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t shag her! Come on, look me in the eye and say you just had dinner.’

  ‘Natasha, we have a very — ’

  ‘You did! I know you did! That’s amazing. Fast stuff, Ed! Good work, fellah! Come on, tell me everything. How was it? Was it great, or was it completely complex and weird?’

  Newson gave in. ‘It was completely complex and weird.’

  ‘I warned you. I told you only sad people get into this sort of situation.’

  ‘I got into that sort of situation, Natasha.’

  ‘All right, maybe not sad…Just a bit…well, you’ve got to admit it, it is a strange way to get laid. Anyway, never mind that. I want to know how weird and how complex.’

  ‘Very, but it’s over and done with now. I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘You hope it’s over and done with, but I’ll bet it isn’t.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘She may be a bunny-boiler. Unbalanced and vengeful.’ Natasha put on an American accent. ‘What? So you think you can screw me then just walk away!

  Think again, Detective Inspector Newson! Eeee, eeee, eeeeh!’ Now she was doing the shower scene from Psycho.

  ‘This isn’t a movie and it’s definitely over.’

  ‘So come on, you have to tell me. What happened?’ But Newson would not be drawn. ‘All I can say is that when you crash your plane on to the deck of someone else’s life after an absence of twenty years, it’s hardly surprising that you encounter a bit of damage. Helen had plenty, her life is complex and difficult, and I think that perhaps momentarily she hoped my appearance might provide some solutions for her.’

  ‘And you just wanted a shag.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Bummer.’

  ‘The very word I was thinking of myself.’

  The conversation lapsed for a moment. Newson felt uncomfortable. He did not really like Natasha’s knowing that he had slept with Helen. Certainly he was happy for her to understand that he was not entirely sexless, but he also suffered from irrational feelings of infidelity. In sleeping with Helen he had been unfaithfull to his fantasy relationship with Natasha, and although she would never know how much he loved her he was still prone to a kind of perverse private guilt.

  ‘Everything good with you?’ he asked, breaking the silence. ‘Lance well?’

  ‘All right. He’s not happy with me working so hard.’

  ‘As far as I can see he’s not happy with anything you do at all.’

  ‘He’s dealing with a lot of issues. He’s a complex bloke.’

  ‘He’s a very lucky one, that’s all I can say. He should be on his knees with gratitude that you even give him the time of day.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know me. I can be a right bitch.’

  ‘Oh, I know that.’

  Natasha smiled. Newson wanted to kiss her so much it hurt.

  ‘I…I missed you while I was away,’ he said. ‘I mean.., it was nice when you called.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to get away from everything.’

  ‘Yes, work, of course, but not from…Well, it was just nice to hear from you, that’s all.’

  Natasha turned to him and smiled, but then looked away. There was further silence. Every fibre of Newson’s being yearned to declare his love. To throw caution to the wind, fall on to his knees next to the gear stick of Natasha’s Renault Clio and plead with her to forsake Lance for him. But he didn’t.

  ‘Yeah, well. Anyway,’ Natasha said.

  Newson opened his briefcase and fossicked pointlessly with papers, trying to refocus his mind on what they should have been discussing.

  ‘Right,’ he said firmly, ‘we need to discuss what to do about the Bishop case. It seems clear to me that we have to take a look at who he went to school with.’

  ‘Shit, that’s a hell of a job. Forty years is a long time. People could be absolutely anywhere.’

  ‘Fifty years. If he’s fifty-five now he first went to school in about 1954 or five.’

  ‘I don’t think they have compasses in nursery school.’

  ‘That’s true. I reckon we should start by taking a look at who was at school with him in 1958 and ‘59.’

  ‘Why particularly then? They left school at fifteen in those days, so he’d have been there till at least 1964.’

  ‘Just a hunch. Cliff Richard released ‘Move It’ in 1958.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Fantastic. It’s generally considered to be the first genuine all-British rock ‘n’ roll record. Cliff was cool in those days.’

  ‘Was he really around in 1958?’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘And the killer was playing ‘Move It’ while he punctured Adam Bishop with a school compass three hundred and forty-seven times.’

  ‘Yes, that and the Everly Brothers, the Platters, all terrific stuff, all from the last two years of the fifties. Elvis was in the army, you see. The field was wide open.’

  ‘I suppose it does seem kind of likely that the killer chose that music for a purpose,’ mused Natasha.

  ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we? Besides that, we need to keep going with cross-referencing our five murders. Look at the backgrounds on Spencer, Bradshaw and Tatum. It’d be interesting to see if they were all viewed with the same degree of animosity in their circles as were Adam Bishop and Farrah Porter.’

  Natasha dropped Newson off at New Scotland Yard. She was to return to Kensington to supervise further forensic work on Farrah Porter’s flat. The police had been forced to vacate the apartment while MI6 went through it, and only now was the investigation back in police hands.

  Newson stood on the pavement, watching as he had done so often as Natasha disappeared into the traffic.

  Even her little Clio seemed cool and feisty to him. A spunky, independent little car for a spunky, independent little lady. Red, of course. Red meant don’t mess with me. Newson despaired. He was even in love with her fucking car.

  With head bowed, he made his way into the office, thinking about the forthcoming class reunion. Perhaps he might find a cure for love there, or at least some distraction from it.

  EIGHTEEN

  The week passed slowly, with the frustrating business of going through the motions of an investigation. Newson was convinced tha
t in the Bishop and Porter cases he was looking for the same killer, and that the motivation for murder was an as yet unidentified element that they had in common — an element that they also shared with the three previous murder victims. However, he had no proof to support this assumption and so was clearly required to pursue his investigations with an open mind.

  Farrah Porter had many political associates and rivals, of course, all of whom had to be interviewed, and her recent contacts and activities required investigation. Adam Bishop’s numerous enemies within the building trade and the wider Willesden community all had to be laboriously traced and eliminated. Computers were impounded, bank accounts searched, cupboards opened and skeletons rattled. All was to no avail, as indeed Inspector Newson had privately predicted.

  And still the only factor with which Newson was able to link the two victims, one a violent builder, the other a celebrated junior politician, was the fact that they both appeared to have been loathed by those who knew them. In this aspect, at least, Natasha had been able to draw some parallels with the earlier three victims Newson had chosen to lump into his investigation.

  ‘Angie Tatum wasn’t popular,’ said Natasha, ‘but she wasn’t hated in the way Bishop and to a lesser extent Porter were hated — or at least not recently.’

  Natasha and Newson were holding an unofficial end-of-week briefing in a Dunkin’ Donuts on Piccadilly Circus. ‘Most of the people who knew her just thought she was a bit sad.’

  ‘Hanging on to a glory that was long gone?’

  ‘Exactly, and, let’s face it, it was a pretty tawdry glory in the first place, wasn’t it? I mean, getting your tits out, what sort of job is that?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘I did speak to a couple of girls who knew her when she was queen of page three, and they said that in those days she was pretty nasty, cocky and a bit spiteful, but even they weren’t glad she was dead.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Neil Bradshaw was different again. At first you wouldn’t say that he was particularly disliked, but, reading between the lines, people were wary of him. They didn’t trust him. It’s all very political.’