Past Mortem

by Ben Elton

  What mistakes had he made? It was a short step for Newson from reflecting on his own shortcomings to speculating on whether he might have caused Christine’s murder. Was the killer focusing on him? Could it be that by murdering his old friend — his lover — the killer was speaking directly to him? It was a horrifying thought and Newson struggled to force it from his mind. He knew what the connection was now. He knew how the killer found his victims, and it had nothing to do with him.

  It had nothing to do with him.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Whoever it was didn’t use Rohypnol to subdue her,’ Dr Clarke said. ‘It was chloroform. There are residual traces around her mouth.’

  Newson had specifically asked for Dr Clarke to be contacted when he had alerted the local police and his own office at New Scotland Yard to this latest murder. She had attended three out of five of the previous murders and Newson felt that there might be some benefit in continuity. Besides which, in his shaken state he did not feel up to having to convince any new colleagues that he really was in charge.

  ‘And it was you who found the body this time?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Yes, it was me who found her.’

  ‘A friend of yours?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  Newson caught Natasha’s eye. She’d been looking at the champagne and flowers standing amongst the clutter on the table in the window..

  ‘Yours?’ she enquired.

  ‘Yes, mine,’ Newson replied.

  ‘Flowers and two bottles of Veuve. It must be nice being your friend,’ she remarked.

  Newson felt hot and deeply uncomfortable. He hated the way Natasha was looking at him. It was clear that she must think he’d bought these clichéd and expensive tokens with the sole purpose of exchanging them for sex. But he hadn’t. Not entirely, anyway. He had liked Christine and he knew that she would have loved to be brought flowers and two bottles of good champagne. He’d been looking ‘forward to seeing her smile when he handed them over.

  He also felt excruciatingly exposed professionally. Christine had been brutally murdered, and shortly thereafter he had turned up bearing romantic gifts. It was a profoundly awkward situation for anybody, but particularly so for the chief investigating officer.

  ‘You’re completely convinced that this is part of the cycle?’ Natasha asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Newson replied. ‘The victim allows her killer to walk into her home where he promptly drugs her, restrains her and inflicts on her a macabre death while playing music that was popular during her schooldays. He then departs leaving scarcely any trace that he was ever there. It’s the same killer. I’ve no doubt of that.’

  ‘Seems very strange, doesn’t it,’ Natasha said, ‘that he should kill a friend of yours? I mean, apart from the fact that you’re in charge of the team that’s pursuing him, what possible connection do you have with the killer? Do you think he’s trying to tell you something? Warn you off, maybe?’

  ‘Well, it’d be giving me a great deal too much credit if he was, since I have absolutely no idea who he is.’

  ‘So is he interested in you as a person, then?’

  ‘Do you mean, have I become part of his motivation? Of course I’ve wondered about it,’ Newson said, trying to assume an air of cool and efficient confidence. ‘But, frankly, I very much doubt that that’s what this is about. This thing was going on long before I became involved, and either I’ll stop it soon or I’ll be removed from the case, and then I’m quite certain it’ll go on without me.’

  ‘So what happened here, then?’ Natasha asked. ‘How did he kill her?’

  ‘Somebody stuck a tampon deep into her throat and she choked to death,’ said Dr Clarke.

  ‘And whoever did it gained access to her flat without encountering any resistance,’ Natasha said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Newson. ‘She knew her killer.’

  ‘We can only presume that,’ Natasha replied.

  ‘No, this time I know for sure. I have a recording of Christine’s voice on my mobile answering service. She was leaving me a message at the moment when the killer turned up. Talking to me while she looked through her spyhole. I heard her saying, ‘Well, well, well, this is a surprise,’ and that she’d have a story to tell me.’

  ‘So you know the person, too?’

  ‘She certainly thought it’d interest me, so I suppose I must do.’

  ‘Fuck. If that’s true you know the killer,’ said Natasha.

  Dr Clarke broke into the discussion testily. ‘We need to deal with the scene of crime, Inspector. You can discuss it all later. It’s a Sunday. I’m supposed to be with my children.’

  Newson had forgotten about the changes taking place in Dr Clarke’s life. She seemed harassed and on edge. Could it really all be down to his having told her about her old passion from medical school? Had that been the spark that exploded her marriage? Was the past really so powerful that it could comprehensively ruin the present?

  Christine Copperfield’s corpse lying in the next room was proof that it could. Something she did twenty years before had come back and brought her present to a sudden and brutal end. The present. Newson knew that he must focus on the present. Christine was dead. More people were likely to die unless he could find the perpetrator.

  ‘The killer acted quickly this time,’ he said. ‘Christine only left her message with me a couple of hours ago. He entered the flat and since there seem to be no signs of hostility I imagine he subdued her immediately with the chloroform.’

  ‘I think he stripped her while she was unconscious,’ Dr Clarke added. ‘I’ve had a good look at the body and there are only two sets of bruises on it. Big heavy ones just below the shoulders of each arm. If she’d been aware of his taking her clothes off I imagine she’d have struggled and we’d see more evidence of it’

  ‘Unless he held her up with a knife,’ Natasha suggested. ‘The knife he cut her with.’

  ‘Maybe, but if so why bother with chloroform at all?’ said Dr Clarke.

  ‘That’s right,’ Newson said. ‘I think he stripped her while she was out of it and bound her wrists, then waited for her to come round. In the past he’s always made some effort to ensure that the victim understands their fate, and I’d be surprised if he let Christine Copperfield off any of the details.’

  As he said it he was trying to remain calm and dispassionate, but inside an immense anger was building. He’d been having breakfast with this girl only hours before. She had not deserved what had been done to her.

  ‘When she woke up I think he must have acted immediately. I think he pushed the tampon into her throat at this point,’ he continued.

  ‘Before he cut her?’ Natasha asked.

  ‘Yes. Once she was bleeding we can tell where she went and what she did simply by following the stains. If he’d waited till she was on the bed to choke her she would have thrashed around and we’d see a great deal more staining on the duvet instead of the simple neat puddle between her legs. By the time Christine hit the bed, I think she was nearly done for. She was choking while she was being moved around the room. What’s more, nobody heard anything. These are solid flats, but if the tampon hadn’t been acting as a gag, I think they’d have heard her scream when he used his knife on her.’

  ‘So, she woke up naked, he pushed the tampon into her mouth and then he cut her,’ Natasha said.

  ‘Yes, a single slash across the vulva,’ Dr Clarke said. ‘It’s not a deep cut, not life-threatening at all.’

  ‘It didn’t need to be deep,’ Newson said. ‘It just needed to bleed. He needed her to bleed from that particular place in order to complete his scenario.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘He wanted to mark the seats. Mark them with blood. So, having made her bleed, he grabbed her by the upper arms in what would have needed to be a very firm grip because of course she would have been struggling, and he hauled her about the room from one seat to another, pushing her down and leaving a bloody imprint wherever he took her. The sofa
, the dining-room chair and finally the piano stool. Then, as her resistance began to lessen because of oxygen starvation; he marched her backwards into the bedroom and pushed her back on to the bed, where she breathed her last, but not before having been fully conscious of the detail and hence the reason for her terrible fate.’

  ‘He wanted to mark the furniture with blood from the wound in her groin?’ Natasha asked.

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘So this is sexual, then?’

  ‘No, it isn’t sexual.’

  ‘I thought everything was…‘ Natasha had clearly been about to quote Newson’s old adage, but she stopped before it was completed.

  ‘Yes, Natasha. I know what I once said, but this was not sexual. None of the murders are, excepting the very broadest Freudian sense of the word. You see, I know what this killer was doing and so do you. I told you about it. Do you remember? The killer was aping an episode of bullying. Just like he was doing when he killed Adam Bishop.’

  ‘So this is all about bullying?’

  ‘Yes. The blood he forced Christine to leave on the furniture in the last minutes of her life represents menstrual blood. It is a macabre recreation of an incident that happened more than twenty years ago when Christine Copperfield bullied a girl for unwittingly starting her period on a bench in the girls’ changing rooms at their school. Which was also my school.’

  The room fell silent. The busy police officers looked up from their cameras and their fingerprint dust to listen to Newson. Even careworn Dr Clarke seemed to forget that she was in a hurry.

  ‘Who was the girl?’ Natasha asked. ‘Whose menstrual blood do these stains represent?’

  ‘The woman I told you about. Helen Smart.’ Newson looked away from Natasha, but not before he had noted in her eyes the clear thought, ‘Ah, your other recent lover.’ Newson had had sex with only two women in many, many months, Natasha knew that. She also knew that one of the women was the murder victim and the other looked to be shaping up as the principal suspect.

  An hour later the on-site investigation was complete, and the body of Christine Copperfield was removed, leaving the flat she shared with the air crew for the last time.

  Dr Clarke was preparing to leave with it. ‘You know something, Edward,’ she said, using his first name for the first time that he could remember in their long association. ‘You really should remove yourself from this case. You’re too connected now. You discovered the body. You were the last person to talk to the victim alive. You’re compromised. It could look very bad for you. You need to hand it over before Ward tells you to. If you wait till it’s forced on to you it would look pretty bad.’

  ‘These murders have nothing to do with me,’ Newson said.

  ‘From where I’m standing you seem to have an awful lot of inside information. Only you could have worked out the menstrual blood thing and that’s because you knew the people involved. Nobody could have come up with that theory simply from the evidence available.’

  ‘On the contrary, Doctor, all the information required is in the public domain. Anybody can access it at any time.’

  ‘How?’

  Newson crossed the floor of Christine Copperfield’s living room and stood in front of the television, on top of which sat the stereo. One of the constables had turned off the music some time before. Once more taking his handkerchief from his pocket, Newson pressed the CD eject button. The disc emerged.

  ‘By going online and going to the address printed on this compilation CD,’ he said. ‘All you need to do to find the motivation for this murder is visit Friends Reunited.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I’m sorry, I can’t help it. Part of me’s glad she’s dead.’

  Helen Smart was sitting on the same threadbare sofa that she had sat on while making small-talk with the babysitter on the evening when she and Newson had first had sex. Inspector Newson sat in the same chair that he had sat in while waiting for the babysitter to leave. Newson could not decide whether he found Helen’s flat more or less depressing in the daytime. Had it really been less than a fortnight since they’d sat there together? It seemed like a lifetime ago. Helen was fiddling with a pair of scissors, cutting shapes out of children’s coloured card. The scissors were not the blunt children’s type, though, they were big, sharp adult ones. He wondered whether she was playing with them for his benefit ‘I can’t mourn her,’ Helen reiterated. ‘I’m sorry, of course, she was a human being after all, but it’d be hypocritical to pretend I’m upset. She mined my life. Now someone’s ruined hers.’

  Natasha was leading the interview. ‘Do you have any idea who that person might be, Ms Smart?’ she enquired.

  ‘No, of course not. How would I?’ Helen replied.

  She did not look well, Newson thought. Her eyes were hollow and there were bags beneath them. Her hair, which had been so cutely moussed and spiked when she’d come to visit him, was flat and greasy. She had clearly just got up and wore only a big shirt and slippers. Her legs were unshaven and somewhat-bruised.

  ‘Because,’ Natasha continued, ‘whoever killed Christine Copperfield appears to have done so in order to avenge an incident that happened to you while you were at school.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Newson watched Helen closely. Was she lying? Did she really not know how Christine had died?

  ‘We thought that perhaps you might,’ Natasha said. Helen turned to Newson. ‘Why’s she asking all the questions, Ed?’ There was a hard, sarcastic edge to her voice. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a big important policeman. Who’s in charge, you or her?’

  ‘I’m in charge, Helen,’ Newson replied gently, ‘but Detective Sergeant Wilkie is my colleague. You can treat her as you would me.’

  ‘I slept with you, then you dumped me.’

  There was an embarrassed silence before Natasha resumed her questioning. ‘Ms Smart, can you tell me where you were and what you were doing between noon and four o’clock this afternoon?’

  Newson’s discomfort was plain for all to see. It was certainly not lost on Helen.

  ‘What’s the matter, Ed? Embarrassed? Haven’t you told her, then? Look, he’s going red. I think he fancies you, Sergeant.’

  ‘Please stick to the questions, Helen,’ Newson said. ‘What were you doing this afternoon?’

  But Helen was in no mood to be told what to do. Newson wondered if she had been drinking.

  ‘What’s he like to work with?’ Helen said, turning to Natasha. ‘My old mate Ed Newson. Has he abused his position of authority with you? Flashed his warrant card where he shouldn’t? That’s how he pulled Christine, you know, getting her backstage because he’s a copper, gate-crashing the hospitality and getting her pissed for nothing on the strength of his warrant card. How crap can you get?’

  Newson said nothing. What Helen was saying was true.

  Natasha’s expression did not change. ‘I’m going to have to insist that you answer our questions, Ms Smart. I don’t want to have to arrest you for obstruction.’

  ‘She was with me. All day.’

  A man had emerged from Helen’s bedroom. He was skinny with long dirty hair, and wore only his jeans, which were not fully zipped up. Though fit-looking, he was also wasted. Newson noticed needle track marks amongst the tattoos on the man’s arms. They did not look recent. He hoped that they weren’t.

  The man walked across the room with an arrogant swagger and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got no fucking milk, girl,’ he said.

  ‘This is Kevin,’ Helen said.

  ‘Kelvin, darling, Kel-vin, with an I in it. All right?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Helen. ‘This is Kelvin.’

  ‘So, Kelvin,’ Natasha enquired. ‘You say that you and Helen have been here all day?’

  ‘Yeah, in bed. We only got up when you came round.’

  ‘Where’s Karl, Helen?’ Newson asked.

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?�
��

  ‘I’m concerned about his wellbeing.’

  ‘Oh, please do fuck off, Ed. Like you care a toss.’

  ‘I was simply asking where he was.’

  ‘Karl and I were fine before you barged back into my life for a quick couple of shags and then fucked straight off again, and we’re fine now, OK?’

  Newson noted that Natasha’s expression still did not change. She was giving a perfect impression of being supremely uninterested in Helen’s remarks about Newson’s private life. She was a good police officer and a good friend. Newson hoped that he too was maintaining a calm exterior. Inside, he was mortified. ‘I’d like to know where Karl is,’ he said.

  ‘He’s at his nan’s. Now, is there anything else?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kelvin. ‘Is there anything else? Because it’s Sunday afternoon and we was chilling.’

  ‘Shut up, Kelvin,’ said Natasha, before turning back to Helen. ‘When did you place your description of Christine Copperfield’s bullying of you on the Friends Reunited notice board?’ she asked.

  Helen looked at her for a moment, her face a blank. Then a strange smile lit her face and her dull eyes shone. Newson had never seen Helen with such an expression before. A weight seemed to be lifting from her. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘You’re not saying…You’re not saying that someone choked her with a tampon? I don’t believe it! Please say yes!’

  Natasha persevered with her questioning. ‘When did you place your descrip — ’

  It was enough. Helen had heard all she needed. She leapt to her feet and punched the air. ‘They did! They did! The bitch died as she lived. Fuck me, that’s incredible, that is just fantastic. Oh my God!’

  ‘I know when Ms Smart placed the notice, Sergeant,’ Newson said, ‘and it’ll be dated on the site. Let’s leave it for now.’ He felt a terrible sadness. How desperate and distorted must Helen’s world be to take comfort from such a perverse and terrible victory? But he also felt guilt. He did not think Helen had killed Christine, but if she had not, whoever did kill her had read her notice on the Friends Reunited site. She’d only placed it there because of her anger that he intended to attend Christine’s reunion, and Christine had only organized the reunion after he had visited the site. The conclusion was unavoidable: if Newson had not been plotting to find a way to sleep with Christine Copperfield, she would never have been murdered.