by Nick Oldham
Henry shook his head to clear his brain. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until a bit later.’
Professor Baines looked at Henry and said, ‘I decided to get this over with. You sounded harassed on the phone, and as the coroner has given us permission – something arranged by your chief constable, I believe – I thought it appropriate to get it done speedily.’
Henry stood back and let him in the room.
‘How did you get into the hotel?’ he asked Baines.
‘Parked at the back, rang the back doorbell for access.’
Henry thought this through as he pulled his jeans on. ‘OK, you in your E-type?’
‘No, I brought my assistant with me and dropped her off at the infirmary, so I’m in the Mark X.’
‘Great.’
‘What do you want exactly, and why?’
Baines, now acting more like Inspector Clouseau rather than Sherlock, stood at the back door of the hotel, looking furtively both ways to check if the coast was clear. When satisfied, he put his head down, scuttled across the car park and jumped in the very old, pristine Mark X Jaguar, second only in his pride and joy stakes to the E-type he also owned and cherished. The engine started smoothly and he drove close to the back door, where he stopped briefly and allowed Henry to dart out and fling himself across the back seat.
Baines pulled out and headed towards the city centre.
‘Do you see anyone or anything suspicious?’ Henry asked from his hiding place.
‘No, no one about … just a trannie van parked across the road, that’s all.’
‘OK. So you have an assistant?’ Henry asked.
‘All self-respecting pathologists do. She doubles as my mortuary assistant too. Very helpful.’
‘A flexible woman, then?’
‘Very,’ Baines confirmed. ‘She should have everything sorted for us, but from what you say, this shouldn’t take long.’
‘I could be wrong,’ Henry said.
Having possession of the written authority of the local coroner with her meant that by the time Baines and Henry arrived at the mortuary, Baines’ PA had indeed prepared the way.
The corpse of Martin Sowerbutts was again laid out on the slab, ready for Baines to carry out a further examination.
Henry looked at the stitched-up body, hoping he was right. The thought of unnecessarily having another PM performed went dead against Henry’s beliefs. He knew it happened but should be avoided if at all possible, because it was another knock at someone’s dignity in death. On the other side of the coin, though, he knew his uncertainties had to be explored. Even if the man on the slab was a child murderer, he still deserved to have his own death properly investigated.
‘This is Steph, my PA I was telling you about,’ Baines said as he walked into the room, heaved his work bag on to the side and began removing his tweed jacket.
Henry gave Steph a wave, not surprised she had a grey tinge to her young, pretty face.
Baines took out his protective surgical gown, hat, mask and gloves and fitted all four items after having carefully washed his hands. Once he had done this, he unfurled a tool rack in which the implements of his trade were lined up in the slots. He fitted a microphone to his face and linked it by Bluetooth to record on his phone.
Henry saw that Steph had already set up two digital cameras on tripods to record the PM.
Baines looked at Steph from over his mask. ‘Are we in a position to proceed?’
‘Yes, Professor.’
‘In that case …’ He removed a scalpel and held the blade up to the light. It looked very sharp.
Henry sat, watched and listened from a chair in the corner of the room, not wanting to interfere in any way, just to let Baines carry on and find what he had to find. He half-expected the axe to fall on his preposterous notion that Sowerbutts had not actually died in a car accident, but had been dead before plunging over the cliff.
He was prepared to look stupid.
Baines removed the ribcage once Steph had unpicked the stitches and, after placing it gently alongside the body, he carefully picked out the already dissected lungs and carried them across to the inspection table to examine them, speaking softly into his mike while Steph took a video of the procedure with a Go-Pro digital camera.
Henry’s mouth was dry from his unwise decision to down the double whisky from the minibar.
Baines and Steph stood over the lungs. He pointed out things to her, and even picked up a slice of a lung and squeezed.
It oozed blood.
Baines glanced at Henry, then returned his attention back to the lungs.
Henry was beginning to feel a bit silly.
Baines crossed back to the cadaver and inspected Sowerbutts’ bashed-up face closely, then unpicked the stitching around the scalp, folded the skin back over the face and removed the skull cap. Gently, he picked out the brain and carried it to the table, placing it next to the lungs. He opened it carefully.
It took him ninety minutes, after which he and Steph reassembled Sowerbutts and slid his body back into the chiller cabinet.
‘Let’s find a coffee machine,’ Baines said to Henry.
Henry handed one, then another coffee to Baines and Steph. The three stood in a little triangle in the corridor just behind the A&E department.
Henry waited, wondering what an axe felt like when it fell.
‘There are injuries consistent with being involved in a very serious road traffic accident, as you have described. Facial and chest injuries,’ Baines explained.
Henry closed his eyes and thought, Shit.
‘But not all his facial injuries fit with his head having hit a steering wheel. There is no doubt that his face was pounded into something flat – a wall, maybe. Hard to say. That is as well as having hit the rim of the steering wheel. I’m sure it would be possible to match up the pattern of the injuries with the pattern on the wheel itself. But’ – Baines sipped his coffee – ‘the man’s face was essentially battered to a pulp before it hit the wheel.’
‘So he’d been assaulted before the accident?’
‘Either that or been involved in another accident where his face hit something very flat and hard, repeatedly. The face is a mess, but when you know what you’re looking for, it’s all easy to read. There is some form of indentation on his left temple which could have been caused by an iron bar, maybe, or a police baton … just saying.
‘His chest injuries are consistent with the accident you described to me. If he wasn’t wearing a seat belt it is possible he was thrown against the steering wheel as the vehicle crashed down the cliff, but I would argue that it’s unlikely he would receive injuries to both his face and chest consistent with having impacted on the steering wheel during that descent. Obviously it was a rough ride, but it doesn’t seem physically likely he would bash his head and chest in the same manner. I won’t stake my life on that.’
Henry thought about the words, visualizing the vehicle going over a cliff: a tumble dryer.
‘Another but,’ Baines said significantly. ‘The injuries to his face and chest are both post-mortem, sustained after he died.’
Sometimes Henry could not stop his bottom lip from drooping, which it did. ‘You mean …?’ he began, trying to grasp this.
‘I mean his face was bashed on the steering wheel after he was dead, as was his chest, but like I said, it is unlikely they both occurred when the car was going down the cliff. I’d say the chest injuries came with that but not the facial ones. I can determine that from the nature of the bruising. His face, I think, was bashed into the steering wheel before the vehicle went over the cliff, but he was dead at that time.’
Henry tried to compute this. ‘You sure?’
‘Just as sure as an oncologist can look up your bottom and tell you you’ve got bowel cancer. It’s my job, it’s what I do.’
‘I get it. But how did he die, then?’
‘Well, you were right in your suspicions – his lungs were filled with an excessive amount of blood,
so he suffocated in it. I would say he was unconscious from having had his face smashed against something flat, and then he was left lying face up, and the blood from these facial injuries – from his broken nose, cheekbone, teeth knocked out, et cetera, was inhaled and he died.’
Henry pursed his lips. ‘He was dead before he went over the cliff?’
Baines looked pointedly at him.
‘OK, I get it.’
Baines patted him on the shoulder. ‘Best of luck with this, my old friend.’
Baines had to leave immediately to get back across the Pennines with Steph to carry out a PM scheduled for later that morning. They would get very little sleep. He promised Henry a full report of his findings later that day by email. He dropped Henry back at the hotel by the same devious means as he’d picked him up. He asked Baines to report any suspicious vehicles outside the hotel, but there was just the same, the old Transit van.
Henry thanked him profusely and promised a catch-up soon, then slithered out of the car and in through the back of the hotel up to his room, his mind churning with the vivid memories of attending the cliff-top accident and the subsequent – first – post-mortem, during which Runcie had a hushed conversation with the pathologist, then Henry’s own doubts about the PM itself – the fact that he saw the lungs saturated with blood. Too much blood.
He walked past Daniels’ room, seeing a light under the door, then on to his, which he entered, paranoia setting in, without turning on a light.
It was just after five a.m. and, although he hadn’t slept, he wasn’t feeling tired at all as he tried to work out what his next steps should be.
He drew up a chair next to the window, put his feet up on a footstool and looked out over the quayside as a slow dawn began to creep in from the east.
His mobile phone was in his hand and he tapped it thoughtfully on the palm of his other, then made the decision. Scrolling through his contacts page, he found Jerry Tope’s home number again.
Diane Daniels had not slept well, but lay awake tossing and turning on the big soft bed.
Her mind, too, was cluttered with thoughts of the investigation on which she had found herself.
When she had volunteered she had expected it to be a by-the-numbers review of a couple of slow running, unsolved murders. The chance to sit by Henry Christie’s shoulder, enjoy and learn from the experience was all she had wanted.
It had become much more than that very quickly, not least because she had not expected Henry, still in recovery from the gunshot wound, to be so proactive and willing to ruffle feathers. He seemed to revel in making people feel uncomfortable.
The last thing she thought she would do was go out and speak to a murder victim’s wife, and then rescue her from suicide.
Daniels smiled. Actually, it had all been pretty good. She looked at her phone for the time. Just gone five a.m.
No point in even thinking about sleep now. She threw off the duvet and padded naked into the bathroom. A pee, and then a run to set up her energy levels for the day ahead. Somehow she knew she had to be on tip-top form.
‘That’s odd,’ Jerry Tope said.
‘What is?’
‘I was just about to send you a text for you to phone me.’
‘At this time in the morning?’ Henry was amazed to find the normally grumpy-at-any-time-of-the-day Tope almost jovial – well, certainly amenable at this hour. Over the years, Henry had learned that whatever time he called Tope, he was bad-tempered.
‘Yep, been surfing all night.’
Henry held back from making a quip. Just asked, ‘Why?’
‘You have a victim over there, the one called Mark James Wright? Stabbed to death.’
‘Yep.’
‘Well, I’ve looked into his business. As you probably know, he was a bit of a one-man band working in the construction industry. I’ve looked at all of his accounts online, but they’re a bare minimum – there’s not a lot of information. He provided heavy plant machinery for building sites and demolition projects and all that, but you know all this.’
Henry did, but didn’t want to interrupt Tope, which could have had fatal consequences. Tope usually liked a dramatic set-up followed by a denouement, and anything that got in his way usually resulted in heavy sulking.
‘So I don’t know if this is helpful or not. I’ve been reviewing crimes for Central Yorkshire, Portsea Division, and come across a few undetected fraud cases.’
Henry leaned forwards, looking through the window at the quayside. It was still quiet.
‘Two quarter of a million scams.’
‘OK … and …’
‘Two legitimate companies hired out their machinery to companies who were supposedly about to begin some demolition projects in Portsea.’
‘What type of machinery?’
‘Crushers and screeners – big effing things that crush stone then sort it. Worth over a hundred grand each. Thing is these companies found out too late that they were dealing with artificial companies – all set up and sophisticated, with mobile phone numbers, offices in Portakabins – that didn’t actually exist. The legit companies provide plant machinery on rental, supposedly, then deliver it, only to discover that when they go to seize it back because none of the rental fees have been paid, there is no sign of the plant – or the companies, ’cos they didn’t exist in the first place. Probably exported to Europe and sold over there.’
‘Is this machinery not traceable or trackable?’
‘Yes, they do have GPSs fitted but any half-good engineer can remove them. The GPSs still emit signals, which made the owners think the machinery is where it was delivered, but it’s long gone. Two companies have been bankrupted.’
‘Crikey,’ Henry said.
‘I just wondered if Wright was somehow involved in the scam, that’s all. Just doing my job as an analyst. Why were you going to call me?’
‘How good are you at accessing bank accounts on the sly?’
Henry leaned forward again as a figure jogged across to the quayside from the front door of the hotel. It was Daniels out for her early morning jog.
She paused, running on the spot, fitting her earphones before trotting off up river. Stretching and rolling her muscles, she settled into an easy pace. Henry had no intention of running that morning. He fancied a couple of hours in bed.
That changed as the back door of the Transit van that had been parked up all night opened and a black-clad figure climbed out with a hood pulled over his face and set off behind Daniels.
FOURTEEN
The music from her iPod enveloped her, pulsing a steady beat that translated to her feet as Daniels jogged gently along the path by the river. It was a good pace, one she knew she could maintain for about four miles with ease, which is, give or take, as much as she wanted to do three or four times a week. Added to a couple of focused gym sessions, which she hated, it was enough to keep her sometimes bad diet at bay. She liked her food, liked sweet things, and knew the payoff was moderate exercise.
She was aware of her body as she relaxed into the pace. The way her feet connected with the ground, the muscles in her legs and her arse tightening, her boobs gently bouncing … All felt good.
Until she became aware of something else.
A sixth sense kicking in, but too late.
A sudden rush. The feeling of someone behind her, approaching quickly. A shadow. A change in the air pressure.
She tried to twist.
And the gloved hand went around her face, covering her eyes, nose and mouth, instantly gagging her, and she felt the strength of a man – she knew it had to be a man – yank her to a stop and drag her sideways to try to pitch her to the ground. Her hands grabbed at his forearm, digging her nails deep, although she knew the barrier of the material of what he was wearing made her sharp nails ineffective.
‘Interfering bitch,’ the man growled into her ear.
She began to struggle violently, kicking back with her heels and stomping down in the hope of smashing the man�
��s toes.
But she was off balance and could feel herself teetering over.
She twisted again, right round, facing him, and saw with terror he was wearing a balaclava mask with slits for the eyes and mouth. It was a terrifying glimpse that sent a shockwave of fear through her whole being, making her think, Killer, rapist …
As she pirouetted to face him, her right hand thrust up between their bodies. She wanted to slam the heel of her hand up into his nose to try and drive the shard that was his septum up into the frontal lobe of his brain, but she misjudged the trajectory and instead slammed her hand on to the underside of his chin, which had a great effect.
He screamed, reeled backwards and let go of her.
‘You bitth.’
He had bitten his tongue. She had managed to ram his teeth together with his fat juicy tongue between them.
His hand came up to his face, then came away as he spat blood, a terrible sight coming out through the mouth-opening in the mask.
But he did not hesitate for long.
He came at her like a wild animal. The difference this time was that she was ready for the attack, had regained her balance and, as his arms came together, she danced out of reach of them and he grasped fresh air where she had been standing a microsecond before.
Again, he recovered quickly from his setback, swung his fist and caught her on the side of the face, sending a tremor through her brain and knocking her down on to her hands and knees.
She tasted blood inside her own mouth now, where her cheek had been cut on her teeth.
‘You’re going in the river, bitth,’ he promised, unable to say ‘bitch’ properly.
She was not going anywhere without a fight.
He was standing perhaps four feet away from her, and she could see the lower portion of his legs from the knees down. She dived for them, propelling herself like a runner from the blocks, intending to wrap her arms around them and bring him down.
He sidestepped nimbly aside and slammed the sole of his trainer against the back of her head, driving her into the gritty ground.
She rolled away and he was suddenly towering over her.
From his outline, she saw he was wide and muscled, and knew that if he managed to grip her properly it would be almost impossible for her to break free and she would be in the river. As fit as she was, she knew she could not match his strength.