by Clare Curzon
If green bottles were so much more robust, maybe some of the Dellar collection, close-packed and horizontal in their sturdy shelving, could even now have survived the upper storeys’ collapse. Or would they be long gone, sold on by Claudia like the best of the library, to cover expenses in her and Carlton’s final years?
Kate wondered if that possibility had occurred to Robert, so enraged by being denied his grandfather’s books or some share of their value. And had Matthew, his father, been secretly a party to any liquidating of family assets? Perhaps Claudia had allowed him to take a cut.
Kate moved away from the window, leaving the rain still pattering in. For a brief moment she had resented that Michael’s portion as third brother could be overlooked and her little family deprived. But how trivial, to be considering vintage wine’s survival, when a precious life has been taken! In any case the heat would have made it undrinkable.
Her present reality overwhelmed her. She had no one, unless Eddie miraculously pulled through. And if not, what use had she for anything else?
She reached for the phone, dialled the hospital and waited while someone responsible was called to answer her demands.
Sister informed her there had been no change. Eddie remained in a deep coma.
It meant there was still hope, of a kind. Jess was another matter. Today they would be holding a post-mortem. Kate refused to let her mind travel so far into the blackness.
Yeadings, having first stopped off at Kidlington to pick up and read the PR office’s digest for the day, was an hour late reaching the mortuary. Littlejohn was in mid-flow, dictating his progress into a mike clipped to the front of his green plastic apron. The others had gathered and were uneasily waiting as he sliced, sawed, removed, then handed wrinkled organs over to steel bowls for the necessary weighing. There was a new mortuary assistant, small, male and Asian. Possibly Burmese.
Harsh overhead lighting, thrown back by white walls and gleaming steel, united with the heavy, airless smell of death insufficiently masked by disinfectant, producing for Yeadings the customary unease below his belt. This was by no means a normal dissection, the cadaver less resembling a human form than some charred and twisted tree trunk. The limbs, barely recognizable, were distorted and shrivelled. It was doubtful whether even Littlejohn would manage a reasonable assessment of the body’s original size and general appearance.
Since the facial damage was so severe that no next of kin would be viewing the body, Littlejohn had reached the clenched teeth by removing both jaws. This meant peeling back skin from the lower face to reach and detach the masseter and temporalis muscles at the mandible, then sawing through at nose base level towards the joint before the ear. This he had skillfully achieved once photography and radiography of the area was completed.
Yeadings was conscious of DI Salmon’s hard stare from across the room, but declined to make any excuse for his presence. Admittedly there was no need for him, since the DI was accompanied by the coroner’s officer and one of the team’s detective sergeants but, because he would ultimately carry the can for how the investigation progressed, Yeadings was taking no chances. Salmon had yet to prove himself adequate.
Z‘presence indicated that she was the one who’d covered yesterday’s excavations on the spot. Salmon might otherwise have consigned his female DS to less front-line business – not to spare her feelings, but from gender prejudice. The man had the sensitivity of a wild boar. And this morning, Yeadings considered, he looked not unlike one, add the odd whisker here and there.
Littlejohn had paused in his work to look up. ‘Good to see you, Mike,’ he growled expansively. ‘More the merrier. Must press on, though. Young Z’s been taking notes if you want to catch up. Take a look. You might be quite surprised.’
Yeadings walked across and took the notebook Z offered. He scanned the first shorthand page, made out the usual description of circumstances and site of the finding. The body’s external measurements noted must be of purely academic interest owing to the exceptional heat distortion, and pretty useless in this case. Nevertheless they had been scrupulously noted because minor changes would certainly occur later during protracted refrigeration.
Littlejohn was now examining the state of the teeth. To Yeadings’ lay mind they sounded nothing out of the ordinary: a few small fillings, a single eyetooth capped; no denture. Salmon shouldn’t need reminding that a match with the missing girl’s dental record would be necessary to ensure identification. Requiring the mother to view the body was quite out of the question.
‘We’ll be going for DNA,’ the pathologist murmured.
That did startle the superintendent. Surely no need for that added expense if the teeth had sufficient work done for her dentist to recognize them. So maybe they hadn’t.
‘Well, it’d be nice to find out who it is we’ve got here, eh?’ Littlejohn remarked with a fierce grin. ‘And why the funeral pyre.’
Yeadings assumed that the pathologist had so recently arrived back that he hadn’t caught up with all the information available on the Larchmoor Place survivors. But ‘pyre?’ he questioned. Wasn’t that an unnecessary touch of macabre imagination?
‘Pyre,’ Littlejohn repeated. ‘Oh, very much so. Our deceased friend here got the full Maid of Orleans treatment. I’m sending off parts of the underside to the chemi lab for analysis together with samples of the vinyl kitchen floor. They appear to have – er, much in common. Melded, in fact.’
It was unusual for him to be so mealy-mouthed. Yeadings saw clearly enough what the man meant. ‘So it’s definitely not a natural or accidental death?’
The pathologist straightened stiffly, rubbing at his lower back. ‘Nothing natural or accidental about the cremation of a human body. But we’ll need a great deal more time and exploration to determine whether the victim was alive when the fire began. Or, if dead, from what cause. You haven’t brought me an easy one this time, Mike. In fact it’s quite a teaser.’ He sounded delighted.
Yeadings didn’t want half the team hanging about for hours. Zyczynski had done her bit yesterday, witnessed the body’s retrieval, ensured continuity. DI Salmon could manage from this point on his own.
‘Right, Z, you can knock off here. I’ll see you back at the incident room. Bring your notes. We can leave this with the DI now he’s back.’
‘Sir.’
He observed Salmon’s slack mouth tighten to match a black stare. ‘Let me know when you’ve finished here,’ Yeadings added mildly.
‘Going, Mike?’ Littlejohn paused, scalpel raised. ‘You’re going to miss all the fun bits.’ He grinned fiendishly. ‘My best regards to Nan and the kiddos.’ Then he plunged back into the charred flesh. Yeadings and Z withdrew. Salmon turned sourly away from the exploration.
At a few minutes before eleven Kate Dellar heard a car draw up outside the house and waited in trepidation for the doorbell to ring. She lived in a quiet road. By 9am most mornings the traffic flow outside had stopped. It wasn’t a kerbside people chose to park by. Few tradesmen called because most of the neighbours commuted daily to London.
Even expecting the bell, she started as it shrilled. No, she told herself. Nothing more. I can’t take it.
But she moved into the hall and tried to make out who stood beyond the glass panel of the front door. The head’s outline was irregular. It looked like a woman’s. Then it turned in profile and Kate recognized the knob of dark hair low on the neck. Marion Paige. An envoy from the family?
The letterbox flapped and the visitor peered through. ‘Kate? I know you’re there. It’s Marion. Please let me in.’
Back in the shadows Kate stayed still, uncertain. Of them all this woman had been the only one to offer help. She could hardly turn her away. She moved forward into the light, let herself be seen as she opened up. But still she couldn’t speak.
‘Kate,’ the other one repeated. ‘You look like a ghost. Have you eaten?’
‘I – I …’
‘Come on. I’ll make you something. You shouldn�
�t be here alone. I hoped you’d ring or send for one of us. Haven’t you any neighbours who could come in?’
She bustled past, slid off her jacket and hung it on the newel post, then almost pushed Kate towards the kitchen with scooping motions of her hands. ‘You’ll feel better once you’ve got something inside you.’
Just like I used to do with the children, Kate thought; when they couldn’t face school. She let herself be propelled towards the breakfast bar. A stool was pulled out and her elbow held firmly while she allowed herself to be seated. I shall be sick, she warned herself, at just the smell of food.
But Marion had the sense not to attempt anything greasy. She found wholemeal bread in the crock, sawed off two slices and dropped them in the toaster.
The warm, yeasty smell that arose reminded Kate she hadn’t eaten since toying with the hotel food the previous evening. ‘No butter or spread,’ she warned the woman scrabbling in the fridge.
‘Marmalade, then. You can’t eat it dry.’
Kate supposed she was right. Dry, the toast would lodge in her throat. There seemed to be a lump there already. ‘Just a smear,’ she allowed.
She stirred herself to fill and switch on the kettle, aware of Marion watching under lowered lids. The effort of moving made her feel less light-headed. Something like anger pulsed inside her. She resented the woman regarding her as spineless. ‘I am not a victim,’ she said shortly. ‘There’s just so much that anyone can take at once.’
‘It’s the uncertainty,’ Marion suggested. But that was just parroting. Everyone knew that was what parents said when their children went missing.
Well, Kate’s children had gone missing. Hadn’t they? Not in the same way, though. The thing she confronted was death, still in the balance in one case. In the other …no hope now.
‘Have the police been back?’ Marion asked.
Kate shuddered, remembering the detective inspector’s face; the crude message delivered on her doorstep.
‘Not since last night,’ she admitted once she could find words. Grim-faced she fetched two mugs, the cafetière, milk and sugar bowl, lined them up on a tray, then forgot what next.
‘Ground coffee?’
‘Packet’s in the fridge door. It keeps fresher that way.’
Her words were cut across by the phone ringing. As with the doorbell earlier, she started, felt her body thudding with shock, and all energy instantly drain.
Marion Paige held out one hand towards her, but was moving in the opposite direction.
‘No!’ Kate shouted. ‘Don’t answer it. I’ll go.’
The phone was in the hall. In the seconds it took her to get there she forced herself to take control. ‘Hello,’ she whispered; lifted the receiver and repeated it aloud.
‘Mrs Dellar?’ It was a woman’s voice, not Sister’s, so nothing important after all.
‘This is Sergeant Zyczynski again, Mrs Dellar. From Thames Valley CID. I heard you were at home and wondered if there’s anything I could do. Is there someone with you?’
Not a friend exactly, but the young woman detective who’d come out to Jess’s boat. ‘I’m all right. There is somebody here,’ Kate admitted.
There was a short pause, then, ‘I don’t want to bother you, but there are one or two things we need to know, Mrs Dellar.’
Kate wished she wouldn’t keep repeating the surname. It made her sound like one of them, in parallel with Claudia. ‘Is it something I can answer now, without you coming round?’
‘If you prefer. It’s just that we’d like to know the name of your family doctor.’
‘I told them at the hospital. My GP’s Dr Finnegan at the Medical Centre. But my son has someone else in London now. A Dr Santer, but I don’t know his address.’
‘Yes?’ The policewoman appeared to be waiting for more.
‘Is that all?’
‘Perhaps I’d better have your dentist’s name too.’
‘We use the Park Clinic, but …’ She was going to say that maybe she was the only one registered there now. The children would have joined another list when they moved away. Then the reason for the request struck her. Neither of the twins, nor she herself, had any need for dentistry at present.
They needed to know, for an odontologist to identify the body. They would check with Jess’s records and there would be no escaping. It would be certain then. No way of going back, of keeping the frailest hope alive.
But she’d known since last night, hadn’t she? A body found in the ruins. Only one member of the family missing. There was no one else it could be.
Blindly she reached out the receiver. It clattered down in place. ‘They’re identifying the body,’ she told the woman hesitating in the kitchen doorway.
‘At least you will know then for sure.’
‘I don’t want to know,’ she wailed. This was Jess they were talking about: Jess, once her darling baby.
Back at Carlton’s, when they’d been first introduced, this woman had made an odd remark about Jess. After Marion had said how alike mother and daughter were, Kate had had the momentary suspicion that there had been a tinge of malice in her voice. And later when Kate had rashly demanded what the woman had against Jess, she’d brushed the question aside, saying enigmatically, ‘Ah, that’s another story entirely.’
An interruption had occurred at that point, so she had never explained herself.
But she could now.
‘You’d met Jess before seeing her at Carlton’s, hadn’t you?’ Kate accused her now.
‘Yes.’ Marion sounded casual. ‘Michael introduced us. I’d called in at King’s College and she was in his Faculty office.’
So she had known Michael too. The academic world was a small one, but if Marion’s department at UCL was Geophysics, why would she need to consult a historian?
This must have happened almost a year ago, maybe more. Michael’s fatal mugging down by Temple Underground station had been in October. At that time Jess hadn’t yet dropped out of Engineering, hadn’t become infatuated with Charles Stone.
‘I see,’ Kate said; but she didn’t. Any idea of this woman offering comfort was shaken now. She’d been an acquaintance whom Michael had never troubled to mention: someone on first-name terms with him. And any animosity between her and Jess could have started from that moment of first meeting in his office at King’s.
So what were the circumstances of it? Kate looked away from her, wishing she would go now and leave her to grieve alone.
Zyczynski had returned to the Area CID office and was re-reading her shorthand notes on Kate Dellar. ‘I should have gone to see her,’ she regretted, almost under her breath.
Beaumont was perched on a corner of her desk, working his way through an apricot Danish. ‘It’s done now. At least you say she’s not on her own. Do you want me to go and pick up the dental records?’
‘If you’ve nothing more pressing. Better telephone first or they’ll leave you hanging around.’
‘Right, then. Tell the Boss where I am if he asks for me.’
‘Will do.’ She watched him stand, brush the fallen flakes of pastry off his shirt-front, wipe his fingers on a scrap of printer paper and make for the door, conscious that this left him one up.
Zyczynski gave a wry smile. When Littlejohn’s notes on the body’s teeth arrived Beaumont would be there, star pupil, to produce the matching chart from Jessica Dellar’s dentist and win any acclaim.
She shrugged. Scoring points should take second place in a case like this. And it didn’t matter that she’d handed him that one on a plate. Their detailed track records weren’t so important at the moment in the race for promotion. Walter Salmon was installed again as their DI and looked likely to remain until such time as Angus was permanently back: which she was sure he would be eventually, now that the wedding was definitely on.
She’d bet almost anything that Paula had finally surrendered, agreeing to quit her Law practice in London and seek a place in local chambers; even switch from legal defence to
join Crown Prosecution. Which surely meant the pair of them would be setting up home here in Thames Valley.
She settled to transcribing her notes on the computer, reflecting it might now be a good thing that Max was taking the apartment next to her own. Good flats were hard to find at a reasonable price, and much as she valued Angus as her immediate guv, she didn’t need him on her doorstep after the day’s work was done.
She printed out her report, dropped a copy off at the incident room and took another to leave on Yeadings’ desk. She found he had just returned and was on the phone. He waved her to a seat.
‘DI Salmon’s still at the PM,’ he said when the call was through. ‘I want you to follow up some of Sir Matthew Dellar’s judgments. He’s been retired from Queen’s Bench for over four years, so you’ll need to dig way back. Make a list of any disgruntled old lags released in the last three months. Special attention to anyone with a taste for arson who made a death threat against him. It’s often no more than hot air, but just once in a blue moon some obsessive will make an attempt on the judiciary.
‘That’ll do for the present. If nothing of significance shows up we may need to go even further back, to when he was a QC. No, on second thoughts I’ll put a DC on checking among long sentences from that period.’ He entered a note to this effect in his log.
‘Yessir.’
‘That’s to say, after we’ve tried this new Italian coffee you brought in. Where’s Beaumont?’
‘Chasing up Jessica Dellar’s dental records.’
Yeadings looked up from his pouring. He looked thoughtful. ‘Ah, yes. Littlejohn thought we might have to go for DNA. There hadn’t been much work done on the body’s mouth.’
‘Well, she was young. Probably took good care of herself.’
‘Until the early hours of Saturday morning,’ he said dryly. He paused. ‘I’d very much like to know what she was doing downstairs before the fire had gone out of control.’