by Ed O'Connor
‘You said yesterday that you don’t believe in coincidence.’
Dexter sighed. Underwood’s memory was full of trivial detail and irrelevancies in the places where police procedure and details of the criminal law should have been. ‘Go on then,’ she said, ‘let’s have it.’
‘It’s not coincidence. Jack is murdered and decapitated. We find three ten-pence pieces next to his body.’
‘Why is that so significant?’
‘Look at a ten-pence coin,’ Underwood gestured at the pile of change Dexter had place on her desk. ‘What do you see?’
Dexter saw what he was driving at. ‘The queen’s head. Isn’t that a bit bleeding obvious, though?’
Underwood crossed round to Dexter’s side of the table. ‘Let’s say you were a murderer with a real hard-on for chopping people’s heads off.’
‘Hard to imagine that, but I’ll try.’
‘Let’s also say that you were collecting a specific number of heads for some fucked-up reason.’
Dexter smiled thinly. Underwood had a peculiar way of expressing himself.
‘Hypothetically, three heads,’ he continued.
‘Go on.’
Underwood arranged three of Dexter’s coins in a straight line on the table. ‘So you need three heads. Three heads equals three coins. We found three coins by Jack Harvey. Next, you need two heads.’ He removed one of the coins. ‘Two heads equals two coins. We find two coins on the driver’s seat of Jensen’s car. On the next victim, we’ll find a single coin. I guarantee it. It’s a countdown.’
Dexter pulled at her short black hair, as if trying to straighten out the kinks in Underwood’s logic. ‘What about Ian Stark? We found three coins on him. He still had his head.’
‘True but there were severe injuries to his neck. Maybe the killer tried to decapitate him but was interrupted or bottled it and forgot about the coins.’
Dexter’s eyes never left the coins in front of her. ‘Then there’s Rowena Harvey. Why not leave a coin for her?’
Underwood frowned. ‘The killer took a photograph of Rowena Harvey from Jack’s office. I don’t think he plans to kill her. Not yet anyway.’
‘Why does he want her, then?’
Underwood didn’t want to think about that.
Dexter didn’t seem convinced. ‘I’ll get my jacket. Let’s go meet the mushroom man.’
Underwood nodded his acknowledgement as Dexter left the room. He stared at the coins intently. He replaced the third ten-pence piece and arranged the coins in a row, aligned left to right across the desk.
The heads were all pointing the same way.
34
Two miles away DS Harrison stood contemplating the derelict buildings that surrounded the Car Wash. A forensic team had identified traces of Ian Stark’s blood at the scene the previous evening. The area had been cordoned off and the entrance to the enclosed square of tarmac had been blocked with a squad car. Harrison watched as the SOCOs clad in their strange white protective suits investigated every inch of the Car Wash and the smashed up surrounding buildings.
Harrison wondered if Sarah Jensen was tied up or lying dead in a similar building nearby. He racked his brains for an angle, a way of finding her. He had seen the looks on the faces of his colleagues in the Incident Room. They all thought she was dead. In his darkest moment, when he had awoken the previous night and reached out for her in the empty bed, so had he.
‘There’s not much here, mate.’ Marty Farrell, the senior SOCO had joined him.
‘It’s been raining for two nights,’ Harrison observed angrily. ‘What did you expect?’
Farrell decided to concentrate on the basics. ‘We found the blood traces in the centre of the tarmac. No evidence that the body was dragged anywhere. All blood patterns are concentrated in that area.’
‘So what does that tell us?’
Farrell thought for a second. ‘If you’d just cut someone’s throat you’d have blood all over your hands and your clothes most likely. You’d probably want to drive home, right?’
‘Agreed.’
‘I reckon the killer drove in from Station Road. I reckon he drove right in here. Did the job on Stark and drove away.’
‘You’re speculating.’
‘Maybe. But if he’d walked away from here we’d expect to find traces of Stark’s blood near the exit or on the pavement out front. There’s nothing.’
‘So he drove off? So what? How does that help?’ Harrison was frustrated. They seemed to be making no forward progress.
‘Easy, mate,’ said Farrell. ‘I’m just thinking out loud. Now our friend Stark was no mug, right? He was an experienced pusher.’
‘Yep.’
‘If the killer drove in, then it’s unlikely he caught Stark off guard. You know, crept up on him in the dark.’
‘Go on.’ Harrison felt a flicker of interest.
‘I don’t know, mate. It just feels odd. There are police patrols up here regularly at night. Why would Stark not do a runner when the headlights shone through the entrance?’
‘Maybe he knew it wasn’t a police car. Maybe a squad car had just gone through. I can check the uniform patrol schedule for that night. See which cars were in this area.’
‘A car comes in that for some reason he knows can’t be a police car. Why would he risk it, though? Why expose yourself if you’re as canny as Stark?’
‘Money, I suppose,’ Harrison mused. ‘If he thought he was going to make a killing. No pun intended.’
‘Right. Put all that together and what have you got? A car pulls up that can’t be a police car. Stark thinks he going to make a pile of cash so he comes out of the dark.’
Harrison felt a tingle of excitement. ‘Marty, you are a genius. He drives a flashy car. A sports car or a Roller or something big that stinks of money.’
‘It’s just speculation, mate. He might have pedalled up on a frigging unicycle.’
It was something. Harrison needed a break. It wasn’t much but it was a start. He would check the patrol schedules and see if any of the squad car drivers had seen any incongruously expensive cars around the station the night Stark was killed. If that turned up nothing, he would get some plods to start questioning late night commuters at the station. For the first time since Jensen’s disappearance, Harrison felt a flash of positivism.
35
Dexter parked on Trumpington Road, stunned that she had actually managed to find a convenient parking space in Cambridge on a weekday. The University Botanical Gardens are situated just to the south of Cambridge, away from the overcrowded little streets, the hubbub of tourists and shoppers. In the summer, the gardens became cluttered with students and picnickers stretching out across its lawns and surrounded by wine bottles and unread books. At nine in the morning, it is usually deserted and Underwood found the Gardens’ quiet beauty particularly therapeutic.
‘Where are we meeting this character?’ Underwood asked, inhaling a deep breath of pine-scented air.
Dexter consulted the map she had downloaded from the internet. ‘By the rock garden, in front of the greenhouses. Leach arranged it all. We need to take a left here.’
They turned off the main walkway. There was a small lake to their left. Ahead, through the trees Underwood could see a sculpted outcrop of grey rocks. Sitting on a wooden bench about twenty yards ahead of them was Dr Adam Miller. Underwood judged Miller was in his mid-thirties. He had long chestnut coloured hair tied back in a pony tail and was eating an enormous roll, the contents of which were gradually spilling out on to his lap. Miller threw occasional lumps of bread to the increasingly agitated ducks that had gathered by the edge of the lake.
‘Dr Miller?’ Dexter asked.
Miller looked up and hurriedly placed his roll on the bench, dusting himself down.
‘Shit! You’re early!’
‘I’m DI Dexter, this is DI John Underwood.’
‘Sorry to disturb your breakfast,’ Underwood added.
‘No worries,’ M
iller grinned.
‘What part of Australia are you from?’ asked Dexter appraising Miller’s accent.
‘New Zealand.’ He noticed Dexter’s embarrassment. ‘Don’t worry. Everyone thinks I’m an Aussie. You want to talk mushrooms, right?’
‘Poisonous mushrooms,’ Dexter clarified.
Miller gestured to the row of white-framed glasshouses behind him. ‘Let’s go over to the oven. I’ve got some stuff set up for you.’
‘The oven?’ asked Underwood.
‘That’s what we call the glasshouses. You’ll figure out why when we get inside. Shall we go?’
They walked along the gravel pathway. Miller had a breezy charm that Underwood liked. ‘Nice place to work,’ he observed.
Miller nodded. ‘Can’t beat it. The Gardens have been part of the University since eighteen thirty-one. I guess even you Brits can figure out how to do something right given a hundred and seventy years!’
‘You obviously haven’t been on one of our trains,’ Underwood replied.
Miller opened the door to the glasshouses and the three of them were instantly engulfed by heat. ‘Welcome to the oven, guys!’ Noting their uncomfortable expressions Miller added, ‘Don’t worry. This is the tropical house. I’ve reserved us a little experimentation lab. It’s air conditioned.’
They walked down the central aisle and Miller gave them a brief guided tour. ‘Like I said, the Gardens were set up in eighteen thirty-one by a guy called Professor Henslow. He taught Charles Darwin. We’re in the tropical house now. Beyond the central atrium are the succulents and carnivorous plants with the cacti down the end. However, we are booked into Lab Three which is down here on the left.’ They crossed the high vaulted courtyard area and turned right into a shaded corridor. The temperature dropped suddenly and Dexter shivered as the film of sweat on her back began to chill her skin.
‘Here we go.’ Miller unlocked a grey door and they were inside Lab Three. There were colourful printed diagrams of plants pinned up on two walls. Miller placed his keys on a desk in front of a blank white board and gestured them over to the central work area. There were two metal trays filled with earth containing planted mushrooms.
‘A word of warning before we start,’ Miller said. ‘Don’t touch any of these. Bad idea. So, what do you need to know?’
Dexter looked at the fungi. There was something vile about them that made her uncomfortable. ‘Dr Miller, what we discuss today is confidential. We need your expertise. However, you cannot repeat what we discuss today to anybody. Do you have a problem with that?’
‘None whatsoever,’ Miller smiled. ‘To be honest after the telephone conversation I had with your colleague Dr Leach I was fascinated. Glad to be of assistance.’
‘Leach faxed you the toxicology reports he produced on the two victims?’ Underwood asked.
‘He did. Both victims had lethal levels of amatoxins and phallotoxins in their systems. I guess he explained to you how that can be fatal.’
Dexter consulted her notes. ‘He said that the poisons attack the liver and kidneys. That they induce liver failure.’
‘Right. Amatoxins are cyclic octapeptides. Nasty little poisons. Ingestion of even a small amount can be deadly. Zero point one milligrams of poison per kilo of body weight can be fatal, particularly if the victim is very old or very young. Basically, you ingest five to seven milligrams of amatoxins and you are in for a very bad couple of days. That amount can be present in a single mushroom of about fifty grams.’
Dexter was making notes. ‘The first victim, Ian Stark died of liver failure six hours after he was admitted to hospital. Assuming he ingested the poisons on the same day that’s rather an accelerated timetable.’
Miller nodded. ‘It is. If he had eaten a single mushroom containing amatoxins, his deterioration would have taken place over three or four days. There are some treatments that can inhibit the poison’s attack on the liver cells: the hospital gave him Penicillin G and Silibilin, right?’
‘Eventually.’ Dexter tried to recall the details. ‘They gave him Naxolone to start with. They assumed it was a heroin overdose. Stark wasn’t given Penicillin and Silibilin until about four hours after he was admitted.’
‘If he’d eaten a single mushroom, that should still have given him a reasonable chance,’ Miller explained. ‘The issues as I understand them are that the levels in his system were extremely high. Something like zero point five milligrams per kilo of body weight. That’s a fatal dose. And that there were no traces of fungi in his digestive tract implying the toxins were introduced directly into the blood stream.’
‘Direct injection speeds up the process?’ Underwood asked.
‘No question. There have been experiments performed on lab animals that show amatoxins introduced intravenously can cause death within two to five hours.’ Miller pulled on a pair of latex gloves. ‘You wanna see some black magic?’
‘Go ahead,’ Dexter replied.
Miller picked up a scalpel from the work surface next to one of the trays of fungi. He selected a large yellow-capped mushroom and sliced off a small section from its cap. Then he placed the section on a square piece of newspaper and pressed down on it firmly. Having done so, he placed the mushroom section in a clear plastic bag and dropped it into a bin. ‘This is called the Maixner Test,’ he said as he retrieved a small bottle containing a clear fluid from a shelf behind his desk. ‘It’s the standard test for the presence of amatoxin.’
He unscrewed the lid of the bottle and, using a glass pipette, dropped a tiny amount of the fluid onto the stained newspaper. He then placed the paper in the sunlight to dry. ‘This liquid is hydrochloric acid,’ he said as he replaced the bottle. ‘It reacts with the amatoxin residue left by the mushroom and … well, you can see already.’ He pointed at the newspaper. The stain was already turning light blue. Over the next two minutes the blue became more vivid and obvious. ‘Cool, isn’t it? That means “don’t eat me”.’
Dexter was intrigued. ‘Based on the toxicology reports can you suggest why the levels of toxin were so high in the victims?’
‘My guess would be that whoever injected the victims with this stuff has managed to create a concentrated dose of fluid derived from several mushrooms,’ Miller replied.
‘Can you identify the types of fungi based on the toxicology profile?’ Underwood asked; he was beginning to sense an angle that they could exploit.
‘I’m way ahead of you guys!’ Miller grinned. ‘I can’t be one hundred per cent accurate given the likelihood that the killer has mixed and concentrated residues obtained from several fungi. However, my best guess is that he has used combinations of these two babies.’ He pointed down at the two trays on the work surface in front of him.
‘This brute is called the Amanita Phalloides or European Death Cap.’ He looked at the tray of mushrooms with a mixture of awe and respect. ‘Looks inoffensive enough, right?’
Dexter nodded. The mushrooms were about ten centimetres high with a wide smooth cap that was a strange kind of yellowish-green colour. The section Miller had cut for the Maixner Test had been from one of these mushrooms.
‘And that’s part of the problem,’ Miller continued. ‘These are often mistaken for edible mushrooms. Trouble is they contain very high levels of amatoxins. Ingest enough and you are dead meat. There’s no effective antidote as yet.’
Miller pulled the other tray closer to them as Underwood and Dexter bent over to investigate. ‘You recognize these?’
The tray contained six mushrooms of the same genus. The caps were blood red but covered with crusty white scales. The stalk was white with a small veil just below the cap.
‘They look like the mushrooms that grow in woods in fairy stories,’ Dexter observed, pleased with herself.
‘That’s right. These are called the Amanita Muscaria or Fly Agaric. The white flecks on the cap are the remains of a membrane that once covered the entire cap and stalk. Powerful hallucinogenic fungus, this one. It contains a poisonous alkaloi
d called muscimol. The Fly Agaric has had a long association with mankind. People were tripping out on this baby long before the sixties.’
‘You are saying that poisons from both these mushrooms were present in the bodies of Stark and Harvey?’ Underwood asked.
Miller nodded. ‘That’s my estimation based on the toxicology profiles.’
‘Do these things grow in the UK? Or has this guy imported them from overseas?’ Underwood was working the angle now, it was becoming clearer to him.
‘They aren’t common in the UK but they do grow indigenously in certain areas,’ Miller thought for a second. ‘As a basic rule the European Death Cap tends to grow in mixed forests – you know, deciduous and coniferous. The Fly Agaric prefers birch forests or clumps of birch trees in mixed forests. You know, I could probably find a list of likely sites. I’m sure the University must keep records of that kind of thing.’
Underwood was impressed that Miller had seen the angle too. ‘That would be enormously helpful.’
Dexter’s mind was working through other possibilities. ‘Do these toxins degrade over time? I mean is the killer digging up these mushrooms immediately before he uses them or is he using stuff he’s stored up for a while?’
Miller whistled softly. ‘That’s a smart question. You should be a mycologist. There’s not a huge amount of research literature on that subject. However, I have read some case studies. There are cases of people who have had amatoxin poisoning after eating fungi they have frozen. There was a case of an old guy – in France I think – who defrosted a European Death Cap eight months after picking it. He died. Should have been more careful. My view is that amatoxins degrade slowly. It’s possible that your killer could have harvested these things months ago, extracted what he wanted from them and then frozen it. That’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?’
Dexter shook her head.
Underwood’s mind was racing. He remembered the notion that had occurred to him the previous evening. The idea that the fatal effects of the fungi were not the killer’s only motive for using them. ‘Why do people eat these things then?’ he asked Miller. ‘What do they get out of having these hallucinations?’