Evil Impulse

by Leigh Russell

  ‘You know how people gossip,’ she had said. ‘We have to remain strictly professional in our relations at work. Once we get back home, it’s different, but at work, we need to continue as before.’

  ‘You know we ought to tell the DCI,’ Ian had replied.

  ‘What we do outside of work is no one else’s business.’

  Ian had not been as concerned as she was to keep their relationship quiet, but he had accepted Geraldine’s conditions cheerfully enough, and they settled easily into their new way of life. Still, Geraldine knew that they would not be able to keep their affair to themselves for long, and Ariadne’s curiosity made it clear that their colleagues were already growing curious.

  3

  Ariadne gave Geraldine a sympathetic smile when she announced that she was going to the mortuary to view the body that had been retrieved from the river that morning.

  ‘Have fun,’ Ariadne called out to her as she stood up.

  Grabbing her bag, Geraldine hurried away, relieved that her friend was no longer upset with her. She wondered if she was unnatural in caring more about her friend’s opinion of her than the prospect of viewing a dead body but, unlike some of her colleagues, Geraldine had never been disturbed by the sight of cadavers. On the contrary, she found them fascinating, not out of some existential curiosity about death itself, although that was a question that troubled her when she had nothing else to occupy her thoughts. What she appreciated about attending a post mortem was the evidence a murder victim unwittingly revealed about how he or she had died.

  The blonde anatomical technology assistant, Avril, greeted Geraldine with a weary smile.

  ‘Looks like another one for you,’ she said, handing Geraldine a mask. ‘This one doesn’t smell too fresh, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Do they ever?’ Geraldine replied.

  Avril wrinkled her nose. ‘She’d been in the water for a while when they found her.’

  Geraldine nodded. The victim could have been in the water far longer if she hadn’t chanced to be spotted by a passerby taking a walk along the towpath by the river. Still, it made no difference to the dead woman now. With a nod to Avril, she went in to see the pathologist. In her early forties, Geraldine was only a few years younger than Jonah Hetherington, yet she found him reassuringly avuncular. It could have had something to do with his being married, and the father of a teenage son, while she was single. He brushed a curl of ginger hair from his face with the back of a glove, leaving a faint red smear of a stranger’s blood across his forehead. Had he been tall and blond, like Ian, the marking on his face might have given him the appearance of a warrior from a previous age, perhaps a Viking preparing for battle. As it was, he more closely resembled a clown, with his plump face and wispy hair, below which his blue eyes twinkled in greeting.

  Geraldine waited good-naturedly for him to crack one of his usual jokes. ‘We must stop meeting like this,’ or ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’ or even, ‘Of all the bloody joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.’ But on this occasion, he merely nodded at her without speaking.

  ‘Was this an accidental drowning, or do you think we need to investigate?’ Geraldine asked.

  Jonah raised his eyebrows, oddly orange against his pale freckled face. ‘What would you say if I told you she didn’t drown?’

  ‘I’d ask you how she died,’ Geraldine replied, with exaggerated patience.

  The pathologist smiled before launching into his findings. ‘There’s no pulmonary oedema, and no sign of haemorrhaging in the sinuses or airways or lungs. If she had been conscious when she entered the water, she would have struggled to breathe, which would have caused pressure trauma in the sinuses, airways and lungs. There is no evidence of bleeding, and no debris from the water which would almost certainly have been sucked into her sinuses and lungs while she was attempting to breathe.’ He paused.

  ‘In other words, she was dead before she entered the water,’ Geraldine said.

  He nodded. ‘Possibly some time before, probably long enough for the body to lose rigidity so that it would have been easier to transport.’ He frowned. ‘I’d say she was dead for at least thirty hours before she was deposited in the river, maybe longer. That’s just an initial impression, but I’m confident further analysis will confirm my estimate.’

  ‘Can you be more specific?’

  ‘It’s impossible to be more precise than that.’ Jonah’s tense expression relaxed into a resigned smile. ‘Now if this was CSI or some such TV programme, I would pin the time of death down to the nearest hour for you. The nearest minute. And of course my own conclusion would be confirmed by her watch, smashed at the exact instant of her death. Unfortunately I’m not a glamorous star of fiction, but a tubby pug-faced pathologist working in the real world, and it’s all rather messy and unsatisfactory. Don’t blame me. I hate disappointing you like this, but I’m not responsible for reality.’

  ‘So someone deposited the body in the water after she died?’

  ‘Yes, and before you ask, cause of death was suffocation.’

  Geraldine’s eyebrows rose. ‘Perhaps she was dumped in the river in an attempt to conceal signs that she had been suffocated?’

  ‘I can only tell you what happened. Speculating about why it happened is your job, not mine.’

  ‘But you’re sure that was how she died?’

  Jonah nodded. ‘As sure as I can be.’

  ‘So were there signs of suffocation that the killer failed to conceal?’

  He nodded again, pointing to a small evidence bag. ‘We found microscopic fibres in her sinuses and airways that she had inhaled, suggesting something was held over her mouth and nose before she expired, and there were a few of the same fibres still lodged under her fingernails. It’s not absolutely conclusive but yes, that appears to be how she died.’

  ‘Appears to be?’

  ‘She might have covered her mouth and nose with a cloth of some sort herself, perhaps to protect herself from a noxious smell, or she could have been lying face down on something, and inhaled the fibres accidentally. But given that she was dead before she went in the water, and there is no other obvious cause of death, it seems fairly likely that she was suffocated by a killer who then disposed of the body. There is no conclusive physical evidence to confirm whether the killing was deliberate or accidental.’

  ‘But if it wasn’t murder, how did she end up in the river?’

  Jonah inclined his head.

  ‘So the killer thought that being immersed in water, the evidence of how she died would be washed away,’ Geraldine concluded her train of thought.

  ‘He might not have realised there was any evidence to destroy. Certainly nothing was visible. But it could be the killer dumped her in the river thinking she wouldn’t be discovered for a while, and eventually even the microscopic evidence we found on the cadaver would have been obliterated.’

  ‘He? You think the killer was a man?’

  ‘He or she. We could be looking for a female killer. But the killer would need to be strong enough to carry a body.’

  ‘How long was she in the water?’

  He shrugged. ‘A few days.’ He stared down at the bloated body and heaved a sigh. ‘She was quite young.’

  He turned the body over and Geraldine studied the mottled grey cadaver lying in front of them, resembling a snake in human shape. The dead woman’s fair hair was snarled and matted, making it look shorter than it actually was. When she had been alive, it must have reached down to her shoulders. Individual features were difficult to visualise. Somewhere in the greying green oozing mess that barely covered her skull lay clues to her appearance, but an untrained observer could only speculate about what she had looked like.

  ‘Her head was crawling,’ Jonah said. ‘She’s not a pretty sight even now, but –’ He grimaced. ‘We’ve cleaned her up as much
as we can for the time being, but we’ll have to work on her before we can ask anyone to identify her.’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t begin to imagine what she looked like.’

  ‘I’d rather not try,’ Geraldine replied.

  The dead woman must have looked disgusting if even the pathologist had been repulsed.

  ‘We haven’t found her bag yet,’ Geraldine went on more briskly. ‘We don’t know who she was. What about her clothes? Do they tell us anything?’

  Jonah shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. She entered the water fully dressed in a blue jumper, jeans and trainers, none of which are in any way unique.’

  Geraldine frowned. ‘Had she been sexually assaulted?’

  ‘Not as far as we can tell, although it’s difficult to be sure of anything just yet,’ Jonah replied solemnly, his customary good humour clearly shaken by the sight of the ravaged face lying on the table in front of them.

  4

  She was the one he had chosen and, like a fool, she had allowed herself to believe they were happy. When he had told her he loved her, she had believed him without question. Now, seeing his arm around another woman’s shoulders, a veil seemed to lift, as though it had been fluttering over her eyes ever since their wedding day. Remembering how happy she had been then, her eyes watered. She had convinced herself they had been married in the sight of God, even if her husband had refused to have the wedding ceremony in her church. Abandoning her faith like that, at least outwardly, was another change marriage had wrought in her life.

  Her feet carried her across the wet pavement, seeming to act independently of her frozen will. The weather had turned chilly although it was not yet winter, and trees lined the street with burnished yellow and gold, the kerb littered with an early fall of brown leaves. Reaching the shelter of a shop front, she stood perfectly still, scarcely breathing.

  Watching them.

  It had been bound to happen again, sooner or later. Looking at them together, Bella realised she had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Waiting and fearing. Her husband’s regular visits to the health club, and his occasional trips away from home staying out all night, had been obvious signs that she had refused to recognise.

  One glimpse of them together changed everything, her carefully constructed life swept away by a single gesture. As she waited to see what they were going do next, her thoughts spun wildly. The scene playing out across the street, and her response to it, wouldn’t only affect her own life. At thirteen, Zoe was going through what her teachers called ‘a phase’, whatever that meant. They assured Bella that her daughter was being a typical teenager and would ‘grow out of it when she was ready’, their comments so similar she suspected they had prepared in advance what they were going to say.

  ‘It’s all a natural part of growing up,’ one of them had added, with a tinge of impatience.

  Bella didn’t remember having been so aggressive and secretive with her own parents at that age, but now it wasn’t only her daughter’s attitude she had to worry about. She wondered if Zoe suspected there were problems in her parents’ marriage. Focused on what was happening just a few yards away, she barely noticed other people scurrying through the rain falling between her and the couple across the street. Holding his umbrella over her, he inclined his head to listen, and smiled at something she said. Anyone else watching them would probably admire his manners as the edge of the umbrella dripped on his shoulders, while she remained dry.

  And all the time, out of sight across the road, Bella stood, huddled in a doorway, shock holding her physically upright. She felt as if she was under water, struggling to fight her way up to the air so she could breathe again.

  There was nothing for it but to carry on as normal. Seething inwardly, she pulled herself together, finished her shopping and went home, bedraggled and stunned. As she was preparing the dinner that evening, she heard the front door slam. A few moments later John strolled into the kitchen, and dropped his sports bag on the floor.

  ‘It’s cold out there,’ he grumbled. ‘How long till dinner’s ready? I’m starving.’

  Her face felt like a mask, her smile was so rigid, but John grinned at her as though nothing had changed between them. In a way, it hadn’t. Certainly he had altered very little in the thirteen years they had been together. Nearing forty, he looked about ten years younger, the tinge of white on his temples barely noticeable against his fair hair. Other than that, the only changes in him were a barely perceptible thickening around his middle, and a few lines around his eyes that made him look as though he was permanently smiling.

  What with motherhood, and losing both her parents, Bella hadn’t aged so well. Her hair seemed to be thinner than when they had first met, so now she wore it short. Everyone said politely that it suited her. Only her mother had been honest, telling Bella that her new hairstyle made her look old. Her mother had been right. All the same, Bella kept her hair short because it was easier to look after. Gradually her mother had lost the power to speak. Probably she had continued to dislike her daughter’s hair, but now the one person who had cared enough to tell Bella the truth was forever silent.

  ‘What are you making for us tonight?’ John asked, as though he was genuinely interested.

  ‘Lamb hot pot.’

  He leaned down to kiss her cheek, and she wondered if he had always been so oblivious to her feelings.

  ‘It’ll be ready in half an hour,’ she said.

  A moment later she heard him going upstairs. With a sigh, she carried her husband’s sports bag to the washing machine and put his clothes and towel in to wash, before calling her husband and daughter down for supper. Zoe took her tray without a word and turned to leave. Bella had given up remonstrating with her for eating in her room.

  ‘I need to do my homework,’ was the only reason Zoe gave.

  Zoe’s figure told a different story. Beneath her baggy school uniform it was difficult to see quite how much weight she had lost, but any attempt to discuss it with her was met with a sullen glare. Every evening she would take her supper up to her room, and later she would bring her empty plate to the kitchen. Bella had checked her room furtively several times while she was out, but found no trace of the food Zoe had almost certainly not eaten. Bella suspected it had been flushed down the toilet.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ John asked with fake cheerfulness, as though he hadn’t noticed Zoe no longer ate with her parents.

  ‘As if you give a shit about what happens to her,’ Bella thought, but she said nothing.

  ‘I’m going upstairs. I’ve got homework.’

  ‘Don’t work too hard,’ he told her.

  John would have denied that was a deliberate dig at his wife but, at the very least, it was insensitive. For over six months Bella had done nothing, after spending four years visiting her mother every day in a care home and then the hospice where she had died a lingering death. In many ways the end had come as a relief, but it had left Bella’s weekdays empty, with John out at work. Eventually she planned to look for a job, but after such a long break it was going to be difficult to find anything, and she kept finding excuses to put off registering with an employment agency. Instead, she scoured the papers for posts she wasn’t eligible to apply for, and told herself it was impossible to find a suitable job. In the meantime, John insisted he was happy for her to stay at home.

  ‘You’re lucky your mother does such a good job of looking after you,’ he told Zoe.

  ‘I don’t need looking after,’ Zoe muttered. ‘I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, and I always have been.’

  ‘So we are a family of liars,’ Bella thought.

  After Zoe had disappeared upstairs, John and Bella ate in front of the television as they always did, the words of strangers shielding them from each other. It was easier that way. And all the while Bella was wondering how she was going to get through the night without betraying her
feelings. Neither original nor inventive, the sole excuse she could think of was to say that she had a headache. Armed with a lie of her own, she went upstairs. She needn’t have bothered to wrack her brains because as John climbed into bed beside her, he turned away.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he mumbled. ‘It’s just that I’m dog tired tonight.’

  Suspecting she knew the reason for his exhaustion, Bella welcomed the reprieve. Whatever happened, she could not bear him to make love to her when she knew what he had done to another woman only that day. Somehow she had to put an end to his life of sin and win back his affection, but she did not know how to go about it.

  ‘You look tired,’ John told her the following morning.

  ‘I didn’t sleep well last night,’ she admitted.

  That, at least, was true.

  Brushing her hair off her face, she remembered that she hadn’t cleaned her teeth that morning. Something else John hadn’t noticed. But it was a while since he had kissed her on the lips.

  ‘What are you up to today?’ he asked.

  Almost any answer would have served. He wasn’t interested in her plans. She could hardly blame him. Between shopping and housework and looking after the garden, not forgetting the laundry, her life didn’t exactly make for fascinating listening.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘You look – well, you don’t look like your normal self.’

  ‘It’s nothing really, but I think I might have a bladder infection,’ she said, preparing to fend off any attempt at intimacy.

  ‘You should get that checked.’