Death Bed

by Leigh Russell

  The meeting dragged on, seeming to focus more on concerns about public perception of the police than the case itself. Geraldine read out her report on the post-mortem findings, but that only led back to a discussion about the press release.

  ‘We’re still no closer to knowing who she is then?’ the Safer Neighbourhood Inspector asked. ‘You know what the media are going to make of that.’

  He nodded at the press officer, the woman the detective chief inspector had been talking to when Geraldine arrived.

  ‘Was there nothing on the body to give us any sort of clue as to her identity?’ she enquired.

  ‘Her prints and DNA have been sent off, but there was nothing else to tell us anything. She had nothing on her but her clothes – totally nondescript, jeans and a t-shirt, common cheap High Street brands. No shoes. No watch,’ Geraldine said. She refrained from adding, ‘No right index finger and no name.’

  As if on cue, a constable came in with a message for the detective chief inspector.

  ‘We had a call this morning, sir, from a woman who thinks she might know the identity of the Tufnell Park woman. Her flatmate’s gone missing and matches the description of the deceased. She’s about the same age, and - ’

  ‘How long has this woman been missing?’ the borough commander interrupted impatiently.

  ‘We’re not sure yet, sir. A constable’s gone round to question the woman who reported it.’

  ‘What’s the missing woman’s name?’ the borough commander demanded. ‘Has the body been positively identified yet?’

  ‘We’re following that up, sir. The call’s only just come through. The missing woman’s name is Donna Henry and we’re trying to contact her mother, who only lives at Baker Street so we’re hoping we’ll get her in soon to view the body.’

  The commander nodded and the constable withdrew. Geraldine thought it was going to be difficult for anyone to identify the dead woman, her face was so bruised and swollen, but she kept her concerns to herself.

  After the meeting she went straight to the morgue. Mrs Henry arrived soon after, expensively dressed in a clingy grey cashmere suit and real pearls. Well-spoken and surprisingly calm about the coming ordeal, she was convinced the dead girl couldn’t possibly be her daughter. Geraldine wondered if her own mother had felt the same confidence about her daughter when she had given Geraldine up for adoption at birth. She remembered every word of the short letter her mother had written to the adoption agency: ‘I know she’ll have a better life without me.’ But the young mother couldn’t have known.

  She led Mrs Henry into the viewing room. The body had been cleaned up, and there was no whiff of putrefaction in the room to taint Mrs Henry’s delicate perfume. The dead girl’s face had been smoothed down, her nose and cheek roughly reconstructed, her split lip covered so that it was clearly visible only if you looked closely, and with her eyes closed it wasn’t immediately noticeable that one eyelid was puffy. Despite her obvious injuries, it was now possible to see that the dead girl must have been quite beautiful when she was alive.

  Mrs Henry glanced down at the dead girl’s face, winced, and shook her head just once before stepping back.

  ‘That’s not Donna.’

  She turned away dismissively, seemingly unconcerned about her daughter’s disappearance.

  ‘No, that’s not my daughter. Donna will turn up. She always does. I never know where she is from one week to the next, but I’ve brought her up to make sure she has enough money on her to get a taxi if she’s out late, so she can always get home safely.’

  She spoke as though having money for a taxi was a cast iron guarantee against misfortune. Geraldine hoped for her sake she was right as she showed Mrs Henry out.

  Meanwhile they were back to square one with the investigation. If the anonymity of the victim was worrying for those concerned about the public image of the police force, it was also frustrating for the detectives working on the case. Twenty-four hours after the discovery of the body they should have been questioning the victim’s family, sifting through possessions, consulting known contacts, and putting together a timeline to plot her movements immediately before she died. They were all impatient to move the investigation forward, but time was passing and they were getting nowhere.

  PART 2

  16

  A LONG SHOT

  Geraldine was pleased to be away from her desk as she and Sam drove back to Tufnell Park. She wanted to keep busy. The alley was still being searched but they had no idea where the woman had been killed, and with every passing hour, the trail leading to her killer would be growing colder. If he hadn’t left the area already, he would be busy covering his tracks while they rushed around, clueless and increasingly uneasy.

  They had attempted to talk to the occupants of properties in Tufnell Park Road on either side of the alleyway that morning, but only one old woman had answered the door to the flat above Dave Crawley’s. Grey-haired and bowed, she didn’t speak much English.

  ‘Yes?’

  Geraldine had held out her warrant card and introduced herself.

  ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘Yes?’ the old woman had repeated.

  ‘We want to ask you a few questions.’

  The woman had shrugged.

  ‘He not here.’

  She had begun to close the door.

  Geraldine had waved her warrant card in front of the old woman again.

  ‘Police.’

  The old woman’s eyes had narrowed in understanding as she pulled back in alarm.

  ‘What you want, missus? He not here.’

  ‘Were you here last night?’

  ‘Night? Night?’

  ‘Here. Home.’

  Geraldine had pointed at the floor.

  ‘Were you here last night?’

  The woman had smiled suddenly, revealing strong yellow teeth.

  ‘Ah home. Yes.’

  She nodded, pleased to have understood.

  ‘Home. I live in house. Yes. And the man. Is my son.’

  ‘Did you - ’

  Geraldine sighed.

  ‘Last night. Did you hear anything unusual?’

  The old woman had shaken her head and made a tutting sound with her tongue, vexed at not being able to understand.

  ‘He not here. And I no speak good. He not here. He work.’

  ‘Thank you. We’ll come back later.’

  ‘Yes, missus. Thank you.’

  None of the other neighbours had been at home during the day. It was a different story when they returned in the evening. They started again with the flat above Dave Crawley and this time a young man came to the door.

  ‘You again? Ma said you’d be back.’

  He leaned against the door jamb staring at Geraldine through a greasy black fringe.

  ‘This is about the woman found in the alley, isn’t it? Have you got him yet?’

  He spoke fluently but with an obviously Eastern European accent.

  ‘Have we got him? Who do you mean?’

  ‘The killer. Has he been arrested yet? The man who killed that woman in the alley.’

  ‘What makes you think it was a man?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You just assume, don’t you? I mean, it’s always a man, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did you notice anything unusual last night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see any unfamiliar cars in the street?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you hear any cars stop outside some time after midnight?’

  ‘No.’

  They rang the bell of the ground floor flat beside the alley and a youth of about eighteen came to the door. He introduced himself as a student and after a fleeting hesitation invited them in.

  ‘It’s the police asking about that woman they found,’ he announced as he led them into a small living room.

  Two other young men looked up from a game of chess and Geraldine and Sam posed the same questions to all of them.
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  One of the lads thought he might have heard a car draw up outside during the night, but he couldn’t tell them what time he’d heard it or anything else about it.

  ‘Can you describe the sound of the engine?’

  He shook his head and his eyes flicked back to the chess board.

  ‘It was just a car.’

  ‘Could you tell which direction it approached from?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you remember if it came from Junction Road or the other direction?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What time did you hear it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was just a car, you know. I don’t even know if I heard it. I was asleep. I might just have imagined it.’

  Or made it up to try and sound helpful, Geraldine thought. Time waster. The chess players returned to their game.

  ‘Sorry we couldn’t be more help,’ their flatmate apologised as he showed them out.

  They questioned the neighbours who lived opposite, but no one had seen or heard anything.

  ‘Why is everyone so bloody unhelpful?’ Sam grumbled. ‘It’s like no one cares that someone’s been killed. No one saw or heard anything!’

  ‘To be fair, it’s unlikely anyone would notice a rubbish bag being dropped in an alley in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Well, it would make our job a whole lot easier if someone had seen, and made a note of the car number,’ Sam replied with a grin, her usual good temper restored.

  A team was examining CCTV film, listing registration numbers of vehicles that had driven off the main road along Tufnell Park Road and cross referencing them to see if anyone with a history of violent behaviour had been driving in the area on Saturday night, but it was a long shot. The killer probably hadn’t been driving a vehicle registered in his own name, and the number plates might not have been legitimate. The chances of identifying the killer that way were slim. And they still didn’t know the victim’s name.

  17

  THE AGONY OF MOVING

  Donna recollected climbing a lot of stairs and supposed she must be in an attic. The burning in her wrists and ankles had woken her from a dream of Lily’s cooking and she could almost taste the food in her mouth, as she lay there nauseous with hunger. No light penetrated the slits around the blind that covered the window so she assumed it must be night. She was dimly aware of a subtle change in the atmosphere. The room felt somehow emptier and the rank musty odour had gone. As if to compensate, the sickening smell of excrement and sweat seemed stronger. Lying in her own filth, she couldn’t believe she had ever been clean. Her past life was a dream. As she became fully awake, pain dominated her consciousness so that the foul smell, even her hunger and thirst, faded into insignificance beside it.

  A distant door slammed. She felt the vibration of footsteps before hearing them and then sudden light dazzled her. Squinting up at the man, she saw he was holding the chipped cup out towards her and endured the agony of moving her head to gulp at the water.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you,’ she mumbled.

  Her head began to clear slightly.

  ‘I’m so hungry.’

  For a second she thought he was angry again, so she added hurriedly, ‘thank you for the water. Thank you.’

  He raised his hand, not to strike her but to force food in her mouth. She swallowed and gagged, her tongue too sluggish to search for crumbs stuck to her lips, her eyes watering with disappointment.

  ‘Would you like some more?’

  ‘Yes please. I’m starving. Please.’

  A feeling close to joy seized her as he pushed another mouthful of bread between her lips. It slid awkwardly down her throat and this time she didn’t choke. She looked up at the man and he smiled at her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she repeated.

  He leaned forward and fiddled with something by her neck.

  ‘There.’

  He stepped back.

  ‘I’ve loosened the chains so you can sit up now if you want.’

  She wriggled her hands but her wrists were shackled as tightly as before, only the chains were longer so she could move her arms further from the bed. She raised one arm, the movement arrested by a terrible pain in her shoulder. Glancing down, she saw her wrist, raw and bloody from the chafing.

  ‘Sit up,’ he ordered. ‘That way you’ll be able to see better.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The collection of course.’

  He went over to the shelves and after some deliberation selected a small irregular bowl and held it up above his head.

  ‘This Tibetan drum was once a human skull. I don’t know exactly how old it is, but it could be several thousand years. The Buddhists used them in tantric rituals when they made sacrificial offerings to their protective gods.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Where does it come from?’

  ‘I just told you, it comes from Tibet.’

  ‘No, I mean, what’s it doing here?’

  ‘I bought it. They’re not hard to come by if you know where to look. In Tibet, and parts of Nepal and China, it was commonplace to use human skulls for drums and begging bowls.’

  He took another one from the shelf and held it in front of his face. She could see his eyes gleaming as he gazed at a small bowl decorated with delicate blue mosaic.

  ‘You’re looking at a fourteenth century Aztec human skull overlaid with turquoise.’

  He replaced it carefully on the shelf and picked up an undecorated upturned skull.

  ‘This one was found less than two hundred miles from here. It had been hidden underground since the last ice age, over ten thousand years ago.’

  He held out his hand.

  ‘Look, you can see scratches where the soft tissue was scraped away, and marks where someone banged the jagged rim with a stone to try and smooth it down so it could be used as a drinking cup.’

  He grinned suddenly.

  ‘They’ve got a replica of a skull cup like this on display in one of the London museums.’

  He returned the skull cup to its shelf and picked up a small comb.

  ‘It’s not just cups and bowls. The pre-Aztec civilisations took human bones from their dead relatives and used them to make combs like this one, and buttons. I’ve got one somewhere.’

  He felt on the shelf.

  ‘Here it is.’

  He held up a tiny object, too small for her to see clearly.

  ‘And this one’s a needle. They turned bones into household items after their relatives died.’

  ‘How did they – get them out?’

  She dropped back on the bed, exhausted from the effort of supporting her head.

  ‘They removed the flesh and muscle. None of that’s any use once a person’s dead, is it? Decay is inevitable. Only bones are permanent. Femurs, tibias, skulls, they used them all.’

  ‘Why?’

  He frowned at her.

  ‘What do you mean, why? Don’t you understand anything? People die and rot away, decompose to nothing, but bones remain. The Aztecs understood that. So a bone from a woman who was good at sewing would be made into a needle, to preserve the gift. Or they might make a button out of someone’s bone to keep their memory alive.’

  He ran his hand along the edge of the shelf and picked up a small bone which he held up to the light. Despite her lethargy she could tell it was precious to him, and curiosity overwhelmed her disgust.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This one is a phalanx,’ he explained as though he was a teacher.

  ‘A phalanx?’

  ‘A fingerbone.’

  He stroked the small bone and smiled.

  ‘Each bone is unique. Like you.’

  He turned to Donna.

  ‘You’re unique.’

  She stared up at him through her pain and exhaustion. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, aware that he had said something kind, and afraid of provoking his temper if she didn’t respond.

  Exhausted, she closed her eyes and succumbed to darkness.<
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  18

  TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

  ‘So Donna Henry’s gone missing, and we’ve got an unnamed body.’

  The detective chief inspector tapped a series of pictures showing Donna Henry’s smiling face and the corpse that had been discovered near Tufnell Park station.

  ‘They’re both attractive black women in their early twenties. Is there a connection here, or are we wasting resources following up Donna Henry’s disappearance, if she has disappeared?’

  He looked at Geraldine facing him across his desk.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘There’s no reason to assume anything’s happened to Donna Henry,’ she said slowly. ‘The chances are she’ll turn up.’

  ‘That’s what her mother said, isn’t it?’

  Geraldine flicked through her notebook and read aloud. ‘Donna will turn up. She always does. I never know where she is from one day to the next.’

  ‘Her mother should know, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He smiled, but his voice revealed his irritation.

  ‘Call me Reg. It bothers me, though,’ he went on, gazing down at the photos with a worried frown.

  He turned to his screen, clicked on a map and twisted his monitor around so Geraldine could study it with him.

  ‘We’ve got a triangle. Tufnell Park where the second victim was found is less than two miles from the pub in Camden where Donna Henry was last seen, and two miles from her flat in Highbury Fields which is three miles from Camden Town. It’s all a bit too close for comfort, isn’t it?’

  He looked up at Geraldine. It took her a few seconds to realise it wasn’t a rhetorical question. She liked Reg Milton’s seemingly consultative approach but she didn’t know anything about him or his reputation, so resolved to be cautious. The detective chief inspectors she’d worked with in Kent had been quite domineering and she wondered if Reg was equally controlling, just less forthright in his approach. At any rate, he seemed to think there was a connection between the two women and Geraldine agreed with him.