He had lost her completely. Helena had a quick temper and it was in good form then. “What the hell are you talking about?"
He didn't help the cause of his personal safety when he said only, “I'm not sure."
* * * *
Having sent the samples of carpet to be analyzed by a forensic laboratory, Eisenmenger turned to finding out a little more about the people who had had most contact with Daniel Hunt. He called at the offices of Welcare, which occupied the second floor of a small office block opposite a public swimming bath. It was a run-down and uncomfortable spot where there was fifty years’ worth of grime, where the shops were poorly stocked, and where dust and litter seemed to interbreed.
There was no lift, so Eisenmenger had the pleasure of trudging up the stairs past scuffs on the emulsion, flattened and hardened chewing gum patches on the steps, and a broken office chair on the first floor landing. Welcare shared the floor with a company that imported plastic cutlery from China and a firm of accountants. To judge from the real estate, no one seemed to be enjoying an economic boom.
The receptionist was short and might have been reported by an ungenerous correspondent as overweight. A more forthright witness might have used the term “fat.” She was perhaps sixty and hobbled badly when she returned to the desk as Eisenmenger entered the office and caught her in the act of filing something. She smiled sweetly and looked at him through glasses that were presumably functional but that failed to do anything for her aesthetic appeal.
Eisenmenger explained the reason for his presence.
"Oh yes. Poor Mr. Hunt!"
"Obviously, the people who had closest contact with him were his carers, your employees."
"I suppose so."
Emma Bell had been able to supply him with names but not where they lived. “I know who they are, but I was wondering if you could give me a list of their addresses."
Her face, previously full of expectancy, was suddenly a thing of uncertainty. “I don't know..."
"You see, I need to talk to them. I think it's important to know how he was in those last few days."
After some consideration she decided, “Yes, I can see that, but it's not up to me."
"No?"
"You'll have to speak to Mr. Menten."
Mr. Menten was tall and ponderous, dry and gray; he was also officious.
"I really don't see that I can help you."
"I appreciate that there are problems of confidentiality..."
"Very great problems, Mr. Eisenmenger."
Eisenmenger rode manfully over the mislabeling and, with what he hoped was a persuasive smile, said, “But I am looking into a suspicious death."
A frown; it was the kind of frown that signaled clearly that he was enjoying being obstructive. “Is it, though?"
Eisenmenger rode over this. “It's just that I have a problem with people bursting spontaneously into flames.” He smiled.
Mr. Menten didn't. “The police didn't think it was suspicious."
"No."
"The house was locked, I understand."
"Yes."
"Mrs. Bell tells me that he had been smoking."
"He had the occasional roll-up."
It was Mr. Menten's turn to smile. “There you are, then."
And that was, effectively, the end of the interview.
Eisenmenger sought solace with Mr. Menten's secretary. He thought it potentially worthwhile to dig up any gossip that he could on Daniel Hunt's carers. “Mr. Menten's a stickler for the rules.” He tried to sound not unadmiring.
"Oh yes. He's definitely that."
"Emma said that he's a very good boss."
"He's marvelous.” Having produced this unqualified praise, it seemed to him that she almost sighed. He sat firmly upon the incredulity that struggled energetically to make its way to his features.
"Emma was telling me that you've had problems recruiting recently."
This was a lie, but he operated using a relative morality system.
"We always have problems. It's the low pay, you see."
"You were lucky to get Mrs. Ramsay, then."
"That's what we rely on, people like her."
He frowned. “What do you mean?"
"The pay's so poor that the only people we attract are ladies like Audrey Ramsay who don't need the money, and young girls who...” She failed to come to the end of the sentence, and he was forced to offer a prompt.
"Who?"
She looked down as if embarrassed; he guessed that this was artifice. She said tentatively, “Well, you see, most of them aren't very good."
"Oh, I see."
"They're slapdash, and we've had a few who, we think, might have been dishonest."
She spoke as if she would really rather not have been put in this position, yet also he suspected that these failures of the younger generation had only confirmed what she already knew.
"But not Emma?"
"Oh no. Not Emma. She's very conscientious, kind ... the clients love her."
"And do they love Mrs. Ramsay?"
Caught by surprise by this inquiry, she replied after a brief pause, “Yes, I think they do."
"I know that Daniel Hunt certainly thought highly of her."
Another lie but, hey-ho.
"That's nice to know.” She smiled.
Which didn't help him, but he remained a thing of absolute patience and asked, “How long has she been working here?"
"About four months, I think."
"This is her first care job, is it?"
"That's right. She's retired, you see. Wanted to do something that would occupy her time and that would do some good. Her husband died quite recently and she's got no family, you see."
He nodded in understanding. “I suppose you get a lot of turnover of staff."
"A fair amount. Especially the younger ones."
"It must be quite upsetting for some of your clients if the faces change all the time. I know that Daniel said as much."
Her face formed a frown. “Did he? But he had had the same group of carers—except for Audrey Ramsay—for a long time now, I think. At least a year."
Eisenmenger rushed to smooth over this slight crack in the otherwise smooth-surfaced lie he had concocted. “Oh, I know ... he meant before this present group of people."
She understood. “Yes, we did go through a tricky patch a little while ago."
He was getting nowhere and was therefore forced to push his luck as far and as fast as he could. He leaned over the desk and in a confidential manner said, “I know that this is irregular, but Amanda Hunt, Daniel's sister, wanted to express her appreciation to Mrs. Ramsay. I don't suppose you could let me have her address, could you?"
"Well, I can't, you see. Mr. Menten wouldn't like it."
"He doesn't need to know."
She considered, then, “But if she wants to write a letter and leave it here, we can pass it on."
Eisenmenger felt the smile becoming fixed, the muscles around it cramped. “She was hoping to talk to her. I'm sure you'd agree it's far more personal that way."
Yet more consideration, but this time the outcome was better. “Yes, I can see that."
Eyes were cast toward the door of Mr. Menten's office. “Very well. Hold on."
She got up from her desk and hobbled to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room by the window that looked out onto the swimming bath. She returned with a sheet of paper that she showed to Eisenmenger. It was Audrey Ramsay's personnel file. He had just scribbled down the address and returned the sheet to the secretary when Mr. Menten chose to emerge from his office and was less than delighted to see Eisenmenger in conversation with his secretary. There entered into the room a distinctly refrigerated atmosphere as he asked, “Is there anything more we can do for you, Mr. Eisenmenger? We are very busy, you know."
The secretary, looking as she might if she had just been caught picking the Pope's pocket, hurriedly covered the sheet of paper with a box file as Eisenmenger was forced merel
y to smile and bow his head in apology.
"I was just making small talk with your delightful secretary."
Said secretary dropped her eyes, but not before a blush could be seen making its way onto her face.
Mr. Menten, less impressed, said, “I don't pay her to make small talk, Mr. Eisenmenger."
Eisenmenger weighed his options and saw the wisdom of leaving without a further word.
* * * *
Helena was waiting for him when he returned to their flat.
"I think we're onto something,” she said at once.
He flopped into a chair, thinking about the beer that was sitting there in the refrigerator not ten meters away. Could he hear it calling out to him, the voice faint but nevertheless almost beyond irresistibility? “You may be, but I can't say that I am."
Helena wasn't listening to what he was saying, nor did she care what he might or might not want from the refrigerator. “Kenneth Strauss was left without a family after the accident, but interestingly, he seems to have recovered fairly quickly. He remarried within the year. He now has two more children and seems to be happily settled in Aberdeen."
It was good to hear that somewhere in the world there was someone who cracked the Life Sucks problem, but Eisenmenger felt unable to raise much joy at this nugget of news. “I'm none the wiser."
"He wasn't the only one affected by the tragedy, though.” She left it there, tantalizing him.
He played his part. “Who else was there?"
"The parents of Jessica Strauss. She was an only daughter—"
The answer flashed through his head a fraction of a second before she told him.
"—and her maiden name was Ramsay."
He sat up, galvanized. “Bloody hell!"
Enjoying the reaction—her grin was face splitting—she nodded and went on. “Her parents were Audrey and William Ramsay."
He was staring at her, but she knew that his mind was a long way off, that it was sprinting through connections and possibilities and correlations and implications. She said, “I think we can guess what Daniel Hunt became disturbed about in the last few weeks of his life."
Eisenmenger didn't reply, didn't even hear.
Helena went on, “Interestingly, I've traced a newspaper interview with the Ramsays some days after the trial ended. The father, William, was especially angry and bitter about Daniel Hunt. Here."
She handed him a photocopy, which he took absently. His eyes found it only slowly. In it William Ramsay was vitriolic about Daniel Hunt, claiming that no punishment save the death penalty was good enough for him. Audrey Ramsay's voice was absent from the story, as if she fed through her husband.
Helena said, “William Ramsay would make a fairly strong suspect."
"He would..."
She caught the tone. “What is it?"
"William Ramsay died of a heart attack a year ago."
She sighed. “Oh great."
Almost without thinking, he rose and fetched that beer from the refrigerator, then sat back down. Helena said nothing as she fetched her own glass of wine. They sat in silence for a while until Eisenmenger asked, “What did William Ramsay do for a living?"
"He was a teacher. Both he and his wife taught at a boarding school until he died."
"Do we know what they taught?"
"Does it matter?"
A shrug. “I don't know."
She sipped her wine and with some resignation said, “I'll try to find out."
* * * *
The results from the forensics lab came in the post first thing the next day. As Eisenmenger read through them, he found them at first perplexing and apparently inexplicable. He reread the report, then put it down and stared at it.
Helena, noticing the expression on his face over the breakfast table, asked, “What's wrong?"
The answer she received was not entirely informative. “I don't know.” A pause, then, “But that's not the point."
"What is, then?"
He smiled. “I may not yet know what is wrong, but at least now I know for certain that something is wrong.” Before she could explore this Delphic utterance further, he asked abruptly, “Have you still got the key to Daniel Hunt's place?"
"It's at the office."
"Good. I need to take another look."
* * * *
"He was murdered."
Eisenmenger announced this without preamble, coming into Helena's office at the earliest opportunity that her client list would allow. Startled, she asked, “You're sure?"
"Here."
He held out the reports to her. She read through them then shook her head, sighed, and looked up at him. “You'll have to translate."
"The ash from the carpet samples contained high levels of potassium hydroxide. High levels."
"I can see that, but so what? Is it a poison?"
"Almost certainly it's poisonous, but that's not the significance. Daniel Hunt wasn't poisoned. Somebody found a way to get him to swallow an incendiary bomb."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
He was talking half to himself now, shaking his head at the possibilities he now saw. “My Lord, it's absolutely astounding. It shows a level of ingenious cruelty that is quite simply terrifying."
Helena had almost to shout. “What does?"
He stopped, surprised, came back to her. “How the death was achieved."
Patiently, Helena prompted, “Which was?"
But he was off again. “It was the painkillers. Entericoated capsules, designed to pass through the stomach and into the small intestine before they dissolve. Then once there, once inside the deepest part—"
"John, for God's sake, tell me what you know!"
Brought back to reality, with a brief apology he breathed deeply and produced from his pocket the bottle of painkillers she had found in Daniel Hunt's house. As he explained he took four out and put them in an empty wastepaper basket in the center of the room. Helena watched in bafflement. From her desk he took her bottle of drinking water and poured some onto the capsules, then stood well back. “Somebody tampered with them. They broke them open, poured out the active drug, and packed them with metallic potassium in a suspension of paraffin oil. That's the only way to handle the stuff, and it explains the tiny oil droplets on the surface of the capsules."
"And what does metallic potassium do?"
"It's the pure form of the element. It's very rare in nature because it is incredibly reactive. It has a violent exothermic reaction with oxygen and with water."
At last she began to see. “So that when the tablets dissolved inside the intestine..."
He nodded, then went to the wall by the door where there was a small carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. “As soon as it came into the contact with the water of the intestinal contents, it burned at a temperature of several thousand degrees. What's more, in the reaction, potassium hydroxide is formed and gaseous hydrogen is liberated. That fuels the fire, making it even hotter. At that temperature, the body fat would ignite. Once it starts, it wouldn't stop until almost nothing was left."
She felt stunned by the words. Stunned and nauseated. “That's horrible."
He nodded slowly, staring into her eyes. “Metallic potassium is very rare and very difficult to get hold of. You can't just ring someplace up and order it. In fact, I can think of only one place that it might be relatively easily obtained."
With a suddenness that made them both jump, there was a loud fizzing noise and white-hot flames suddenly erupted from the bin. There were tiny clanging noises, as if projectiles were pelting the bin. Even from three meters away, the heat was intense. Eisenmenger aimed the fire extinguisher and doused the flames; it proved to be difficult.
She asked gently, “Where would you get hold of metallic potassium?” Her tone was peculiar.
He looked up at her. “A school chemistry lab."
She murmured, “Ah."
His next question was almost asked with his breath held. “Did you find out what the Rams
ays used to teach?"
She nodded. “William Ramsay taught mathematics."
"And Audrey?"
She sighed. “Chemistry."
* * * *
Audrey Ramsay lived in a small and neat bungalow in a suburb on the eastern side of the city. Eisenmenger and Helena drove along street upon street of similar dwellings before they reached their destination. Agedness seemed to be suspended in the atmosphere, to be seeping into their bones as they breathed. When Eisenmenger looked sideways at Helena he half expected her to have gray hair and slack skin.
"Mrs. Audrey Ramsay?"
Her hair, Helena decided, was dyed. There were bags under her eyes, and she projected tiredness in an almost despondent way.
"Yes?"
Helena made the introductions. “We're here in connection with a Mr. Daniel Hunt. He was a—"
"I know who he was."
The degree of calm was chilling. She stood to one side. “Come in."
The room was cluttered but clean. Eisenmenger noted a picture of a small girl playing on a swing being pushed by an elderly man; next to that was a picture of a married couple with the same young child, the setting a birthday party; the same couple on their wedding day made up the triptych. When they were seated he asked gently, “Is that your daughter's family?"
She didn't look at the picture. She said merely, “Yes."
She didn't ask how he knew.
Helena said, “We're just trying to clear something up. A curious coincidence, probably."
Helena suddenly found that Audrey Ramsay was staring at her, expressionlessly. It was unnerving, as if she were trying a touch of mesmerism, but before Helena could say anything, Mrs. Ramsay said simply, “No coincidence."
For a moment nonplussed, Helena, now returning the stare, replied slowly, “You killed Daniel Hunt."
She nodded. There was a hint of pride as she asked, “Have you worked out how?"
Eisenmenger reached into his pocket and brought out the capsules. She looked at them, then said, “I retired three years ago, but I still do a bit of supply teaching when they're short of staff. That wasn't paying enough, so I took the care job as a way of making ends meet. He was the last person I expected to meet. Most of the people I helped to look after are in their eighties and nineties, but there he was.” Her sigh was deep and it modulated slightly as if tears were somewhere nearby. “I thought I'd forgiven him, but...” She broke down.
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