The Chemistry of Death

by Simon Beckett

  Luckily, there was too much to do for my thoughts to wander.

  Unlike skin and flesh, bone retains the impression of anything that cuts into it. In Sally Palmer’s case, some of these were little more than scratches, revealing nothing. There were three places, though, where the blade had gone deep enough to leave an ossified record of its passing. Where her back had been cut for the swan wings, the flat bone of both shoulder blades bore matching grooves. About six or seven inches long, each had been made with a single, sweeping stroke. That much was apparent from the way the wounds were shallower at either end than they were in the middle; in both cases the knife had travelled across the scapula in an arc rather than been thrust. Slashed rather than stabbed.

  I’d used a tiny electric saw to carefully cut longitudinally along one of the grooves, so it was split down its full length. Marina had hovered curiously nearby as I’d examined the exposed surfaces where the knife had cut through the bone. I motioned her to take a look.

  ‘See how the sides are smooth?’ I asked. ‘That tells us the knife wasn’t serrated.’

  She peered at it, frowning. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because a serrated blade makes a pattern. A bit like when you cut wood with a buzz saw.’

  ‘So these weren’t caused by anything like a bread or steak knife.’

  ‘No. It was sharp, though, whatever it was. See how clean and well defined the cuts are? And they’re quite deep. Four, five millimetres in the middle.’

  ‘Does that mean it was big?’

  ‘I’d say so. Could be something like a large kitchen or butcher’s knife, but I’d guess some sort of hunting knife was more likely. The blades on those tend to be heavier and less flexible. Whatever did this didn’t bend or wobble. And the cut itself is quite wide. Meat knives are much thinner.’

  A hunting knife also tied in with the killer’s obvious woodcraft, though I didn’t say that. I’d taken photographs and measurements of both shoulder blades before turning to the third cervical vertebra. This was the section of bone that had sustained the most damage, caused when Sally Palmer’s throat had been cut. It was a different sort of wound, almost triangular in shape. Stab, not slash. The killer had plunged the knife into her throat point-first, then drawn it across her trachea and carotid artery.

  ‘He’s right-handed,’ I said.

  Marina looked at me.

  ‘The depression in the vertebra’s deep at the left-hand side, then tapers off to the right. So that’s the way he cut.’ I pointed at a spot on my own throat and drew my finger across. ‘Left to right. Which suggests he’s a right-hander.’

  ‘Couldn’t it have been done backhanded?’

  ‘That would have made it more of a slash, like on the shoulder blades.’

  ‘From behind, then? You know, to avoid the blood.’

  I shook my head. ‘Makes no difference. He might have stood behind her to do it, but in that case he’d still reach around, put the knife in, and then pull it back across her throat. Left to right, for a right-hander. If not it would mean pushing the knife rather than pulling it. Too awkward, and it would make a different-shaped mark in the bone.’

  She was silent as she went through it in her mind. She gave a nod when she accepted it. ‘That’s pretty cool.’

  No, I thought. Just the sort of thing you pick up when you’ve seen enough of it.

  ‘Why do you say “he”?’ Marina asked, abruptly.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘When you’re talking about the killer you always talk as if it’s a man. But there are no witnesses, and the body’s too far gone for us to find any evidence of rape. So I just wondered how you knew.’ She shrugged, embarrassed. ‘Is it just a figure of speech or have the police found something out?’

  I hadn’t given it much thought, but she was right. I’d automatically assumed the killer was male. Everything so far pointed to it—physical strength, female victims. But I was surprised I’d taken something like that for granted.

  I smiled. ‘Force of habit. It usually is. But no, I don’t know for sure.’

  She looked at the bones we’d been so clinically examining. ‘I think it’s a man too. Let’s hope they catch the bastard.’

  Thinking about what she’d said, I almost missed the final piece of evidence. I’d examined the vertebra under a bright light and low-powered microscope, and it was only as I was about to straighten that I spotted it. A tiny black fleck, lying like rot at the deepest point of the hole carved by the knife. But whatever it was, this was no rot. I carefully scraped it out.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Marina.

  ‘No idea.’ But I felt a race of excitement. Whatever it was, the only way it could have got there was on the tip of the killer’s knife. Perhaps it was nothing.

  Perhaps.

  I sent it off to the forensic lab for spectroscopic analysis, something I had neither the expertise nor equipment to carry out myself, and started making plaster casts of the knife cuts in the bones. If the weapon that had caused them was ever found, it would be possible to identify it simply by seeing if it fitted—a match every bit as conclusive as Cinderella’s slipper.

  I was almost done now. It was just a matter of waiting for the lab results, not just on whatever substance I’d just found but for the other tests from the day before. They would give an accurate time-since-death, and once I had that I would be finished. My role in Sally Palmer’s death, a far more intimate one than we’d ever shared while she was alive, would be over. I could retreat back to my new life, bury myself away again.

  The prospect didn’t bring the relief I’d expected. Or perhaps it was that, even then, I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as that.

  I had just washed and dried my hands when there was a rap on the steel door. Marina went to see who it was, and came back with a young policeman. With a sinking feeling, I eyed the cardboard box he was holding.

  ‘Chief Inspector Mackenzie’s sent this.’

  He looked for somewhere to put it down. I pointed at the empty stainless-steel table, knowing what would be inside.

  ‘He wants you to carry out tests on it. He says you’ll know what he means,’ the policeman said. The box didn’t look very heavy, but he was still red-faced and breathless from carrying it. Or perhaps he’d just been trying to hold his breath. The smell was already noticeable.

  He hurried out as I opened the box. In it, wrapped in plastic, was Sally Palmer’s dog. I guessed Mackenzie wanted me to carry out the same analysis on the animal as I had on its owner. If, as seemed likely, it had been killed when she’d been abducted, knowing how long ago it had died would also tell us when its owner had been taken. And how long she had been kept alive. There was no guarantee her killer would do the same for Lyn Metcalf, but it would give some idea of her possible survival window.

  It was a good idea. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work. A dog’s body chemistry isn’t the same as a human’s, so any comparative tests would be meaningless. The best I could do was examine the score marks made on its vertebra. With luck that might show if the same knife had also cut the animal’s throat. It was hardly going to change the course of the investigation, but had to be done all the same.

  I gave Marina a rueful smile. ‘Looks like we’ll be working late.’

  In the end, though, it hadn’t taken as long as I’d expected. The dog was much smaller, which made life easier. I’d taken the X-rays I needed and then put its body to boil in detergent. Tomorrow when I arrived at the lab there would be nothing left but its skeleton to examine. The thought of the remains of both Sally and her dog lying in the same room struck a chord within me, but I wasn’t sure if it was a comforting or mournful note.

  The low sun lanced off the surface of Manham Water, setting the lake on fire as the road bent and dipped in its approach to the village. Squinting, I pulled my sunglasses down from my forehead. For an instant my vision was obscured by the frame, and then I saw a figure walking towards me on the road edge. I was surprised to see someone so close
, but they were back-lit by the blinding sun, and I was almost past before I recognized who it was. I stopped and reversed until my open window was level with her.

  ‘Can I give you a lift home?’

  Linda Yates looked up and down the empty road as if considering the question before answering. ‘I’m not going your way.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. It’ll only take a few minutes. Hop in.’

  I leaned across and pushed the door open. When she still hesitated I said, ‘It’s not far out of my way. I’ve been meaning to check on Sam anyway.’

  The mention of her son’s name seemed to decide her. She climbed in. I remember noticing how she sat close to the door, but at the time I didn’t think anything of it.

  ‘How’s he been?’ I asked.

  ‘Better.’

  ‘Has he gone back to school?’

  She raised a shoulder. ‘Doesn’t seem much point. They finish tomorrow.’

  That was right. I’d lost track of time, forgotten the school was about to break up for the long summer holiday. ‘How about Neil?’

  For the first time something like a smile came and went. But it was a bitter one. ‘Oh, he’s fine. He’s like his dad.’

  There were domestic undercurrents there it was best to avoid. ‘Have you been at work?’ I asked. I knew she sometimes cleaned for a couple of the village shops.

  ‘We needed some things from the supermarket.’ She lifted the plastic bag she’d been carrying as if to prove it.

  ‘Bit late to go shopping, isn’t it?’

  She glanced at me. By now there was no mistaking her nervousness. ‘Somebody’s got to do it.’

  ‘Couldn’t…’ I searched for her husband’s name. ‘Couldn’t Gary take you?’

  She shrugged. It obviously wasn’t an option.

  ‘I don’t know that walking home alone is a good idea right now.’

  Again, that quick, nervous look. She seemed to press herself up against the door even more.

  ‘Everything all right?’ I asked, but I was beginning to see that it wasn’t.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You seem a bit on edge.’

  ‘Just…be glad to be home, that’s all.’

  She was gripping the edge of the door, where the window was open. She seemed ready to fling herself out of it. ‘Come on, Linda, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ It came out too quickly. And now, belatedly, I began to understand what it was.

  She was scared. Of me.

  ‘If you’d rather I stopped so you can walk the rest of the way, just say,’ I told her, cautiously.

  I could tell from the way she looked at me that I’d been right. I thought back, realized with hindsight how reluctant she’d been to get into the car. But it wasn’t as if I was a stranger, for God’s sake. I’d been the family’s doctor since I arrived, seen Sam through mumps and chickenpox, Neil through a broken arm. It was only a few days earlier that I’d been in her kitchen, when her boys had made the gruesome discovery that had started all this. What the hell’s going on?

  After a moment, she shook her head. ‘No. It’s all right.’ Some of the tension had left her, though not all of it.

  ‘I don’t blame you for being wary. I just thought I was doing you a favour.’

  ‘You are, it’s just…’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s nothing. Only talk.’

  Until then I’d been putting her reaction down to a general anxiety, an indiscriminate mistrust in the face of what was happening in the village. Now my own unease began to grow as I began to understand it was something more.

  ‘What sort of talk?’

  ‘There’s a rumour going round…that you’d been arrested.’

  I hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t that.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as though I might blame her for it. ‘It’s just stupid gossip.’

  ‘Why the hell would anyone think that?’ I asked, stunned.

  She was fretting at her hands now, no longer afraid of me, only of having to tell me this: ‘You’ve not been at the surgery. People are saying that the police came to see you, that you’d been driven away with that inspector. The one in charge.’

  It was becoming all too clear now. In lieu of any real news, rumour had rushed in to fill the vacuum. And by agreeing to help Mackenzie I’d inadvertently made myself a target. It was so absurd I could have laughed. Except it wasn’t funny.

  I realized I was about to drive past Linda’s house. I pulled up, still too stunned to speak.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I just thought…’ She didn’t finish.

  I tried to think of what I could say that wouldn’t involve dredging up my entire past for the village to examine. ‘I’ve been helping the police. Working with them, I mean. I used to be…a sort of specialist. Before I came here.’

  She was listening, but I wasn’t sure how much sense this was making to her. Still, at least she didn’t look as though she wanted to throw herself out of the car any more.

  ‘They wanted my advice,’ I went on. ‘That’s why I haven’t been in the surgery.’

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say. After a moment she looked away. ‘It’s this place. This village.’ She sounded weary. She opened the door.

  ‘I’d still like to look in on Sam,’ I said.

  She gave a nod. Still shaken, I followed her up the path. Inside, the house seemed misty and dim after the brightness of the evening. The TV was playing in the lounge, a cacophony of sound and colour. Her husband and youngest son were watching it, the man slumped in a chair, the boy lying on his stomach in front of the set. They both looked around when we entered. Gary Yates turned to his wife, silently demanding an explanation.

  ‘Dr Hunter gave me a lift home,’ she said, setting down her shopping bags, moving around too quickly. ‘He wanted to see how Sam was.’

  Yates seemed unsure of how to react. He was a wiry man in his early thirties, with the pinched, feral look of a tinker about him. He slowly stood up, hands held uncertainly. He decided not to offer them, stuffed them into his pockets instead.

  ‘Didn’t know you were planning to call,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t know myself. But given what’s happened I couldn’t let Linda walk home by herself.’

  He flushed and looked away. I told myself to ease up. Any points I scored against him would only be extracted from his wife’s account after I’d gone.

  I smiled at Sam, who’d been watching from the floor. The fact that he was inside on a summer evening like this said he wasn’t fully himself, but he seemed better than the last time I’d seen him. When I asked him what he would do during the school holidays he even smiled at one point, showing some of his old animation.

  ‘I think he’s doing OK,’ I told Linda in the kitchen afterwards. ‘He’ll probably bounce back soon enough now he’s over the initial shock.’

  She nodded, but distractedly. She was still ill at ease. ‘About earlier…’ she began.

  ‘Forget it. I’m glad you told me.’

  It had never occurred to me that people might get the wrong impression. But perhaps it should have. Only the night before Henry had warned me to be careful. I’d thought he was over-reacting, but he obviously knew the village better than I did. It rankled, not so much because of my misjudgement, but because a community I’d considered myself a part of was so readily prepared to think the worst.

  I should have known even then that the worst can always surpass expectations.

  I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the door to the lounge was shut. There was a question I’d been waiting to ask since I’d stopped to give Linda a lift.

  ‘On Sunday, after Neil and Sam found the body,’ I began, ‘you said you knew it was Sally Palmer, because you’d dreamed about her.’

  She busied herself at the sink, rinsing cups. ‘Just coincidence, I expect.’

  ‘That wasn’t what you said then.’

  ‘I was upset. I shouldn�
��t have said anything.’

  ‘I’m not trying to trick you out. I just…’ Just what? I was no longer sure what I was hoping to prove. I ploughed on anyway. ‘I wondered if you’d had any more dreams. About Lyn Metcalf.’

  She stopped what she was doing. ‘I wouldn’t have thought somebody like you would have much time for that sort of thing.’

  ‘I was just curious.’

  The look she gave me was speculative. Piercing. I felt myself grow uncomfortable under it. Then she gave a quick shake of her head. ‘No,’ she said. And then she added something so quietly I almost missed it.

  I would have asked her more, but at that moment the door opened. Gary Yates regarded us with suspicion.

  ‘I thought you’d gone.’

  ‘I’m just going,’ I said.

  He went to the fridge, opened its rust-edged door. A skewed fridge magnet on it said ‘Start the day with a smile’. It showed a grinning crocodile. He took out a can of beer and opened it. As if I wasn’t there he took a long pull, giving a stifled belch as he lowered the can.

  ‘Bye, then,’ I said to Linda. She bobbed her head, nervously.

  Her husband watched through the window as I went back to the Land Rover. As I drove into the village I thought about what Linda Yates had said. After she’d denied dreaming about Lyn Metcalf, she’d added something else. Just two words, barely loud enough for me to hear.

  Not yet.

  Ridiculous as the rumours about me were, I couldn’t afford to ignore them. It was better to meet them head-on than let the whispers get out of hand, but I still felt an unaccustomed apprehension as I headed for the Lamb. The garlands on the Martyr’s Stone were limp and dying now. I hoped it wasn’t an omen as I drove by the police trailer parked by the village square. Two bored-looking policemen sat outside it in the evening sunshine. They stared incuriously at me as I passed. I parked outside the pub, took a deep breath and pushed open the doors.