The Chemistry of Death

by Simon Beckett

  When I stepped inside my first thought was that Linda Yates had exaggerated. People glanced my way, but there were the usual nods and acknowledgements. A little subdued, perhaps, but that was only to be expected. No-one was going to be laughing and joking around here for a while yet.

  I went to the bar and ordered a beer. Ben Anders was on his mobile in the corner. He held up his hand in greeting before going on with his conversation. Jack pulled my drink as contemplatively as ever, placidly watching the golden liquid chase the suds up the glass. Henry’s warning the previous night had been misplaced, I thought with relief. People knew me better than that.

  Then someone further along the bar cleared his throat. ‘Been away?’

  It was Carl Brenner. And as I turned to him I realized that the room had gone quiet.

  Henry had been right after all, I realized.

  ‘Hear you’ve not been around much the last couple of days,’ Brenner went on. He had a jaundiced, heavy-lidded look about him that told me he was in his cups.

  ‘Not much, no.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘There were some things I needed to do.’ As much as I wanted to end the rumours about me, I wasn’t going to be bullied into anything. Or give the village tongues even more to wag about.

  ‘That’s not what I heard.’ There was a yellow anger burning in his eyes, waiting only for a target. ‘I heard you were with the police.’

  The pub seemed very quiet now. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So what did they want?’

  ‘Just advice.’

  ‘Advice?’ He made no attempt to hide his disbelief. ‘About what?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask them that.’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  His anger had found its focus now. I looked away from it, around the room. Some people were staring into their drinks. Others stared back at me. Not yet condemning, but waiting.

  ‘If someone’s got something to say, say it,’ I said, as calmly as I was able. I held their gazes until, one by one, the faces turned away.

  ‘All right, if nobody else is going to, I will.’ Carl Brenner had risen to his feet. He aggressively swigged what was left in his glass and banged it down. ‘You’ve been—’

  ‘I’d be careful if I were you.’

  Ben Anders had materialized beside me. I was pleased to see him, not just because of his reassuring physical presence, but because it was a welcome sign of support.

  ‘Stay out of this,’ Brenner said.

  ‘Stay out of what? Just trying to stop you from saying something you’ll regret tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t regret anything.’

  ‘Good. How’s Scott?’

  The question took away some of Brenner’s bluster. ‘What?’

  ‘Your brother. How’s his leg? The one Dr Hunter fixed up the other night.’

  Brenner fidgeted, sullen but deflated. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Good thing the doc here doesn’t charge for out-of-surgery hours,’ Ben said, affably. His gaze took in the rest of the room. ‘I daresay most of us have had cause to be grateful for that some time or another.’

  He let his words hang, then clapped his hands together and turned to the bar. ‘Anyway, when you’ve got a minute, Jack, I’ll have another.’

  It was as though someone had suddenly opened a window to let in a clean breeze. The atmosphere cleared as people stirred, some of them looking slightly shame-faced as they went back to their conversations. I became aware of sweat damping the small of my back. It had nothing to do with the heat in the airless bar.

  ‘Would you like a whisky?’ Ben asked. ‘You look as though you could use one.’

  ‘No thanks. But I’ll get yours.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘Forget it. The bastards just needed reminding of a few things.’ He glanced across at where Brenner was staring moodily into his empty glass. ‘And that bastard needs someone to give him a sorting. I’m pretty certain he’s been milking nests at the reserve. Endangered ones. Normally once the eggs have hatched we’re OK, but we’ve been losing adult birds as well. Marsh harriers, even bitterns. I haven’t caught him yet, but one of these days…’

  He smiled as Jack set his pint down. ‘Good man.’ He took a long drink and gave an appreciative sigh. ‘So what have you been doing?’ He gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Don’t worry, I’m just curious. But it’s obvious something’s been taking you away from here.’

  I hesitated, but he’d earned some sort of explanation. Without going into too many details, I told him.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘Now you see why I don’t talk about it. Or didn’t,’ I added.

  ‘You sure you wouldn’t just rather tell people? Get it out in the open?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I can spread the word, if you like. Put it about what you’ve been doing.’

  I could see the sense in that. But it still went against the grain. I never used to talk about my work, and old habits died hard. Perhaps I was just being stubborn, but the dead had rights to privacy just as much as the living. Once word got out what I’d been doing there would be no end to the morbid curiosity. And I was far from sure how Manham would feel about its doctor’s unorthodox activities. I was well aware that my two vocations might not sit comfortably with each other in some people’s eyes.

  ‘No thanks,’ I told him.

  ‘Your choice. But there’s still going to be talk.’

  Although I knew as much, my stomach still sank. Ben gave a shrug.

  ‘They’re scared. They know the killer must live around here. But they’d still rather it be an outsider.’

  ‘I’m not an outsider. I’ve been here for three years.’ It rang false even as I said it. I might live and work in Manham, but I couldn’t claim to belong. I’d just had proof of that.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You could live here for thirty, you’re still from a city. Push comes to shove, people look at you and think “foreigner”.’

  ‘In that case it won’t matter what I say, will it? But I don’t think everyone’s that bad.’

  ‘No, not everyone. But it only takes a few.’ He looked solemn. ‘Let’s just hope they catch the bastard soon.’

  I didn’t stay long after that. The beer tasted sour and stale, though I knew it was as well kept as ever. There was still a numbness when I thought about what had happened, like the deadened moment before the pain sweeps in from a wound. I wanted to be in my own house when it finally caught up with me.

  As I drove from the pub I saw Scarsdale leaving the church. Perhaps it was my imagination, but he seemed to be striding taller than before. Out of everyone, he was the only person who was flourishing from the events that had overtaken the village. Nothing like tragedy and fear to make a man of the cloth the man of the moment, I thought, and straight away felt ashamed. He was only doing his job, the same as me. I shouldn’t let my dislike of him colour my thinking. God knew, I should have had enough of prejudice for one night.

  A guilty conscience made me raise a hand in acknowledgement as I approached. He looked directly back at me, and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to deign to respond. Then he gave his head a short downward tilt.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew what I was thinking.

  CHAPTER 12

  BY FRIDAY THE PRESS had started to drift away. The lack of any developments meant Manham was already losing its hold on the media’s fickle interest. If something else happened they would be back. Until then Sally Palmer and Lyn Metcalf would steadily diminish in airtime and column inches, until their names faded altogether from the public consciousness.

  As I drove into the lab that morning, though, my thoughts weren’t on the fading media presence or, I’m ashamed to say, the two victims. Even the shock of finding myself regarded with suspicion in the village had been temporarily displaced. No, what fretted away at me was something far more trivial.

&
nbsp; Dinner at Jenny Hammond’s house that evening.

  I told myself it was no big thing. That she, or rather her friend Tina, was just being friendly. When I’d lived in London a dinner invitation had been simply polite currency, offered and accepted without much thought. This was no different, I told myself.

  It didn’t work.

  I wasn’t in London now. My social life had become reduced to bland conversations with patients or a beer in the pub. And what were we going to talk about? There was only one subject in the village at the moment, and that would hardly make for light dinner-table chat between strangers. Especially not if they’d also heard the rumours about me. I wished I’d had the presence of mind to say no when the offer was made. I even considered calling with some excuse, offering my apologies.

  But, as much as the thought of the meal unsettled me, I didn’t make the call. Which was almost as unsettling in itself. Because, underneath it all, I was uncomfortably aware of why I was really so nervous. It was the thought of seeing Jenny again. It stirred up a complex silt of emotions I’d rather have left settled. Right up there among them was guilt.

  It felt like I was preparing to be unfaithful.

  Of course, I realized how ridiculous that was. I was only going for a meal, and since a drunken businessman had lost control of his BMW that afternoon almost four years ago, I was all too aware that there was no-one for me to be unfaithful to.

  But again, that made no difference.

  So as I parked the car and took the lift to the laboratory, I wasn’t exactly focused. I tried to pull my thoughts together as I pushed open the steel door to the mortuary lab and went in. Marina was there already. The door was still swinging shut behind me when she spoke.

  ‘The results are back.’

  Mackenzie frowned down at the report I’d given him. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Pretty much. The tests confirm that Sally Palmer had been dead for around nine days when her body was found.’

  We were in the lab’s small office. I’d offered to email the results, but when I’d called him he’d said he call around instead.

  ‘How reliable is that?’ he asked now.

  ‘The amino acid analysis is accurate to twelve hours either way, which is as close as you’re going to get. I can’t tell you the exact time she was killed, but it was some time between noon on the Friday and Saturday.’

  ‘You can’t narrow it down any more than that?’

  I resisted the urge to snap. I’d spent all morning working out the time-since-death equations. It was a complicated business, factoring in the test results with the average temperature and other weather data for the days that Sally Palmer’s body had lain outside. Life’s biggest mystery reduced to a banal mathematical formula.

  ‘Sorry. But taking into account everything else, the maggots and so on, I’d put it pretty well in the middle of that range.’

  ‘Call it midnight Friday, then. And she was last seen three days before that at the barbecue.’ Mackenzie frowned at the implications. ‘There’s no way you can be as specific for the dog?’

  ‘A dog’s body chemistry is different from a human’s. I could run the analysis but it wouldn’t tell us anything.’

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘But you still think it was dead longer than that?’

  I shrugged. All I had to go on was the condition of the dog’s body and the insect activity around it, and that was hardly an exact science. ‘Pretty sure, but like I say, the same rules don’t necessarily apply to dogs. But two or three days more, at least.’

  Mackenzie pulled at his lip. I knew what he was thinking. This was the third day since Lyn Metcalf had disappeared. Even if the killer followed the same pattern as before and was holding her somewhere, we were entering the endgame now. Whatever warped agenda he was following, if it hadn’t already run its course it soon would.

  Unless she was found first.

  ‘We’ve also got the analysis on the substance that was in one of the knife marks on Sally Palmer’s vertebra,’ I told Mackenzie. I read from my own copy of the report. ‘It’s a hydrocarbon. Fairly complex, but around eighty per cent carbon, ten per cent hydrogen, with small amounts of sulphur, oxygen, nitrogen and a few trace metals.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Bitumen. Common-or-garden bitumen. The sort of stuff you can buy in any hardware or DIY store.’

  ‘Well, that narrows it down.’

  Something flickered faintly in the back of my mind, a synaptic connection sparked by something that had just been said. I reached for it but it remained elusive.

  ‘Anything else?’ Mackenzie asked, and whatever almost-thought I’d had slipped away.

  ‘Not really. I’ve still got to examine the knife marks on the dog’s spine. With luck that’ll confirm that the same weapon killed them both. Then I’ll be finished.’

  Mackenzie looked as though he’d expected as much but hoped for more.

  ‘How about your end? Any more developments?’ I asked.

  I could see the answer from the way Mackenzie’s face closed down. ‘We’re following up a few leads,’ he said, stiffly.

  I said nothing. After a moment he sighed.

  ‘We’ve got no suspect, no witnesses and no motive. So, “no” is the short answer. Door-to-door enquiries haven’t turned up anything, and even though we’ve restarted the search we’re still having to go slow to check for traps. And it’s going to be impossible to cover an area like this. Half of it’s like a bloody swamp, and then there’s Christ knows how many bloody woods and ditches.’

  He shook his head, frustration getting the better of him again. ‘If he’s decided to hide her body properly we might never find her.’

  ‘You think she’s dead, then.’

  The look he gave me was jaded. ‘You’ve been involved with enough murder investigations. How often do we get them back alive?’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘Yeah, it happens,’ he conceded. ‘But so does winning the lottery. Frankly, I’d give better odds on that than Lyn Metcalf surviving. Nobody’s seen anything, nobody knows anything. Forensic didn’t find any useful evidence either where she was snatched or where we found Sally Palmer’s body. Nothing’s been flagged when we checked criminal records or the Sex Offenders Register. All we’ve got to go on is that the suspect must be reasonably strong and fit and knows a bit about woodcraft and hunting.’

  ‘Doesn’t narrow it down much, does it?’

  He gave a sour laugh. ‘Not much. It might if this was Milton Keynes, but a country community like this, hunting’s a way of life. People don’t even notice it. No, whoever he is, so far our boy’s been able to stay under the radar.’

  ‘What about profiling?’

  ‘Same problem. We just don’t have enough to go on. The only profile the psychologists can come up with is so vague it’s useless. We’re dealing with an outdoor type who’s physically fit and reasonably intelligent, but still reckless or careless enough to have left Sally Palmer’s body where it could be found. That could apply to half the men in the village. Extend that to neighbouring villages as well and you’re looking at two or three hundred potential suspects.’

  He sounded depressed. I couldn’t blame him. I was no expert, but I knew from experience that most serial killers were found either by luck or because they made some glaring mistake. They’re chameleons, apparently ordinary members of society who hide in plain view. When they’re finally exposed the first reaction of friends and neighbours is always disbelief. Only with hindsight are the jagged, saw-toothed edges that have been there all along finally recognized. Regardless of what atrocities they’ve committed, the single most shocking thing about our real-life monsters is how normal they seem.

  Just like you and me.

  Mackenzie scratched at the mole on his neck. He stopped when he caught me watching. ‘There’s one thing that’s come up that might be important,’ he said, with a casualness that wasn’t entirely convincing. ‘One witness who spoke to Sally Palmer at th
e barbecue says she was annoyed because someone had left a dead stoat on her doorstep. She thought it was a sick idea of a joke.’

  I thought about the swan wings that had been with Sally Palmer’s body, and the mallard tied to the stone on the morning Lyn Metcalf had disappeared. ‘You think the killer left it there?’

  He shrugged. ‘Could have been kids. Or it might have been some sort of marker or warning. Staking a claim, sort of thing. We already know he uses birds as a signature. There’s nothing to say he might not use animals as well.’

  ‘What about Lyn Metcalf? Did she find anything like that?’

  ‘She mentioned to her husband about finding a dead hare in the woods the day before she disappeared. But it could just as easily have been killed by a dog or fox. There’s no way of knowing now.’

  He was right, but I still wondered. Coincidences happen, in murders as in every other facet of life. But given the way the killer had behaved so far, it didn’t seem impossible that he was confident enough to have marked out his victims in advance.

  ‘So you don’t think there’s anything to it?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s not what I said,’ he snapped. ‘But at this stage there’s not a lot we can do. We’re already looking for anyone with a record of animal cruelty. A couple of people can remember a spate of cats being killed about ten, fifteen years ago, but no-one was ever caught, and…What?’

  I’d started shaking my head. ‘You said yourself, this isn’t like a town or city. Attitudes are different here. I’m not saying people are deliberately cruel, but you don’t get much sentiment, either.’

  ‘Meaning no-one would notice a few dead animals,’ he said, flatly.

  ‘If someone set fire to a dog on the village green there’d probably be a reaction. But this is the countryside. Animals are killed all the time.’

  He reluctantly accepted what I’d said. ‘Let me know what you find out from the dog,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Anything important, you can get me on my mobile.’