Wild Chamber

by Christopher Fowler

  Dropping to his knees, he tried to see if she was alive. He pressed an ear to her heart and put his hand to her neck, but there was no beat, no pulse. He needed to call an ambulance, but now his fingers were slippery with blood that had leaked from her nose and – my God – from the corners of her eyes, and every second he dithered she came closer to death. He felt his heart beating faster and looked around, suddenly fearful; her attacker had to be standing nearby. He had an awful, overpowering sensation of someone right behind him, but when he turned there was no one there. Nobody could get out; the garden gates were always kept locked.

  She was dead long before help arrived, and all Jackson could do was sit on the wet grass, tormented, and cry a silent prayer for her.

  Margo Farrier was small and sudden of movement in the way that some old ladies turn into sparrows. Genteel but lively, she had an attentive face that was quick to judge. She watched it all from her window, of course. First an ambulance and two squad cars turned up, then one car went away and some more police officers arrived, and some kind of white and yellow tent was erected on the footpath (Margo could only see its top corner from her bedroom window). Then a grey BMW stopped with three men in it, one tall and elegantly attired, flicking a handkerchief over his shoes; one stocky and shaven-headed, eating a sandwich; the last one elderly, wearing a squashed homburg and a ridiculously long striped scarf, and carrying a walking stick. When these three arrived the others avoided them and beat a hasty retreat.

  The one in the homburg paused to knock his pipe out on the park gate. On her gate, indeed! Then he checked the sole of his shoe, scraped something off on the kerb and spat for good measure. Where did he think he was? This was Holland Park, not Hackney!

  Margo rang Mr Dasgupta at number 17. ‘I’m sorry to call so early,’ she said. ‘What’s going on in the crescent? Are they plainclothes police? One of them looks like a tramp.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Farrier, I think it’s another mugging,’ said Mr Dasgupta very loudly, knowing that his neighbour was hard of hearing. ‘I just went to get a newspaper and the policeman told me there was a body in the park.’

  ‘It can’t be a mugging,’ said Margo, shaking her head vehemently. ‘Nobody can get into the park except us and the gardener, not without a key. I hope it’s not serious. There’s so much violence in London, it’s just awful.’

  ‘Maybe one of those troubled boys from the estate managed to get over the wall,’ said Mr Dasgupta. ‘Nobody is safe these days.’

  ‘The railings are covered in anti-climb paint,’ said Margo. ‘They were redone only two weeks ago. Whose body is it? Not one of the residents, surely?’

  Mr Dasgupta was apologetic. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. The officer said he couldn’t tell me anything, but a special unit was on its way and they would come to talk to all of us.’

  Mrs Farrier suddenly felt cold. ‘I don’t want anything to do with the police. People will think I’ve been up to something. I live alone, I don’t feel safe.’

  And yet you’re always inviting strangers in for tea, thought Mr Dasgupta wearily. ‘It’s our duty to help them with their inquiries,’ he told her, adding, ‘My son has not come home yet.’

  ‘You don’t think it was him, do you? Those lads he hangs around with – well, some of them could be refugees and you never know what they get up to.’

  ‘I meant he might be the one who got mugged,’ Mr Dasgupta explained with an inward sigh. ‘His friends are Indian, Mrs Farrier, not Syrian. And anyway …’ He decided it was not worth having another argument with her about refugees. ‘My son is a good boy,’ he finished lamely.

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Mrs Farrier, ‘but can’t you go over there and ask them what’s happened? We live here; we have a right to be told. If you don’t, I will.’

  When Mr Dasgupta demurred, Margo Farrier went for her coat. A new gardener had started a few weeks ago, a black lad, Ritchie something – perhaps he would know what was going on.

  ‘I’m just popping out, Wilberforce,’ she told the budgie. ‘I’ll only be a few minutes. Somebody needs to find out what’s going on.’

  6

  ‘A MURDER IN THE PRELAPSARIAN PARADISE’

  It was a measure of the area’s affluence that while other neighbourhood parks had bandstands, Holland Park had an opera company. The neighbourhood’s elegant centrepiece had landscaped gardens with statues and peacocks, an orangery and an icehouse. Nearby, the communal gardens of Clement Crescent were arranged in an arc of grand terraced houses, yet this verdant and immensely wealthy West London neighbourhood was bordered by the more vivacious ethnicity of Shepherd’s Bush. The famous and the infamous rubbed shoulders, passing through each other’s districts, rarely having cause to speak to one another.

  The sky had a look of pained contraction, as if at any moment it might find release in a flood upon the heads of passersby. The walled garden of the crescent was always off-limits to the general public, but today it was closed to everyone except the police. An ominous patch of scuffed gravel showed at the edge of Dan Banbury’s geodesic examination tent. John May looked around, waiting impatiently while the crime scene manager scraped some of the gravel into a plastic box. ‘God, it’s as cold as Keats’s owl in here,’ he complained.

  ‘That’ll be the trees, you urbanite,’ said Banbury, lidding his sample. The crime scene manager was an oddity at the PCU, a happily married husband and father who enjoyed living in the suburbs and having a kickabout in the garden with his son. As a result, none of his colleagues ever enquired about his home life.

  ‘If he strangled her, why is there blood?’ asked May.

  ‘Cartilage rupture. It’s a ligature strangulation. Mechanical asphyxia. He pulled a cord around her throat and held fast. I don’t think she felt much.’

  May couldn’t bring himself to look. ‘So it’s a professional job?’

  ‘Don’t just hover about outside, come and see for yourself. This isn’t an act you commit after carefully studying an anatomy chart. It’s the sort of wound inflicted by someone subject to violent outbursts. It’s interesting that he didn’t use his hands; we might be looking at premeditation.’

  ‘You said “he”.’

  ‘Well, yes, because, you know – strength.’ Banbury pointed back at the figure in the flowerbeds. ‘Can you do something about him?’

  ‘Oh – of course, sorry.’ May turned to the figure that was hunched over in the herbaceous border pulling up a purple-flowered buddleia by its stem. From this distance, with his brown hat and overcoat faded by the early morning mist, it did indeed look like a rummaging tramp. Arthur Bryant’s blue button eyes missed very little even when they lost their focus. The detective sidled and beguiled his way through life with an easy gentlemanly air, and although he now had fewer hairs on his head than a coconut, and those white, he possessed a sense of animation and liveliness seldom seen in men half his age. None of which went an inch towards explaining just how incredibly annoying he could be.

  ‘Arthur, what on earth are you doing?’

  ‘This is a weed.’ Bryant rose with the uprooted plant in one pudgy hand. ‘They grow out of brickwork and can pull down walls if you let them take root.’

  ‘Would it be asking you too much to pay attention?’ May pointed at the tent. ‘A woman just lost her life over here.’

  ‘She’s dead but the garden’s still alive.’ Bryant looked around for somewhere to drop the buddleia and finally decided to sling it behind a hedge.

  ‘You’re getting dirt everywhere,’ shouted Banbury. ‘John, either bring him over or keep him away from the area.’

  ‘You don’t have to talk about me as if I’m not here,’ Bryant complained. ‘“One is not idle because one is absorbed. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do.” Victor Hugo.’

  May indicated the disturbed gravel. ‘I thought you’d be interested in this. She put up a fight.’

  ‘I’m more interested in the suspect. What kind of gardener doesn’t know that buddleia is an inva
sive weed? Has anyone talked to him yet?’

  ‘When did we have time?’ asked May, exasperated. ‘He’s only just been taken into custody. Let him get over the shock before you hit him with questions. You’ll get clearer answers.’

  ‘Between seven and seven fifteen,’ Bryant called out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The time she died.’

  May was brought up short. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘The gardener phoned it in at seven twenty a.m., but he got here at seven. She’s lying on the main walkway so he’d have seen her on the way in, which means she was attacked after he arrived.’ He tipped his homburg and pointed to the wooden noticeboard on the railings at the back of the shrubbery. ‘It’s got the gardener’s hours on it. Monday, Wednesday, Friday – seven a.m. to one p.m. I had to pull the buddleia out to read it, didn’t I?’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ Banbury admitted. ‘I think you need to see this, John. The markings are unusual.’ He opened the flap of the tent, which had now been properly illuminated, and ushered May inside.

  Arthur Bryant could not remember the last time he had been in a London park. He looked about, marvelling at the height of the trees, the scale and age of the planting, the aleatoric shadows. In this small green city pocket he smelled damp wood, something smoky, petrichor and the lingering scent of night flowers. During the war doctors had placed soldiers with respiratory problems in large parks because the air was cleaner. What the city destroyed, the trees put back.

  May stood outside the tent with his gaze averted. Banbury frowned. ‘Is something the matter?’

  May turned away. ‘Her eyes are still wide open, Dan. Can’t you close them?’ The unfamiliar tone in his voice alerted Bryant, who stumped over and threw Banbury a questioning look.

  ‘Strangulation is a bit more unpleasant than you’d expect,’ Banbury explained. ‘It’s – well, it’s an indoor crime.’

  Bryant moved in for a closer look. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s usually other damage inflicted first – punching, kicking, rape. It’s primarily associated with partner abuse. Strangulation is intimate. It suggests anger, power and control.’

  ‘What about the technical side of it?’

  Banbury laid out a tray of little white boxes as if he was about to start offering canapés. ‘Technical? OK. It would have taken around eleven pounds of pressure applied for ten seconds to make her black out, and over thirty pounds of pressure to close off the trachea. Brain death usually occurs about five minutes later. The gardener found no pulse and thought she was dead but she might not have been, quite. Not his fault. We should try to find the ligature that was used. It’s not rope or wire cord, it’s got small ridges that have left tiny indentations. He may have thrown it somewhere.’

  ‘John?’ Bryant sidled up to his partner. ‘What’s the problem, old sock?’

  May looked forlorn. ‘You always say we don’t handle this kind of case.’

  Bryant removed his homburg, not as a sign of respect but because his ears were hot. ‘What are you talking about? We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.’

  ‘I do,’ said May, so softly that they barely heard him. ‘A woman-hater. We can’t do anything in situations like this. Violence without rationality – that’s for the Met to untangle.’

  ‘It will fall to us whether you like it or not,’ Bryant pointed out, smoothing down his white tonsure. ‘If people start feeling unsafe in public spaces—’

  ‘But your speciality lies in finding motives, Arthur. If there isn’t one, your abilities are useless.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Bryant extracted an immense handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose. The noise startled starlings. ‘It seems to me like you’re making an excuse.’

  ‘He’s right, John,’ said Banbury. ‘It’s not like you to be squeamish.’

  Women, Bryant mouthed theatrically at the crime scene manager. ‘What if it turns out there’s a motive?’ he said aloud. ‘You’ll be failing her, and possibly others like her.’

  May looked down at the path, determined not to see inside the operations tent a second time. ‘I don’t know, Arthur. After all I’ve been through lately, I’m not ready for something like this.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s what this is about,’ said Bryant.fn1 ‘We don’t know the circumstances yet. If it turns out she was attacked by a drunk boyfriend I’ll happily hand it straight over to the Met. They seem to enjoy sorting out dreary old domestics, and I don’t.’

  ‘Maybe you should learn more about them,’ May pointed out. ‘Sometimes people do the most extraordinary things. They keep disastrous relationships going just for the pleasure of hurting a partner. Cruelty becomes the only thing that satisfies them.’

  ‘It all sounds ghastly,’ said Bryant dismissively, ‘husbands clubbing their wives to death because they’ve walked in front of the television once too often. Let’s treat this as one of our cases for now. We should be able to see what we’re up against in a couple of hours, shouldn’t we, Dan?’

  Unhappily placed between the pair, Banbury could only shrug. ‘I hope so, Mr B. There’s one other thing. I think he’s moved the arms and legs. Not the gardener, the attacker.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Banbury tilted his head to one side, considering the corpse. ‘If you drop in your tracks, that isn’t how you hit the ground. This arm, here, and her leg, not folded under her but set neatly beside the other. And the gravel marks, see? She’s too tidy. Almost as if she’s been prepared in some small way.’ He turned to May, but the detective had walked away.

  Bryant considered his partner’s uncharacteristic reaction. The attachments John May formed with women were on an entirely different level to his own. They were his lifeline and the source of his strength. Bryant had once thought that the roots of this bond lay in May’s need to be found attractive and find attraction in turn, but in the last few years he had come to the recognition of a deeper truth: his partner’s respect for women far surpassed that of most men. He was in awe of them, and grew profoundly upset when they proved to be victims of violence, a reaction unsuited to his profession.

  Bryant had more layers of protection; he did not understand people and didn’t expect to be understood in return, a state of affairs which suited him perfectly. Circumstances interested him, not emotions. As far as he was concerned the male animal was an atavistic, truculent creature who could not be trusted to get the lid off a sardine tin, let alone involve himself in a loving relationship. At the end of every party there was always a girl left crying, never a man.

  He looked up at the curving mouse-brown bricks of the terrace. ‘She died here in the shadows. There must be a lot of eyes staring down from those windows. There don’t seem to be many lights on, but maybe somebody saw something. I’ll wander over and have a chat with them.’

  ‘You’re not going to wander off anywhere,’ called May. ‘To keep everyone happy, let’s do this by the book, just while you’re getting back on your feet.’

  ‘I am back on my feet,’ said Bryant indignantly. He held up his malacca walking stick. ‘This is just to give me an air of sophistication. Behold, Arthur the flâneur detective.’ He used the tip of the cane to push back his hat and nearly took his eye out.

  ‘Fine, but crime scene first, suspect interview, then witness statements.’

  ‘And murder weapon,’ said Bryant, turning about on his heel. ‘There isn’t one. I mean not dropped nearby. Unless you count this.’ Bending down, he lifted an opened Swiss army knife by the tip of its blade.

  ‘Are you touching that?’ Banbury all but bellowed. ‘Can you just leave it alone until after I’ve bagged it?’

  ‘Well, it’s obviously not the murder weapon, is it?’ said Bryant reasonably. ‘She’s been strangled. Park sweeps always produce fistfuls of knives.’

  ‘Yes, but not in this kind of park. The residents are too exclusive. So what’s it doing here?’

  ‘Maybe it’s the gardener’
s. Or someone lobbed it over the wall.’ Bryant looked around his feet. ‘The grass is wet, the gate is locked, the railings are painted with a special oil that never dries. What can you check for prints?’

  ‘I’ll do the gate but I don’t know if we’re going to pick up much,’ said Banbury. ‘Sometimes it’s worth doing car bonnets.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When people squeeze between two parked cars they often put their fingertips down on the car closest to their dominant hand.’

  Bryant squinted back at the entrance. ‘The gardener had to let the EMT in with his own key, didn’t he? So he was locked in here with the victim and her killer. What happened to the weapon after the attack?’

  ‘It’s a garden, Mr Bryant, he could have thrown it anywhere,’ said Banbury, checking his camera. ‘It’s a cord or cable of some kind, so he probably took it with him. If he didn’t, we’ll find it when we get a bit more natural light in here.’

  ‘You’d better do so in the next few minutes if you want dabs,’ said May. ‘According to my phone it’s going to rain at nine.’

  ‘I need you to get low shots of the grass in every direction around the path, so we can see if there are any trails through the dew,’ said Banbury. ‘He must have disturbed something in order to reach her, although I can’t see any flattening, which means he came up the path. It’s hard-packed gravel.’

  ‘What about a shoe shape? Come on, let’s have a shufti.’ Bryant headed over to the tent.

  ‘Covers on, please.’ Banbury handed him blue paper shoe slips. ‘Gloves too.’

  The victim was in her late twenties, lying on her back in the centre of the garden’s path, dressed in an ice-white designer tracksuit with an expensive-looking red woollen coat beside her. Banbury had closed her eyes but the left one had partially opened again, so that the dead woman appeared to be lewdly winking.

  ‘She’s well heeled,’ remarked Banbury. ‘Gold necklace, solitaire diamond wristband and rings, Prada trainers. Nothing’s obviously missing, so it’s not a mugging.’