Breath of Life (9781476278742)

by Ellis, Tim

  ‘You’ve got a sewer map?’ Parish asked.

  ‘Yes, and we’ve made some calculations based on the prevailing conditions over the past week. The best I can offer you is the farthest point the body could have been put into the sewers, which was Rush Green. Sewage flows south and south-east to Rye pumping station. The body was found in Hailey. As such, it could have entered the sewers anywhere between Rush Green and Hailey, including both Little and Great Amwell, as well as Hailey itself, which also includes St Margarets. I’m afraid it’s not much help.’

  ‘On its own it’s useless, Toadstone. But as I often remind myself when I despair of ever solving a case, it’s one piece of the puzzle. I’m sure that if we find more pieces, then it might make some sense.’

  ‘Of course,’ Toadstone said. ‘The victim could have been killed in Scotland, and then driven here to be disposed of.’

  Parish’s brow furrowed. ‘Most helpful. I think we’ll work on the assumption that she lived and was killed in Hertfordshire or Essex. Have you got anything else for us?’

  ‘We found an assortment of artefacts that might have belonged to the killer or the victim, but it’s unlikely. We’re still analysing them, but I’m not hopeful.’

  ‘You’re never hopeful, Toadstone. In fact, I’m beginning to think “Not Hopeful” is your middle name.’

  ‘It’s Reginald, actually.’

  ‘Yes, but doesn’t Reginald mean “Not Hopeful”?’

  ‘No, it means “Ruler’s advisor”.’

  ‘Stop picking on Paul, Sir,’ Richards said.

  ‘Here come reinforcements. So, is that it? A map of almost everywhere, and a large helping of pessimism?’

  ‘You can be really ungrateful sometimes, Sir,’ Toadstone said.

  ‘Ungrateful, Moi! Come on, Richards. I think we’d better leave before I say something untoward.’

  ‘See you, Paul,’ she threw over her shoulder as she followed Parish out of the lab. ‘You know he doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘If you want to be a hostage negotiator, I’ll arrange for you to go on a course before I transfer you.’

  She ignored him.

  Parish grunted. ‘I hope Doc Riley produces something a bit more substantial than Toadstone.’

  ‘Are you in a bad mood because you were banned from the antenatal classes?’

  ‘I’m not in a bad mood.’

  ‘Huh! You could have fooled me.’

  ‘I obviously did.’

  Parish found an empty incident room.

  ‘Sit.’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  He picked up a marker pen and began making a mindmap.

  ‘Okay, we have a body.’ He put “Body” inside a bubble and drew a series of lines off it. ‘Identity – question mark. Location killed – question mark. Time of death – question mark. In fact, we know nothing about anything.’

  ‘Yes we do. We know that the victim is in her early twenties and that she recently had a baby. We have an approximate area where she was dumped in the sewers, and she could also have been killed within that area. Lola will probably give us some missing persons that we can follow up, which might lead us to finding out her identity, and the identity of the killer. Doc Riley will probably give us lots of information, and can probably tell us how long ago the woman gave birth, and then we can check the local hospitals for recent births.’

  ‘Yes, but apart from those things we know nothing.’

  ‘It’s only the first day of our investigation. You’re not normally...’ She narrowed her eyes to slits. ‘You don’t want Inspector Kowalski to solve his case before you.’

  He gave a laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Richards.’

  ‘You do that when you’re lying, you give a short laugh.’

  ‘I can see I’ll have to put the parental controls on the Crime Channel again. You’ll be thinking you’re a psychological profiler next.’

  ‘I could be as well. So, you think you’re in a race, and you’re feeling depressed because Kowalski will come back bragging that he’s solved his case, and we aren’t even close to finding out who our victim is.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to wipe the smile off Nash’s face?’

  ‘Why are we still sitting here, Sir?’

  They both laughed.

  ***

  Kowalski and Nash arrived at The Snooty Pig on Church Lane in Wormley at ten thirty, and squirmed into the white paper suits provided at the main entrance.

  A uniformed officer was on guard, and Diane Heffernan from forensics was there with her team.

  ‘Hi, Di,’ Kowalski said as they walked into the main bar area. ‘What have you got for us?’

  ‘The killer entered through the rear door. At first we thought it was a robbery gone wrong, but the safe hasn’t been touched, and as far as we can tell, no cigarettes or alcohol have been taken.’

  ‘What about the victim’s jewellery or personal possessions? Nash asked.

  Di’s eyes narrowed to slits above the mask.

  ‘Oh, this is my new partner, Nash. Nash, this is Diane Heffernan from forensics.’

  ‘Senior scientific officer,’ Di added. ‘I’m Doctor Toadstone’s second-in-command.’

  ‘Of course,’ Kowalski said.

  ‘No, as far as we know, no personal possessions have been taken. But we’ll need to find out exactly what she had before we can rule it out completely.’

  ‘Who discovered the body?’

  ‘The cleaner – Tracey Corless – arrived at seven thirty. She got on with cleaning, and it wasn’t until about quarter past eight that she discovered the body. She’s in the living room waiting for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Di.’

  ‘Doctor Paine is upstairs.’

  They climbed the stairs and entered the main bedroom. The victim lay at an angle on the double bed in a dark pool of blood, which had seeped into the bottom sheet and spread downwards from the gory mess that used to be her face. She wore a sleeveless satin nightdress that had been rucked up to reveal her pubic hair and midriff. Blood had splattered up the headboard and the wall behind the bed.

  ‘Hi, Sandy,’ Kowalski said. ‘This is Nash, my new partner.’

  The two women nodded at each other.

  ‘The victim is Lisa Taverner, the licensee. Aged thirty-two, unmarried, and childless. Time of death between two and six this morning. She was subjected to a frenzied attack, and has been struck approximately twenty times about the head and face with an iron bar.’ She pointed to a two-foot bar covered in blood with a diameter of approximately one-inch lying on the floor by the foot of the bed.

  ‘Nowhere else?’ Nash asked.

  ‘No, just on the head. As you can see, she’s unrecognisable.’

  ‘It was a man,’ Kowalski said. ‘And he knew her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sandra Paine agreed. ‘It certainly appears to be personal. One or two blows would have killed her. The other eighteen were for something else.’

  ‘Sexual assault?’

  ‘No, except I found the stem of this pushed into her vagina.’ She passed Kowalski an evidence bag with a single withered white rose inside.

  ‘A dead flower?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kowalski turned the bag over in his gloved hands. ‘Does a dead flower pushed into a woman’s vagina mean anything to you, Sandy?’

  ‘Nothing springs to mind.’

  He shrugged and handed the bag back. ‘Post mortem?’

  ‘Ten tomorrow morning. I’ve got a backlog.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll see you then.’

  They went downstairs to question the cleaner.

  Tracey Corless was a thin woman in her late thirties with shoulder-length brown hair held back with an orange band that matched the colour of her overall. There was an ashtray on the table in the living room with about twenty cigarette butts piled in a little mountain, and she was smoking another cigarette.

  Kowalski let Nash take the lead.

  ‘You arrived at seven thirty?’

 
; ‘Like I do every morning.’

  ‘And you didn’t notice anything unusual?’

  ‘No, I just got stuck into my cleaning. I have a system. I do the bar first, because it’s the worst area. Some cleaners start with the easy areas first, but I like to go from difficult to easy. So, I’m vacuuming, and wiping, and dusting, and stacking the glasses on the bar, putting all the rubbish in a black plastic bag, you know. Now, Miss Taverner is usually up and about by the time I’ve finished the bar, and we have a cup of tea together. Some cleaners like to start with a cup of tea, but I see that as a reward. I do the work first, and then I have a cup of tea. Anyway, I thought she must have had a late night, or... you know, taken a man up there...’

  ‘Did she often take men up to her private rooms?’

  ‘Depends what you define as often. I’m not one to tittle-tattle, but Miss Taverner certainly liked the men, that’s for sure. She was real pretty... and the bastard did that to her face.’ She began sobbing.

  Nash waited until the crying had stopped. ‘Do you know how many men?’

  ‘Maybe two or three a month.’

  ‘Different men?’

  ‘Mostly, from what people say. A lot were gone by the time I got here.’

  ‘Were there any regulars?’

  ‘Regulars? You make her sound like a whore. Miss Taverner weren’t no whore. She was good to me, and I liked her regardless of what other people said.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  She looked at both of them. ‘I suppose you’ll find out from other people anyway. The men... well, most of them... they were married.’

  ‘She liked married men?’

  ‘Said there weren’t no complications. I told my Freddie that if he went upstairs with Miss Taverner, he better come down again with a tight grip on his dick, because the first chance I got I’d chop it off.’

  ‘Is there anything else that you’d like to tell us?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Do you want me to finish cleaning?’

  ‘No. This is a crime scene now. The bar won’t be opening for the foreseeable future.’

  ‘What about me pay?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know anything about that. Maybe the brewery...’

  ‘Shit! I’m out of a job, aren’t I?’

  ‘I would say so.’

  ‘Just what I need at Christmas. And my Freddie hasn’t worked for over a year either.’

  Nash shrugged.

  Tracey Corless stubbed her cigarette out, put her coat on, and left through the main entrance.

  ‘It could have been a woman,’ Nash said, once the cleaner had left.

  ‘Yes it could,’ Kowalski admitted. ‘Good interview.’

  ‘Thanks, Sir.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ He meant it as well. Nash was certainly a good detective, business-like, and not afraid to get her hands dirty. She wasn’t Ed though.

  This was the first time in his career he’d had a female partner – he didn’t like it much. Yes, he’d asked for a young woman to train like Parish had Richards, but now that he had one he didn’t like it. Ed and he had been mates. They’d had rapport, and did things together off duty – like go to rugby matches, a pint or two in the pub, and took turns at each other’s houses for barbecues at weekends. He’d never have that relationship with Nash. And when it came down to it, he didn’t really fancy her either. Oh, she had a hot body like Richards. Like Jerry used to have before all the kids, but apart from another conquest – he just didn’t like her that much. Richards, on the other hand, he could see himself shacking up with her if Jerry ever died or left him, but Nash – no, there was something about her that he didn’t much like, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  Chapter Three

  She wandered around the cold empty house until she found herself in the baby’s room. The empty cot taunted her. She so wanted a baby of her own – a baby to hold and to love.

  Six months she’d been pregnant this time. Six months of joy that had turned to despair in a heartbeat – or the absence of a tiny heartbeat. She’d painted the room pink because she was so sure the baby would be a girl – and it was.

  Now, she had no baby, and no husband. When she’d come home from the hospital without the baby he was gone. All that remained of him was the lingering smell of his sweaty feet, and a note behind a fridge magnet. If she couldn’t give him what he wanted then he’d have to look elsewhere.

  While she’d been pregnant the bastard had already been looking elsewhere. He’d been on expeditions into lap-dancing clubs, brothels, hotel rooms with hookers, and into his secretary’s knickers. He’d obviously found what he wanted in one of those places.

  One day, she’d catch up with him, and then she’d give him what he wanted.

  She touched the Lucky Duck toy hanging above the cot and the chimes pushed back the silence for a moment, but then it enveloped her again.

  Angela Richards had her husband and her baby – like she’d had all those years ago when she’d stolen Andy Richards off her by getting herself pregnant. Well, this time Angela bloody Richards wouldn’t get away with it. This time, she knew exactly what to do.

  She sat in the rocking chair, and tears welled in her eyes as she began to sing a lullaby:

  Star light,

  Star bright,

  First star

  I see tonight

  I wish I may,

  I wish I might,

  Have this wish

  I wish tonight.

  ***

  Catherine found a little furnished one-bedroom flat to let on Coppice Row in Theydon Bois – the Best Kept Village in Essex – above the Acupuncture and Herbal Clinic. It stank of tiger penis, snake oil and red ginseng roots, but she couldn’t afford to be picky.

  She’d found the advert on the village website. It took two hours to drive there because of the number of detours, stops, and three-point turns she made to make sure she wasn’t being followed. There was no point in having a secret place if it was compromised as soon as she found it.

  She paid three months’ rent in advance in cash, because she didn’t want any money trail leading back to her bank account. Professor Hui De Chang and his wife – Shu Jun – appeared very kind, and wanted to know if she had any pets. When she said no, they seemed disappointed. They also wanted a contact number, so she went to a phone shop, bought a pay-as-you-go mobile and put twenty pounds of credit on it. She didn’t plan to make calls from the phone – it was merely to enable Professor Chang to contact her if he needed to. Why he would want to she had no idea, but she gave him the number anyway. She was being extra careful. She didn’t want the Chang’s telephone number to appear on any of her phone records – her life depended on it.

  Gradually, she was creating a separate identity for herself – another life. There was the local reporter – Catherine Cox – who worked at the Chigwell Herald, and lived at Number 35 Phoenix Tower on Cairns Way in Woodford Bridge; and then there was Polly Hubery – a name she had randomly picked from the telephone directory – who lived above a smelly Chinese medicine shop. Mrs Chang had asked her what she did. She said she wrote content for web pages, which made Mrs Chang’s eyes glaze over.

  Polly Hubery planned to expose the secret Freemason lodge – P2. Catherine Cox would carry on with her life as the local reporter for the Chigwell Herald.

  The last thing she did to separate her two lives was to move the second laptop and all the information she had amassed about P2 from the boot of her car to the flat. She couldn’t find anywhere to hide them, so she put them at the bottom of the washing basket in the bathroom. She rationalised that if P2 found her here it wouldn’t really matter if they found what she was working on as Polly Hubery.

  ***

  They arrived at King George Hospital at five to twelve. Parish was driving. He’d told Richards, before they set off from home to travel to the station, to bring her National Occupational Standards for Investigators booklet with her, so that they could discuss where she
was with her evidence collection when they were stuck in the car with nothing else to do.

  ‘One-point-one is: Create and maintain professional relationships with investigation colleagues and stakeholders.’

  Parish made a sound with his lips. ‘I expect you’re going to struggle getting evidence for that one?’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘So who’s going to vouch for you?’

  ‘Inspector Kowalski...’

  ‘We’re not talking about bribing people with a quickie in the broom cupboard, you know.’

  ‘Lola...’

  ‘Or putting straw dolls in your folder with voodoo spells attached to them from crazy people.’

  ‘You’re not taking this seriously, are you?’

  He laughed. ‘Isn’t that the one about “recognising your own limitations and skills”?’

  ‘Yes. I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘But I’ve learned my lesson.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any evidence of that. If memory serves, if it hadn’t been for Mr Chubley coming to your rescue on Osea Island you’d be dog meat by now.’

  ‘You can’t talk. You went into that hide without back up. If it hadn’t been for me and Mr Chubley coming to your rescue you’d be dog meat yourself.’

  ‘Yes, but we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you. I get paid to take risks. You get paid to take orders. And anyway, there was no cause for concern when I wandered in there. When you got there, I was nowhere to be found. It was then that you should have called for back up.’

  ‘From where? The causeway was flooded.’

  ‘Typical woman – an answer for everything. What’s one-point-two?’

  ‘One-point-three is: Maintain records of personal investigation activity.’

  ‘What happened to number two?’

  ‘We don’t need to worry...’