Blood Lines

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Slider said, ‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. What’ve we got?’

  ‘He’s in there, sir.’ Baker gestured towards the closed door.

  ‘He is dead?’

  ‘As a fish,’ Mills reassured him. ‘I had a quick shufti. Looks like suicide.’

  ‘You’ve got blood on you,’ Slider noted with disapproval. Surely after all this time Mills hadn’t forgotten the basics?

  ‘It’s off the bloke that found the body. He was hysterical, sort of threw himself at me,’ Mills explained.

  ‘Morley’s taken him away, sir,’ Baker intervened. Morley was his partner. ‘Giving him a cup of tea.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Philip Somers. He’s the assistant producer for this programme that apparently deceased was going to be on.’

  Slider nodded, worked on a pair of gloves, and opened the door. It was a small, white-tiled room with off-white ceramic tiles on the floor. There were two stalls straight ahead, of the usual grey melamine and stainless steel construction, their doors open onto innocent untenanted sanitary ware. Three urinals occupied the far right hand wall, and a row of four washbasins with mirrors above the left-hand wall immediately inside the door. The door opened to the right, but in the mirrors Slider could see the reflection of the wall behind it, which supported an electric hand-drier and a condom slot machine.

  That was the easy bit. The unpleasant bit was the blood, spattered across the mirrors, streaking the water in the washbasin, smeared over the washbasin rim, and puddled on the floor. The body was lying with its feet towards him, crumpled on its side. Even from here, he could see how Mills could be sure life was extinct: the neck had been severed so determinedly that the head was almost off. It lolled back at an unnatural angle, exposing the butchery aspect of severed vessels. Slider felt the familiar sense of pressure behind the eyes and had to look away for a moment and fix his gaze on something neutral; behind him Mills was breathing hard and swallowing rapidly. And then he heard Atherton’s voice saying, ‘If only blood were some nice unassertive colour, like grey or pale green, it wouldn’t be half so bad. But red …!’ Slider managed a smile, and the pressure behind his eyes evened itself out.

  ‘Boss?’ said Mills into his ear. ‘Over there, on the floor, by the end stall.’

  A knife with a bloodstained blade, an old-fashioned clasp-knife of the sort dreamed of by boy scouts in Slider’s youth, with a leather-wrapped, steel-capped handle and a steel cross-guard, and a slightly curved blade about eight inches long.

  ‘Suicide, you think?’ Mills prompted.

  ‘Mmm,’ Slider said non-committally. He stared around a few moments longer, memorising the layout, and then closed the door. Atherton was a little way off, chatting to a young woman, his hands in his pockets, the curve of his back at its most languid. Slider knew that pose, and left him to it.

  He said to Mills, ‘This man, Somers, who found the body – he raised the alarm?’

  ‘Apparently he stayed on guard here while he sent someone else – a female, Dorothy Hammond, one of the assistants – to tell the producer – that’s the top bod in this set-up. Somers said once he knew this bloke was dead, he realised he had to stop anyone else going in there and touching anything.’

  ‘An intelligent member of the public,’ Slider commented. ‘How rare, Who’s the producer?’

  ‘Fiona Parsons – female over there in the suit.’ The one Atherton was chatting up. No, had been chatting up – he had left her now. Slider met him halfway.

  ‘It seems there’s a bunch of celebs in a room along there,’ Atherton said, gesturing with his head, ‘who will be growing restive. Miss Parsons wants to know what to do with them. I suppose we’ll have to interview them?’

  ‘Even if it is suicide,’ Slider agreed.

  ‘If?’ Atherton said.

  ‘Better safe than sorry. You can go and pacify them in a minute. You’ve a light hand with demigods.’

  ‘Years of practice in the CID.’

  ‘But fill me in first on this programme.’

  ‘Questions of Our Time. Haven’t you ever seen it?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never watched it.’

  ‘You haven’t missed much. Well, you know the formula – panel of experts, studio audience, chosen topic, audience put questions, panel exercise egos. They put it out live, in an attempt to inject some excitement into it. It’s cheap telly, of course, because the audience isn’t paid, and as long as they pick publicity-junkies, the panel do it for nothing as well.’

  ‘And what was today’s question?’

  ‘Right up your street, guv. Funding of the arts – elitist, or essential? Bringing culture within reach of the masses, or subsidising middle-class taste with working-class money? A question that is no question, really,’ Atherton added provocatively, but Slider wouldn’t be drawn.

  ‘So who are these celebrity guests, then?’

  ‘Well, Roger Greatrex, music critic and opera aficionado, alias the deceased, you know. Then there’s Sir John Foster, Director of the Royal Opera House; Jack Mallet—’

  ‘The Heritage Minister, yes.’

  ‘Dame Barbara Frankauer – novelist, Islingtonite and token woman,’ Atherton went on. ‘And Sandal Palliser. You know who he is?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  It would be hard to categorise Sandal Palliser, except to call him a Media Star. He had done crits, written columns, presented programmes on television; he was frequently to be seen at awards dinners making speeches, and at film premières escorting the nubile and famous under the barrage of flashing lights. His opinion was sought on discussion programmes, his bonhomie on game shows, and his showbiz anecdotes on chat shows. He had recently even written a novel, a surprisingly slushy love story set in his native Derbyshire Peaks, which had reached best-sellerdom – partly, so Atherton said, on the strength of Palliser’s famous name, but mostly on account of a much-talked-about sex scene in chapter eight, in which the heroine encountered the hero after hours in a porcelain factory and did quite surprising things to his person with china clay before being bonked to within an inch of her life on a heap of packing straw. Since the book was assumed to be autobiographical, That Chapter had been the talk of the dinner-party circuit for weeks, while the Groucho seethed with speculation as to who the heroine really was.

  ‘I should have thought with Sandal Palliser and Roger Greatrex on the panel, they’d hardly need anyone else,’ Slider said.

  ‘They’re a debate on their own,’ Atherton agreed.

  Recently Palliser, who liked to pose as a champion of the people, had conducted a printed slanging match with Roger Greatrex on the subject of the unacceptably esoteric nature of the modern arts. Palliser had cited in particular the latest Booker prize novel that no-one would ever want to read, the Turner prize winner that only a regurgitation fan would want to look at, and the Glyndebourne Don Giovanni. It was the latter which had actually sparked it all off, for they had happened to be at the same performance and got into an attention-grabbing row in the foyer during the interval. The following day Greatrex had praised the production in his review column in the Guardian as ‘daring, innovative and thought-provoking’, while Palliser, in his commentary page in the Mail, had castigated it as ‘pretentious adolescent clever-dickery’.

  Greatrex had responded in The Sunday Times’ Arts Supplement by accusing Palliser of ‘pseudo-blokeism’, and Palliser, perhaps a little unfairly, had brought out the big guns by devoting a whole edition of his Arts and Minds programme on ITV to the proposition that the whole modern arts machine was an exclusive back-scratching club paid for out of tax-payers’ money.

  All this had stirred up quite a lively ongoing debate in the letters columns of the national dailies. Slider had followed it at first because he had seen the Don Giovanni production which had started off the row – with Joanna playing in it, it was almost a family concern. But the argument had become blurred by a number of letters complaining that the DG production was
blasphemous, on account of the Act Two supper-room scene taking place, for no adequately explained reason, in a church, where the Don had done a number of sacrilegious things around and on the altar. Even at the pre-dress which Slider had attended, there had been disturbed murmurings from the audience, and though Slider had merely thought it silly, it had obviously upset some people. After a couple of days the correspondence in the papers had wandered off into the byways of what constituted blasphemy and whether it should still be a criminal offence in the nineteen-nineties, and Slider had lost interest.

  But he could quite see why any discussion programme about the arts at this moment in time would have to include Sandal Palliser and Roger Greatrex if it wanted to be topical.

  ‘All right,’ he said to Atherton, ‘you go and pacify the great and famous. As soon as reinforcements arrive they can give their statements and go home.’

  ‘What about the audience, guv? There’s a couple of hundred bods penned up in a canteen upstairs with nothing but sandwiches, tea and the daily papers to keep them quiet.’

  ‘Someone had better go up and talk to them. Mills, find Morley and send him up. He’s to tell them as little as possible, but keep them quiet.’

  ‘Right, guv.’

  ‘Aren’t we going to let them go?’ Atherton said in surprise.

  ‘Not yet. I might want statements, and you know what people are like once you let them get away. I want their names and addresses, anyway.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘All of them. You’d better contact the factory and ask the Super politely for some more uniforms. We’ll need a few just to keep this area clear of sightseers, let alone all the interviewing. This is going to mean a bit of overtime, I’m afraid. What are you smirking about, Baker?’

  The duty police surgeon had been sent for, but it was the forensic pathologist who arrived first – Freddie Cameron, the man for whom the adjective ‘dapper’ might have been invented. Slider had been distributing his troops when he arrived, and hurried back to the scene of the crime to meet him. Cameron was engaged in putting on a set of overalls to cover his light grey Prince of Wales check suiting; Atherton was with him, holding a plastic cup of something that steamed, Cameron’s clipboard under his arm.

  ‘Hullo-ullo-ullo,’ Freddie said jauntily. ‘The hounds of law on felon’s traces, eh?’

  ‘Come again?’ said Slider.

  ‘My words exactly,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Which, mine or his?’ Slider asked. ‘No, don’t answer that. How did you get here so fast, Freddie?’

  ‘I was only down the road at Hammersmith Hospital. Just finished a post when the call came, so here I am.’

  ‘You’ve beaten the surgeon to it.’

  ‘Where’s he coming from?’

  ‘It’s Prawalha. From Fulham.’

  ‘Oh well you can forget that,’ Freddie said effortfully as he hairpinned his foot up within reach and tugged on a plastic overshoe. ‘Fulham Palace Road’s solid – accident at the junction of Lillie Road. I’ll do the necessary, if you like.’ He met enquiring stares over his arm and said simply, ‘Heard it on the car radio. On Classic FM Roadwatch. Don’t you coppers know anything?’

  Atherton grinned at Slider. ‘I’d better see if I can turn Dr Prawalha back. He won’t like coming all this way for nothing.’

  ‘Right, all togged up,’ Cameron said. ‘Let’s have a look.’ He opened the door, stepped carefully over to the body and examined it in silence for a moment. He looked at his watch. ‘I pronounce life extinct at – eight-oh-six p.m. Forehead still warm; warmth in the axilla. Death within the last three hours, probably two.’

  ‘We know he was alive within the hour,’ Slider said.

  ‘Good. That’s a help. I hate doing all that mental arithmetic with temperature readings. Well, not much doubt about the cause of death.’ He examined the wound. ‘Single clean incision from under the left ear across and downwards to the right. All the structures through to the anterior spinal ligament completely severed. Death due to anoxia caused by severing of the windpipe – more or less instantaneous.’

  ‘More or less?’

  ‘Depends on your point of view. Who can say how long an instant of terror lasts, subjectively?’

  ‘You’re a great comfort,’ Slider complained. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No superficial cuts or haggling around the wound – a sign of great determination or great strength, or both. No apparent bruising or other wounds. Clothing a little rumpled, but no signs of a struggle.’

  He stood up and looked at the basins and mirrors. ‘Now you see there, across the mirror, the typical spread pattern of droplets from the arterial pumper? He went straight through the left external carotid with the first cut. Lovely work.’

  ‘So he was facing the mirror,’ Slider said.

  ‘Yes, or had his head slightly turned to the right, as you’d expect if it was a suicidal cut. And the blood in the basin and the smears on the rim suggest that he collapsed slightly forward and then hit the rim, or brushed against it, as he fell. Blood on the hands, under the nails, on the cuffs and sleeves, as you’d expect. Both hands. Two-handed action for extra penetration, perhaps. Blood on the cheek, too, but that’s from resting in it on the floor.’ He pondered.

  ‘So it looks like suicide, then,’ Atherton said from the doorway.

  ‘The wound is consistent with a right-handed suicidal cut,’ Freddie said. ‘And he was right-handed, by the look of it. See the writer’s bump on his right middle finger? Don’t see so many of those in this world of the word-processor, but in my day every school-kid had a whopper of a one. He must have been a nice old-fashioned sort who liked to write longhand,’ he finished regretfully, as though one fewer of those in the world was a real loss. ‘On the other hand, it could have been a homicidal cut by someone standing behind him. No way of saying.’

  ‘Doesn’t the lack of other superficial cuts suggest homicide?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘Not necessarily. I’ve known a homicide case where the murderer slashed away like a mad salami-slicer before he got through to the business parts. You never can tell. Deceased’s quite a tall man, though, by the looks. If it was a homicidal cut, you want a tallish murderer. Or a short one with his own set of steps.’

  ‘What about the weapon? There’s a knife over there,’ Slider said.

  Freddie turned and looked. ‘Yes. I’ll have a closer look when it’s been photographed, but from a cursory glance it’s certainly consistent with the wound, and there’s plenty of blood on it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Slider, frowning thoughtfully. Freddie looked up and met his eyes, and an intelligence passed between them.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Freddie said quietly, and reached for the corpse’s jacket. ‘Look here.’ Slider looked. ‘And here. You see what this is? Might be nothing, but—’

  ‘As you say,’ said Slider, ‘but. Well, if that’s all you can tell me for now,’ he went on, straightening, ‘I’d better strike while the iron’s hot.’

  Reinforcements were arriving all the time, and over Slider’s shoulder Freddie saw the photographer shoving his way to the front. ‘Ah, there you are, Sid. About time. I can’t do anything until you’ve recorded this little lot for posterity.’

  ‘Traffic’s bloody terrible,’ Sid grumbled. It was his usual mode of communication. ‘And no wonder, with every bloody copper in West London hanging around in here. Why don’t some of you lot go and do something useful for a change, and sort the bloody traffic out?’

  ‘That’s a new one,’ Atherton said mildly. ‘We generally get asked why we don’t solve murders instead of harassing motorists.’

  ‘Well come on, come on, let the dog see the rabbit,’ Sid hustled his way into the doorway. ‘Oh, bloody hell, it’s a wet one! If I’d known I was going to go bloody paddling, I’d have brought me bloody wellies. I suppose you want this lot in bloody colour? Who’s got the plastic shoes?’

  Slider left them to it, and eased himself away from
the door of the gents.

  ‘What next, guv?’ Atherton asked.

  ‘I want to talk to Miss Parsons,’ Slider said.

  ‘I don’t think you have any choice in the matter,’ Atherton murmured. ‘She’s determined to talk to you.’ He gestured with his head to where Fiona Parsons was lingering just to one side with her eyes fixed on Slider.

  ‘I’ll do her first, and then Philip Somers. And I want someone to talk to this Dorothy person, see if she can pin down some times. Oh, and see if you can get me a drink, will you?’

  ‘A drink drink?’

  ‘Some hope. What’s the coffee like in the machine?’

  ‘All right, if you don’t swallow,’ Atherton said.

  Atherton moved away, and Slider allowed himself to be waylaid by Fiona Parsons. ‘Do you have to leave him lying in there like that?’ she asked indignantly, looking towards the rest-room door. ‘I mean, in that place of all places. It seems so – unfeeling. Can’t he at least be put somewhere more, well, dignified?’

  ‘I’m afraid we can’t move him for the time being,’ Slider said gently. ‘It’s a matter of collecting evidence, you see. I really would like to have a word with you. Is there somewhere quiet nearby we can go and talk?’

  ‘There’s a dressing-room just along here,’ she said. ‘Will that do?’

  The dressing-room was small, windowless and bare, containing a padded bench fixed to the wall, a broad shelf with a mirror over it for a dressing-table, and a small table and hard chair. Fiona Parsons sat down on the bench, so Slider pulled out the chair and sat down facing her. It was no hardship to look at her. She was tall, athletic, and tanned, with a clear, freckled face and short, heavy fair hair cut in a bob and held off her face with a black velvet Alice band. She was wearing a severely cut, but very short-skirted pinstripe suit with three-quarter sleeves, over a plain white shirt with an open neck, from which her throat rose somehow fragile and vulnerable, encircled by a fine gold chain. Legs to rival Princess Di’s in the sheerest of hose and plain, flat-heeled shoes; the manly cuffs on her jacket contrasted with a delicate gold watch on one wrist and a narrow gold bracelet on the other. Everything about her was a mixture of the businesslike and the feminine, which Slider assumed was deliberate, but was nonetheless intriguing.