The Chemistry of Death dh-1

by Simon Beckett

  She quickly closed down the burst of hope she felt. It was too soon for that. She'd not even told Marcus that her period hadn't started. No point raising his hopes for nothing. She would give it a few more days, then take a test. That thought alone was enough to send a flutter of nerves through her stomach. Run, don't think, she told herself, firmly.

  The sun was coming up now, burnishing the sky directly ahead. The track ran along an embankment by the lake, cutting through reedbeds as it headed for a dark expanse of woods. Mist curled slowly on the water, as if it were about to combust. The sound of a fish jumping broke the silence with an invisible slap. She loved this. Loved summer, loved the landscape. Even though she'd been born here, she'd still been away to university, travelled abroad. But she'd always come back. God's own country, her dad always said. She didn't believe in God, not really, but she knew what he meant.

  She was coming to her favourite part of the run now. A path forked off into the woods, and Lyn followed it. She slowed her pace as the trees closed in overhead, closeting her in shadows. It was all too easy to trip over a root in the dim light. It had been a stumble over one of them that had made her pull the muscle in her leg, and she'd gone almost two months before she could run again.

  But the low sun was already starting to pierce the gloom, turning the canopy of leaves into a glowing latticework. The woodland here was ancient, a wilderness of creeper-strangled trunks and swampy, treacherous ground. Cutting through it was a warren of meandering paths that could lure the unwary into its depths. When they'd first moved into the house Lyn had made the mistake of exploring it during one of her morning runs. It had been hours before she'd emerged onto a familiar stretch by pure luck. Marcus had been frantic – and furious – when she'd finally made it back home. Since then she'd kept to the same path going both in and out.

  The halfway point for her six-mile route was a small clearing, in the centre of which was an old standing stone. It might have been part of a stone circle once, or just a gatepost. No-one knew any more. Overgrown with lichen and grass, its history and secrets were long forgotten. But it was a convenient marker, and Lyn had fallen into the habit of patting its rough surface before setting off back. The clearing wasn't far now, a few minutes at most. Breathing deeply but steadily, Lyn thought about breakfast to goad herself to run faster.

  She wasn't sure when the unease started. It was more a growing awareness, a subliminal itch that finally tipped into conscious thought. Suddenly, the woods seemed unnaturally quiet. Oppressive. The thud of her feet on the path sounded too loud in the stillness. She tried to ignore the feeling, but it persisted. Grew stronger. She fought the temptation to look around. What the hell was the matter with her? It wasn't as if she hadn't done this run most mornings for the past two years. She'd never been bothered before.

  But she was now. The back of her neck prickled, as though something was watching her. Don't be stupid, she told herself. But the urge to look back was growing. She kept her eyes on the path. The only other living thing she'd ever seen here was a deer. This didn't feel like a deer, though. That's because it isn't. It's nothing. Just your imagination. Your period's three days late and you're letting it get to you.

  The thought distracted her, but only briefly. She risked a quick glance, had time to see only dark branches and the path twisting out of sight before her foot stubbed against something. She stumbled, windmilling her arms for balance, heart thumping as she just managed to keep upright. Idiot! The clearing was just ahead of her now, an oasis of dappled sunbeams in the choked woodland. She put on an extra spurt of speed, slapped her hand onto the rough surface of the standing stone and quickly turned around.

  Nothing. Just the trees, shadowed and brooding.

  What did you expect? Pixies? But she didn't leave the clearing. There was no birdsong, no whisper of insects. The wood seemed to hold its breath in pensive silence. Lyn was suddenly afraid to break it, loath to leave the clearing's sanctuary and feel the trees close in around her again. So what are you going to do? Stay here all day?

  Without giving herself time to think, she pushed off from the stone again. Five minutes and she'd be back out in the open. Open fields, open water, open sky. She pictured it in her mind. The unease was still there, but less urgent. And the shadowy woods were growing lighter, the sun throwing its light ahead of her now. She began to relax, and that was when she saw something on the ground ahead of her.

  She stopped a few feet away. Splayed out on the centre of the path like an offering was a dead rabbit. No, not a rabbit. A hare, its soft fur matted with blood.

  It hadn't been there before.

  Lyn quickly looked around. But the trees offered no clue as to where it had come from. She stepped around it, then broke into a run again. A fox, she told herself, as she settled back into her rhythm. She must have disturbed it. But a fox wouldn't have left its prey behind, disturbed or not. And the hare didn't look as if it had been just dropped. The way it was laid out looked…

  Looked deliberate.

  That was stupid, though. She pushed the thought from her mind as she pounded down the path. And then she was out of the wood and back in the open, with the lake spread out before her. The anxiety she'd felt a few minutes before sloughed away, fading with every step. In the sunlight it seemed absurd. Embarrassing, even.

  Later, her husband Marcus would remember that the local news was on the radio as she came in. As he put bread in the toaster and chopped a banana he told Lyn that a body had been found only a few miles away. It must have sparked a connection, even then, because she told him about finding the dead hare. But she'd laughed about it, making a joke of how it had spooked her. As the bread popped out of the toaster the incident already seemed insignificant to both of them.

  When she came back from the shower, it wasn't mentioned again.

  5

  I was halfway through the morning surgery when Mackenzie arrived. Janice brought the news along with the next patient's notes. Her eyes were wide with intrigue.

  'There's a policeman here to see you. A Chief Inspector Mackenzie.'

  For some reason I wasn't surprised. I looked down at the patient's notes. Ann Benchley, an eighty-year-old woman with chronic arthritis. A regular.

  'How many more are there to see?' I asked, stalling.

  'Another three after this.'

  'Tell him I won't be long. And tell Mrs Benchley to come through.'

  She looked surprised, but said nothing. By now I doubted there was anyone in the village who didn't know that a body had been found the day before. But so far no-one seemed to have made the connection with Sally Palmer. I wondered how long it would stay that way.

  I pretended to study the notes until Janice had gone. I knew Mackenzie wouldn't have come unless it was important, and I doubted any of that morning's patients were urgent cases. I wasn't sure why I was keeping him waiting, other than a deep reluctance to hear whatever he had to say.

  I tried not to think what it might be as I saw my next patient. I looked sympathetic as Mrs Benchley displayed her gnarled hands, made the soothing and ultimately useless noises expected of me as I wrote her another prescription, and smiled vaguely as she hobbled out, satisfied. After that, though, I couldn't put it off any longer.

  'Send him in,' I told Janice.

  'He doesn't look very happy,' she warned me.

  No, Mackenzie didn't look very happy. There was an angry flush to his face, and his jaw jutted truculently.

  'Good of you to see me, Dr Hunter,' he said, his sarcasm barely concealed. He carried a leather folder. He held it on his lap as he sat down opposite me, uninvited.

  'What can I do for you, Inspector?'

  'Just a couple of points I'd like to clarify.'

  'Have you identified the body?'

  'Not yet.'

  He took out the packet of mints and popped one in his mouth. I waited. I'd known enough policemen not to be discomforted by the games they played.

  'I didn't think places like this were a
round any more. You know, small, family doctor, home visits, all that sort of thing,' he said, looking around. His eyes settled on the bookshelves. 'Lot of stuff on psychology, I see. That an interest of yours?'

  'They're not mine, they're my partner's.'

  'Ah. So how many patients do the two of you have?'

  I wondered where this was going. 'Five, six hundred altogether, perhaps.'

  'As many as that?'

  'It's a small village but a big area.'

  He nodded, as if this were just a normal conversation. 'Bit different to being a GP in a city.'

  'I suppose so.'

  'Miss London, do you?'

  I knew then what was coming. Again, no real surprise. Just a sense of a weight settling onto my shoulders. 'Perhaps you'd better tell me what you want.'

  'I did some research after we spoke yesterday. My being a policeman and all.' He gave me a cool stare. 'You've an impressive CV, Dr Hunter. Not the sort of thing you'd imagine for a village GP.'

  Unzipping the folder, he made a show of leafing through the papers in it. 'Took your medical certificate then switched to a PhD in anthropological science. Quite a high-flier, according to this. Followed that with a stint in the States at the University of Tennessee before coming back to the UK as a specialist in forensic anthropology.'

  He cocked his head. 'You know, I wasn't even sure what forensic anthropology was, and I've been a policeman for nearly twenty years. I could manage the "forensic" bit, of course. But anthropology? I always thought that was studying old bones. Bit like archaeology. Shows how things can slip by you.'

  'I don't like to rush you, but I've got patients waiting.'

  'Oh, I won't take any longer than I have to. But while I was on the internet I also found some papers you'd written. Interesting titles.' He picked up a sheet of paper. ' "The Role of Entomology in Time-Since-Death Analysis". "The Chemistry of Human Decomposition".'

  He lowered the paper. 'Pretty specialist stuff. So I phoned a friend of mine in London. He's an inspector with the Met. Turned out he'd heard of you. Surprise, surprise, it looks like you've worked as a consultant for various police forces on quite a few murder investigations. England, Scotland, even Northern Ireland. My contact said you were one of the few registered forensic anthropologists in the country. Worked on mass graves in Iraq, Bosnia, the Congo. You name it. According to him you were pretty much the expert when it came to human remains. Not just identifying them, but how long they'd been dead, what they'd died of. He said you picked up where pathologists left off.'

  'Is there a point to this?'

  'The point is I can't help but wonder why you didn't mention any of this yesterday. When you knew we'd found a body, when you found evidence it could be a local woman, when you knew we would want to identify who it was as soon as bloody possible.' He kept his voice level, though his face had grown redder than ever. 'My friend at the Met thought it was highly amusing. Here am I, the senior investigating officer of a murder inquiry, with one of the country's leading forensic experts in front of me pretending to be a GP'

  I didn't let the fact he'd finally called it a murder distract me. 'I am a GP.'

  'But that's not all you are, is it? So why the big secret?'

  'Because what I used to do doesn't matter. I'm a doctor now.'

  Mackenzie was studying me as if trying to decide if I was joking or not. 'I made some other phone calls after that one. I know that you've only been practising as a GP for three years. Packed in forensic anthropology and came out here after your wife and daughter died in a car crash. Drink-driver in the other car survived unhurt.'

  I sat very still. Mackenzie had the grace to look uncomfortable. 'I don't want to open old wounds. Perhaps if you'd been straight with me yesterday I wouldn't have had to. But the bottom line is we need your help.'

  I knew he wanted me to ask how, but I didn't. He went on anyway.

  'The condition of the body's making it difficult to identify. We know it's female, but that's all. And until we've got an ID we're pretty much hamstrung. We can't start a proper murder investigation unless we know for certain who the victim is.'

  I found myself speaking. 'You said "for certain". You're already pretty sure, aren't you?'

  'We still haven't been able to trace Sally Palmer.'

  It was only what I'd been expecting, but it still shook me to hear it confirmed.

  'Several people remember seeing her at the pub barbecue, but so far we haven't found anyone who can recall seeing her since,' Mackenzie continued. 'That's nearly a fortnight ago. We've taken DNA samples from the body and the house, but it'll be a week before we get any results.'

  'What about fingerprints?'

  'Not a chance. We can't say yet if that's down to decomposition or if they've been deliberately removed.'

  'Dental records, then.'

  He shook his head. 'There aren't enough teeth left to get a match.'

  'Someone broke them?'

  'You could say that. Could have been done deliberately to prevent us identifying the body, or just a by-product of the injuries. We don't know yet.'

  I rubbed my eyes. 'So it's definitely murder?'

  'Oh, she was murdered, right enough,' he said, grimly. 'The body's too badly decomposed to know if she was sexually abused as well, but the assumption is that she probably was. And then somebody killed her.'

  'How?'

  Without answering, he took a large envelope from the folder and dropped it on the desk. The shiny edges of photographs peeped out. My hand was reaching for them before I realized what I was doing.

  I pushed the envelope away. 'No thanks.'

  'I thought you might want to see for yourself.'

  'I've already told you I can't help.'

  'Can't or won't?'

  I shook my head. 'I'm sorry.'

  He regarded me for a moment longer, then abruptly stood up. 'Thank you for your time, Dr Hunter.' His voice was cold.

  'You've forgotten this.' I held out the envelope.

  'Keep it. You might want to look at them later.'

  He went out. I still had the envelope in my hand. All I had to do was slide out the photographs. Instead I opened a drawer and dropped it inside. I closed the drawer and told Janice to send in the next patient.

  But the envelope's presence stayed with me for the rest of the morning. I could feel its tug throughout every conversation, each examination. After the last patient had closed the door I tried to distract myself by writing up his notes. Those finished, I went and stared out of the French doors. Two home visits, and then I had the afternoon to myself. If there had been a breath of wind I could have taken the dinghy out on the lake. But as it was I'd only be as becalmed on the water as I felt now, on dry land.

  I'd felt curiously numb as Mackenzie had dredged up my past. He might have been talking about someone else. And in a way he was. It was a different David Hunter who had immersed himself in the arcane chemistry of death, seen the end product of countless incidents of violence, accident and nature combined. I'd looked on the skull beneath the skin as a matter of course, priding myself on knowledge that few other people were even aware existed. What happened to the human body when life had left it held little mystery for me. I was intimate with decay in all its forms, could chart its progress depending on the weather, the soil, the time of year. Grim, yes, but necessary. And I took a magician's satisfaction in identifying when, how, who. That these were individuals I was dealing with I never forgot. But only in an abstract sense; I knew these strangers only in death, not in life.

  And then the two people I cherished more than anything else in this world had been snatched from me. My wife and daughter, snuffed out in an instant by a drunk who had walked away from the crash unscathed. Kara and Alice, both transformed in a moment from living, vital individuals to dead organic matter. And I knew – I knew – exactly what physical metamorphosis they would be undergoing, almost to the hour. But that failed to answer the single question that had come to obsess me, and to which
all my knowledge couldn't even begin to find an answer. Where were they? What had happened to the life that had been within them? How could all that animation, that spirit, simply cease to exist?

  I didn't know. And that not knowing was more than I could bear. My colleagues and friends were understanding, but I hardly noticed. I would have gladly plunged myself into my work, except that was a constant reminder of what I'd lost, and the questions I couldn't answer.

  And so I ran. Turned my back on everything I'd known, relearned my old medical training and hid away out here, miles from anywhere. Given myself, if not a life, exactly, then a new career. One that dealt with the living rather than the dead, where I could at least try to delay that final transformation, even if I was no closer to understanding it. And it had worked.

  Until now.

  I went to my desk and opened the drawer. I took out the photographs, keeping them face down. I would look, then give them back to Mackenzie. I still wasn't committing to anything, I rationalized, and turned them over.

  I hadn't known how I'd feel, but what I hadn't banked on was the familiarity of it all. Not so much because of what the images showed – God knows that was shocking enough. But the fact of looking at them was like taking a step back in time. Without even realizing it, I began studying them for what they might tell me.

  There were six photographs, taken from different angles and viewpoints. I leafed through them quickly, then went back to the start and looked at each one again in more detail. The body was naked and lying face down, arms stretched out above it as though it were in the act of taking a dive into the long stalks of marsh grass. It was impossible to tell its sex from the photographs. The darkened skin hung off the body like badly fitting leather, but that wasn't what caught the eye. Sam had been right. He'd said that the body had wings, and so it had. Two deep cuts had been sliced into the flesh either side of the spine.