‘What makes you say that?’ Rowley wondered.
‘Makes me say what?’
‘That she was making it up.’
‘I should have thought it was obvious. A woman with a suite in the Royal Vic – which means a woman with a lot of money – isn’t going to waste her time in a musty old library, is she? And even if that is how she gets her kicks – because I do accept that there are some bloody funny folk about – there must be places like that in America, so why would she bother coming over here?’
‘Maybe she was doing research into her ancestors,’ Rowley suggested. ‘That’s the sort of thing Yanks do.’
‘And maybe, like I said, this Miss Dobson just wanted a bit of glamour in her life,’ Simcox countered, confidently unyielding.
‘Even so, I wouldn’t have taken the chance myself,’ Rowley said, ‘because if she is telling the truth, and he finds out you knew and didn’t pass it on, Shagger Beresford will have your balls for breakfast.’
A picture of the victim appeared on the screen.
‘This woman, believed to be called Mary Edwards, was found dead in a Whitebridge hotel yesterday,’ said the newsreader’s voice. ‘Anyone who has information on her whereabouts and activities in the last two weeks should contact the police immediately, at the number showing on the screen.’
‘They’ve changed the message since they first broadcast it this morning,’ Simcox said, suddenly sounding vaguely troubled.
‘No, they haven’t,’ Rowley disagreed. ‘It’s exactly the same as it’s always been.’
‘There were more details this morning,’ Simcox said, now with a hint of desperation entering his voice.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Rowley said firmly. ‘All details have been kept to an absolute minimum. Like DI Beresford said, it’s one of the ways we have of judging from the start whether the caller actually knows anything. It’s all there in your script.’
‘Oh shit!’ Simcox said. He put his pint down on the counter, almost untouched. ‘I have to go.’
‘We’re due back in the incident room in ten minutes,’ Rowley reminded him, ‘and if you’re not there, DS Yates will skin you alive when you do turn up.’
‘That’s nothing to what will happen if I don’t get down to the library right away,’ Simcox said, heading for the door.
On the map, it looked as if the mortuary shared a site with the Whitebridge General Hospital, but due to the actions of a thoughtful town council in the sixties, they were now separated by a line of trees, so that while they were not exactly two separate worlds – how could they be, when the less fortunate of the hospital’s patients continued to make the one-way journey from warm bed to cold slab? – they were at least distinct from each other.
Once upon a time, Monika Paniatowski had regarded the mortuary as nothing more than a very ugly building – a swollen concrete carbuncle in fact – that her friend, Dr Shastri, was strangely fond of.
All that had changed the morning after the rape, when she had gone there so that Shastri – the only medic she could trust with her secret – could examine her and assess the damage.
Now whenever she entered the mortuary, it was like entering a time machine, and she had no sooner crossed the threshold than she was back in the woods, lying in the damp earth and being violated.
She did not have to go there.
She realised that.
She could easily have sent one of her minions instead.
Yet she continued to visit the mortuary herself – continued to step inside the nightmare time machine – because not to have done it would have been to accept that the rapists had won and her life had lost.
On this visit, she found Shastri in her office, looking, if not troubled, then at least puzzled. ‘I am finding the inside of my latest guest’s head a little perplexing, Monika,’ Dr Shastri admitted. ‘What happened to her may not be as straightforward as it at first appeared.’
‘Are you saying that she wasn’t killed by the poker after all?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘No, it was undoubtedly the poker – or some other metal bar – which dealt the fatal blow.’
‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘There had been further damage to the brain that I have not yet been able to account for.’
‘Could you explain that?’
‘Certainly. The blow which killed her was an almost horizontal one, but there is a second contusion – a diagonal one – which runs from near the top of the right-hand side of the frontal lobe to near the bottom of the left-hand side.’
‘Did the poker do that, too?’
‘No, that’s what makes it so interesting. The pattern of the damage is entirely different.’
‘So what weapon was used?’
‘There you have me,’ Shastri said. ‘Since the damage is nowhere near as extreme, I would have to say that this weapon was not as hard.’
Paniatowski pictured the murderer standing there – facing Mary – with the poker in one hand and something else – as yet unknown – in the other. Not only would he have looked slightly ridiculous, but it would have been awkward for him, because few people are ambidextrous enough to wield a weapon in each hand. Besides, a second weapon would have been unnecessary – the poker alone was enough to rob the poor woman of her life.
‘You are wondering why he needed two weapons,’ Shastri said.
Paniatowski grinned. ‘I hate it when you can read my mind,’ she told the doctor.
‘The truth is, Monika, that I cannot say, with any degree of certainty, that the first injury – the diagonal one – was even the result of an attack.’
‘Are you saying it could have been an accident?’
‘Absolutely. She might, for instance, have tripped, and fallen against a shelf. If that shelf had had a rounded edge – as many do, for safety’s sake – it would have left just such an impression as we see here.’
‘But since the two blows were delivered at the same time, then surely …’
‘Ah, but, you see, we cannot say for certain that they were. The brain had not had time to begin repairing itself, so it is possible that the blows were simultaneous. On the other hand, the first blow could have been at least several hours old when Miss Edwards died.’
Great, Paniatowski thought. Bloody great!
‘How much damage would the first blow have done?’ she asked.
‘Again, I am unable to give you a clear-cut answer. It may have rendered her unconscious, or it may have just given her a headache. In cases like this, each individual is different, and, of course, chance always plays a part.’
Paniatowski took out her packet of cigarettes, then, remembering that the taste of formaldehyde did little to enhance the smoking experience, she put them away again.
She had already ruled out the idea that the murderer had two weapons in his hands when he killed Mary, but had he been responsible for the diagonal injury?
No – because if he had hit Mary earlier, she would not have just stood there while he waved the poker in her face.
‘You are quite right, Monika,’ Shastri said. ‘Though my scientific training tells me that I can reach no firm conclusion, my common sense tells me that the first injury was accidental.’
‘You’re doing it again,’ Paniatowski told her.
The woman behind the desk at the Whitebridge central library was around twenty-five years’ old. She had blonde hair and a firm bosom, and even though they weren’t visible below the desk, anyone looking at her would have known instinctively that she had a pretty sensational pair of legs.
But sensational legs were – for once – the last thing on DC Simcox’s mind, as he burst into the library, having run all the way from the pub.
‘I need … I need to speak to Miss Dobson,’ he gasped. ‘Is she in?’
The blonde smiled.
‘I’m Miss Dobson,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’
She was Miss Dobson? She couldn’t be! Yet she seemed to have the same voice
as the woman who’d rung the incident room.
‘I’m DC Mark Simcox,’ he said. ‘If you remember, we spoke earlier this morning.’
The smile froze, and then drained completely away.
‘I spoke to someone,’ Miss Dobson said, ‘but I don’t know whether it was you or not, because whoever it was didn’t have the common courtesy to tell me his name.’
‘I’m … I’m sorry about that,’ he said.
And he was thinking, Why didn’t I believe her? Why didn’t I pick up on the fact that if she knew the victim was American, she must have actually met her – because one of the details that had been held back had been her nationality?
‘The thing is, Miss Dobson, I should have reported your phone call, and I didn’t,’ Simcox confessed.
‘And why was that?’
Why was that – a very good question to which the truth was the worst possible answer.
‘Straight after your call, I got another one from a woman who was threatening to kill herself,’ Simcox lied. ‘She was serious – I could tell she was serious – and I knew that if I put the phone down, she’d really do it. So I kept talking to her. I must have been on the phone for nearly an hour, but by the time she rang off, she was really sounding much better.’
He saw with relief that Miss Dobson was smiling again.
‘So you’re a bit of a hero,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ he protested.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘neither would I.’
‘The thing is, when I do report what you’ve told me, my inspector will want to know why it took me so long,’ Simcox said.
‘Yes, I expect he will.’
‘And since an hour or two isn’t going to make much of a difference to the progress—’
‘It’s more like three hours since I called you.’
‘Isn’t going to make much of a difference to the progress of the investigation, I was wondering if I could ask you to say that you didn’t actually phone until much later.’
‘I don’t want to get in trouble myself,’ Miss Dobson mused.
‘You won’t. I swear you won’t.’
‘Well, since you’ve spent the morning doing a good deed, I suppose there’ll be no harm in me stretching the truth for once,’ Miss Dobson said.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Simcox said, with relief. ‘Well, I’d … uh …’ He started to back away from the counter. ‘They’ll be expecting me in the incident room.’
Miss Dobson’s smile broadened. ‘I’m sure they will,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they’d be quite lost without you.’
As Simcox made his way down the library steps, he was starting to feel better. By his quick thinking, he had managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, he told himself.
God, he was good in a crisis!
Back inside the library, Miss Dobson was wondering whether or not she’d done the right thing. Simcox obviously wasn’t a very good policeman, and the sooner he and his superiors realised that, the better all round. On the other hand, he had looked so pathetic, and refusing to do what he wanted would have been a little like sticking a hat pin in the paw of a small sick puppy.
The first thing that George Clegg became aware of when he came round was the cold, which had wrapped itself around him in an icy shroud, chilling his bones and making the tips of his fingers tingle.
The second thing was that he was sprawled in his old familiar armchair, in front of a fire which had long since burnt itself out.
How long had he been there?
How much time had passed since he’d seen the young woman’s picture in the newspaper, and understood that something dreadful – something almost unimaginable – had happened?
The discomfort was still there in his chest, but he was going to have to learn to ignore it, because there was something vital he had to do.
Slowly and painfully, he eased himself out of the chair and made his way shakily to the front door.
When he stepped outside, he realised immediately how bitterly cold the air was, but he did not go back into the house for his heavy overcoat, because that would have taken too much time – and anyway, he was not sure he could summon up the strength for all the twisting and turning that would be required to put the coat on.
The street was deserted, and there was no smoke coming out of the chimneys of any of the houses.
In the past, he had considered himself very lucky to be surrounded by neighbours who were thoroughly decent people – people who wanted nothing from the state, as he hadn’t when he’d been younger, and expected to work for what they had.
Now, he wished there had been at least a few scroungers living on the street, because even scroungers, on seeing the shape he was in, would have helped him – even scroungers would have made sure that, even if he could not deliver it himself, the police would get his vitally important message.
He could see the bright red telephone box – almost like a beacon – at the end of the road.
A few years earlier – perhaps even as little as twelve months earlier – it would not have seemed very far away at all.
But things were different now. Ellie’s death had robbed him of his vitality. It was as if his body, responding to his grief, had begun to shut down. And that phone box – though it could not have been more than a hundred yards away – seemed as distant as Tibet.
He took a deep breath, tried not to think about the ever-tightening band of pain around his chest, and took a tentative step towards the box.
He did not notice the black ice until he stepped on it, and by then it was too late.
He felt his legs fly from under him, and then the jarring of his spine as it made contact with the hard pavement.
JOURNAL
You simply can’t buy a copy of the New York Times Review of Books in Whitebridge.
It’s no loss. The Review is staffed by loathsome creatures with college degrees and a serious humanity deficit. They are like those men in bars who watch women come in, then turn to their friends and say, ‘Jeez, I wouldn’t date her – she’s a dog.’ And it doesn’t ever occur to these pot-bellied drinkers that while the women they’re dismissing so easily are not exactly Jane Fonda, the face that greets them in the shaving mirror each morning would make Woody Allen look like a real hunk.
Critics! They are slavering beasts who sink their teeth into a living thing and tear it to shreds. They are wreckers who send their sledgehammers smashing into the cornerstones of delicate structures that other – more worthy souls – have put their hearts into.
People change, and situations change, and, in twelve months’ time, I might have quite a different opinion of the yellow-teethed rodents who inhabit the Times Tower. I doubt it, but I suppose it is a slim possibility.
In the meantime, rats are rats, and I want nothing to do with them.
Question: if all the above is true, then why did I spend the entire morning scouring every newsagents in Whitebridge for a copy of the Review?
SIX
The team had ordered a late lunch of sandwiches from the Royal Vic’s justly famous kitchen, and sat eating them at a table in the corner of the incident room. Paniatowski had chosen roast pork, Crane had plumped for Bavarian ham, and Beresford had asked for a corned beef sandwich in which both the bread and the corned beef must be thickly sliced. Meadows, always one to do things differently, had gone to the kitchen to prepare her own sandwich, and so far none of the others had plucked up the nerve to ask her exactly what was in it.
‘The first thing I want to deal with is the tattoo, so that we can get it out of the way,’ Paniatowski said. ‘If you remember, I saw it as a possible way of finding out which state Mary was from, but it turns out that the expert thinks it’s a butterfly that only lives in Lancashire and Cumbria. So either the expert’s mistaken – which is more than possible, considering it was only a tattoo he was working with – or her family originally came from Lancashire, and she had it done as a reminder of her roots. But I don’t real
ly see how that helps us, either.’
‘Can I say something, boss?’ Crane asked.
‘Of course, Jack.’
‘It could be there as a reminder of her roots, but it could also be the symbol of a promise that she made to herself.’
‘What kind of promise?’
‘That one day she’d make the journey – the pilgrimage, if you want to call it that – to Whitebridge. There are lots of similar examples in literature, and—’
‘Oh, come on now, Jack,’ Beresford said. ‘This isn’t literature, lad – it’s real life.’
‘The thing you don’t seem to appreciate, sir, is that literature isn’t something that’s totally distinct from real life,’ Crane countered. ‘On the contrary, it both draws on real life and influences it.’
‘I’m sure that theory would go down very well with your clever mates in Oxford …’ Beresford began.
Then he noticed that Paniatowski was glaring at him, and dried up.
‘You may be right, Jack,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Possibly she had been planning to come to Whitebridge for a long time – and possibly the tattoo was a symbol of her commitment. But I don’t see how, for the moment at least, that contributes anything to the investigation. Do you see a way in which it might?’
‘No, boss, I don’t,’ Crane admitted.
Paniatowski turned to Beresford. ‘So what have your lads come up with, Colin?’
‘We still have a lot of Mary’s time in Whitebridge unaccounted for,’ Beresford confessed, ‘but we are making progress. We’ve talked to all the shop assistants who sold Mary her clothes …’
‘How can you be sure you’ve spoken to all of them?’
‘Because we’ve matched all the clothes hanging in the bedroom closet with the assistants who sold them to Mary.’
‘Fair enough. Carry on.’
‘One of the assistants wondered why anyone who dressed so nicely would want to buy any of the tat that her shop had on offer – she didn’t phrase it quite like that, of course, but it’s what she meant. The other assistants didn’t make any comment on how she was dressed, so I think we can assume she only bought one Mousy Mary outfit wearing her Model Mary clothes, and she did the rest of her shopping wearing that.’
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