Monkey Puzzle

by Paula Gosling

  He was feeling the gas now.

  The stink was in his nose and throat, his brain singing and his stomach bitter. There – a dark shape huddled before the open door of an old gas oven, and from within a steady hiss. Cursing and choking, Stryker turned all the knobs until the hissing stopped, then tried the one window. Stuck.

  He picked up a saucepan sitting on top of the cooker. Glass, pan, water and peeled potatoes flew out and down on to a small garden below. The wind came in bringing snow. Fair trade, Stryker thought blearily – snow for potatoes – and he knew he was close to going under.

  He grasped the slumped figure under the arms to drag it out through the living-room to the hall. The old man was surprisingly light, but even so he fell twice with his burden. He was nearly to the door when the first uniformed cop appeared.

  A few whiffs of oxygen cleared Stryker’s head, but it took some time for his heart to settle down, and his lungs sulked painfully. The paramedic who’d arrived with the ambulance was using a respirator on Pinchman, whose face was losing the rosy flush of asphyxiation.

  ‘Will he make it?’ Stryker asked, leaning against the wall.

  ‘He might,’ the paramedic said. ‘We can be real insistent about it when we want to be. Suicide, was it?’

  ‘Head in the oven.’

  ‘Ah, the old ways are still the good ways,’ the paramedic said, cynically. Five minutes later they wheeled Pinchman away and Stryker went back into the apartment. The note was in the typewriter on the desk under the window:

  I can’t face living any more. I killed Aiken Adamson.

  I hope we don’t meet in Hell.

  Edward Pinchman

  Poor old bastard, Stryker thought.

  He looked around the room. The smell of gas was nearly gone, and the room looked as if nothing had happened there. Nothing at all. He flicked the wall switch, and the lamps came on, pooling soft yellow light on to the worn wood and upholstery of the big old chairs. Pinchman’s crutches leaned against one of them. His books lined the walls with a lifetime of reading, his pipe rested beside an empty coffee cup on a nearby table, his desk with its pile of blank typing paper looked ready for work.

  Only the man was missing. Gone with an escort of sirens through the white world of the streets to the white world of the hospital. They’d try hard to bring him back, Stryker thought, but maybe we should have let him go. Maybe he was one of those who had really wanted to leave.

  He sighed and turned towards the hall. Outside the broken door a uniformed officer from the black and white that had answered the call stood waiting for his orders.

  ‘Close the windows, get the door back up, and then seal it,’ Stryker said, abruptly.

  ‘You mean lock up?’

  ‘I mean seal it. I’m coming back and I want everything exactly the way it is, now.’

  The patrolman watched Stryker bouncing down the hall and scowled. What the hell? Locking up was one thing, officially sealing was another. He looked into the apartment. The old man had tried to kill himself, right? He’d written a note, stuck his head in the oven, turned on the gas. It was as plain as the nose on your face.

  Wasn’t it?

  SEVENTEEN

  The others were waiting for him at the Mortuary.

  ‘Hey, it looks like you’re in the right place,’ Neilson said, when he saw Stryker’s dishevelled clothing and white face. ‘They got a slab waiting for you.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Tos asked, anxiously

  Neilson and Pinsky looked at one another. ‘Aww,’ Neilson said, sympathetically. ‘Him doesn’t feel good.’

  ‘Shame,’ Pinsky agreed.

  ‘Knock it off goddammit!’ Stryker said, half-laughing. ‘I got a dose of gas, that’s all. I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine,’ Tos said, severely.

  ‘You look lousy,’ Neilson agreed.

  ‘Lousy,’ Pinsky echoed. ‘Really bad.’

  Stryker looked up. ‘You don’t look so hot yourself.’

  Pinsky instantly began to worry. ‘I feel okay,’ he said, defensively. ‘What do you mean, I don’t look good?’

  ‘I didn’t say you didn’t look good, I said you didn’t look so hot, which is hardly surprising as it’s goddamn cold in here,’ Stryker said.

  ‘Whadya mean, gas?’ Neilson asked, suddenly.

  Stryker looked at him approvingly ‘So, what do you know, somebody around here has ears.’ Neilson looked smug.

  Quickly, he told them what had happened. ‘Has Bannerman started?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Neilson said. ‘He said he has a waiting list, people are just dying to get on it.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Pinsky moaned. ‘I was waiting for that.’

  They came into the long room in single file. The smell of formaldehyde didn’t quite mask the throat-catching odour of decayed blood and death. Neilson went a little pale.

  Ahead, at the far end of the room, Bannerman – almost obscured by his swaddling clothes of surgical smock, red rubber apron, cap, gloves and big rubber boots – turned at the sound of their hard heels on the tiled floor. ‘About time.’

  He turned back to the shape on the guttered metal table. Beside him was a trolley laid out with bistouries and scalpels, bone saws, surgical drills, containers for samples, and the rest of his paraphernalia.

  The whine of the electric bone saw began again, and they saw that he had progressed to the head. His assistant delicately inserted the suction pipe to clear away the blood and other liquids.

  Adamson’s body lay naked and mutilated under the strong light. Neilson, after one quick and horrified look, concentrated on the face of Bannerman’s assistant. He was startled to see she was a girl in her twenties, and quite pretty. She was intent on her grisly work, her face blank with concentration. Only the reddish curls escaping from under her cap and the long sweep of her eyelashes proclaimed the woman within. Neilson was both repelled and fascinated to find loveliness amid such gore. She seemed totally unmoved by the brutal laying open from throat to groin of an elderly man. Adamson’s internal organs had already been removed and were in jars along the trolley, neatly labelled for later examinations and tests.

  ‘Damn,’ Bannerman said, and put down the bone saw to strip off a torn rubber glove. ‘Bone fragment.’ He washed his hands, powdered them, and thrust them into fresh gloves. As he came back past the foot of the table, he reached out and pinched one of the dead man’s toes.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ Stryker asked, expecting some technical explanation.

  ‘Do what?’ Bannerman asked, absently, retrieving the bone saw from where he’d laid it casually on Adamson’s shoulder.

  ‘Tweak his toe. I’ve seen you do it lots of times during a PM. Does it tell you about muscle tone or . . .’

  Bannerman looked affronted. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Pinsky put in. ‘You do it every time.’

  Bannerman stared at them, then at his assistant, who nodded solemnly, her eyes twinkling. ‘I didn’t even realise I did it!’ he said, slowly. There was a silence and then he cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. ‘I suppose it’s a kind of . . . gesture of affection.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘A what?’ Stryker finally managed.

  ‘A gesture of affection, he said,’ Pinsky offered, helpfully.

  Bannerman eyed them warily, waiting for the attack. Stryker and Neilson both opened their mouths to speak, caught the assistant’s eye, and thought better of it.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Stryker said in a strangled voice.

  ‘I suppose you think it’s funny,’ Bannerman said, belligerently. ‘Did it ever occur to you – ’

  ‘Have you measured that dent in his head?’ Stryker asked, quickly. He liked Bannerman, he didn’t want to hassle him.

  ‘Just coming t
o it now,’ Bannerman growled, and flicked the bone saw into life again to resume cutting. ‘It was long and round in cross-section – like a lead pipe, maybe.’

  ‘I suggest that Miss Scarlet did it in the library with the lead pipe,’ Neilson said to the assistant. She started to grin, then turned it off, quickly. Neilson was enchanted to have even got through to her.

  ‘Did it have to be heavy, this pipe? Have to be lead, for instance?’

  ‘No. We’ve taken some skin scrapings . . .’ Bannerman put aside the saw and eased his fingers into the opening in the skull. He pried at the brain, the grey-white mass slippery in its meningeal layers. ‘Ah – I suspected this when the bone started to fragment. Take a look.’

  Stryker edged forward, gingerly. ‘That clot?’

  Bannerman nodded. ‘The killer should have been content with the bash on the head. That’s a huge sub-dural haematoma – it would have killed Adamson before morning if he’d been left alone. No need to stab him at all. Of course, that didn’t show so the killer couldn’t have known. If he had, he might have gotten away with making it look like an accident.

  The edge of the desk was rounded and it was metal – if Adamson had slipped he could have hit his head on it and . . .’

  ‘Maybe that’s what happened,’ Neilson said.

  ‘According to the reports, the desk was rolled steel with a plastic coating,’ the assistant said, in a soft voice. ‘The scrapings from the scalp showed . . .’

  ‘Aluminium,’ Stryker said. She looked at him in surprise.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’ve just come from the apartment of a man who is a double amputee and walks with aluminium crutches,’ Stryker told Bannerman. ‘Could he have hit Adamson and made a dent like that?’

  Bannerman shrugged. ‘The kind of crutches that lock over the wrists and forearms?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Bannerman thought about it. ‘Double amputee for how long? How old a man?’

  ‘About sixty-five, but . . .’

  ‘Been crippled for twenty years,’ Pinsky said. ‘I asked.’

  ‘So he’s built up the muscles in his arms considerably,’ Bannerman mused. ‘Yes – as far as force is concerned, it’s possible. The blow needn’t have been all that hard because Adamson’s skull is on the thin side – hence the degree of trauma.’

  ‘But Pinchman would have fallen over, if he’d swung a crutch off the ground,’ Neilson objected.

  ‘Maybe,’ Bannerman agreed. ‘Unless he leaned against something.’

  ‘He could have leaned on the desk,’ Pinsky suggested.

  ‘Why don’t you take him in for questioning?’ Bannerman said.

  ‘Because he’s already in the hospital,’ Stryker said. ‘He tried to gas himself.’

  ‘Did he leave a note?’ Bannerman asked.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Confessed to it.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ Bannerman said, turning back to Adamson’s body. ‘He knocked him out. Then – not realising he’d die anyway – he finished him off with his own paper knife. Did he say why he’d done it? In the note?’

  ‘Adamson was a vicious man with a vicious tongue.’

  ‘And disabilities can build up one hell of a frustration load,’ Bannerman said. ‘One word too many . . . you can see how it could happen. It would explain the frenzy of the attack and the difficulty in pulling the knife out of the breastbone . . . he’d have been kneeling or even sitting on the floor beside the body . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I get the picture,’ Stryker agreed. ‘It fits.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  Stryker shrugged. ‘Any other little revelations you can give me about him?’ He nodded towards Adamson’s hollow carcass.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Bannerman said, over his shoulder. ‘His heart was in good shape – he might have lived another twenty years.’ He sounded regretful, as if it had been his fault this one had gotten away.

  ‘Okay, thanks.’ Stryker started for the door.

  Over the clink of the instruments, Bannerman spoke again. ‘What about the insulin?’

  Stryker froze in mid-step. Pinsky banged into him from behind, deflecting Neilson into the sharp corner of an empty metal table. Neilson swore under his breath, and rubbed his hip.

  Stryker turned slowly. ‘Insulin?’ he asked, thinly.

  ‘Insulin,’ Bannerman repeated, barely suppressed joy in his voice. ‘Adamson was a diabetic. They found an injection kit and a box of insulin ampoules in his desk, presumably an emergency supply in case he had to work late, as he did on Friday. Something about the ampoules must have bothered somebody, because . . .’

  ‘Me,’ Pinsky said.

  Bannerman nodded. ‘Because they were put through for analysis.’

  ‘My dad’s a diabetic,’ Pinsky went on. ‘He uses it. It didn’t move right – in the bottles. Too thin.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me this,’ Stryker said to Pinsky.

  ‘I didn’t know, I only asked for them to check, I didn’t know for sure, did I?’ Pinsky said, defensively. ‘It was only a feeling I had.’

  ‘Ah,’ Tos said.

  ‘Four of the ampoules contained tap water,’ Bannerman said, reaching for a container to take yet another sample from the ravaged carcass. ‘We did a blood check earlier today. It was dangerously hypoglycaemic. If this poor bastard hadn’t been hit in the head and stabbed, he just might have died in a diabetic coma. Now – do you figure the substitution was made by the one who hit and stabbed him – or someone else altogether?’

  ‘You bastard,’ Stryker said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  Bannerman’s chuckle echoed off the tiled walls. ‘You didn’t ask me.’

  When they got back to the station Stryker put in a call to the hospital. Pinchman was still alive – but only because someone had noticed a residue on his tongue. Apparently not content with gas, he’d also given himself a big overdose of barbiturates. He was in a coma. They didn’t hold out much hope for him, but said he was tough. Maybe. Maybe.

  Stryker put down the phone. ‘Tomorrow morning I want to go over Pinchman’s place with a fine-tooth comb,’ he said to Tos.

  ‘What for?’ Neilson piped up from his desk.

  ‘I don’t know. Something.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘Humour me, I’m in a delicate state,’ Stryker said, wearily. ‘And before you say it, I’ll say it. I’m going home to bed.’

  ‘About time,’ Tos said. ‘You want me to drive you?’

  Stryker looked at him. ‘You’re already driving me crazy, so why add to the effort? I’m fine, thanks.’

  They watched him go out of the room, then looked at one another. ‘How come he wants to go over Pinchman’s place?’ Neilson asked. ‘What’s to find there?’

  ‘He hates to let go before he knows it all,’ Tos said, angrily. ‘He hangs on to a case like a fat woman hangs on to her last doughnut. Has to finish up every damn crumb on the plate.’

  ‘Hey, listen,’ Pinsky said, suddenly. ‘He’s whistling.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Toscarelli groaned.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Neilson asked.

  ‘Trouble,’ Toscarelli said. ‘Probably for us.’

  It was still snowing, but lightly. The silence gave some grace to the city, and Stryker went through the back streets slowly, making the first tracks in some of them, hearing the groan of the snow as it packed beneath his tyres. The snow had drifted, softening the lines where edge met edge, and against every lamp-post, every post box, every building and kerb, giving them each a soft, flowing outline.

  He loved the city like this, hushed and briefly suspended in its headlong run to destruction, mantled with a transient beauty that hid all the dirt and slowed all the hate. In two miles he passed only four cars, and the drivers smiled as they edged past o
ne another in the rutted, twinkling streets. The snow made them momentary partners in adversity, witnesses of that fleeting moment in time when nobody had spoiled anything. Yet.

  He didn’t have much chance at beauty, these days.

  He tried not to think of anything except what he saw or felt, the whiteness and the shadows, the chill touch of an occasional flake from the open window against his cheek, an icy kiss from the night. In a bubble he moved from place to place, taking an hour to drive what normally took him ten minutes, crossing and re-crossing his own tracks, breathing slowly, keeping very still.

  Pretending.

  He arrived home, parked the car, and went into the apartment. He looked at the freezer, thought about eating, decided against it, and went to bed. In the warm and comfortable dark, he relaxed his body and waited for sleep to come.

  It did not.

  EIGHTEEN

  The suicide attempt of Edward Pinchman was the topic of conversation in the Security Office when the Guard reported in before going over to the Library. He listened, made the right sounds – surprise, dismay, regret, shock, sympathy – and inwardly cursed his own impatience. He should have realised the old guy was weak, being a cripple, and might take the easy way out rather than pay up.

  The Security Guard admitted to himself that he’d been a coward to try the easy one first. Well, wouldn’t you? he asked the wind, as he crossed the dark Mall. Wouldn’t anybody?

  Now he was left with the other one.

  No cripple. No easy mark.

  Tough. Dangerous. Smart.

  And maybe crazy, too.

  He had to be careful, he had to think it out.

  He entered the stillness of the Library, locked the door behind him, and began the long round, walking slowly. Whenever he came to windows that overlooked the Mall and Grantham Hall, opposite, he glanced up at the windows of the English Department, many of which were still lit.