‘Probably still out of their skulls on vodka from the night before.’
‘Judith, this kind of cultural stereotyping does you no credit.’
‘We’re not back in Benenden now, Hen,’ said Judith as she stood up. ‘Stop talking down to me. I think Dave’s right. There are Lithuanians and Lithuanians, and these sound like scumbag Lithuanians. I just hope you don’t carry any valuables when you jog.’
It was two weeks later when Dave checked his watch again and decided there was no obvious explanation for Henrietta’s unprecedented lateness so he’d better go and look for her. Had she changed her plans, she would have called him. He tried her number again, but once more it went straight to answer. It wasn’t hysterical to be worried that she could have had an accident or been mugged and injured.
Hood up and scarf across his face, he marched into the cold drizzle, turned the corner into the towpath and walked swiftly along scanning the undergrowth and the canal surface. The solitary early-morning runner he encountered denied having seen a tall, middle-aged woman jogging in a grey tracksuit. It took only twenty minutes for him to spot a floating grey-clad body, tear off his overcoat, pull off his shoes and plunge in. By the time he had dragged her up onto the path, he knew there could be no doubt that she was dead, but nonetheless he opened her mouth, rolled her on to her stomach and rang 999.
By the time two paramedics came running towards him, he was sitting on the path hugging her body close and rocking to and fro. ‘I couldn’t do anything for her,’ he said. ‘My poor, poor Henrietta. Look at her head. She’s been murdered. Oh, Hen, Hen, why couldn’t you take my advice?’
The police got nowhere with the Lithuanians, all of whom claimed to have to have been asleep in their shacks at the time she was attacked. Then a close search of the undergrowth near their squalid camp revealed her money belt, in which – for Henrietta liked to be prepared for all eventualities – was her phone, a fifty-pound note, a few pound coins, a tissue, her keys and a debit card. Since even in death Henrietta was a VIP, this discovery led to the arrest of the couple of dozen occupants of the encampment, but even with the help of a team of interpreters over two days, none of them had anything helpful to say. What was more, enquiries suggested that while they were disposed to a bit of thieving, they had no record of violence except with each other after too much drink.
‘What the fuck are we supposed to do?’ asked the chief inspector of his superintendent. ‘There isn’t a shred of forensic evidence to implicate them. She was hit with a big stone on the side of her head and then thrown into the water. But even the dumbest of those scumbags would have known to chuck the weapon into the water, so even if we found it, it would be clean.’
‘And anyway why would they kill her?’ said the superintendent. ‘They could have just snatched the money belt.’
‘Dunno. She seemed the type to put up a fight. Maybe someone thick and drunk was trying to cover his tracks.’
‘Definitely no dabs on the money belt except hers?’
‘Nope. And we confiscated all their effing gloves, but forensic’s found nothing. And the woolly gloves we found when we sent a couple of divers down weren’t yielding up any guilty secrets neither.’
‘Husband? Enemies?’
‘Everyone says the marriage was happy and apparently the husband had been warning her against jogging alone. He said miserably that he should have kept her company but that he didn’t have her energy. Apparently they slept separately when she was going to get up especially early, so he hadn’t even heard her go out.’
He scratched his head. ‘As for enemies? Well there seems to have been thousands of people who didn’t like her, but then she was a politician.’
Henrietta’s family, friends and colleagues were outraged that the police had to admit defeat, though not at all as outraged as the tabloids which she had so despised who did everything short of making direct murder accusations. When they went back to their miserable accommodation, the Lithuanians were terrified by the massed ranks of cameras and shouting media types, and in consultation with interpreters and the social services, packed up and headed off to stay with friends living rough near Peterborough.
The party leader appointed Judith to Henrietta’s job and life in the Commons went on as usual. Dave went back to work, but his colleagues noted sympathetically that his heart seemed no longer in it. After a couple of months he went to his boss and gave in his resignation. ‘It’s no good, Gavs, I just can’t do it any more. I don’t know what I’ll do next, but I’ve got to carve out some kind of life without my Hen.’ And with the blessing of his superiors, he took an enormous golden handshake, held a subdued drinks party for his closest colleagues and walked away from the City.
The following morning, Dave lay in bed late with Agnes and counted his blessings. He no longer had to share his life with a woman whom he could barely stand, and he could enjoy playing the field. What was more, he was rich as well as free, having ensured he wouldn’t be taken to the cleaners, as he well knew he would have been had he had the temerity to leave Henrietta. And as a bonus he’d got rid of those blasted Lithuanians who were disfiguring a neighbourhood he so loved and who had made his evening strolls unpleasant. He smiled when he remembered how often Henrietta had sneered at him because of his inability to multitask. ‘You’ve got to hand it to me now, old girl,’ he thought. ‘It takes some operator to kill three birds with one stone.’
BRYANT AND MAY IN THE FIELD
Christopher Fowler
Christopher Fowler is the author of a series featuring Arthur Bryant and John May, who are members of the fictional Peculiar Crimes Unit. The Bryant and May series is set primarily in London, with stories taking place in various years between the Second World War and the present. Whilst there is a progressive narrative, many of the books focus on flashbacks to a major criminal incident from the detectives’ shared past. His other publications include a study of unjustly forgotten authors, Invisible Ink.
‘Remember that parachutist who was alive when he jumped out of his plane but was found to have been strangled when he landed in the field? Well, you’re going to love this one, trust me.’ John May took the car keys away from his partner and threw him an overcoat. ‘Come on, I’ll drive. You’ll need that, and your filthy old scarf. It’s cold where we’re going.’
‘I’m not stepping outside of Zone One,’ Arthur Bryant warned tetchily. ‘I remember the last time we left London. There were trees everywhere. It was awful.’
‘It’ll do you good to get some fresh air. You shouldn’t spend all your time cooped up in here.’
The offices of the Peculiar Crime Unit occupied a particularly unappealing corner of North London’s Caledonian Road. Most of the building’s doors stuck and hardly any of its windows opened. Renovations had been halted pending a budget review, which had left several of the unheated rooms with asbestos tiles, fizzing electrics and missing floorboards. Bryant felt thoroughly at home in this musty death-trap, and had to be prised out with offers of murder investigations. ‘Alright,’ he said grudgingly, ‘if I have to. But this had better be good.’
As the elderly detectives made their way down to the car park, May handed his partner a photograph. ‘She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but don’t be deceived. The Met has had its collective eye on her for a couple of years now. Marsha Kastopolis. Her husband owns a lot of the flats and shops along the Caledonian Road. He’s been putting her name on property documents as some kind of tax dodge. The council reckons it’s been trying to pin health and safety violations on them, but no action has ever succeeded against her or her husband. I think it’s likely they bought someone on the committee.’
‘I take it she’s dead,’ said Bryant impatiently.
‘Very.’
‘That doesn’t explain why we have to drive somewhere godforsaken.’
‘It’s not godforsaken, just a bit windswept. The body’s been left in situ.’
‘Why?’
‘There
’s something very unusual about the circumstances. Yes, look at the smile on your podgy little face now, you’re suddenly interested, aren’t you?’
‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ Bryant knotted his scarf more tightly than ever and climbed into the passenger seat of Victor, his rusting yellow Mini.
‘Have you got around to insuring this thing yet?’ asked May, crunching the gears.
‘It’s on my bucket list, along with climbing Machu Picchu and learning the ocarina. Where are we going?’
‘We need to climb Primrose Hill.’
Bryant perked up. ‘Greenberry Hill.’
‘Greenberry?’
‘That’s what it was once called. After the executions of Messrs Green, Berry and Hill, who were wanted for the murder of one Edmund Godfrey in 1678. Although nobody really knows for sure if the legend is true.’
‘Incredible,’ May muttered, swinging out into Euston Road. ‘All this from a man who can’t remember how to open his email.’
The night before it had snowed heavily again. Now the afternoon air was crisp and frosty, and the rimes of snow that crusted King’s Cross station had already turned black with traffic pollution. The Mini slushed its way past the grim bookies and pound stores of lower Camden Town, up and over the bridge still garlanded with Christmas lights, and into the wealthier environs of those who paid highly for living a few more feet above sea level. It finally came to a stop at the foot of the fenced-off park, a great white mound surrounded by the expansive, expensive Edwardian town houses of Primrose Hill.
‘The local officers have sealed the area,’ said May, ‘but the council wants the body removed before nightfall. The hill is a focal point for well-heeled families, and as the shops in Queen’s Crescent are all staying open late over Christmas they’re worried about the negative impact on local spending.’
Bryant wiped his glasses with the end of his scarf and peered across the bleached expanse, its edges blurred by a lowering silver sky. Halfway up, a green nylon box had been erected. ‘You can tell them they’ll get it cleared when we’re good and ready to do so,’ he said, setting off toward the body.
‘Wait, you can’t do that, Mr Bryant.’ Dan Banbury, the PCU’s Crime Scene Manager was sliding through the pavement slush towards them.
‘Can’t do what?’
‘Just go off like that. I’ve established an approach path.’ He pointed to a corridor of orange plastic sticks leading up the hill. ‘You have to head in that way.’
‘I’m a copper, not a plane,’ said Bryant, waving him aside.
‘There are already enough tracks out there. I don’t want to have to eliminate any more.’
Making a sound like a displeased tapir, Bryant diverted to the narrow trodden channel, and the detectives made their way up the snow-covered slope to the tent, with Banbury anxiously darting ahead. ‘She was found just after 6:20 a.m. by a man out walking his dog,’ he told them.
‘Why did it take so long to get to us?’ asked May. ‘It’s after two.’
‘There was a bit of a dispute about jurisdiction. They were going to handle it locally but all fatal incidents in Central North get flagged, and we picked it up.’
They reached the tent and Banbury went in ahead of them. The victim lay on her back on the frozen ground, her beige overcoat dusted with snow. From the alabaster sheen of her skin she might have been a marble church statue reclining on a bier. A single battery lamp illuminated the wound on her upper throat. Blood had coagulated around the parted flesh and had formed a hard black puddle beneath her left shoulder. Her eyes were still open but had lost their lustre as they froze.
‘You’ve moved her,’ said Bryant, noting the snow on the front of her clothes.
‘That was the dog walker,’ said Banbury. ‘All he could see as he got closer was a woman’s body lying in the middle of the common. There was a bit of a mist earlier. He thought maybe she had collapsed until he turned her over and saw she’d been stabbed.’
‘Looks like a very sharp kitchen knife or a cut-throat razor,’ said May. ‘The wound’s very clean, straight across the carotid artery. A real vicious sweep.’ He checked her palms and fingers and found them crimson. ‘Not defence marks. Maybe she raised her hands to the wound and tried to stem the bleeding. Any other cuts to the body?’
‘Not that I can see, but bodies aren’t my field of expertise,’ Banbury admitted. ‘I’m more interested in where she fell.’
‘Why?’ May asked.
‘She’s in the exact centre of the common, for one thing, about 150 metres in every direction. The dog walker was met by a DS from Hampstead who called in his team. We’ve just taken a full statement from him. I picked up the initial report and established the corridor to the site.’
‘Why did you do that before anything else?’
‘Because there are no footprints,’ Bryant cut in, waving his gloved hand across the virgin expanse of the hill.
‘That’s right, Mr Bryant. We’ve got hers, out to the middle but not back, the dog and his owner’s, also there and back, and the DS’s. Nothing else at all. Six is a bit early for the Primrose Hill crowd. Victim was last seen around 11:00 p.m. last night by one of her tenants. She was coming out of a restaurant. No more snow fell after about 5:00 a.m. According to the dog walker, there were just her footprints leading out to the middle of the hill slope and nothing else. Not a mark in any direction that he could see.’
‘He must have been mistaken.’
‘Nope – he’s adamant, reckons he’s got 20/20 vision and there were no other footprints.’
‘Then it’s simple – she must have taken her own life.’
‘What with? There’s no weapon.’
‘You haven’t had her clothes off yet, you can’t be sure of that,’ Bryant said. ‘Can we take the body or do we have to use the local resource?’
‘They’re happy for her to go to St Pancras if you sign it off.’
Bryant didn’t answer. He was peering at the victim, trying to conjure her last moments.
‘Could someone have swept away their footprints?’ asked May.
Bryant pulled a sour face. ‘Look at this snow, it’s crusted solid. Besides, why would anybody try to do such a thing? This is an urban neighbourhood, not Miss Marple country. There has to be a more obvious explanation. Got her mobile, have you?’
‘Yes, she received a call from a nearby phone box just after six this morning. You might want to check last night’s—No!’ Banbury snatched the plastic bag back from Bryant, who had begun to open it. ‘Can you not take it out until I’ve finished with it?’
‘Just send us the call list, then,’ said May, always keen to keep the peace. His partner was like a baby, reaching out to grab the things he wanted without thinking. Except that he was always thinking. ‘Come on, Arthur,’ he said, ‘we’ve enough to be getting on with.’
‘Where did she live?’ Bryant asked as he was being led away. Below him the skyline of London formed an elaborate ice sculpture that shone pink and silver in the gelid afternoon air.
‘Canonbury, I believe,’ Banbury said.
‘What was she doing over here so early on a Tuesday morning? Get those lads on it.’ He indicated the members of the Hampstead constabulary who were standing around in the car park. ‘See if they can find out if she stayed somewhere nearby, will you? And have them check taxis running from Islington to Chalk Farm early this morning.’
‘Why Chalk Farm?’ asked May.
‘To get here from Islington you either have to drop off your fare by the footbridge near Chalk Farm Station or go all the way around,’ Bryant explained. ‘This place is a peninsular that’s a pain in the arse to reach. That’s why the rich love it. They don’t have to rub shoulders with us plebs. And get someone to walk all the way around the perimeter, check for any kind of break in the snow. There must be something.’
After a brief stop at the PCU, the pair headed across to the gaudy offices of North One Developments Ltd, the property company Marsha Kastopolis
had owned with her husband. Bypassing the confused staffers at their computer terminals, they found Phantasos Kastopolis in the building’s basement, sweating on an exercycle. The red-faced property tycoon was leaking from the top of his dyed comb-over to the bulging waistband of his electric blue nylon tracksuit. He grabbed a towel and mopped at his chain-festooned chest, clearly annoyed at being interrupted.
‘If this is about burst pipes, there’s nothing I can do,’ he said. ‘It’s bloody freezing, innit, and them students haven’t paid their rent this month so they got no bloody complaining to do.’
‘It’s about your wife,’ said May, and he proceeded to explain the circumstances of Mrs Kastopolis’s death while Bryant wandered around examining the gym equipment with ill-disguised distaste.
‘What was she doing out at that time?’ Kastopolis asked after he had demonstrably absorbed the news, a process that involved a fair amount of ranting but not much grief. ‘She never goes for a bloody walk.’
‘We were hoping you could tell us. Does she know anyone in Primrose Hill?’
‘I don’t know where her friends live.’
‘Do you know if she had any enemies?’
‘She had enemies because I have enemies!’ Kastopolis exploded, throwing his towel on the floor. ‘They all got it in for us, ’cause they don’t like Cypriots owning their streets.’
‘Your wife was English.’
‘Yeah but she was married to me. I came here with nothing but the clothes I stood up in and bought the shops one by one. My father was a farmer, and look at me now. Thirty years of bloody hard work.’ He raised his spatulate fingers before them in an attempt to prove the point. ‘Of course I have enemies. They’re jealous of me. They try to ruin me. But I tell you what, my friend, I do a lot of good in this community.’
‘You infringe a lot of building regulations, too,’ said Bryant, unimpressed. He pulled a plastic folder from his overcoat. ‘Fire hazards, illegally blocked-off hallways, substandard materials, contractor lawsuits, environmental health injunctions, it’s all here.’
Deadly Pleasures Page 8