Rubbernecker

by Bauer, Belinda

‘Oh dear,’ said Williams. ‘I can assure you we’ll get it back to you as soon as we can.’

  ‘By Monday?’

  ‘As soon as we can.’

  Still Spicer didn’t let it go. He stood there, drumming his fingers on the corner of Williams’s desk. ‘What if I personally guarantee that we will not press charges against Patrick?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Williams. ‘We have made an arrest and I cannot pre-judge the outcome of our own independent inquiries.’

  ‘What inquiries?’ said Spicer. ‘Surely it’s quite clear what has happened? It seems like a waste of police time to do more.’

  ‘It seems that way, sir, I agree. But we have our procedures. Believe me, when we are able to release the head, the university will be the first to know. Now, I’m on my way home, let me walk out with you.’

  Williams pulled on his jacket and let them both out through the double doors. Spicer thanked him and left, but DS Williams stood and stared through the glass after him for so long that Wendy Price said, ‘You all right, Em?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Williams. ‘Just thinking.’

  He was just thinking about Dr Spicer’s reluctance to leave the head in police custody.

  And about the jagged scars around the tip of his index finger.

  They did look like bite marks.

  50

  IT HAD BEEN a long night, but Emrys Williams still didn’t go home. Instead he copied Dr Spicer’s address off the statement, then drove his ten-year-old Toyota down to the Bay, against a tide of red-shirted rugby fans walking into town for the international.

  It was only ten a.m. This wouldn’t take long and it was on his way.

  Sort of.

  He swung the car around outside Dr Spicer’s flat, and started to drive slowly back along Dumballs Road. It was Saturday, and most of the industrial units on the broad, grubby street were closed by steel shutters.

  Williams stopped twice, once to look at broken glass that turned out to be a Heineken bottle, and again towards the station end of the road for a pigeon that refused to take off as he approached. It strolled defiantly across the road while he sat like a lemon, instead of like a vastly superior being on vital police business. Rats with wings, his father called pigeons, but Emrys Williams had always rather liked them – especially these city pigeons with the iridescent throats and all the attitude. So he watched in vague amusement as it strutted between two parked cars and hopped on to the pavement. If he hadn’t, he would never have seen the short skid mark that had left rubber on the kerb.

  He double-parked and got out. Only one tyre mark was visible from the road; the other was under one of the newly parked cars. He got down on his knees to look. There were fragments of red plastic in the gutter under the car. He picked up the largest of them, which was about the size of his thumb. It looked like part of a lens cover. A brake light, maybe?

  He checked the lights of the parked car, then stood up and stared around. He was standing near the corner of a brick-built unit. SPEEDY REPAIRS AND MOT. Williams walked to the end of the building, which was the last in the row before the multi-storey car park. Between the two was an alleyway, a patch of littered grass, a steel fence.

  And, behind the fence, a bicycle.

  It was years since Emrys Williams had climbed anything, and he’d got heavy or his arms had got weak – one or the other. Maybe both. He got halfway up and then just hung there, and three men in Wales shirts stopped and shoved him the rest of the way with encouraging grunts and a general-purpose ‘Ooooooooh’ as he hit the ground on the other side.

  He brushed himself down from the ungainly drop and thanked them, and they waved and went on walking.

  Williams gazed down at the bike. It was an old Peugeot ten-speed racer, but it had been in good condition until whatever had happened had happened to it. Now it was just a Chinese puzzle of blue and chrome, the chain drooping and the wheels twisted rubber loops.

  The lens of the rear light had been smashed. Williams put the thumb of red beside it.

  It matched.

  He hauled himself back over the fence with new gusto and twisted his ankle as he dropped on to the pavement. He cursed out loud and vowed to start jogging again. He walked feelingly back to the car and drove the short distance to the car park.

  He found one of the few spare bays on the second level and got out. From here he could see the back of the station, through the bare branches of a tree.

  I had to jump out of the car park and into a tree.

  With curiosity bubbling in his belly, Emrys Williams walked as briskly as his ankle allowed to the concrete wall that hemmed the second level. It was chest high. You’d have to be mad to jump it. Mad or desperate.

  Cars were parked all along the wall and he squeezed behind them.

  Directly opposite the tree, the concrete wall was cracked and missing several large chunks, which lay on the ground, along with more broken glass – clear and orange this time. Headlight and indicators.

  Williams leaned against the wall and looked over the parapet. It was a good twenty-five feet to the grass below. The dark branches of the tree were flecked with raw cream, where boughs and twigs had snapped and splintered as something large had fallen through them.

  Something as large as Patrick Fort.

  It was eleven forty-four.

  Emrys Williams thought the dissecting-room technician looked like a cadaver himself. He was gaunt and pale and had a funereal air about him. He also smelled of rotting flowers.

  Williams did his best to hold his breath while he spoke, which was less than successful.

  ‘I understand you are missing one of your heads,’ he opened.

  Mick Jarvis looked at him in almost comic astonishment.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘First I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Really?’ said Williams. ‘That does surprise me. Would you mind checking?’

  The technician immediately strode to the back wall of the hangar-like room and started unzipping what Williams now realized were body bags. He kept his distance.

  ‘Head,’ said Jarvis impatiently as he went down the row. ‘Head. Head. Head. Shit.’

  ‘No head?’ enquired Williams, and Jarvis nodded.

  Jarvis called the chair of the medical school to report the theft, and then made them both a cup of strong tea.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Jarvis. ‘That kid was always weird. He broke in twice before, you know?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Found him in here once, going through confidential files. Then one night he threw a shoe at me in the dissecting room. Biscuit?’

  Williams took a HobNob. ‘How does one break into a place like this?’

  ‘Well, the first time he used his own entry code, but at a time when he was not allowed to be here. But that code was suspended once he was expelled.’

  ‘So how did he get in last night?’

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Jarvis, and fired up the computer. He stared at the screen, while making annoying little half-sounds that he seemed to imagine were keeping Williams informed.

  ‘That’s there. Here we … There. Now we’ll see … OK, I get it … Cheeky little bastard!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He must have used another student’s code. Belongs to a girl called Megan Jones. Here, you see? At a quarter past midnight.’

  Williams nodded slowly. He had a thousand questions, but as he dunked, he asked the one he felt was most pertinent. ‘This sounds like a silly question, Mr Jarvis, but I’ll ask it anyway. Is it at all possible that Number 19 was a murder victim?’

  Jarvis laughed. It was a strange sound in a strange place and from a strange-looking man. ‘Absolutely not. Our donors have generally died from age-related heart conditions or cancers, or complications like pneumonia. Every death is properly certified by an attending doctor. Even then, we can only accept donations if the body has not been too badly damaged by an illness or injury. We need them to be in reasonable shape so that students
know what a standard body looks like. There’s no point training students on bodies with broken limbs or with severe internal degradations.

  ‘For the same reason we can’t accept autopsied bodies, so the donors will have been expected to die from their disease or injuries. Autopsies are always performed on murder victims.’

  ‘If you know they’ve been murdered,’ mused Williams.

  ‘True,’ nodded Jarvis and took another biscuit, so Williams did the same. He’d missed breakfast because of all this.

  ‘Would it be possible to see the paperwork relating to Number 19?’

  ‘Of course.’ Using a key that was poorly hidden under a saucer, Jarvis opened one of the two filing cabinets and withdrew a slim folder.

  Emrys Williams studied the records. The first form was a donor application in the name of Samuel Galen.

  ‘This is dated almost ten years ago!’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jarvis. ‘People can make a donor application at any time. If they change their minds, they only have to let us know and we destroy the documentation.’

  Williams ran his eye down the form. He noticed that Samuel Galen and he shared a birthday. Same day, same year. Emrys and Sam. He wondered whether Sam had celebrated his birthdays the same way he did – with a few pints down the Three Tuns and a phone call from his aged mother, who never forgot.

  It gave him an uncomfortable sense of his own existence being on temporary loan, and he had to brush the idea aside to concentrate on the matter at hand.

  The donation form was short and contained questions that left no room for sentiment.

  I consent to my body parts being retained by the nominated establishment.

  I consent to unidentifiable photographs of my body parts being taken and retained for training, education and research.

  Burial/cremation

  All the donor had to do was tick boxes. Mr Galen had ticked burial, then apparently changed his mind and gone for cremation.

  In a different pen.

  Williams pointed it out to Jarvis, who frowned.

  ‘I don’t know how I missed that. Any changes should be signed at the point of the change, or a new form must be filled in. They can’t just cross things out!’

  Williams flicked to the back of the thin sheaf. Attached to the rear of the form was a largely blank page headed PERSONAL DECLARATION (OPTIONAL).

  Samuel Galen had exercised the option.

  My daughter, Alexandra, is an alcoholic. I am donating my body to help to train doctors who may one day find a solution to this heartbreaking disease.

  Emrys Williams was caught off-guard. The declaration was an oddly moving thing to hold in his hands when just this morning he had found the man’s head in a fridge, crammed between the best and the worst of student cuisine.

  ‘Most applicants attach a personal statement,’ said Jarvis. ‘Why they choose to donate is important to them.’

  Williams went through the rest of the file more quickly. There were next-of-kin consent forms, signed by a Mrs Jackie Galen one day after the date of death, transfer documentation from the local hospital to the university, undertakers’ permissions, and a copy of the death certificate, which gave the cause of death as ‘heart failure due to complications of coma’.

  ‘Another HobNob?’ said Jarvis, shaking the packet at him.

  Williams didn’t hear him.

  The death certificate had been signed by a Dr D. Spicer.

  51

  JUST BEFORE THREE p.m., Emrys Williams opened the double doors and said, ‘Thank you for coming back down so quickly, Dr Spicer.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Williams stood aside for Dr Spicer to pass him, then lingered for a moment to listen to the national anthem swell out of the stadium and float across the city – a sound that never failed to take hold of his heart and give it a patriotic squeeze. The city would be loud tonight and filled with Welshmen dressed as daffodils with their arms around the shoulders of Frenchmen in berets, all celebrating the result in the common language of not being English.

  Williams sighed and closed the door.

  They talked while they walked. ‘There are just a few things we hope you can help us with. About Patrick Fort, mostly.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Spicer. ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Good,’ said Spicer. ‘Because he’s quite vulnerable, I think.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. You know he was at the university on a disability quota?’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes. He’s autistic.’

  ‘I thought he had Asperger’s?’

  ‘Well, it’s all on the spectrum. He can be quite detached from reality at times. Paranoid. Confused. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Sounds like my ex-wife.’

  Spicer laughed.

  Williams opened the door to Interview Room Three and ushered him inside.

  ‘Dr Spicer, this is DCI White, who is in charge of the case,’ he said. ‘And you already know Mr Galen.’

  The head was on the table in a clear plastic evidence bag.

  There was a long silence.

  Spicer finally looked at White and said, ‘Hi.’

  ‘Thanks for coming, Dr Spicer.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘We’ll try not to keep you long,’ said White. ‘DS Williams is a long way past the end of his shift, and I’m supposed to be at the match.’ He smiled ruefully. Spicer only nodded.

  They all sat down, the head between them. Williams and White never glanced at it; Spicer could look at little else. The head was a magnet for his eyes, dragging his gaze back to it whenever it strayed. A fold in the plastic touched the remaining eyeball, making it stand out as if peering directly at Spicer through a peephole to another dimension.

  DCI White opened a folder. ‘Patrick Fort has told us some story, Dr Spicer.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. World of his own. He needs help really.’

  ‘I agree. But maybe together we can separate fact from fiction.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ said White. ‘Patrick says that you tried to kill him last night.’

  ‘Does he? That’s ridiculous.’

  DCI White flicked through the folder in a show of not knowing what it contained. ‘He says you knocked him off his bicycle on Dumballs Road and then tried to run him down in a car park.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘But he was injured.’

  ‘How would I know?’ said Spicer. ‘Look, Patrick came to a party at my flat last night. He got very drunk. He left early. If he fell off his bike or got knocked off it, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  DCI White nodded and flicked through the paperwork again. ‘This morning he had a blood alcohol level of zero.’

  ‘I’m surprised,’ said Spicer, and folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘Did you leave the party at all?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Spicer. ‘I went out to get more beer.’

  ‘Bad planning?’ said White.

  ‘Students. Free booze. You know?’

  ‘But not Patrick Fort.’

  ‘Not if you say so.’ Spicer shrugged. ‘He appeared a little irrational. I assumed he was drunk.’

  ‘What time did you go out?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘About eleven.’

  ‘And what time did you get back?’

  ‘About half past, I should think.’

  ‘Get a receipt for the beer?’

  ‘I’d have to check.’

  ‘Which shop did you go to?’

  ‘Asda. In the Bay. What has this got to do with Patrick Fort?’

  ‘I’m getting there. You didn’t go out again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have witnesses?’

  ‘Yes! Everyone. My fiancée, other students. Anyone can tell you where I was.’

  ‘Patrick tells us you were trying to run him over at the time.�
�

  ‘Well, he’s wrong.’

  ‘We found his bicycle. Someone threw it over a fence. Certainly looks mangled. Forensics are taking prints from it now.’

  ‘Good. I hope you catch whoever did it. If someone did it.’

  ‘DS Williams here also found paint and headlight debris from a car that hit a nearby car park wall at speed. What kind of car do you have, Dr Spicer?’

  Spicer paused. ‘A Citroën.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Grey.’

  ‘Silver grey?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘In good nick, is it?’

  ‘I’ve had a few bumps. Nothing major. My fiancée drives it too.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  Spicer shrugged and looked at his watch. ‘Is this going to take much longer?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said DCI White. ‘But you appreciate we have to check out Patrick’s story, Dr Spicer. We wouldn’t be doing our jobs otherwise.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Spicer.

  ‘Thanks for your forbearance,’ smiled DCI White.

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Can we get you a cup of coffee or anything?’

  ‘No. I’m fine.’

  ‘Good. Patrick admits that after he escaped from you, he went—’

  ‘He didn’t escape from me,’ said Spicer with air-quotes. ‘I wasn’t there.’

  ‘After he was knocked off his bike,’ amended White, ‘he went to the dissecting room, where he removed the head of poor Mr Galen here.’

  ‘That’s appalling.’

  ‘Indeed. Although he says he removed the head to preserve the evidence that shows that Mr Galen was in fact a murder victim. And that you followed him there to try to stop him doing just that.’

  White raised his eyebrows at Spicer, who gave an expansive shrug.

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but you can’t expect me to comment on paranoid delusions.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said White. ‘And it’s Detective Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Spicer. ‘I’m just getting a little bit fed up with you seeming to believe everything this clearly delusional student has told you, however bizarre.’

  ‘Oh, we didn’t believe it!’ said White. ‘Not one little bit!’

  Spicer looked surprised for the second time and White went on, ‘That’s why DS Williams here took it upon himself to see if his story was supported by any physical evidence.’