Grave Truths

by Anne Morgellyn

  ‘Not that long. Why, have you?’

  Fawkes gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Not personally, no. He’s known to uniform for sleeping rough.’

  ‘There’s no crime against that, is there? He’d nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Depends. You don’t seem to be taking this masterpiece of English literature too seriously then after all, Miss Moon.’ He picked up the letter.

  ‘Some things don’t add up,’ I said shortly. ‘Roy’s still grieving for his mother.’

  ‘Never mind about that. What doesn’t add up?’

  I sighed. ‘He describes pushing her – that was after she’d set about him with her stick. I was there at the flat when Mrs Woods was being removed. I was part of the team that removed her. There was no sign of any scuffle and no blood on the walls. It was all on the wardrobe. The pathologist said she was dying when she hit the floor – a massive stroke.’

  Fawkes threw the letter back on the table. ‘We’ve asked for the post mortem results,’ he said. ‘What I’d like to know is why Woods came to you with this. He seems to think you can corroborate his story.’

  ‘Like I said, I was part of the Coroner’s team that removed his mother.’ I swallowed some water from the glass he had poured out for me. ‘Roy came to my house afterwards. The office gave him my address. Actually, it was my boss.’ I leaned forward, realising that now was the moment to drop the Bubba in it. ‘She’d been a bit brusque with him, she’s like that. Anyway, she gave him his mother’s ashes without any ceremony, if you see what I mean, so he was pretty upset. I felt sorry for him. I was about to help him arrange a memorial for his mother, off the record I have to say, because I’ve given in my notice on my job, then he came back again this morning and gave me that letter. I think he’s at the end of his tether.’

  ‘To the extent of killing his mother?’

  ‘No. Well, no, I don’t know.’

  ‘He told us you’d fingered him. Knowing that, he said, made him decide to turn himself in. He said he couldn’t take the pressure.’

  ‘I said I’d listen to him,’ I cried. ‘I went to see him at Hammond House, I saw the carrier bag with his mother’s ashes. He was on his own. It was pathetic.’

  ‘Did you suspect him?’

  ‘The police were there at her flat when I was called,’ I shrugged. ‘Uniformed police, not crime scene – you know. I mean, it didn’t look like a crime. The GP said he thought it was natural causes and they seemed to go along with that, but I wasn’t so sure.’

  ‘I see.’ Fawkes lit a cigarette, then waved the pack at me, which I declined. ‘Not sure it was natural causes?’

  ‘The landlord found her. It was obvious he wanted her out. There was blood all over the place …’

  ‘I thought you said it was only on the wardrobe.’

  ‘On the wardrobe, on the floor. Not on the wall.’ I sipped more water. ‘I pointed it out at the mortuary but they said that scalp wounds bleed a lot like that. A friend of mine did the autopsy. I asked him to. I used to work there, you see.’ I looked at the table. Chas would have to be brought into this. He wouldn’t like it.

  ‘If you had any doubts about it being natural causes, why didn’t you express them at the time?’

  ‘I did, like I told you. I told the pathologist.’

  ‘And he subsequently turned in an autopsy report stating the death was due to natural causes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fawkes screwed up his eyes. ‘And as a consequence of that, the old lady was signed off for cremation. The Coroner was satisfied, the doctor was satisfied. You arranged the funeral.’

  ‘It was finished with,’ I said miserably. ‘But then Roy’s mother’s friend told me about his violent behaviour.’

  ‘And that’s when you suspected him?’

  ‘No – yes, I suppose so,’ I said miserably. ‘He’d been diagnosed schizophrenic. I don’t really know what that means, but I know it’s a scary label. I asked Roy’s psychiatrist about it when went to see him to see if he knew where Roy was. He told me Roy wasn’t dangerous, but he also said …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He said Roy didn’t get on with his mother. He said Mrs Woods had had Roy put away. I suppose that was it, that was why I suspected him. But then I got to know him,’ I finished. ‘And I don’t think he’s crazy. Depressed, maybe. I’ve been there too. I mean, I’ve not been feeling too hot since some crazy woman pushed me off a bus last week. That’s why I gave up work. I don’t know what to believe,’ I said. ‘Except I don’t think Roy’s a criminal.’

  ‘He’ll be assessed, don’t worry,’ Fawkes said softly. ‘The shrink is with him now.’

  ‘When he first came round I was frightened,’ I continued. ‘It was getting dark and I didn’t know what he’d come for. I thought he was trying to break in so I slammed his hand in the door. Then he went to A & E and called his psychiatrist. I felt terrible about it. It was just a misunderstanding.’ I did not add that Roy had climbed in through my bedroom window today, when I was lying on my bed, afraid of what he’d do to me. It was up to Veil to lead him to the light now, give him fresh asylum. ‘Will you be taking this further?’ I asked.

  ‘Like I said, Woods is being assessed. We’re waiting for reports.’ Fawkes waved his cigarette. ‘But even if he was capable, there’s not a lot we can do without a body, is there?’

  ‘The pathologist might have kept something,’ I said. But even if Chas had saved something of Edith, that was hardly going to show up as evidence that Roy had pushed her. It was Roy’s word against bureaucracy’s, for no one was going to want to take this any further. It would expose too many flaws in the procedure. Besides, we had all the answers. We knew who had died, and where she died, and when she died. The only thing in dispute was how she died, and this was between Roy and Chas. I didn’t pretend to know the full story here, but when it came to Chas’s evidence, I didn’t fancy Roy’s chances.

  ‘We’ll need a statement from you to be going on with,’ Fawkes said. ‘If you’d like to hang on here, I’ll do the honours.’

  And so I spent another hour going over what I had said in a formal statement, how I had removed Edith Woods, hastened the autopsy, interviewed Mrs Blank and Dr Veil, been pushed off a bus and filled my head with paranoid suspicions, projected onto Roy that evening when he came to make me a present of his mother’s scarf. How badly I had failed to support Roy was made crystal clear to me when Dr Veil called me at home some hours after I’d got back.

  ‘It might have been a good idea to contact me before you took Roy to the police,’ he began.

  ‘I didn’t have much choice,’ I said. ‘He told me he’d murdered his mother. What’s going to happen to him now?’

  There was an agitated pause, followed by a sharper exhalation. ‘Roy’s been sectioned,’ Veil said. ‘The police didn’t want him so they called in a social worker.’ He coughed wetly. ‘Of course, I could see he was in a bit of a state, I could see that too – he’s been feeding off these delusions.’

  ‘They are delusions then?’

  ‘I asked you not to interfere,’ he barked. ‘This time, I shall be taking it up with the Coroner personally.’

  ‘You can’t just section him without good reason,’ I said. ‘You must have thought he was ill or something.’

  ‘He’s ill now all right. He’s a menace to himself and other people.’

  ‘So he’s in the best place then,’ I said. ‘I was trying to help him.’

  ‘And just how do you think you could do that, eh, what are you – some kind of cleaner upper for the council? Could you arrange for him to have accommodation in the hostel? Could you help ease his condition by making any kind of professional assessment? All you have done is pander to his fantasy. He’s been given medication to calm him down, and when that takes effect, he’s out of here.’

  ‘A few pills aren’t going to make that go away … what will happen to him when he leaves you?’ I said, suddenly terrified for Roy.

  ‘Well, you
realise he’s lost the place at Hammond House? They won’t have him there if he’s in danger of harming himself.‘

  ‘Harming himself?’

  ‘He threatened to kill himself at the police station,’ Veil said. ‘Spouting all kinds of stuff about John Lennon. I’ve heard it before, during his last bad episode.’

  ‘The police didn’t tell me that,’ I said.

  ‘Part of it was a performance,’ Veil scorned, ‘but you can’t be sure with these people. He had to be sectioned.’

  ‘He wanted to come back to you. That’s good …’

  ‘And you’ve been helping.’

  ‘All he wanted was a rose from me,’ I said. ‘I thought I could help him arrange a memorial for his mother. I thought it might help him grieve.’

  Veil raised his voice. ‘By going over the details of his mother’s funeral, her cremation maybe? The autopsy report.’

  ‘I am two thirds through a professional counselling qualification, Dr Veil. All I did was listen to him, as a human being …’ I bit my tongue, too late, on this disclosure. Now Veil would wring me out and hang me up to dry.

  He blew out such a breath I fancied it had shifted my net curtains. ‘I don’t know who’s accrediting these studies,’ he said darkly, ‘but they should have made it abundantly clear to you that you were not to go about counselling’ (he gave a nasty emphasis to the word) ‘people, any people, let alone those with Roy’s diagnosis, without supervision and outside the appropriate context.’

  ‘You mean fifty minutes on the couch with a box of tissues handy? It’s not like that, Dr Veil. I wasn’t using Roy as a guinea pig. My studies had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘There was every chance he might have settled at the hostel,’ Veil went on. ‘Now we are back to square one. I can’t keep him here indefinitely. We haven’t the beds. We’re not some sort of clearing house. The fact that these people are suffering and odd and vulnerable and, well, all sorts of things, is not a reason to section them under Mental Health Act legisation just to keep the Chief Constable happy. I would expect even a quasi professional like yourself to take that straight on board …’

  ‘If it’s possible, I’d like to come and visit him, to put this right. Is that …?’

  ‘No it is bloody well not,’ he said. ‘Come within fifty metres of my hospital and I will have you arrested. Leave Roy Woods alone.’ There was the click of a connection being broken. He had hung up on me.

  ***

  Chapter 14

  I put on my coat and headed for that other hospital. I was travelling on autopilot, down through the tunnels of the Tube again then up along the familiar greasy streets that twisted and turned in a Dickensian stew till I reached the double doors of the path lab, the ranks of ruby jars winking in the light at me like fetishes. ‘No specimens?’ I asked Chas breathlessly. ‘No samples? Nothing at all?’

  Chas steered me to a chair and offered me a glass of clear spirit. A technician was working at a bench on the other side of the room. She frowned at me under her gold-rimmed spectacles. I was just a nuisance caller, keeping the great professor from his work. In a jar of formalin, the grey mass of a human brain lay in fixed contortion. It was too much to hope that it could be the brain of Edith Mary Woods, but what if it was? It was hardly going to tell us that Roy had killed his mother. Only Roy could know that now for certain. Had I failed his mother as badly as I had failed him?

  ‘Could he have done it?’ I asked Chas. ‘I mean, she could have been pushed after all.’

  Chas sighed. ‘She had a massive stroke, Louise. The police are satisfied with that and so they bloody well should be. You’re not questioning my conclusions, are you?’

  ‘But she could have been frightened by Roy, which would have put pressure on her brain …’

  ‘That isn’t very probable, and certainly not provable.’

  ‘But he said he pushed her. He could have precipitated the stroke. He said she was fit as a fiddle.’

  ‘She had a massive aneurysm. How many more times? Let Veil take care of him.’

  ‘I’m sorry to dump this on you all over again,’ I said. ‘I just need to know.’

  Chas looked quickly round as the technician swivelled her head away. ‘Let’s go to my office,’ he said, guiding me there with his hand on my arm, as though I needed restraining. Once in there, he put the door on the catch and sat me down on the sofa at right angles to his desk. ‘Your business is to stick to your sick leave arrangements and work on that head,’ he said. ‘How the hell did you get involved in this anyway? I told you to leave well alone.’

  ‘He broke into my bedroom,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Chas scratched his head. ‘Did you tell the police about that?’

  ‘Not exactly. I said that Roy had been round with a letter. He didn’t hurt me.’

  ‘Just scared the shit out of you, right?’

  The vodka I had swallowed rose in my throat all of a sudden. I reached for the bottle of Evian on Chas’s desk. ‘I felt bad about his hand,’ I said, wiping my mouth. ‘I saw Hammond House, where he was living. I saw what it was like inside. All he wanted was to talk about his mother.’

  ‘You should not have encouraged him.’

  ‘I saw the carrier bag containing his mother’s ashes. The only thing I feel bad about is involving you. Maybe if I’d rubber stamped it, forgone the autopsy …’

  ‘No, you were right to ask for that. Besides, I thought it was Coroner’s rules. Sudden death, hadn’t been seen by a doctor in weeks?’

  I nodded. ‘But she wouldn’t have been the first to have missed out. A lot of doctors just put old age on the death certificate. Who’s going to quarrel with that? Some faceless old person, going to bow out anyway.’

  ‘Well, you were right to insist. You were doing your job.’ He fetched the vodka bottle. ‘The woman was a textbook case. No way was she haemorrhaging because of a blow to the head. The aneurysm had been there for years.’

  ‘Veil doesn’t believe Roy either. He saying that Roy was just fantasising.’ I bit my lip. ‘But what about his mother, what about the truth, Chas? No one gives a shit about what really happened to poor Edith. They never even sealed the scene.’

  ‘And was any of that your fault? You gave her a decent funeral. The old lady’s probably on cloud nine now, playing sweet music for her maker …’

  ‘You know you don’t believe that.’

  ‘I know the only thing you have to reproach yourself for is getting involved, Louise. I know how Veil operates. I told you. This Roy is clearly a bad patient – too smart to dope till he is catatonic, but too fixated on the same old story to merit talk cure time with the great head-shrinker. So he was fucked up by his mother – what’s new?’

  The door knob rattled. I felt myself go red as Chas let in the departmental PA, bearing a plastic folder. She smirked at me as Chas glanced at the paper inside.

  ‘This is another copy of the mother’s PM report.’ He handed it over to me. ‘I’d like you to take it home with you and stick it on your wall and read it over till you know it off by heart.’ He reached for his jacket. ‘I’ll take you over to Professor Thule before we leave. He works late hours here, does all his NHS work after four.’

  ‘Professor Thule was going to Brussels today,’ the PA cut in. ‘I spoke to his secretary this morning. Are you leaving now, Professor Androssoff?’

  ‘Too bad.’ Chas frowned at me. ‘Yes, we’re going,’ he told the PA. ‘I’ll be in late tomorrow.’

  ‘Who’s Professor Thule?’ I asked when she’d gone. ‘Can he add anything to these results?’

  ‘He’s the neurologist I mentioned.’ Chas locked the office door behind us. ‘Too bad he can’t see you today.’

  ‘I’ve already got an appointment with another consultant.’

  ‘I know. I merely wanted you to see the best man for your head, that’s all. Looks like you’re coming straight home with me then.’

  ‘On the bike?’

  ‘No, I’m not on the
bike today. We’ll take a taxi.’

  ‘You can drop me at Mornington Crescent.’

  ‘I said you’re coming home with me.’

  ‘What for, to see your etchings?’

  ‘You’re not funny, you know, Louise.’ But he reconsidered. ‘At least you can laugh about it.’

  ‘Who’s laughing?’ I said, as we got into the lift. We were stalled at Level 1 by a porter wheeling a covered trolley. I looked away from the motionless bedsheet, trying not to catch the smell of death.

  ‘Sorry, going up,’ Chas smiled, and pressed the button for main reception. This new part of the hospital was generously funded by his rich new patron, Sir Anton Stockyard. What would he think about the prospect of his protegé cocking up a routine post mortem? But Chas would not have cocked it up. He would not have misinterpreted the evidence: the bursting clot and whatever that had done to Edith’s brain. It was the context of the fall he could not see, the dirty flat with the cat thrown in the cupboard, the son, angry at the loss of his collection, the old woman lashing out with her stick, setting about her son, as he had put it, him pushing her away. She had fallen and hit her head: that was not disputed – though she had not been pushed against the wall. Maybe Roy had misremembered that detail. Why would he say he had killed her, as the agent of the stroke, the stroke of luck? What kind of thing was that to admit to in the context of his mother’s passing? How could any of us know the whole truth? The whole thing made that memorial rose all the more imperative, I saw it now. It was the only way that Roy could straighten things out with his mother. It was the only way that I could straighten things out, short of knowing the whole truth. Fantasy or not, Roy said he had pushed her. He needed to make his peace. I needed to make my peace with Edith Mary because I had pushed her away too soon.

  We were out in the courtyard now, no taxis on the rank. ‘Were there any bruises on Edith?’ I asked Chas. ‘On her arms or shoulders – anywhere that could have indicated she had been pushed or grabbed hard by someone?’

  ‘Drop it, Louise,’ he said curtly. ‘You’ve seen the record – now change yours.’