‘Who was the first to get the illness?’
‘Benny.’
‘And he was the first to die?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s why you recall the date.’
‘I recall all the dates, Sergeant. The first to the last.’
‘When was the last?’
‘Three weeks. Everyone, everyone here, has contracted the illness. Those of us, staff and residents who remain, have all survived it. As a result, we’re more relaxed now. We’re out the other side, you might say. Hallelujah. The great virus war of 2020, and here we are, the survivors, allowing people like you to just walk in off the street, untested, unmasked, while we laugh at Covid, that will not touch us.’
‘People do get it again, people do d –’
‘No one cares,’ she says. ‘They’re either all ready to die, or they think they’re invincible. Everyone was fed up with restrictions, everyone has been through hell, there’s a signed letter from every resident and every power of attorney family member stating they wanted all restrictions on the home lifted.’
A beat. Another. The bitter pill they have all swallowed. How the war was won and where it got us.
‘Fuck it,’ she says, as a statement of intent from the inmates of Home 292.
‘Did you ever have any idea who it was who brought the illness here?’
She laughs, the sour, rueful laugh with which we’re familiar, and says, ‘You’re kidding me, right...? Pick one out of two hundred, Sergeant. What can I say? Benny was the first, so maybe it was someone who had contact with him. Maybe it was one of his sons, or his daughter-in-law, or his grandkids. You know if any of them ever had symptoms?’
I automatically shake my head.
July.
She doesn’t need to know about Harry and Victoria Lord having symptoms in early July.
‘But the paths of a virus are so labyrinthine, who can say? It could have been any visitor, passing it to any resident, or any other visitor, and on and on, through the passageways of innumerable human bodies, people being infected or not, showing symptoms or not, all at different rates and different stages. But Benny was the first to die, that’s all we know for certain, and thereafter, the cataclysm. Just as the rest of the country was slowing down, and the graphs were flatlining, and people were starting to think of moving on, we were dying. Those random days when there was one death announced, or two deaths or whatever... those deaths were ours. Day after day. And now, now it picks back up everywhere else, and many more will feel our pain.’
She swallows, breaks the look, stares at the desk.
‘Was Harry Lord one of the ones who used his influence and money to make sure the home lifted all its restrictions?’
She doesn’t lift her eyes, the lips purse even more tightly, nothing flashes across her face, then she closes her eyes, lifts her head and stretches her neck. The physical attempt at releasing the tension, a pose held for a few moments, and then she looks coldly across the desk.
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Harry Lord more or less ran the home. When he wanted to, at any rate.’
‘OK.’
And then, silence. We stare across the desk. The onus is obviously on me, as I was the one who came here.
What else is there to know? We wondered if Harry Lord’s death might be Covid-related, and within a couple of minutes we have a connection. But if the home weren’t aware that Lord might have had the virus, and therefore potentially was the person who infected his dad, and as a result, potentially infected all the other patients, why should it have any bearing on the investigation?
There are a fuck-load of potentials in there. Nevertheless, if someone, somewhere knew about it, then might they not consider killing Harry Lord a reasonable act of vengeance?
‘Would you be able to give me the list of all the patients who died?’ I ask, heart sinking at the question.
It makes sense, but Jesus, that is going to be a lot of people to follow up. That has phone calls and paperwork coming out its arse.
‘Why?’
I don’t answer. That, there, is a fairly regular question directed at the police, and there are two kinds of people who ask it. Idiots, and those who know well and good why we’re asking. Those people then have to choose who they’re going to be.
She sighs heavily, a sigh that will have crossed her lips a thousand times these past few months, then she says, ‘You really suppose someone thinks Mr Lord brought the disease to the home, and now they’ve taken their revenge?’
‘No, I don’t think that. But it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that ever happened. People kill for all sorts of reasons, and this has been one hell of a year. For everyone. We’re in the early stages of our investigation into Mr Lord’s murder, and so we need to pursue every avenue. This one is as likely as any other to be a dead end.’
‘Well, I suppose we can, but I’ll need to speak to the Director first.’
‘The Director’s here?’
I’d’ve been better speaking to the Director.
‘The Director hasn’t been here since March. She got set up to work remotely and has not darkened our doors since.’
No bitterness there, then.
‘I’ll need to speak to her too,’ I say.
‘Of course.’
And that might be it for the Day Manager. The conversation, such as it was, had been drawing to an end, and now we’ve added in the higher layer of authority, she can hand over the reins, and I wonder if she’s thinking she should just have mentioned the Director right from the kick-off.
‘There’s one other thing,’ she says. ‘No idea if it’s significant. Just kind of creepy, really. We wondered about calling the police, decided it wasn’t worth the bother. Dial 111 and you can write off the rest of the day while you’re waiting, right?’
I don’t answer that, if for no other reason than I have absolutely no idea.
‘What did you want to report?’
‘There was a thing nailed to the door of the home a couple of mornings ago. Kind of sick, given everything that happened.’
She pauses, seemingly having to think about where this thing might be, and I get no sense of it, what’s coming, and that it might be of the utmost significance.
And so, when she rolls her eyes at herself, opens the large desk drawer, takes out the item that was nailed to the door of the home and passes it across the desk, I’m completely taken aback, the words, ‘Fucking Jesus,’ unavoidably escaping my lips.
I take it from her, holding it gingerly by the edges, and then set it down on the desk in front of me. Empty eye sockets stare back at me from an identical white mask to the one placed over the face of Harry Lord.
16
We got the list quickly enough. The care home lost twenty-three residents in just under two months. Around half of their complement. That’s Black Death levels. Add to that two members of staff. No wonder Geraldine the Day Manager looked as though she’d had the living shit kicked out of her. They did a nice job of making sure that didn’t get into the press.
And so there are now a multitude of people to talk to, the investigation given a sudden, brutal kick up the arse. The family members of twenty-five Covid victims; the Director, continuing to self-isolate, as she has been doing since March, refusing to have the police at her house, and requiring interviewed by video; and there’s Mrs Lord, who will know more than anyone about her husband’s dealings with the care home, and with whom Kallas and I are now sitting.
‘What?’
The crumpled brow, the crinkled nose. The bags beneath her eyes like bilious clouds. In her face, the confusion of the murder victim’s wife. Or, as we all have to be cynical around here, the feigned bewilderment for the police audience.
‘There was an identical mask to the one placed over Harry’s face, nailed to the door of the home where his father died.’
‘Why? Why would someone do that?’
‘To make a connection.’
‘Why?’
&
nbsp; ‘We’ll start with us asking you that, Mrs Lord,’ I say. ‘How involved was Harry in the home?’
‘Involved? Not at all.’
The crease hasn’t left her brow. She’s found a prop, and she’s clinging to it.
‘He was a wealthy man. He provided funds to the church far in excess of what he might have been expected to, is it possible he did the same with the home?’
The furrow relaxes a little, she blinks. She holds my gaze for a moment, then looks at Kallas, then glances at the daughter, who’s sitting next to her looking young and in over her head, unfamiliar with dealing with death and its aftermath.
‘I don’t know. I don’t really know what Harry did with his money.’
‘You knew about the church.’
‘Yes. I was a member. The church was different.’
‘So, you don’t know if he gave additional funds to the home?’
‘No.’
‘When the home held onto restrictions into mid-July, was he one of those applying pressure to have those restrictions lifted?’
She hesitates, but only because she knows where this is going. This entire conversation is heading in a direction she doesn’t want to think about. A direction Harry would not have wanted to think about, were he still alive. A direction they would both have been intending to ignore for the rest of their lives.
‘Yes.’
‘Did he speak to other families? Get a group together?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was he the first to visit?’
A beat. Finally, ‘Harry and I and Liam went. Mandy was still in Durham. I don’t know whether we were the first to visit or not. One of the first, I suppose.’
‘And this was just after you and Harry had had symptoms of the virus.’
‘We were tested.’ Voice hard, lips thin, as defensive as a Walter Smith Rangers team playing Barcelona.
‘Could’ve been false negatives.’
‘Harry paid for good tests. The best.’
‘It was done privately?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps you could give us the details of that?’
‘Why?’ snaps the kid, and her mum squeezes her hand, gives her the it’s OK, just leave it side-eye.
Mandy, undaunted – and what twenty year-old is ever daunted by a side-eye from a parent – removes her hand so she can lean forward.
‘What do you want to prove? That my parents both had the virus? That they took it to the home, and they gave it to Granddad? They gave it to them all? What does that have to do with whoever killed dad?’
The connection is clear, and I don’t bother making it for her. The mum finds her daughter’s hand again, entwines her fingers. They swallow with perfect synchronicity. The daughter looks as though she might be about to cry.
‘I’ll get those details for you,’ says Mrs Lord.
‘Thank you.’
‘Is there anything else you’ll need?’
‘Everything you know about other families with whom he was in contact with regards to reopening the home.’
She looks a little lost at that, finally shakes her head, though more at the enormity of the task.
‘I’ll see what I can find.’
‘D’you know if there was anyone who was dead against it? Against reopening?’
‘I really...’ and she shakes her head, and lets the answer drift off, hoping, more than likely, that it will take the question with it.
We already have at least one solid answer to that from Geraldine, the Day Manager, but there’s rarely ever only one answer to any question.
Fuck me, that’s deep, isn’t it?
I glance at Kallas, the have you anything you’d like to ask look, and she shakes her head. Has been silent throughout, an invisible, yet focussing presence.
I can’t help myself holding the look a little longer than necessary, then drag my eyes away and turn back to the widow.
‘I think that might be all for the moment, Mrs Lord, thank you. There’s nothing else you’ve thought of in the last day that might be significant?’
The head shake, the barely moving lips, the eyes dropping to the table, the fingers gripping more tightly the fingers of the girl.
‘Thank you, Mrs Lord,’ says Kallas, getting to her feet, and that’s that one for the moment.
I watch the mum, the widow, waiting for the flicker, the look in the eye that speaks of relief, but there’s nothing. She looks washed out, the look of these times, when so many have had their lives torn up and spat out.
She stares at the table, her daughter stares at the same spot, and Kallas and I see ourselves to the door.
‘WE HAVE A LOT OF PHONE calls to make,’ says Kallas. Heading to the mortuary to see Fforbes. ‘If I could ask you to coordinate the team once we get back to the station.’
‘Sure.’
‘I will speak to the chief, see if we can get more resources. Human resources,’ she adds, just to make sure I didn’t think she meant coffee or toilet roll.
The phrase human resources always sounds a little too Soylent Green to me, even more so coming from Kallas’s monotone.
‘You want to be included in the roster of calls?’ I ask.
‘No. There are many things to consider. I’ll stay at the operations room, try to fit everything in to place. We have too many different strands at the moment, it can be easy to get lost.’
‘It was a bold statement,’ I say, ‘the mask nailed to the door, though weirdly, in its way, not an obvious one. There was no guarantee we’d make it public that there’d been a mask placed on the victim, and we hadn’t; and there was no guarantee the home would tell the police about their mask. A connection was never definitely going to be made, and if it was, the killer had no control over the timing of the connection.’ Take a moment, try to squeeze that thought into something more constructive, but there’s nothing there.
‘There are various ways in which the link could have been made,’ says Kallas. ‘One of those links happened. Perhaps the killer would have found some other way for it to have happened, if it had not.’
‘How would he have known it didn’t?’
‘Good,’ she says, I think meaning ‘good point’, but it’s not entirely clear.
‘It feels enough of a statement, however, that it might be the killer is not done,’ I say. ‘Leaving a calling card is not a good sign.’
‘I agree. We can hope, perhaps, that the intention was to link Lord’s death to the home and leave it there. But if that were the case, why would the killer give us that clue to their identity? We are now interviewing everyone who had anything to do with the home, and in particular Mr Lord. So, was it to throw us off the scent, or is it just the beginning?’ She pauses a moment, but I know she’s not looking for an answer, her questions entirely rhetorical. ‘We cannot focus on the end product of the investigation,’ she continues. ‘We must, for now, do what is right in front of us. That also means not losing sight of Mr Lord’s many lovers.’
‘You’re on that?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many have you counted so far?’
She glances at me, wondering if it’s a serious question, then she says, ‘I’m not running a tally. I think six, though perhaps it is more.’
‘Six this year, or six lifetime? I mean, the lifetime of his marriage.’
‘Six this year. I do not think it will be the final number.’
Stare straight ahead. Lucky bastard.
I mean, he’s dead, so let’s not get carried away about him being that lucky, but still, six women and counting. I’m supposed to be a sex addict, and I haven’t had that many women this year. Of course, he was fit as fuck, and much, much wealthier. He was probably turning women down, while I, for my sins, take anyone I can get.
On we go, round and round the investigation race track, regularly passing the same points, hoping the perspective is a little different, making our way to see Dr Fforbes, and to breathe in the Kool Aid of disinfectant.
; FFORBES, KALLAS AND I sitting around a white table in the mortuary, drinking tea, eating Fox’s biscuits. Or bisqwits as I can’t help saying in my head, ever since the Sopranos panda was on TV.
Kallas initially refused, until it became obvious that the doc and I would be sitting here drinking a brew, and she was able then to shake off those Estonian shackles and go wild. Drinking tea and eating Fox’s bisqwits in a mortuary is the Estonian equivalent of downing a bottle of gin, shooting LSD into your eyeballs and running naked onto the set of Captain Marvel looking to anally bang Brie Larson.
On the table are the two masks, side-by-side, identical, Lord’s death mask identifiable as being marked with soaked-in blood.
‘So, nice of you to come in ‘n’ all, but –’
‘It is not a problem.’
‘But these are both... you know, I think this second one just confirms what we had from the first. These are made in a factory somewhere from a mould. Could be Bangladesh, could be Vietnam, could be anywhere. Putting them together then, yes, we have confirmation they are identical. Quite probably from the same batch. The one found at the home does not give up any further secrets, however.’
‘Is there anything to be revealed from the mask at the home?’
‘Zip. No DNA, no blood, no body matter of any description.’
Fforbes takes a drink of tea, then scoops up another chocolate biscuit.
Kallas runs a light finger over the mask that was attached to the door, the hole at the top of the forehead where the nail was hammered through. Then she takes a drink of tea, regarding the cup with shame, before placing it back on the table.
‘You have the final report on the autopsy of Mr Lord?’ she asks.
‘I e-mailed it about ten minutes before you got here.’
‘You didn’t say.’
‘No,’ says Fforbes, and I get the conspiratorial glance again. ‘I guess we got carried away talking about tea and biscuits.’
‘Is there anything of note?’
‘I’ve got the time of death down to between one-fifteen and one-thirty. There were only seventeen cuts carried out post-mortem, so our killer knew what he was doing. They kept him alive for a long time. There was also evidence of bruising of the testicles, so it looks as though there was some gratuitous pain delivered, along with the slashing.’
In My Time Of Dying: DS Hutton Book 5 Page 8