Songbird

by Peter Grainger

  Janey was staying with a university friend she’d made in Leicester, and he could even picture the girl from one of the parties he’d attended one weekend. Tonight they would go out just for a quiet drink, she said – what was he planning?

  ‘I’m not sure it’s a plan, but I might go down to The Blue Note for an hour, just to see what’s on. It’s Saturday, so someone will be playing something. Or I might not bother, I don’t know.’

  It was Lake’s only jazz venue, in a basement off the market square. They’d been together a few times, and it was a good place to sit and talk without the need to drink much – you could even just have coffee and stay completely sober. Since the frightening encounter with the Albanians two years ago, when Smith had collected him in a stupor from Micky Lemon’s cafe, that was often Waters’ preference, and also, in this job you soon realised that alcohol was the root cause of many of the nastiest things you have to investigate. As for the music, he didn’t pretend to know much about it. The modern stuff could be awful – something to do with chromatic scales, he’d looked it up – but then, on another night there might be a man who looked like a retired geography teacher playing a piano so beautifully that it hurt, or a trio involving a young woman with a cornet who performed nothing but tributes to someone called Beiderbecke, and every time she appeared the place was full by nine o’clock.

  OK, she’d said with mock seriousness, but you sit on your own and don’t talk to anyone. Because he had told Janey that he first went there with Katherine Diver – or rather, that Katherine had taken him there not long after they first met and she was giving him the tour of the Kings Lake dives. These included his one and only visit to a pole-dancing club where the owner had recognised Katherine and offered her two hundred pounds if she would do that dance again, the one she did as a dare on a hen night months before. Waters had stood aghast as she seemed to be considering it. She asked for five hundred and the man said no. Waters had sat there for an hour, dreading the man’s return with an improved offer. He’d only known Katherine for a couple of weeks then but had a horrible feeling that for three hundred and fifty, she might have obliged.

  That was years ago, of course, already years ago, and he hadn’t seen Katherine or Jason Diver since it came to an end. Their improbable private detective agency, however, was still in existence, despite DC’s absolute conviction that they wouldn’t last six months after they inherited it from their uncle. Diver and Diver Associates – he wondered whether there were any associates now, or whether the sister and brother had taken on the investigative work themselves.

  When he arrived at The Blue Note at a little after nine, it was busy enough. There was no music then but the stage was set up with drums, a double bass and keyboards – hopefully this would be music he could listen to for a while. When he bought an Americano, the woman behind the bar said hello as if she remembered him from a previous visit, and he found an unoccupied table for two left of the entrance. He could sit in the shadows with his back to the bare brick wall and watch the comings and goings, something that the job had taught him to enjoy.

  The hand on his shoulder took him by surprise.

  ‘Chris! Long time, no see! How are you?’

  Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world… But he should not have been surprised, should he? Surprised that Jason Diver might still frequent The Blue Note? Waters returned the greeting and said he was good, how was Jason himself, but his eyes were already searching the basement room for Katherine. If she was somewhere between his table and the door, how would he make his escape?

  He couldn’t see her but out of politeness had to ask, naturally.

  Jason said, ‘Oh, she’s on top form, as ever. She’s in the running for Lake’s Young Businesswoman of the Year! Did you know? It’s a hoot, isn’t it? She’ll be mortified she’s missed you.’

  ‘She isn’t here with you?’

  ‘No. She went to the office to make a phone call. I know that sounds mad on a Saturday night, but it’s trans-Atlantic. To do with a case.’

  Jason looked at the iWatch on his left wrist.

  Waters said, ‘You’re still in the business, then? How’s it going?’

  ‘Really taken off this year. I wasn’t joking about the Businesswoman thing, Chris. I bet that call is over. I’ll give her a ring, let her know who’s here.’

  ‘I don’t think-’

  Too late – he was making the call through the watch. Waters made his own call in the form of a private prayer, though if you had asked him at that moment what form salvation might take, he could not have given a straight answer. All he’d wanted was a quiet hour and some music. Now the other half of the most chaotic and confusing relationship he’d ever had might be striding in through the doorway in a matter of minutes.

  ‘No, not answering. But Chris, come and join us, just me and a couple of friends over there.’

  Jason put a hand by his mouth conspiratorially and said, ‘It’s alright, we don’t need to tell them what you do. Seriously, they’re good sorts. Justin’s in the city and Mike teaches at the university. If you won’t join us, we’ll join you. What on earth is that you’re drinking?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘… and the police witness is Detective Constable Butler. The date is Monday the thirty-first of July, the time 08.42, - twelve minutes behind the scheduled start,’ with a look at Gervaise Fraser, ‘and the subject has been formally identified as Michelle Simms. We’ll begin with the preliminary photographs, then.’

  Dr Robinson hadn’t remembered Serena’s name – he’d read into the voice recorder from a page of notes prepared by Olive Markham – but he had remembered her face from the Sokoloff autopsy. The fact she had come back for more must have impressed him in some way because he had taken the time to outline for her the procedures ahead. Her role was two-fold – literally to be a legal witness to the autopsy but also to supervise the assembling of material that might become evidence if they managed to charge someone with the murder of Michelle Simms.

  Autopsy is a slow, laborious, scientific process. Steps taken out of sequence can damage, even destroy material that would otherwise have played an important part in an investigation; on the other hand, every case is unique, and the pathologist must be simultaneously aware of many potential evidence trails. Each discovery about a body can lead to a new pathway, another set of samples to be taken and another batch of labels to be written and attached by the police witness. A single mistake with those labels and hundreds, possibly thousands, of hours of police work might have been wasted.

  Gervaise Fraser seemed singularly unimpressed by the doctor’s mention of his late arrival. With slow but practised fingers, he removed a lens from the digital camera body, put on its end cap and placed it into a soft leather case. Then the procedure was reversed as he fitted a new lens to the camera and adjusted various settings. He took one shot of the stainless steel dissection table and its occupant, and checked that he was satisfied with the result before nodding to the pathologist that he was ready to begin.

  Robinson returned the nod and said to Serena, ‘We begin by taking a sequence of photographs front and back as we remove the clothing, one item at a time. Please don’t feel the need to offer a hand as we rearrange the body – Ms Markham and I are used to this, and the fewer contacts with the living, the better. For all concerned. Rigor has passed which should simplify matters. At this stage, there is nothing for you to do but observe.’

  The mortal remains of Michelle Simms were indeed limp, and it was plain that the pathologist and his technician had worked this way many times before. Very few words passed between them, and Olive Markham knew the sequence in which Robinson wanted the clothes removed. Similarly, Gervaise Fraser took his pictures steadily, moving around as they lifted and repositioned the corpse, showing no more interest in the subject than he might have done if he’d been photographing flower-arranging displays for a local Women’s Institute open day.

  They took off the blouse. Robinson
took a superficial look at it, front and then back, before handing it to his assistant; the line was very clear and sharp for him, and whatever evidence the clothing held was someone else’s business, not his. Olive folded the blouse as she might have after ironing it, and then put it into a clear plastic cover. But then, briefly, the eyes of the two women met. Their mouths were covered by identical blue masks, but the pathology technician’s gaze was saying, perhaps, yes, it’s a nice blouse, she took her time choosing this one, the way we do, and when she got home, didn’t she try it on again in front of the mirror? It looks new. Maybe she bought it for her trip to the seaside with her sister and her nieces.

  After the bag was placed on the side bench where the samples would gradually accumulate, Serena picked up her first label and began the process of adding the all-important information. It wasn’t easy with the latex gloves, and she hardly recognised her own handwriting when she had finished. Olive had folded the blouse so the maker’s label was still visible. It wasn’t one that Serena recognised. Her own clothes almost always came from high street chains and this cream-coloured blouse probably did not. It looked expensive and she had half an impulse to break the seal and feel the material, as if that might give her a clue as to how this poor woman came to die in the thing she’d bought to make herself look attractive.

  Olive took off the bra and repeated the bagging procedure. Nothing was done with any urgency, and the photographer took another two or three pictures, again from the front and the back. The bra was cerise pink, and the upper half of the cup was lace. It looked too flimsy to support the woman’s breasts, which hung heavily to the side when they put her onto her back again. Robinson leaned down and lifted one breast with his own cupped, gloved hand, looked closely and said something to Olive. She nodded and when she brought the bra to the labelling station, she said to Serena, ‘Dr Robinson wants you to know there are breast implants.’

  A simple factual statement and yet somehow faintly damning, as if this too might have been a contributory factor. Why do we have these irrational thoughts, and make these illogical judgements? And yet she knew, because she was an intuitive and instinctive detective, that nothing can be entirely discounted when we build the victim’s profile; the decision to enhance or alter in such a fundamental way a body’s appearance is only the final expression of complex psychological processes. Just how insecure and unhappy had Michelle Simms been? In what other ways did this manifest itself in her life? Serena recalled Reeve’s words about how states of mind reflect themselves in behaviours, and how behaviours can affect one’s chances of becoming a victim. It was a disturbing thought – not that anyone ever deserves to be attacked but that in some unconscious way one might have invited it.

  When the body was naked, Robinson carried out a minute inspection from head to toe, and Fraser followed him, taking numerous close-up images. Serena didn’t always eat breakfast anyway but she had made a point of not doing so this morning. She found the process of dissection interesting rather than upsetting, but this man-handling of the complete but lifeless female body troubled her in some way. Another man had taken the life and now two more of them were posing and photographing the remains, as if Michelle Simms had become a mannequin or worse, a grotesque and ghastly sex toy. Tonight, maybe, Robinson would go out to dinner with his medical colleagues and Fraser would sit at home processing these images. The thought made her angry, and that’s OK – use the anger to find the person who did this, who made this happen.

  Robinson said to his technician, ‘You can prepare for a T-shaped cut but I’ll begin with an examination of the head and neck. If you could take the hair samples first, and then the fingernails.’

  Olive Markham said, ‘For the nails, do you want scrapings or clippings?’

  ‘We’ll do both. Pay particular attention to the scrapings on the right hand, please. In fact, I’ll take those myself.’

  They watched as Olive took samples of hair from the head and the pubic bone – Serena wasn’t surprised to see that the dark hair on the latter had been carefully trimmed. She guessed that Michelle Simms had been a reader of magazines and a follower of fashion trends. Serena had already added information to several more labels and she had time to say to Robinson, ‘Why the right hand in particular?’

  ‘As I told your sergeant at the scene, there is material under two or three of the nails. I debated whether to remove it there and then. Here is a more controlled environment, of course. The bags over the hands should have preserved any material that was dislodged when the body was moved.’

  She’d noticed the plastic covers that had been tied around both wrists. She said, ‘What sort of material? Any ideas?’

  ‘Light in colour. Possibly some sort of fabric. Nothing you are likely to get DNA from, if that’s what you’re hoping. At least, that would be my suspicion. Ms Markham has finished, so I’ll do my bit with the right hand, and then we’ll examine the head and neck. Keep all the bags lined up in chronological order on the bench. You are putting the time on each one? Good. I’ll check them all before we leave. You’re doing a decent job.’

  Robinson spent a long time examining the bruises on the right side of the face, asking Fraser to take more images until he, Robinson, was satisfied with the results. He used a hand lens and leaned in closely, eventually inviting Serena to do the same. He said, ‘Contusions alter over time, and this alteration process varies according to a number of factors. As a result, the conclusions we might draw from them are easily challenged. Nevertheless, our timing on this one is fortuitous. It’s easy enough to make out the three darker areas within the general area of bruising – here, here and here.’

  He was pointing with the tip of a roller-ball pen, and sure enough she could see three diffuse but darker patches within the damaged flesh of the cheek. Robinson went on, ‘Classically, these are the marks made by a clenched fist – each point of more intense bruising is made by a knuckle bone. One, two, three.’

  Then he held up his own left hand, made a fist and counted again, pointing to each knuckle with the same pen, the index finger knuckle first – ‘One, two, three.’ Finally, he moved his fist close to the dead face, crouched a little in order to line it up and said, ‘This isn’t at all scientific and we won’t note it down, but I’d say his hands are larger than mine.’

  Serena said, ‘If she’d been hit more than once, there would be multiple marks from the knuckle bones?’

  ‘Yes. I can see evidence only of a single blow to the face, and no other contusions on the body, other than what we’re about to examine on the neck. A heavy blow.’

  Robinson pressed gloved fingers onto the bruised area and palpated it gently.

  ‘I can feel nothing but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a hairline fracture in the cheekbone. It might be worth scanning that area – not something we would usually do. But at least one heavy blow with a clenched fist.’

  ‘Heavy enough to knock her out? Could a punch to the face do that?’

  She knew that the slight hesitation was because she had asked him to speculate, to move beyond the scientific facts and enter her realm – that of possibilities and probabilities.

  Robinson said, ‘I cannot say she was knocked out by this blow. I would venture that she was probably knocked down by it. I would be surprised if she remained on her feet. When we examine the brain, we might find evidence of recent subdural trauma linked to the blow. That’s basically what happens when boxers are knocked out. The brain collides with the inner wall of the skull, and the protective membranes aren’t enough to prevent damage.’

  ‘A single blow, though? We’re looking for a strong man with large hands.’

  Robinson held up his gloved hands and said, ‘Well, hands larger than mine. And there is another possibility. A man who knows how to deliver a punch – it isn’t solely about brute strength. It’s as much about how the arm is tensioned and the body is positioned at the moment of impact. Boxers practise this for hours – and other such dubious sports, too, I
imagine.’

  Serena thought it over, watching Olive Markham remove the covering on the corpse’s left hand. Then she said, ‘But you’d go so far as to agree that we’re looking for a man?’

  Robinson said, ‘I understand that increasing numbers of young women are taking up the noble art – which tells us much about the times in which we live. But yes, detective constable, I would think your attacker was male, and a relatively strong individual.’

  Robinson took several swabs from the skin of the neck before he examined it internally. Serena asked why, and he explained that it was a routine procedure when one was confronted with an area with which the killer had been in direct contact. There was nothing obvious, he said, but the swabs would be screened chromatographically and then tested further if anything unusual appeared.

  The bruising internally on the neck was worse than the discoloration of the skin on the surface. Robinson said that none of the neck vertebrae had been broken, as happens not infrequently in manual strangulation, but the windpipe itself showed signs of trauma. In an unusually colloquial turn of phrase, Robinson, standing up straight for a moment to relieve his back, said, ‘He meant business, Miss Butler. Sometimes your killer intends to frighten or to hurt and misjudges the matter. I doubt that was the case here.’

  Five minutes later, he straightened up again and looked at Olive Markham. She picked up a large scalpel from the tray of instruments, but Robinson said, ‘No. Oral, vaginal and anal swabs next. Let’s rule out something your detective sergeant was interested in – I don’t mean that to sound inappropriate, naturally.’