An Empty Death

by Laura Wilson

  Rice scattered the blue-suited gardeners, who broke up in confusion, allowing Stratton a clear path behind him, and disappeared through a side door. Following, Stratton found himself pounding down a passage, hearing shouts, banging doors and shrieking whistles behind him as the sound of running feet alerted inmates and staff. Skidding round a corner, he was just in time to see Rice yank open an outside door and take off again across the grass. Stratton could see, about half a mile away, the edge of a wood. Gunfire was issuing from somewhere behind it. Rice, he realised, was heading for the weapon-testing range.

  ‘Oh no you fucking don’t,’ he muttered. The bastard wasn’t going to cheat him that way – Rice was his. Stratton tried to increase his speed – the distance between them was lengthening – but he was panting now, fighting a stitch…Why the fuck wasn’t Ballard there? He was younger, fitter, he’d be able to catch up with him, whereas he, Stratton, was going to lose him, chase him into the path of the guns, and then—

  Rice fell, full length in the grass. So abruptly did it happen that, for a moment, Stratton thought that one of the shots must have gone wide. Then he saw that Rice was on his knees, clambering upright, and, in a final, agonising burst of speed, gasping, almost retching, with the effort, he forced himself forward, closing the gap until he was close – closer – close enough to launch himself into a rugby tackle and, catching Rice around the knees, bring him down.

  ‘You killed her!’ he grunted. One knee in the small of Rice’s back, he grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and slammed his face into the ground, over and over again, harder and harder. ‘You killed her!’ He wasn’t even thinking of Rice as a person, just a punchbag of flesh. He lunged forward and held Rice round the neck in an armlock, yanking him upwards, taking out his anger at himself, at the world, in a serious of vicious jerks, unconsciously taking his rhythm from the stuttering rattle of the guns in the valley. ‘You – killed – her! – I – will – fucking – murder – you!’

  He felt Rice thrashing beneath him, heard him grunt as he tried to breathe, and then – and this took a moment to register – his body stilled and went limp. ‘Oh, Jesus, no…’ He’d broken his neck. He scrambled off and pushed Rice over, onto his back. The man’s face was a bloody mess, a flattened nose, eyes swollen shut and burst lips. Stratton slapped it, hard, forehand and backhand. ‘Don’t you dare fucking die, you bastard.’

  One eye opened a fraction, and the head came up an inch. ‘You…’ he croaked, ‘want to…kill me.’ The eye closed again.

  ‘No…no.’ Stratton, all rage dispelled, was aghast. He looked down at his hands, which were shaking from his exertions, blood smeared across the knuckles. ‘I’m sorry.’ Kneeling on the grass beside Rice’s ruined head, he began to sob.

  After a moment, he felt something touch his leg, and, looking down, saw Rice’s muddy fingers. The single eye flickered again, and Rice murmured, ‘Don’t…don’t…’ before lapsing into unconsciousness.

  Stratton wiped the tears and sweat from his face and looked around him. Standing at a distance, by the building, were a row of white-coated men – doctors, he supposed – all staring in his direction. His turn for the loony bin. For a moment, he wanted to laugh. Then he heard a deep gurgling sound that took him, instantly, back to Jenny in the Rest Centre kitchen, so that Rice’s face and body became hers, and, raising the man up, he cradled him in his arms. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve got you.’

  How long they remained like that, Stratton didn’t know. After a time, the guns stopped firing, and, sometime after that, he became aware of footsteps and voices, and, looking round, found himself staring at a pair of suit trousers and six blue serge legs. Looking up, he saw the worried faces of a detective and three policemen. Stratton fished in his pocket and handed the senior man his badge. Silently, the detective glanced at it, nodded briefly, and handed it back.

  They stood round him in a ring, silent and keeping a wary distance as Stratton gave Rice a gentle shake. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Again, the flickering eye, accompanied by a slight inclination of the head.

  ‘John Walter Strang, I am arresting you,’ he produced the warrant and held it in front of Rice’s nose, ‘for obtaining your present position under false pretences.’

  Rice shook his head in gentle reproach, and, for just a couple of seconds, Stratton really did believe that they had got it, or at least that part of it, wrong.

  ‘You are John Walter Strang, aren’t you?’ Again, Rice shook his head. ‘We know,’ continued Stratton, ‘that you have a scar at the base of your thumb. On your right hand.’ One of the uniformed coppers peered at Rice’s hand and nodded in confirmation. ‘Your mother told us about it.’

  Rice’s slightly open eye widened in shock, but only for a split second.

  ‘Is John Walter Strang your original name?’ asked Stratton.

  Rice’s bloody face seemed to radiate contempt. ‘He’s…no-one,’ he whispered. ‘I know…who I am.’

  ‘But you were born John Walter Strang?’

  Rice nodded.

  ‘And you have also used the name James Dacre?’

  Another nod.

  ‘And Sam Todd?’

  Another nod.

  ‘And John Watson?’

  Another nod.

  ‘And…’ Stratton checked again. ‘Norman Thomas?’

  ‘Yes…’ Rice parted his ruined lips in a crooked semblance of a smile. ‘But…you’ve missed…some.’

  ‘You can tell us later,’ said Stratton. ‘At the station. But first – before we go – there’s something I want to ask. Gentlemen,’ he looked up at the circle of policemen, ‘if you wouldn’t mind…’

  The detective rolled his eyes in a manner that said a strange day was getting even stranger, and jerked his thumb at the coppers, whereupon they all retreated some distance towards the wood.

  ‘Why did you want to kill me?’ asked Stratton, when he was sure they couldn’t be overheard.

  ‘Help…Fay.’

  ‘You loved – love – her that much?’

  ‘Makes…no sense.’

  ‘Not even…now?’

  ‘Nothing…makes sense.’

  ‘You told Mrs Ingram that I was a police officer.’

  ‘Thought…she…knew.’

  ‘No. It made her worse, didn’t it? Set her off. You wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise – in your letter.’

  ‘She already…had the knife…I don’t know. I’m sorry. You may not…believe…but it’s the truth. Could have been…good doctor. Wanted to…save people. Not…an act.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Stratton. ‘Thank you.’

  Seventy-Six

  ‘So…’ Some hours later, at a Birmingham police station, Stratton checked the names off the list he’d written. ‘That’s John Salter, Thomas Collis, Frank Patmore and Thomas Stanbridge. Besides the ones we already knew about. Are there any others?’

  The man sitting on the other side of the table, battered, but speaking almost normally now, shook his head. ‘That’s the lot.’

  ‘Humour me,’ said Stratton. ‘Who was your favourite?’

  ‘Well…’ The man paused, but not for long. ‘I enjoyed Rice, but it was Dacre, I think. Yes. James Dacre.’

  ‘Because of Fay Marchant?’

  ‘Yes. But also because it was my first time. As a doctor, I mean. When I discovered I really could do it.’

  That made sense, thought Stratton. Dacre, being a doctor, was the first identity with real status. And Dacre, of course, had had the admiration – and perhaps even the love – of Fay Marchant. It was a lot to lose – that was why Dacre had been prepared to kill in order to keep it. Stratton pushed his packet of cigarettes across the scarred wooden surface. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They were sitting in the small interview room drinking tea. The prisoner, who had been fingerprinted, entered into the station log and seen by the doctor (with a lot of eyebrow raising at the cuts and bruises, b
ut nothing actually said), had been subdued but calm throughout. Watching him smoke, Stratton decided it was time for that to change. Since their last exchange on the grass, the man had made no effort to ingratiate himself with Stratton in any way, which made things a lot easier. Banishing a lingering sense of gratitude for this, he prepared himself to go in for the kill.

  ‘You know, Mr Strang…’ A well-controlled flicker of irritation crossed the man’s face. ‘I think it’s time you told us about that morphine.’

  This was the first time since they’d sat down that Stratton had addressed him as anything – and reminding him of his true status was quite deliberate. If he addressed him as Rice, the man would, automatically, answer as a qualified person, a psychiatrist, and Stratton didn’t want this because the persona of Rice, like that of Dacre, was more intelligent than he, as well as being a professional man and therefore several notches up on the social scale. He’d reached this decision during the car journey, in order to guard against any danger that he might become deferential, which, given what had just happened, was a definite risk. Also, he hoped that calling the man Strang – who, after all, was simply a criminal – would separate them both from the shared experience of Jenny’s death.

  ‘There’s not really much I can add to what I’ve already told you,’ said the man, easily.

  ‘Yes there is, Mr Strang’ – again, the slight tightening around the blackened eyes – ‘for instance, in your letter, you claimed to have stolen the morphine, but you didn’t say why you took it.’

  ‘Absent-mindedness, pure and simple,’ said the man. Recognising the practised charm with which this was said, Stratton thought, I may have addressed him as Strang, but it’s Dacre who’s talking, and this is something he’s rehearsed. Still, he told himself, it’s Dacre who cares about Fay. ‘As you suspected,’ the man continued, ‘I was rather distracted by Nurse Marchant – working myself up to asking her on a date, you know…’ He gave a self-deprecating chuckle. ‘And then of course there was that business with the torsion – I’d never seen one before, and when Mr Hambling tore a strip off me…not to mention the…well, what was involved…’ Stratton, who remembered in vivid detail exactly what was involved, willed himself not to wince. ‘It never occurred to me that Nurse Marchant could get into trouble until later, and by then I was feeling…well, rather a fool, to be honest. Besides, I’d used some of the stuff. That woman who walloped me.’ He rubbed the side of his face and grimaced. ‘Bloody painful, like this.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Stratton, whose own face, thanks to the fists of the giant who’d felled him in the hospital, was feeling extremely tender, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t believe you. You see, we happen to have very good reason for thinking that Nurse Marchant took that morphine.’

  Alarm flickered in the man’s eyes. ‘No, Inspector. I took it. As I said, I’m the culprit.’

  ‘Did you use it to kill Dr Byrne?’

  The man shook his head.

  ‘No,’ agreed Stratton. ‘You didn’t. Nurse Marchant, on the other hand—’

  ‘Nurse Marchant had nothing to do with that,’ said the man flatly. ‘You know she didn’t.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Stratton, ‘I don’t know anything of the sort. And I suspect there’s rather a lot that you don’t know about Nurse Marchant.’

  The man’s face took on a worldly expression – time for the ‘both-men-of-the-world’ act, thought Stratton. The man opened his mouth as if to speak, but – perhaps clocking the look on Stratton’s face, closed it again. Remembering the lengths that he’d been prepared to go to for Fay, Stratton felt a twinge of guilt. Stop it, he told himself. This is no place for emotions. Just get on with the fucking job.

  ‘She was having an affair with Dr Reynolds,’ said Stratton. The calmness with which the man received this told him that it wasn’t news. However, he was willing to bet his month’s salary that it was all he knew. ‘Unfortunately,’ he continued, keeping his eyes on the man’s face, ‘they were rather careless, and she managed to get herself pregnant.’

  The man lowered his head and looked at the table. Didn’t know about that, did you, thought Stratton. ‘Reynolds, being a doctor,’ he continued, ‘was able to arrange a certain operation. Which he undertook himself, by the way.’ Stratton leant forward. ‘On his own child.’ The man flinched as if he had been struck, but still did not meet Stratton’s eyes. ‘Soon after that, Reynolds met with an unfortunate accident. But you know all about that, don’t you, because you were working in the Middlesex mortuary at the time as Sam Todd. We had one particular set of fingerprints that cropped up all over that mortuary, by the way – we haven’t identified them, but now that we have yours I imagine it’s only a matter of time, don’t you? Because that’s something you can’t change about yourself, whether you’re Strang, or Todd, or Dacre…or the man in the moon, come to that.’

  Stratton paused to see if the man would challenge this, or make some remark, but he remained silent, staring downwards. It was, as far as the murders were concerned, a fishing expedition, and he needed a hell of a lot more evidence. Well, he’d just have to stretch the truth a bit – a lot – and see if it had the desired effect. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you claim to have met Nurse Marchant for the first time when you bumped into her – the day the morphine disappeared – but I’m beginning to wonder if you didn’t know her before that. I think you might have cooked all this up together.’

  The man looked up, shaking his head. ‘No. I told you. That was the first time I met her.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Stratton, thoughtfully, ‘that if she could have a doctor – Reynolds, I mean – she’d hardly lower her sights to a mortuary attendant. Anyway…’ he sighed deeply, ‘the whole business with her and Reynolds was pretty sordid, as I’m sure you can imagine…’ Stratton paused to allow the man to imagine it. ‘I think that Dr Byrne got to know about what Reynolds did, and threatened to have him struck off and her dismissed in disgrace. You said yourself that you were prepared to kill to protect her, but of course if you didn’t know her then…As you know,’ he continued, ‘some people have a very strong survival instinct. You do yourself. The odd thing is that it has nothing to do with physical strength – it’s all in here.’ Stratton tapped his forehead. ‘Reynolds must have argued with Byrne – pleaded with him, begged him – not to report the pair of them. And I know that Fay, for her part, pleaded with Reynolds to run away with her, but,’ here Stratton adopted a sarcastic tone, ‘apparently for the first time, his conscience pricked him, and he refused. He was married, after all. The two of them had an argument on the night of Reynolds’s death, and…’ He let the implications of this hang in the air for a moment before resuming. ‘If you remember – and of course you do remember, because you were on the spot, as Todd – it was Byrne who said that Reynolds’s death was due to foul play and suggested we look into it. To be honest, we would probably have chalked it up as one of those unfortunate things that happened in the blackout, but of course…With Reynolds out of the way, Nurse Marchant had to deal with Byrne, didn’t she? And before that, of course, there was Nurse Leadbetter…Nurse Marchant was upset – angry – Byrne was still threatening to report the matter, and perhaps he’d guessed about the nurse, too…She must have felt trapped, poor girl.

  ‘Nurse Marchant was seen outside Byrne’s office on the night of his death. By me.’ Stratton paused and stared at the man, who blinked several times, but did not change his expression. ‘She seemed…well, agitated. Which she would be if she’d just pumped poor Dr Byrne full of morphine. She must have caught him off guard, somehow, managed to knock him out. Strong girls, nurses.’ Stratton paused, took a swig of his cooling tea, and lit another cigarette, deliberately not offering the packet. ‘You are probably asking yourself why, having taken her in for questioning, we let her go, but that was for the other matter – the abortion. We suspected her of murder then, but now, with a witness who has just come forward, we have enough evidence to convict her. The only fly in the ointment
has been you, Mr Strang. Naturally, we wanted to speak to you about the other matter – obtaining employment by fraudulent means is a serious business – but I wanted to be sure, in my own mind, that I could eliminate you from our enquiries. And now that I’ve got to know you better, Mr Strang, I can see that the explanation you provided for taking that morphine is, by your standards…well, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s unsatisfactory. I’m sure you’ll be very relieved to hear that I don’t believe for a moment that you killed Dr Byrne, and I shall now instruct my colleagues in London to arrest Fay Marchant. That must be quite a weight off your mind, I should think.’

  ‘I…’ began the man. ‘I…Yes. A weight off my mind,’ he repeated, mechanically. Far from being relieved, he had the desperate, cornered look of a rat in a trap.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Stratton, cheerfully. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Apart from anything else, I need to check that they can put you up overnight. You can keep those.’ He gestured to the packet of cigarettes. ‘If you need a light, there’s a policeman just outside the door. I’m sure he’ll be happy to oblige.’

  Seventy-Seven

  Left alone, the man buried his face in his hands. Why the hell had he sent that letter? To try and help Fay, yes, but also to show off…And Stratton had seen through him. Understood. And the way he’d kept calling him Strang, trying to provoke him…

  He’d wondered, occasionally, if it might be a relief to tell someone – a stranger – about his life, but when he had he’d imagined disbelief, then admiration for his daring. Nothing like this. Now he was right back where he started. Worse, in fact. Not only was John Strang a mere nobody, he was also a common criminal, a fraud. And as for Fay…It couldn’t be true, could it? The affair with Dr Reynolds, yes, but the abortion…? And killing that nurse? It wasn’t possible…Stratton had said something about a witness…Everything had spun horribly, hopelessly, out of his control. The moment he’d seen him at the hospital he’d known that he had lost, that was why he’d run towards the firing range. When Stratton had started bashing his head against the ground, the pain had scarcely registered, so divorced had he felt from even his physical self. Now, he ached all over…And then there was the question of his mother. Would she insist on seeing him? Could she insist? She was the cause of all this. He didn’t want to see her, ever again.