Merciless: a gripping detective thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book 2)

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘How much do you owe?’ Caroline asked, imagining tens of thousands.

  Maddie shook her head, reluctant to answer.

  ‘At my worst it was nearly fifty grand,’ Caroline lied.

  ‘God. Nothing like that. Fifteen, give or take. But it’s the interest that’s the killer.’

  Peanuts, Caroline thought. She could wipe out this debt with a few strokes of her pen. ‘Interest? You’ve not got one of those dodgy loans?’

  ‘I had to,’ Maddie admitted. ‘I could hardly go to the bank.’

  Caroline pretended to think for a minute. ‘Look. I haven’t been entirely straight with you. I can afford to take time off work to look after Den – Dad because I’ve got some money. I got an inheritance a year ago. I paid off the last of my debts, bought a small house but I’ve still got way more than I need. Let me lend you the money. You could pay me back in instalments, interest free.’

  Maddie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because you’ve been good to my dad.’

  The suspicious look was still there. ‘That’s my job. It’s not special treatment.’

  ‘I know. It’s not just that. I know how it feels to be drowning in debt. I’m in a position to help, that’s all.’

  Maddie shook her head. ‘It’s a generous offer but I couldn’t, it wouldn’t be right. We’re not friends or anything; I’m just looking after your father for a few days.’

  She wasn’t biting. Caroline could have kicked herself. She’d jumped in with her offer too soon and had probably lost her chance to have Maddie in her debt. Time to cut her losses. ‘Think about it,’ she said, standing up and slipping one arm into a sleeve of her coat. ‘You can always let me know if you change your mind. I’d better get back. There’s still a lot to do before I get my father home.’ She shrugged the coat onto her shoulders, zipped it up to her chin, and stepped out into the damp night, leaving Maddie to finish her drink.

  JANUARY

  9

  Kate was surprised by the lack of odour in the DRI’s autopsy labs. She hadn’t been expecting to be able to smell decomposing bodies but she had imagined that there would be some sort of disinfectant to cover up anything unpleasant. Instead the air in the place smelt of nothing; sterile. Logically, she understood that extractors and circulated air kept everything fresh but the less rational side of her brain was convinced that there were more sinister forces at work, masking the real purpose of the dissection rooms, so that coming face to face with death would be more shocking.

  It wasn’t her first post mortem. Kate had seen her share of bodies during her twenty- odd years as a police officer and had attended a number of autopsies but this was her first without being accompanied by a senior officer. It was also her first double PM. Kailisa was going to look at the body from the canal and Dennis Lambert in the same morning, which meant that Kate wouldn’t get a break from the gore until lunchtime. Not that she expected to feel much like eating.

  She pushed open the glass door which led into the observation area, and gazed down through the internal window at the body lying on the stainless steel table below her. There was something theatrical about the positioning as if she was in the audience up in ‘the gods’ and the autopsy suite was the stage. Sadly there would be no encores for the woman below her. Kailisa and his team had left most of her clothing intact except for the unzipping of her jacket, presumably to be certain that she was in fact dead when they pulled her out of the lock. Kate watched as a gowned and gloved Kailisa, accompanied by an assistant, entered from a door somewhere below her and walked over to the body. The theatricality of the situation was heightened as he spoke to the assistant, ignoring Kate’s presence even though she’d spoken to him in his office less than half an hour earlier.

  He dictated his first impressions, the formulaic opening lines of every post mortem that Kate had attended, sounding slightly metallic through the intercom system.

  ‘The body is of a white female, approximate age mid-thirties to early forties. She appears to be well nourished and her clothing, while not expensive, is good quality and shows few signs of wear.’

  Kate watched as the clothes were cut from the body and examined but there were no clues in the pockets or on any of the labels. Everything was chain-store generic; Kailisa noted that even her underwear was from a supermarket. Her clothes were bagged and labelled before Kailisa began on the physical examination of the dead woman. He drew down a large lens from the lighting apparatus above the table and angled it along the body. No sign of trauma other than the head injury which had been discovered at the scene.

  ‘She has had a child,’ Kailisa said, focussing the light onto her abdomen. ‘There is an obvious scar left from a C section.’

  ‘Recent?’ Kate asked.

  Kailisa shook his head. ‘No. Impossible to say how old but it’s well healed. I’d say a few years. A teenager possibly.’

  Kate made a note. A child meant that somebody might be depending on this woman. She might have a partner, a loving family who were missing her. Her hand dropped almost instinctively to her own abdomen and the scar she had from giving birth to her son, Ben. What would he do if she was missing?

  Nothing else stood out. Kailisa gestured to his assistant, a tiny, elfin woman with a blonde crew cut and an efficient manner which she had probably modelled on her mentor. She approached with an electric razor and shaved an area of the dead woman’s head, exposing the wound to her scalp. Kate leaned forward in her seat, trying to get a better look at the mess of bruised skin.

  Kailisa, obviously sensing the movement above him, looked up anticipating her question.

  ‘DI Fletcher, this is the only obvious injury. At the moment I am unable to ascertain if it is the cause of death. The injury is a blunt force trauma caused by an object with an obvious angular shape.’

  ‘Could it have been one of the iron ladder rungs in the lock?’

  Kailisa turned away and, for a second, Kate thought he was just irritated by her questions but then she saw he was looking at a spread of photographs along one of the countertops which ran along three walls of the room. He slid a ruler out of a drawer and held it next to the dead woman’s head, then consulted the photograph again.

  ‘I’d say not,’ he said. ‘The object we’re looking for is more square-shaped than elongated like the rungs. And thicker. Perhaps the edge of the concrete canal side. I’ll need to check the photographs to ascertain whether the angle is possible.’

  ‘There was some debris brought in with the body. Stuff that the divers brought up from the bottom of the lock. Anything there that she might have hit her head on?’

  Kailisa shook his head. ‘She didn’t hit her head on the bottom of the lock. When she was found she was almost floating. The air trapped in her down jacket would have acted as a buoyancy aid. The lock is eight feet deep at its shallowest. There is no way that she could have struck the bottom with any force. She may not have even reached the bottom. If she’d been in moving water such as a river or the sea I’d have expected a variety of post-mortem injuries but there is unlikely to be anything from when she entered the water.’

  ‘What about something in the debris that could have been used to hit her and then was thrown in with the body?’

  Kailisa sighed and Kate knew that she’d used up her quota of his goodwill for the time being. She sat back down and continued to watch as the pathologist cut the body, his scalpel like a paintbrush tracing faint red lines across her chest and abdomen as he made the initial incisions. After removing and assessing the internal organs, the pathologist turned his attention back to the head. This was the bit Kate really hated. Kailisa made an incision with his scalpel, circling the scalp, then peeled back flesh and skin, exposing the bones of the skull. The woman’s face crumpled like a deflated balloon as more skin was pulled forward, exposing the whole of the top of her head.

  ‘The damage to the skull is more obvious without the flesh,’ Kailisa said to his assistant a
s Kate leaned forward again. ‘The wound is approximately four inches long with a sharp edge rather than something rounded like a baseball bat or a cosh. The blow has fractured the parietal bone on the right side and was of sufficient force to cause skull fragments to embed in the brain. The dura is ruptured and there are indications of severe bleeding in the cranial cavity. The skin around the injury is heavily bruised and split.’ He picked up a saw, obviously intending to remove the top of the skull so that he could examine the brain. Kate tried to imagine the attack. It was the right side of the head and towards the back. Could somebody have approached her from behind and then hit her? Which would make the attacker right-handed – like around ninety per cent of the population.

  ‘Would she have been unconscious when she went in the water?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘So she drowned?’

  Kailisa smiled up at Kate. ‘Drowning, as you probably know, is rather difficult to ascertain. There is a little froth in her lungs indicating that she aspirated water but it may have been a reflex. The cold shock may have stopped her heart or the head injury may have been severe enough to kill her within minutes as the pressure of the hematoma built up in her brain. At the moment, I’m uncertain. I’ll make slides of lung tissue, and the results of her blood tests may also help.’

  ‘So there’s nothing obvious?’

  ‘There is the wound to her head. The severity suggests that she may not have survived even if she had not ended up in the water. I think that is the most likely cause of death but I need to wait for the lab results.’

  ‘Did somebody hit her with something?’

  Kailisa consulted the photographs of the scene. ‘I’d say that’s the most likely cause. It’s hard to imagine how she could have fallen and hit her own head with such force and at this angle. We’ll know more when the slides come back from the lab tomorrow. I’m sorry that I haven’t got anything more definite.’ He paused and picked up one of the photographs, turning it upside down and then back again. A whispered conversation ensued with his assistant, who tapped on a computer keyboard and summoned up an image which she printed out.

  ‘What is it?’ Kate asked, but he ignored her and took the printout over to the body.

  She watched as he measured the wound again and compared it to the photograph.

  Finally he turned to her, holding up the piece of paper. ‘A house brick,’ he announced. The image was clear, obviously colour laser printed; a red, angular house brick like the ones that had been made in Thorpe years before she was born. Even without the image of the ruler next to it, Kate knew that it would be about four inches wide and eight long. Her father’s garden had been full of them, left over from when the house was built. He’d used them to make borders for his vegetable and flowerbeds. Looking at the image she could almost feel the weight of it in her hand. Heavy enough to inflict a fatal blow.

  ‘Weapon?’

  Kailisa turned his free hand palm up in a gesture which suggested ‘possibly’ then went back to his dictation.

  Kate took out her phone to send a quick text to Raymond. She had been instructed to call him but he’d been in such a rage about the previous night’s news report of Dennis Lambert’s murder that she really didn’t want to risk his wrath by suggesting that they weren’t much further forward with the woman from the canal. He couldn’t understand how the press had got hold of the Lambert story so quickly and was threatening to sack any ‘leakers’ or ‘traitors’. She knew that he’d calm down eventually but the one thing guaranteed to soothe him was a result and she didn’t really have much to offer so far. She knew that it wasn’t Kailisa’s fault. He was methodical and scrupulous and he wouldn’t want to commit to a cause of death if there was any room for doubt.

  Suddenly realising that there was something missing from his evaluation, she tapped on the glass to get his attention. He looked up, clearly irritated by the interruption.

  ‘Any clues to time of death?’

  Kailisa grinned. ‘I was waiting for that. It took you a while. Getting rusty, DI Fletcher?’

  Kate felt herself reddening. It was a mistake. She should have asked sooner.

  ‘Her stomach contains undigested remains of something which looks like pizza. It seems likely that she died soon after eating. As the body hadn’t been spotted during daylight hours, I’d say that sometime between six and nine o’clock yesterday is likely. Unless she ate a very late meal. As she was floating in the water, there are no lividity marks to give us any further indication.’

  Kate thanked him and took out her notebook. Drawing a line beneath the previous day’s jottings, she wrote the date and then Canal body. Pizza. Where from and who with? She might have been out for a meal with somebody who could help to fill in the timeline. Or somebody who might be the murderer. Of course, it was possible that she’d eaten alone at home. Kate was familiar with the lure of pizza delivery after a long day.

  Kailisa finished dictating and turned to his assistant who stripped off her gloves and gown, dumped them in a medical hazard bin and left.

  ‘I’ll start on Dennis Lambert in around twenty minutes,’ Kailisa said through the intercom. ‘Perhaps you’d like a break.’

  Half an hour later, fuelled by surprisingly good hospital coffee, Kate listened to Kailisa’s opening lines again. This time, the identity of the deceased was known to both of them and the pathologist stated that cause of death had been reported as an overdose of opioid analgesics combined with alcohol. Kate sat down, much less curious about this death. The point of the post mortem was simply to corroborate Caroline Lambert’s story that her father had taken an overdose.

  Kailisa spent some time examining the head and face for fibres or any other indication of suffocation. He mentioned the absence of petechial haemorrhages in the eyes indicating that the man was neither smothered nor strangled. An examination of the throat failed to find any bruising and there were no external signs of trauma. Kate knew that he couldn’t be certain of cause of death until the blood results came back but he would be ruling out other causes, such as suffocation, as he examined the body.

  She watched as he opened the body cavity and removed the organs one by one, weighing and dictating. The stomach was empty apart from a small amount of brownish fluid from which Kailisa took a sample for analysis. Next he removed the liver, the primary site of Lambert’s cancer. Years of abuse had left it enlarged and noduled with cirrhosis. He measured the cancerous lesions and dictated size and location to the ever-vigilant assistant.

  Kate was about to excuse herself, having seen enough to confirm Lambert’s illness, when she saw Kailisa frown. He was looking at the notes that had been provided by the hospital; the deathly progress of the cancer which had reduced Dennis Lambert to a bedridden husk of a man.

  ‘DI Fletcher. You might want to come down for a closer look.’

  Kate leapt from her seat and raced to the mortuary doors, grabbing a gown and gloves and struggling into them as she walked across to the dissection table.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ she asked as Kailisa held up the liver for her inspection.

  ‘This man’s liver is in a very poor state. Cirrhosis has caused the most obvious changes, the rough surface and the slightly pale colour.’

  He turned it on his palm as if he were examining a particularly interesting rock-pool find. ‘Here, where I’ve cut a section, you can see a tumour.’

  He pointed with a gloved finger to a yellowish mass nestled within the lobes of the liver like a malignant pearl in an oyster. ‘The cancer is in the left and right lobes. Most definitely terminal.’

  ‘We knew that–’ Kate said.

  Kailisa held up his free hand, palm out, and she curbed her interruption. ‘Dennis Lambert would have been in some pain but it should have been manageable. The liver is enlarged but not excessively so. I am surprised, looking at this, that he was already confined to his bed. His notes suggest a much more advanced stage of the disease based on his perceived pain l
evel and his medication.’

  Kate stared at the gory organ, trying to make sense of what Kailisa was telling her. Lambert’s cancer wasn’t as bad as it appeared? Had he been faking? But, surely, the hospital would have performed tests to check. ‘Could the notes be wrong?’

  Kailisa put the liver gently back down in a dissecting tray and nodded to his assistant, who opened a large envelope and removed a sheaf of papers. ‘I only have the written notes. There are no original images from an ultrasound or an MRI scan. Just an account of what these tests found.’

  ‘Is that unusual?’

  Kailisa shrugged noncommittally. ‘It is slightly irregular. Perhaps they are stored on a computer and were not printed out. I think you need to find those images though just to confirm the notes.’

  It didn’t make sense. How could Lambert have been less ill than anybody thought? Why would he pretend?

  ‘I’m sure that all will become clear when you request the original records,’ Kailisa said, but his eyes betrayed some doubt. ‘For the moment, I can confirm the presence of liver cancer. I will check for metastases in the other organs. It’s possible that there is something else which caused him to become immobile, perhaps in the lungs or the heart. The blood work will help. I can let you know the results by telephone tomorrow. At the moment, I can see nothing to contradict the assertion that he took his own life with an overdose.’

  Kate smiled as she realised that he was dismissing her and didn’t want her to come back for any further information. ‘That would be really helpful. Can I take the name of Lambert’s consultant? I need to find those original scans.’

  The assistant found the relevant details, and Kate took a quick picture with her phone – much easier than pen and paper when your hands were gloved and every available surface was either bloody or potentially contaminated.