by Val McDermid
But there was the additional evidence of the attack on her. An attack she couldn’t tell Rigston about now, that was for sure. He was already treating her like a suspect. She could see no prospect of him believing in her unseen assailant.
She lurched into the kitchen and collapsed into a chair. She needed to talk to Dan. She dialled his number and he answered on the third ring. ‘I can’t talk now,’ he said straight away. ‘Can you meet me in Keswick in an hour?’
‘Yes,’ Jane said wearily. ‘Where?’
There was the sound of muffled conversation. She thought she recognised Jimmy’s voice. ‘Down by the lake. The car park on the road to Friar Cragg. OK?’
‘I’ll see you there in an hour.’ Jane stared at her phone as if expecting it to give her some irrefutable guidance. Her suspicions weighed heavy on her and she didn’t know who to talk to. Certainly not Rigston. She recognised in him a man who was far too smart to be fobbed off with the half-truths that were all she could offer him. But she couldn’t just keep her mouth shut either. If someone was killing off old people, she had to make sure the deaths didn’t all drift past without anyone acknowledging what was going on.
Then it came to her: the one person who would be more interested in the deaths than in whatever Jane might be hiding.
Half an hour later, Jane was sitting in the basement of Gibson’s funeral parlour, keeping company with a two-hundred-year-old corpse and a forensic anthropologist. If they could see me now, she found herself thinking absurdly. She’d just caught River, who was on her way out to grab a sandwich.
‘This is going to sound pretty weird,’ Jane said.
‘Oh good, I do like weird,’ River said, settling herself on a lab stool.
‘Bear with me. I know I told you some of this before, but I need to get it straight in my head. It’s to do with the manuscript I’m looking for. The last person I know to have had it in her hands was a servant called Dorcas Mason. I figured she might have decided to keep it safe rather than to destroy it. So, if it still exists, the chances are it’s been passed down to one of her descendants.’
‘Makes sense,’ River said.
‘I drew up a family tree and then I listed the surviving descendants in order of likelihood, based on primogeniture.’
River nodded. ‘Soundest principle, especially back then.’
‘The first person on my list died the night before I was going to see her. The second person on my list died the night after I visited her. The third person on my list died the night after I visited him. And I’ve just had a call from DI Rigston to tell me that the fourth person on my list died last night. Two nights after I visited her.’ She produced her rough family tree and illustrated her point.
River studied it with interest. ‘It’s bizarre, I’ll grant you that. But, like I said before, old people die.’
‘I know. And none of these deaths has been treated as suspicious. But they’re all related to each other. OK, a bit distantly, but still in the same extended family. The same extended family who might just be in possession of a very valuable and very portable piece of property. And since old people don’t go out very often, if you want to search for something like that, killing them’s the most certain way of making sure you won’t be disturbed.’
‘It does feel suspicious,’ River said slowly. ‘It’s not unheard of to have a cluster of deaths in a family, but this cluster is rather too close together.’ She tugged at her ponytail. ‘This woman Ewan Rigston called you about–why was he ringing you?’
‘He said he wanted to know if I was the last person to see her alive. Something about a sudden death, she hadn’t been to see the doctor recently. But he ended up acting like I was a murder suspect or something.’
River’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? Well, if she hadn’t seen the doctor recently, there’ll have to be a post mortem. I tell you what I’ll do, I’ll have a word with my colleague in Carlisle. Normally he’d be called in to do it. But I’m here on the spot, I’m a qualified pathologist, and it’ll get me some Brownie points with my boss if I step into the breach. And I can take a good look around your little old lady and see if there’s anything at all suspicious. How does that sound?’
Jane grinned. ‘You have no idea what a weight you’ve just taken off my back.’
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ River said. ‘Chances are I’m not going to find anything.’
‘I’d be very happy if you didn’t. This all started because I was determined to find a manuscript that might not even exist. The last thing I want is four deaths on my conscience as a result.’
The two men were already there, sitting on a bench, staring out across the silver glitter of the water. Dan looked round as she approached, his smile as cheerful as the sunshine. ‘Sorry about cutting you off earlier,’ he said, pushing off from the car and pulling her into a hug. He kissed her lightly on the mouth. ‘You know how it is. So, how are you?’
‘Still aching. And there’s something I need to talk to you about. I don’t know how to say this except to come straight out with it,’ she admitted. ‘Letty Brownrigg died last night.’
Jimmy’s face registered shock. ‘Granddad’s cousin Letty? Lives up Chestnut Hill? She was at Alice’s on Monday. She looked fit as a fiddle. What happened?’
‘They think it was natural causes, but there’ll have to be a post mortem.’ Talking about it seemed to increase the burden of Letty’s death, not reduce it. Jane had let herself be charmed by Letty, and now she was dead. Perhaps because of Jane.
Jimmy covered his face with his hands for a moment. He ran his fingertips over his eyebrows, dropped his hands to his lap and sighed. Dan put an arm round his shoulders. ‘Poor Letty. Jesus, it’s like all the oldies just decided to lie down and die together.’ He gazed bleakly at the water for a few minutes in silence. He turned to Jane, a question on his face. ‘But how come you know all this?’
‘The police phoned to ask why my name and number were on her phone pad. I was there on Tuesday, remember? They wanted to check that I wasn’t the last person to see her alive.’ Then the dam burst and Jane’s emotions spilled over. ‘It’s like everybody I need to talk to about the manuscript is dying. First your gran, then Tillie, then Eddie. And now Letty. It’s scaring me.’
Dan put his other arm round her, instinctively pulling her close. ‘I can see why.’
‘And now Ewan Rigston is treating me like I’m a suspect. Just because it’s my list they’re on.’
‘Well, it is too much to be coincidence,’ Jimmy said. ‘And I suppose you are the obvious connection. Have you got any better ideas?’ There was nothing hostile in his question; it was more a plea.
‘Somebody who believes the Wordsworth manuscript is out there and wants it very badly. But see, here’s the thing about old people. They don’t go out much. People come to them. The family takes care of them. They’re always home and they sleep notoriously lightly. Consequently, they’re hard to burgle. If you want to search their houses properly, you need to shut them up. And this guy shuts them up for good.’
Dan shivered. ‘Fuck, Jane, that’s cold.’
‘I know. But it’s the only explanation I can think of.’
‘Surely somebody would have noticed if they were all murdered,’ Jimmy said, fighting the logic of her argument because to accept it was too monstrous.
‘Not if there weren’t obvious signs of a struggle or injuries. They were all old. All pretty frail. Not hard to terrorise. Maybe that’s what killed them.’
Jimmy shook his head, as if trying to dislodge something. ‘So what are the police going to do about it? Apart from acting like you’re the suspect.’
‘I don’t know. But Ewan Rigston seems to be taking it seriously.’
‘So he should.’ Jimmy turned sideways to face her, anger in his eyes. ‘These are people I’ve known all my life, people I care about. My kin. Is there nothing we can do?
‘I’m trying. I spoke to Dr Wilde, the pathologist who’s working on the bog
body. She’s going to do the post mortem on Letty. If there’s anything, anything at all to suggest foul play, she’ll be all over it.’
Jimmy’s face cleared. ‘That’s a start, at least.’
‘There’s one other thing. Dan and I went to see Jenny Wright down at Coniston this morning. She was next on my list. I don’t think she should be left on her own down there until we know what’s going on.’
Jimmy pulled a face. ‘God, that old witch.’
‘She was very insistent that someone should fetch her to the funeral tomorrow. Maybe you could go down this afternoon and bring her back with you?’
‘That’s not a bad idea.’ Jimmy groaned. ‘But she’s such a disagreeable old bag.’
‘Even so, you don’t want her murdered, do you?’
‘I suppose not. Couldn’t we get the cops on it?’
‘They’re not going to care for her like her family will,’ Dan said.
‘OK, I’ll go now.’ Jimmy looked stricken at the thought.
‘I could come with you,’ Dan said. ‘Lighten the load.’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘Thanks, but I can live without the Spanish Inquisition that would provoke.’ He got to his feet, patting Dan on the shoulder. ‘I’ll call you later.’ He leaned down and kissed the top of Dan’s bald head.
In silence, they watched him drive off. ‘He’s a nice guy,’ Dan said.
‘I know.’
Dan screwed up his eyes against the sparkle of the water. ‘I admit, I started it because I thought he might be a useful source for us.’ He gave a deep sigh. ‘But I’m getting to like him far too much.’
For once, Jane couldn’t be bothered with the self-indulgence. She got up and started back to the car. Halfway there, she turned and said, ‘You know what, Dan? Four old people are dead. Somebody tried to kill me last night. When it comes to your love life, you’re confusing me with someone who gives a shit.’
When I recovered my senses, I quickly understood that they had left me for dead. I knew that, if I remained, they would surely return & finish what they had started in so cowardly a fashion. A terrible pain beat in my head & my shoulder was bleeding profusely. But I knew if I did not remove to some other place, I would surely die. I struggled to my knees & almost fainted with the agony. It was then I saw what I took at first to be an apparition. It took the form of my wife Isabella & I thought myself closer to death than I had at first believed. But when the apparition spoke, I understood it was truly Isabella in the flesh. ‘Husband,. I am, come to help you,’ she said. ‘They told, me you were dead, but. I did, not believe them. They are killing all the white men.’ With her help, I was able to find my feet & together we stumbled into the banyan trees nearby. I was safe, but I feared it would not be for long.
37
River had developed a knack for getting her own way. It had something to do with determination, but even more than that it had to do with a profound understanding of what made people tick. Judicious flattery, professional courtesy and the willingness to grant favours, often before they were even asked–all these helped her to bend the world to her will. By the time she’d finished her phone call, the pathologist on the other end was convinced she was doing him a favour by performing the post mortem on Letty Brownrigg.
Since Letty’s body had already been transferred to the hospital mortuary, it didn’t take long to have everything set up. By the time Jimmy set off for Coniston, River was preparing to examine the dead woman. Her assistant and the uniformed police constable Ewan Rigston had asked to be present were discussing football with casual disregard for what was about to take place. River looked across at the nonchalant policeman and said, ‘Have you witnessed a post mortem before?’
‘Aye, I have,’ the stolid young man replied. ‘More than most. They always send me. My dad was a butcher. Bodies don’t bother me.’
‘I’m glad about that,’ River said. ‘I hate having to hang about while people run off to lose their lunch.’
‘No chance of that with me. It’s just meat, isn’t it? I mean, whatever it is that makes you human, that’s long gone by the time they hit the slab,’ he said casually. ‘We’re all just bags of blood and guts once we’re dead. I’ve never understood the way people get all squeamish about their loved ones having to have post mortems.’
‘Some people do have religious objections,’ River pointed out as she began to probe the woman’s skull with her fingers for any signs of contusions or abrasions.
‘And that makes even less sense, when you think about it,’ the policeman said. ‘OK, I accept some people believe in the resurrection of the physical body. But if you’ve got this all-powerful god, surely he’s capable of putting the pieces back together the way they were? It should matter even less to the religious because they’re the ones that’re supposed to have faith that their god can do anything. That’s the trouble with religion. You bring God in the door and logic flies straight out the window.’
River grinned. ‘How come you’re still just a constable? I’m not used to philosophical discussions from men in uniform.’
‘I like being a grunt,’ he said. ‘This way, I spend more of my time with people, not paper. I don’t have to worry about the politics of policing or keeping the brass happy. When I go home at night, I don’t have to fret about the burden of command. It’s not a bad life.’
‘Some might call that a lack of ambition,’ River said. Suddenly something caught her attention and she stopped listening. She bent over to look more closely, reaching for a magnifying glass. ‘That’s interesting,’ she murmured.
‘What is?’ the policeman asked.
‘A very faint bruise right above the carotid sinus,’ she said, pointing it out to him.
‘Funny place to have a bruise,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s not like you’re going to knock yourself there. What do you think caused that? Has somebody tried to strangle her?’
River shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. There are no other corresponding marks. Well, we’ll have a better idea once we open her up.’
But River’s confident prediction was not entirely borne out by events. As she left her assistant to close the Y-incision, she shared her conclusions with the PC. ‘Heart failure, pure and simple. Her heart showed signs of cardiomyopathy, arteries pretty furred up. Heart stopped beating.’
‘Isn’t that what happens to all of us, ultimately?’ the philosophical policeman said.
‘Yes, but for a variety of reasons. Absent any other obvious cause of death, like massive gunshot wound or signs of poisoning or asphyxiation, all we’re left with here is heart failure.’
‘OK. So the death certificate will be forthcoming, will it?’
‘I’ll see to that.’ River peeled off her latex gloves. On the face of it, there was nothing suspicious about Letty Brownrigg’s death, but a niggle of unease troubled her. Jane Gresham’s concerns hadn’t dissipated into thin air as she had hoped. What she planned to do next was entirely outside her remit and against professional protocol, but she wanted to satisfy herself.
Once the policeman had left and she had changed back into her street clothes, River walked back to Gibson’s. She nodded to the young man who greeted the grieving and headed for the viewing rooms. When she looked in on Tillie Swain, a middle-aged woman was sitting in a chair, head bowed. River slipped back out into the corridor and made for Eddie Fairfield.
The coffin sat in splendid isolation, a wedge of afternoon sunshine splashing the body with colour. Swiftly, River crossed to the coffin and looked inside. A white ruff shrouded Eddie’s neck but it took only a moment for her to move it out of the way and study his neck. She pulled out her magnifying glass and looked more closely. It was very faint, but it was there. A small bruise on the carotid sinus, about the size and shape of a pair of fingertips. ‘Oh, shit,’ she muttered. She took out her digital camera and shot a range of pictures, from close-ups of the bruise to longer shots that established it as being indisputably a feature of Eddie Fairfield’s body. ‘O
h shit,’ she repeated, rearranging the ruff.
Back in the hallway, she collared the young man. ‘Where’s Edith Clewlow?’ she asked.
‘All screwed down ready for the funeral tomorrow morning,’ he said laconically.
River smiled winningly. ‘Any chance you could open her up for me?’
He recoiled slightly, as if she’d suggested some improper sexual act. ‘What for? I thought you were just supposed to be doing the bog body?’
‘Call it professional curiosity,’ she said. ‘I’ve got this theory, and I want to check something. Just five minutes, that’s all I need.’
He looked doubtful. ‘I shouldn’t, really…’
