He peered more closely. ‘Difficult to detect external signs of strangulation beneath these rope lesions. Signs of petechial haemorrhages here and here… Now, these marks…’He began to work his way over the body, peering closely at each of the small brown marks in turn. Then he asked for the plastic evidence pouch containing the electrical lead with the exposed wire, and placed it against several of the wounds. Finally, he straightened up and said,‘It’s not easy to interpret electrical burns, you know, and we don’t see them very often. Mostly domestic accidents, housewives poking about in the toaster with a fork, that sort of thing. There was one fascinating case I recall of attempted autoerotic stimulation by connecting a penile vibrator to a mains plug- what a silly man! But the direct application of an electrode to the body is more unusual than you might think. Certainly I’ve never seen anything like this before…’
‘Come on, Sundeep,’ Brock interrupted. ‘You have a theory.’
The man smiled. ‘A hypothesis, perhaps, yes. There is a characteristic mark for electrode burns…’ He pointed to a burn on Betty’s left breast.‘It comprises a central area of necrosis where contact occurred, surrounded by a ring of white, which in turn is circled by a halo of dilated blood vessels.’
Everyone moved in closer to see what he meant, and the photographer took a close-up picture.
‘I can’t see the halo,’ Brock said, peering through the half-lens glasses on the end of his nose.
‘Exactly. Now look at these other burns,’Mehta went on, pointing generally across the abdomen and legs. ‘They all have the central brown burn, but none have the pink halo. Although I’ve never seen this before, it suggests to me that, as with the rope marks to the neck, there was no vital reaction. She was already dead.’
Kathy felt relief. She noticed the technician’s eyes widen behind her clear plastic visor, showing more than professional interest for the first time.
‘Why electrocute a dead body?’ Brock said.
‘Quite!’ Mehta beamed. ‘That’s for you to puzzle out, I think, Brock.’
There was silence for a moment, then Kathy said, ‘Would the electric shocks cause the body to convulse?’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean, even after death?’
‘Yes, yes. Didn’t your biology teacher at school show you the trick where you attach battery leads to a dead frog’s leg to make it jump?’
Brock and Kathy exchanged a glance, both thinking the same thing.
Dr Mehta completed his external examination at the discoloured soles of Betty’s feet, then took up a scalpel and moved back to her throat, where he began carefully slicing into the flesh. ‘Yes, internal bruising, and both the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage have fractures, which suggests manual strangulation,’ he said. The technician moved in beside him with bone cutters to help open up the chest and remove the major organs. Kathy sat on a stool, barely paying attention to the familiar process while her mind returned to that room in the basement of the derelict house, trying to imagine what had been played out there.
Completing the routine of examining, weighing and slicing, Mehta was able to offer a closer approximation to the time of death. The cheese and onion pie Betty had eaten with Reg Gilbey around seven p.m. was found in the final stages of the small intestine, and this, together with the state of rigor mortis and the body temperature, led him to believe that death had occurred at around one a.m. Cause of death was manual strangulation.
The doctor sat back onto a stool, bloody gloved hands dangling between his knees. ‘Is that enough for you, Brock?’
‘Almost, Sundeep. Just let me be sure what we have. Betty has a bath and goes to bed around eleven p.m. About two hours later her neighbour hears noises from her house, perhaps the intruder. There is a scuffle in her bedroom, a vase is broken, perhaps she receives a blow to the head. Does he strangle her there?’
Mehta thought. ‘Seems probable, doesn’t it? There’s no indication of a struggle when he took her next door, no significant bruising or abrasions.’
‘That’s right. He had to take her downstairs, out into the yard, haul her over the wall into the building site and carry her down into the basement. Why?’
‘I’ve no idea. That’s your job, old chap!’
‘Humour me, Sundeep. I value your insight.’
The doctor gave a smug little smile and straightened in his seat.‘Well, to avoid being disturbed, I suppose? Perhaps he didn’t want the neighbour to hear him, or people in the street to see a light-the basement next door had its window boarded up.’
Brock frowned, not altogether convinced.‘All right, let’s say he wants time with the body undisturbed. So he takes her next door, and presumably he already knows of this place and how suitable it would be, and there he prepares, in effect, a torture chamber for the corpse. He binds her hands behind her with insulating tape. There was no sexual interference?’
‘No signs of that. Perhaps he thought she was still alive and was hoping to get something from her. Information of some kind-where she kept her money and jewellery, perhaps.’ With Brock’s encouragement, Mehta was enjoying playing the detective.
‘But why the camera?’
‘If there was a camera. We don’t really know that.’
‘Well, he discovers that in fact she’s dead. So he hangs her anyway and administers-how many was it?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘Twenty-three shocks to her corpse. Can we infer anything about his state of mind? I mean, if those were stab wounds you’d be telling us he was in a frenzy, wouldn’t you?’
‘Maybe… it would depend on the depth and pattern of cuts. In this case, I don’t see any evidence of a frenzied attack. Look at the pattern, Brock; not in a cluster, but rather evenly and thoughtfully distributed, wouldn’t you say? Here to an elbow, there to the calf, the thigh. Almost like an experiment to test the reactions of different limbs.’
‘And possibly photographing these reactions.’
‘Exactly! One might almost say that he is a serious student of pathology.’
‘Quite,’ Brock murmured.‘Many thanks, Sundeep.’
‘Stan Dodworth,’ Kathy said as they emerged from the mortuary.
‘That’s what I thought.’ Brock took a deep breath of the street air, trying to vent the smells from his lungs.‘As if he’s started to make his own corpses.’
‘Why would he pick Betty?’
‘Because he likes older subjects, and he knew she lived alone, and conveniently next door to a place he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed.’
‘Yes, he was down in that cellar with Gabe and Poppy and Yasher just over a week ago.’
‘That would mean he’s still in the area. And now every solitary old person is at risk. We have to find him quickly, Kathy. We’d better have another talk to the people he was closest to in the square.’
Kathy checked her watch. ‘I was going to take Reg Gilbey through Betty’s house to see if he might notice anything.’
‘You do that. I’ll see you later at the station.’
Gilbey was in his kitchen, a glass of golden liquid on the table in front of him, a cigarette held in an unsteady hand. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in a week, grey skin, grey bristles on an unshaved cheek, bent shoulders. Kathy felt sorry for him, but then remembered Betty’s words; ‘I watch him you know, I know his secrets.’ It seemed entirely possible that she had been referring to Gilbey, the neighbour with whom she shared a long and troubled history. Stan Dodworth wasn’t the only one who might want to see Betty dead.
‘Your sitter’s gone?’
Gilbey gave an abrupt little nod. ‘Couldn’t do any painting, hand was shaking too much. Just seems to have hit me…’ He reached for the tumbler of whisky and lowered his head to it so as to reduce the chances of it spilling in his trembling hand. He swallowed, gave a rasping cough. ‘Wouldn’t stop talking about her.’
‘The judge?’
‘Mmm. How well did Betty know the girl? Were they very close?
Did she talk to me about the kidnapping?’
Good questions, Kathy thought, and wondered at Beaufort’s curiosity. There had been something insistent about it, she remembered.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Yes, of course Betty talked about it, we all did. But with Betty, you never knew what was real and what was fantasy. She was obsessed, you see, with the idea of the stolen child. Had been ever since… that business I told you about. So when the reports of the other missing girls appeared in the news, she got it all tangled up with her own fantasies, even before Tracey disappeared.’
‘Do you feel able to come next door with me?’
‘All right.’ His eyes darted up to hers with an anxious look. ‘You don’t think those Turks could have done it, do you?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Only… well, they made no secret of wanting to buy her house, and she was always fighting with them about one thing or another-noise, mud in the lane, blocked drains, smells. I’ve heard her screaming at that Yasher character more than once…’His voice petered out.‘No, doesn’t seem likely, does it?’
‘Come on, let’s take a look at her house.’
The SOCO team were finishing as they reached the back door. She led Gilbey slowly from room to room, trying to prompt his memory and taking notes as he identified this item or that. The dolls spooked him, watching with their blank smiles, and Kathy had to force his attention to the drawings and paintings. He pointed out a number that she’d hardly noticed on her previous visit, when she’d been concentrating on signs of disturbance. Some especially caught his eye. ‘Oh yes,’ he said as they came upon an abstract in a dark corner of the living room, ‘William Scott, of course, I’d forgotten about this one.’ She noted the unfamiliar names, checking the spelling: Wallis, not Wallace; Brangwyn not Brangwen. By the time they came to the last room, Betty’s own bedroom, Kathy had listed a dozen original works of mid-twentieth century British art, which Reg assured her would together be worth well into six figures. They had also come across a similar number of empty picture hooks. He mentioned the details of those of the missing paintings he could remember.‘I helped her sell them, through my own dealer.’
‘Fergus Tait?’
‘Fergus Tait! Fergus Tat, more like. Certainly not, I wouldn’t deal with that cowboy. My bloke’s in Cork Street, in the West End.’
Gilbey was looking uneasily at Betty’s bed, stripped of its sheets and pillowcases for laboratory analysis. He seemed very pale, and Kathy saw his eyelids flutter, his body begin to sway.
‘Sit down, Reg,’ she said, and quickly grabbed a chair into which he almost toppled.
‘It’s been a shock,’ he whispered.‘I still can’t believe it. Hanged, you say?’
‘I think you need a doctor.’
‘No, no. I need a drink. Take me home.’
Kathy looked at the colour returning to his cheeks and nodded. Then she said, ‘What was the painting in this room?’ She pointed at the empty hook on the wall beside the bed.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never been in here before.’ He caught her watching him.‘And that’s the honest truth.’
She took him back to his kitchen and got the name of his dealer in the West End, just in case. Then her phone rang, Brock on the line.
17
Kathy joined Brock and Bren for their first formal interview regarding the murder of Betty Zielinski at Shoreditch, beginning with Yasher Fikret, as representative of the family companies that both owned the house in which Betty’s body had been found and were carrying out the building renovations.
‘What can I say,’Yasher said, making an expansive gesture with his hands, heavy gold rings glinting.‘I’m devastated, as a neighbour, as a friend, as a local businessman. My whole family is devastated. I speak for them all. When’s the funeral, incidentally? We will want to show our respect with floral tributes etcetera etcetera. My mother is offering to cater, no charge.’
Yasher was smartly turned out in dark suit and thick silk tie, but his gestures and way of speaking suggested that the style of businessman he modelled himself on owed less to the Financial Times than to Hollywood, The Godfather, perhaps. But the suggestion of menace beneath the swagger was real enough, Kathy thought. She eyed the big gold rings and wondered if one of them had torn Poppy’s cheek.
‘That’s very generous, I’m sure,’ Bren said dryly. ‘At present we’re still trying to trace Ms Zielinski’s next of kin. Do you know if she had a solicitor?’
‘No idea.’
‘You didn’t have dealings with her, as an adjoining owner to your development?’
‘Our lawyers may know. You want me to check?’
‘Please.’ Bren pushed the phone across the table, but Yasher ignored it, slipping an impressive little silver machine out of an inside pocket, unfolding it and pressing a few buttons.
‘Allo, Tony?’Yasher drawled.‘You remember the owner of number fourteen West Terrace, next to the end of our block, Betty Zielinski?
… Yeah, well she’s been done in, mate, last night… I’m not kidding. I’m with the cops now. Listen…’
Bren and Brock waited impassively while the exchange continued. Yasher finally folded away his phone and said, ‘Sorry, no. Never dealt with a solicitor, just Betty in person.’ A slight pause, then,‘So you don’t know the next of kin?’
‘Not yet.’
Yasher looked thoughtful.‘Bad business.’
‘Where were you last night, Mr Fikret?’
‘Me? I was at home with my wife and little boy. After dinner I watched football on the sports channel till eleven, then I went to bed. My wife will confirm that.’
‘How many people know about that cellar room in your property, where the men play cards?’
‘Well… all the regular building gang, of course, plus most of the subcontractors-plumbers, electricians…’
‘We’d like all their names. Anyone else?’
‘You know about me taking some friends there, the night poor little Tracey disappeared. My artist friends.’ He smiled as at a private joke.
‘To sell them drugs, yes.’
Yasher held up his hands in protest. ‘If you’re going down that road, Mr Gurney, I’m saying nothing. I’m here to help…’
‘The point is that whoever took Ms Zielinski down there knew it very well. They knew exactly what was down there-a live power supply, for instance.’
‘They broke in; they didn’t have a key,’ Yasher said defensively.
‘That doesn’t necessarily follow. They knew how easy it was to break in with just a screwdriver through the hasp. No alarms, no guard dogs. Very poor security for a building site in that area, Mr Fikret.’
‘That’s the site manager’s business, not mine.’
‘The site manager tells us that you had your own arrangements for a dog and a security guard right up until last week.’
Yasher scowled truculently. ‘As it happens, I’m in dispute with that company over a commercial matter. And I completely deny your allegations about drugs. If there were any there they had nothing to do with me. I resent your insulting…’ He began to rise.
Brock broke in, voice mild,‘Please sit down, Mr Fikret. Tell us about your relationship with these artist friends. If it wasn’t to sell them drugs, why did you go there the night Tracey disappeared?’
‘It was their idea. They wanted to see what we were doing to the old building. I thought Gabe might be thinking of buying one of the flats for an investment. They’re just neighbours, people I meet in the square. I don’t pretend to understand what they’re on about all the time, but I like their company, okay? That’s the nice thing about living in this part of London-the culture you brush up against every day.’ He gave a broad grin.
‘But you’re a bit of a collector yourself, aren’t you?’ Kathy said.
‘Me?’Yasher looked astonished.
‘That painting in the shop, your mother said you bought it.’
‘Ah, that! Yes,
I bought it down the market. That’s real skill, that is. That’s my taste, all right.’
‘What do you think of your friends’ work, Gabe and Stan and Poppy?’
‘You want an honest answer? Don’t tell them, please, but I can sum it up in two well-chosen words-total crap.’ He saw the little smile cross Bren’s face. ‘Aha! You agree with me, Mr Gurney! Am I right?’
‘When was the last time you saw Stan Dodworth?’
‘Stan? That would be the night we went to the cellar that I told you about. Not since then. Why?’
‘He’s missing, Mr Fikret. Any idea where he might be?’
‘No. I really don’t know him that well.’
‘And when was the last time you were in that basement?’
‘Oh, I don’t know… a couple of days ago. I seem to remember calling down there for some reason.’ He gave another big toothy grin.‘Mr Brock, sir, let’s be frank. If I was going to bump off the old lady, do you think I’d have left her for you to find on my own premises? The idea’s crazy. If this has anything to do with me at all, it’d have to be someone wanting to embarrass me and my family, right?’
After he’d gone, Bren said reluctantly, ‘He’s right, Brock. He’s not that stupid.’
‘Actually, I think he’s devious enough to do it this way just to put us off. But I don’t think he’s got the artistic talent.’
‘Artistic talent?’
‘Yes. The thing was staged, Bren. Artificial and composed, as if it was a commentary on something. I just wish I knew what.’
Listening to this, Kathy recalled Reg Gilbey’s sneer that the young artists in the square didn’t have an original thought between them, that everything was a reference to something else, and she wondered if Betty’s killer might have been deliberately using some recognisable artistic image of death or suffering. The more she thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. What had been done to Betty surely had meaning, a message of some kind. If they could find the reference, perhaps they could find the killer. What images might inspire Stan Dodworth, for instance?
No trace bak-8 Page 16
