‘What a bloody miserable place,’ muttered Renfield, glancing up at the swaying branches that scraped against the building’s low roof.
‘You haven’t been here before?’ asked May.
‘No, I always met Rosa at the pub around the corner. I dumped her.’
‘Why?’
‘She gave me the willies. She’s got a funny attitude to the dead. A bit like old Bryant. Believes in spirits and all that malarkey.’
‘Why is she doing this for you if you broke up with her?’
‘I don’t know. I was a bit surprised myself.’
Renfield thumbed the door buzzer. A slender olive-skinned woman with centre-parted black hair and dark, haunted eyes opened the door. She had an air of recent bereavement about her, which was at least appropriate considering where she worked. ‘Come in,’ said Rosa Lysandrou, checking the empty street behind them. ‘There’s someone here who wants to see you.’
May shot Renfield a look as they passed into the gloomy nicotine-brown interior. Rosa was dressed in mourning black, an outfit she regarded as respectful and proper for processing the dead. She looked like a woman who had lost any reason to smile soon after her teenage years. It seemed entirely natural for her to be in such a solemn place as this, although she did come over a bit like a character from a Daphne du Maurier novel.
‘Hullo there, Giles, what are you doing here?’ asked May, shaking Giles Kershaw’s hand as he stepped into the corridor.
‘I applied for this position as soon as I heard about the vacancy,’ replied Kershaw, unzipping the top of his green disposable suit. ‘St Pancras Coroner—it’s a huge step up for me. Come on, I’ll show you around.’ He led them into the building.
‘I must say I feel bad about what happened, the unit closing just after we recommended you for the position at Bayham Street mortuary. We put in a good word for you. I’m glad you landed on your feet.’
‘Well, I owe you a favour. Perhaps I can find a way to pay it back. Here, take a look at this.’ Giles opened a carved church door that led into the Chapel of Rest. Usually such places were bare white cells adorned with a single plain oak cross and a bench or two, but this one was elaborately Gothic, a proper Victorian chapel with brass candlestick holders and a life-sized painted statue of Christ crucified. His anguished eyes were turned Heavenwards and were weeping tears of blood. Livid wounds in His side gushed crimson rivers. Was this a deliberate psychological ploy, May wondered, that after relatives identified the bodies of their loved ones in the morgue they should come in here and see how Christ suffered? Was the idea to place their own grief in perspective and bring them to a better understanding of their religious beliefs? Or had it simply been done to creep them out with guilt?
‘A bit over the top, isn’t it?’ observed May.
‘Constructed by the architect of the church behind us. There was never a shortage of money for its upkeep, because of the fine residents in the graveyard.’
Kershaw took them along the passage to the autopsy room, and turned on the overhead lights, green tin circles that dated from the 1940s. ‘Come on in. Sorry about the smell of damp. I asked Rosa about it, and she said, “What smell?” I think she’s been here too long.’
‘Renfield used to go out with her,’ May whispered.
‘Oh, no offence meant. She’s very nice in her own way.’ Kershaw flicked the lank blond hair from his eyes. ‘Anyway, now I’m the new St Pancras Coroner. Rather an honour.’
‘You always had ambition,’ said May, following him.
‘I’m sure Mr Bryant would appreciate the circumstances surrounding my employment.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Didn’t you hear? The old coroner, Professor Marshall, apparently had some kind of nervous breakdown last October and vanished. Rosa knows all about it. She’s still very loyal to him. Gets a bit Mrs Danvers-ish if you ask too many questions. They couldn’t keep his job open any longer.’
‘Death doesn’t wait. I imagine you’ve stepped into a bit of a backlog.’
‘They had someone covering, but he rubbed Rosa up the wrong way and was forced to move on pretty sharpish. I couldn’t have taken on the position without you and Mr Bryant showing so much faith in me. Sadly I don’t think I can repay that faith today. I’m afraid I’ve no ID on your freezer man. I can’t access any of the old PCU databases. It’s annoying because I wanted to check his fingerprints through IDENT1, but we’re not allowed to use the system. Fifty identification agencies in Great Britain, and we’re locked out of all of them.’
‘Islington CID are trying—his prints haven’t come up yet.’
Kershaw led the way to the drawer cabinet, pumped up a trolley and slid out a body covered in white plastic. Transferring the remains to the table, he folded down the top half of the sheet. ‘I’ve conducted an internal examination but the results won’t be very reliable without deeper analysis. Although the freezer was fairly airtight, I’m told the unit backed onto a warm ventilation shaft from the building next door, which raised his body temperature.’
‘Do you have anything at all?’
‘I can’t tell you exactly when he died because the crew from Islington had to pass the investigation over to their opposite numbers at Camden, and they didn’t maintain the body at the temperature in which it was found. By the time he got here he’d been placed in a variety of different atmospheres. As you can see, he’s a white male roughly thirty-three years of age, outwardly healthy if a bit overweight. He’s worked outdoors; there are tan lines on his upper arms, hard skin on the thumbs, a few cuts and nicks. The amputation was made with sharp, slim blades. Two distinct types of cut here, a series of small strokes to cut through the skin and meat, and a second with stronger pressure to sever the cartilage in the neck. Two knives, one for the heavy cutting, the second smaller and finer. It’s a professional job all right. I’m surprised the tattoo and the hands are intact. Unfortunately the ivy wreath is straight out of the book, a standard design, and one of the most common available. The cutting could have been done with surgical equipment, or the type of vegetable knife you can buy in any decent kitchenware shop. He was beheaded after death. The cuts are uniform and smooth, nothing to make the killer’s handiwork recognisable. We have microtomic equipment here, which has proven useful. I took a thin slice of tissue from the throat and another one from the gut to compare the effects of decomposition in an airless atmosphere. It’s not my field, so I had to use one of Professor Marshall’s contacts. Luckily Rosa kept his address book.’
May walked slowly around the body, studying it. Putrefaction had been halted in its advance, but the corpse’s skin had turned green and black, producing an acrid odour. He found it hard to imagine that this man had recently been walking around, eating in restaurants, watching TV. He was someone’s lover, someone’s son, but there was almost nothing human left. Without a head his trunk bore an unsettling similarity to something you would find in a meat locker. How would his loved ones feel if they could see him like this? ‘Get anything else?’
‘It’s tricky because the usual decay process has been interrupted by the relatively sterile storage of the body. Usually, after two to three days you get staining on the abdomen. The discolouration spreads, veins grow dark, the skin blisters after a week, tissue starts softening and nails fall off at around the three-week stage, and finally the face becomes unrecognisable as the skin liquefies—’
‘We don’t need a lecture about decomposition,’ interrupted Renfield impatiently. ‘Have you got a date of death or not?’
‘Four or five days ago,’ Kershaw replied, rattled. ‘The victim’s blood hadn’t had time to pool. He was dead when he was cut up, so it’s possible the attacker struck while he was in the shop. Either that, or he was killed very close by. In that case you’ll be looking for a van, because he was laid out flat; there were no blood creases behind the legs or in the elbows. I made a couple of calls; Islington CID have a record of gangs who have removed identification from their victim
s in the past, but there’s no obvious MO match with any of them, and none are currently active in the area where the victim was found. Whoever killed him was a bit careless about washing the body. There’s a streak of mud here, on his right shoulder blade. Looks like London clay. I’d like to get a sample off for analysis, but I don’t have a case number.’
‘Any idea how he died?’
‘There are no entry wounds on the body so it must be on the missing part. Possibly head trauma, although we’ll have to find it first.’
‘We haven’t found anything on the premises yet,’ said May. ‘Not that we expected to. I’ll have Dan Banbury make a thorough search, but the property has been used as a dumping ground for builders’ materials, so we won’t have time to get to it today.’
Kershaw looked down at the corpse and ran a forefinger around the neatly severed neck with tenderness. ‘I guess he’ll yield his secrets when the last piece turns up.’
‘We don’t have the time to wait for that,’ said May. ‘We have to establish an identity fast.’
‘There was one peculiar thing,’ said Giles, uncovering the corpse’s pale feet. ‘What do you make of this?’
Renfield and May leaned forward. Just below both ankles, there were dozens of tiny black specks.
‘Scratches?’ May asked.
‘Burns,’ replied Kershaw. ‘Hot metal filings. He didn’t wear proper work boots. They’re in different stages of healing, so they didn’t all happen at the same time. It’s a professional hazard. He’s done some welding.’
14
RATS
And so it was that late on Saturday afternoon, the Peculiar Crimes Unit made arrangements for an invisible return to the streets of London. Bryant frightened the life out of a local estate agent by threatening to requisition property on behalf of the government, and instantly acquired the keys to a partially furnished building that had been sitting empty on their books for almost a year. The gimlet-eyed agent, Mr Hawker, a man who would have sold his grandmother’s bed with her in it if he thought he could turn a profit, had been unable to shift the property because prospective tenants complained that there was something unsavoury and bothersome about the maze of interconnected dust-grey rooms, and indeed, Hawker possessed a secret file on the building that he was careful to hide from his new client. His desperation to offload this millstone was almost as urgent as Bryant’s desire to occupy it, and so a deal was struck to the immediate satisfaction of both parties.
In this latest incarnation of the PCU, much had changed. Instead of decently equipped offices in Mornington Crescent, they found themselves on the first and second floors of an unrenovated warehouse on the corner of Balfe Street and the Caledonian Road, a property standing on the boundary between respectability and knife fights. On one side were green-footprint restaurants, cappuccino bars and glass cliffs of offices packed with time-strapped executives. On the other were run-down pubs, sex shops and gangs of dazed drunks in soccer shirts.
Arthur Bryant did not see it like that, of course. He stood on the roof sucking Licorice Allsorts with his trilby pulled over his ears and his scarf knotted tightly around his neck, and watched the dying sunlight whiten the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Life is a very beautiful dream, he thought. I’m so glad I chose not to wake up from it just yet. He had almost forgotten how lovely the city could appear to the right eye at the end of the day, when the shining yellow buildings of every shape, age and size radiated light beneath a panorama of blue-grey cumulus.
Below him was the most connected part of the city. It operated like a gigantic wall socket overloaded with too many crackling plugs. Above, behind and underneath the roads ran the railways: GNER, First Capital Connect, Kent, Midland, East Coast, Hull, Grand Central, Virgin, Silverlink and Scotrail. Beneath these were the underground routes, the Northern, the Victoria, the Piccadilly, the Metropolitan, the Circle, the Hammersmith & City, and across them all ran a dozen bewildering bus lines.
Most of the time the thousands of men, women and children who rushed past each other to their transport links managed to do so without ever colliding or uttering a sentence longer than ‘Sorry’ or ‘Excuse me,’ but occasionally the system momentarily fractured and something terrible happened. Here, in 1987, a fire in the tube station had killed thirty-one people. In 2005, terrorists had murdered fifty-six. Yet this was merely the most recent twist in the area’s knotted history, for the scruffy, unassuming site had reflected the rise and fall of empires.
It was perhaps appropriate, then, that the Peculiar Crimes Unit should find its spiritual home here, among the debris of the past and the construction of the future. Early on Monday morning, Raymond Land placed Crippen in a box and reluctantly left his pleasant house in Putney to trudge his way across London. In truth, he was happy to be getting out from under his wife’s feet. Leanne found him more annoying than ever since he had been at home, which was odd because she was hardly ever at home herself. She was forever disappearing for one-on-one tuition with fitness trainers, makeover artists, yoga gurus and dance instructors, all of whom seemed to be suntanned males half her age. The fact that she needed to have her hair done before attending a pottery class mystified Land.
The acting temporary head of the PCU had been wooed with a promise of promotion; if this case was resolved quickly and quietly, he would finally be bumped up to Superintendent, a job title he would have been granted long ago if Bryant and May had not upset so many important people. Still, the thought of coming back to work was undignified. It was like making tearful farewells at a leaving party, only to have to come back and collect your scarf. Perhaps the investigation would fail and he would once more be released. Perhaps he could borrow some of Bryant’s little blue pills to get him through the week. So on Monday morning, Land stood before the black-painted door of Number 231 Caledonian Road, drew in a great lungful of traffic fumes, then rang the bell.
Janice Longbright dragged chairs along the warped corridors of the musty warehouse, trying to ignore the smell of old oysters, cloves and candlewax. She had spent Sunday arranging empty packing crates into makeshift desks, and trying to find places for everyone to sit. At least the electricity had been left on; the building had little natural light, and the agent had no desire to be sued by anyone taking a tumble in the gloom. April had already prepared a briefing room, and had arranged for some secondhand computers to be delivered from Mornington Crescent later in the day, but the place was still a shambles. Bryant had demanded that the office be ready for immediate operation after the weekend, but there was too much to do.
‘What’s this I hear about you going on a date with Jack Ren-field?’ April asked Longbright as they shook open dust-crusted curtains to allow dirty sunlight into the room. ‘I thought nobody liked him.’
‘Nobody did, and I still don’t like the way he behaves, but I think working at the PCU is changing him for the better. Anyway, it wasn’t a proper date. We just went up Brick Lane for a Ruby.1 He’s still got a bloody great chip on his shoulder, but I can deal with that.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought he was your type.’
‘These days my type is any type who still likes my type,’ said Longbright, slamming down the chairs. ‘It’s been a while since I even bothered to look at a man. Jack hasn’t got a clue how to treat women. He hasn’t got an ounce of imagination. He’s more like an Alsatian than a human being.’
‘Then his ears have probably pricked up,’ said April, ‘because you’re talking about him enough.’
‘God, I am, aren’t I? I must be getting desperate.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?’ asked April, who thought she was young enough to get away with asking such things.
‘I’m old enough to have to memorise a date before which I’m not supposed to be able to remember anything. Let’s get on before I change my mind about coming back. You’ve got your grandfather’s cheek.’ She glanced around the chaotic room. ‘We should give this space to John and Mr Bryant. It would be a good
idea to have them working in the same room again. I wonder where Jack is. He’s supposed to be here giving us a hand this morning.’
‘There are rat droppings everywhere. And what is that revolting smell?’ April sniffed the stale air.
‘I dread to think,’ replied Longbright. ‘Something’s probably dead in here. I’m going to risk opening some windows. It feels like the place has been sealed for years.’
They set about making the warehouse fit for human habitation.
Leslie Faraday always looked forward to the end of his working week. By lunchtime on Saturday he had expected to have an empty In box and a desk swept clean of paperwork. Then his superior had called with instructions for handling the newly risen PCU, and the happy harmony of his weekend had collapsed abruptly. Now he found himself wrangling an alarming number of expenditure requests from the very detectives he thought he would never have to deal with again. Plus, Renfield was proving obstreperous.
‘You’re trained in surveillance,’ Faraday told the telephone wearily. ‘Surveillance is the continual observation of a person or a group. Spying is the gathering of clandestine intelligence. So don’t think of it as spying; think of it as surveillance.’
‘I know the difference between them, Mr Faraday. I’m not an idiot.’
From what he had heard about the detective sergeant, Faraday thought he would have jumped at the chance, but Jack Renfield was audibly uncomfortable with his proposition. ‘All I’m asking you to do is keep a diary for the duration of the investigation, Sergeant Renfield. At the end of each day, starting today, you will call me on this line, which is direct and secure, and inform me of anything out of the ordinary. This way, we can call a halt to any unauthorised procedures before they get out of hand.’
‘You’re asking me to rat on my colleagues.’
‘That’s a rather old-fashioned way of thinking. We’re all being monitored these days. If I wanted to, I could have CCTV cameras installed in the PCU’s offices.’ But you’re cheaper, Faraday thought.
On the Loose Page 9
