THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author.

by David Videcette

  He always needed time at a scene, to just stand there and look – to understand where he was and how people would use the space in normal circumstances. It was important to think about the way people normally moved around in it. That way he could identify things that were out of place.

  The place looked clean, spotless in fact. Everything was dusted to within an inch of its life. Groom-Bates was obsessively clean. The washing up was done. Was this a suicide? Had she cleaned it knowing that people were going to look around? Suicides normally did it clothed in Jake’s experience. He couldn’t remember attending a suicide scene where they had been naked. They were always clothed because they knew people would come and look at them. They thought about it before they acted. They wanted clothes on to protect their modesty – as if to ameliorate death, our most immodest state.

  Jake surveyed the scene calmly and quietly.

  The glass of water by the bed was half full.

  She was naked and in bed, watching TV.

  Her phone was by the bed. It was off, as Brian had said.

  Jake figured there would be no last text messages or phone calls to friends and family, just a couple of calls from her father.

  There appeared to be nothing out of place.

  He knew suicide was far more prevalent amongst men. Three times as many men committed suicide compared to women.

  In Jake’s mind this didn’t look like a suicide. But what was it?

  Was it something she’d caught off the bus at the blast scene that had killed her?

  Had she even been at the blast scene?

  Brian ran back into the room, panting and holding a box of surgical gloves. Jake took a pair out of the box and pulled them on.

  Brian just stood there.

  ‘Put a pair of gloves on, Brian. We’re going to inspect the body together.’

  Brian donned a pair of gloves and followed Jake to the bed.

  ‘Right. We’re going to lift her up and look at her back. Help me out.’

  They pushed their hands under the unyielding body of Groom-Bates. She was rigid. They could feel her cold skin through their gloves. It was fragile, like paper. They turned her on one side. A small pool of maggots sat under her body, eating away at the dead flesh of her back in a recess of the mattress.

  ‘So no knife, no bullet hole, Brian. You’re a very lucky man.’

  And crucially, thought Jake to himself, no sign of any green gunge.

  They laid the body back down again.

  ‘Right, Brian. We don’t know how she died. The post-mortem will decide that. I’ll talk to the coroner. I want you to seize all the prescription medicine in the flat and her mobile phone.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I forgot to ask, sir. Why are you interested in this case? Aren’t you Anti-Terrorist Branch?’

  ‘Forty days ago she claimed that she was at or near the bus bomb site. I need to understand what killed her.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Brian looked as confused as ever. Jake decided it was pointless trying to explain or asking him to do anything else.

  Jake walked to the entrance where Lenny was waiting.

  ‘It’s time for lunch, Lenny. Let’s find a nice café while this little lot sort themselves out.’

  63

  Wednesday

  17 August 2005

  1317 hours

  Shepherd’s Bush, West London

  They hunted for a café as they walked. The place was awash with traffic, mainly large goods vehicles. Westfield Shopping Centre was under construction behind the row of shops on the other side of the green.

  ‘Jesus, it’s still pandemonium around here! They’ve been building that place for more than two years. How long is it going to take?’ shouted Jake above the noise of the lorries.

  ‘God only knows. Maybe till 2008, they’re saying. I dunno. Do they really need a shopping centre here, so close to London’s West End?’ Lenny was unimpressed.

  Along the route, the eatery options that presented themselves were not particularly enticing. They had a choice of sharing a table with a fat, hairy trucker or dining next to a builder showing off his arse crack.

  Jake turned and looked back at the Pennines apartment building where the men in black would be bagging up Groom-Bates by now.

  ‘Change of plan. Let’s to go the Regency, Lenny.’

  The Regency was special.

  Lenny smiled. They jumped in the car and drove to New Scotland Yard. The underground car park was full again. The security guard waved them away. Lenny parked on a double yellow line outside The Feathers pub on Broadway. They would get a ticket from the council traffic wardens but hopefully they’d get it written off.

  They passed the three-sided, spinning New Scotland Yard sign, which cost the Met around £200 per year to power and rotate. Jake thought he recognised the face of a female reporter doing a to-camera piece for one of the television news channels. The Met were talking about buying the freehold for the Yard, which they currently rented. If the Yard ever moved, Jake wondered how many of the local businesses would survive the disappearance of all that ready cash flow. He couldn’t ever imagine it happening though. He was sure the Met were all set to buy the place.

  The Regency Café was loved by detectives and worth the extra walk. Opened in 1946, its lavish interior had featured in several films. Daniel Craig had filmed a particularly brutal scene there for Layer Cake. The film had been so well received that the bookies already had Craig as favourite to snap up the role of 007 in Casino Royale.

  On the way, they passed a newsagent and Jake noted that one paper had gone with the headline, ‘The Name’s Bland, James Bland’. They were touting Clive Owen as the better man for the job.

  The café was buzzing as usual. Cappuccino-coloured tiles went from floor to ceiling. Formica tables with four fixed plastic chairs around each one meant you had to slide across clumsily to take a seat. Red gingham half-curtains were pulled across the lower panes of the windows, shielding customers from the road.

  Jake and Lenny queued up diligently, ordered and paid.

  Cash only and everything was cooked to order. The servers were in full voice, shouting out the orders ready for collection at the top of their lungs. The husband-and-wife team had the loudest voices Jake had ever heard. In another setting they could have been opera singers, he thought.

  Jake sat down opposite the serving counter with his mug of tea.

  ‘What’s your plan for the lady “professor” then, Jake?’ Lenny asked, sliding into the seat opposite him.

  ‘We need speak to the coroner’s officer – let them know our concerns. I want to see what the post-mortem turns up.’

  ‘Two sausage, two eggs, bacon, bubble and beans!’ screeched the woman from behind the counter.

  ‘Do you think we need to go to the post-mortem? Do we need to be present and get samples, Jake?’

  ‘We’ll have to let Denswood decide that. I wouldn’t think so personally, not unless they can’t establish cause of death straight away.’

  ‘Two eggs, two sausage, two bacon, bubble, fried slice, beans and chips!’ bellowed the man at the counter in a deep guttural growl.

  ‘What’re your thoughts on her and how she died?’ Lenny asked.

  Jake sipped his hot tea.

  ‘It’s a strange one. She was young. She was very skinny though. Maybe drug misuse? Difficult to say. The place looked clean and tidy. Whatever it was that took her, did it all of a sudden – I don’t think it was a gradual thing. She was clearly well enough to keep the place tidy.’

  ‘Suicide? Could she have done something to herself? Suddenly decided to do it?’

  ‘What, in bed watching her last Family Fortunes show naked, Lenny?’

  ‘You’re probably right. The blast then? Something to do with that? Is she the fifty-third victim?’

  ‘I don’t know, Lenn
y. Got my doubts. Let’s wait for the PM.’

  ‘Two cheese on toast with beans and egg!’ screamed the woman.

  ‘House!’ called out Jake, like he’d won the big bingo prize fund.

  64

  Friday

  19 August 2005

  1234 hours

  Chelsea Harbour mortuary, Imperial Wharf, south-west London

  Jake pulled up alongside the double-storey white gates. A ten-feet-high wall ran around the perimeter, securing the mortuary building. Large red signs stated in bold white lettering: ‘No Parking, 24-hour access required. Unauthorised vehicles will be towed.’

  Death was indeed a twenty-four-hour business, thought Jake.

  The mortuary was nestled amongst plush, high-rise apartments that had sprung up out of the old gasworks like invasive bamboo.

  Security at mortuaries was always high. Not that the dead were going to escape. It was more that the dead had a story to tell – the story of how and why they had died – and there were sometimes people who didn’t want that story to be heard. The bodies needed to be protected so that the integrity of that story was sound.

  Grief also did strange things to people. Sometimes the bereaved felt the police and authorities were adopting the wrong course of action and wanted to take their loved ones home, or just didn’t want them at the mortuary at all. Jake could commiserate with those feelings all too easily.

  Lenny got out of the passenger seat and went to the silver box on the wall by the gate. Jake watched him state his credentials into the intercom and wave his warrant card for identification purposes before the gate swung open slowly on a tiny motor. Jake pulled into the small yard and parked as Lenny walked in behind and found the buzzer to get access to the building.

  Inside, a light-grey, tiled floor was met with white tiled walls – yet the tiles did nothing to mask the smell of death, which hit you as soon as you walked in. They were greeted by a man in his late fifties wearing a white lab coat. His hair was unkempt and his face showed several days’ worth of stubble.

  ‘I’m Derek. I’m the lab technician who’ll be assisting the pathologist today.’

  Derek didn’t proffer his hand to shake. Jake wondered how many dead bodies Derek had handled that morning already. Shaking hands wasn’t a particularly attractive scenario in this environment.

  ‘I’m DI Flannagan and this is DS Sandringham,’ he replied.

  ‘This way, please…’ Derek wandered off in front of them, following the path of the highly polished, grey-tiled floor as it snaked its way down along the corridor.

  They passed through a set of double swing doors and into a large room that was tiled floor to ceiling like the hall, but with harsh fluorescent lighting and gleaming stainless-steel furniture. Four examination tables sat side by side, each one designed to hold an adult cadaver on a raised section that looked like a sieve. The drain holes were there to allow any bodily fluids to drip down into a reservoir underneath and be channelled away unseen.

  At the far end of the room was a slim, elegant, red-haired woman in her late forties. Jake had met Dr Angela Farthing some years earlier whilst working on a previous case. She didn’t look like she’d aged a day.

  Given the unusual circumstances of ‘Professor’ Groom-Bates’s death, Jake had put in a special request for a registered Home Office forensic pathologist to undertake the post-mortem examination.

  Dr Farthing donned surgical gloves and a white lab coat as she looked down at the lifeless, naked figure of the woman Jake had found in bed at the Pennines.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector. Please tell me what you know about this lady and her death?’ she asked him, primly.

  ‘Good morning, ma’am. She was thirty-six years old. Lived on her own. Australian by birth. Worked as an editor of a medical journal at the British Medical Association building in Tavistock Square. Bit of a Walter Mitty character by all accounts and appears to have lied about her qualifications and background. She claimed in a newspaper article to have treated the injured on the bus that was blown up outside the BMA building on 7 July. She has no high-level medical qualifications. Her moment of glory in the media unwittingly undid and laid bare her lies to her employer and those around her. She was found dead at her bedsit. It’s a very strange case.

  ‘Crucially, and what I really want to know is, could it be possible that she picked up some contaminant in the process? Some toxin, bacteria or infection that’s killed her?’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector. Let’s get started then.’

  Dr Farthing began pawing at the skin around Groom-Bates’s left shoulder. She moved down her left side to the foot, across to her right foot and then back up to the right shoulder.

  ‘Her back please, Derek.’

  Derek pulled the ‘professor’ onto her side so that the doctor could look at her back.

  ‘I see the flies found her. Thank you, Derek,’ she said, referring to the hole in the base of Groom-Bates’s back.

  Derek gently laid the cadaver down onto the examination table again, whilst Dr Farthing spoke into her Dictaphone in preparation for her report later.

  ‘No signs of bruising. No puncture wounds. Slight decomposition of lower back with the presence of fly larvae and localised egg laying. Larvae are small. Are you looking for me to determine time of death, Inspector?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ replied Jake.

  ‘You don’t want me to test a sample of the dead larvae, then?’

  ‘No, thank you. Neighbour saw her alive twenty-four hours before we found her dead in bed. Time of death is not terribly important in this case.’

  Dr Farthing raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips and continued.

  ‘So, this “contaminant” that you mentioned… Have you any idea what type that might be, Inspector?’

  ‘We don’t know. One of the victims who was badly injured on the bus, an amputee, is showing signs of a green fluid weeping from the site of their amputation. Coupled with Professor Groom-Bates’s death, there is a distinct possibility that there was a dirty bomb on that vehicle in Tavistock Square on 7/7.

  ‘We know that there are countries out there experimenting with munitions containing biological agents. Maybe there’s some involvement? Difficult to say at this stage.’

  ‘OK. Understood… Derek, could you do the brain for me, please?’

  Derek nodded. He picked up a scalpel in his right hand and flattened down Groom-Bates’s lank hair with his left. On the very top of her head, he cut a cross in the skin. Then he peeled it back as one would peel an orange, folding her forehead over her face and two flaps over her ears, to reveal the white skull underneath. Jake had seen this done maybe ten times during his police career, but it still made him wince.

  Derek then picked up a small, hand-held, electrical circular saw and turned it on. The whir of the motor reminded Jake of the dentist. Derek began cutting around the top of the skull with the saw. There was a smell of burning as the saw blade clattered around the bone. The cerebral fluid ran out and into the sink. Derek then lifted off the top of Groom-Bates’s skull like the lid from a jam jar. With the top of his fingers he pulled out her brain, cut the cord attaching it to the spine and placed it onto a weighing scale behind him.

  ‘One thousand, three hundred and forty-three grams – no sign of haemorrhaging,’ said Derek as he picked up the buttery mass off the scales and passed it to Angela.

  Angela made a visual examination before placing it on a stainless-steel table to her left and dissecting it.

  ‘Brain appears to have been starved of oxygen – probably at or around time of death, I would say. Let’s look inside her, please, Derek.’

  Derek moved to Groom-Bates’s torso. He dug hard at the sternum with the scalpel and ran it down over her chest and toward her pubis. He pulled open the slit he’d made, the yellow fat visible under the skin. From behind the lower part of the ribs, he
lifted out a white, j-shaped sack. It was about the size of a grapefruit. Jake recognised it instantly. This was the stomach. Its contents shifted about waywardly as Derek lifted it – like food waste in a bin bag.

  The smell was already bad, but Jake knew the worst was yet to come. Nothing could mask it or prepare you for it.

  Derek placed the stomach in a stainless-steel bowl before cutting it open to let its contents spill out. The smell was unbearable. It hit Jake like a smack in the mouth. He wanted to throw up. Like distilled essence of rotten eggs mixed with concentrate of rotting cauliflower leaves, but in a heavy gas. It hovered; so dense you could almost see it, touch it.

  He always wanted to throw up during post-mortems. Trying to detach himself from them was almost impossible. Standing there, watching them take place, it was an assault on every sense that you owned. Seeing a dead body in situ was easier, thought Jake. In the morgue with the body being cut open, cut up and things being said – every one of your senses was wide open and being abused in the most revolting of circumstances. Vision and sound were bad enough. Then there was the smell. It got the back of your throat. You could taste it, it was so strong. You could see the colour drain from onlookers’ faces. You had to fight the urge to gag. Jake had seen plenty of people faint as the smell from the stomach contents hit them.

  Angela sifted through the bowl of stomach lining and stomach contents with her gloved fingers. ‘Undigested food; last meal appears to have been crisps and a bar or two of chocolate – perhaps just half an hour before death. Nothing out of the ordinary about the stomach or its contents.’

  Jake started to lose his focus. He began to think about the body parts he’d seen in Tavistock Square. About the intestines found at the door of the BMA. He had to concentrate on something else, otherwise he was going to gag and be sick.

  He shut his eyes and tried to name every Premiership football ground in the country to distract himself. It was no good… the smell wouldn’t go.

  He gagged. Acid reached his taste buds. It had been a few years since he’d done a post-mortem. Jake forced himself to swallow half a mouthful of sick back down.