This Is a Dreadful Sentence

by Penny Freedman

  By ten thirty a.m., uniformed police were stationed at the doors of the Social Science library and Scott was watching while the police pathologist made an initial assessment of the body. The smell, he thought. You never quite got used to the smell of violent death. Not just blood, but urine, shit and usually someone else’s vomit. That was here now: someone had thrown up in a waste paper bin and the high, sour smell was everywhere.

  Scott went into the library office. A young woman and a middle-aged man were sitting there, both clutching mugs of tea, both visibly shocked. He sat down beside the woman.

  ‘Miss Kitchin?’

  ‘Yes. Carol Kitchin.’

  She was paper-white and making a visible effort to keep her voice steady.

  ‘I’ll try to keep my questions to a minimum for now, Miss Kitchin. I know you’ve had a nasty shock.’

  She bowed her head in acknowledgement of the shock and the sympathy.

  ‘You’re the assistant Social Science librarian?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you opened up the library this morning?’

  ‘Yes. Either the Social Science librarian does it or I do.’

  ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened this morning? Take your time.’

  ‘I came in through the staff door as usual, took off my coat, switched on the computer, then went down to the main door to open it.’

  ‘And what time was that?’

  ‘Just before nine. I like to be prompt. I could hear there was a group of students outside waiting to get in. There always is.’

  ‘But you didn’t open the door this morning?’

  ‘No. As I was walking down I saw the blood.’ Her voice wavered and she took a gulp of tea.

  ‘And the blood was around the base of the first set of stacks?’

  ‘Yes. I knew right away that there must be something dreadful there, but I never thought … I vaguely thought it was some horrible practical joke – a dead cat or something.’

  ‘Could you see anything there? Did you investigate?’

  ‘No. I didn’t want to go near it. I got straight on to Security. And Tom came.’ She turned and smiled wanly at the middleaged man beside her.

  ‘What did you do while you were waiting for him?’

  ‘I didn’t have to wait long. He came right away. I think I just went into the office and sat down.’

  ‘So, Mr White, what did you find when you got here?’

  Tom White’s face was blotchy red in contrast to Carol Kitchin’s pallor, and he was breathing noisily.

  ‘Do you mind if we go outside for this?’ he asked. ‘I could do with a smoke.’

  ‘Would you mind coming outside, Miss Kitchin?’

  She stood up.

  ‘I’d like to. I’m afraid I was sick in the waste paper bin when the – when the body fell out. I feel I ought to clear it up, but we were asked not to touch anything.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. My officers have dealt with worse.’

  They went out through the staff door into the foyer of the Social Science block, of which the library was a part. Scott waited until Tom White had taken a few shaky drags on his cigarette before he asked,

  ‘What did Miss Kitchin say to you when she phoned, Mr White?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Just could I come and look at something in the library. There was blood and she didn’t want to look at it herself.’

  ‘And you went right away?’

  ‘Yes.’ He turned to Carol Kitchin. ‘You sounded pretty upset.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  White took a deep pull on his cigarette.

  ‘There was blood, like she said. I didn’t know what it was but the only thing to do was to open up the stack.’

  ‘So that’s what you did?’

  ‘Yep. I took it slow and it was hard to move at first, but then there was a sound and it just fell out onto the floor.’

  ‘The body?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned away for a moment, concentrating on his cigarette. Carol Kitchin had her eyes closed and was taking deep, controlled breaths. Scott waited until White turned back towards him.

  ‘Did you touch the body at all?’

  ‘No. It was a mess – the head and that – a bloody mess. I knew he had to be dead. Poor devil had to be dead.’

  Back in the library Lynne McAndrew, the pathologist, had just finished her initial examination of the body. She stood up from her cramped position between the stacks, grimacing and flexing her knees.

  ‘Well?’ Scott asked.

  ‘Well, he’s been dead for about twelve hours, I would say. He’s at maximum rigor mortis. He was crushed. And he was alive and standing up when he was crushed. See the way his arms are raised? He was trying to push the stack back as it came towards him. I’ll know more about what actually killed him when we do the autopsy. It could have been asphyxiation, but there’s a lot of blood. I’d say it was probably ribs piercing the lungs. There are some head injuries which happened after death. Whoever turned that wheel went on turning it after he was dead. And we know who our body is. His wallet was in his pocket.’

  Scott flicked it open and looked at the student ID card. Name: Ekrem Yilmaz. Date of birth: 24.11.70. Nationality: Turkish. He took a plastic evidence bag from his pocket and sealed the wallet into it.

  ‘Any chance it was an accident?’

  ‘Someone moved the stack without realising he was there, you mean? I don’t see how it could have been. He’d have shouted, wouldn’t he? And even supposing the person turning the wheel was deaf – which I guess is possible – they’d be bound to feel the resistance.’

  ‘Have you seen anything like this before?’

  ‘Well I’ve seen people crushed, of course, but it’s mainly from above. Even if the force comes at them laterally, like a runaway truck, it’ll knock them over first and then crush them. I did once see a child crushed against a wall by a car that went out of control and mounted the pavement.’

  ‘So what’s your feeling about this? Are we looking at what the press will want to call a frenzied attack?’

  ‘I suppose. I just wonder how frenzied you can be with that thing. How fast can you actually turn it?’

  ‘There’s another set of them further down there.’

  He turned to look at a younger man just entering by the main library doors.

  ‘I’ll get young Tyler to try his strength on them.’

  Detective Sergeant Mark Tyler raised a questioning eyebrow and said, ‘The SOCOs are here, sir.’

  ‘Good. If you’re finished, Lynne, we’ll get him photographed and taken away and then the SOCOs can get to work. Meanwhile, Sergeant Tyler and I will take a look round here.’

  The room was L-shaped: bookshelves, including the movable stacks, stood in ranks all along the longer dimension, and at the end was a glazed door controlled by a swipe-card security panel. Beyond that was a lobby with coat-hooks and toilets and double doors to the outside world; at the other end was the librarian’s desk and behind it a door into the library office. From the office, another door led into a short corridor with a staff toilet opening off it and a door at the end leading to the foyer of the Social Science block. The shorter dimension of the L led along from the main doors and contained more bookshelves and reader’s bays with connections for laptops. At the far end there was an emergency exit. Now he was no longer focussing on the bloodied corpse, Scott started to take in the quality of the place. University libraries had certainly changed since his student days: beautiful wood had gone into all these bookshelves and tables and the walls were no plain magnolia. Lilac Mist, the colour chart would have called it. It was echoed in the heathery upholstery of the chairs. He commented on this to Tyler, who looked unimpressed.

  ‘Our friend there has messed it up a bit, though, hasn’t he, sir? I don’t reckon anyone’s going to want to work in here for a while.’

  ‘I don’t reckon anyone’s going to be able to. But there’ll always be the ghouls who
’d like to. I haven’t talked to the College Principal yet but he needs to understand that this stays closed for as long as it takes.’

  ‘Any chance we’ll need to clear the whole campus, sir?’

  ‘I don’t think so. This is the crime scene and it’s easy to isolate. So many people mill around outside, there’s no chance of picking up forensic even if we had the place to ourselves.’

  The body had been between stacks near the main doors. It had now been bagged and was being taken out and the SOCOs had gathered to move in. Scott had a few words with them and returned to Tyler, who was tentatively testing the wheel controlling the stacks at the other end of the room.

  ‘Go on then, Mark. See how fast it’ll move’

  Tyler was a big man, broad-shouldered and fit. With his ruddy complexion he looked, Scott thought, as though he had grown up on a farm, though he was actually a taxi driver’s son from Milton Keynes. He spun the wheel with as much force as he could muster and the stacks moved smoothly together. Smoothly but not fast.

  ‘It’s quite hard work, sir. ‘

  ‘Yes, I don’t think we’re looking for a female killer.’

  ‘Not the style for a woman anyway, sir. Can’t imagine a female doing something like this even if they did have the strength.’

  ‘Well what a sweet old-fashioned lad you are, Detective Sergeant. Not true, I’m afraid. Some women are capable of anything. Look at Lady Macbeth.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, I thought we were talking real life here, not Shakespeare.’

  ‘Shakespeare knew a thing or two. But you’re right. I can’t see a woman doing this.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what strikes me - why didn’t he get out? I really put my back into turning that wheel but there’d still have been time for someone to get out, even if they’d been down the far end of the shelves.’

  ‘Dr McAndrew says he was alive when he was crushed, and standing up but I suppose he could have been drunk or drugged – slow off the mark. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy results.’

  ‘And what was he doing in there or how did someone get him there? I take it it happened after the library closed last night. No-one could have done it with other people around, could they? Students don’t study that hard so as not to notice someone being bumped off.’

  ’The library closes at ten – it says so on the door – and Dr McAndrew puts time of death around ten. Maybe he and the murderer somehow stayed around after it closed. A prearranged meeting, possibly, though why here? We need to know about access: what was locked, who had keys, which librarians were on duty, what they saw. Get going on that, will you, Mark?’

  Scott took a look round the library office, noting the duty rota on the wall. He left the office, looked into a staff cloakroom on his right and went out through the door to the central foyer of the Social Sciences block, guarded at the moment by a uniformed constable. The place had the air of an atrium: glass roof, vigorous plants standing in terra cotta pots. Against the back wall was a glassed-in booth where a uniformed porter sat. Mark Tyler was finishing a conversation with him and came over to report.

  ‘Well that’s quite clear. It’s not a librarian on duty in the evenings, it’s one of the students – postgrads, he says, often foreign students – non-EU – who aren’t allowed to do other jobs. If they have any problems, they call the porter on duty for help. At nine fifty-five they ring a bell and get everyone out, then they lock the main doors, maybe tidy up a bit, turn out the lights and go out through the office and into this foyer, the way you’ve just come. They lock the door out to the foyer here, then they hand the two keys – the main door key and the key to the office entrance - in to the porter. He signs for them and the student signs too, with the time. She handed the keys in at 10.10. This guy wasn’t on duty last night but I’ve got the name of the guy who was – Clive Davies – and the student’s signature looks like Yukiko Iwaki. Not a signature really – more sort of printed.’

  ‘So could be faked, you mean?’

  ‘Possibly. Do you want to take a look?’

  Scott felt a surge of impatience, a need to be doing. He knew there were those in the force who thought he had been promoted too young to DCI; this case, his first solo murder case, he needed to do well. He didn’t want to get snarled up in trivia. He turned and called over his shoulder,

  ‘No, I want to talk to Yukiko Iwaki, and to Clive Davies, and to anyone else who was around. I’m going to look around outside. You keep an eye on the SOCOs and let me know if they come up with anything. There’ll be people to interview as soon as we can round them up.’

  Going out of the building, he lit a cigarette and walked along the side of the library to the main doors at the front. He remembered when the college was a college of education, training teachers, and only half the size it was now. He had come with his primary school class to see Peter and the Wolf here and they had been allowed to run around and let off steam afterwards. It was much less open and green now, with new buildings squeezed in between the older ones. He stood and chatted to the constable stationed outside as he smoked and looked across to a group of students standing in front of a garishly-painted building opposite, some also smoking, others just gawping at the police activity. They were wrapped in coats and scarves against the unfriendly wind that channelled between the buildings. He wished he’d put his own coat on and couldn’t recall for the moment where he had left it. Grinding his cigarette under his heel, he strode across to the gaggle opposite. They started to scatter awkwardly but he caught up with one of them.

  ‘What is this building here?’

  ‘Student Union.’ The reply was surly with a defensive upward inflection.

  ‘Do you know if anything was going on at the Union last night?’

  The boy called across to one of the others.

  ‘Know if there was anything at the SU last night?’

  ‘Women’s night, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ He turned to Scott. ‘Once a month there’s a girls only night.’ He smirked. ‘I guess they dance round their handbags, don’t they? And sing I will survive.’

  ‘And is there a no smoking rule in the Union building?’

  ‘Oh yeah. The nanny state’s alive and well.’

  Scott didn’t bother to thank him. He eyed the distance back to the library doors. He bet there were always some smokers outside the Union when there was a gig on, and they’d have seen anyone going in or out of the library after hours. The place would be well lit at night, he could see. It was a matter of appealing for information and jogging memories. Tedious work – a job for the team.

  He went back into the library and then out of the emergency exit to check the view from there. The door was securely closed, so no-one had gone out of it last night. Nor in, presumably, since you can’t get in through an emergency door unless someone opens it for you from the inside. He made a note to check with the security staff that no-one had found the door open the previous night. There was a three-storey building opposite and he could see seminar rooms on the ground floor. This was obviously mid-morning smoke time: a woman stood opposite without a coat on, puffing hard on her cigarette, huddled against the cold. Turning to go inside, he looked back at her again. He had the most uncomfortable feeling that he knew her from somewhere – and that he wished he didn’t.

  He noticed that a board behind her declared the building to be the English Language Department. Since his murder victim was a foreign student, he guessed this department might be the place to start looking for information about him. As the woman opposite gave him a vague wave and started off towards the front of the library, Scott crossed the grass, entered the building and found the department office. There a nervous woman fluttered round him, producing a thick file on Ekrem Yilmaz. Although a couple of computers were humming away, this was not the paperless office. He spent fifteen minutes or so looking through the file and then was told that for more information he would need to speak to the Director of Studies upstairs on the left.

 
The nameplate on the door read:

  Mrs G. Gray

  Director of English Language Studies

  He knocked and went in, and there she was again, the woman he’d seen smoking earlier, the woman with a disturbing familiarity. While doing the standard business with the warrant card, he surveyed her: plumpish, large bust, slightly rumpled clothes, big glasses, wry smile, unruly blond hair growing dusty with grey now. He knew who she was.

  Shit.

  This was all he needed. His first solo murder case and the chance to prove that his early promotion hadn’t been a mistake, a time when he needed authority and gravitas for Christ’s sake, and here he was face to face with his old English teacher and feeling seventeen again. She hadn’t recognised him, though. He was just a policeman as far as she was concerned. But she would. Oh yes, she would. At some point in this case, just when he didn’t need it, in front of a load of other people, she’d say I’ve just realised where I know you from. You were at the William Roper School, weren’t you? You haven’t changed a bit! Better to come clean, then. As teachers went, she’d not been bad. Young then, of course, with a decent sense of humour. They’d made jokes about her tits but they quite fancied her really. Get it over with, brush it aside in an all over a long time ago and I’m a busy man kind of way, establish his authority and move on. He took a breath.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he said, and only just avoided adding ‘Miss’.

  3

  THURSDAY: Unreal Conditions

  It’s official. Policemen are not just getting younger, they are actually children. So this is how it goes. It’s Thursday morning and I have a clear three hours for getting some admin done. I don’t mind admin - I think I’m quite a good director of studies - but given the choice I’ll always opt for something teachingrelated instead. This morning, though, there are exam entries which must be done, and staffing for next term, and I must make use of the extra hour I’ve got. Normally, I teach a class at ten, but this morning my colleague, Jenny, has taken them to the Language Lab for an IELTS Listening test and I don’t have to teach till twelve. So the plan is to get my head down and work through my in-tray.