Four Below

by Peter Helton

  ‘I’m a police officer, Liam, I expect to hear nothing but lies. But what’s suspicious about the farmer reporting the accident?’

  ‘Show you in a minute, when we get closer to the wreck.’

  ‘The road’s just there; we should be able to see it in a minute.’

  ‘You’re getting warmer, Jane.’

  ‘I wish that were true.’

  Fifty yards before the lane joined the road on which the BMW had crashed, McLusky jumped the shallow ditch that ran alongside it. He waited for Austin to join him beside the electric fence that surrounded the meadow, the northern edge of which was formed by the hedge in which the car had ended up. ‘How can you tell whether these things are switched on?’ he asked, putting his index finger close to the wire.

  ‘Why? Are we climbing over it?’

  ‘I thought we might.’

  Austin frowned into the mist. ‘There’s no cattle in the field, so I presume it’s not turned on.’

  ‘After you, then.’

  ‘Oh, thanks very much.’

  ‘Go on. Farmers are famously hard up. They’d never run current through it just for the fun of it.’

  Austin hesitated for another second, hand hovering, then with the strength of his conviction grasped the top wire. No current. A minute later both of them struggled diagonally towards the hedge, with the wet grass sketching cold streaks of moisture across their trouser legs. They found themselves directly on the other side of the hedge to where the accident took place, confirmed by the landmark of the sole tree. Judging by the noise, a tow truck was just arriving.

  McLusky rubbed his gloved hands for warmth. ‘What do you see, Jane?’

  Austin scratched the tip of his nose. ‘I can see the crashed BMW. Well, I can see the exhaust system and bits of the underside showing through the gap there.’

  ‘And you can tell it’s a BMW because … you’re an expert in car exhausts?’

  ‘Erm, no, it’s because I know it’s a BMW.’

  ‘And so did Farmer Giles back there. Because if I’m not mistaken, he mentioned BMW before either of us did.’

  ‘I think he did.’

  ‘Seven o’clock this morning in thick mist with no street lighting and Farmer Murry is turning clairvoyant. He would barely have been able to see the bloody hedge, even on a quad or tractor with the lights turned on. Let alone spot a square yard of dark car metal in it and identify its make from this side. Yet he did want us to know he hadn’t been near the thing.’

  ‘You think our Mr Murry saw the crashed car in the lane, had a nosy round the dead man’s luggage and found something he fancied.’

  ‘It’s a distinct possibility.’

  ‘Are we going back to have a friendly word about it?’

  McLusky sniffed, crossed his arms and blew a white cloud of breath through rounded lips while he thought. ‘We’ll wait for forensics on the car and luggage and the post-mortem results. Then we might have a better idea what happened here. And then we’ll pay him another visit, order a goose for Christmas and scare several types of shit out of him. Now let’s get back to your car before we perish out here.’

  McLusky worked imaginary brake pedals as Austin drove. The inspector was himself quite happy to risk the odd speeding ticket while remaining utterly convinced that everyone else drove much too fast. The radio had been quiet, which could only mean that nothing had been found at Leigh Woods. By the time Austin once more parked the Nissan near the Mazda beside the woodland track, McLusky felt too comfortable to have much enthusiasm for searching the woods.

  ‘Searching for a dead body is a mug’s game. You feel bored and frustrated while you’re looking, and if you do find something you invariably wish you hadn’t. Especially if it’s kids. We don’t have any missing children on our books?’

  ‘Nothing recent.’ A hundred yards ahead Austin could just make out one yellow jacket ghosting in and out of the edge of visibility. ‘Are we joining the troops?’

  McLusky felt the persuasive hand of lethargy push him deep into the car seat. He shook it off. ‘Why of course we are, my man,’ he announced with excessive cheer. ‘You try and stop me.’ He swung himself out of the car and strode off towards the swaying dragon lights among the trees, calling over his shoulder, ‘Why didn’t you try and stop me, Jane?’

  Half an hour later, feeling as though every last bit of warmth had left his body, and with each sentence uttered among them now littered with swear words, McLusky called a halt. ‘Lunch! Go get some! Two more hours this afternoon is all I’m prepared to give this farce, then we’ll all go back to policing the city.’

  He was the first to the cars and the first away. Driving the Mazda was like driving around in a fridge. Never before had the neon-lit cavern that was the Albany Road canteen looked such a desirable destination.

  To say that she liked going to the mortuary might have been overstating it, but the drive out to Flax Bourton wasn’t too unpleasant and the new facilities were a great improvement on the ones they had replaced. From the outside the mortuary looked like a cottage hospital; inside it looked futuristic. Death in the twenty-first century. Inside it appeared highly technical, stainless and brightly lit, though the bodies Fairfield tended to see on these tables often arrived here via bloodstained kitchen floors, glass-strewn pavements or in this case the shopping centre toilets. From this state-of-the-art place of recorded facts and rationality the body would then be moved once more, into the world of ancient beliefs, of procession and candlelit rituals involving earth or fire.

  In the viewing suite, separated from the actual body by glass and therefore spared the smells of the operation, Fairfield nevertheless felt she was as close to it as she could stand. Apart from the smell, all other aspects of the procedure were enhanced by the technology; the sound, and not just of the pathologist’s voice, was very clear. Details deemed important could be magnified with the aid of the mobile camera that transmitted live pictures to a large monitor on her right. There was no I’ll take your word for it, Doc here. The pathologist frequently moved the camera or had his assistant do so, to make sure Fairfield didn’t miss any of the gore. The doctor’s commentary, for the record and sometimes off the record, added a touch of docudrama to the proceedings.

  Coulthart had yet to explain why the unfortunate yet utterly predictable death of this junkie should involve CID, and why the post-mortem had been almost instantaneous. Fairfield was about to press the intercom button to ask that very question when something else engaged her attention. Coulthart had moved the camera to give her a close-up view of the dead man’s left arm. All along it black and blue bumps and circles formed a hideous chain that made her think of the plague. She pressed the button. ‘What is that, Dr Coulthart? I’ve seen plenty of junkies before, but that’s unusual, surely?’

  ‘Very little escapes you, Inspector. I was just about to draw your attention to this unusual feature and, in a way, was playing for time. I’m expecting a telephone call … ah.’ The phone on the wall by the door rang and Coulthart’s assistant went to answer it. ‘This might be it, quick work if it is, but then I impressed on them the urgency of the matter. I earlier sent several samples off to the lab by courier, and unless the chap fell off his motorcycle or managed to get himself lost in the fog, then this should be it. Excuse me, Detective Inspector.’

  Coulthart took the receiver that the assistant held out to him. He listened, nodded, talked, listened and talked some more, from time to time throwing glances in Fairfield’s direction. She knew that for him to send samples by motorcycle courier was unusual, and for a forensics lab to respond this quickly something of a miracle. At last the pathologist terminated the call.

  ‘Okay, enough build-up, Doctor, what have we got there? Tell me it’s not another plague that can be spread by sharing needles.’

  ‘No, not a plague, though I fear we may see more dead drug-users soon. Tell me, Inspector, what do you know about anthrax?’

  ‘Anthrax? That’s a poison, isn’t it? Didn’t
someone send anthrax through the post in the States a while back?’

  ‘No, and yes. I must say you disappoint me, Inspector. Anthrax is a disease, not a poison, and it is caused by the aptly named bacterium bacillus anthracis. But yes, some deranged American sent some through the post to express his displeasure at this or that. Not that it matters, DI Fairfield. Somehow, in the past few years, a new delusion has begun to affect the weaker minds, which is that as a means of expressing your displeasure, it is quite acceptable to kill and maim a lot of people you have never met. Because otherwise of course no one listens. People used to stand on soapboxes; now they put ground glass into baby food or send diseases through the post. And there are a lot to choose from, believe me. Anthrax, smallpox, botulism, Ebola, plague. Not so easy to deliver, plague,’ Coulthart mused, nodding to himself.

  ‘So our customer died of anthrax?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘Not an overdose?’

  ‘No. He must have been feeling extremely ill by the time he entered the toilets. He tried to make himself feel better by injecting, but died of respiratory arrest.’

  ‘So how did he get it?’

  ‘He almost certainly contracted it from injecting contaminated heroin. He’d have been feeling ill for some time, high fever, trouble breathing. Probably thought he had a bad case of flu.’

  Fairfield felt a shiver going through her. ‘How does heroin get contaminated with anthrax?’

  ‘That’s a very good question. The same way, I presume, that all the other rubbish gets into heroin. Someone puts it there.’

  ‘You mean someone laced his heroin with it? That means we’re looking at unlawful killing.’

  ‘That is for you to decide. But his was no natural death, I can say that much.’

  ‘But anthrax. I mean, isn’t that going a bit far? If you want to kill a junkie, you stick a knife into him while he’s distracted, which is pretty much all the time.’

  ‘I would agree.’ Coulthart paused for dramatic effect. ‘Unless of course it wasn’t just this one junkie you wanted to get rid of.’

  Fairfield sat down on the padded bench by the observation window. ‘You mean someone with a grudge against junkies?’

  ‘That’s entirely possible.’

  ‘So there could be more out there.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a distinct possibility. As you said, lacing the man’s heroin with anthrax because you wanted to kill him would mean going to extremes of difficulty. Anthrax is lethal and doesn’t just lie around for you to use. The lab will try and identify the exact strain, which may help identify the source.’

  ‘So we’re going to see more cases.’

  ‘Unless he travelled here recently from elsewhere, carrying his own supply, the city could be awash with the infected drug. The injection sites on his arm suggest he’s used contaminated heroin several times. You must find the source of it or we will find ourselves chatting over the cadavers of many more of these unfortunate creatures.’

  ‘Just how infectious is anthrax? I mean, can you pass it on? Can you catch it just from handling the heroin?’

  ‘Person-to-person infection is normally rare. Sharing needles would certainly be efficacious. Infection can be effected both by inhalation and gestation. So extreme caution is advised when handling any heroin. But the surest way to contract it is, of course, cutaneous.’

  ‘Which means …?’

  Coulthart zoomed the camera into a close-up of the blackened lesions on the dead junkie’s arm. ‘Injecting the stuff, Inspector.’

  Chapter Six

  McLusky scooted into the bathroom. Now that it was definitely winter, he’d have to buy another heater. The Montpelier flat he rented above Rossi’s, the Italian greengrocer’s, had once had open fireplaces in every room. They had later been replaced by gas fires, and these in turn had been removed and replaced with nothing. The two-bar electric heater he had bought when he moved in couldn’t hope to heat even one room, let alone the whole flat.

  In the meantime he lit the ancient stove in the kitchen, turned the oven to gas mark eight, put the kettle on the hob and scooted around until he was showered and dressed. He had managed to acquire a few more sticks of furniture, which meant the sitting room could now accommodate three people sitting down, which didn’t happen often, and he could breakfast at the kitchen table should the fancy take him. That didn’t happen often, either.

  This morning ritual of rushing around was made more difficult by the fact that he was required to wear a suit to Albany Road and keep it spotless until he could accompany DSI Denkhaus to a lunch at the Isis.

  The Isis was arguably the finest, certainly the most expensive, restaurant in town, where they were to be dined, wined and bored rigid by a few prominent businessmen – definitely all men, Denkhaus had confirmed – who liked to deliver their opinions to the police force in person and in a more congenial atmosphere than even headquarters could provide. All were sponsors of charities close to the Chief Constable’s heart.

  McLusky had fought hard to try to wriggle out of it. ‘Why would they want to meet me? Surely there are more suitable officers around …’

  ‘For once I agree wholeheartedly, DI McLusky. I can assure you that you were not my first choice, or anyone’s first choice, to go to this lunch. Neither was I, for that matter. They didn’t really want to talk to anyone below Assistant Chief Constable, but the ACC just can’t be …’ Denkhaus breathed deeply, swallowed down his indignation. ‘So I got lumbered with it. They are interested in our fight against drugs because businesses worry about the level of drug-related crime in the city. And our hosts want to meet someone who was part of the team that put Ray Fenton behind bars.’

  ‘I only played the most marginal role in that investigation.’

  ‘I’m aware of it. But in the absence of DCI Gaunt, you’ll have to do.’

  ‘Claire French distinguished herself in that operation, as I recall.’

  ‘I can’t turn up with a DC in tow. Besides, French is quite … Well, anyway, there we are, stuck with it. What we need to get across is that we are doing all we can, that prevention is better than cure and that progress is being made.’

  When H-hour arrived McLusky was glad that he had kept his tie in his jacket pocket and brought a spare shirt, since the one he had put on that morning had acquired a mysterious stain, as he had known it would.

  Denkhaus, wearing his uniform, was in energetic, upbeat mode. A large silver-grey BMW with police driver had made an appearance, a sweetener sent by the ACC perhaps. McLusky felt no better about being driven, though by the time the car glided to a stop outside the Isis, he had to admit it had been quite the smoothest journey through Bristol traffic he had experienced without the aid of sirens. For many, lunch at the Isis, especially if paid for by others, would have been a memorable occasion, but no one at Albany Road had envied him the invitation. McLusky himself was fond of good food, though he rarely got it. When he did, he preferred to eat it in relaxed surroundings and in the company of his choice.

  The restaurant’s designers had achieved an understated opulence that bordered on the minimal and yet managed to instantly suggest privilege. Part of it, he decided, came from the strange sensation that the room swallowed sound. Every table was taken, conversation was animated, yet the place seemed quiet and gave the impression that all was simply a setting for your own entrance. The other noticeable thing about the place was the age of its clientele; with a few glamorous exceptions, the diners were on the whole male and over fifty. Perhaps it took that long to earn enough money to eat here, McLusky thought as they were led to the table by an immaculately groomed creature. With dismay he realized that what he had envisaged as a long dining table full of local businessmen chatting over their food, where he would be required to merely nod and pretend to agree with Denkhaus, turned out to be just three men who now rose to greet them.

  In his sixties, the oldest and largest of the three, Paul Defrees appeared to be the mover of the enterprise. �
�Ah, Superintendent, I’m so glad you could find the time …’ He had a sonorous voice, very little hair and preternaturally white teeth. McLusky had heard the name more than once in the past but until now couldn’t put a face to it. Defrees ran the largest private security firm in the West Country, among other things providing staff for commercial premises, night patrols for wealthy property owners and security for festivals. A lot of his initial money, however, had come from running gangs of wheel clampers, operating mainly on private land. He introduced his two companions. Frank Walden, a disappointed-looking man in his fifties with a hint of dampness in his handshake, was a property developer who had run projects all over the south-west of England and in the south of Wales. The youngest of the three, James Cullip, had tightly curled dark hair and quick, intelligent eyes. His business interest went far beyond Bristol and included holdings in Europe, mainly France.

  McLusky had decided to stick to non-alcoholic drinks, which also relieved him of any stress he might otherwise have felt over the intimidating wine list. The lunch menu was difficult enough, since his French was non-existent, but he settled on confit of duck liver to be followed by roast quail. Once the starters arrived, he began to relax. The three men seemed genuinely interested in the policing of the city. Cullip, who owned two bars in Bristol, one in Millennium Square, was particularly worried about the level of street crime and complained about it in a low, scratched voice. ‘I like Bristol a lot. I’m from London, you see, but I chose to move here. I believe the quality of life is much better than in the capital. Bristol is going places. But when you have interests in the catering business, then street crime affects it directly. My customers need to be able to walk safely at night and my staff need to get home very late. Two of my bar staff were mugged last month. One of them decided not to work evenings any more. ‘

  Defrees agreed. ‘Bristol must clean up its act. It’s not enough to tart up the centre. If there is to be sustained investment, then crime must fall. A reputation for drug crime is always bad for a city. Businesses are highly mobile now; there is no reason why many of them couldn’t move north or south.’