Hen's Teeth

by Manda Scott

  ‘Sure. D for Daniel, as in the lion’s den. You sure you typed it in right?’

  ‘I’ll try again.’

  She did, several times, with different spellings of each name. Each time, the mainframe, with the patience of one well used to such temerity, gave us the same answer.

  NO INFORMATION AVAILABLE

  ‘It’s lying,’ I said, as we ran out of ideas.

  ‘It can’t,’ said Lee and she should know.

  ‘They must have done an autopsy,’ I said. ‘He was a medic, for God’s sake.’

  ‘They did do one. Definitely. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Maybe they forgot to archive it?’

  ‘They couldn’t. It’s done automatically’

  ‘Is there a hard copy?’

  ‘There should be.’ Lee began closing down files. ‘Better than that, there’s a full rack of back-up tapes in the basement somewhere.’ She switched off the machine and stood up. ‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to?’ Her voice had a kind of wary caution that made no sense of the sentence.

  I paused, half-way to the door. Bridget, what’s left of her, is also somewhere in the basement. I don’t ever want to see anyone I’ve known in life after they’ve been the subject of a Lee Adams post-mortem. Especially not Bridget.

  I sat down again.

  ‘Would you mind if I stayed here?’

  ‘Not at all.’ She dug in a drawer and pulled out the latest copy of the BMJ. ‘Here.’ The rag flopped on the desk beside me. ‘It’ll give you something else to think about.’

  It was a kind idea, if not entirely effective. I think Lee forgets how completely uninspiring medicine is to those not intimately involved.

  It took me less than a minute to filter through the articles and only slightly longer than that to read the single interesting one – yet another epidemiological study of cervical cancer. The results were ambiguous as ever.

  The ‘Situations Vacant’ at the back was slightly more exciting, if only as a reminder of how wonderful it is not to be stuck on the endless trek up the vertical slopes of the career pyramid. If I hadn’t stepped out, I’d be one of the many going for the few free consultancies by now. Or stuck for ever at senior registrar, pretending that I preferred it like that. Either way, I’d be battling with the insanities of trust status and evaluating life expectancy versus cost at every step. Not my idea of a fun way to spend my most productive years.

  I gave up on the Journal and picked up a pharmacology textbook from the shelf instead. It’s a long time since I read anything useful about temazepam. They hadn’t invented it when I was learning pharmacology – at least, it wasn’t in sufficiently regular use for me to learn much about it. I flicked through the pages and browsed through the clinical data and overdose warnings. Interesting stuff. Far more useful than the BMJ. By the time Lee returned, my pharmacology was back up to finals exam standard, at least in the field of the benzodiazepine anxiolytics.

  Lee emerged from the basement with a pair of floppy disks and some news of her own.

  ‘He’s still here. Did you know?’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Malcolm.’

  I shook my head. ‘He can’t be. There was a funeral. They buried him.’

  ‘No, they didn’t. They had a memorial service. You don’t need a body for that. Look.’ She sat down at the terminal and slid one of the disks into the drive. The machine chewed on it for a second or two and then opened the single file: a post-mortem report of one Dr Malcolm D. Donnelly, deceased. It was meticulous in its detail. Far longer even than Lee’s PMs, and she’s not exactly lax in her approach. The kind of thing you’d expect from a man who made his name as a clinical pathologist before he sailed on to the brighter waters of toxicological research.

  ‘Take a look at that.’ Lee ran her finger across the bottom of the screen. The ‘cremation/burial’ section had been deleted and replaced by ‘Anatomy Dept’.

  I read it twice and then again to make sure. Medics very, very rarely turn over their earthly remains to the probing attentions of the student masses, however glowingly the concept is presented to the general public. The mere thought makes my palms itch.

  ‘Malcolm wouldn’t do that.’ My voice rose a register. I coughed and brought it down again. ‘I mean, why, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Who knows?’ She leant under the desk and switched on a desk printer. ‘Maybe he wanted to hang around for a while longer.’

  ‘Don’t be morbid, Adams.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She grinned to show that she wasn’t. ‘But it does mean that if we want to, we can have a look at what’s left. At the very least, there’d be blood and organ samples in store. If we’re very lucky, he might still be lying in a freezer somewhere and we could do another post-mortem.’

  Nobody is that stupid.

  ‘If you had just murdered someone, would you be careless enough to leave the body lying around for any passing pathologist to take a look at?’

  She kept her eyes on the screen and hit a couple of keys. ‘I might. It could be less trouble than trying to override a will. Folk get struck off for things like that. The lawyers get really upset. You can get away with murder if you know what you’re doing, but it’s the paperwork that catches you out in the end.’

  The laser printer whined into action and a squeaky-clean copy of a squeaky-clean post-mortem slid out into the tray. It’s the paperwork that catches you out in the end. I thought of Malcolm and what it might have taken to get him to leave his body for the vultures of science.

  ‘We need to find the body and have a closer look,’ I said, trying to keep my imagination in check. Anatomy ranks quite a long way below Pathology on my list of fun places to visit.

  Lee saw me and smiled indulgence. ‘Tomorrow, huh?’ she offered. ‘One more day won’t make any odds.’

  ‘True.’ I let out a breath. ‘But we could check the date on the will tonight. It might be useful to know if the sudden urge for anatomical preservation was a last-minute change of mind.’

  ‘Could do.’

  ‘All the paperwork’s at the farm,’ I said, ignoring a graphic image of what Caroline would say if I turned up on the doorstep with Lee Adams in tow. ‘Would you like to come home?’

  ‘Why not?’

  It had gone midnight when we juddered down the track to the yard. An old VW Golf sat in one of the passing places half-way down the lane, the windows steamed to invisibility with the activities from inside. It rocked gently as we passed.

  The house was in darkness. I found the spare key in its hiding place under the upturned water bucket in the corner of the yard and opened the back door as quietly as I could, signalling silence to Lee. Caroline used to be a fairly light sleeper when we were children and there was no reason to believe she had changed.

  A throat-catching stench of dog shit hit me as I entered the kitchen. Beside me, Lee took a deep breath and swore. I put one hand over my nose, fumbling in the dark for the light switch with the other.

  The faint whine of an embarrassed dog emanated from the far side of the room.

  ‘Tan, you crazy hound, couldn’t you wait?’

  I found the light and stepped into carnage.

  ‘Mother of God . . . Tan!’

  He was still alive – just – lying in a pool of mixed blood and faeces, his small intestines spilling out fanwise across the floor from the gaping wound in his abdominal wall. There was cord binding his muzzle and more anchoring his front paws to one of the heavy, fireside chairs. He lifted his head to look at me and whined again. I retched hard and bile hit the back of my throat.

  Lee got to him first. She knelt in the filth, cradling his head on her lap, talking dog-talk, holding the pain at bay. One hand unwound the cord from his nose. The whining stopped.

  ‘Have you got a gun?’ The words slid in between one piece of nonsense talk and the next and she didn’t look up. It was a moment or two before I realized she was talking to me. She read the hesitation wrong.

  ‘
You can’t put him back together, Kellen. Not like this.’ This time she did look up and her eyes were black, unreadable pits.

  ‘I know.’ I shook my head. ‘Malcolm’s shotgun’s in the loft.’

  ‘Hell. That’s too far.’ Her eyes closed and she took a short breath in. ‘Right.’

  Her voice carried on, almost unbroken, spinning mindless canine fairy stories while one hand stroked his head, across and across, caressing, soothing, fingers seeking urgently for the atlanto-occipital notch down at the base of his skull. Her fingers locked on the back of his neck and she tightened the grip on his muzzle.

  Her voice changed. ‘OK, kid. Time to go.’

  The dog raised his head a fraction, sighting imaginary rabbits, and I watched his tail rise and fall twice in a tentative wag. The tendons stood out briefly on Lee’s forearms and there was an ugly snap, like green wood breaking. The tail fell limply to the floor.

  Lee laid her hand on his chest, behind the elbow, and kept it there for a moment, feeling for the heartbeat. Then she stood up abruptly. Fluid and filth smeared down from her knees to her feet. Her eyes slid across mine, unseeing. ‘We’d better find Caroline,’ she said.

  I was already half-way to the door, my mind played havoc, tying the woman in the dog’s place. At the foot of the stairs we paused.

  Lee raised one eyebrow. ‘Split?’ she whispered.

  No chance. One dead is enough. There’s safety in numbers.

  I shook my head once and then led the way, silently, up the stairs to search the top floor.

  We went through the entire house in less than five minutes.

  No one. Particularly no Caroline.

  That left the barn and the outbuildings: three sheds, the wood store and the garage.

  The barn door hung an inch or two open. It had been closed when we drove in, we both knew that. I caught Lee’s eye and jerked my head round at the left side, sketching a window in the air between us. She nodded once and vanished, a shadow in other shadows. I made for one side of the open door, taking time, trying to avoid the gravel, keeping out of the patches of moonlight.

  A tawny owl chick called twice to its mother. Except it was too late in the year for owlets and there are only barn owls round the farm.

  Lee in place.

  I eased open the barn door and slid inside, hugging the deep shadows at the edges of the stalls. Somewhere up to my left, a pony huffed a small snort of surprise.

  ‘There, something up there. Far end. Past the horses.’ Lee’s voice. Ghost-like in my ear. We began edging up the row of boxes.

  Two sounds, opposite directions. A scuffle in the chicken shed at the end of the barn and outside a car revved up in the lane.

  ‘Split?’

  ‘Go!’

  Lee went for the shed. I turned and sprinted for the door, hurling myself through, out into the yard, over the gate and up the lane. Red tail-lights burned round a corner, leaving empty space and diesel fumes where the Golf had been parked.

  Not a hope.

  I cursed viciously and spat, tasting the metallic tang of blood in the back of my throat from the run.

  A high-pitched whistle called me back to the barn, fast. Lee was there with Caroline, the latter lying on the floor of the chicken shed, bound hand and foot with the same white whipcord that had held the dog. A wide gash on one ankle bled profusely. Otherwise she was alive, conscious and, as far as I could see, in one piece. I have never in all my life been so glad to see a single human being alive and well.

  ‘Caroline. Christ, woman. Are you all right?’

  Lee cut the wrist cords and helped her sit up. She looked up at me blank-eyed and shaped her lips round one word. ‘Tan?’

  I took her hand and met her eyes, trying to think of what to say.

  ‘Dead,’ said Lee, cutting the last loop of cord. ‘I did it.’

  I held on to Caroline’s hand and, just for a moment, saw her teeter on the edge of emotional free-fall. Then she caught herself and the blank stare came back.

  She nodded, her eyes fixed on nowhere. ‘Thank you.’

  I’m not sure she even knew she was talking to Lee.

  We helped her back to the house and in through the front door to the living room. It was cold and smelt of disuse but there was no blood on the floor and the memories it carried were old and beyond harm. It was the best we could do.

  Caroline sat in silence on the edge of the sofa, letting me dress the cut on her ankle and massage the circulation back into her hands and feet. She submitted with good grace to Lee’s detailed medical check, drank coffee and answered our questions in a steady, controlled monotone, building layer after layer of shell around the nightmare. By the time we left, she could have passed in the street as normal. She’s always been good at building walls. It’s something to do with the need for control.

  I let Lee guide the questions. She probed gently, keeping the language clinical, distant, carefully guiding past the nightmares to the facts. Good technique.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Just one.’

  ‘Male?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I don’t know. An hour ago . . . maybe a bit more. I went upstairs to make up the spare bed for Kellen and he was waiting . . .’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never saw him. He kept behind me. I just heard his voice.’

  ‘Scots?’

  ‘Yes. But not a strong accent. Like Malcolm’s but deeper and . . . harder.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘The bantams. Two of them got out a couple of weeks ago and we never got round to looking for them. He said they belonged to a friend of his and he wanted them back.’

  ‘Did he get them?’

  ‘No. I don’t know . . . I don’t know where they are. Really. I have absolutely no idea . . .’

  Her voice cracked. Anger over the fear. Thin ice. I shook my head at Lee and she backed off. We could put the rest together ourselves. It wasn’t difficult.

  Lee rocked back on her heels and looked up at the ceiling, pensive.

  ‘Take her somewhere safe,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll stay and clear up here.’

  There aren’t too many options. ‘I’ll take her back to the flat,’ I said, praying hard for a peaceful night. ‘Give me a ring when you’re done. I’ll come and pick you up.’

  ‘OK.’ She jerked her head towards the door. ‘Don’t hang around.’

  The roads were too quiet and the weather too clear to take up much of my mind with the driving. I drove along on autopilot, trying not to think of the scene in the kitchen and failing. Caroline sat beside me breathing evenly, her eyes and her mind in neutral, until I drew up in a space at the corner of Beaumont Gate.

  ‘Is Lyn still here?’ she asked. Her voice was as colourless as her eyes.

  ‘No. We split.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a diplomatic pause while I pulled her bags from the back seat and we made our way up the street towards number 57.

  She put a hand on my arm as I juggled the bags into one hand and hunted through my pockets for the key. ‘Are you living alone now?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Anyone I should know?’

  ‘I doubt it. She’s a computer journalist. Specializes in electronic media. Her name’s Janine Caradice.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘American?’

  ‘Canadian.’

  Wait for it.

  ‘Rae Larssen’s ex?’

  Thanks.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that to her face if I was you. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Oh.’ A flash of amusement warmed her eyes. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I opened the street door and keyed a number into the alarm pad on the wall. We took a bag each and walked up the two flights together in a reasonably amicable silence.

  It was half past two in the morning by the time I turned the key in the lock and let us both int
o the flat. Janine, not surprisingly, was asleep. On balance, I had no real desire to introduce Caroline to my lover at that time of night, so by two forty-five the pair of us were crashed out, semi-clothed, on the sofa bed in the living room, with the phone and an alarm clock for company.

  The front-door buzzer woke me. With a reflex left over from hospital days, I was on my feet by the speaker before my brain had cut in to ask what the hell was going on.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi. It’s me.’

  Lee. I hit the buttons, heard the outer door open and shut a floor below and listened for the ripple of rubber-soled feet on the stairs. I met her at the door and guided her quietly past the sleeping Caroline to the kitchen.

  ‘Tea?’ I found a box of peppermint teabags in the back of a cupboard. Revolting stuff, but it’s about the only thing in the house that isn’t laden with stimulants.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Everything cleared up?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Lee nodded, peaceably. ‘I buried Tan. I thought perhaps we ought to keep this in the family until we’ve decided what we’re doing.’

  Quite. This is where the Adams/Stewart partnership comes into its own. She knows the problems and we both take the same route through to the same kind of answers. There were two things that really bothered me on the way home with Caroline and the first of them was what to do about Tan.

  I floated a compost teabag in a mug and passed it over.

  ‘There’s a Stewart MacDonald in charge of the local law,’ I said. ‘He’s a step or three up from your average rural plod. And he likes dogs. He met Tan the other night. I’ll have to tell him something.’

  Lee twirled the bag in the mug and a wash of peppermint vapour mixed with the coffee in a familiar, nauseating, early-morning cocktail. ‘Can you keep it low key?’ she asked.

  ‘Tan? Sure. I’ll have to. If they find out how he died, they’re not going to follow the suicide line on Bridget for long.’

  Lee blew gently across the top of her mug. ‘Do you want them to?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Of course not.’ There’s no way I want the rest of the world to believe that Bridget was that kind of loser. ‘But I’d rather that than Laidlaw. The second they call it a murder hunt, he’ll be in there with both left feet, waving arrest warrants to the four winds and daring everybody to make his day.’