‘W-what are we l-looking for?’ Mayberry stammered.
Rafferty stopped in her tracks. What were they looking for? The victim was at the hospital, no doubt in surgery by now if she was still alive, so there was no witness to talk to, no body to look at, and the crime scene was being washed clean by the September rain. There was little point in having Mayberry loitering by her side, doing nothing to help out.
‘Go find whatever CCTV you can,’ Rafferty ordered. There weren’t any obvious cameras in sight, but some of the businesses on the adjoining road had to have coverage. At the very least, it would give her time to explore the crime scene without being the centre of attention.
Mayberry nodded his acknowledgment and set off down the alleyway. He had barely gone ten feet when he was out of sight.
Rafferty made a mental map of the surrounding area.
The alleyway wound around the properties to the north and to the west, joining up the Old Brompton Road and Drayton Gardens. Both were major thoroughfares with lots of foot traffic, yet few ventured down the alleyway. Rafferty didn’t blame them. The cut-through was dimly lit, with only two lampposts covering a three-hundred-yard stretch, and the high fences on either side backed onto private gardens. It was eerily quiet for somewhere so central.
It seemed like the perfect place to commit a murder. Or to dump a body.
Lighting had been set up around the place where Angela King had been shot. Her blood had pooled on the ground. It wasn’t easy to spot because of the weather, but judging from the size of the pool, Angela King had lost several pints of blood before the ambulance arrived on the scene.
Rafferty ran her torch along the ground in either direction to look for blood droplets that might indicate movement. There were none. Either the victim had been shot on this spot while standing still, or the killer had cleaned up.
Rafferty rubbed at her temples. A migraine was beginning to set in. Did Morton feel like this when he was on a scene? He always looked so composed. Think, she told herself. There had to be some physical evidence. The victim had been shot. Where was the bullet?
There was no glint of metal in sight. Perhaps the bullet was still in the victim.
Rafferty was still searching when Ayala appeared on scene.
‘Evening,’ he said. ‘Where’s the boss man?’
‘No boss man. Tonight, it’s the boss lady.’
Ayala didn’t even bother to hide his disdain. The scowl on his face and the set of his jaw said it all.
‘The new chief’s orders. I’m in charge of this case. You got a problem with that?’ Rafferty asked.
She knew he did. Ayala had been on course for his own murder investigation team when Rafferty had re-joined the force. She’d displaced him as Morton’s right hand in no time, and he’d never let her forget it.
He shrugged his shoulders as if he couldn’t care less. ‘Fine by me.’
‘Good. Not a word to Morton, either. That’s an order direct from Silverman. I need you to start going door to door. Canvass the flats to the south and east, and then go door to door among the clubs and restaurants.’
‘On a Saturday night? That’s going to be utterly fruitless,’ Ayala complained, then quickly added, ‘boss.’
‘So be it.’
***
Angela King was in bad shape by the time she arrived at the Accident and Emergency department at the Royal Brompton Hospital. The paramedics in the ambulance had done their best to fill the gunshot cavity with gauze. They’d stemmed the bleeding, given her oxygen, and tried to reassure her so she wouldn’t go into shock.
Doctor Hannah Cornell had seen it all before. She’d been a trauma surgeon for over twenty years, but even after all this time, it was still a rush. That wasn’t something she’d ever admit to a patient. If you weren’t an adrenaline junkie or a sadist, you didn’t survive more than a short stint in Accident and Emergency.
She stood in her favourite room in the hospital, the operating theatre, and surveyed her patient. This was her domain. These were her staff. And tonight, Angela King’s life was in her hands.
A nurse bristled at her elbow. He was already fiddling with the patient’s IV. ‘Patient presented with a bullet wound to the chest. Paramedics have filled the cavity with gauze.’
‘Mainline six units of blood, stat. Get me a 32G chest drain.’ Cornell stared intently at the woman’s injury as she considered her options. The patient’s heartbeat was weak. Her venous pressure was rising, and her systemic pressure was falling in response. Beck’s Triad. Fluid was accumulating around her heart.
But before Cornell could deal with the heart, she had to drain the patient’s chest cavity.
Bullet trauma was typically indirect. The bullet followed a narrow trajectory, obliterating everything in its path. That could be fatal, although in most cases, it wasn’t. With it, the bullet brought enormous kinetic energy transfer, which damaged all the tissue around the bullet’s path.
And then, if the patient lived long enough, they were at high risk of an infection from whatever bacteria the bullet had dragged in with it.
Cornell smiled. She felt most alive when death was in the air.
She jabbed the drain into the patient’s chest. The lung and chest walls had collapsed, flooding the area with blood. The fluid began to spurt out of the drain. There was too much. She’d have to go in surgically.
‘Nurse, scalpel.’
This was the tricky bit. The tension from the pneumothorax would have pushed the trachea to the other side. Cornell could barely see through the blood. She ran her fingers over the cavity, feeling for the right place to cut, and then, with a jolt of adrenaline, she pressed the scalpel to the patient’s chest.
Blood erupted from the incision. It seemed like gallons, though Cornell knew it to be no more than three pints. In less than ten seconds, the operating theatre went from sterile, cold, and clean to a scene out of a horror movie.
‘She’s going into cardiac arrest!’
Cornell glanced at the monitors. Timing was everything. The few minutes between the patient being admitted and getting her into the operating theatre might have cost Angela King her life.
‘Paddles. Now.’
The nurse desperately wiped away at the fluid on the patient’s chest. They couldn’t use the paddles until she was relatively dry.
‘Charge.’
‘Are you sure?’ the male nurse asked.
‘I’m damned sure. Do it,’ Cornell barked.
The paddles began to hum as they charged. Moments later, they were ready for a Hail Mary to save Angela King’s life.
‘Clear!’
Cornell pressed the paddles to the patient’s chest the moment the team was clear. The patient convulsed on the table, a violent spasm as she clawed to hold on to life.
‘Clear!’ Cornell repeated.
The electricity coursed through the patient, her every muscle tensing and twitching. Cornell glanced at the monitors once more. It wasn’t helping. Angela King’s heart wouldn’t start.
One more try. One more.
‘Clear!’ Cornell thrust the paddles into place and jolted the patient’s heart once more. Cornell’s own breathing stopped as she craned her neck expectantly towards the monitors.
Nothing. She was going to have to call it.
‘Time of death, ten thirty-two p.m.’
Chapter 4: No Backup
Rafferty left Mayberry to get on with the general canvass, which normally would have suited him just fine if Ayala had bothered to make an appearance. Ayala was supposed to be there, but he seemed to have disappeared.
Mayberry wasn’t confident that he’d find a reliable witness. The alleyway was dark and dingy and ran behind the busy thoroughfares of Drayton Gardens and the Old Brompton Road. At this time on a Saturday night, it would be a small miracle to find someone who wasn’t drunk, high, or too busy working to notice any goings-on.
And he had to talk to them. His aphasia was better than it had once been, but he still
hated talking to anyone except those close enough to know he had to take his time.
He fumbled in his pocket, searching for the reassuring presence of the little moleskin notebook and pen that Morton had given him the previous Christmas. Writing down what he wanted to say helped, but explaining that he needed to write it down – and that he really was a police officer on the job – was never easy. Especially with drunks. His first encounter of the night proved that.
‘You’re a copper, are ya, lad?’ The speaker was a homeless man who was camped outside an ATM machine a couple of hundred feet away from the alley. He had a can of White Lightning in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Mayberry nodded. ‘H-have y-you seen anything un-un-unusual tonight?’
‘I met this guy. He can’t speak English proper, and he’s pretending to be a policeman too. Now, you gonna spare us a quid, or you want to move on? Only you’re scaring off me marks.’
Mayberry sighed inwardly. He wished Ayala were here. Ayala had a way of getting witnesses to talk, and it left Mayberry free to do what he was good at: to watch, to listen, and to make extensive notes.
He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket, swiped his thumb against the reader to unlock it, and opened up Messenger.
Ayala, where are you?
He hit send. It wasn’t like Ayala to be late to a crime scene.
Mayberry turned slowly on the spot. He was on the Old Brompton Road, looking west from the Old Dog past Drayton Gardens. The people there were passing through, heading out for the night or heading home. Most had been in the bars or the restaurants. That left a few homeless people who hadn’t seen or heard a thing. It didn’t help that there were tourists everywhere. Mayberry could barely speak English, let alone try his hand at Urdu or Chinese.
There had to be something to find. The crime scene had yielded nothing. There were no prints, no trace, no things to find, only the blood, and that was being washed away by the weather. He hadn’t even found a bullet. From his brief conversation with Rafferty, it sounded like the victim had been shot at close range, but if it had been a through-and-through, then the bullet should have been in the fence. It wasn’t.
The CCTV had largely been a bust. The convenience store around the corner had been happy to hand over their tapes, but there was no guarantee the killer had walked past.
He decided to try inside the Old Dog once more.
He found the bar and flagged down the barman by flashing his police identification.
‘Are y-you L-L-Leon?’ Mayberry yelled over the music.
The barman nodded and beckoned for Mayberry to follow him. He led the way back to the alleyway in which he’d been taking his smoke break when he’d heard the gunshot. There, he turned on his vape once more and looked expectantly at Mayberry.
‘I’m D-D-DI Mayberry. You f-found the victim?’
Leon was polite enough to pretend not to notice Mayberry’s stutter. ‘That was me. Want me to tell you what happened?’
Mayberry nodded, grateful that he didn’t have to speak.
‘I came out here to vape. I’m on shift ‘til one a.m. tonight, and I get a headache with the music being so loud. That was about half nine. As I was smoking, I heard... well, the shot. Only it didn’t sound quite right. I know what guns sound like. You never forget that sound.’ Leon shivered. ‘I was in the army, see?’ He rolled up his sleeve to show off a tattoo depicting a crest with a tank and the words “Fear Naught”.
‘S-second R-royal Tank Regiment?’
Leon took a drag from his vape. ‘Bingo. I did a full tour, and then I came back here. It’s probably why I don’t like the loud music. The gunshot wasn’t right. I don’t know why. It was definitely a gunshot. She had the hole in her chest to prove that. I don’t know, maybe I’m imagining things. I’m sure it was a gun. It had to have been. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, Detective.’
‘D-did you see anyone unusual t-tonight?’
‘Not that I remember. It was the usual crowd inside, and I didn’t see anyone at all out here. I told the other detective that. Is there anything else? I only get one five-minute break, and if I don’t get back to work, I’ll be in trouble with my manager.’
‘Y-you’re f-free to go.’
***
Angela King was in the mortuary by the time Rafferty arrived at the Royal Brompton. The receptionist at the front desk helpfully escorted her downstairs.
‘Hold on here one moment, please,’ the receptionist said when they were outside the door of the mortuary. She slipped inside, and Rafferty could hear her talking to someone. She returned carrying two plastic bags.
‘This,’ she said as she handed over the first bag, which was a satin evening bag, ‘was brought in with her. We looked inside, but only to find her ID.’
Rafferty took the bag. For a moment, she wished the rest of the team was there with her. It was usually Mayberry who handled the chain of custody paperwork for Morton. Now that she was the senior investigating officer, she’d have to do it herself.
‘And the other one?’
The receptionist hesitated. ‘The victim’s clothes. The surgical team had to cut her top off to operate on her. I hope that’s not a problem for you.’
Rafferty took the second bag. The clothes wouldn’t be of much evidentiary value. At best, there would be a bullet hole they could measure, and, given the relatively narrow alleyway, there would probably be gunshot residue on there too.
‘Not a problem,’ Rafferty said. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘That’s everything.’
Rafferty gestured at the door to the mortuary. ‘Can I go in?’
‘I’m afraid not, ma’am. The pathologist arrived five minutes before you did. He’s in there right now, and he said...’
‘He said what?’
‘He said, “Morton can fuck off until I’m good and ready. The body is mine ‘til I choose to release it.” Does that mean anything to you?’
Chiswick. Rafferty smiled politely. ‘I’ll wait.’
***
The death was simple to explain from a forensic point of view. She’d been shot.
Doctor Larry Chiswick ruled it murder the moment he saw the body. There was a gaping hole in the victim’s chest where the bullet had struck her. The actual cause could be exsanguination, hypoxia, or collapsed lung. Not that it mattered. One bullet, one hole, one dead woman. It was the sort of autopsy that Chiswick did on autopilot.
The gunshot wound had been made worse by the surgeon’s mangled attempt to keep her alive. Her ribs had taken a beating, which would normally be suggestive of an assault, but Chiswick knew from the Accident and Emergency records that this damage had occurred when they tried to resuscitate her. The damage made his job a little more complex, but a single gunshot wound was a closed case as far as Chiswick was concerned.
Chiswick set a recorder down on a tray next to the gurney and spoke aloud to record his thoughts.
‘The victim is female, late forties, and in good health. Apart from being dead.’
Chiswick hit pause on the recording, chuckled at his own joke, then hit the button again to resume recording.
‘She was shot at close range, face-on, as evidenced by the presence of gunshot residue. From the angle of the entry wound, it appears the victim made little or no attempt to flee, which suggests she may have known her attacker. It is impossible to definitively determine the calibre of the bullet due to attempts to save her life. It is probable that a small-calibre weapon was used, due to the lack of perimortem damage sustained. According to the treating surgeon, the cause of death was a cardiac incident caused by acute bullet trauma. The manner of death was undoubtedly homicide.’
The bullet had passed close to the heart, and kinetic energy transfer had done the rest. It was a simple gunshot death.
Except for one thing.
The bullet had penetrated approximately five inches through Angela King’s body. When Chiswick rolled her over, there was no exit wound.
&nb
sp; ‘Odd,’ he mused. She had been hit at a sufficiently low velocity to avoid a through-and-through, and yet there was no bullet inside her. He x-rayed her chest to be sure, and then updated his audio findings. ‘No bullet is present in the chest cavity. I presume this is the result of removal by the Accident and Emergency department, but the senior investigating officer will wish to confirm this.’
He hit the pause button once more. There wasn’t much more he could do here. The body would need to be transferred to the police morgue at Scotland Yard, where he could perform a full autopsy, send off blood samples to check for intoxication, and add her DNA to the system. That could wait until business hours on Monday morning.
Chiswick snapped closed his carry bag, slipped his audio recorder into his pocket, and disposed of his gloves in the yellow bin marked for biological waste.
He found Detective Inspector Rafferty waiting for him in the corridor. She was staring off into space, her headphones blaring out some awful pop music at much too loud a volume. He tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention.
‘Where’s David?’ he asked.
‘At home, I presume. This is my case.’
Chiswick used a fat forefinger to push his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and smirked.
‘Good one. So, where’s David, really? I’ve got news.’
‘It really is my case. Tell me what you’ve got.’
Chiswick’s smirk melted. ‘Okay, I’ll humour you. Your victim was shot at close range with a low-power weapon. There wasn’t a bullet inside her chest, so I assume you’ve been given that by the trauma surgery team.’
‘I haven’t,’ Rafferty said. ‘It must be in there. You must have missed it.’
‘Detective, I’ve been doing this since before you could legally drink. I didn’t miss anything. There is no bullet in her. It would have shown on the x-ray.’
Rafferty frowned. If it wasn’t inside the victim, and the surgery team hadn’t taken it out, where had the bullet gone?
‘What else can you tell me?’
The DCI Morton Box Set Page 52
