Death Watch

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘A ligature mark?’ Atherton said. ‘Possibly, I suppose. Couldn’t be the mark of his collar, could it, Guv?’

  ‘I don’t think so. See the texture of it, with these diagonal ridges? Rope, more likely. We may find some of it amongst the debris they moved off him. Pity the ceiling’s come down. There must have been some sort of pipe up there, or an air duct or something.’

  ‘You think he hanged himself?’ Atherton frowned.

  ‘I don’t think he was watching telly.’

  ‘Suicide, then? But what about the fire – an accident? The condemned man enjoyed – no, that doesn’t work, does it? I can’t see anyone putting a rope round his neck with a fag still on. Perhaps he’d put it down half smoked, and then kicked the ashtray over in his convulsions. But would anyone hang themselves before finishing their cigarette?’ He had never been a smoker, and therefore couldn’t judge the niceties of the ritual.

  The fire worries me,’ Slider admitted. ‘But look, d’you see here?’

  He took a biro out of his pocket and pointed at the side of the head. Atherton stooped. There was a shred of something adhering to the charred and brittle hair. Several shreds of something.

  ‘It looks like melted plastic’

  ‘Yes. A melted plastic bag, wouldn’t you say?’

  Atherton straightened. ‘Belt and braces, you mean. Well, they do, don’t they, suicides, like to make sure?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Slider got up carefully and straightened himself, and stood looking down at the body with an unseeing frown. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said at last.

  ‘I don’t think you’re meant to,’ Atherton said gently.

  ‘Is the photo team on the way?’

  ‘Yes, and Doc Cameron, and forensic. I don’t expect they’ll be here for at least an hour, though, given the traffic’

  Slider smiled suddenly.

  ‘Then we might as well go and have some breakfast. I could do serious structural damage to a sausage sandwich.’

  Atherton turned his eyes resolutely from the body. ‘Fine by me. D’you want to talk to Hunt first?’

  That at least made Slider shudder.

  ‘Not on an empty stomach,’ he said.

  Hunt, despite having been up all night and at the scene since six forty-five, still looked perfectly neat and tidy, as if his clothes had been painted on; and since he had lately grown a beard, he didn’t even appear unshaven. He had always been a great one for going by the book, a spit-and-polish man, and as nearly stupid as it was possible to be and still get into the Department; but since passing his exam, he had added keenness to his other vices.

  As Atherton put it in technical language to WDC Swilley, ‘He was always a paper-tearing prat, but now he’s a total pain in the arse.’

  ‘Bound to get on, then,’ said Swilley, nodding wisely. ‘Next thing you know, he’ll be rolling up the leg of his John Collier and doing funny handshakes.’

  Hunt was in the motel manager’s office, which they had requisitioned, when Slider and Atherton got back from breakfast.

  ‘I interviewed the night clerk, sir,’ he told Slider smartly. ‘Deceased arrived last night at eleven fifty-five, and signed the register in the name of John Smith. I think that was probably a false name, though.’

  With anyone else, it would have been either a joke, or cheek. Slider had the depressing certainty that Hunt meant it. ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He paid cash, and the address he gave was a company one – Taylor Wood row at Hanger Lane – but I’ve called their personnel department, and they don’t have a John Smith working there.’

  ‘What about his car?’

  ‘I thought of that,’ Hunt said proudly. ‘Apparently he didn’t put down a car registration number, and the clerk didn’t ask. There’s no car outside the cabin, but he could have parked out on the street somewhere. There are plenty of parked cars around. Or of course he might have arrived on foot, or from the tube station, or by taxi. Just because it’s called a motor lodge, doesn’t mean you’ve got to come in a car.’

  ‘Really? I would never have thought of that,’ said Slider. Hunt didn’t blush. ‘So we have no idea who he is?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Nobody recognised him? What about the people staying in seven and nine?’

  ‘The clerk says he’d never seen him before. The other guests were woken by the hotel staff telling them to get out because of the fire. They both say they didn’t see deceased at any point, but I haven’t taken detailed statements from them yet.’

  ‘All right, you can get someone started on that now. Who else is here?’

  ‘PC D’Arblay – he was first on the scene. It’s his beat. And Jablowski’s just arrived, and Mackay’s on his way.’

  ‘All right, you and Jablowski can make a start, and Mackay can help when he gets here. Get on with it, then.’

  It was the mark of the man that he almost saluted. ‘Yes sir,’ he said, departing. D’Arblay passed him in the doorway.

  ‘Photographer’s here, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Right, I’m coming,’ said Slider. He turned to Atherton. ‘When you’ve a minute, you might ask the night clerk whether our man asked for number one, or was given it.’

  ‘Righto, Guv.’ It was a small point, but it might be telling. A man bent on self-destruction might well seek the privacy of the furthest cabin from the main building.

  ‘I hope we find his wallet in there somewhere,’ Slider said as he turned away. ‘Otherwise we may end up having to do a PNC on every parked car in the Bush.’

  Joanna came into his office at a quarter to two.

  ‘Just got back?’ Slider asked astutely, seeing she was carrying her violin case. His powers of detection were razor sharp today. ‘How was your rehearsal?’

  ‘Awful. More than ever I ask myself if it can be a coincidence that conductors and blind men both use white sticks.’ She leaned across the desk and kissed him. ‘How has your day been? I gather you’ve been having some excitement.’

  ‘How do you gather that?’

  ‘I’ve just been talking to Flatulent Fergus downstairs. You lucky mugs! A fire and a corpus already, and it’s still only lunchtime!’

  ‘You’ve missed out the best bit,’ said Slider bitterly. ‘We had a flying visiting from Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Head.’

  ‘Yes, O’Flaherty told me. Known to his friends as God. Deus ex machina was what Fergus said.’

  ‘I suppose he came in a car.’

  ‘And what did he want?’

  ‘What do brass always want? To make trouble, of course. And with Dickson not here, that dropped him straight onto my neck.’

  ‘Was it a routine roust, or something to do with the fire?’

  ‘Oh, the fire. He wanted to make sure I understood he’d like it to be a suicide.’

  Joanna wrinkled her brow. ‘Why would he want that?’

  ‘Because suicide isn’t a crime, and we’re getting near the end of the budget period, and murder enquiries are very expensive.’

  She stared. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Top brass have to worry about things like that. It’s one of the reasons I never wanted higher promotion.’

  ‘But – he’s not asking you to fabricate the evidence?’

  ‘No, of course not. He doesn’t really know what he’s asking. He’s like a kid saying “I wish I had a train set,” on the off-chance that there really is a Father Christmas. Perhaps if he says he’d like it to be suicide, it might just turn out to be that way.’

  ‘You don’t like him, do you?’ she said shrewdly.

  ‘Oh—’ He began automatically to shrug it off, and then paused, realising that it didn’t matter what he said to Joanna about a senior officer. Head was tall, well-built, handsome in a thick sort of way, with curly hair and blue eyes and the sort of firm-featured looks that simply cry out for the stern glamour of uniform. He was younger than Slider, by far less experienced, several ranks above him, and thought he knew best. But it wa
sn’t even any or all of that. There was just something about the way he didn’t listen, the way he made it known that he knew he didn’t have to listen, that got up Slider’s nose.

  ‘I don’t like being loomed over,’ was all he said, however.

  Joanna looked at the puckered brow under the soft, untidy hair, and said, ‘You don’t think it is suicide?’

  The brow cleared and he smiled at her ruefully. ‘I don’t think anything yet.’

  ‘Open mind and closed mouth?’

  ‘Until Freddie does the post, and I get the forensic report, I’ve got nothing to think with.’

  She knew him better than that. ‘Just a vague feeling of unease, then?’

  ‘I don’t like fires,’ he admitted. ‘We haven’t even ID’d the poor bastard yet.’

  ‘How will you go about that?’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got various lines to try. We’ve started the house-to-house, and Atherton’s downstairs with the night porter from the motel, putting together a photofit. We’ll match that up against Missing Persons for a start, and if that doesn’t yield anything we can circulate it in various ways. As a last resort we can go on the telly. But ten to one someone’ll report him missing, if they haven’t already. Most people have a slot they fit into, and it’s noticed when they go astray. And we can check on all the parked cars in the immediate vicinity, to see if there’s one unaccounted for.’

  ‘It looks as though you’ll be pretty busy, then?’ she asked carefully. Slider felt the habitual stillness of caution creep into his bones.

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to come to your concert tonight,’ he said, watching her mouth. With a woman it was from the line of the lips that you could best judge how close you were to critical mass. ‘There’ll be too much to do.’

  ‘What time d’you think you’ll finish?’

  He shrugged. ‘It could be any time. Two, three in the morning. Maybe not at all.’ She was taking it very well. He offered her the consolation prize. ‘I’ve already told Irene I won’t be back at all tonight, so if I do find I can knock off for an hour or two, can I come and wake you up?’

  When she smiled, her face lit up like Harrods on Christmas Eve. She was his own personal Santa’s Grotto – and full of goodies with his name on them. ‘Yes please,’ she said.

  The night clerk from the motel looked haggard. He was Roger Pascoe, an Australian, twenty-three years old, travelling round the world by working in hotels, bars and restaurants – anywhere they were desperate for staff. He’d just had a hectic season as a barman in Miami: Canadians, down for the winter, drank like sinks when released from their own draconian liquor-laws. He’d come to London for a rest before going to Europe for the summer.

  He’d deliberately chosen a quiet job in an out-of-the-way spot, and expected to be reading a lot of novels through the nights, sleeping through the days, and saving a great deal of money. What he hadn’t expected was strife of this order. A registration clerk who allowed a suicidal guest in to torch himself and destroy the entire building would be about as popular with future potential employers as a fart in a phone box.

  ‘No, he asked for number one,’ he said to Atherton. ‘At least, he said could he have the end cabin, the furthest away one.’

  ‘You didn’t find that surprising?’

  Pascoe rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘Why should I? I didn’t know he was going to top himself. He could have any one he wanted. He could have ’em all, for all I cared, as long as he paid.’

  ‘Was that before or after he signed in as John Smith?’

  ‘Christ, I don’t know! After, I think. What does it matter? You think I should have asked him for his ID, asked him what he was up to? My bosses wouldn’t agree with you. He paid cash up front, he could do what he liked in there.’

  ‘Your bosses wouldn’t want their premises to be used for illegal purposes,’ Atherton suggested mildly.

  ‘Going with a prozzie isn’t illegal.’

  ‘Is that what he was doing?’ Atherton said, interested.

  Pascoe looked wild. ‘Oh look mate, I been up all night. Don’t lay traps for me. A lot of blokes bring tarts back there, and mostly they don’t want anyone to know. Married blokes, you know? It’s not my business. I’m not the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  ‘But you said this man was alone?’

  ‘He came in alone. I don’t know who he might have had waiting for him outside, do I?’

  ‘True.’ Atherton smiled a little. ‘Take it easy, guy. I just want to know what you know. Did he seem as though he might have a girl waiting for him outside? Did he seem excited, nervous – what?’

  Pascoe looked away, remembering. ‘He’d been drinking. He wasn’t drunk, but I could smell it on him. He was – I don’t know how you’d put it. Happy? A bit lit up? Not sad or depressed, anyway. Yeah, he could have had a girl waiting for him. Or a bloke.’ He gave Atherton a serious look. ‘We get a lot of the other sort in, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Did he seem that way to you?’

  Pascoe shrugged. ‘You can’t tell. I wouldn’t have said so, but, Christ, a bender can seem like Joe Normal nowadays. He didn’t mince in and call me duckie, for what it’s worth. He was just a middle-aged bloke in a suit. If I’d known he was gonna fry himself I’d have taken more notice.’

  ‘All right. And you don’t know if he had a car? You didn’t hear a car pull up? He didn’t mention a motor at all?’

  Pascoe shook his head numbly. ‘You can’t see outside from my desk. I already told your mate all this, the one with the beard. Why can’t you get it from him?’

  ‘Because I want you to tell me. You might just remember something else, something you didn’t tell him.’

  ‘What, like the bloke had a wooden leg, or one eye missing?’ Pascoe sneered, and then he stopped, his jaw sagging ludicrously. ‘Blimey, you’re right! I’ve just remembered something – he had a scar on the back of his hand.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘His right hand. When he was signing the register. An old scar – a strip of shiny skin, about an inch wide, from his wrist right up to his knuckles.’ He looked at Atherton, pleased, expecting praise. ‘I never told your mate that. It’s only just come to me.’

  ‘You say it looked old? It wasn’t puffy, or puckered, or red?’

  ‘No. Smooth, pale pink and shiny. Years old. You’d hardly notice it, if you weren’t looking. It wasn’t ugly.’

  ‘It sounds as though it could have been a skin graft.’

  ‘Yeah. Like that. Maybe he’d had a bad burn—’ Pascoe’s smile came slowly to pieces. ‘Christ, the poor bastard. Did you see that cabin? What a way to go.’

  ‘He would probably have been overwhelmed by the smoke in the first few minutes,’ Atherton offered him, for comfort. ‘Do you think you could help us put together a photofit of him? Do you remember what he looked like?’

  ‘Remember?’ Pascoe stared, putting two and two together, and going slightly green. ‘Yeah, I could give it a shot. He was a good-looking bloke. He was—’

  He closed his mouth tightly.

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ Atherton advised.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dutch Courage, French Leave

  FORENSIC PATHOLOGISTS WERE AS DIFFERENT from each other as God makes all men, but they generally had two things in common: they smelled of peppermints, and they didn’t wear ties.

  Freddie Cameron wore a bow-tie. Today’s was navy-blue silk with a tiny crimson spot, to match the remote-crimson stripe in his dark blue suit. His wife Martha chose his clothes, and he sometimes felt her taste was too conservative. Spending most of his life in morgues, he could have fancied something a touch more cheerful from time to time. He’d once had a yellow waistcoat, when he was much younger. Now that’d be the thing to brighten up the place! But he’d thrown it away when Martha said it made him look like a bookie. Not that he had anything against bookies, of course. Some of his best friends were bookies. But at the time he’d been trying to make his way in h
is profession, and what he really wanted to look like was a top-class pathologist.

  His old friend Bill Slider would never look like anything but a policeman, he thought. He did at least seem a lot more cheerful these days. There’d been a time – during that Austen case – when Cameron had been worried old Bill was going to have a breakdown. He’d got extremely twitchy, and did some very strange things, but he seemed to be back to his old self now, thank God.

  ‘Well old chum, how are you?’ Cameron greeted him breezily. ‘You’re looking fit. Are you getting enough?’

  ‘I’m getting so much I’m thinking of taking on a lad,’ Slider said inscrutably.

  Cameron made the obvious connection. He had never liked Irene, and felt that Joanna was much more the thing, but since Bill was apparently still living with his Madam, it made things a little awkward. In the normal course of events he and Martha would invite Bill and Irene over from time to time, but Cameron didn’t feel able either to do that, or to tell Martha about the new circumstances. Martha was a bit old-fashioned about that sort of thing. Well, women were, weren’t they? They felt threatened by it. So he’d had to make excuses both ways.

  ‘How is your young woman?’ he said politely.

  Slider had a fair idea of what was going through Cameron’s mind, and said blandly, ‘You must meet her, Freddie. Perhaps the four of us could go out for a meal sometime.’

  Cameron’s eyes bulged a little. ‘Ha! Yes, why not, why not? Good idea! Well, perhaps we should get on.’

  He led the way, a dapper figure looking to Slider’s eyes strangely out of place in this modern chrome and steel setting. They had finally closed down the old morgue of glazed bricks, porcelain sinks and enamelled herringbone tables with which Slider always associated Cameron, and the posts were all done in the hospital’s path department now.

  Inside was the usual merry throng of onlookers, known in the Department as the Football Crowd – Lab liaison officer, Coroner’s officer, photographers, Hunt as exhibits officer to oversee the sealing and labelling, and D’Arblay, as first officer on the scene, to identify the body as the one from the motel. The morgue attendants hovered in the background like mothers at a ballet exam, and there were a couple of white-coated hospital researchers and some medical students along for the ride.