Orchestrated Death
Page 4
‘All normal,’ he said. As he worked, he had spoken his commentary aloud for the machine, and between comments he whistled. Sometimes he forgot to touch the foot pedal, so the whistle got recorded too. This was particularly trying for the audio-typist who transcribed his reports, for the machinery played the whistle back at a pitch which was quite painful through an earpiece. She had spoken to him again and again about it, and he always apologised profusely, but it made no difference. He had always whistled. He had begun it as a student thirty years ago, an assumption of insouciance which was designed to deceive himself more than other people, and to stop him thinking of the cadavers as human beings; and the habit was so ingrained by now he wasn’t even aware he was doing it.
‘Right, I think that will do,’ he said at last, switching off the machine and nodding to the assistant. ‘I’ll be off then. I’ve got two more to do at Charing Cross before I’ve finished, and I promised Martha I wouldn’t be late tonight. She’s got some ghastly people coming in for drinks.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Not much chance of making it before they leave, thank God, but I’ll have missed the traffic, anyway.’
‘Goodnight, then, sir,’ said the assistant. When the doctor had gone, he had his own tasks to perform. The body would have to be stuffed and sewn up, the skull packed and the scalp drawn back into place and stitched, and the viscera disposed of in the incinerator. When this was done, he returned the body to the trolley and, because he was a bit of a perfectionist in his own way, he fetched a damp cloth and cleaned it up. Dead bodies don’t bleed, but they leak a bit.
With a gentle hand he wiped the pink-tinged bone-dust from the face. Poor kid, he thought. It was tragic when they caught it as young as that. And pretty too. From her label he could see she was unidentified, which struck him as odd, because she didn’t look like the kind of girl no-one would miss. Still, sooner or later, someone would want her, so she ought to be made a bit decent. Kindly he smoothed the hair back to hide the stitches, and then wheeled her back to her waiting numbered drawer in the mortuary.
When you’re born, and when you die, a stranger washes you, he thought, as he had thought a hundred times before. It was a funny old life.
It was silly weather for January, warm and sunny as April never was, and all down Kingsway there were window boxes crammed with yellow daffodils. Pedestrians were either looking sheepish in spring clothes, or self-righteous and hot in boots and overcoats, and the bus queues were suddenly chatty.
Only the paperseller outside Holborn Station looked unchanged and unchangeable in his multifoliate sweaters, greasy cap, and overcoat tied in the middle with baling-string. His fingers were as black and shiny as anthracite from the newsprint, as was the end of his nose where he had wiped it with his hand. He scowled in disproportionate rage when Slider asked him where the Orchestra’s office was.
‘Why don’t you buy yourself an A ter Z? he enquired uncharitably. ‘I’m not Leslie Fuckin’ Welch, the fuckin’ Memory Man, am I? I’m here to sell papers. Right? Noos-papers,’ he added fiercely, as if Slider had queried the word. Slider meekly bought the noon edition of the Standard, asked again, and was given very precise directions.
‘Next time ask a bleedin’ policeman,’ the paper-seller suggested helpfully. Am I that obvious? Slider thought uneasily as he walked away.
The office turned out to be on the third floor of a building that had known better days, one of those late-Victorian monsters of red brick and white-stone coping, a cross between a ship and a gigantic birthday cake. Inside were marble-chip floors and dark-panelled walls, and a creaking, protesting lift caged like a sullen beast in the centre of the entrance hall, with the stairs winding round it.
There was a legend on the wall inside the door, and Slider looked up the Orchestra office’s location, considered the lift, and took the stairs, flinching when the lift clanged and lurched into action a moment later, and loomed past him, summoned from above. He didn’t like its being above him, and hurried upwards while coils of cable like entrails descended mysteriously inside the shaft.
On the third floor he found the half-frosted door, tapped on it, and entered an office empty of humanity, but otherwise breathtakingly untidy, crammed with desks, filing cabinets, hat stands, dying pot plants, and files and papers everywhere in tottering piles. On the windowsill amongst the plants was a tin tray on which reposed a teapot, a caddy, a jar of Gold Blend, an opened carton of milk, and a sticky teaspoon. The empty but unwashed mugs were disposed about the desks, evidence to the trained mind that coffee-break was over. A navy-blue cardigan hung inside-out over the back of a chair which stood askew from a desk on which the telephone rang monotonously and disregarded.
Soon there were brisk footsteps outside in the hallway, the door was flung open, and the cardigan’s owner hurried in, bringing with her the evocative scent of Palmolive soap, and reached for the telephone just as it stopped ringing.
She laughed. ‘Isn’t it maddening how they always do that? I’ve been waiting for a call from New York all day, and just when I dash out to the loo for a second … Now I suppose I’ll have to ring them. Can I do something for you?’
She was a small, slight, handsome woman in her forties; shiny black hair cut very short, large-nosed face carefully made-up, a string of very good pearls around her neck. Slider would have known even without looking that she was wearing a white blouse, a plain navy skirt with an inverse pleat at the front, navy stockings, and black patent-leather court shoes with a small gold bar round the heel. He felt he knew her well: he had met her a hundred times in the service flats round the back of Harrods or the Albert Hall; in Kensington High Street; in Chalfont and Datchet and Taplow. Her husband would be a publisher or an agent, something on the administrative side of The Arts, and their son would be at Cambridge.
Slider smiled and introduced himself and proffered his ID, which she declined gracefully with a wave of the hand, like someone refusing a cigarette.
‘How can I help you, Inspector?’
Slider was impressed. Few people nowadays, he found, could call a policeman ‘Inspector’ or ‘Officer’ without sounding either self-conscious or rude. He produced the mugshot.
‘I’m hoping you may be able to identify this young woman. We have reason to believe she may be a violinist.’
The woman took the picture and looked at it, and said at once, ‘Yes, she’s one of ours. Oh dear, how awful! She’s dead, isn’t she? How very dreadful. Poor child.’
That was quick of her, he thought. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Anne-Marie Austen. Second fiddle. She hasn’t long been with us. What was it, Inspector – a traffic accident?’
‘We don’t yet know how she died, Mrs –’
‘Bernstein. Like the composer,’ she said absently, looking at the photo again. ‘It’s so awful to think this was taken after she – I’m sorry. Silly of me. I suppose you must get used to this sort of thing.’
She looked up at Slider, demanding an answer to what ought to have been a rhetorical question, and he said, ‘Yes and no,’ and she looked suitably abashed. He took the photo back from her. ‘As I said, Mrs Bernstein, we don’t yet know the cause of death. Do you know if she had any chronic condition, heart or anything, that might have been a factor?’
‘None that I know of. She seemed healthy enough – not that I saw much of her. And she hadn’t been with us long – she came from the Birmingham about six months ago.’
‘I was wondering,’ Slider said musingly, running his fingers along the edge of the desk, ‘why she hadn’t been missed? If one of your members doesn’t turn up, don’t you make any enquiries?’
‘Well, yes, normally we would, but this is one of our quiet periods. We’re often slack just after Christmas, and in fact we haven’t any dates for the Orchestra until the middle of next week.’
‘I see. And you wouldn’t contact your members in the mean time?’
‘Not unless some work came in. There’d be no need.’
‘When di
d the Orchestra last work together?’
‘On Monday, a recording session for the BBC, at the Television Centre, Wood Lane. Two sessions, actually – two-thirty to five-thirty, and six-thirty to nine-thirty.’
‘Was Anne-Marie there?’
‘She was booked. As far as I know she was there. I don’t attend the sessions myself, you know, but at any rate, nobody has told me she was absent.’
‘I see.’ Another little piece had slipped into place in Slider’s mind – well, quite a big piece really. It explained why the girl was in that area in the first place. She finished work at nine-thirty at the TVC, and half an hour or so later she was killed less than half a mile away. Probably she had met her murderer as soon as she came out of the Centre. Someone might have seen her walk off with him, or get into his car. ‘Did she had any particular friends in the Orchestra?’
Mrs Bernstein shrugged charmingly. ‘Really, I’m not the person to answer that. I work mostly here in the office – I don’t often get to see the Orchestra working. The personnel manager, John Brown, would be able to tell you more about her. He’s with the players all the time. And she shared a desk with Joanna Marshall – she might be able to help you.’
‘Shared a desk?’
‘Oh – the string players sit in pairs, you know, with one music stand and one piece of music between them. We call each pair a desk – don’t ask me why.’ Slider gave her an obedient smile in response to hers. ‘Desk partners, particularly at the back of the section, are quite often close friends.’
‘I see. Well, perhaps you could put me in touch with Miss Marshall, and Mr Brown. And would you give me Miss Austen’s address, too?’
‘Of course, I’ll write them down for you.’ She went to a filing cabinet and brought out a thick file containing a computer print-out of names and addresses. Flicking through it she found the right place, and copied the information onto a piece of headed paper in a quick, neat hand.
‘The phone number of the office is here at the top of the sheet, in case you want to ask me anything else. And I’ll put my home number too. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you think I can help.’
‘Thank you. You’re very kind,’ Slider said, pocketing the paper. ‘By the way, do you know who was her next of kin?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t. The members are all self-employed people, you see, and it’s up to them to worry about that sort of thing.’ The quick dark eyes searched his face. ‘I suppose she was murdered?’
‘Why do you suppose that?’ Slider asked impassively.
‘Well, if it was all above board, if she’d tumbled downstairs or been run over or something, you’d have said, wouldn’t you?’
‘We don’t yet know how she met her death,’ he said again, and she gave him a quick-knit smile.
‘I suppose you have to be discreet. But really, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill a child of her age, unless –’ She looked suddenly distressed. ‘She wasn’t – it wasn’t –?’
‘No,’ said Slider.
‘Thank God!’ She seemed genuinely relieved. ‘Well, I should think Joanna Marshall would be your best bet. She’s a nice, friendly creature. If anyone knows anything about Anne-Marie’s private life, it’ll be her.’
Out in the street again, Slider tried the name out on his tongue. Anne-Marie Austen. Anne-Marie. Yes, it suited her. Now he knew it, he felt as though he had always known it.
John Brown’s telephone number produced an answering machine inviting him tersely to leave a message. He declined. Joanna Marshall’s number produced an answering machine giving the number of a diary service, which Slider wasn’t quick enough to catch the first time round. He had to dial again, pencil at the ready, and took down a Hertfordshire number. The Hertfordshire number rang a long time and then produced a breathless woman with a dog barking monotonously in the background.
‘I’m so sorry, I was down the garden and the girl seems to have disappeared. Shut up Kaiser! I’m sorry, who? Oh yes, Joanna Marshall, yes, just a minute, yes. Today? And what time? Oh, I see, you want to know where she is? Shut up Kaiser! Well I’m afraid I can’t tell you, because she’s not working this afternoon. Have you tried her home number? Oh I see. She’s not in trouble, is she? Well all I can tell you is that she’s on tonight at the Barbican. Yes, that’s right. Seven-thirty. Kaiser get down, you foul dog! I’m sorry? Yes. No. Of course. Not at all. Goodbye.’
Slider left the telephone box and walked back into Kings-way. The sunshine and warmth had persuaded the proprietor of an Italian café to put tables outside on the pavement, and two early lunchers were sitting there, remarkably unself-conscious, eating pizza and drinking bottled lager, blinking in the sunshine like cats. A mad impulse came over Slider. Well, why not? His morning cornflakes were a distant memory now, and a man must eat. He hadn’t been in an Italian restaurant in years. He lingered, looking longingly at the tables on the pavement, and then went regretfully inside. He’d feel a fool. He hadn’t their sureness of youth and beauty and each other.
He plunged into the dark interior, into the smell of hot oil and garlic, and felt suddenly ravenous and cheerful. He ordered spaghetti with pesto and escalope alla rustica, and half a carafe of red, and it came and was excellent. The frank, pungent tastes worked strangely on his palate, accustomed as it was to sandwich lunches and grilled chops and boiled vegetables at night: he began to feel almost drunk, and it was nothing to do with the wine. Anne-Marie, he thought. Anne-Marie. His mind turned and fondled the name. Was she French? Did she like Italian food? He imagined her sitting opposite him now: garlic bread and gutsy wine, talk and laughter, everything new and easy. She would tell him about music, and he would regale her with the stories of his trade which would all be new to her, and she would marvel and be amused and admire. Everything was interesting and wonderful when you were twenty-five. Until someone murdered you, of course.
‘You only just caught me. I was just going out for something to eat,’ said Atherton.
‘I’ve had mine. And I’ve found out who the girl is.’
‘I deduced both those facts – you smell of garlic and you’re looking smug.’
‘I also know why she was where she was: she was working at the TVC that evening.’
‘Lunch can wait. Tell me all,’ Atherton said. He sat down on the edge of a desk, raising a cloud of dust into the streams of sunlight that were fighting their way through the grime on the windows of the CID room, which no-one had ever washed in the history of Time. Everyone else was out, the telephones dozed, and the room had that unnatural midday hush.
Slider told him what he had learned that morning. ‘It’s possible that whoever killed her knew that the Orchestra wouldn’t be working again for ten days, and that therefore she wouldn’t be missed. Stripping the body, too – they’d have expected it to delay us for weeks. After all, if it hadn’t been for Nicholls identifying that mark on her neck –’
‘Unlike Nicholls, I didn’t have the benefit of seeing it. And unlike you, by the way.’
‘All right, sonny – how would you like to go back to tracing stolen videos?’
It was a familiar joking exchange of sass and threat, but suddenly there was a harsher note in it that surprised both of them, and they eyed each other with some embarrassment. Atherton opened his mouth to say something placatory, but Slider forestalled him. ‘You’d better go and get your lunch, hadn’t you? Who’s minding the shop, anyway?’
‘Fletcher. He’s in the bog.’
Slider shrugged and went away to his own room, angry with himself, and a little puzzled. Everyone needed help in this job – why was he suddenly so defensive?
Freddie Cameron phoned.
‘I’ve got the forensic reports from Lambeth, Bill. I’ve just sent off a full copy of the post-mortem report to you, but I thought you’d like to know straight away, as it’s your case.’
‘Yes, thanks, Freddie. What was it?’
‘As I thought – an overdose of barbiturate.’
‘Self-ad
ministered?’
‘I think it very unlikely. The puncture was in the back of the right hand, damned awkward place to do it to yourself. The veins slide about if you don’t pull the skin taut. Anyway, I found the puncture as soon as I got her into a good light, and it was the only one, so there’s no doubt about that. But there was some very slight subcutaneous bruising of the left upper arm and right wrist. I’d say she was handled by an expert – someone who knew how to subdue with the minimum force, and without damaging the goods. Professional.’
‘Left upper arm and right wrist?’
‘Yes. It seems to me that if she was sitting down, for instance, someone could pass their arm right round her body from behind and grip the wrist to hold it still while administering the injection with the other hand.’
‘Or there might have been two of them. She’d probably struggle. No other marks? No ligatures?’
‘Nothing. But they wouldn’t have to hold her for long. She’d have been unconscious within seconds, and dead within minutes.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘Pentathol.’
‘Pentathol?’
‘Short-acting anaesthetic. It’s what they give you in the anteroom of an operating theatre to put you under, before they give you the gas.’