The Secret Anatomy of Candles

by Quentin Smith

  Lazlo had made him a mug of coffee, which he still held between cupped hands, the coffee untouched and now cold. Milling around everywhere were the ghostly white shapes of the scene of crime officers, dressed in white protective suits collecting forensic evidence.

  “Fresh cuppa, guv?” Lazlo asked.

  Jasper looked up with empty eyes that seemed never to blink.

  “I’d prefer a large Chivas.”

  Lazlo took the coffee mug, nodding. Jasper watched as the SOCO gathered items together into sealed plastic bags. One dusted the front door for finger prints, another used a small vacuum cleaner on the hallway carpet.

  “Why are they bagging the rope like it’s evidence?”

  Lazlo paused, surprised that Jasper, a legal man, should ask a question with such a manifest answer.

  “They’ll look for trace, guv, fingerprints, DNA, that sort of thing.”

  “Why? She hanged herself.”

  “Procedure, you know that guv.”

  “I bought that rope, Lazlo, there’s a roll of it in the garage. My DNA will be on it. My DNA is all over this house.”

  Lazlo nodded. His boss was rambling, his eyes still staring blankly ahead, trying to deal with what they had been forced to see earlier.

  “I’ll get that scotch, guv.”

  An officer wearing a knee length tan overcoat sat down beside Jasper. He held a notepad in his hand and pulled a well chewed pen out of his mouth as he flipped the pad open.

  “My name is DCI Roscoe, Mr Candle. We met earlier and I wondered if I could quickly run through some details before we leave?”

  Roscoe had very short cropped hair, such that it was not possible to tell whether it was black or brown. His easily visible scalp glistened and revealed a lengthy scar that crossed his skull from above the right ear to his forehead.

  Jasper nodded, feeling the tics now in control of his arms, left shoulder and his face, inhabiting his body with brazen impunity at this time of immense personal weakness.

  Roscoe stared at Jasper’s involuntary spasms out of the corner of his eye, unsure what to make of them.

  “Would you like me to call your doctor for you, Mr Candle. Perhaps some sedatives might help you get a little rest?”

  “No,” Jasper said, as Lazlo returned and handed him a generous tumbler of Chivas with three ice cubes. Jasper took it without looking at Lazlo and gulped a mouthful. “This will help.”

  Roscoe looked away and shrugged.

  “You and your friend, Mr Lazlo, discovered your wife’s body at about 11.15 am, correct?”

  “He’s a work colleague,” Jasper said, savouring the glow on his tongue.

  Roscoe raised his eyebrows and looked up from his pad.

  “Was it around 11.15am, Mr Candle?”

  “I don’t remember the exact time, but more or less,” Jasper said.

  Roscoe scribbled in the pad.

  “And the house was locked with no indication of forced entry?”

  “We let ourselves in with my keys.”

  “Do you want this, guv?” a SOCO asked from behind them, holding aloft a laptop in a large, transparent plastic bag.

  Roscoe twisted his body around to address the officer.

  “Yes, take it to the station to be examined.”

  Jasper too had looked around.

  “That’s my laptop,” he said.

  “Does it contain confidential client information? You’re a solicitor aren’t you?”

  Jasper met Roscoe’s eyes and shook his head.

  “No, that’s all at work.”

  Roscoe smiled broadly, perhaps falsely.

  “Well then you have nothing to worry about. We’ll return it.”

  Jasper raised his eyebrows and sighed resignedly, disliking the discomfort of having his home invaded and probed.

  “When did you last see your wife?”

  Jasper became aware of his hands shaking as the ice cubes clinked in the tumbler, but he didn’t care.

  “I’m not sure, several days ago at least.”

  “Where have you been staying?”

  “In my office. I’ve had court cases and I work late.”

  “Alone?”

  “Mostly, I have a secretary who works fairly long hours too, and there’s Lazlo, of course.”

  Roscoe’s pen made scratching sounds on the pad, ending up being chewed in his mouth as he pondered.

  “When last did you speak to your wife?”

  Jasper’s head writhed to one side away from DCI Roscoe and he struggled to control and straighten it.

  “I’ve been trying to contact her for days. I thought she was in London with her sister. I should have…”

  Roscoe stared at Jasper’s facial contortions with a curious intensity.

  “Should have what?”

  Jasper lowered his head and shook it from side to side.

  “I should have tried harder.”

  “What did you last speak about?” Roscoe asked.

  Jasper looked up, lifting the tumbler to his twitching lips again.

  “I am trying to remember our last conversation, but… I can’t.”

  Roscoe looked across at Jasper as an experienced officer assessing the husband’s emotional responses, looking for inconsistencies and suggestions that he was faking it. Body language was so difficult to fake, ask any poker player, and in spousal deaths the partners are implicated in an unsettling majority of cases.

  “I hope you don’t mind me asking, Mr Candle, but did you and your wife get along? Were there problems?”

  Jasper shrugged and pursed his lips.

  “I didn’t think there were any major problems. I do work hard, I’m away a lot, but…”

  “How long have you been married?”

  Jasper tilted his head backwards as he calculated, his lips moving soundlessly.

  “Fifteen years, give or take.”

  “Had you had any arguments recently?”

  Jasper shook his head sadly. Perhaps they should have; any form of communication would have been preferable to nothing and could even have been a prelude to something beneficial which might have prevented this desperate act.

  “Do you have any idea what might have prompted this?” Roscoe asked, slightly more compassionately.

  Jasper continued to shake his head.

  “I will figure it out though, that’s what I do,” Jasper said eventually.

  The determination in Jasper’s voice made Roscoe straighten up.

  “Did you find a note or a letter from your wife?”

  This was the hurtful part for Jasper and he buried his face in the tumbler of Chivas. Why had Jennifer not even felt moved to explain to him why she had done this, what her darkest final thoughts had been? That not only hurt deeply but was rather humiliating too. He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry to have to ask you these questions at such a tragic time, Mr Candle. I’ll leave you now, sir. Oh, one last thing, can I have the contact details of your wife’s sister please?”

  Jasper pulled out his iPhone, found Charlotte’s details and showed it to Roscoe, whose pen scraped across the notepad. Jasper was distracted by the sound of the ambulance doors shutting loudly. He watched in silence as the vehicle, emblazoned with bright yellow phosphorescent diagonals, pulled away slowly off the crunching gravel drive beneath the autumnal chestnut trees.

  That was his marriage, over, not at all how he had expected it to end.

  Roscoe stood up and stuffed the notepad into the breast pocket of his trench coat like a used handkerchief.

  “Do you regard suicide as unlikely without a note?” Jasper asked without looking up, staring intently at the melting ice cubes in the tumbler.

  “Nothing is unlikely at this early stage, Mr Candle. We’re very open minded in these cases.”

  This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our own disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars.

  Will
iam Shakespeare

  NINETEEN

  Lazlo leaned over Stacey’s desk, his simian knuckles pressed flat against the polished glass surface of her neatly kept desk. Stacey’s fingers were rattling the keyboard and her concentrating face reflected the luminous glow of the computer monitor in front of her.

  Lazlo lifted a huge arm and plucked the white earphone out of her ear. Stacey was startled and lifted her arms defensively as black mascara-enriched eyes widened in her pale face.

  “Sorry Lazlo, didn’t hear you.”

  Lazlo shook his unshaven swede of a head.

  “How do you hear the telephone ring?” he said, gesturing at her earphones.

  Stacey lifted the phone out of her lap and flicked it from side to side in the air.

  “Vibration.”

  Stacey was looking particularly Gothic, with a deep shade of eye liner and midnight lipstick accentuating the emerald glow of her green eyes.

  “How is he?” Lazlo asked, inclining his head towards Jasper’s office.

  A pained expression creased Stacey’s young face as she spun round in her seat and placed her elbows on the desk.

  “He just works, Lazlo. Works, and drinks scotch.”

  Lazlo nodded and rubbed his stubbly double chin with a meaty hand.

  “Is he getting any sleep?”

  Stacey shrugged.

  “He hasn’t been home since… you know. He’s been living here.”

  “He hasn’t been home at all?” Lazlo said in astonishment.

  Stacey shook her head slowly from side to side. Lazlo remained silent, looking at Stacey’s flawless youthful complexion.

  “Can I go in?” he said eventually.

  Stacey stood up, straightened her jet black figure-hugging dress and walked over to the closed door of Jasper’s office. She lifted her arm and prepared to knock on the panelled door, but then sheepishly held her knuckles back and turned around to face Lazlo.

  “You go in,” she said with a child like shrug of her shoulders, “and take this with you please. It came today.”

  Stacey picked up a brown A4 envelope off her desk and gave it to Lazlo, who raised his eyebrows and then heaved his frame over to the door, entering after a polite rap on the wood.

  Seated at his desk, Jasper was poring over papers scattered from corner to corner. His tartan braces creased a starched white shirt that he wore without a tie, top button undone.

  “Ah, Lazlo,” he said looking up briefly. “What brings you here?”

  “Guv’nor,” Lazlo said touching his forehead and sinking into the creaking chair in front of Jasper’s desk.

  He dropped the A4 envelope on to the desk. Jasper lifted his eyes and looked at it. His left eyelid twitched its wretched dance, occasionally pulling the entire cheek into the foray.

  “Today’s post,” Lazlo pre-empted, folding his arms across his bulbous belly.

  “Care for an Engelbert Humperdink?” Jasper asked, walking over to the drinks cabinet in the corner.

  On it, several empty bottles of Chivas mingled with others still glowing with ample amber nectar. Jasper had clearly stocked up.

  “No thanks, guv, I’m working.”

  “So am I,” Jasper said.

  Lazlo winced slightly as he hadn’t meant his refusal of a drink to sound like an admonishment. Jasper sat down and drank from his tumbler, the only sound in the whisky and cheese smelling room being the clink of ice cubes.

  “How are you doing, guv?”

  Jasper stared at the envelope, his only visible reaction being the tics that ravaged his face and the occasional subtle twist of his head to one side. His left hand trembled too, but by keeping it below the desk it was easier to hide.

  “I’m not exactly… Patty Hearst, you know, but I’m keeping myself busy.”

  Jasper forced an insincere smile and then attacked the envelope, ripping it open with his index finger before studying the contents. His eyes scanned the pages in silence as Lazlo looked around the room. The bed in the corner was unmade, with two empty pizza boxes and a photograph of Jennifer, smiling within a silver-framed portrait, lying on the carpet beside it.

  “It’s from Dr Potter, how about that.”

  “Who’s he?” Lazlo rasped.

  “He’s Debra Kowalski’s GP, treated her boy. I went to see him recently about the case.”

  “Interesting?” Lazlo asked, nodding his head and raising his eyebrows.

  “It’s all about vaccinations and the law. I never expected him to be helpful. Funny that.”

  Lazlo continued to nod in silence, both because he was unsure what to say and also because he was concerned about Jasper.

  “You sure you’re OK, guv? Anything I can do for you?”

  Lazlo unclasped his hands and then clasped them again, looking awkward and uncomfortable. Jasper leaned back in his reclining desk chair and lifted the Chivas to his mouth.

  “I’ll be fine, Lazlo. It’s a bottomless pit now, but I’ve been through this before and I know what to do.”

  Lazlo frowned.

  “Been through this before?”

  Jasper sighed deeply and clasped his hands behind his head as he leaned back.

  “I’ve never told anyone this, not even the old trouble and strife. When I was a law student I had a serious relationship with a girl in my class, quite a mother of pearl she was. We were planning our engagement.”

  Lazlo listened intently but uncomfortably, unaccustomed to such revelations from his boss.

  “I was favoured to win the law medal, but I became distracted by this… I did say she was quite a mother of pearl, didn’t I?”

  Lazlo nodded. “You did, guv.”

  “Mmmh… well anyway, I took my eye off the ball and my head out of the books and, well… I didn’t get the medal.”

  Jasper paused, his eyes staring into the distance as he seemed lost in time. Only the facial distortions and occasional roll of his shoulder rooted him in the present.

  “What happened, guv?”

  Jasper was startled back from his reminiscences and regained eye contact with Lazlo.

  “I broke it off, furious with myself and with her for coming between me and success. I did much better after that, but three months later she jumped off Prebends Bridge in the dead of winter.”

  A silence hung over the two men, broken only by the clink of ice cubes as Jasper immersed his face in the tumbler of Chivas.

  “Of course I had to get to the bottom of why she had done this. Painstaking investigation led me to uncover that her father had been declared bankrupt in the weeks before her suicide. Her mother had a nervous breakdown, and…”

  More ice clinked in Jasper’s tumbler and Lazlo shifted uncomfortably in his chair. If he had ever heard a more convincing account of denial, then he could not recall it, Lazlo thought to himself.

  “Perhaps I will have that scotch, guv.”

  “It has been my life’s experience, Lazlo, that there is always a clear and unambiguous reason for everything. Look hard enough and you will find culpability lurking in the shadows of every event.” Jasper said, as he walked over to the drinks cabinet. First he re-filled his own glass and then poured one for Lazlo.

  “Ice or water?”

  “Straight please, guv.”

  Jasper sat down again and placed Lazlo’s Chivas on the desk, cradling his own in his hands. The silence extended as Jasper stared into his drink. He loved watching the wispy curls of melting ice water mingle with the uncorrupted, golden, malty scotch, like a Tchaikovsky ballet in a glass.

  “What terrifies me the most, Lazlo, is the possibility, however remote, that Jennifer may have ended her life because of me.”

  Lazlo sat frozen to his chair, quite unsure how to respond or even if he should respond. He chose to remain silent, afraid even to nod or move a facial muscle.

  “So, as painful as it is right now I am determined to find out who or what is to blame for Jennifer’s…” Jasper could not bring himself to say the word. “There will
be a culprit, someone to blame for this, and I will find them.” He continued, seemingly unaware of Lazlo’s catatonia.

  Lazlo swallowed a large mouthful of Chivas and then struggled to speak as, being more accustomed to Black Sheep ale, the scotch paralysed his vocal cords. He cleared his throat.

  “If I can be of any help, guv…”

  Jasper nodded his appreciation.

  “As soon as the coroner’s examination is completed I will have something to go on, of that I’m very confident. There’ll be a rational and clear reason for all of this… business… you’ll see.”

  TWENTY

  The most striking thing about any autopsy room is not its white sterile austerity, not the unfriendly expanse of bleached floor and wall tiles, not the hostile frigid cold of gleaming stainless steel surfaces, nor even the presence of splayed naked human cadavers. It is the powerful smell of antiseptic and air freshener which incompletely suppresses the odour of refrigerated human flesh, a vivid memory association that is not easily forgotten.

  Add to this the discordant clanging of metal instruments on stainless steel, the intrusive whine of power saws and it is the last place one would expect to find anyone eating.

  “Case number 1167/53 is a healthy looking forty two year old female, one hundred and fifty seven centimetres tall, sixty kilograms…”

  “Oh God, do that in English please,” said Dr Whitehouse through a mouthful of sandwich.

  Dressed in green scrubs and calf length white gum boots, Dr Sally Whitehouse was sitting at the white melamine work surface in the corner of the autopsy room eating a sandwich as she supervised the post mortem examination. Her crop of copper hair was tucked into an unflattering disposable green theatre cap.

  “Uh… five foot… er… three inches, and weighing one hundred and twenty… er… one hundred and thirty two pounds,” said the pathologist, surveying the body on the slab in front of him. His face was obscured by a surgical mask, but revealed short black hair and bushy eyebrows as he spoke into the microphone suspended from the ceiling above the dissecting table.