The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  Oscar went quickly to Roth’s desk and let his eyes rove over the books and papers there. An address book was beside the telephone, open to the Cs. Oscar looked at it a moment, then strode back to the door he entered through and stepped into the hall.

  “Angelique?” he called.

  A moment later, the woman appeared from a side office.

  Oscar jammed a thumb over his shoulder. “Mr. Roth just called for you from the yard. He’s having some trouble with Mrs. Roth.”

  She licked a lower lip, smiled, and hurried up to Roth’s office. “Thank you.”

  Oscar watched her exit through the French door, then he went deeper into the Roths’ house.

  The bedrooms were upstairs. It took only a minute to find the one furnished for a teenage girl. Oscar stepped inside, closed the door quietly, and looked around. It was Spartan: a single bed, neatly made; no posters, no ornaments; a school desk with just a lamp and a pencil holder; a dressing table in pink, the only obvious concession to gender. On this was a framed photograph of the same girl Oscar had seen in the Missing Persons file pointing to her GHOSTS FUCKING RULE T-shirt—only in this photograph she was younger: a ten-year-old smiling under a bob haircut. Beside her was a pretty dark-haired woman—Carole Roth. A man’s hand rested on Carole’s arm, but he had been cropped from the photo.

  Oscar opened the dresser’s top drawer. Inside, laid out with mathematical precision, was a small makeup kit, a mirror, a manicure set, and a hairbrush. He knelt to inspect the brush. Not a single hair was caught in the bristles. He lifted it by the bristles and held the handle to the light. Not a smudge of a fingerprint. He placed the brush back in the drawer and stood.

  This looked like the bedroom of a child already declared dead.

  The door opened behind him. “Detective?”

  He turned. Angelique was in the doorway. She wasn’t smiling politely now.

  “This isn’t the toilet,” Oscar said.

  “No.” Her eyes were hard. “Did you want some directions?”

  “It’ll keep. The Roths are ready?”

  “They’re downstairs.”

  “Who was the woman with them?”

  Angelique simply waited.

  “Dead?”

  Carole Roth frowned, as if trying to place a faint snatch of familiar music. Oscar could see that her face, which had been so pretty in the photograph with Penny, now looked as narrow and pale as a horse’s skull. Her pupils were dilated despite the bright morning glare in the office.

  “We don’t know that,” Oscar said. “But we’d like your help to determine whether the body we have is hers.”

  Paul Roth was watching Oscar carefully now. Angelique had whispered in his ear when they returned to the office, and his stare had become steely.

  “Help, how?” Roth asked.

  “DNA swab.”

  Carole Roth began giggling, and looked over at Paul. Her eyes were mirthless, almost mad. “She’s dead.”

  “Honey,” Roth began.

  Carole Roth stood. “I’m going to lie down now.” She banged her shins heavily into the coffee table and let out a sudden, piercing shriek. Angelique ran forward and took her arm. Carole Roth shook the woman away with a fury that was sudden and surprising. “I can make my own way,” she snapped. Oscar saw a large, pearl-size drop of blood running down her shin. Passing Oscar, Carole lifted a finger toward him. “Bad news, Detective,” she said with a small, grotesque smile, and stumbled away.

  Oscar was alone with Roth.

  “Okay,” Roth said. “Tell me how this proceeds.”

  “Normally, we’d ask a relative to view and identify the remains. But the body is in bad shape.”

  “Her face,” Roth said. “Because of the … industrial machinery?”

  “Exactly. So we’d like to carry out a DNA test.”

  “A swab, you say.”

  “Or a blood test. Swab’s usually fine.”

  Roth’s gaze ticktocked between Oscar’s eyes.

  “It would be Carole’s DNA you want. Penny is her daughter.”

  “Previous marriage?”

  “Carole’s first husband is deceased.”

  “You and she? No kids together?”

  “After Carole’s first experience, we agreed that children were not advisable.”

  Oscar decided he didn’t like the man.

  “I appreciate that your wife is under the weather right now, Mr. Roth. But we need to get that sample as soon as possible.”

  “I understand the urgency, and we don’t want to hold up your investigation.” Roth returned to the other side of his desk, tightened his dressing gown, and sat. “You can have the sample the moment you furnish a coronial request.”

  Oscar wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Pardon?”

  Roth’s face was an illegible blank. “You can swab my wife’s mouth once you give me the appropriate request in writing, signed by a state coroner.”

  Oscar frowned.

  “Don’t you want to know if we have Penny? If she’s dead or alive?”

  “No, and no.” Roth shrugged. “Don’t looked so shocked, Detective. I’m sure you’ve heard from Elverly how much of a disagreeable little shit Penny is. Or was. She wanted to be anywhere she wasn’t. She played up her disability. She wanted to be free of it, but she refused to do her exercises. When she visited here, she treated it like a concentration camp and us like the Gestapo, like it was her duty to escape. I don’t know what sort of friends she had, but if they were anything like her I’m not surprised if she got herself into trouble.”

  Oscar watched the barrister.

  “Which is why you shipped her off to Elverly.”

  “Of course. She’s caused nothing but heartache to her mother and me.”

  Oscar nodded and stood.

  “We’ll get the request.”

  He headed to the door but hesitated. “Oh. Can I ask where you were Saturday night?”

  Roth smiled coolly. “Here on the Heights, Detective Mariani. Like I say, I’ve been unwell. The screaming shits, if you need the detail. Any more questions?”

  “Just one. Which is your car?”

  Roth took a microsecond to adjust to the fresh current.

  “The Seven series.”

  “Nice,” Oscar said. “Thank you for your time.”

  Oscar walked down the neatly trimmed path. The wind tugged at his hair. He really did need to get it cut.

  At the side of the house, the three expensive sedans lay stretched under the portico like sleek guard dogs. As Oscar approached them, he noticed a white-haired man standing at the hood of the Bentley, his hands behind his back, watching him patiently. Oscar was struck by how unnaturally slender the man was: he was almost a parody of a thin man. Then he noticed the driver’s hair was not white but a blond of almost albino fairness; his face was unlined and ageless. During his second year of study for his philosophy degree, Oscar went to Europe to tread the roads walked by Frege, Voltaire, and Hobbes. But once there he was seduced from scholarship by Southern France’s sunny beaches, tanned women, and elegant buildings. It was at a museum in Saint-Paul de Vence that Oscar saw a work by Giacometti: L’Homme qui marche, “The Walking Man.” The sculpture was of a skeletally thin figure walking as purposefully as the indentured dead; disproportionately long and delicate, yet oddly strong and utterly composed. This driver reminded Oscar of it. Seeing that he had Oscar’s attention, the thin man nodded, turned, and walked back through the carriageway.

  Oscar followed into the striped shadows cast by the colonnade but stopped at the cars, took out his notepad, and jotted down the license plates of all three vehicles. The driver waited patiently on the other side of the portico. When Oscar pocketed his notepad, the man turned and passed through a patinated stone arch and out of sight. Oscar strolled after him.

  This was a different garden again. A stand of Chinese tallow trees was a red slash dividing a rink of lawn from a smaller yard with an ornamental pond. There was no sign of the driver. Os
car continued around the house, and his eye caught a billow of black behind a lush green hedge. He walked toward it, and found the woman who’d been with Carole Roth on the lawn. Fine white fingers held her tailored gray jacket close about her neck against the wind, and her hair flew behind her like a black flag. Despite the fact that she was in shade, she was staring at the bronze markings on an old sundial.

  “Ms. Chaume?” he said.

  The woman looked up at him, and Oscar felt momentarily illuminated. Her eyes were a bleached aquamarine so pale that, for a moment, he thought she was blind—until those eyes moved over his with such measured precision that there was no mistaking that she saw everything very clearly. She wore no jewelry, yet her appearance suggested great wealth. The woman’s skin was eggshell white, and her gray outfit made her look otherworldly, anachronistic, as if she had stepped out of a black-and-white glamour magazine from a past, politer time. The stark palette brought attention to red lips, sharply but generously carved. As he approached, she extended a hand. Closer, he could see that she wasn’t petite; she was almost as tall as he was, but in proportions reserved for willowy Art Nouveau bronzes. He tried to guess her age, but her skin was flawless.

  “Anne,” she said. Her voice had a musical timbre; it floated lightly, birdlike. “How did you know?”

  They shook hands. Her skin was dry and warm.

  “Mr. Roth’s address book was open on his desk, at C,” Oscar said. “Yours was the only woman’s name I could see on the page. It was a guess.”

  Her face showed no reaction.

  “Are you finished inside?”

  “Mr. Roth seems to think so.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Good.”

  “You don’t like Paul Roth?”

  “Do you?”

  “He’s not my barrister.”

  She inclined her head. “Another guess?”

  He nodded.

  She smiled slowly, an expression that Oscar found more attractive than he would have liked. He took a half step back to get out of the way of it.

  “Where’s your driver?”

  “Karl knows when to make himself scarce.”

  “Not much to make scarce.”

  She laughed; it was a pretty sound. “Karl is only slight of weight. He is invaluable. Much more than a driver.”

  The smile lingered on her face, and he found himself smiling back.

  “He led me here, so I gather you wanted to see me, Ms. Chaume?”

  She nodded. “I want to know if you’re here because of Penny.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Carole is my friend, Detective—”

  “Mariani.”

  “You don’t look Italian.”

  “Surprisingly few people say that.”

  “Carole is my friend,” she repeated. “And Penny is her daughter and she’s been worried sick about her. Police like you—” Her eyes roved up and down Oscar, and he felt their passage like a physical touch. “Homicide police, I’m guessing, don’t tend to arrive with good news. I want to know how to approach Carole when I go back inside.”

  “With a stomach pump,” Oscar said. “What’s she on?”

  Chaume pursed her lips. “As a friend, I’d want to keep that private. But since you’re a sworn officer, she calls them her ‘Paul pills.’ Do you think that means they’re from Paul, or to cope with him?”

  “Mrs. Roth doesn’t look like she’s coping at all.”

  Chaume shrugged. “As I say, she has been worried about Penny. And she didn’t think Paul was sharing her concerns.”

  “Was she right?”

  She fixed Oscar with a look that was both grave and strangely playful. “What do you think of Paul Roth, Detective Mariani?”

  Oscar knew he shouldn’t engage in banter with the woman, but he found himself, stupidly, unable to resist. “Paul Roth is a person of interest.”

  “That’s your professional take. What’s your personal opinion?”

  “The exact opposite.”

  She smiled wider, showing white teeth and a delicate tongue. “There you go. But everyone is useful for something.”

  He watched her eyes sweep over his face. Her stare was candid, and Oscar felt the pull in his belly creep lower and warmer. To distract himself, he took out his notepad. Chaume looked at it curiously.

  “Am I a person of interest, too, Detective? That’s delightful. No one has found me interesting for a long time. You want to know where I was on the night in question?”

  “Do I?”

  “I was home.”

  “Alone?”

  “Now we’re getting personal,” she tutted. “A shame.”

  She glanced over Oscar’s shoulder. He followed her gaze. Karl was waiting near the portico. Beside him stood the dead boy. Oscar would have thought them both ghosts, had the thin man not cast a long, lean shadow. Storm clouds were racing across the sky, and a front of cold air was shoving at the trees and making them hiss like water on a skittle. Chaume’s pale eyes refocused on Oscar. She regarded him for a long moment, as if trying to make a decision.

  “Carole loved her daughter, Detective. And while Paul is a selfish bombast, I don’t think he has murder in him. So do me one favor? Please take care in your investigation, won’t you?”

  She gave him one more smile, then walked away, catlike, neither hurried nor slow. Her hair blew about her head like black silk; her legs were long.

  A moment later, Oscar heard the motor of the large Bentley start, and the crunch of gravel on the drive. His phone rang. It was Neve.

  “Yes?”

  “Where are you?”

  With the image of Anne Chaume sidling away in his mind, Oscar fought the odd, guilty impulse to lie. “The Heights. Why?”

  “Haig called. They found Lucas Purden.”

  The air between the buttresses beneath the bridge smelled of salty mud and wet concrete. The sky had grown as dark as evening; hard rain was only minutes away. A wide pedestrian path ran parallel with the river under the end of the bridge, and a narrow set of graffiti-slashed stairs led up to the road that the bridge emptied onto. A shifting knot of two dozen onlookers waited behind barrier tape. Uniformed police in blue knit sweaters or blue leather jackets seemed lashed to ice-white flashlight beams that scoured the path like erratic dogs. On the far side of the huddle, Detective Kace took notes while an Asian man in a Lions jersey and fishing pants nodded enthusiastically. Below the path, an embankment of large flinty rocks was a steep and slimy five-yard grade down to the dark water. Oily brown waves slapped at the rocks and gently twisted Lucas Purden’s pale ankles.

  Oscar found Neve waiting well away from the crowd and the uniformed police.

  “The Heights?” she said. “Fancy.”

  He led her toward the barrier tape. “What are you doing in today? You should be home in bed. The summary report can wait.”

  “It’s waited too long already.”

  They showed their IDs and pushed through. Lingering above the tang of river salt rode the leathery scent of good tobacco smoke.

  Haig leaned against one of the wide concrete columns under the bridge, his blue uniform almost black in the gloom. The end of his cigarillo glowed, and his eyes twinkled red under the glossy brim of his cap.

  “Mariani.” Haig sounded pleased. “Go ahead, take a look. The boy’s not going anywhere.”

  Two Scenes of Crime officers in white plastic overalls had rappelling ropes tied around their waists and were being helped up the treacherously slick rocks by stout officers on the path.

  “Stay up here,” Oscar said to Neve.

  “Screw that,” Neve replied quietly. “I’m coming.”

  “Gloves?” Oscar asked the first forensic tech. The man reluctantly handed over two pairs.

  Oscar and Neve climbed down slowly. No one offered ropes.

  Lucas Purden was on his back, as if to better admire the arching cement girders. His lids and eyeballs had been pecked away by fish, and the rest of his skin was the si
ckly yellow-white of beef fat that had begun to turn. Oscar flicked on his flashlight. The dead boy’s fingers were pulp: splinters of pink and white bone speared through ruptured skin wadded with flesh. The legs of his pants were rolled up, and his loose ankles were bound together with large nylon cable ties. Purden’s feet looked as if they’d been shortened: the heels were recognizable, but the flesh forward of them had been pulverized; broken bones protruded like snapped chopsticks from the pale, pink-gray flesh. The top of his jeans had been rolled down to his upper thighs, and his once indefatigable penis had met the same fate as his fingers and toes. His belly was swollen, and he was starting to rot.

  “Oh hell,” Neve whispered.

  Oscar knelt awkwardly on the slippery rocks and lifted Purden’s wrist. The arm flopped, unresisting. Around both wrists were contusions so deep they had eaten through skin into flesh and tendon. Oscar carefully inspected the boy’s head. The face was waxy and cold, and the skin on his chin, forehead, and the tip of his nose was badly torn. Oscar gently rolled the boy’s head and parted his wet hair. The back of his head had been flattened; in the middle of that plateau was a hollow the size of a toddler’s fist.

  “A hammer?” Neve asked.

  Oscar shrugged and nodded.

  “What are these welts?” She touched one of Purden’s wrists. “Handcuffed?”

  Oscar shined his flashlight on one of the dead boy’s wrists. The light picked out a fine, stiff hair embedded in the torn skin. A rope fiber.

  “His chin and nose are torn,” Oscar said. “I think he was put on his stomach, a rope on each wrist pulled tight out in opposite directions, and his fingers, toes, penis were smashed until, I don’t know, his killer heard what he wanted or got his jollies. Then he stoved in the back of Luke’s skull.”