1 First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  ‘What the devil –’ Dudley was shouting and then he stopped short as he saw the man beside the bed. ‘Oh,’ he said.

  George stared at him and then at the interloper. ‘For God’s sake, do something! This guy just walks in here and –’

  ‘Evening, Guv,’ Dudley said and looked over his shoulder at the uniformed man. ‘You go back to your place,’ he said curtly. ‘No right to leave it.’

  The young policeman looked sweaty and anxious. ‘I thought it’d be all right, sir, seeing it’s –’

  ‘You heard me,’ Dudley said curtly. The young policeman took off his helmet, shook his head, rubbed his damp face, put it on again and went, and Dudley turned back towards George.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ she shouted. ‘What’s the matter with you? Is this the way you always run things? Let anyone wander in and then –’

  ‘This is Dr Barnabas, Guv,’ Dudley said, not looking at her. ‘Took over from Dr Royle. This is Detective Chief Inspector Hathaway, doctor.’

  She turned her head and glared at the man in the track suit and he looked back at her with a cheerful grin.

  ‘Never thought a pathologist’d get so uptight, even if said pathologist was a female,’ he said. ‘Glad to meet you, Dr Barnabas.’

  ‘Do you always work in that sort of plain clothes?’ she said icily. ‘It’s no wonder you startled me. It’s not what you’d normally expect to see at the scene of a crime.’

  ‘Crime?’ Dudley said and came forward. ‘No crime here, doctor. We agreed, didn’t we? It’s just a run-of-the-mill affair.’

  ‘You had a Soco here,’ she retorted. ‘Which surely suggests –’

  ‘Simply that we were doing what we should,’ Dudley said smoothly and looked again at the man in the track suit. ‘Burglar alarm went, Guv, we came, found the body, took no chances. But it’s all sorted. We know the whys and wherefores, and once Doctor here does her PM at Old East tomorrow we’ll have a cause of death too. All straight up.’

  George was furious. That she’d made a fool of herself by overreacting was bad enough, but it was worse to have to put up with this sort of unspoken rudeness from goddamn cops; and she spoke without stopping to think. ‘I don’t know how you can be so sure there’s no crime,’ she snapped. ‘Until I’ve reported on the body, you know nothing.’

  ‘Like I said, doctor,’ Dudley said smoothly. Too smoothly. ‘After you get the body over at the mortuary and do the necessary –’

  ‘It’s not going anywhere until I’ve done all the examination I want to do here,’ she said. ‘I’ve only been able to make a cursory one, and that’s not enough. So you can send for my equipment, and I’ll let you know when you can move the body. It’s up to me and I’ll decide when I’m good and ready and no sooner.’

  ‘Now, look here, doctor!’ Dudley was nettled. ‘It’s midnight! What do you want to go making all this fuss for when we can send the body over to the mortuary first thing in the morning and –’

  ‘No.’ She was implacable, pleased to see the glint of anger in the man’s eyes. She’d show them for making a fool of her, even if she had prepared the way by making such a stupid fuss in the first place. ‘Now. I don’t care what the time is. Things have to be done properly.’

  Dudley opened his mouth to speak, but Gus Hathaway was too fast for him. ‘I think we have to listen to Dr Barnabas, Roop,’ he said. He had a rough voice with a rumble in the bass and a decided London twang, and George found herself thinking absurdly, That’s an attractive sound, and then glared at him.

  ‘I mean right now,’ she said, daring him to argue with her.

  ‘Then right now it’ll ’ave to be, won’t it?’ he said amiably. ‘Roop?’ He looked at Dudley, whose face was thunderous. ‘Send someone to Old East to pick up Dr Barnabas’s kit, will you? Seeing she forgot it.’

  ‘I did nothing of the sort!’ she almost shouted. ‘I had no idea we were going to be dealing with a crime.’

  ‘If we are,’ Hathaway said and smiled at her with the same irritating cheerfulness. ‘No evidence at present, o’ course, according to my lads. Still, we got to look, don’t we? Yes. So off you go, Roop. No ’anging about. With a bit of luck we’ll get this sorted by dawn.’

  George was already regretting her impulsive behaviour, and, as she caught Dieter’s eye and saw that he too was far from happy at the thought of the night being dragged out any longer, almost opened her mouth to retract; but she couldn’t do that, now now, and said only, ‘I can manage on my own. You go back, Professor. No need for you to hang around.’ She managed a malicious little grin. ‘Only these policemen here. If that’s what they are, come to think of it. I’ve been shown no IDs, after all.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Dudley said disgustedly. He turned and went. ‘I’ll send for your gear. In the lab, is it?’

  ‘In the cupboard on the right-hand side of my desk,’ she said. ‘It’s always there for an emergency. As I say, we didn’t know that this was one.’

  ‘Well, you’ve made damned sure that you’ve made it into one,’ Dudley said. ‘When there’s no reason.’

  And Professor Dieter looked at her with a slightly accusing gaze, and she lifted her hands in a sort of apology to him. ‘I’m not saying there is now. Just that there might be circumstances –’

  ‘Well, I’m not waiting around to find out,’ Professor Dieter said with a sudden brisk air. ‘I have a heavy day tomorrow. I suppose you’ll be able to get transport back, Dr Barnabas?’

  ‘No need to worry about that.’ Gus Hathaway had moved from the bedside and was now sitting in a low armchair in front of the open fireplace. ‘We’ll see the doctor gets ’ome safe and sound. Good night, Professor. Thanks for your assistance with this matter.’

  ‘Yes, well …’ Dieter said. He nodded at Hathaway and then at George and went. The two of them were left alone.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re sorry now,’ he said in a conversational tone after a long pause. ‘Doesn’t do to get mad, does it? Causes more grief to yourself than it causes others, sometimes. I found that out a few years back. But there it is, we all ’ave to learn.’

  ‘Don’t you dare patronize me,’ she blazed in fury and he laughed.

  ‘Oh, come off it, ducks! That’s the in word, ’n’t it? Patronize. Feminist claptrap. You got mad because you misjudged a situation, and anyone could ha’ done the same. You wasn’t to know who I was, so you made a bit of a bish. Well, there it is. It ’appens. It’d make more sense if you said as much now and let us all go ’ome to our beds, don’t you reckon? Better than trotting out that feminist flim-flam. Patronize!’ And he laughed, deep in his throat, a cheerful burring sound that again she liked. But her fury was greater than her liking for any sounds he might make.

  ‘I see no point in discussing this,’ she said icily. ‘I have my doubts about this situation. As the pathologist on this patch I’m entitled to make my own clinical decisions. If I think it necessary to do an examination here, then do it I shall and –’

  ‘Oh, we all know that. Try and stop you! I was just trying to persuade you to stop yourself. But if you don’t want to …’ He shrugged. ‘We can sit it out without any trouble.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well, as soon as old Roop gets back with your kit, I’ll be on my way. I only dropped in as I was passing.’ He laughed again. ‘That’s why the outfit, ducks. I was on my way home after my evening constitutional. Saw the lads, had to pop up and do a recce, didn’t I? Well, of course I did, you’ll understand that, I’m sure. Seeing you’re so keen on knowing the facts about everything, you’ll understand someone who’s got the same sort of attitude. Ah, here’s Roop.’

  ‘Do you have to call me that?’ Dudley growled, trying to keep his voice down so that George wouldn’t hear him. ‘You know I –’

  ‘Sorry,’ Hathaway said cheerfully and in full voice. ‘I forget. Here’s Rupert then. Got the gear for the good doctor?’

  ‘It’s on its way. And so’s Mike. He can sit in on this.’

  ‘Not you?’
Hathaway said and quirked an eyebrow at him. ‘Thought you’d want to stay here with the doctor and see it through. It’d be a pity to miss out on the excitement, after all.’

  ‘What excitement?’ Dudley said. ‘Anyway, I’m in court tomorrow, with the Hobson affair. I’ll need all my wits about me for that. Mike can take over. He’s on his way. He’s picking up the gear as he passes Old East. Shouldn’t be above ten minutes or so.’

  ‘Well then, we’ll be on our way, shall we?’ Gus Hathaway got to his feet and smiled at George, who was now sitting on the edge of the dais, her arms folded round her knees. ‘There’s Bob Dennison on the door. He’ll keep an eye on things till you’re ready to go. Good night, doctor. Glad to have met you. I’m sure we’ll meet again from time to time.’ And, absurdly, he pulled the sweat band off his forehead with a little flourish, as though it were a hat, and the curly hair that it had been constricting sprang out into a tight bush as he sketched a sort of bow. She glared at him and said nothing. They went, and she heard the rumble of their voices as they left the flat and went away down the stairs. It had been a long time since she had felt quite so sorry for herself – or quite so angry with her own impetuosity.

  There really wasn’t a great deal she could do with her examination. And the fact that she suspected that Gus Hathaway, if not Dudley, had known this perfectly well didn’t help. But she did it, doggedly and carefully, as the detective constable, who had introduced himself to her a little shyly as Michael Urquhart in a soft Scottish accent that she found very comforting, stood silently at the foot of the bed and watched her.

  She checked the body temperature first. A more accurate idea of the time of death must surely be useful; the rigor mortis assessment was never enough.

  She thought carefully before checking the rectal temperature and opted for the deep nasal route backed up by a reading from deep in the ear, rather than the more common rectal one. It would, she felt hazily, be more seemly, and anyway easier than having to manhandle the body on to its front. Not for the first time she was grateful for the pocket-sized electronic thermocouple Ian had given her for her birthday last year; it made her work a lot easier, for using a normal thermometer in these circumstances was very difficult. It was not until she’d completed the temperature readings and carefully logged them that she realized she’d thought of Ian for the first time without a single pang, and was pleased about that. But she didn’t linger on the satisfaction; the examination itself was much too absorbing.

  She worked in contented silence, checking not only the body’s temperature but that of the bed and the room itself, and photographing every step of the way. By the time she’d completed her superficial examination and logged all the observations and measurements of the degree of postmortem staining, rigor mortis, and the rest of the minutiae, she had a full tape on her dictaphone, a little pile of her Polaroid pictures, and only a few unexposed films left. Almost on an impulse she moved around the room, taking pictures of the bed, the way the body of Oxford was lying in it, and then finished off with pictures of the contents of the bathroom cabinets. All the time she dictated notes about what she saw, and Urquhart watched and listened to her in silence, clearly puzzled. But it wasn’t until she had finished and closed the cupboards and the bathroom door that he spoke.

  ‘I’ve never seen the doctor at a scene take the pictures,’ he said. ‘Is this a new way of doing things?’

  ‘I wouldn’t take them if there were photographers here,’ she said. ‘But there aren’t. They don’t think it’s necessary and me, I’m not sure. That’s why I wanted to do a preliminary examination of the body here, instead of just waiting till I got to the mortuary.’

  ‘Oh, is that it? Yon Rupert told me it was that you wanted to show Gus Hathaway you were not about to be pushed about.’

  She reddened. ‘I never heard such stuff.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ He sounded disappointed. ‘I thought it would be a great thing if she does, the doctor. No bad thing at all.’

  She finished packing her kit and looked up at him sharply. ‘Why? Is he troublesome?’

  He leaned against the wall, his arms folded, clearly settled in for a nice chat now he’d started. ‘Not exactly troublesome. He can be a bit sharp, if you take my meaning. Not to deny downright nasty sometimes, but then so can we all. No, it was just I thought … Well, of course, he’s the Guv’nor, but now and again it’s no bad thing for a man to listen to others, is it? But when we try to come up with the odd idea, it’s a rare day he’ll pay us the attention we ought to be getting.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘He ignored you?’

  ‘That he did. I saw as clear as anyone that the lad couldna have done it – this was the matter of the robbery down at the bonded warehouse in Wapping, you’ll understand – but would he listen? He wouldna, no matter what I said. But in the end when it was shown I was right, well, would he say I’d done right? Indeed he did not. Just said that intuition was not enough, he only cared for hard evidence. Well so do I, but there’s a deal to be said for using your gut feelings, now, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes,’ George said a little absently and then lifted her chin. Why shouldn’t she try to pump him? He seemed willing enough to talk and there was no one around to listen, after all. ‘What sort of a man is he?’ she said. ‘Apart from not liking hunches?’

  ‘What sort? Well, verra full of himself, to tell you the truth, though I’m sure you’ll no’ tell him I said as much! But he is, and there’s others’ll tell you the same.’

  ‘Does he usually follow his own men when he’s off duty? I imagine he was off duty tonight, seeing he turned up here in a track suit.’

  ‘Oh, he was off duty all right. But he only lives three doors down the street, do you see? So he couldna help seein’ all the lights and the lads when he came home. I dare say I’d have come in lookin’ about too, if it had been one of my neighbours that was involved. He doesna usually meddle when he’s off duty, I’ll give him that.’

  She lifted her brows. ‘I didn’t know policemen made enough money to live in places like this.’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, they’re not all as fancy as this one, these flats. This is a double one for a start. No, he has one of the smaller ones. But all the same, he does have a deal more money than the rest of us. Inherited a fortune, he did.’

  ‘Oh, did he now? What sort of a fortune?’

  Matt grinned. ‘Fish and chips.’

  ‘Fish and …’

  ‘I laughed too. We all did. And he gets verra verra verra angry when we do. But we canna help it. His old dad owned a chain of fish-and-chip shops all round the East End, and when the old man died the Guv got the lot. I’m told it’s over five hundred thousand he came in for, and still earning. The shops are doin’ fine, d’ye ken.’ He shook his head admiringly. ‘I’d no’ work if I had that sort of siller, would you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ George said, and tried to see the man who had so alarmed her when she had first clapped eyes on him as a substantial heir, a rich man. She couldn’t. He was a policeman and policemen were never rich. ‘It’s different for me, maybe, I love my work. I’d do it whatever happened.’

  ‘That’s what he says,’ Urquhart said and sighed. ‘Me, I just dinna comprehend it. Are you finished then, doctor?’

  ‘Mmm? Oh, yes. Pretty well.’ She looked round the room again and nodded. ‘I’ll do the rest at the mortuary tomorrow. I’ll call the coroner’s office as soon as the body arrives and get the go-ahead. I take it you’ll move it quickly.’

  ‘Nine o’clock tomorrow. After the GP comes over. Not that he’ll be much good: not seen the bloke for God knows how long, according to Sergeant Dudley,’ Urquhart said with some briskness, now that the end seemed to be in sight. ‘He said not tonight, too expensive.’

  ‘Too what?’

  ‘It’ll cost more to shift the body tonight. Overtime,’ Urquhart explained. ‘Got to think of budgets these days, don’t we? And it’s not as though this was a murder, after all.’
/>   ‘How do you know it isn’t?’ She was combative again.

  He stared at her. ‘Sarge said it wasn’t. Rupert, he said.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t the Angel Gabriel, you know, with a gift of divination into everything,’ she said tartly. ‘No one can say what Oxford died of till I’ve done my examination. Tomorrow. So don’t you go jumping to conclusions. And you can save the GP an unnecessary trip too. If he hasn’t seen him for a long time he can’t help now. Tell him to send his notes to my office, please. First thing. Right. Are you going to drive me back?’

  ‘We are. I’ve to call in to the station when we’re ready for a car,’ he said.

  ‘Call in? You mean there isn’t one down there?’

  ‘No need to waste a car waiting for us,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Like I said, budgets are tight. But he’ll be back soon enough. You go on down, doctor. I’ll secure the premises here and call in. I’ll no’ be that long.’

  She waited for him down in the street, yawning a little now, for it was well past two in the morning and fatigue was creeping up on her. Out here under an indigo sky blushing at the rim with the lights thrown by the buildings that edged the river, the air smelled fresh and clean, for all it was dank with the thick tang of the river and its sludge, and she was glad to breathe deeply and rid her lungs of the smell of roses and herbs that still filled her from the bedroom in the over-decorated lush flat upstairs. There had been something deeply repellent about it, once the first glamour of the look of the place had faded. It had had an air of decadence, a whiff of nastiness, that had nothing to do with the presence of a rapidly cooling body, and it was good to have left it behind.

  She turned to look up at the building’s façade and noted even more features that showed they were expensively built; the trim on the balconies; the tropical hardwood frames to the windows; the general air of not-a-penny-spared; and thought again about the unpleasant Gus Hathaway, he of the interesting voice and rough manners. She’d never had to deal with a rich cop before. It could be odd working with this one. She’d have to make damned sure that though they’d started off badly he didn’t get the idea she was someone he could push around, half-millionaire though he might be. And somewhere deep inside her spirits lifted at the thought of coming battles. It was always more interesting when there was a bit of an edge to a working relationship, she told herself. She watched a car come round the corner, its blue light winking, with deep gratitude. It really had been one hell of a long day.