Jack Pendragon - 02 - Borgia Ring

by Michael White

  A few paces along the hall, he reached the kitchen. A floodlight on a stand had been set up close to the sink. It cast an intense white glow over everything. The back door to the garden stood open and Pendragon could see a forensics officer moving around on the path between the kitchen and a brick wall covered with a trellisfull of yellow roses. Along the windowsill above the sink and draining board stood another row of crosses. Pendragon counted nine of them arranged with the largest in the centre, a smaller version of the one on the lounge wall.

  ‘I’ve just arrived, Pendragon. So no, I can’t give you times, dates, reasons or any other bloody thing,’ Jones said as the DCI came into the room. The pathologist was standing beside Tony Ketteridge’s body. The dead man lay on the floor close to a small breakfast table, his back against a dishwasher that was still going through its cycle. Ketteridge’s head was twisted to one side, his chest soaked in blood and vomit, mouth wide open. Both eyes were red discs.

  Pendragon looked round as Turner came in through the back door.

  ‘Were you first here, Sergeant?’

  ‘Yes, guv. I was just leaving the station when the call came in. I got here with Sergeant Mackleby about twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘I take it Mrs Ketteridge reported the murder?’

  ‘Yeah. She was hysterical, apparently. Not too surprising.’

  ‘Had the body been touched?’

  ‘Pretty sure it hadn’t. Mrs Ketteridge could barely bring herself to open the door. Roz … Sergeant Mackleby’s with her now in the other room.’

  ‘Yes, I saw her as I came in.’

  ‘When we arrived, the back door was open. Didn’t look like there was much of struggle. The table has been pushed to one side, but that’s about it.’ Then he added in a whisper, ‘What’s with all the bloody crucifixes?’

  Pendragon shrugged. ‘No idea. Who’s outside?’ He strode over to the back door with Turner in tow. A forensics officer in a plastic suit had their back to him. They turned.

  ‘Dr Newman,’ Pendragon said.

  ‘Chief Inspector.’

  ‘First impressions?’ He looked around the narrow space. A line of paving stones stretched from the kitchen door down the side of the house into the garden, little more than a smudge of dark green in the night now. A brick wall about head-height, separating the house from the neighbouring property, ran the length of the passageway then petered out into a wire fence dividing the gardens. A cat brushed against Pendragon’s calves. He bent down to stroke it. Straightening, he said, ‘If only animals could talk.’

  Colette Newman smiled. ‘Not much to discover on the surface,’ she said. ‘There are some traces of mud along the path here. They look quite new. We followed them back to this side of the garden fence. Looks like our murderer came in from over there and went in through the back door of the kitchen.’

  Pendragon saw movement in the garden and noticed another SOCO in a plastic suit crouching beside the fence, dusting brush in his latex-covered right hand.

  ‘Wouldn’t the ground be too hard to carry soil through to here?’ Turner queried. Pendragon and Newman spun round in unison.

  ‘My first thought too,’ the Head of Forensics said, noticing the sergeant for the first time. ‘Looks like one of the Ketteridges watered the flowers earlier this evening. Ignoring the hosepipe ban, of course.’

  ‘We’ll have to charge them,’ Pendragon replied darkly.

  ‘We’ve taken samples anyway and two of my team are covering the kitchen and the rest of the house. The minute we know anything …’

  ‘Thanks,’ he replied and turned back to the kitchen. ‘So, Tony Ketteridge either knew the person who killed him and let him in, or the murderer was watching the house and knew how to get in.’

  ‘Or it was an opportunist attack.’

  They walked back to the body and Pendragon crouched down beside Jones who was examining the corpse.

  ‘Do you get a sense of déjà vu, Pendragon?’ he asked.

  ‘Carbon copy, by the look of it.’

  ‘Indeed. Can’t tell you where the puncture site is yet, but I bet we’ll find one. You happy for me to get the poor sod to the morgue?’

  Pendragon nodded and straightened up. ‘Do you mind if I come over to the lab when I’ve finished here?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all. So long as you can stomach it,’ Jones replied with a smirk.

  Pendragon returned to the hall, pausing for a moment to look at the crucifixes on the table and the wall. They were all different shapes and sizes, some old, some looking pretty new. Most were unadorned but a few carried the image of the body of Christ. Turning into the lounge, he indicated to Mackleby that he would like to have a chat with the victim’s widow. He sat down on the sofa.

  Pam Ketteridge was a large woman, tall and broad-shouldered, with fat arms that filled out the winceyette. She had a wide face. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying and dark tracks ran down her cheeks where tears had washed away mascara.

  ‘My name is DCI Jack Pendragon. I’m sorry for your loss.’

  She made a snorting noise. ‘You sound like you’ve been watching too many crappy American cop shows,’ she retorted without looking at the Chief Inspector. She had a faint northern accent. ‘I apologise,’ she added quickly, scrutinising him. She dabbed at her right eye. Pendragon said nothing, hoping she would talk, but she looked away without adding anything.

  ‘You found your husband’s body?’ he asked.

  She nodded and stared across the room. ‘And, no, I didn’t touch anything, DCI Pendragon. I was so shocked, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Then, I … I seemed to act automatically. I don’t have any memory of going into the hall or making the call to the police. The next thing I knew there were two officers at the door. I haven’t been back … back in there.’

  ‘Had you been in here all evening?’

  She looked at him, her eyes puffy, and shook her head. ‘No, that’s the worst thing,’ she replied. ‘If I had … I was in bed.’

  ‘And you didn’t hear anything?’

  She put her hand into the pocket of her gown and pulled out an iPod. ‘Tom bloody Jones.’ And she burst into tears. Pendragon let her cry and gazed around the room as the woman blew her nose and tried to compose herself. The flat reminded him of his childhood, the sort of décor his parents had gone in for – no subtlety, over-patterned everything.

  ‘If only I had paid Tony more attention,’ Pam Ketteridge sighed. ‘We were having an early night. He was exhausted …’ Then she suddenly froze. ‘You don’t think this has anything to do with the other …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘murders’.

  ‘It’s too early to know.’

  ‘This is my fault,’ she said suddenly, her voice trembling with emotion. ‘The problems he’d had at work … that poor man, the workman who was killed. My husband felt terrible about it. I should have talked to Tony, should have listened.’

  ‘Did he tell you anything about the lead-up to the death of Amal Karim?’

  She stopped sobbing and looked away again. ‘You mean, the skeleton? They reported it on the news tonight, just before we …’

  ‘Yes,’ Pendragon replied, considering the woman’s face. ‘Anything new could be extremely useful.’ It was impossible, he realised, to know for sure how much she was keeping to herself in this state. What was she holding back? And what did she believe the police knew? Had her husband told her about being questioned at the station? He thought it unlikely because it would have led to all sorts of uncomfortable questions from Pam about what Tony had been up to on Saturday morning.

  ‘No. Not that I …’ She broke down again. This time she could do nothing to conceal her anguish. Taking her hands from her face, she stared into the middle distance and let the tears run down to her chin. ‘O, Lord, take me from this pain,’ she cried. And to Pendragon’s astonishment, she dropped from the sofa to the floor. Landing on her knees, she started to rock backwards and forwards. ‘O, blessed art thou, Lord G
od Almighty. Show mercy upon our wretched souls. We have sinned! We have sinned!’ And she threw herself on to the carpet, arms outstretched towards the line of crucifixes on the mantelpiece. Christ, suffering his own agonies, frowned down upon her.

  Sergeant Turner had just walked into the room as Pam Ketteridge threw herself to the ground. He ran over and he and Pendragon began to help the woman to her feet and guide her back to the sofa. She did not resist, but kept repeating the same five words. ‘He shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have done it.’

  It took a few minutes for Pam Ketteridge to calm down enough to focus on Pendragon’s face and to understand that he was asking her a question.

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs Ketteridge? Shouldn’t have done what?’

  She simply stared at the DCI in silence. Then she seemed to pull herself together. ‘The skeleton. Tony hid the skeleton.’ She glanced at Sergeant Turner who was sitting on the edge of an armchair opposite, taking notes.

  Saying these few words seemed to calm her. It was as though she had confessed her sins to a priest. ‘He didn’t know what to do with it. They’re weeks behind, see? And he thought … well, he thought he could just keep the whole thing quiet.’

  ‘He told you this?’ Turner asked.

  She turned towards the sergeant and then back to Pendragon. ‘Yes. On Sunday. I knew something was wrong with him. He was being very quiet, hardly spoke a word to me all evening. I finally dragged it out of him.’

  ‘So, what did he say exactly? Try to remember his own words, Mrs Ketteridge.’

  She frowned and ran the tips of her fingers across her brow. ‘He said they had come across a skeleton … a complete skeleton. He was thrown by it. It was late on Friday. He didn’t know what to do. A couple of his boys were spooked. When he said they should just rebury it, they balked. So he shut up shop and told them it could wait until Monday.’

  ‘And when did he dispose of the skeleton?’

  ‘He told me he went back a few hours later, about nine-thirty, as soon as it was dark.’

  ‘What did he do with it?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me. Just said, “It’s done.”’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I was very upset, and he knew it. I told him he had done wrong. That he had committed a terrible sin.’

  ‘And what about this evening? After the news report about the skeleton being recovered?’

  She screwed up her mouth as though she was fighting to keep the words in. ‘We had a row. A huge row. He had lied to me, see? First I thought he had done a terrible thing, pretending the skeleton had never been found, but then I learned that he hadn’t done that at all.’

  ‘Did he say tonight what he had done with it?’

  ‘He had hidden it under the site hut, then moved it to the boot of his car.’

  ‘Then decided to make it reappear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No.’ Pam Ketteridge responded. ‘He clammed up completely. Our last words to each other were angry ones.’

  ‘Ah, Pendragon. Just in time,’ said Jones as the DCI walked into the morgue and the pathologist switched on the electric autopsy saw, a misshapen metal cylinder that nestled in the palm of his hand. ‘An amazing piece of kit, this … the SF-4000. Weighs only a few kilos, but the blade rotates at 200 revolutions per second. Can cut through bone just like that … fantastic.’

  Pendragon knew Jones was trying to intimidate him, so he ignored him and walked calmly over to the body lying on the stainless-steel table. For perhaps the tenth time this evening he asked himself why he was going to put himself through this. The answer, he knew, was two-fold. Although he trusted Dr Jones’s expertise, he wanted to make sure nothing was missed. But the second reason was personal. The pathologist’s comments about his squeamishness a few days earlier had hit a nerve. It was true, he had always found the chopping up of dead bodies hard to deal with. It was about time he faced up to his phobia. It was part of his job. It was never going to go away, or not at least so long as people killed each other.

  As if he had read his mind, Jones put down the electric saw. ‘So, why are you here exactly, Chief Inspector?’

  Pendragon shrugged. ‘It was that or writing up a report.’

  The pathologist held his eye. ‘You wouldn’t be checking up on me now, would you?’

  ‘No,’ Pendragon replied emphatically.

  ‘Then the only other reason would be that you’re using me as a therapist. I charge extra for that.’

  Pendragon exhaled through his nose and shook his head. ‘Charge the Met. They’re keen on educational courses.’

  ‘I suppose I should be flattered,’ Jones replied. ‘Here, put these on,’ He tossed a gown and mask to Pendragon.

  Tony Ketteridge’s was certainly not a beautiful corpse. Under the severe lights of the lab his skin was a bluish-white and his copious jet-black body hair merely accentuated his pallor. It gave the term ‘as pale as death’ a whole new meaning, Pendragon thought to himself. And then there were the red eyes.

  ‘Not an especially fine example of homo sapiens,’ commented Jones, removing a digital recorder from the pocket of his lab coat. Turning it on, he shifted into officialese. ‘Subject: male. Anthony Frederick Ketteridge. Age: 54. Weight: 115 kilos. Height: 1.65 metres. Time of death: approximately 8 p.m., Wednesday 8 June. External examination: subject is obese, borderline morbidly obese. Small, recent laceration to the throat and fresh, superficial bruising to thoracic region. No serious contusions. No fractures or breaks. Both corneas are coated in blood; presumably from rupture of retinal vessels.’ He leaned over the body and turned Ketteridge a few inches on to his right side, then lifted his left arm. ‘There is a small puncture mark in the left axilla with surrounding haematoma. Appears to be a fresh wound.’

  Jones placed the recorder on a side table. ‘Take a look,’ he said to Pendragon.

  The DCI walked round to Jones’s side and the pathologist handed him a magnifying glass. Pendragon looked closely at the small red hole in the soft flesh of Ketteridge’s armpit.

  ‘Exactly the same as Tim Middleton,’ Jones said from behind him. ‘This is looking more and more like a carbon copy of the first poisoning.’ He picked up a scalpel and Pendragon returned to the other side of the table as the pathologist leaned over the corpse. ‘Let’s take a look inside.’

  Jones sank the scalpel into the dead man’s flesh. There was a thick layer of fat to cut through but the blade was exceptionally sharp and sliced through tissue, fat and blood vessels with ease. The metal made a squelching sound as the tissue parted. Blood slithered down the side of the corpse and into the run-off drains along each side of the table. It was thick and congealed, acting solely under the effects of gravity. Jones brought the blade down across Ketteridge’s chest, stopping just below the breast bone. He then repeated the action, starting from the other side and meeting the end point of the first incision. To complete the procedure, he then sank the scalpel deep and made a straight vertical cut to Ketteridge’s navel.

  With experienced fingers, he parted the flesh, folding back skin and tissue to expose the ribs. Picking up the electric saw, he set to work, slicing through the bones at 200 revolutions per second. With the cuts made, he then buried his hands deep inside the dead man’s chest and prised the ribs apart. Placing a chest clamp into position, he turned the large nut on the side of the device and, slowly, Ketteridge’s body opened up like a sea clam to reveal the cluster of reddish-grey internal organs.

  In less than a minute, Jones had Ketteridge’s liver on a dish beside the corpse. It was black and degraded, very similar to Middleton’s.

  ‘As I expected,’ Jones said, and prodded it with the scalpel. ‘Severe necrosis.’ He turned back to the corpse and poked around inside the abdominal cavity with a narrow stainless-steel tube. ‘Pancreas all but obliterated. Spleen ditto,’ he remarked. ‘I’ll run all the tests, of course. But it’s pretty obvious what killed him. Looks like you’ve got yours
elf a serial killer, Pendragon.’

  Stepney, Thursday 9 June, 7.10 a.m.

  Jack Pendragon was shaving when he heard his mobile ring, telling him he had a text message. He made a final sweep of the blade up his neck, washed and dried his face then walked over to the kitchen counter where he had left the phone charging. The text was from Colette Newman: ‘Have findings that should interest u. Can u call in lab. Would 10 b ok?’ He winced at the mangled English. He would never get used to texting shorthand and was a little surprised that someone like Dr Newman would stoop to it. Then he realised he didn’t actually know how to send a reply and so he punched in Dr Newman’s number instead.

  Brick Lane Police Station was a hive of activity. There had been a pile-up on Whitechapel Road involving at least one reported fatality and it seemed as though half the force at the station was rushing to the scene. Pendragon found Turner in the main ops room at a computer terminal.

  ‘I’ve finally got round to trying to find out something about the ring, guv. Problem is, I can’t get a good impression of it from the photos. I managed to track down Tim Middleton’s SIM card, but even taking the images directly from that, I can’t see much.’

  Pendragon leaned over his sergeant’s shoulder and peered at the image on the screen. ‘No, I see your problem.’

  ‘And that’s after putting it through image-enhancing software, best we have. All I can tell you is, the top is green!’

  ‘Okay, we’ll have to give up on that for the moment. I need you to get on to Bridgeport Construction. Arrange to interview the late Mr Ketteridge’s immediate superiors – this morning.’

  Pendragon arrived early at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory on Lambeth Road. It was an impressive building, renowned as the biggest and best forensics lab in the world. It was odd to be looking at it now, so grand and important. It seemed like only yesterday, Pendragon mused, that he had been reading in his Boys’ Own Book of Modern Science how the whole science of forensics had come about by fluke. It had been the brainchild of a simple police constable named Cyril Cuthbert who, during the 1930s, worked in his off-duty hours with a second-hand microscope he had bought for £3. The Commissioner at the time, Lord Trenchard, heard about it and visited Cuthbert and the makeshift lab he had set up in his station broom cupboard. Trenchard was so taken with what he saw, he agreed to establish a proper laboratory at Hendon Police College with a budget of £500 a year. The rest, as they say, was history.