Breath of Life (9781476278742)

by Ellis, Tim

  ***

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Maybe we should all be getting a cut of your salary, Inspector,’ a woman shouted from the back of the press briefing room.

  There was a ripple of laughter.

  He saw Catherine Cox at the back. She caught his eye and smiled, but the less contact they had the better. As far as anyone was aware, she knew nothing about P2.

  ‘I’m sure that can be arranged, but I expect you to report for duty at eight-thirty in the mornings from now on.’

  ‘I’d heard that was an actual time, but I never really believed it.’

  More laughter.

  ‘Seriously... I have a woman’s body I can’t identify...’

  Questions reigned down on him.

  He held up his hand. ‘Let’s just say that parts of the woman are missing, which make identification close to impossible. We do know that she was in her early twenties, had recently given birth to a baby boy... No, we have no idea where the child is. She also had dark hair. My able assistant – Constable Richards – is passing round a photographic reconstruction of the woman, but as you can see the face is blank. The body does actually belong to the young lady, but the dress has been computer-generated. What I want is for you to publicise the picture asking your readers and viewers if they know her, or they know of a baby without a mother that appeared about six weeks ago. The helpline number is on the back of the photograph.’

  ‘Where was the body found, Inspector?’

  ‘In the sewers beneath the village of Hailey, but she could have been introduced into the sewage system from some distance away.’

  ‘Is there just the one body?’

  ‘Thankfully, yes.’

  The questions petered out.

  ‘Thank you for coming, and thank you in advance for your help.’

  ‘We’ll be in the Dog and Duck later, the first round’s on you.’

  ‘If I’m not there, start without me.’

  ‘Don’t we always?’

  He usually slipped out of the rear door into the corridor, but Richards had been cornered by a group of male photographers, so he went to her assistance.

  ‘That’s it... smile... now a profile... and can you loosen your blouse by a couple of buttons, and next time maybe wear a short skirt...?

  ‘With a suspender belt and stockings...?’

  ‘Have you got any lip gloss?’

  ‘Is there a wind machine round here somewhere?’

  ‘Richards?’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Have you people got nothing else better to do?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Here’s my card, Constable. Call me if you’d like a portfolio of tasteful pictures taken.’

  He took Richards by the elbow and led her away.

  ‘What have I told you about posing for photographs?’

  ‘It’s like there’s another person inside me...’

  ‘What, like a supermodel?’

  ‘Yes... something like that.’

  ‘Have you got the pool car yet?’

  ‘There’s only one of me, you know.’

  ‘I’m going up to forensics, you go and sign out a pool car.’

  ‘Are we going somewhere?’

  ‘Well, we won’t be without a pool car.’

  ***

  ‘I’m in Southend.’

  ‘What are you doing there?’

  ‘The Chief used the detective shortage here as an excuse to get rid of me.’

  Lord Peter Elias was in the rear seat of the Bentley on his way back to London. ‘She found out...?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s to do with that bastard Kowalski. He doesn’t like me because I challenged him at every opportunity. He went to the Chief and told her he couldn’t work with me, so here I am... in Southend – the arsehole of the world.’

  ‘I’ve only just left Abby, why didn’t she tell me?’

  ‘Why would she, Sir? She doesn’t know I work for you. To her, I’m simply a troublesome detective that she’s shifted sideways to please one of her Inspectors. It’s an operational decision, and has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘You’re sure she doesn’t know?’

  ‘She doesn’t know. The bug is still in place. I can access the recordings via the Internet on my laptop. If there’s anything, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘We’ll leave things as they are then, and have a good time in Southend, Bluebelle.’

  ‘Thanks, Uncle Peter.’

  ***

  He arrived at King George Hospital at one minute to ten. It had been touch and go for a time because of a three-car pile-up on the A10, but he put the blue light on the roof, and snaked through the wreckage and mayhem. There were some advantages to being a copper – not many – but some.

  The hospital reception was like a refugee centre. Why were all the people here? Where had they all come from? Didn’t they have homes to go to? Two days of snow, and it was like the end of the world had arrived in time for Christmas. He expected to hear any minute that the government was operating from bunkers somewhere under the Kent countryside, television coverage was being intermittently affected by the extraordinary weather conditions – media executives were ruing the day they decided to completely switch over to digital, and strange creatures had been reported...

  So, he was on his own. It didn’t look as though he was going to get a Christmas this year. Maybe New Year would get flushed down the toilet as well. Jerry knew how the cards were stacked. She’d stuck with him through thick and thin, and given him four children – three girls and a boy – eleven-year-old Gabe, nine-year-old Oceana, Tabitha, who was eight, and last but certainly not least was the mischievous Gabi who was six. Jerry was the rock that kept him upright. Without her, he’d crumble to dust and blow away in the Siberian wind.

  At night he’d go home and thank the Heavens that she was warm in his bed, his house was chock-full of love, and that his kids were as normal as kids were these days.

  Oh, he liked to chat the ladies up, but never – in their seventeen years of marriage – had he ever strayed. Before he was married – well, that was a different time. Then, he’d drunk deeply at the well of plenty. But he loved Jerry with everything that made him Ray Kowalski, and he’d grow old and die with her at his side.

  He reached the mortuary five minutes late. Doc Riley was at one table peering into the chest cavity of a cadaver, and Doc Paine was cutting a Y-shaped opening in Lisa Taverner from collar bone to pubis. There was no bleeding.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said to him.

  Sandra Paine had been a pathologist for eighteen months. During that time, she had picked up some bad habits. One of those bad habits was thinking that Kowalski danced to her tune, but he let it be. Life was too short to fall out with everyone who pissed him off.

  ‘It’s like the film set of “The Day After Tomorrow” out there. You’re lucky I was able to commandeer a sledge and a team of huskies otherwise you’d be standing there talking to yourself.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with working down here. The world could end, but we’d never know about it.’

  He watched as she used a pair of shears to crunch through the lateral sides of the ribs, and then lifted the complete sternum and ribs to reveal the heart and lungs in situ. Before placing the chest plate on a stainless steel tray – to be returned to the body once the post mortem has been completed – she removed some hanging gelatinous soft tissue from its posterior.

  While she went about the post mortem methodically she spoke into a microphone hanging from the ceiling on a retractable arm.

  ‘The pericardial sac has been opened. Blood from the inferior vena cava has been removed for analysis. There is no blood clot in the pulmonary artery. The inferior vena cava, pulmonary veins, aorta, pulmonary artery, and superior vena cava have all been severed to remove the heart, which is...’

  And so the post mortem continued until she had examined and eviscerated the lungs, and all the abdominal organs.
After weighing each one, she took tissue samples for later analysis. Then the stomach and intestinal contents were weighed and examined...

  ‘Her last meal appeared to be a cheese sandwich...’

  Moving round to the head, she made an incision from behind one ear, over the crown of the head, to a point behind the other ear.

  ‘Deep lacerations consistent with being struck with an iron bar – the murder weapon...

  Then she pulled the scalp away from the skull with the front flap going over the face, and the rear flap going over the back of the neck. She cut all round the top of the skull with a saw to create a cap...

  ‘The pieces of the skull will need to be fitted together once they’ve been examined. The iron bar caused extensive damage to both the skull and the brain, and was clearly the cause of death.’

  She lifted off the bone fragments to reveal the brain. After examining it in situ she severed the cranial nerves and spinal cord, and it made a sucking sound as she lifted it out of the skull.

  Standing up straight, Sandie pulled off her gloves to massage the small of her back, and said, ‘Okay, I think we already knew what the cause of death was, but that confirms it. Nothing looks out of the ordinary. Toxicology and the usual tissue tests will need to be carried out, but I can’t imagine that the cause of death will change.’

  ‘Thanks, Sandie.’

  He made his way back to a world in the throes of a second ice age.

  Chapter Eight

  He was thinking of Richards as he made his way to forensics. She was like a magnet for those damned photographers. Maybe she should have been a supermodel. She was certainly beautiful enough to strut her stuff on the catwalk. Everybody thought so, except him – he didn’t think of her in that way. She was nearly twenty-two, nearly a detective, and his partner, but all he wanted to do was protect her. He’d taken the place of her dead father in more ways than one.

  ‘Inspector Parish?’ the Chief said stepping out of the shadows. She’d obviously been waiting to ambush him.

  ‘Hello, Chief. I’ve seen more of you this morning than I have in the past month.’

  ‘You haven’t installed a video camera in my shower room, have you?’

  He smiled. ‘It’s an interesting idea.’

  ‘Apart from the fact that I’m old enough to be your grandmother.’

  ‘That would make me about three years old then.’

  ‘Flattery will take you a long way.’

  ‘Well, at the moment, it’s taking me up to forensics.’

  ‘The man you saw in my office...’

  ‘He’s in charge of P2, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, the Worshipful Grandmaster, but I wanted to assure you that I didn’t call him. He surprised me. I’ve made the decision I should have made a long time ago if I’d had the courage. The trouble is, P2 have a lot of secrets, and nobody simply leaves. If I’d decided to double-cross you a lot of people would need to die, and I couldn’t live with that.’

  ‘So, what did the Lord Chief Justice want?’

  ‘We spoke briefly about P2, but he wanted to discuss Catherine Cox...’

  ‘How... although I shouldn’t ask. Clearly P2 have resources we can only dream of.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about Catherine Cox?’

  ‘He knows she has Rowan Grieg’s files... Someone is following her.’

  ‘Is he going to kill her?’

  ‘Probably, yes. As soon as he finds out what she’s up to.’

  ‘We need to bring her in and hide her until this is over.’

  ‘Sooner rather than later, but if she’s coming to Dirty Nellie’s tonight, then they’ll follow her there.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ he said rubbing his chin. ‘Leave it with me, I’ll sort something out. You didn’t say anything about Nash?’

  ‘If I had, he would have known I knew about her. As far as Nash is concerned, she’s just another detective that has fallen foul of Ray Kowalski.’

  ‘Which reminds me what I came back to your office to tell you. Inspector Threadneedle has given me PC Laveque of her own free will, and did you know that Lola has passed Phase One of the NIE?’

  ‘Yes, I knew that, but how in hell did you manage to get Maureen to give you her prized asset?’

  ‘Let’s just say that I’ll have to watch my back for the next six months.’

  ‘I can imagine... But you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?’

  ‘She’ll be perfect for Kowalski.’

  ‘You’re crazy. He’ll eat her for breakfast.’

  ‘Trust me. I’ve worked with Lola, she’s more than a match for Kowalski.’

  ‘I’ll let you tell him.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning when she reports for duty up here. I’ll surprise him.’

  ‘You sure will.’

  She wandered off along the corridor shaking her head.

  He carried on up to forensics. He hadn’t doubted her, had he? At least she’d told him about Catherine. He felt responsible for Catherine, even though he shouldn’t. He’d given her the information and told her that she was on her own, but he didn’t really believe that. Where were they going to hide her? He knew he couldn’t hide her at his house, Angie would never agree to that again. And with the baby arriving within the week... No, that was definitely out of the question. Maybe Richards... Of course! Richards still had Chief Day’s house. It had been sitting empty all this time. When he’d challenged her about it, all she’d say was that she couldn’t bring herself to sell it, or move into it.

  ‘Don’t you just love the smell of napalm in the morning, Toadstone?’ he said when he reached Toadstone’s lab.

  Toadstone lifted his head out of the doorstop of a book he was reading and smiled. ‘Robert Duvall playing Lt Col Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, 1979. Although, you altered it slightly.’

  ‘No cheerleader this morning, I’m afraid. She’s gone to get the pool car.’

  ‘I’m glad Mary isn’t here. I wanted to talk to you about whether she’s said anything?’

  ‘She talks all the time. You know that.’

  ‘About me, I mean?’

  ‘Ah! Let me ask you this, Toadstone: What have you done to get the woman you love?’

  ‘You know what I’ve done.’

  ‘I know you’ve had some plastic surgery. And if I was being honest, which I usually am, it was money well spent. Richards also thinks they did a good job, by the way. But... does she know you did it for her? Does she know you’d go to hell and back to win her heart? Does she even know you’ve loved her since that very first day? Does... No, apart from some lame attempts at asking her out as the old Toadstone, she knows none of that, because although you now look like Captain America, inside you’re still the same old Paul Toadstone – the geek who has a doctorate in forensic science.’

  ‘You mean that I’ve got to change inside as well as outside?’

  ‘I knew there was a spark of intelligence in there somewhere. You were who you were because of the way you looked. You look different now, and therefore you have to be somebody different. To coin a phrase: Faint heart never won fair maiden.’

  ‘Of course, Lochinvar from Marmion by Sir Walter Scott...

  O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

  Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

  And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,

  He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.

  So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

  There never was knight like the young Lochinvar...’

  ‘As much as I like you quoting poetry at me in the mornings, Toadstone, it’s not really what I came up here for.’

  ‘You know they’ve found another body?’

  Parish’s eyes narrowed. ‘And you were going to tell me this when?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘Why aren’t you rushing out there?’

  ‘That’s what I have a deputy for.’

  ‘So, you’re goin
g to sit here reading while Di does all the hard work?’

  ‘It’s the new me.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve quite got the hang of being a fearless knight, Toadstone. When you say, “They’ve found...” Who are they?’

  ‘The same two sewage workers who found the last body.’

  ‘You know I don’t like coincidences.’

  ‘I know, but I think they’re simply on duty. They were called out to a blockage at Folly View in St Margarets about two hours ago.’

  ‘And the blockage was a body?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, Richards and I will make our way out there. So, what I really came up for was to find out whether you had anything for me?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’ve kept me hanging around all this time to tell me that?’

  Toadstone shrugged. ‘Have a nice trip, Sir.’

  He turned to go, but said over his shoulder, ‘I’m not sure I like the new you, Toadstone.’

  ***

  The weather was becoming a major factor in his investigation. If this carried on he’d be snowed in – everybody would.

  He’d phoned Jerry to make sure she was okay, and heard the kids in the background.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘They closed the schools.’

  ‘Again? Those teachers have more holidays than... Well, than themselves.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Nash is history.’

  ‘I liked her.’

  ‘I did, but then I didn’t. She became a pain in the neck as soon as we started doing some serious work.’ He didn’t tell her about Jed and his secret organisation. She didn’t need to know, and it was too crazy for words.

  ‘Who will you get now?’

  ‘I’m thinking of working on my own for a while.’

  ‘I don’t like that idea.’

  ‘Well, there’s nobody else in the team who’s available, and who I’d like to work with. We’ll just have to run some interviews again. Oh, I’ll be a bit late tonight.’