EQMM, December 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Someone playing games?"

  Moody didn't dignify that with an answer.

  A pinkish strip of flesh ran across the back of both her hands; it felt slightly tacky. “I think her hands were taped,” I said.

  "To keep her from struggling, no doubt."

  With a gloved hand, Moody lifted a black cane from the floor. “I suppose she needed this for walking.” On one end it had a silver duck head and on the other, a silver tip that appeared to be threaded on the outside. Moody pulled the tip off. “It's hollow. Why would someone want a hollow cane?"

  "To transport contraband—drugs, perhaps?” I said. “Or explosives."

  Moody grimaced.

  The Eye makes a complete circuit in thirty minutes. By the time Moody and I stood up, we were high above the Thames, Banqueting House, and Westminster. From this position we could see clearly into the capsule immediately ahead of us and across the top of the one following us. Reflections off low clouds and haze kept me from seeing inside that one, but I knew that all the pods following us were empty.

  The sturdy glass capsules are designed for maximum visibility. Unlike the chairs on a Ferris wheel, which stay level in response to gravity, they turn within circular mounting rings fixed to the outside of the main rim, affording a 360-degree view. Top to bottom, all but a rectangular section above and the floor itself are transparent. It occurred to me that the opaque floor prevented “up-skirting” of women by occupants of other capsules.

  "Forget about the view, and think about which capsules we can see into. People who might have seen something going on in here—which capsules could they have been in?” Moody walked slowly around the perimeter of our airborne bubble.

  "It's tricky,” I said. “It depends on what's reflecting what.” We had reached the apex of the ride, 135 meters high. At this point we should have been able to see into the neighboring capsule on each side, but rays from the setting sun, slipping through the city haze, bounced blindingly off one and made the other appear silhouetted against an orange glow. A few seconds later, I could again see clearly the whole interior of the capsule ahead of us.

  "You can also see into the capsules on the far side, depending on when you look,” Moody said as we began our descent.

  I moved over and stood beside him to see where he was pointing.

  "The cables and struts are in the way some of the time, but it keeps changing. So if you were watching a specific capsule over there, sometimes you could see it, sometimes you couldn't."

  "But people aren't generally watching other capsules, are they?” I said. “They're here for the view."

  "Right."

  "That attendant said, ‘Slow day.’ I didn't know it was ever so slow they had people riding around in pods by themselves."

  "It's April; not many tourists yet. And it's been a hazy, foggy day."

  "It was raining this morning,” I said.

  "And it's Thursday—not a busy day, I shouldn't think."

  "Do you suppose our man—if it was a man—picked today because he knew it would be a slow day?"

  "Likely, I'd say. This whole thing was carefully planned."

  "He was taking a terrible chance, though. Must have been a nutter to think he could get away with it."

  "At the moment, he appears to be doing just that.” Moody jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and rocked back on his heels. He nodded toward a red structure mounted on a platform past which we were about to descend. A couple of cameras were pointed straight at us.

  "Are you telling me they've got photos?"

  An automatic announcement poured through a speaker mounted in the housing of one of the two metal leveling bands that belted our capsule: Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like a photo of yourself on the London Eye, please step to either end of the capsule. There are cameras positioned on both sides of the wheel. You may purchase your photo in the gift shop at the end of your flight.

  "Bloody hell! We can get the gift shop to show us their pictures of capsule eighteen!"

  "Not only that,” I said. “They'll have photos of everybody in all the capsules."

  As we approached the bottom, the empty capsule ahead of us swung open and a black-jacketed attendant walked in. He swished a black disc on a long pole—obviously a metal detector—high and low all round the interior.

  Moody grabbed the detector-wielding attendant as soon as our door opened. “Do you chaps do that to every capsule, every time around?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then why was this metal cane left lying on the floor?"

  "Once they'd seen the body, sir, they probably didn't think they should move anything."

  We found the attendant who had stood at the door earlier, seeing that passengers got off safely. She told us that she had been the first to see the body. “When the passenger didn't get up, I said to myself, ‘What's wrong?’ and I said to her, ‘Time to leave, madam,’ and when she didn't move—because she was dead, of course—I walked in and by that time the security man with the metal detector was behind me. He took one look at her and said, ‘Oh my God!’ and ran out and left me there with her all by myself."

  "Then what?” I asked.

  She was a pretty girl, probably no more than seventeen, and pale in the face from having delivered that whole speech on one lungful of air. “I heard the security man outside yelling, ‘We need help!’ and ‘Stop the wheel!’ Then he came back in and knelt down beside the poor woman and more people ran in behind him and it was getting pretty crowded so I left."

  The constable and the attendant that Moody had left in charge of names and envelopes were waiting for us on the exit ramp as the SOCO team clattered up the entrance ramp and into capsule 18. “We have one woman who says she remembers looking into that capsule, sir. Only one, the constable reported."

  He introduced us to Pauline Newsome, a large, owlish woman I guessed to be in her mid forties. “There was a big group of Japanese tourists in the capsule below it—number seventeen, they told me; that's how I know which one you're referring to."

  "Tell us everything you can remember."

  "There was one woman in the capsule below the Japanese group, then the Japanese group, then one woman in the next one above it. That's the one the poor woman ... that was number eighteen."

  "What was she doing?"

  "Just sitting there. On the bench."

  "Did you see her move at all?"

  "No, I don't think so. She was wearing a dark jacket and I think she had grey hair. She was just sitting quietly on the Thames end of the bench."

  The attendant interrupted her. “The Japanese party, sir. I remember them. They all wanted to go in the same capsule, even though I told them they could spread out into another one if they wanted to. There was nobody else in line, so it would have been all right."

  "But there was someone else in line, wasn't there?” Moody said. “The woman who's now dead."

  "She may have been behind them at the time, or she may have come up a bit later. I don't remember."

  It took us more than an hour to straighten out the envelopes, photos, names, and so on. The photos proved a disappointment, with no one at all visible in capsule 18. As evening settled in, one of the SOCOs bustled into the little office we had taken over. He handed Moody a United States passport. “Looks like our killer forgot to check under the victim's blouse. She was wearing one of those safety pouches they make for passports and cash."

  Moody opened the passport and said to me, “Derek, call Heathrow Airport Immigration and find out what they know about Helen Behringer from Stamford, Connecticut."

  Immigration collects local address information from tourists before they leave the airport. They told me that Helen Behringer was staying at the Strand Palace Hotel, which, conveniently for us, was a short hop from the Waterloo Bridge.

  * * * *

  At the reception desk in the Strand Palace we learned that Ms. Behringer's niece, a Ms. Diane Coles, had already gone to the police station to report her aunt mi
ssing.

  "Do you know which station?” I asked. “Did she take a taxi or is she walking?"

  "We advised her to go to the Charing Cross station. She left with a man who had apparently called for her. He's not one of our guests, but I got the impression that they knew each other well.” The man behind the reception desk shifted a stack of papers nervously. “I say, Miss Behringer hasn't come to any harm, has she?"

  "I'm afraid she has.” Moody drew out his mobile and rang Charing Cross. I heard him tell them to hold Ms. Coles and her companion until we got there.

  En route, Moody looked over at me and said, “Are we on our way to break bad news to relatives or to interview suspects?"

  "Huh? Oh, I see.” I thought about it for a minute. “Could be either. Or both."

  "Exactly. So do we talk to them together or separately? If we're informing relatives of the death of an aunt, the proper thing is to tell them together, so they have each other for support.” Moody swung the car around Aldwych Circle to reverse our direction down the Strand. “If we are about to meet our killer, then ‘divide and conquer’ is much the better plan."

  In interviewing suspects, Moody and I make a terrific team, taking advantage of the disconnect between our perceived and actual personas. We never do the “good cop-bad cop” thing because every crook in the world is on to that one. We're much more subtle than that.

  Moody's long somber face leads people to think he's a drudge—a bean-counting rule-follower. The sort of cop who'll remember everything that's said, word for word, but who couldn't tell a nun from a junkie if one of them was a man with a needle in his arm. Actually, Neville Moody is an astute judge of human nature.

  Now me, on the other hand, people peg me for a bit of a cock-up and I suppose I must look the part, because more than once I've been offered a beer in exchange for letting something slip my mind. In reality, I'm as reliable as they come.

  Moody and I conferred as we drove, and by the time we parked at Charing Cross we had a plan.

  * * * *

  Ms. Diane Coles's platinum-blond hair was about an inch long all over her head and she looked about forty. She introduced us to her brother, Ted Behringer, a big, athletic-looking bloke who owned and operated a gym near Kensington High Street.

  "Could you tell us who Ms. Behringer's next of kin would be?” Moody asked.

  Ms. Coles's hand went to her throat. Mr. Behringer grabbed her elbow. “She's ... she's not ... Well, Ted and I are her next of kin, I suppose,” she answered in an American accent. “She has no children. She never married. Our father and she were brother and sister but he died some fifteen years ago."

  Upon hearing that her aunt was indeed dead, Ms. Coles collapsed into the chair offered by the desk sergeant, and Ted Behringer knelt beside her, holding her head against his shoulder. She cried, and he mumbled things I couldn't quite catch.

  After a decent interval, Moody asked Diane Coles to go with him to the hospital morgue where we'd been told they'd taken the body, to make a formal identification. I took Ted Behringer into an empty room down the hall.

  Behringer had the pigeon-toed walk of an athlete. He wore black cross-trainers, dark trousers, and a light-tan thigh-length jacket with a black lining. Black muscle shirt underneath. Thick neck. The sort of man who gets on my nerves.

  He grabbed a chair, hiked his trouser legs up, sat down, and plopped one ankle on the opposite knee. “My aunt and my sister are with a group visiting from the U.S.—Red Hatters, they call them. It's my aunt's group, actually, a bunch of older women. Diane is here simply as a companion for my aunt. Aunt Helen—Ms. Behringer—was keen to get Diane away from home for a bit because she's been going through a messy divorce."

  "Did Ms. Behringer need a companion? Did she, for instance, have trouble getting around?” I asked.

  There was a slight pause before he answered, with a sort of hybrid American/British accent. “Yes, she used a cane and she had to plan her activities in London so as to avoid too much walking."

  "What were her plans for today?"

  "I thought she was planning to do Buckingham Palace with the rest of the group, but she changed her mind. I'd made the arrangements for all of them, and met them outside the palace at about three or half-past. Something like that. They all gave me their money and I bought their tickets for them. We were given a three forty-five entry time for the Queen's Gallery."

  "So you took off the whole day from work, did you?"

  "When you own the place, you can do that,” he said, with a haughty sniff that I found incredibly irritating.

  "Where did you think Ms. Behringer was? Did you discuss it with the others?"

  "Diane is sharing a room with her. She told me that Aunt Helen wasn't feeling in top form this morning and had decided against the palace. Thought she might rest in the room for a while and then do a bit of shopping."

  "Did everyone else go on the palace tour?"

  "I bought sixteen tickets. I think that would be everyone. You'll have to check with Diane to make sure, but I believe she said there were fifteen in the group not counting Aunt Helen. I made sixteen."

  "How did they all get from the hotel to the palace?"

  "Taxis. Four taxis, I think."

  "Did you go in one of the taxis yourself?"

  "Drove my own car and met them there."

  * * * *

  By the time DI Moody and Diane Coles came back to the station, it was after nine p.m. We let her and Behringer go and we put in a call to the Strand Palace Hotel asking them to advise all of Ms. Behringer's fellow travelers that we needed to interview them and we'd be there early the following morning.

  Moody and I compared notes but found no major discrepancies between the two siblings’ stories.

  "But she's lying,” Moody told me. “She knows a lot more than she told me, and she's not sorry the old girl's dead."

  "Behringer's lying too,” I said. I was sure of it.

  * * * *

  It took most of the morning to interview, separately, each of the fourteen women who were allegedly at Buckingham Palace while Helen Behringer was getting herself murdered on the other side of the Thames. Numerous ticket stubs for the London Eye had told us for certain that the murder had occurred between 16:17 and 16:47. The tour of the palace had been from 15:45 until 17:15, give or take a few minutes on either end. All of the women recalled seeing both Ted Behringer and Diane Coles at various times during the tour, but they had not stayed together as a group.

  "I saw Diane in the ladies’ room at the Queen's Gallery. That was before we went to the Royal Mews."

  "I remember Ted handing us all our tickets before we went in."

  "Ted helped me into a taxi when we left, but he and Diane drove off in another car. They didn't go back to the hotel with us."

  Those were typical comments.

  The autopsy revealed that Helen Behringer had morphine in her system when she died. Enough morphine to have dulled her senses but not enough to have killed her. Death was due, as we already suspected, to asphyxiation by ligature strangulation.

  "I don't get it,” I told Moody. “If our killer had morphine, why not give the old girl a big dose instead of a small one? Kill her nice and easy and avoid all that hassle?"

  "Why indeed?"

  * * * *

  It was early afternoon when we got a call from a constable in the incident room back at the station informing us that he'd found another woman who remembered capsule 18. We got her address, near Notting Hill Gate, and dashed over. Her name was Elizabeth Gaskins and she was at home alone.

  "My sister-in-law and I took the kids—her one and my two—on the Eye yesterday because it was my son's birthday and we'd let them all stay out of school, for a family lark, you know. I suppose we shouldn't have, but families have so little time together, don't they?"

  Moody and I sat in the clean but cramped sitting room of her flat while she made our tea. Photographs on the shelves told me that there was a Mr. Gaskins and that their two childr
en were of different genders.

  "I saved our ticket stubs.” Mrs. Gaskins set down the tea tray and handed three stubs to Moody.

  He looked at them and said, “16:05. That would be when you first got on. So if the ride is thirty minutes, you would have been on the Eye until about ... 16:35. Yes, that would have overlapped the time when Ms. Behringer was on it."

  "But I didn't know anything about a murder until I got the call from the police. How did you get my name, by the way?"

  "You bought the tickets with a credit card."

  "Oh yes.” Elizabeth Gaskins sipped her tea slowly, as if she was pondering the ease with which she could be identified by the authorities. “But we were ahead of her, you see, so by the time her capsule was opened and they found her, we were probably gone."

  "Tell us what you remember."

  "Well, I was looking through those cables and poles and things, so I couldn't see any of the capsules on that side for very long, but I remember the capsule full of Asian people. That struck me as odd, because the loads were so different; some of the capsules were completely empty and we five were the only ones in ours. But there must have been twenty people in that one."

  "What about adjacent capsules?” Moody prodded her.

  "The one below them, I think, had two people in it. They were sitting on the bench. A man and a woman, I believe, but it could have been two women—or two men, I suppose. No, it couldn't have been two men because men would never sit that close together. Not in public, at any rate.” She blushed a little. “And in the capsule above the Asian group, there was one woman."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Positive. Because I wondered why a woman—she looked fairly elderly, kind of hunch-shouldered—would go on a thing like that by herself."

  "You're positive there was no one else in the capsule with her?"

  "Absolutely. I took a good look, at least a couple of times, because I just wondered about her, you know?"

  Since the Gaskins's flat was near the Kensington address of Ted Behringer's gym, we decided to pay him a quick visit. We entered the gym from a side door adjacent to a parking lot where we had to navigate around a long row of bicycles chained in such a way as to almost completely block the door. Inside, the most striking thing about Behringer's Gym was what we didn't see: much equipment. What I saw plenty of was empty space—pressure marks on the green carpet where equipment had once been. Ted stood up and swiped a towel across the seat of a leg press when he saw us coming.