Blood Never Dies

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘I like things nice,’ Ms Green had said in response to Connolly’s first recoiling stare. There was a burnt herbal smell, too, that made Connolly suspicious; but after a moment she decided on probabilities that it was joss sticks, not ganja. She would have betted that Lauren Green was a bath-with-scented-candles type, too, had she but possessed a bath.

  ‘What do you do, so?’ Connolly asked, opening her notebook. The morning light filtering through plants and coloured scarves made everything appear to move gently like seaweed. She would have to make notes by feel.

  ‘I work at Sarges in Poland Street – you know, in Soho?’

  Lauren Green was youngish, in her twenties, Connolly guessed, and though plain in the face had a reasonable body. ‘Stripper?’ she enquired automatically.

  ‘I’m a waitress,’ Lauren replied, with faint affront. ‘Just because it’s in Soho . . . The pay’s better than round here.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean anything,’ Connolly said. ‘I just thought you’d a grand figure.’

  She was instantly placated. ‘Oh. Well, dashing around serving keeps you fit.’

  ‘Tell me about this morning. What time’d you get home?’

  ‘Well, after we closed and cleared up, I stopped off for breakfast with one of the others – Jez, he’s bar staff as well – he’s gay, he’s my best mate. He’s a real laugh. We often have breakfast together. Well, I don’t like to cook here, because the smells get into everything, and I like things nice. So it must have been about half seven when I got home. And coming up the stairs I could hear the music. But in here it was the worst because it must have been right above me.’

  ‘Had you had that trouble before?’

  ‘No, never. Not with this bloke. The one before, Surash, he used to play loud music a lot, but not generally in the morning, and we were mates, so he was good about turning it down if I was trying to sleep. But this new one, well, I don’t really know him. But I’ve never heard a peep from him, only footsteps going across the floor sometimes, you can’t help that in a flat, and now and then a sort of murmur like it might be a telly, but not on loud. Nothing I couldn’t sleep through. I didn’t even know he had any music till this morning, and it was ridiculous, thump thump thump right through the ceiling. So I went up and knocked to ask him to turn it down, but there was no answer. I reckoned he couldn’t hear me through the noise, or he’d fallen asleep, God knows how. I knocked a lot, then I came back here and banged on the ceiling, but nothing. I was at my wits’ end, so I rang the landlord. Well, I didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘Mr Botev?’ She nodded. ‘You rang him direct? Isn’t there a letting agent?’

  ‘Nah, he wouldn’t pay an agent. Sooner keep the money himself. Not that he likes being disturbed, he lets you know that all right, but he gives you his number when you first come, in case of trouble. Like I had water through my ceiling once when Surash left the bath running and went out. Well, he come and turned the taps off, but it was months before I could get him to fix the ceiling. I had this big bald patch and all brown round the edges. I was ringing him every day in the end, so he got a decorator in just to keep me quiet, I reckon. Anyway – what was I saying?’

  Connolly could see she was becoming dazed with fatigue. ‘You rang him about the music upstairs.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Well, he didn’t want to come – didn’t think it was an emergency. It was an emergency to me all right. I had to sleep. So I said if he didn’t come I’d call the police. That got him out. I heard him coming up the stairs and went to the door, and he give me a filthy look as he went past, and told me what he thought of me, but I can take that. Anyway, he lets himself in and I hear the music go off, so I goes in and shuts me door to get ready for bed. And that’s all I know till the police come and all this starts off. So he topped himself, did he?’

  ‘It looks that way,’ Connolly said. ‘You say you didn’t know him very well?’

  ‘Not at all, really. Though Mish downstairs said he was well fit. He’s only been here a few months. I think I’ve only seen him once, when he was coming in the same time as I got home. He held the door for me – the street door – and I followed him up the stairs, and I thought “nice bum”. He didn’t say anything to me, though. I didn’t even know his name.’

  ‘Apparently it was Robin Williams. Does that mean anything to you?’

  ‘No–o. Or – wait! Oh, no, I’m thinking of – there’s a film star called Robin Williams, in’t there?’

  ‘It isn’t him,’ Connolly said drily. ‘Did he ever have visitors, that you know of?’

  ‘No, but I work most evenings. I never heard anyone up there, or saw anyone. Like I said, I’ve only ever seen him the once.’

  And she said it with regret. A well fit, single man living upstairs from you was a resource not to be wasted. Connolly felt she could follow Lauren’s thought processes perfectly, and was proved right when after a pause, she went on, ‘He was probably gay, though. The really buff ones always are.’

  Freddie Cameron, the forensic pathologist, for whom the word dapper might have been coined, looked just a trifle less so than usual, though Slider could not immediately put his finger on the area of neglect. In deference to the weather, he was wearing a suit of biscuit-coloured linen, but not even a heatwave could make him neglect the jacket or fall short in the bow-tie area. But there was something slightly frazzled about him, all the same.

  ‘Everything all right, Freddie?’ Slider asked, cutting to the chase.

  Cameron made a moue. ‘We’ve got the grandchildren,’ he said, in the sort of way a person might say they had termites. ‘They’ve just got old enough to be dumped on us while Stephen and Louisa go on holiday.’

  ‘Well – that’s nice, isn’t it?’ Slider said hesitantly.

  Cameron rolled his eyes slightly. ‘Of course, we adore little Clemmie and Jasper. It’s not their fault they haven’t been brought up properly. I don’t understand it,’ he added plaintively. ‘We were always quite strict with our two – table manners, please and thank you, don’t interrupt, don’t touch without asking, that sort of thing. So why didn’t they pass it on to their own?’

  ‘Reaction,’ Slider said. ‘The pendulum will swing back one day.’

  ‘Not soon enough to save us,’ Freddie mourned. He smoothed back his hair, then felt for his bow tie, something Slider had never seen him do before. Hitherto Freddie had always known he was perfectly turned out, even on a Monday morning. ‘I must say I didn’t cover myself with glory this morning,’ he confessed. ‘In the middle of chaos in the kitchen, Martha had a fit of the nobles and said “You get off to work, I can manage.” And I’m ashamed to say I embraced my inner coward and made a run for the door.’

  ‘I once made a run for a rabbit,’ Slider reflected. ‘When the kids were small.’

  ‘You’ll get yours, buster,’ Cameron said, narrowing his eyes. ‘The time will come . . .’

  ‘Not too soon, I hope,’ Slider said. ‘Mine aren’t old enough to mate yet.’

  ‘Don’t bank on it. Anyway, who have we got here?’

  ‘The landlord says his name is Robin Williams.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Freddie. He put on his glasses and advanced to the bathside and studied the body. ‘Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? Unusual method.’

  ‘That’s what we thought. Which was partly why we thought it might be murder.’

  ‘On the other hand, it has its advantages, if you get it right. Rather a peaceful death.’

  ‘Yes, we noticed there was no splashing. Suggested he didn’t struggle, which was a point for suicide and against murder.’

  ‘Also it was a vein, not an artery, which takes time – time enough for him to fight back or struggle out of the bath if it was murder,’ Freddie said. He leaned over and felt the face. ‘Rigor just beginning here. Of course, he’s been lying in cold water, which will have delayed the onset.’

  ‘So when does that put it?’ Slider asked.

&nb
sp; ‘Oh, say, six to twelve hours, very roughly. Can’t be exact, as you know, but probably you’re looking at an evening bath rather than a morning one.’ He rolled back the eyelids. ‘Ah, now, you see – pupils much dilated. I think our friend here took some kind of narcotic before jumping in. That might explain the lack of struggle, if it were murder – send him to sleep and then dispatch him. Very efficient.’

  ‘Unfortunately, that also fits in with suicide,’ Slider said. ‘Suicides are notorious for the belt-and-braces approach. Will you be able to tell what he took, given that most of his blood is now mingled with twenty gallons of bath water?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll work something out,’ Cameron said airily. ‘Based on the total volume, calculations can be made. There may be traces in the tissue or residue in the stomach, depending on how quickly he died. The pathology will be clear, anyway. If it was a large dose, there would be oedema in the brain cells, the heart sac, congestion in the lungs. Leave it to the experts, old thing, and don’t worry your little head about it.’

  ‘Right. I’ll go away and worry about something else.’

  The forensic team – what Slider’s firm called the circus – were in, like vengeful ghosts in white coveralls, masks, mob caps and slippers, and the photographer with both still and video cameras. Bob Bailey, the Crime Scene Manager, tutting over Botev’s unfettered presence before the shout, had already taken the fingerprints and a buccal swab from the indignant owner before he was hauled off to the station to make his statement. ‘God knows what he’s touched,’ Bailey grumbled.

  The first thing they discovered was that the tidiness was not just skin deep. In the main room the wardrobe contained some jeans and chinos, a pair of leather trousers, a couple of jackets, the drawers a few T-shirts and underwear. There was some food in the fridge: cheese, bread, a vacuum pack of four apples, half a lemon, several cans of beer, some bottles of mineral water, a bottle of vodka, and some small cans of tonic. Otherwise, there were no signs of life at all. The cutlery and crockery had all been washed and put away. The kitchen surfaces were clean, and the bin under the sink was empty, with a clean bin-liner in it.

  What was even more suspicious was that there were no personal papers anywhere, and nothing by which to identify the occupant: no wallet, no credit cards or driving licence, and no mobile phone. Yet there was a watch in one of the drawers in the small two-drawer cabinet at the end of the sofa that presumably served as bedside cabinet. It was quite a nice watch – not super-expensive, but a Tissot Chronograph probably worth about two-fifty, which suggested that the absence of the wallet was not simple robbery. It suggested, au contraire, that the murderer – if it was murder – had gone to some trouble to remove all traces of who the victim was; which further suggested that they would have taken care to leave no trace of themselves.

  Bob Bailey, dancing on Slider’s heart, said cheerfully, ‘Maybe it was suicide after all. Just a very neat and tidy bloke.’

  ‘But why would he want to conceal his identity?’

  ‘To protect the people he’s leaving behind.’

  ‘Thanks. You’re a great help.’

  ‘I only said “maybe”.’

  When one of Cameron’s assistants appeared just then to say the doc had the body out of the bath and would he like to come, Slider was glad of the distraction.

  Lying on the plastic sheet, dripping raspberry syrup like a melting ice-cream treat, the pale body looked even more unnatural. In reality, the corpse was no more a human being than a plastic mannequin in an M&S window was. But unlike the mannequin it once had been. Death was so mysterious, Slider thought, not for the first time. The difference between a human being and a dead body was so profound, it always amazed him that the thing that made the difference, the vital spark, could disappear so instantaneously and completely. You’d think it would at least leave an afterglow of some sort that would fade gradually like the sunset from the sky. But it didn’t. Tick – alive; tock – dead. That was all there was to it. And no going back.

  Robin Williams had been young, healthy, with all his life before him. Now he just didn’t exist any more. This object that was left was merely rubbish, something to be disposed of, no good for anything at all; but while it had held that animating spark it had been a thing of beauty, purpose and almost limitless potential. Slider looked at the fit and nicely-muscled frame over which Freddie Cameron was poised, and felt unhappily moved by the awful waste.

  Did he kill himself, driven by some huge reversal in his life to come to this meagre flat and end it? And if so, why had he gone to such lengths to conceal his identity? Why should it matter to him after he was dead? But then young suicides, perversely, often did not really believe in their own deaths. They planned them like a piece of theatre with the inchoate idea in the back of the mind that they would be there to see the results, the effect it would have on people. Suicide was the ultimate narcissism. Those driven to it by fear or despair could be just as efficient, even ruthless in carrying out the execution, but it was seldom stylish, and rarely involved concealing their identity – they just didn’t care any longer.

  But an accumulation of factors was telling him this was not suicide. And that was an even bigger waste. ‘You’ve got something for me?’ he asked hopefully. ‘I keep veering between suicide and murder like a compass needle in a magnet shop.’

  Cameron looked up at Slider over the top of his half glasses. ‘As it happens, I think I may have. If you look at the musculature of his arms, you’ll see they’re slightly different from each other. It doesn’t show up on women much, or on bods who work out, but for ordinary folk like thee and me, who have to use brute force occasionally in the course of an average life, the dominant arm develops slightly larger muscles.’

  ‘Handedness,’ Slider said, in a light-bulb moment.

  ‘Just so. Of course, you used to be able to tell from the hand itself, in the dear dead days of writing with pens, but no one these days has a writer’s bump on the middle finger. But chappie here’s not very muscular – more your aesthetic type. And I can see he has slightly better biceps on his left arm than on his right. But the cut was to the left jugular, which would not be natural to a left-hander.’

  ‘But the way he was lying in the bath, with his left side to the wall, would make it a natural cut for a right-handed murderer leaning over him.’

  ‘Just so. If you can prove that he was left-handed, you’re away.’

  Slider was already looking in the bathroom cabinet. He emerged triumphantly holding – but carefully with a gloved finger on the head and the tail – an electric razor, a black Phillips Phillishave. ‘Treasure trove,’ he said. ‘I was hoping for shaving tackle but an electric is even better. It’ll give a whole set of prints, thumb at the side of the head, forefinger in the middle at the back, and three fingers and a palm round the grip. If they’re left-hand prints rather than right-hand . . .’

  ‘You’ll have your proof,’ said Cameron.

  Slider stuck his head out of the bathroom door and yelled for Bob Bailey and the portable fingerprinting kit.

  TWO

  Good Morning Vat Man

  The house had three storeys plus a semi-basement, and there were two flats to each of the middle floors. Botev had given the names of his other occupants, and Slider discovered why the address had seemed familiar when he was called out: he knew the basement tenants. Mish and Tash – for some reason their names always made him think of an Edwardian music hall conjurer’s act – were prostitutes and had come to police attention on a couple of occasions, though they were generally no trouble. Slider believed in getting working girls on the police side – they could be very useful sources of information – so he had a good relationship with Mish. Tash was a recent addition and he didn’t know her well.

  He decided to interview them himself before returning to the station, and found them awake and agog – Michelle perhaps a little more gog than Natasha, but then she was the brighter of the two, and she knew Slider. Tash was still rather w
ary, and lurked behind her friend’s shoulder like something waiting to be tripped over.

  Mish greeted him eagerly – not, he supposed, for his personal charms but for what he might tell them about what was going on – and got the coffee on.

  ‘I know you don’t like instant,’ she said kindly, ‘but I got some o’ them sashits of the real stuff. I’ll do them.’

  They were both bed-haired and smudge-eyed, wearing large towelling bathrobes, one embroidered ‘Sheraton Heathrow’ and the other ‘Crowne Plaza Paris’.

  ‘It’s this businessman, one of my regulars,’ Tash explained sheepishly. ‘Stays in all the best places. He always brings us something, dun’t he, Mish?’

  ‘We haven’t had to buy shampoo or conditioner for years,’ Mish agreed.

  ‘That’s where we got the coffee,’ Tash said. ‘But he eats the chocklit mints,’ she added sadly.

  ‘So what’s going on upstairs?’ Mish asked. ‘We see Milan go in like a madman this morning, and Nicky from upstairs comes out and says he’s giving Lauren what-for on the stairs, and the next thing you lot start arriving. Then it’s the forensics, and someone said it was him on the top floor. Well, we couldn’t sleep now if we tried, could we Tash?’

  ‘I could, I’m dead on me feet,’ Tash said. ‘Has something happened to him, then, the top floor?’

  It was a pretty sharp deduction, Slider had to give her.