by Paul Charles
Her other dream was a weekly half-hour on Radio 4 where she would have a single guest per week for a discussion; not an interview. She would have a weekly topic of her choice to discuss and the point of her guest would be to give the discussion a balance. Her guest would not have to be someone she liked, as long as she respected them.
She reached Victoria Station and strolled through to her train with three and a half minutes to spare. No whistles blowing, no slamming of doors, no clouds of bountiful white smoke rising up from under the train giving you the impression you were about to make a journey through the heavens. No, none of that. That was all the romance of a long-forgotten time. Now the train merely lurched hesitantly into motion.
But - and here’s the big thing - as it did, as the train escaped the grand iron girders of Victoria Station, ann rea felt a release and a relief, a relief she was sure junkies felt with the release of their drug into their system, feeling the warm comforting buzz as it worked its way through the bloodways and byways of the body. Relief, sheer relief. ann rea couldn’t believe how good - no, not good but absolutely bloody wonderful - she felt. It was like taking a main drag on a long-lost habit, like smoking, or drinking, or pills, or sugar, or food, or shopping, or whatever evil you helplessly served. All of which brought her neatly to her third suspect: herself.
“And it’s yourself is it?” she could hear Kennedy’s soft lilting accent say. Oh God, why did he have to have such a pleasing voice and why, Jesus, Mother and Saint Joseph, did he have to have those sad green eyes? Eyes which gloriously drank each and every inch of her body when he thought she didn’t know he was looking. How could anyone not help but be drawn into their rich sadness?
But he wasn’t a sad man, quite the opposite in fact, at least with her. It was just that maybe he’d been somewhere, seen something which made him think, ‘shit - all this larking around thinking about why, where, who and what comes next and generally contemplating one’s navel is all a total waste of time and the only thing which is important is to get on with what little life we have left, and God knows isn’t it short enough?’
Poor Daniel Elliot, who had definitely arrived at the short end of life, arrived without his true love, now occupied ann rea’s mind as the train glided effortlessly through the countryside, green, green like Kennedy’s eyes, and past the backyards of people’s homes.
Kennedy had been the first one to make ann rea aware of the intrigue of backyard journeys and she was now absolutely enthralled by them. You could build a picture of the inhabitants” lifestyles from their yards, where their guard was always down. The front garden, where they were always on show, gave you the idea of what the owners aspired to; the backyards revealed, warts and all, the reality. That was another of Kennedy’s qualities for ann rea; what you saw was exactly what you got. She had to admit that she did like (as in a lot) what she saw. But why then was she having these doubts?
Or were they doubts? Were they not just healthy questions through which she could remove a suspect from her list? “I’ve got to get away from you”. Should that perhaps be “I’ve got to get away from my doubts”? Now, with the relief ann rea was feeling from leaving London, had she in fact got away from her doubts?
And that morning - as they both dealt with their doubts in different ways - an ever-growing number of miles apart, they were joined by some strange thread. ann rea making her way to Daniel Elliot to offer support and solace, and Kennedy walking over Primrose Hill en route to North Bridge House to find that his day was going to be consumed, not with thoughts of ann rea, but with the beginnings of an investigation.
An investigation into a murder, possibly the most complicated homicide Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy had ever been involved in.
Chapter Seven
“They’ve found another body up on the bridge, sir,” Irvine announced to Kennedy six seconds after the DI sat down at his American Arts and Craft oak desk and four seconds after the same DI had thought about his first cup of tea of the morning.
“What? The same place where Burton was found? Not that bleedin’ dog again?” Kennedy rolled out his questions with the ease of a parent introducing the family.
“No, sir. The other side of the road and just beyond the bridge, you know, just where the fountain is, sir. The one with the bronze statue of a washerwoman on top of it. In fact the body was found in the little nook underneath the statue.” Irvine then paused for a second before replying to Kennedy’s other question.
“And no, sir, not a dog this time either. No, the poor sod looks like he’s been bludgeoned to death. Very messy it is too: the scene looks like a butcher’s shop.”
The very thought made Kennedy’s stomach heave. He was glad that he never, as in ever, took breakfast. Vitamin C drink at home and a cup of tea on reaching the office, followed shortly thereafter by another cup of tea and then another cup of tea, only this time accompanied by Walker’s shortbread, at eleven (ish). But no real solid food until lunchtime. This time of the year though - late spring - Kennedy did indulge himself with some fruit, that is, whenever he remembered to stop by Marks and Sparks for it.
Soon, two very smartly dressed policemen (Kennedy: very dark blue three-piece suit, starched white shirt, blue and red old school tie, red socks and well shined classic black leather shoes; Irvine: Donegal three-piece tweed suit, checked shirt, Irvine tartan tie, and brown and cream brogues) were making their way for the second time in two days over Gloucester Gate Bridge to view a dead body.
In a way Kennedy was thankful that Burton had died at the hands, sorry, the teeth, of a dog. Otherwise the media would start to pound out the serial killing stories. Certainly it wouldn’t have been true, he thought, but then when did the truth ever get in the way of selling papers?
Irvine had, on his earlier visit, blocked off the bridge from the Parkway side and blocked the Regent’s Park exit at Gloucester Gate. This would mean a lot of pissed-off drivers in and around Camden Town: Parkway was becoming increasingly busy during the rush hours and the forced detours would cause havoc, but there was little to be done about it. Kennedy spied about two-dozen officers at the scene of the crime, ranging from the beat bobbies whose main responsibility was to keep the train-spotters at bay to the forensic team who would (literally) scour the scene with a fine tooth-comb. Kennedy had never been able to work out why anyone would want to comb their teeth in the first place. Also visible was a photographer and a pathologist. The pathologist was once again Dr Forsythe and she and Irvine both had smiles for each other.
“Strange,” Kennedy thought, “does this mean that the exuberant Staff Nurse Rose Butler is off the scene?” Kennedy would be sad if this were the case because as far as he could see the DS and the SN were made for each other. But then ann rea was always accusing him of being a romantic when he came up with such notions.
Forysthe let the photographer finish work before examining the body. First she sealed the lifeless hands and feet in polythene bags, retaining and protecting foreign soils on the shoes (green and white tennis shoes) and skin, or other telltale particles under the nails (dirty and long).
The thin (as in very thin) body was dressed in green slacks and dirty white T-shirt beneath an unbuttoned dark green shirt. The shirt and T-shirt were sprinkled with blood. The once bright red flow of life was now a baked rust which also mingled with his badly-dyed hair.
At the mouth of the washerwoman’s “cave” was a large stone and the body was lain on its side inside, behind this stone. The awkward positioning of the body made the doctor’s examination very difficult. The shallow cave also seemed to serve as a bit of a rubbish dump. The forensic team were bagging all the discarded contents, mostly last autumn’s leaves, sweet and ice-cream wrappers, and something which immediately caught Kennedy’s eye, a half-eaten apple. He carefully picked it up between his forefinger and thumb and sealed it in one of his stash of forensic bags.
“It looks like he was crawling into the cave to take refuge,” Kennedy said very quietly as the
surgically gloved fingers of his left hand stretched and contracted by his side, “But then he’d be on his stomach wouldn’t he? No. He was either dumped here or beaten here and the last thump must have knocked him over the stone into the cave. I wonder what the washerwoman could tell us if she hadn’t been frozen in bronze by the Drinking Fountain Association on the 3rd day of August 1878.”
Kennedy’s last sentence was spoken very slowly as he read the well worn inscription on the fountain’s plaque. He looked around, surveying the bridge which separated the SOC team from Camden Town. “You’d think, though, if he’d been beaten on the bridge someone would have witnessed it and come to his rescue, or at the very least phoned the police.”
“Come to his rescue? In the nineties, sir? I don’t think so, sir. I think most people would rather give away their firstborn than interfere in a fight,” Irvine offered.
“You’re probably right, but could you check last night’s log and just see if any calls were made?” Kennedy seemed distracted by something at the other side of the bridge, or maybe he wanted to escape the glare of the corpse’s one visible eye. He always had this weird feeling, when viewing an open-eyed corpse, that they were looking at you from the other side of life, beckoning you into their new, tranquil world. He wandered to the far end of the bridge, on the other side of the road, and hunkered down by a well weathered blue engraving fixed to the parapet, Kennedy guessed, in 1878; the year it was built.
He caught Irvine’s eye easily as the DS had been intrigued with Kennedy’s distraction. Kennedy motioned to him to cross the road. “What do you make of this then?”
Irvine was aghast at the sight of the engraving, which depicted a large wild dog, an Irish Wolfhound in fact, attacking a man by leaping, teeth bared, straight for his throat.
“Wow!” was all he could mutter.
“Wow! Just,” Kennedy laughed nervously, “let’s get this photographed and see what we can find out about the history of this bridge. Tim Flynn will be a good starting point. There’s not a lot around the streets of Camden Town that he’s not aware of, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was around when the bridge was built,” laughed Kennedy, this time less nervously but still slightly forced.
They returned to see how Dr Forsythe’s work was progressing.
Without any prompting, she said “I’d say he was beaten both by fists and a blunt instrument, possibly, but not definitely, a baseball bat. Positively not an iron bar though, the bruising is too spread out. I can’t tell you exactly when it happened, but from the colour of the bruising I would say that late last night would be a good guess. Of course I’ll give you a more accurate guesstimate when I’ve done the autopsy.”
“Would you be able to say if he had more than one assailant?” Kennedy inquired, happy to once more avert his eyes from the corpse.
“Hard to say, unless of course we assume the fist marks are from one attacker and the blunt object another,” Forsythe replied as she turned to face Kennedy, her long ponytail swinging in an arc.
“I’d say two,” Irvine offered.
“Yes, I’d agree. I don’t suppose you’d either attack a man with your fists and then start beating him about the head with a chunk of wood, or vice-versa for that matter, beat him with the wood, put the wood down and then beat him with your fists.” Kennedy was trying to recreate some scene in his mind’s eye. “I suppose, though, it is conceivable that our attacker could have started off with the wood, or baseball bat, which he might have dropped in the scuffle, and then had to continue with his fists as he would have been under attack himself at that point. Do you mind?” Kennedy motioned to the doctor that he wanted to examine the body.
“Yes, please go ahead, I’m done until we can get him down to the morgue,” Forsythe replied as she snapped off her rubber gloves.
Kennedy knelt down and over the stone and pulled at the corpse’s T-shirt until it came free from the waist of the trousers. He also checked the arms by sliding up the shirt. “Well, that kinda disproved the dropped baseball bat theory, no markings on the arms, and I just wanted to make sure he hadn’t received a good kicking about the body as well.”
As he leaned into the little cave he smelt the smells of dog-do, urine and death, not necessarily in that order. Death has a cold smell - a smell which never changes from corpse to corpse. Kennedy thought it strange how, when alive, our smell was as individual as our fingerprints, whereas in death we all smell exactly the same. He had the SOC people remove the body from the cave and lay it down on the pavement. The side of the face closest to the ground appeared to be more bruised, but this could have been the blood draining down to that part of the body. The eye on the bruised side was closed tight and it appeared as if the open eye was cocked up at the washerwoman, with her bronze “wooden” water pail. He looked as though he was beseeching her as to why, in his hour of need, she had not protected him. Kennedy saw that the washerwoman in turn appeared to be staring beyond the corpse, her eyes full of remorse, not daring to look upon that which had happened beneath her at this her fountain of sorrow.
Chapter Eight
Twenty-seven minutes later Irvine walked into Kennedy’s office and presented him with a large sealed plastic bag full of smaller sealed plastic bags, all bearing the contents from the pockets of the corpse found under Kennedy’s newly named Fountain of Sorrow.
Moneywise the deceased had two £20 notes, four £10 notes, three fivers, three pound coins, a fifty-pence piece, six twenty-pence pieces, a ten-pence piece, three five-pence pieces and four two-pence pieces; a lot of change, all things considered. There was also a small, credit-card size wallet with a Mastercard valid until July the following year. The name and initials on the credit card were J. B. Stone. Also found in the wallet was a BT phone card worth five pounds, seven business cards with the legend, “John Stone - Estate Agent - Camden Bus Estate Agents - 0171 387 4099”, a tube ticket outward from Camden Town (£2.50) and a National Lottery ticket.
Kennedy was bemused at the lottery ticket. When the lottery had started up he had been one of the millions keen to spend a few bob to be in with a chance of the big shout. Then on about the fourth week he was queuing at the Woolworth’s lottery desk and he spied, about three places up the queue, a woman and her kids, one barely a month old hanging from her hip, one, dummy-mouthed, hanging on to her leg for dear life, and a third, about four years old, crying and demanding sweets. All four were poorly dressed and dirty and Kennedy thought, “You know what: you need this chance, I don’t,” and he turned on his heels and left Woolworths swearing never to buy another ticket. London Met Police pay, even for a Detective Inspector, wasn’t exactly great but Kennedy was a man with simple needs - music, books, clothes, movies and theatre; no cars, no other vices - so he found it easy to get by “comfortably” as they say, and was happy to do so.
Another sealed plastic bag contained the remains (two fingers) of one of the three million bars of Kit Kat sold each and every day in Great Britain. But the other contents were by far the most interesting to Kennedy.
Two of the sealed bags contained older, partly soiled plastic bags, these containing what appeared at first sight to be cannabis in one and tabs of E in the other. Kennedy guessed, due to the small quantities of each, that the drugs were for personal use and not for dealing. And that was the entire contents of John B. Stone’s pockets - assuming of course, as Kennedy must at this stage, that the cards belonged to, and were not stolen by, the victim.
Kennedy summoned Irvine and WPC Anne Coles into his office.
“Okay, it’s not a lot to go on,” he began. “He’s an estate agent, travels by tube - sometimes? frequently? seldom? - from Camden Town, likes Kit Kat, smokes a bit of grass, likes to party and drop some E. He dyes his hair from black to blonde and gets himself beaten to death.”
Kennedy gestured at the plastic bags on his desk in front of him, then clasped his hands and studied this intriguing array of pocket contents. Irvine and Coles followed his gaze, not sure what exactly to look
for.
“Let’s get on to the credit card company and find out Stone’s address, and maybe a copy of his last statement or three so that we can at least build up a picture of his recent shopping trail,” Kennedy ordered Coles, “And could you, DS Irvine, visit Dr Forysthe and attend the autopsy. I’ve got a weird feeling about this one. It might just be the memory of Flute Burton yesterday with his throat torn away and then this morning Mr Stone beaten up and left to die on the other side of the road.”
“Not to mention the engraving,” Irvine added and then explained to the WPC about Kennedy’s gruesome discovery on the end of the bridge.
Kennedy pondered as he wrote down the telephone number of Camden Bus Estate Agents. He wanted to find out their address, for he intended to visit them himself and begin his inquiry into the death of John B. Stone.
Chapter Nine
They say that in the seconds before you die your entire life flashes before you. But how on this earth would they or anyone know?
Nevertheless, in John B. Stone’s mind’s eye he would see the following flash past in the final seconds. Being out in the cold hallway every Sunday afternoon. That was a strange thing: in his memory the hall was always cold, even in the summer. This may have been due to the fact that the hallway was very large - but even this perception could be due to a child-size view - and was unfurnished and uncarpeted, with black and white chessboard tiles.
On those Sunday afternoons his parents made brutish noises in the living room in front of a blaring television, but he could still hear them.
