by Peter Corris
“I don’t see any reporters or camera crews, do you, Hardy?”
It was an olive branch of a sort; we’d hardly spoken since the police station. Loomis had concentrated on making efficient arrangements, and I’d worked on steeling myself for something nasty. “Looks clear to me,” I said. “This shouldn’t take long. I’m told it’s only fifteen metres deep.”
Loomis smiled. “Is that all? Christ, look at the muck in the water.”
I guided the launch out to what Ray had called ‘the dead set middle’. The water was being chopped up by a light breeze, and it was cold on the deck. Loomis had brought along a heavy police overcoat; I was still in my shirt and jacket; unless we got it over with quickly I was going to be shivering. “Here. And I think what you’re looking for is over in that direction.”
The frogmen nodded, pulled down their masks and went over the side. One of the constables handed down the tool kit.
“Rather them than me,” Loomis said.
I nodded. “My mate needed a half-hour shower afterwards. And some brandy. Wouldn’t have anything with you, inspector?”
Loomis didn’t reply. A ferry passed us, and a few curious passengers watched our boat as it tossed lightly in the wake. One of them flicked a cigarette butt into the water and Loomis glared. “I’d like to make him jump in and fish it out. To answer your question, there’s bound to be a drop of something aboard for medicinal reasons. If we need it, We’ll get it.”
A couple of sailing boats gave us a wide berth, the way cars keep clear of police cars on the road, and a rubber boat with a powerful outboard skipped past on the north side. There was a constant hum of traffic noise, road and rail, from the bridge. After what seemed like an hour but was probably only half that, one of the frogmen surfaced and signalled. The launch edged towards him and the cops ran a line over the side. The frogman went under again and we waited. The line quivered and the sergeant pressed a button on the electric winch. The line tightened and came in slowly and steadily. The constables moved to the side, with heavy gloves on their hands and hooks and lengths of plastic rope at the ready.
The water broke and a dripping, grey-green package came to the surface. It was about six feet long, sealed at both ends. A length of chain hung from one end, free of the line which the frogmen had wound around it. The policemen lifted the bundle over the side and laid it on the deck. Water and a greeny-black goo flowed from inside it. I expected a smell of some kind but there wasn’t any. Loomis stepped back, but not quickly enough to avoid the water splashing over his shoes.
“Shit!” He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Get on with it, sergeant. And don’t let’s forget the anchors. What are they, Hardy? Oildrums?”
I was staring at the canvas package and the chain and thinking of burials at sea, honourable and dishonourable deaths—floggings and keel-haulings. It all felt like a step back into history, back beyond the time of the building of the bridge, back to the beginnings. I shivered, and not because of the cold. “Yeah,” I said, “oildrums, recycled.”
Loomis gave a short laugh and bent to examine the canvas. He straightened up and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Not much we can do with this. Must be hundreds of places sell canvas like that. Same with the chain. Would you say this Lithgow was a bright bloke?”
“Very.”
Loomis sighed. “That’s not going to help.”
The frogmen and other cops worked hard and efficiently. They got four canvas bundles and four concrete plugs the size of a couple of house bricks from the bottom. Loomis watched the operation sourly; he turned his collar up against the wind and rubbed his hands together. When the last dive and lift was complete, the senior frogman pulled up his mask.
“That’s it, inspector.”
“Thanks. See any weapons down there?”
The frogman shook his head “The bottom’s like all silty and soft. Those plugs had really settled in. Whoever put them down there knew what he was doing.”
Loomis scarcely heard him. He was looking towards the quay where a group of people had assembled. “Bugger it,” Loomis said. “We’ve been spotted. Where do we dock, sergeant?”
“Harris Street, sir. Wharf 25.”
“Anywhere else we could go?”
“Sans Souci?”
Loomis shook his head “Just get us there as fast as you can. And get on the radio and tell them not to let any press near the wharf. Can you do that?”
The sergeant almost saluted and hurried forward to the cabin. The launch’s engines roared into life, and we churned the water as we moved fast towards the bridge. We passed under it and I felt the massive structure above me like a heavy, grey iron cloud, blotting out the pale afternoon sun. “What now?” I said.
Loomis hunched his shoulders inside the heavy coat. “Nothing nice,” he said. “We open up and take a look. Then we ask their nearest and dearest to do the same. Got any idea what they’ll look like, Hardy?”
I shook my head. “You?”
“I’ve seen a few floaters in my time. Mostly banged about by whoever killed them and by the rocks. It’s not pretty. But all wrapped up like this? I don’t know.”
The launch changed course and the canvas-wrapped bodies moved a little on the deck, as if protesting about being raised from their cold, wet graves.
20
“Do you want to be on hand for this, Hardy?” Loomis smoked a thin cigar as we watched the bodies and their anchors being unloaded at the police dock.
“What happens now?”
“Pathologist’s on the way. We’ll open ‘em up and take a look. See what the identification possibilities are. After that, autopsy and inquests and the rest of the circus,Any idea how long they’ve been down there?”
I shrugged. “Meredith’s probably got the longest missing one in his files. You’d better ask Wren.”
Loomis nodded and blew smoke out towards the water. We were standing behind a glass shelter a little back from the dock. The light had faded, and everything around was taking on the grey colour of the canvas bundles. “Better phone him. If I know Ralph, he won’t have anything to do with this side of things.”
“Frank Parker said he was a good man, Wren.”
“He is. Good desk man. Tireless. D’you want a smoke?”
“No, thanks. Have you got a bucket on you?”
Loomis laughed. “Some tough guy.”
But an hour later it was me who was standing inside the room where the bundles had been unwrapped and Inspector Loomis who was away somewhere retching his guts up.
The pathologist, Dr Carstairs, was a slim, handsome type who looked too young to be having anything to do with death. That impression vanished as soon as he opened his mouth; his voice was rough-edged and unemotional. “Get cracking, Mr Bennett.”
Carstairs buttoned up his white coat and pulled on rubber gloves. His assistant, evidently named Bennett, did the same, and Carstairs signalled to him to use bolt cutters on the chain and a knife on the stitching of the canvas. The bundles had been neatly sewn along one side in big, strong stitches. “No telling,” Carstairs said. “Gas from the bodies is the story here. Could swell up and burst, in which case you’ll have guts and muck all over the place, or it could go the other way—gas could be absorbed and the body would shrivel.”
Loomis nodded, still very tough. “What decides that, doctor?”
“State of the body when living—age, condition, last meal and manner of death.”
The assistant was still working on the chains. Nothing yet. “What are the chances of identification in both cases?” I said.
“Difficult, either way. Not like with a buried corpse. There, as you’d know, inspector, the bacteria in the earth get to work and you get putrefaction pretty quickly, and destruction of the tissue. Lots of crawly things around to help. Here, you’ll get preservation of the tissue because the only active bacteria are in the body. But there’ll be mould and such. Parts of the face could stick to the canvas. We’ll see.”
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Bennett got the chains off and went to work on the stitching. The bundles were lying on two wide, metal tables which were already awash with water and other matter leaking from inside. The room we were in had a concrete floor and bare walls, artificial light. It smelled strongly of disinfectant, which was starting to be overlain by the smell of sea water and something else. Bennett cut the stitches of each bundle in turn and pulled aside the seam on the first.
The creature inside looked like a mummy, scarcely larger than child-size. It was naked, shrunken and a greeny-black colour. There was no hair on its head. As the pathologist had predicted, parts of the flesh seemed to have formed a mould on the canvas and came away when the material was pulled back. An exposed shoulder bone was white.
“Jesus,” Loomis said. “He looks a hundred years old.”
Carstairs nodded. “Absorption of the gas, as I said. Wasn’t young when he died. Bald, stooped possibly, arthritic, I’d say …” He leaned over and peered closely at the shrunken head and the clawlike hands. He straightened up and looked at me. “Dentition intact and a ring on the third finger of the left hand. Shouldn’t be too much trouble with identification.”
I nodded. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or alarmed that the corpse bore no possible resemblance to Brian Madden. Before we moved on to the next one I noticed that the fingernails and toenails on the shrivelled body were long and curling.
“Doctor Carstairs?” Bennett said. He’d pulled back part of the canvas and stopped. There was a smell now, all right—of old meat and old milk and rotten eggs and everything else bad you can think of. Carstairs waved to Bennett to continue and he tugged the canvas apart. The mess was like a dozen or more squirming, green-black, half-skinned rabbits. The corpse had ruptured and the organs were splattered around and twisted together. The man had been big; his limbs and torso were still sufficiently defined to be able to see that, and he had a massive head which lolled drunkenly as if it had been half-wrenched from the shoulders.
“Broken neck,” Carstairs said, “and massive gas formation in the gut. Mr Loomis .. .?”
But Loomis had run for the door, his shoulders heaving. Carstairs looked at the closing door with amusement. I looked up at the ceiling and drew a breath. This wasn’t Madden either. “This is the best argument I’ve ever seen for cremation,” I said.
Carstairs snorted as we watched Bennett resume snipping. “You seem remarkably composed, Mr …?”
“Hardy. I can stand it. I’ve seen the insides of men before, doctor. I’ve seen them holding themselves together, literally.”
“Ah, a soldier. Tell me, which is worse. This or combat wounds?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s all bad.”
“That one had been in the water longest, at a guess. It’s going to be very interesting sorting all this out We have a serial killer here, do we?”
“Yes. Pretty unusual.”
Carstairs examined the black tongue protruding from the crazily-angled head. “Here it is, yes. I spent a couple of years in New York. Different story there.”
The next corpse was intact and less shrivelled than the first, though it had gone through the same process. The legs were drawn up towards the abdomen and the arms had locked in a rigid position across the chest. Naked and green-black like the others, Brian Madden had for some reason retained more dignity. Under the harsh light his body looked like a three-dimensional rubbing taken from the tomb of a mediaeval saint. The wet, matted hair lay on the skull like a metal cap; his eyes were closed and his mouth had set in a line that was almost a smile.
“How did he die, doctor?”
Carstairs ran his eye over the body. “Can’t say. No obvious signs of violence. Time will tell. You’re going?”
I was on my way to the door. “I said I could stand it. I didn’t say I enjoyed it.”
I rang Louise Madden in Leura and told her that I’d found her father, and how and where.
I had to wait a long time before she responded. “How did he die, Mr Hardy?”
“We don’t know. All I can tell you is that there were no signs of violence on the body. We’ll have to wait. I would’ve come to see you, but there’s no time.”
“What do you mean?”
“This’ll be a big story. No way of avoiding that. I thought you should get the news from me first. It’s not much but …”
“Thank you. My dad was a very private person. He wouldn’t like being part of a … a mass killing.” Her voice broke on the word. “Will I have to identify him?”
“I’m not sure, under the circumstances. I’m in touch with the police and I’ll let you know. Will you be all right? Do you have a friend or someone to stay with?”
“I’ve got plenty of friends. I’ll be all right.”
“I mean someone who can protect you. And you should contact the Leura police and ask them to keep an eye on things.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Look, Louise, this man is insane. We don’t know where he’s going to stop.”
“It sounds as if you know who he is.”
“It’s complicated. I talked to him. I didn’t know at the time that he was responsible.”
“Has he killed people other than … like my dad?”
“Yes, he has.”
“Then you should worry about yourself. If he knows you he might …”
“I can take care of myself. I don’t want to alarm you. I can’t see how he could find out that you employed me, but you never know. Just be careful. And I’m very sorry that it turned out like this. If there’s anything else I can do, just ask.”
“I’ll manage. And thank you, thank you. It’s better to know.”
“That’s right.”
I hung up and turned my attention to the scotch I’d poured before making the call. She was right. It, was better to know. The most pain-wracked faces I’d seen were the people I’d reported negative results to—no sign of father, daughter, son, mother. And she was right about my exposure. If Lithgow had seen my car, he could trace me. He might even have heard me give my name to Betty Tracey. Had I given it? I couldn’t remember. If he only knew it, now was the time to come after me if that’s what he was going to do. I was dead tired, and there wasn’t so much as a pea rifle in the house.
The newshounds had been busy all night. A connection had been made between the salvage operation under the bridge and the tight security at the police dock. The coming and going of the pathologist had been observed, and something had been gleaned from a call to his office. Somebody had leaked something about Colin Glover, and the bloodhounds were on the trail. Loomis turned the handling of the press over to Wren, who straight-batted for as long as he could, which wasn’t long. They got to Clyde Glover and the name Barclay came up. A fresh scent. By the late TV news a thin, speculative story was forming. Wren was confronted with a wild hypothesis that spoke of mass suicides as a result of some scandal involving the building of the bridge. He had no other recourse but to tell the truth. The morning headlines read: CURSE OF THE BRIDGE, and BRIDGE KILLER SOUGHT. The afternoon tabloids wouldn’t be so restrained. Some cop had leaked my name to the reporters. I was described as an ‘enquiry agent’.
I learned all this from Loomis and Wren, who called me to a morning conference at St Vincents during which we could get ten minutes with Meredith. We talked briefly in the lobby before being escorted upstairs. Wren told me that he had driven my car to the hospital and that it needed work on the clutch. He handed me the keys.
“Thanks,” I said. “How is he?” I asked Loomis.
“Strong as a bull. He’ll be back. You know, Hardy, it’ll do his prospects a lot of good if we can catch this loony.”
“I know.”
“And stop him,” Wren said. “He hasn’t killed only the sons of engineers.”
I said, “Right.”
We followed the bustling nurse down the corridor. She gestured for us to stop and went into the room alone. Loomis leaned against the wall
. “Tobin’s none too happy with you.”
“Been out to see him, have you?”
Loomis flushed. “Watch it! Tobin’s a piece of shit to me. Always was. I only meant …”
“You only meant that I’ve got enemies and should have as many police man friends as possible. I get the message, inspector.”
The nurse beckoned us in and we arranged ourselves on chairs around the bed. Meredith was propped up on pillows. There were no tubes into his head, just one into his arm and one into the body. His colour was good.
“Hell, Lloyd,” Loomis said. “You look better than I feel.”
Meredith nodded. “Inspector, Ralph, Hardy. It’s good to see you.” He touched the newspaper on the bed. “I was right about the bridge being the link.”
“You were,” Loomis said. “It was good work”
“And we still want your input,” Wren said.
Loomis filled Meredith in on details that hadn’t made it into the papers, mostly about my role. The news stories hadn’t mentioned me, which was fine: being a high-public-profile private detective would be like playing football in pink shorts.
“Fingerprints in Lithgow’s room?” Meredith asked.
Loomis nodded. “Plenty. But no match-ups.”
“The canvas and the plugs?”
“Undergoing analysis,” Wren said.
Meredith rubbed his face which was smooth-shaven. They’d washed and combed his hair too. He looked almost ready to go back to work “He told Hardy he’d retired from the public service?”
“Which almost certainly means,” Loomis said, “that he was never in the bloody public service.”
“What then?” Wren said.
I shrugged. “Small business, maybe. To do with boats. Just a guess.”
“Great.” Loomis sat back in his chair, took out a thin cigar and ran it between his fingers. “This is one of the biggest harbour cities in the world. Any idea how many small businesses to do with boats there’d be?”
Meredith smiled. “The seafood restaurants alone.”
Loomis and I both laughed but Wren looked grim. “I don’t see what there is to be amused about. This man has killed seven people, maybe more. We don’t know who he is, where he lives or anything about him except that he talks politely and can row a boat. I’d call this a major problem case.”
