Des reached into the pocket of his white coat and brought out an evidence bag containing what looked to John like one of the tablets he’d left up that morning, although in more parts. Two, as he saw the moment the scientist set the bag on his desk, and very soon to be three.
“This is one that I split open, but I tested six at random just to make sure they were all the same.”
The scientist separated the two halves of the tablet, still inside their plastic container, then he changed his mind and unsealed the bag, tipping them out onto the desk blotter and producing a sharp probe from his other pocket.
“Right now, if I just turn this half over...”
As he did so he revealed a large hemispherical dip in its inner aspect, lined with what appeared to be clear plastic. Des prodded it right in the centre.
“OK, so, this dent, together with the matching part in the other half of the tab...” He flipped that one over as well “...forms a sphere.”
John rolled his eyes at the ‘Geometry for Dummies’ lesson.
“I did go to school, you know.”
It earned him a sniff.
“Aye, well, you didn’t go to my school so I’ve no idea what you were taught. For all I know you could believe the world was flat. Anyway...” He prodded again. “This clear lining is waterproof. I’ve tested it with all sorts of liquids and it doesn’t leak, hence why there are no stains on the blue outer part of the tabs.”
John frowned. It made sense if the sphere had been intended to hold in a liquid poison, but then how had the liquid got out and into Derek Smyth’s stomach to kill him?
Des read his mind and delivered the answer in a showman like way.
“Ah, now, I can see you thinking, was there liquid in there? The answer’s yes. I found a clear liquid in each sphere that I’m running tests on at the moment. And how did that liquid get into Smyth’s stomach if this lining is waterproof? I have the answer to that one as well.”
He reached into his coat’s breast pocket this time and produced a small glass bottle, waving it in the air.
“Voila! I give you stomach acid.”
Separating one of the clear hemispherical linings from its surrounding tablet, Des unscrewed the bottle’s lid and dropped it in and they watched as the lining rapidly thinned, broke apart and then dissolved completely, leaving not a single trace. John had to admit that he was impressed, both by Des’ quick discovery and the ingenuity of the tablet’s architect.
“That’s bloody clever.”
“Isn’t it just.”
The scientist screwed the top back on and replaced the bottle from whence it had come before continuing.
“What’s even cleverer is that the lining’s not plastic like it looks, but a form of gelatine.”
John’s eyes widened. “Like they use in cooking?”
“The very same. It’s a clear setting agent. Once it’s set it can provide a seal, but stomach acid would break it down pretty damn quick.”
John didn’t know whether to be impressed by the killer’s genius or disgusted at his goal. He decided on both.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?”
Des shook his head. “Never. And I’ve seen a fair few tricks, trust me. The closest I’ve ever heard was that murder on Waterloo Bridge in the seventies, where a pellet released Ricin into the leg of a Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov and killed him.”
“Well whoever did this went to a lot of trouble to kill Derek Smyth, and they had serious skills. Creating these hemispheres would have taken special moulding tools. And look.”
He turned back to the two halves of the tablet, tilting one on its side and pointing out a faint seam in the blue material where the two sides had been joined.
“There’s the seam where the two halves were joined together. The outer shell is diazepam by the way, a high dose, but it was stamped on substantially with bicarb”
Stamping or stepping referred to the process by which dealers mixed their drugs with a, normally innocuous, bulking product to increase their volume and make more profit.
“So Smyth could have taken several tabs without dying if they hadn’t had poison in them. Anyway, his killer took the blue mix and moulded it into two halves, each with a readymade hemispherical cut-out in the centre-”
John cut in. “They couldn’t have been scooped out afterwards?”
Des shook his head. “No. Look at that one without the gelatine under your ’scope and you’ll see.”
As John did just that he kept talking.
“The inside’s perfectly smooth, no carving marks at all.”
When John had seen for himself and returned to his seat the forensic scientist continued.
“The gelatine sphere was made in two halves as well, each one popped inside a half tablet to form the reservoir, then the liquid poison was added and the whole lot was linked together with a single neat, probably heat generated, seam all around. It could have done with being smoothed down a bit, but all in all it was lovely work.”
Such unalloyed appreciation of a killer’s technique could only be shared with the police or law; to anyone else it would make them seem like psychopaths.
John nodded. “They had the moulding equipment made especially.”
“I’d say so, although making it just to kill Smyth seems excessive, don’t you think? And they wouldn’t do much business if they poisoned their other clients, so perhaps they’re working on a new type of recreational drug? Double layered perhaps?”
John’s eyes widened. “You’re thinking one solid drug on the outside and another liquid one in the centre?”
Des shrugged. “Why not? It could work, as long as the drugs didn’t neutralise each other’s effects. And people are always looking for new ways to get high; the riskier the better for some of them. The possibilities are endless. One drug could be an upper and one a downer – like a tranq and liquid LSD-”
“Or Viagra and Amyl nitrate.”
“You’re getting the picture. The chem-sex people would go mad for that one.”
John looked sceptical. “You really think that’s what’s going on here?”
Des shrugged. “Not a bloody clue, but I can’t see someone spending money on developing this gelatine reservoir technique just to kill Derek Smyth. We should tell Marc about this.”
John nodded, considering the tablet on his blotter for a moment before asking the question that he’d wanted an answer to since the day before.
“So what was it that Smyth took? The poison?”
Des returned the dismantled tablet to its evidence bag and stripped off the gloves that John hadn’t even registered him wearing, so much part of their uniform were they, before answering. “Sorry, no result yet. But I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
They fell into a thoughtful silence until Des broke it by gesturing across the desk.
“Go on then. Show me.”
It caught John on the hop momentarily until he realised what he’d meant.
“Ah... you mean the sketches.”
Des scoffed. “Well you don’t have anything else I’d want to see.”
The pathologist’s response was to turn his PC screen to face his colleague and then move around the desk to join him for the show. His first tap removed the screensaver of his two-year-old daughter playing with a wooden abacus that Natalie had bought to teach her to count on, already positive that their child would have an IQ that topped their genius average own. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately in his opinion because he would rather have his child average and happy than the socially awkward, navel-gazing prodigy that he’d been, Kit had initially been more interested in putting the toy’s bright beads in her mouth and now was more fascinated at how ‘pretty’ their colours were than how they added up; although Natalie still lived in hope that one day a new mathematical theorem would pop out of her infant’s mouth. It was yet another worrying sign of his wife’s almost pathological need for control, something that had first taken them to
a counsellor in March to help their marriage and still saw them having to attend every week to avoid them killing each other. If Natalie developed into the ambitious ‘helicopter’ mother that he was starting to see signs of then they would be upping those sessions to every other day pretty soon.
The next image that appeared on John’s screen was the sketch he’d made of the front of Derek Smyth’s body, which had more dots on it than a measles rash. Des gawped at the screen.
“Are all of those tattoos?”
“No, not all. About two thirds are. The blue ones. The red ones are scars.”
Des glanced sideways at him. “From what? The man looks like he’d been through the wars!”
The pathologist smiled wanly. “I think he probably had. Street wars. There are scars from a bullet and several knife wounds. Mostly small, as if he’d been in skirmishes, but a few were large or deep. And they were in nasty places too. One was on his left abdomen just above the spleen, and I found a matching healed laceration on the spleen’s capsule when I examined it, so the knife had obviously passed right through. Another one on his liver was similar, and...” He tapped the screen above Smyth’s neck. “There was a cut only an inch from his right carotid. Whoever made that one definitely wanted him dead.”
Des sat back in his seat, still fixing on the image. “How old were the injuries?”
“Some old, at least ten years ago, and the carotid scar was about five or six, I’d say. But the one over his spleen was made within the last two years, the scar was still remodelling. It definitely happened in Mahon so I’ll need to get his full medical records. There was only a summary in the file they sent up with the body and that didn’t mention it.”
He tapped a key and Smyth’s rear view appeared. It looked almost as marked.
“OK, this time the dots are mostly tattoos, but there’s a very old bullet wound in his upper back that I’d say would have punctured his right lung when it happened, although he must have had a good surgeon because the scar it left was small. I could hardly see it when I first looked.”
Des gave a low whistle. “Popular with all the wrong people, wasn’t he.”
“You could say that.”
John returned to his side of the desk, turning the screen back as he went, then he fanned out the glossy photographs he’d taken, to Des’ growing alarm.
“This was Mister Smyth’s body art.”
It was like a catalogue of logos from outlawed, legally proscribed organisations, plus others that probably should have been. Acronyms and images of flags, animals and weapons were embedded randomly on Derek Smyth’s body, covering a good forty percent of him below the neck in coloured ink.
Des read aloud in a stunned voice.
“UKUF, UKJ, KKK, SS, Swastikas, C18-”
“Actually, I meant to ask if you knew what C18 stood for? It’s a new one on me.”
Des nodded. “It’s Combat 18. They were a neo-Nazi organisation, most active in England in the nineteen-nineties but they had links with some Loyalist groups here.” He shook his head dolefully. “Was there any illegal group that this man hadn’t linked himself to?”
John smirked. “Well, the IRA and INLA are notably absent, but then they’re mutually exclusive with UKUF I’d say. I think it’s safe to say that Mister Smyth’s political sympathies were Loyalist in nature, but as far as the other symbols are concerned they could have just been bravado or stupidity, or they could have some relevance in his death.”
“One for Marc to sort out.”
“Definitely. We’ll be holding Smyth’s body anyway for the inquest, but I’m pretty sure Marc will want another look at him and I’d like to go over his skin again in case I missed any gems.”
The forensic scientist nodded and rose to his feet. “Well, you didn’t miss any fingerprints. There wasn’t a single one on Smyth’s body anywhere that wasn’t his own.”
John gathered up his rogue’s gallery of pictures. “What about his cell?”
Des nodded. “The team found at least five sets that weren’t Smyth’s, although I doubt they had anything to do with his death. They probably belong to his mates or the warders. Still, we need to rule them out, so I’ve earmarked tomorrow for a trip down to Mahon for some of my CSIs.” He rolled his eyes. “A day of fingerprinting convicts. Just what their mothers always dreamed of for them. I’ll be waiting for their complaints to hit my desk as soon as they get back.”
John smiled up at him. “You’ll need a drink this evening to cope, so I’ll see you at four.”
“Marc’s briefing?”
“Yes. Davy phoned through an invite twenty minutes ago.” He gestured to the scientist’s white coat. “I’d bring the stuff to do your dissolving trick if I were you. It’s an effective way of getting the message across.”
The prospect of carrying a bottle of stomach acid across town didn’t even make them wince.
****
The Customs and Excise Service. Sydenham By-Pass, East Belfast.
Andy had considered pursuing a career in the customs service at one point, imagining himself rescuing smuggled art masterpieces and being featured on the evening news beside a long-lost Van Gogh or Renoir. Not to mention the possibility of specialising in the area and legitimately spending his working hours in art galleries, inevitably run by elegant hotties who would present him with endless opportunities to date; or, almost as good, at the library swotting up on famous paintings’ provenance whilst still getting paid.
It would have combined his love of art with his desire for justice perfectly, so he’d been more than a little put out to discover that the job description that he’d conjured up fitted best with The Met’s specialist arts and antique squad, and taking that job would have required him to move to London to work at New Scotland Yard. A young son, ex-wives that he was still friendly with and aging parents notwithstanding, the idea of hours spent commuting from the suburbs to Westminster every day and shaving years off his life with London’s pollution had made staying in Ireland a no-brainer of a choice.
Besides, from what he’d seen on reality TV shows about the world’s customs and border security forces they seemed to spend most of their lives dealing with awkward travellers, forged passport holders and the remains of various animals that people were smuggling in to eat, worship, display or walk on. And as dealing with the public was always a challenge, usually an irritating one, and he was almost vegetarian, it had given him several more good reasons to remain where he was.
Which didn’t mean, as he traipsed behind the others into the unfeasibly high and narrow red-brick building whose, to his artistic eye, skewed proportions made it look as if someone had built it, decided that it was too wide and then stretched it on a rack, thereby knocking its proportions slightly off, that he wasn’t looking forward to their next meeting, because he was. Andy might have given the impression of being half-asleep at times but that was just his placid nature, and beneath his lethargic veneer there lay a raging curiosity about lives other than his own.
As they stood in the crooked house’s high-ceilinged reception the first curious thing the D.C.I.’s perusal revealed was that everyone seemed to be in uniform, even the woman behind the reception desk. There wasn’t a single civilian suit to be seen; it was like visiting an army camp. The second curiosity was more obvious close up; everyone was wearing epaulettes on their shirts with their rank marked and a badge identifying it as well, from the most junior Assistant Preventative Officer, APO, through four increments to the most senior, the Chief Preventative Officer or CPO.
Quick scan over and, as Aidan seemed to have taken charge at the last two meetings, him having much less of a lazy streak, Andy decided that this one was down to him, so he strode up to the reception desk displaying an energy that tired him out instantly and held up his warrant card as ID.
“We’re here to see the Head of Customs.” He gestured to the others. “Officers Hendron, Hughes and Angel from the Murder Squad.”
He omitted their ranks because t
hat would have been showing off, and as his mother, a wise if absentminded woman who’d often had to be reminded of his, his sister’s and the dog’s names and which one of them owned which, had always taught him, he placed himself modestly last in the list.
The reception officer, whose badge said that she was an APO whose first name began with ‘N’, sending Andy’s romantic brain racing through the possibilities of Nuala, Niamh, Nicola and so on, considered his warrant card thoughtfully for a moment, her gaze moving from it to the two others now on display and then back to her desk and phone. Finally she lifted the handset, simultaneously gesturing to a banquette by a floor-to-ceiling window that none of them had noticed in the internationally accepted signal for ‘sit and wait’.
It wasn’t long before a slim thirty-something man with shoulders that made his top half a sharp, inverted triangle and biceps that were making a break for it through his shirt appeared, displaying a badge that said he was the CPO and his name could be Maurice, Michael, Martin...
He approached them with an extended hand and put Andy quickly out of his misery with, “I’m Max, CPO Max Harding. Pleased to meet you.”
The cursory handshaking over he beckoned them towards a lift, pressing the button for the fourth floor and not uttering another word until they had arrived. That suited Andy fine. He used the time to scrutinise their host from behind, noting that although there was nothing about Harding’s clothes that gave away his character, the intrinsic purpose of a uniform’s uniformity he supposed, his haircut, intricately layered, just brushing his collar, with just a hint of a highlighted tip, said that they might just have hit upon the customs service’s equivalent of a player or a real livewire.
The energy with which their host threw open his office door and the grin that accompanied it confirmed the latter, so Andy wasn’t at all surprised when Harding flung himself into the chair behind his desk, waved them to a coffee stand at the back of the room with, “Help yourselves” and then produced a box of gloriously chocolaty biscuits from his drawer.
“Right now. Who’s been killed and how can I help you solve it?”He sat forward with his elbows on the desk and an excited gleam in his eye. “Was it a drug courier? Did the condoms of coke burst inside them? Or was it gun-running? Did some get through that we missed?”
Crossing The Line Page 11
