Daisy in Chains (26 page)

Wolfe’s mother, Sandra, is in no doubt. ‘Odi and Broon were killed for what they know,’ she told our reporter at her £750k home in Somerset. ‘If they’d gone to the police when I told them to, they’d probably be alive today. As it is, even the most incompetent member of the police force has to see now that the monster who framed Hamish is still out there.’

First detective on the scene of this morning’s murders, Pete Weston, was also one of the lead detectives in the Hamish Wolfe investigation. He was unavailable for comment today.

BROON AND ODI
lie side by side. The post-mortem examinations are over and the bodies have been covered, for decency’s sake, leaving just their heads and their feet visible.

The only lights are the powerful, surgical ones above the gurneys; the corners and edges of the examination room blur into darkness. Modern equipment aside, the scene reminds Pete of old paintings of surgeons at work, of shadowy figures thronging a central point, the surgeon holding a lantern in one hand, a sharp knife in the other. The pathologist, an Asian woman in her mid forties, likes to work in a darkened room, with light focused only on the corpse.

‘It’s all about the patients,’ she explained once to Pete. ‘I find it concentrates the mind upon them.’ Privately, he suspects a different motive entirely.

Somewhere, in the gloom that is the rest of the lab, technicians are clearing away instruments, washing dishes, recording notes with the aid of pen torches. They move around unnoticed, nothing more than undulations in the shadows. Odi and Broon lie in stark relief, like museum exhibits.

‘Can we get some lights on?’ Latimer has just arrived, has already phoned ahead to request the pathologist doesn’t start the briefing without him. Pete has been waiting for nearly an hour. Dr Mukerji ignores Latimer. She has her back to the viewing gallery, is finishing some notes.

‘Not sure she’s turned the intercom on yet,’ says Pete, although he knows she has. They’ve just had a conversation about how much longer his boss is going to be, and doesn’t he realize she has five other cases to get to today?

Latimer peers down at the gurneys and their occupants. ‘And this happened just outside your bedroom window?’

Down in the examination room, Dr Mukerji turns to face them. ‘Is this DCI Latimer, finally?’ she asks Pete.

‘Tim Latimer. Good morning. I don’t have a lot of time. What have you got for us?’

Mukerji walks back to her notes. After over a minute, when even Pete thinks she’s pushing it, she comes back. She stands in between the two gurneys, directly in the light, her hands behind her back. She looks at Odi, then up at the gallery.

‘We have a white female, aged somewhere between thirty and forty – difficult to be more precise, given the conditions she’s been living in over the past few years – in relatively poor health for her age. She is known locally as Odi.’

Mukerji’s head turns. ‘Her companion is known as Broon. He’s slightly older, somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five, and like Odi, showing signs of his lifestyle impacting adversely on his health.’

Latimer pulls out his phone and starts flicking through text messages. Mukerji remains silent until he looks up again.

‘Neither victim carried ID of any sort,’ she continues, ‘so it may be some time before we have complete identification.’

‘We’re working on it.’ Pete meets the doctor’s eyes briefly. Getting a complete ID, tracing next of kin, won’t be easy. When people become homeless it is often for good reason. They cut all ties with the lives they leave behind.

‘I didn’t attend the scene.’ Mukerji steps forward, so that her face and head fall into shadow. ‘But my colleague who did estimated time of death as sometime between zero hundred and zero four hundred hours. The outside temperature last night was minus four, I understand, which, combined with the blood loss, would have hastened the loss of basal body temperature in both subjects.’

Pete wonders how long before she realizes she no longer has the limelight. ‘Rina,’ he says, ‘there were people in and around the square until well after midnight last night. I checked with the landlord of the Crown. He went to bed at about twelve thirty, and he could still hear people milling around, getting into cars. It seems unlikely they were killed much before one o’clock.’

Mukerji doesn’t disagree.

‘And the milk float arrived a few minutes after four,’ says Pete. ‘I was down there twenty minutes later. They were stone cold by that point.’

‘As I say, their bodies would have lost temperature very quickly last night, but I agree, twenty minutes would seem unusually fast. If you want to work to a tighter time frame, between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. wouldn’t be far out.’

The pathologist takes a step back and light floods her face once more. ‘Both patients suffered from malnutrition,’ she says.

‘Seriously? She looks pretty well fed to me.’ Latimer is looking at Odi’s ample curves, covered but not hidden by the sheet.

‘She may have consumed a lot of calories, but they would have been in the form of cheap, fast food, with very little nutritional value. Chips, burgers, pies, pastries. Addictive food, food that made her feel better, gave her a bit of an energy boost, and all but lacking in essential nutrients. Her internal organs were not healthy. Her companion was less obese, but his lungs and liver were in a bad way. These weren’t healthy people.’

‘Not really in a position to fight back, you mean?’

‘Probably not, although just about everyone will put up a fight when their life is threatened. I mention it because, somewhat unusually, they did eat very well within a few hours of their death.’

‘They ate lamb stew,’ says Pete. ‘Maggie Rose gave it to them. She wanted to talk to them about a possible sighting of someone going into Rill Cavern last April.’

‘What?’ Latimer’s head shoots round to face Pete. ‘Why do I not know about this?’

‘It only came up recently, and as an eye-witness account, it holds very little credibility.’

‘I think that’s for me to decide, don’t you?’

Down in the examination room, Mukerji speaks up. ‘They also drank quite a lot of alcohol. Rum, at a guess, but tests will confirm that.’

‘It was rum,’ says Pete. ‘We found an empty half-bottle amongst their stuff.’

‘They probably drank all of it. They were quite inebriated. Would have been very difficult to rouse.’

‘But very easy to kill?’

Mukerji’s lips purse. ‘Odi died from exsanguination, after her throat was slashed twice with a sharp, smooth-edged blade about seven inches
long. The first incision was deepest, severing the right carotid artery and the jugular vein. The second cut through the left carotid artery and the minor veins.’

As she speaks, Mukerji mimes the slashing of Odi’s throat, standing behind the corpse, but to one side, enabling the two police officers to see what she is doing. She makes a big, bold movement, twice, from Odi’s left ear to her right. Then she steps quickly to the other gurney. ‘Broon, on the other hand, choked to death on his own blood. His throat was slashed at least four, possibly five, times and his trachea was cut open.’ More miming. Pete thinks of the shower scene in
Psycho
, the repeated stabbings seen through a shower curtain.

‘I’m not sure this could have been done by one person,’ says Latimer. ‘Even if they were incapacitated.’

‘Possibly not. But you do have to take into account the head wounds.’ Mukerji moves to the top of the gurneys. ‘Both victims were struck over the head, just once in each case, but very heavily.’ She moves Broon’s hair to show them the mat of dried blood. ‘The wounds to each victim are similar and smooth in nature. I’d say they were struck with a hammer, some sort of instrument, rather than a rock or a stone. Probably one of those large club hammers. It was wielded with great force, again suggesting a hammer, something that enabled the perpetrator to get a bit of swing on.’

She demonstrates, swinging her arm back and up, bringing it down swiftly towards Broon’s head. ‘The blow didn’t kill either of them, there’s some evidence of bleeding in both cases, but it would have been enough, especially given the alcohol they’d drunk, and the fact that they were asleep, also very cold, to incapacitate them for long enough for the perpetrator to take a firm hold on their hair and slash their throats.’

‘Still feels like quite a task for one person,’ says Latimer. ‘Are we looking for someone with considerable physical strength?’

‘That would certainly be an advantage, but what strikes me is the slick nature of it. Think about it.’

She mimes the hammer blow again, bringing her imaginary weapon down hard on Broon’s head. Hardly has it made contact before she moves on, arm swinging back again, smiting down on Odi.

Pete can’t help flinching.

‘And now I step back, I put my hammer down and pick up my knife. I take hold of his hair in my left hand, I’m right-handed, by the way, and with my right, I slash deep into his throat. My first slash is pretty deep, would almost certainly have killed him, but even so I slash again, and again, making sure. When I’m confident I can leave him, I move on to my next victim.’

She sidesteps left, taking up position at Odi’s head.

‘Is it just me?’ Latimer mumbles.

Pete steps back, away from the intercom microphone. ‘No, she always does this. Totally freaked us out at first. Apparently she directs the pantomime every year at her children’s primary school.’

‘Fuck me, bet that’s something to see.’

‘The female victim was almost certainly conscious at this stage.’ Mukerji hasn’t finished. ‘Dizzy, in pain, weak, but knowing she’s under threat. She wasn’t found where she was sleeping, was she?’

Pete thinks back to the scene that met him just before dawn. Broon hadn’t moved, was still tucked up in his sleeping bag. Odi, on the other hand, wasn’t by his side.

‘We think she managed to crawl away a couple of feet before she had the same treatment as Broon,’ Pete says.

‘This victim is active.’ Mukerji takes two slow deliberate steps away from the gurney, her eyes fixed on something only she can see. ‘While her partner is being killed, she is dragging herself away, but I go after her.’

‘Should have brought popcorn,’ Latimer mutters.

‘I catch her, take her hair in one hand and bring down the knife.’ Mukerji mimes as she talks. ‘Two slashes and it’s over. I can steal away.’

She backs up, leaving imaginary Odi on the ground, sidestepping around real Odi on the gurney. ‘No defence wounds. No sign of a struggle, other than her failed attempt to escape. Nothing under the fingernails. My job is done. It could hardly have gone more smoothly. I slip away, into the night.’

Latimer clears his throat. ‘Thank you, Dr Mukerji, that was very—’

‘Helpful,’ interrupts Pete.

PROPERTY OF AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE. Ref: 544/45.2 Hamish Wolfe.

THE ARTIFICIAL CHRISTMAS
tree in the interview room is looking the worse for wear. Someone has been pulling the nylon threads so that now, with two more days to go, it has the look of a tree blighted by serious disease or nuclear winter.

Pete sits, as he’s been told to do, as he’s been doing for nearly fifteen minutes, and tells himself that he will wait two minutes longer and that is it. He has things to be getting on with. He reaches out for the Christmas tree and starts plucking it of nylon needles.

The door opens and Latimer, back from showing Maggie to her car, comes in. ‘Wouldn’t tell me where she’s going. Don’t suppose she mentioned it to you?’

Pete shakes his head. He has no idea what Maggie is up to. When she’d finished giving her statement – as one of the last people to see Broon and Odi alive, she’d naturally been one of the first they had to speak to – he’d offered to put a car outside her house for the day. She’d told him it would be a waste of time. She wasn’t going to be there.

‘Pete, I need to ask you this.’ Latimer leans back against the door. ‘Did you speak to those two characters, Odi and Broon, about the Wolfe investigation? In the last couple of days?’

Pete looks down at the carpet tiles. ‘Who says I did?’

‘Maggie Rose does. She’s been talking to people in the square, market traders, street cleaners. You were seen talking to the two of them last Thursday.’

Pete sighs. ‘Maggie herself told me about a possible sighting of someone going into Rill Cavern not long after the last victim disappeared. Odi and Broon were the witnesses in question. I had no choice but to follow it up.’

‘And?’

He looks up. ‘Waste of time. Broon was inebriated, Odi was denying she knew anything. I gave up after five minutes and, to answer your
next question, I didn’t tell Maggie about it at the time. In spite of what she likes to pretend, she and I are not working together and I don’t owe her any information.’

Latimer gives an understanding nod. Then, ‘Pete, I’m going to ask you to give her a wide berth for a week or two, maybe longer.’

‘Come again?’ Pete gets to his feet, still holding on to the tree.

‘I know you’ve been getting a bit chummy with her, and I wasn’t happy in the first place, not since there’s been a chance of her taking on Wolfe’s case, but after what happened last night, it really can’t be a good idea for one of the lead detectives on a murder case to be cosying up to—’