Four Below (15 page)

‘None of the names were from around here; most were London, Manchester, Glasgow.’

‘DS Austin, I hate nameless bodies,’ McLusky said accusingly.

‘Yes, sir. Let’s call him Bob.’

The phone on his desk rang. ‘Let’s not, Jane,’ he said and picked up the receiver. It was Lynn Tiery. DSI Denkhaus wanted to see him in his office. ‘Now?’ he
asked.

‘This minute,’ came the curt answer.

The superintendent’s secretary barely acknowledged him. Some people said you could gauge the amount of trouble waiting for you by the arch of her eyebrows, but today they gave nothing
away. ‘Any idea why the super needs to see me?’

Her finger hovered over the intercom button. ‘You haven’t seen today’s
Herald
?’

‘I haven’t had the pleasure yet.’

‘I doubt you’ll get much pleasure out of it.’ She depressed the button. ‘DI McLusky is here.’

Denkhaus was standing by the window, looking out over the mosaic of snow-covered roofs. He ignored McLusky’s entrance. Since only two seconds earlier he had to have stood at his desk to
press the intercom button, McLusky knew this to be a pose struck for his benefit. On the desk lay a copy of the
Bristol Herald.
He had no time to practise his upside-down reading skills on
the headlines, because Denkhaus turned around and slammed a fleshy hand across the paper, then swivelled it around as though it was heavy as lead.
Police Unconcerned About Drug Deaths
ran
the headline. When McLusky skimmed the long article and his name jumped out at him several times, he knew he was in trouble. ‘After the last debacle when you shot your mouth off to a
reporter, had I not made it absolutely clear that you were not to speak to the press again? No officer on my force is allowed to make statements to the press without prior authorization, and
you’d be the last person I’d get to do it! Here …’ Denkhaus sat down and picked up the paper. ‘ “I am not concerned about dead junkies,” said DI Liam
McLusky.’ Did you say that?’

‘Yes. No. No, I probably said something like “dead junkies aren’t my department”; I never said I didn’t
care
about junkies dying.’

‘What you should have said was
no comment
! That’s all you’ll ever say to any reporter from now on.’

‘I was giving Phil Warren a lift. It was a casual conversation …’

‘Reporters don’t have casual conversations.’

‘I’m beginning to see that.’ McLusky, who had not been invited to sit down, stuck his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. It suddenly felt cold in this office.

‘This article makes out that we, the police, are happy about junkies dying because each dead junkie means fewer muggings and burglaries. It is trying to suggest that we are dragging our
feet about finding the source of the contaminated heroin because it helps clear the city of drug addicts. And you added weight to it by giving Warren a quotable sentence, however distorted. This on
the day when we released a statement to warn drug-users about the anthrax contamination. The
Herald
barely gives that two lines! I will now have to arrange a personal appearance on the
evening news to repeat that message.’

‘Junkies don’t watch telly; it’s the first thing they fog.’

‘It’s not about the bloody addicts, it’s about the public’s perception that we as a force don’t care about junkies dying.’

‘And do we?’

Denkhaus took a deep breath. ‘No one likes a smartass, DI McLusky.’ McLusky was a good officer, but he spoke his mind rather too freely for a detective inspector. He was quite a
successful detective, too, but his sense of commitment to the wider concerns of the force was woefully underdeveloped. He needed to learn that solving crime was just one of many responsibilities
the police force was charged with. Denkhaus continued in a low, threatening rumble: ‘You know as well as I do that our job is to serve the entire community, whatever we think of them. You
should also have learnt by now that these days half of a superintendent’s job is political. If you don’t understand that, then personally I don’t give tuppence for your chances of
promotion.’ There was a pause in which Denkhaus folded the newspaper and laid it aside. ‘Admittedly you’ve run some successful investigations since coming here, but trouble seems
to follow you around somehow.’

‘It looks like Warren is deliberately trying to cause trouble, sir.’

‘Trouble sells papers. But thankfully there’s an easy solution for this kind of trouble. Under no circumstances are you
ever
to speak to Phil Warren again. Not once. You will
give her a wide berth, and if she approaches you, all you will say to her is
no comment
. That is if you want to avoid disciplinary action. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. Go and find DS Austin and send him to me immediately. I think I’ll need to have an urgent talk with him as well.’

McLusky checked his watch. ‘He’s due to attend the post-mortem of the cycle-path victim in a short while.’

‘Too bad. Send someone else. That’s all, DI McLusky.’

Chapter Eleven

‘So now we got a double whammy,’ said Sorbie as he followed DI Fairfield into the mortuary car park. The car park hadn’t been cleared, and it was snowing
again.

‘Yes, we’ll need to get out another press statement to warn them about this one,’ said Fairfield, turning up the collar on her coat. ‘For what it’s worth. Oh, look
who’s paying a rare visit. That’s McLusky’s car, isn’t it?’

‘Hard to tell under all that snow. And it’s got ice blooms on the windows. Doesn’t that heap have any heating?’

McLusky turned the Mazda off the road but didn’t fancy his chances of ever getting out again if he continued to the car park proper. He left the car by the entrance and was crunching
through the snow towards the buildings when he spotted the reception committee. Eight months at Albany Road and he was only just on first-name terms with Fairfield. But not with her DS. McLusky
suspected that even his mother called him Sorbie.

‘Stop press. DI Liam McLusky at the mortuary,’ Fairfield greeted him. ‘Can’t get the staff, is that it?’

‘Hi, Kat.’ McLusky checked his watch, then patted his jacket for cigarettes. ‘More drugs deaths?’

She nodded. ‘The seventh.’

He lit a cigarette and released a large cloud of smoke. ‘No sign of the anthrax source?’

‘None. But only four of them died of anthrax. Three were overdoses. There’s another batch around, not the usual brown stuff, it’s white as the driven. And we’ve just been
told,’ she paused for effect, ‘it’s over eighty per cent pure.’

McLusky coughed with surprise. ‘Marvellous.’

‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You don’t care, by all accounts.’ Fairfield semaphored with her eyebrows while Sorbie turned away to hide his grin.

‘You read the article.’

‘Did you actually say that?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Didn’t sound like you. That’s the second time Warren’s dropped you in it. Whatever did you do to her?’

‘I’ll be sure to ask her next time I see her.’ He flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the snow, where it fizzled out. ‘Got to go.’

Fairfield watched him walk to the entrance. ‘Perhaps it’s what you didn’t do to her,’ she said quietly.

‘What?’ asked Sorbie, who had made a snowball and pretended to lob it after McLusky.

‘Nothing, Jack. Give me the keys, I’ll drive.’

He shrugged out of his coat. On Coulthart’s side of the screen the temperature was kept relatively low, but the viewing suite was well heated and McLusky was grateful for
it.

Coulthart beamed at him. ‘What an unexpected pleasure, Detective Inspector McLusky. I had expected your faithful sergeant. He hasn’t been taken ill, I trust?’

‘Just unavoidably detained, that’s all.’

‘Is it still snowing outside?’ Apart from the one giving on to the viewing suite, the autopsy room was windowless.

‘Yes, but it’s just flurries now.’

‘Good, I don’t relish the thought of getting snowed in and having to spend the night here.’

‘Not scared of ghosts, are you, Doctor?’

Coulthart peered at him over the top of his glasses. ‘Hardly. I’m afraid I’m not a believer in the survival of the soul.’ He turned to the body on the table in front of
him and without further ado made the first incision.

McLusky’s eyes drifted elsewhere. ‘Not the survival of the soul. But you do believe in a soul, then? A mortal one? What would be the point of having one of those?’

‘Oh, plenty of use for a mortal soul, Inspector. Love, art, music … good food, fine wines.’ Coulthart prodded the dead man’s liver with a gloved finger. ‘You need
a soul to appreciate them. Which is why I would like to get home tonight where I can sample some of these soulful delights. So let us get on.’

‘Yes, let’s.’ McLusky knew nothing of Coulthart’s personal life, but presumed that as a Home Office pathologist, fine wine, art and music would all be well within his
price range. Love had been first on his list, so perhaps that too was waiting for him at home. Coulthart’s commentary on the proceedings of the post-mortem saved McLusky from examining too
closely what was waiting for
him
at home.

‘Mm. Okay, we have an IC1 male, late fifties, perhaps older. Multiple traumas all over his body, concentrated on his face, the kidney area, genital area and abdomen. He was severely
beaten. One of his knees was shattered, probably to keep him from running. Then someone laid into him. Ruptured spleen …’

‘Were his hands tied?’

‘No.’ He lifted both of them in turn and examined them closely. ‘They show signs of defensive wounds where he tried to protect himself.’ He gestured towards the row of
X-rays on the wall-mounted computer screen. ‘Several bones broken there, too. There was a faint footprint on his left hand, from a training shoe. It’s now all but disappeared, but
forensics have close-up images.’

‘Good. We have a database of training-shoe tread patterns now.’

Coulthart sounded sceptical. ‘But have you managed to convict anyone with it yet?’

‘Yes, we have. The general pattern narrows it down to the brand, and once you have sufficient wear on the sole, it’s as conclusive as tyre tracks.’

‘Well I can tell you that our man here may of course have owned training shoes, but he didn’t use them to do any training. He was in quite bad shape even before he was set upon. His
liver is in a shocking state, and I am quite certain that when we get to his kidneys, the picture will be just as bleak.’

‘Heavy drinker?’

‘Well it wasn’t his love of rich foods that got his liver into that state. His last meal was probably some sort of cereal. I believe he threw most of it up. Probably during the
beating he received.’

‘And the beating killed him?’

‘Yes. Internal bleeding.’

‘Was he drunk when he was killed?’

‘On the contrary. He had no alcohol in his system at all.’

The next morning McLusky repeated a digest of the post-mortem findings to the detectives in the incident room. Photographs of the victim’s face were pinned behind him on
the board. Some displayed his injuries; one was a reconstruction effort by the technical department, an approximation of what the victim had looked like before his death. Copies of these had been
handed out to detectives and uniform alike and circulated to all stations.

‘His face was not a stranger to the pub, by all accounts. He was a heavy drinker, possibly a binge drinker. Somewhere a barman must miss him.’

‘Not if he drank at home,’ DC French objected. ‘A lot of people can no longer afford to go to the pub.’

‘Very true. Is it just me, or is it freezing in here?’

A chorus of officers confirmed that it was freezing. Someone suggested
bloody freezing.
‘The radiators are just lukewarm,’ said Dearlove, who was sitting next to one in a vain
effort to keep warm in his polyester suit.

‘Maybe it’s an airlock. They might need to be bled,’ McLusky said. He tapped the photograph with the back of his hand. ‘No wallet, no ID, no mobile, no jewellery. M&S
trousers and a cheap black jacket. Man-made fibres. M&S socks and underwear. No tattoos. One ancient scar on his thigh, three inches long. Right thigh. His hands were quite soft, so probably
not a manual labourer. Apart from his enlarged liver, he looks like Mr Average.’

‘Perhaps he was long-term unemployed,’ French said.

‘I’ll leave the DSS enquiries to you, then. Anyone fitting our man’s profile who has missed signing on or any other appointments, training courses, et cetera. Of course, if he
was unemployed he may have signed on in the past few days. So no one will miss him there for a couple of weeks. Right, let’s get to it.’ McLusky dismissed his troops but waved DC French
over. ‘Claire, the shoplifter …’

‘Gareth Keep,’ she reminded him. ‘Report’s on your desk.’

‘Anything?’

‘He did say one thing; it’s in the transcript, about foreigners coming to Deeming’s f at.’

‘Foreigners. What nationality?’

‘He wouldn’t elaborate. Probably had no idea where they were from or he would have used the appropriate racist term. It was just a throwaway remark, but I got the feeling that he
resented it, that he was made to leave when they arrived. But mainly it was
no comment
all the way, as you’ll see.’

‘Did he give a description?’

‘Gareth only knows two adjectives. He couldn’t describe a bowling ball if you dropped one on his foot.’

‘We’re not allowed to use bowling balls any more. Okay, ta.’

In his office, he picked up the interview transcript and began reading it, but soon got distracted by how cold he felt. The radiator behind him was barely even warm. He put on his new jacket and
hunched his shoulders, hands in his pockets. He sat like that, staring at the papers without reading, eyes unfocused, for several minutes. Then he turned off his desk lamp and left his office.

The news was full of headline stories about the unusually early cold snap, pushing even murder from the top spot it usually enjoyed. Words like
arctic
,
blizzard
and
whiteout
were liberally sprinkled through reports by journalists who McLusky suspected had never seen snow before. Certainly a whole generation of southern English drivers who had
seemingly never experienced it were advertising the fact by skidding into ditches or each other.