I Was Dora Suarez (12 page)

‘Well, I’ve got two murders running right now,’ I said, ‘and you don’t care about the computer at all, Constable, what’s running or not running on it, because the next computer that’s going to concern you is the one that works out your sup ben, now get going or tune your guitar up, they say in front of the National Gallery’s a good pitch in summertime.’

He trundled back presently and said: ‘It came in by police bike and was timed here an hour and twenty-three minutes ago.’

‘Your collective idleness could have cost somebody his life,’ I said. ‘What’s your number? Turn around, let’s have a look.’

‘B381, Sarge.’

‘So you’re only in training,’ I said. ‘Well, don’t count on a mortgage for a police flat yet, because you and the other berk who stuck this in a drawer and went off to lunch are both going to be on the mat, which will teach you to take the Factory seriously – you’ll be able to watch it from where you’re both on point duty, now fuck off.’

I rang the number I had been given in the message. When it answered, a voice I had already dealt with said: ‘Who’s that, we’re just in the middle of changing shift here.’

‘Well, mind you don’t catch a chill in this bitter weather while you do it,’ I said. ‘And by the way, isn’t your name Veale? It’s got that tinny kind of ring to it.’

It said stiffly: ‘Yes. I am Assistant Veale.’

‘Well, prolong the experience while you’ve got a chance,’ I said, ‘because if Doctor Lansdown isn’t on this line before you get off it, you’re going to wind up in one of your own fridges; we’ve already had this conversation and I’m tired of it, now get him, move – tell him it’s Unexplained Deaths and down to Carstairs/Suarez.’

The mentality of people like Veale wore my nerves red-hot because they were always the ones who told you that whoever you wanted to talk to was out; true or false, it was the negative little privilege that they reckoned went with their position – they were low on humility. Only I had already softened Veale up once and he didn’t want the second dose I had ready for him, so Lansdown came on the line straightaway. He said: ‘I understand why you were in a hurry for this report. How soon can you get down here?’

‘Immediately,’ I said, ‘but I don’t want to see anyone who answers to the name of Veale – it’s for his sake, not mine.’

The pathologist said: ‘That’s all right, he was just replacing me while I was having a shit.’

I slammed the phone down. I sped out to the police car park where the Ford was, turning my collar up. It had started to pour with rain.

I drove over towards the City; I drove hard. As I drove I thought ‘This is far more than just a banal police enquiry into violent death; there’s far more to Dora than that for me.’ For I found that her death had affected me so deeply that by her defiled face I felt defiled myself. The sweet sadness in the new dress that she had bought and put on, the bottles of wine, the new shoes, the magazine open at the
Pacific, her newly-washed hair, ready to go to death as she thought by her own will and of her own accord – she stayed with me, overpowering me; all I wanted to do was get her back as Betty Carstairs had wanted to. But Betty was too old, and I was too late.

Alone, jammed in what she considered a fatal position, without ever bothering Betty, who was old and sick, with enormous, solitary courage she planned and took her first, faltering steps into the dark, only to be cut down and fall the rest of the way in her own blood at the hands of this cunt. I thought as I drove that even though I was too late to save her, if I could solve her death, I might make some contribution to the coming of a time when such a horror would no longer be possible, a time when society would no longer throw up monsters. I had long understood that every effort was worth that effort, but I had never understood it as clearly as I did now.

I whispered in the car as I drove to the morgue: ‘Join me by the hand, all of you, living or dead, and consider for one moment of your generosity, poor Dora Suarez, who should never have ben slain by an axe at thirty.’

Disjointedly, phrases that she had written recurred to me: ‘That in some other world I may at last be able to shit again without screaming in agony. But of course I can’t tell Betty that. I can’t tell anybody that.’

And then: ‘One night lately I fell asleep with Betty in my arms and dreamed I was a bird, and that when I opened my beak, it spoke tears and the whole world heard them.’

I was coming up to the long facade of the hospital where the morgue was now. I drove past the main gate and on till I got to a narrow unmarked entrance in red brick that was just wide enough to accept an ambulance. Like death itself, the gateway was tactful and half-concealed.

I parked in the space, whirling with dust and waste paper, reserved for staff, and got out into the bright London wind, my trousers clinging damply to my legs and the cold reminding me of everything I had ever wanted to forget.

I went up through the morgue door by three shallow steps in the wet spring wind, feeling the concrete through the soles of my shoes, and was immediately in the atmosphere of that frozen and terrible place while I was still only at the desk. Since I had no manners, I didn’t bother with any but just went up to the clerk at the desk and slapped my card down, saying, ‘Police, A14.’

The man at the desk said: ‘What’s it down to?’ and I answered ‘You can think yourself lucky it’s not you, it’s 87471 and 2 Carstairs/Suarez, and I’m pushed, so can we get on with it?’ He was going to start moaning but I pointed my forefinger at his head in a gesture for him not to bother, so he jabbed his thumb irritably towards the lift the other side of the empty hall. I walked off across the fake marble through the special odour hospitals have and came up to the duty porter, a bald, bearded boy swabbing away at the tiles with a mop tied into a rag; he also had a green plastic bucket for company, which he brought up beside him with his foot from time to time. Mop, bucket and man looked weary under the state-paid neon lights. I said: ‘This service lift working?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘don’t take no notice where it says out of order, it’s repaired now. I’m going for a break myself,’ he added, thumbing the lift button. ‘Which floor, canteen?’

‘No, the one under the food,’ I said. ‘The morgue.’

‘You want the basement then,’ he said, ‘and well, there, I’m sorry for you; sad down there, isn’t it?’ I didn’t answer, so he said: ‘Don’t worry, it’s pretty reasonable your being depressed going down there, I’ll take you down and see myself all right after. OK, here we go.’

The bell rang on the down arrow and the doors hissed open. As we got in he said: ‘You haven’t got a smoke on you by any chance?’

I gave him my half-full packet of Westminsters and said: ‘Take the lot. It’s all right, I’ve got another.’

‘Nice one,’ he said, lighting up, ‘Christ, this’ll do me all the way back to Manpower. Anyway, well, here you are.’ The lift stopped with a sighing bump. He saw me out and pressed the button to go back up to the canteen for tea and tabs. As the door was closing in his face he added: ‘So long, mate, mind how you go now, take care.’

The morgue was an area so vast that its tiled walls, the colour of tired ice, looked grey even under the sunlight that filtered as yellow water through the opaque roof. I breathed formaldehyde; the place was deserted except for two assistants far down the place, just boys, both shod in tired blue Dot Martins, who were leaning against a surface enjoying a smoke.

I said in a general way: ‘Doctor Lansdown in?’

‘No. Out.’

‘Get him in.’

‘What makes you so special?’

‘The taxpayer,’ I said, ‘I’m a police officer.’

‘You got an appointment with the doctor?’

I said: ‘You must be brand-new on this earth. The police don’t need appointments. We make them and folk keep them.’

‘I don’t know about any of that,’ the one in front said. His face was white, freckled, and framed in pale orange curls. ‘Your best plan is go and see Mr Veale in Room G4, it’s just down the corridor. He’ll fix you up.’

‘There’s a danger it might all go the other way,’ I said, ‘if it was Mr Veale.’

‘Why’s that, then?’

I said: ‘He mightn’t have made his will.’ I pointed to a phone in a corner and said: ‘Does that work?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Let’s try it anyway,’ I said. A voice I was getting to know well came on and I said: ‘I am about ten yards away from you, Veale, and even fewer seconds, now get Doctor Lansdown in here or say your last prayer, I’m in the morgue. Either the doctor comes to see me or else I come to see you, and you really don’t need that, Veale.’ A nasal rattle started up the other end; I put the phone down on it.

Soon we heard footsteps in the long corridor I had come in by. I turned to the others and said: ‘See? It’s easy.’

But they had faded.

A man in his fifties wearing an open white coat over an expensive suit appeared and walked up to me. I said: ‘Doctor Lansdown?’

He looked very fit, tired and stricken. He said: ‘Carstairs/Suarez?’

‘That’s right.’

He said: ‘It’s Suarez. Have you examined her?’

‘As she was found. I’m in charge of the case. Why?’

He said: ‘Are your nerves good?’

‘I’ve seen most things. Why?’

‘You’re going to have to look at something you may not have seen,’ the pathologist said, ‘that’s why. I’m just saying that it’s very important that whatever you see now, you must control yourself and remain calm.’ He added: ‘It won’t be easy.’

I said: ‘If what you have to show me could help me find her killer,’ I said, ‘then I guarantee I’ll remain calm.’

Lansdown said: ‘Poor child. It might.’ He added: ‘I’ve examined the dead here for twenty-two years, and I found it difficult to stay calm over her.’ He looked me in the eyes. ‘That’s what’s delayed my report – there were checks I had to make.’ He turned away from me and looked suddenly like a cheap curtain when the rod across its window breaks. He said: ‘Did you think you had seen all of Suarez when you saw her?’

I said: ‘What more is there?’

He said: ‘Did you touch her?’

I couldn’t tell him how I had kissed her dead hair that still smelled of apples. I said: ‘No.’

He said: ‘She was dressed when you saw her?’

‘Of course.’

‘You didn’t interfere with her clothing?’

I said: ‘Doctor Lansdown, as a police officer I was there to examine the position of the bodies and to examine the flat.’

He said: ‘I’m afraid you’ve seen nothing yet, then. Nothing of 87471 at all.’

There was a stool beside a vacant bench; Lansdown pointed to it and said: ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

I said: ‘Christ no. I’m not the kind that needs to sit down.’

‘It was to try and prepare you,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen death here every day for twenty years – but I’ve never seen anything worse than this.’

I said: ‘I’ve seen violent death as often as you have.’

‘I know, but until you’ve seen Suarez you can’t imagine what she went through.’ He added: ‘Don’t tell me she hasn’t marked you, too.’ Then he said, turning away: ‘I’ll just get Wiecienski, we work together. His name’s Andrew. He’s Polish, the rest of the people here are just a farce.’

He went to the door and called out: ‘Wiecienski! Are you there?’

A distant voice said yes, he was there.

The pathologist shouted: ‘Bring the Suarez file with you, Andrew — 87471.’

The voice said in accented English: ‘Who’ve you got with you?’

‘Someone who apparently wants to see some justice done around the place.’

‘What?’ said the voice. ‘I didn’t know there were any of them left.’

Wiecienski came in and put the file marked Suarez D-87471 on the edge of a desk by the door. He was a heavy man of about fifty, with blond hair that looked as if it had been rained on. The pathologist said: ‘Bring her over, Andrew. Bring her out covered so
that at first the officer here can see only what he saw of her before.’

She arrived on a chrome trolley, wheeled slowly over by Wiecienski. She was clean, bloodless and frozen; her blind eyes, black under their heavy lids, shone brilliantly up into the hard light that Wiecienski had switched on over her. She lay half-turned on her side like goods being delivered at an exclusive address on ice; and the unmarked side of her dark head that showed above the towel, lying on its cheek, reminded me of a girl lying stiffly asleep, as long as you did not look too closely – her lips parted on a dream word. The pathologist turned to me and said: ‘I’m going to take the towel away now.’

I said: ‘Do it.’

The doctor took the towel very softly by its two corners from under Dora’s chin and in silence folded it down as far as her shins – and when that gesture revealed the rest of Dora’s body, whose state had been concealed from me in the flat by her dress, my stomach came up to the front of my mouth and I thought, ‘Christ, I’m going to spew,’ but I just controlled it. ‘All right,’ I said. After a moment I leaned over the body again and this time found that I could look at it.

‘Andrew,’ the pathologist said, ‘will you just help me to turn her?’ As they were doing it the pathologist said ‘I want you to see her anus.’

When they had it displayed, I said: ‘What is that abominable thing Dora has there, like a mushroom?’

The doctor said: ‘That’s a development of herpes simplex, orchestrated with mucocutaneous warts.’

I looked. Some of the mushroom had burst. I said: ‘How did she manage to defecate through that?’

He said: ‘It was an intolerable agony for her, made worse by the fact that as she crouched on the loo she must have looked at her thighs and seen these, and these, and these, see? Look, here, here and here.’

I looked at the dark, disfiguring plaques on her upper thighs and said to Lansdown: ‘What is it?’

‘It’s classic Karposi’s sarcoma. Why, haven’t you ever had to deal with a case of AIDS before?’

I said: ‘How did she get into this state?’

He said: ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. That’s why this report on her’s delayed. I’m a pathologist, not an AIDS specialist, so I got on to Westminster where they’ve got a specialist team; they came over, examined her, took samples, and I’m waiting. Don’t rush them,’ he added. ‘Particularly as it’s a case of murder they’re doing their best, but it takes time.’