Malice in London (12 page)

“Is that a rhetorical question, sir?”

Before he could make an appropriate reply, Sergeant
Black lumbered into the office. He wore a solemn expression on his face.

“Excuse me, sir, but I just got a call from someone claiming to have the inside track on Dockside. He says he has evidence that Charles Mansfield, the local councillor, has a secret financial interest in the project, placing him in a conflict-of-interest position.”

“What evidence?” Powell asked sharply.

“He didn’t say, sir. He rang off before I could press him.”

“Did you recognize the voice?”

“Sorry, sir.”

Powell sat in silence trying to grasp the potential implications of this anonymous phone call. He looked at Evans. “I rest my case,” he said.

Before confronting Charles Mansfield with what was, after all, an unsubstantiated allegation at this point, Powell decided that it might be wise to discreetly query Paul Atherton on the financial aspects of Dockside.

Atherton answered on the first ring.

“Mr. Atherton, Chief Superintendent Powell. Sorry to bother you again so soon, but I have a few more questions, I’m afraid.”

“Fire away, Chief Superintendent.”

“When we last spoke, you mentioned that you had an arrangement with Clive Morton whereby he would have owned and operated a restaurant at Dockside.”

“Chez Clive, that’s it.”

“Did Morton have any other financial interest in the project?”

“He had a ten percent share in addition to the restaurant. He was a junior partner, in effect.”

“Do you have any other partners?”

“No. Why do you ask?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“Force of habit, Mr. Atherton. Perhaps you could clear something else up for me. I understand that you don’t own the warehouse property outright but have an option to purchase the property once you get planning approval. Is that how it works?”

A slight hesitation. “You’ve obviously been doing your homework, Chief Superintendent. Yes, that’s how it works. The option is renewable every six months subject to an additional payment.”

“So the longer it takes to get the council’s blessing, the more your costs increase?”

“I’m afraid so. Just between you and me, I’ll be in dire straits if I can’t put this thing to bed by the end of the summer. As you can imagine, it would be difficult to raise additional money at that point because of the uncertainty surrounding the project. However, if and when I get the green light, I’ve got a commitment from my bank for the funds required to purchase the council property. Basically, it all hinges on the politicians now.”

Not an enviable position to be in, Powell thought. “Thank you, Mr. Atherton. I appreciate your candor.”

“Not at all, Chief Superintendent.”

After he’d rung off, Powell wondered about the best way to approach Charles Mansfield. He had no reason not to believe Atherton, but the anonymous phone call had obviously been intended to cast a spotlight on Mansfield
for some reason. If there had been some sort of understanding between Atherton and Mansfield, was it possible that Brighton had found out about it somehow and then threatened to expose them? It occurred to him that if there was a financial agreement of some kind, documents must exist somewhere. He made a mental note to have Evans look into it. His thoughts suddenly turned to Adrian Turner, the po-faced young socialist—perhaps the opposition was up to some dirty tricks. And what about Tess Morgan, the community activist? Even a hint of scandal at this point could well tip the balance of opinion against Dockside.

He picked up the phone and rang Charles Mansfield’s office. Mansfield was in a meeting so he left a message with his secretary.

Sir Reginald Quick’s office at the Forensic Science Service Metropolitan Laboratory was located more or less at the center of the building. As Powell made his way through a labyrinth of antiseptic-smelling corridors that would have done Daedalus proud, he caught occasional glimpses of white-coated boffins bustling about in gleaming laboratories. He eventually arrived at Sir Reggie’s lair and knocked on the door.

“Come!”

Sir Reggie’s office was a cramped and cluttered room filled with file cabinets, books, stacks of reports, and various liquid-filled sample jars with mercifully unidentifiable objects suspended in them. The pathologist sat hunched over a desk that looked far too small for him, pecking with two fingers at a computer keyboard. “Don’t hover, man. Sit down, for God’s sake!”

“Er, where?”

“On the bloody chair, where else? Just move those papers.”

Powell did as he was told.

Sir Reggie continued typing. “I’m just about finished with this damn thing,” he muttered.

“Technical report?” Powell asked harmlessly.

Sir Reggie’s large, florid face suddenly grew even redder. “The Hampstead Amateur Players, of which my wife is a leading light, are putting on
My Fair Lady
next month,” he explained, “and I’ve been lumbered with doing the bloody program.” He turned to look at Powell, his white hair askew and a dismal expression on his face. “Victoria is playing Eliza,” he said.

Powell dared not crack a smile. He knew that Sir Reggie’s spouse, Victoria, was a woman to be reckoned with, both in terms of physical presence and force of personality. But the thought of her playing the simple cockney flower girl beggared the imagination. “That’s nice,” he said lamely.

“Perhaps I could sell you a pair of tickets,” the pathologist ventured slyly.

“Er, thanks all the same, Reggie, but my wife’s away, and I don’t get out much.”

Sir Reggie sighed heavily. “All right, Powell, let’s get on with it. What do you want?”

“Did you have a look at those postmortem reports I sent over? The Morton and Brighton files,” Powell prompted.

Sir Reggie frowned. “They must be somewhere around here … I put them on your chair, I think. What the hell have you done with them?”

Powel smiled. “On the corner of your desk.”

“Oh, right.” He flipped quickly through the reports as
if to verify that he had in fact seen them before. He returned them to their pile and looked appraisingly at Powell. “Yes?”

“I was wondering if you could see any similarities in the two cases?”

He pondered this for a moment. “Now that you mention it … they’re both bloody dead!” He laughed uproariously.

Powell dutifully smiled. “Besides that.”

“Be precise, man!” Sir Reggie roared. “What sort of similarities?”

“Brighton drowned and Morton bled to death as a result of a knife wound. That much is clear. I’m more interested in the fact that they were both struck on the head with unknown blunt objects prior to death.”

“Ah, yes,” Sir Reggie snorted, “the convenient blunt object, the forensic equivalent of the proverbial black box!”

Powell looked puzzled.

“There is a deplorable absence of rigor in modern forensic practice despite all the ballyhoo you hear about DNA and other scientific marvels. If a villain farts at a crime scene, I expect it won’t be long before we’ll be able to test the air with some gadget that will identify the culprit ninety-nine times out of a hundred with an error of plus or minus three percent. But none of this wizardry is a substitute for experience and bloody hard work.”

“I’m not sure I understand …”

“Don’t get me wrong, the pathologists involved did
decent jobs—I know both of ’em personally—they just didn’t take it to that next step. Of course, they don’t have the benefit of reviewing the other’s work, as I have,” he added charitably.

Powell waited patiently for more. He had learned from hard experience that the best way to extract information from Sir Reggie was to appear disinterested. The Senior Home Office Pathologist had a reputation as a brilliant eccentric who had little patience with the intellectual deficiencies of lesser mortals. While his storied abilities seemed at times to have less to do with the scientific method than an uncanny sense of intuition, no one, in Powell’s experience, could read the entrails of forensic mysteries like Sir Reggie. And to his further credit, he bore his title humbly, almost with embarrassment, refusing to be called Sir Reginald by anyone he was on remotely civil terms with.

“Taking the Brighton chap first,” he continued, “the appearance of the body at postmortem clearly points to drowning as the cause of death. The external signs—the foam cap around the mouth and nostrils and the piece of flotsam found locked in his right hand as a result of cadaveric spasm—were corroborated by the appearance of the lungs as well as the presence of water in the stomach.”

Powell knew all this already, having read the postmortem report himself, but he was content to let Reggie warm to his subject.

“The injury to the back of the head was relatively inconsequential in this case. The energy of the blow was
just sufficient to produce a distinctive depressed fracture of the outer table of the skull, leaving the inner table intact. It probably contributed to the victim’s death only in as much as it likely rendered him temporarily unconscious, or at least stunned him, before he ended up in the river, thereby facilitating his eventual drowning.”

“Getting back to the head wound—”

“All in good time,” Sir Reggie said gruffly. “Now then, turning to the case of Clive Morton—a great loss, by the way,” he added parenthetically. “I respect a chap who refuses to be ripped off and isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.”

Powell wasn’t surprised.

“Morton died of exsanguination as a result of an incised wound to the left side of the neck that severed the jugular vein. The angle of the cut is consistent with a right-handed assailant standing over the victim. Because we’re dealing with a cut rather than a stab wound, it is unfortunately not possible to ascertain much about the nature of the edged weapon that was used in the attack. There were no defensive wounds, so one can assume the victim was unconscious at the time the coup de grâce was administered.”

“Lovely,” Powell remarked. “Then he stuffs an apple in poor old Clive’s cake-hole.”

“Obviously a hard-
core
villain. Ha ha!”

“Er, very good, Reggie, but if we might return to my original question. You’ve provided an excellent summary of how the two cases differ; I’m interested in finding out if there are any similarities.”

Sir Reggie leaned back in his chair at a precarious
angle and stared at the ceiling. “Context, Powell, I must have context if I am to devote any more mental energy to this problem.”

Powell briefly summarized the case for a possible link between the two murders. “The fact they both were connected to the Dockside development is either one hell of a coincidence or else someone out there is
dead
set against the project going ahead,” he concluded wryly.

Sir Reggie smiled grudgingly. “At first blush,” he said, “the attacks would seem to be quite different in character. Bludgeoning is most commonly associated with unpremeditated attacks—an assault carried out in the heat of passion with the first heavy object that comes to hand. A mugging gone wrong is another plausible scenario that is consistent with the particulars of the Brighton case. The victim is accosted by a mugger, attempts to flee, and is struck on the back of the head. The villain panics and disposes of the evidence in the Thames. Clive Morton’s murder, on the other hand, positively smacks of premeditation. It is true that the victim was struck on the back of the head in much the same manner as Brighton, except much harder. But it is the next step in the sequence of events that is suggestive. After knocking him unconscious, his assailant then takes the trouble to prop him up against a refuse bin before methodically slitting his throat—”

“Methodically?”

“One neat, deep cut as opposed to a number of clumsy attempts. Leaving aside the significant fact that he was found with his wallet still on him, which would
seem to preclude robbery as a motive, there is the business of the apple to consider. It was obviously intended to make a point.”

Powell frowned. “Yes, but what point?”

“You’re the bloody detective,” Sir Reggie rejoined.

“So you’re saying the two crimes have little in common—”

“I didn’t say that. I said at
first blush.
”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve carefully examined the photographs taken at postmortem and have made some measurements of the depressed fractures of the skull in each case. The indentations in both cases had three sides—that is, flat at the deepest point with the other two sides sloping outward. Based on the distinctive character and shape of the marks, I can only come to one conclusion …” He paused dramatically for effect. “Both injuries were inflicted by a heavy object, probably hexagonal in cross section, approximately an inch and a half in diameter. Although I can’t be absolutely certain, it is likely, indeed probable, that the same weapon was used in both attacks.”

Powell’s mind whirled as the import of this revelation struck home. “What kind of weapon?” he asked mechanically.

The pathologist shrugged. “It’s a bit of a poser.”

It was going on four o’clock when Powell finished up at the lab, so he was able to persuade himself that there was little point in returning to the office. On the way back to Tony’s flat, he stopped at a pub in Berwick Street for a restorative. He spent the next hour smoking and mulling over the implications of Sir Reggie’s findings. If in fact Richard Brighton and Clive Morton were murdered by the same person, which now seemed likely, then one had to wonder who might be next. It was possible, of course, that the crimes had been committed by different individuals using similar weapons. But the somewhat unusual shape of the object described by Sir Reggie made this scenario unlikely. The possibility of separate random attacks by the same person seemed even more remote. One could only assume, therefore, that the killings had something to do with Dockside, the only thing the two men were known to have in common at this point. Which raised the chilling possibility that there could well be others on the murderer’s hit list. Paul
Atherton, the developer, for one. Perhaps the first two murders had been intended to scare him off. Powell frowned at his empty glass.