Maxwell’s Curse (2 page)

‘Time enough for pleasantries later,’ the pathologist told the policeman. ‘You are here, I presume, for answers?’

‘That would be nice,’ Hall said.

‘Well, then,’ Astley continued rummaging into someone else’s soul. ‘If you’re sitting comfortably … Female Caucasian. Seventy-three, seventy-four, something of that order. Not very well nourished. What was the weight, Donald?’

‘Fifty-four point one,’ Donald answered. Anyone less like a mortuary attendant it would be difficult to imagine. Donald weighed fifteen stone if he weighed an ounce, martyr that he was to KFC and McDonald’s. Colonel Sanders had been his godfather.

‘She had mild osteoporosis and evidence of operation scars to both ears. I think it’s a fair bet the old girl was pretty deaf. Loads of mastoid trouble. And – and this is a singular rarity in this day and age – she was a virgin. I wonder how in the twenty-first century you can get to be seventy-four and still be a virgin.’

‘Lucky, I guess.’ Donald was riffling through the paperwork.

‘Be a dear, Donald,’ Astley looked at his number two over the rims of his glasses, ‘and make the chief inspector a cup of tea, could you?’

‘Your wish is my command, master,’ and Donald was gone through the heavy, plastic swinging doors, the Igor of Leighford General.

‘Getting above himself, that man,’ Astley croaked. ‘He’s been watching too much Quincy on the telly and might well find himself in one of his own body bags one of these days.’

‘Cause of death?’ Henry Hall had other fish to fry.

‘My hands around his throat,’ Astley grunted. ‘Oh, I see. This one. Well, actually that’s a bit of a puzzle. Come and have a look.’

Astley heard Hall’s chair legs scrape back with a ‘must I?’ sort of sound. Hall looked over the pathologist’s shoulder. The old woman lay on the slab, her legs splayed slightly, her tiny, shrivelled breasts separated by the y-shaped incision. Mercifully, Astley had not yet gone to work with his circular saw and her scalp was still in place – a thatch of silver hair above the peaceful, sleeping face.

‘When I first saw the body, it was still in the process of thawing out. Do you want to tell me about that?’

‘We assume it had been kept in a deep-freeze – for how long is your department.’

‘Yes,’ Astley lifted his glasses onto his green-capped cranium. ‘I thought it would be. Raises all sorts of problems, that, about the time of death.’

‘Knew it would,’ Hall nodded.

‘She was naked under the plastic bags,’ Astley went walkabout in his white-walled mausoleum, ‘so post mortem, she should have cooled about one to one and a half degrees per hour, extremities cooling faster than the trunk of course. But the freezing interfered with all that. It also cut across the usual rigor. Normally, she’d have been cold as a witch’s tit after twelve hours, rigor kicking in after five. As it was, by the time I’d got to her, rigor was almost gone. Look,’ he was back at the body again, ‘the jaw moves freely, limbs quite mobile.’

Henry Hall looked away. Pulling the dead about was Astley’s job, but there was a grotesquery about it, like some mad puppeteer pulling strings.

‘Rigor is delayed by freezing; it doesn’t start until after the thaw begins. So it buggers up the usual equation – normal body temperature minus rectal temperature divided by one point five … Not going too fast for you, am I?’

Hall had regained his seat and sat with his head against the wall. ‘No,’ he said.

‘I won’t bore you with the chemical analysis,’ Astley went on, proud as always of his medical superiority, ‘and some of that’s still to do.’ He turned to face Hall and put his glasses hack on the bridge of his nose, as though to add majesty to his next pronouncement. ‘I’m estimating the approximate date – date, mark you, as opposed to time – at about December 20 to 22.’

‘Before Christmas.’

Astley smiled and winked at the Chief Inspector. They weren’t mucking about at Bramshill these days, were they? Hall’s IQ was clearly off the scale.

‘And the cause of death? The freezing wasn’t accidental, presumably?’ Hall wanted to know.

‘Indeed not. When I peeled back the black bags, her arms were crossed over her chest in the traditional laying out position. She didn’t die from exposure. And she didn’t die from this, either.’

‘Just tell me, Jim.’ Hall didn’t want any more glorious technicolour close-ups. He heard Astley chuckle as he bent over the corpse again.

‘Oh, ye of little bottle,’ the pathologist said. ‘All right, then, the wussy way. She has a stab wound to the back of the neck. She must have been lying on her front when that was delivered or possibly in a sitting position. The knife you’re looking for is double-edged, the blade at least four inches long.’

‘Commando,’ Hall was talking to himself. ‘Special Services. Any survival store or mag sells them. Wait a minute – you said that wasn’t the cause of death?’

‘Indeed not. The stab wound was delivered post mortem. No blood. No bruising. Somebody impaled the old girl after she was dead. Now why, I wonder, would they do that?’

Hall was on his feet, peering at the corpse, despite himself. ‘Frenzy? What kind of wound is it?’

‘One sure, powerful thrust. No sign of anything frenzied. In my experience, such an attack would produce several wounds, rained down with speed, blurred by the old red mist. There’s no indication, apart from the lack of clothes, of any sexual motive at all. No, the stab was an afterthought.’

‘So what did kill her?’

‘Ever heard me talk of Sir Ephraim Wallace?’

Hall hadn’t.

‘Splendid name, isn’t it? Splendid chap, too. My old pathology teacher at Guy’s.’

Hall thought Astley had graduated from Reading, but he let it pass.

‘“The face,” he would always say. “Look at the face. It holds a million secrets.”’

‘And what does the face tell you?’ Hall asked.

‘The eyes have it,’ Astley told him. ‘Petechiae. Tiny blood pricks in both eyeballs.’

‘Suffocation?’ Hall had met this before.

‘Possibly. But I don’t think so. Toxicology will confirm it later, but there’s much fatty degeneration of the internal organs. Swelling of the liver, stomach, spleen.’

‘Indicating … ?’

‘Poison, dear boy. Possibly phallin. If I’m right, the poor old duck would have had chronic vomiting and diarrhoea. She’d have dribbled and her eyes would have watered uncontrollably. She’d have felt dizzy, had the grandmother of all headaches, before slipping into delirium and convulsions. If she was lucky, a coma would have put her out of her misery after eight hours. Could have been as much as thirty, though. Who was she?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea. Jane Doe at the moment.’

‘Hmm.’ Astley turned back to the corpse. ‘Just remember,’ he murmured, ‘a granny isn’t just for Christmas.’

‘Thanks, Jim.’ Astley heard the door click open.

‘Any forensic on the bags?’ the pathologist asked.

‘Clean as a whistle.’ Hall held the door open for Donald returning with the tea, a beam and some biscuits. ‘This one’s a professional, Jim.’

‘Ah, thanks, Donald.’ Astley prised off one of his sterile gloves and took the proffered mug. ‘This isn’t happening, by the way, Henry.’ He raised the tea, ‘So unprofessional. I’d be struck off.’

Hall waved the sight aside.

‘Tell me,’ Astley joined him at the door. ‘Is it right the old girl was found on Peter Maxwell’s front doorstep?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What is it about that bloke?’

‘You tell me,’ Hall said.

‘This is not the first time – oh, Christ, Donald, no bloody sugar, for Christ’s sake,’ and he put the mug down before following Hall into the corridor. ‘Not the first time friend Maxwell’s been caught up in murder. There was that Jenny Hyde business a few years back; and that accountant chappie in the theme park …’

‘On second thoughts,’ Hall stopped him, ‘don’t tell me. He’s like a bad penny, turning up when you least expect him.’

‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,’ Peter Maxwell murmured, looking out of his lounge window at the knot of paparazzi hanging around the open space where his front gate should have been, if only someone hadn’t invented open planning.

Jacquie Carpenter had had the nous to leave her car streets away and had got in through Maxwell’s back garden. ‘How annoying have they been?’ she asked.

He broke away, bored with the sight. ‘On a scale of one to ten, eighty-three,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to feel like Fred West at twenty-five Cromwell Street. Should I carry out a box wrapped in black plastic, do you think? Titillate them a bit?’

‘Not funny, Max,’ she scolded. That in itself was a landmark in their relationship. A year ago she daren’t have said any such thing. Even now she wasn’t sure how he’d take it.

‘You’re right,’ he said and sat himself down below the display of cards and tinsel. ‘God, when’s Twelfth Night?’

‘It scared you, didn’t it, Max?’ she sat opposite him, her stone-washed jeaned knees tucked under her chin, her auburn hair, usually worn up according to constabulary regulations, cascading over the shapeless Aran that covered her shoulders. ‘Have you considered counselling?’

He looked across the room at her. ‘They’ll make a detective of you yet, Jacqueline,’ he said softly. ‘And, yes, it scared the shit out of me. But counselling? No, thanks; I’ve got my cat.’ There was a silence. ‘It’s good of you to come. I know how difficult this must be.’

She shrugged. ‘Just putting your mind at rest, sir,’ she played the policewoman, ‘as I would with any other member of the public.’

‘Oh, thanks a bunch,’ he scowled, teasing the skin from the top of his milky coffee. ‘What’ve you got?’

‘Max,’ she growled in warning.

‘Oh, come on, now, Jacquie. You can’t do this to me.’ He lapsed into his early Brando. ‘I coulda been a contender.’

‘I can’t tell you …’

‘This is the only counselling I need – involvement, immersion; the need to know. Who was she? That’s all. Just that one question. No more. I promise.’

‘Don’t know …’

‘Jacquie!’

‘Honestly, Max,’ she laughed. ‘We haven’t the faintest idea.’

‘Handbag? Purse? Clothing labels? Laundry marks?’

Jacquie Carpenter had been on the force seven years now, woman and girl. She knew the routine, the basics of an inquiry. The irritating thing was, so did Maxwell.

‘Nothing,’ she smiled. ‘She was naked … Oh shit!’

Maxwell smiled. The law, nil; Peter Maxwell, one. ‘Sexual assault?’ he asked.

‘Max,’ she was firm. ‘I’ve already said too much.’

‘Of course.’ His criminal mind was kicking in. ‘It’s not likely at her age, but then, Albert de Salvo …’

‘And she wasn’t strangled … Oh, bloody hell!’

Maxwell chuckled. ‘Tell me, Jacquie, what was your new year resolution? Tell Old Maxie everything he wants to know? That’s very generous of you.’

‘What have you told them?’ She was suddenly on her feet, changing the subject, nodding towards the window, covering her back.

‘Well,’ Maxwell joined her at the window to wave at the increasingly bedraggled newsmen huddled in the rain, ‘the bloke from the
Grauniad
and I had a discussion on the role of murder in New Labour’s philosophy. I told the bloke from the
Telegraph
this would never have happened if William Hague was PM, which seemed to please him. I gave the
Mail
man a load of bollocks and the
Express
the total opposite – still bollocks, but different. Oh, and when the
News of the World
turned up I just got my chopper out – oh, saving your presence, Woman Policeman!’

She shook her head, smiling. ‘Max, you’re the end,’ she said.

‘Omega and Alpha, me,’ sang Maxwell, still vaguely in the Christmas spirit. ‘How long do you think they’ll be out there?’

She checked her watch. Time to be elsewhere. ‘The DCI’s calling a press conference at six this evening,’ she told him. ‘That’ll satisfy them for a while. Unfortunately, Max, they’re a bit like that film. What is it?
Sometimes They Come Back
?’

Maxwell nodded. He knew it.

She put down her coffee mug and held him by the shoulders, out of sight of the paparazzi’s prying lenses. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.

‘Awright.’ He slid into his Barrymore with ease.

She screwed up her face, never sure of Peter Maxwell. He was Mad Max, not just nor-by-nor’west, but in all directions, to every point of the compass. He’d worn that mask for so long, even she couldn’t see beyond it. She who loved him. She reached out and kissed him. It was enough. For now, it was enough.

Thanks to the miracle of reprographic technology, photographs of the dead woman were on the streets of Leighford by that afternoon. The house to house had begun. As many uniforms as Henry Hall could spare knocked on doors or rang bells or pushed paper through letterboxes. Everywhere the same story; the same shake of the head. ‘Difficult to say, innit?’ ‘I mean, they all look alike.’ ‘Blimey, is she dead?’ ‘I wouldn’t know my own grannie, mate, never mind somebody else’s.’

A detective had visited Leighford General, next door to where the dead woman lay, checking records. But this was the National Health Service, the one run by Alan Milburn, not the one created by Nye Bevan and the inquiries drew blank. ‘Ah, no, you see, all the ENT records were lost in the fire. You know, in ’95. If she’d had the operation before that, we’d have no record of it. And I wouldn’t bother asking Mr McGuigan if I were you. Patients to him are just numbers to feed his wife’s Gucci habit – not that you heard that from here, of course.’ Hospitals, especially junior registrars, were helpfulness itself.

So it was that they set up an Incident Room in the old Tottingleigh library, complete with VDUs and databases, those banks of information that could stem the tide of ignorance. And the Leighford force once again became eagle-eyed, adept under the diced headband at finding needles in the haystacks of unknowing.

So it was too that DCI Henry Hall held his press conference, giving the gentlemen of the press, the doyens of the fourth estate, just enough to keep them off his back for the couple of days he desperately needed. On his way in, towards the powerful lights to each side of the poking lenses and grey fur of the sound booms, he caught Jacquie Carpenter’s arm.