Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation (27 page)

‘We don’t call them “interrogations”,’ he said mildly. ‘We call them “interviews”. “Interrogations” usually implies thumbscrews and pliers, and that’s an image we’re keen not to encourage.’

‘Well, tonight there’s not going to be any interrogations
or
interviews. There’s going to be some conversation and some listening.’

‘Don’t I even get a chance to wash my face and change my shirt?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been wearing this one all day, and it’s getting a bit old.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve been sneaking flannels and spare shirts into my flat while I haven’t been paying attention?’

‘Given the amount of time you spend here compared with the time you spend on the ward, I could sublet the place and you’d hardly even notice.’

She hit him playfully on the chest. ‘You’re wasting time. Brush your teeth and change your shirt if you need to. You’ve got ten minutes.’

Ten minutes later they were in her car – a black Lexus that gave Lapslie a slight shiver whenever he saw it, remembering
the men from the Home Office who had spent time shadowing him on the Madeleine Poel case – and heading towards London.

‘How was your day?’ she asked as she drove.

‘Could have been worse,’ he said non-committally

‘In medical terms,’ she said, eyes on the road, ‘any medical result other than death could be described that way. Amputations, brain damage, disfigurement – “could have been worse”.’

‘In this case, I’ve got a kidnapped family of four and a daughter left abandoned in the house. But none of them is dead so, yes, it could have been worse.’ He paused, thinking. ‘And, if we don’t get a break soon, it still might.’

The car drove onwards, into the night. As they crossed the M25, Lapslie assumed that they were heading towards Central London. A restaurant? A gala event? What?

‘Can I ask a question?’ he said as she drove.

‘You just did.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Funny girl.’

She smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘You’ve got out of the habit of relationships, haven’t you? I sometimes get the impression when we’re talking that it’s a series of questions and answers, rather than a conversation.’

Lapslie felt a sudden lurching sensation, like vertigo. ‘Is that a problem?’ he asked carefully.

‘It’s something we need to work on,’ she said. ‘Over time. So – what was the question?’

‘You’re an anaesthetist. What would you use if you were going to knock out an entire family in their home?’

She thought for a moment. ‘Difficult. Calculating the dose is critical to ensuring that you minimise the risk of brain damage or death. I take it you’re not asking me as an anaesthetist, but you want to know what an ordinary member of the public might use.’

He nodded. ‘I was thinking along the lines of those reports of French criminals gassing people in parked-up motor homes.’

‘The commonest narcotic gas available is diethyl ether. You can get it in cold-start sprays for cars – the kind of thing you spray into your engine to help it turn over when the weather’s below freezing. You’d want to purify the ether, I guess. The best way I’ve heard is to take a piece of PVC pipe and a jar, then spray the can down the pipe and into the jar. The propellant gas is expelled and the diethyl ether condenses on the pipe and runs down into the jar. When the entire can is empty you end up with a very high-content diethyl ether solution. There’s still some impurities in there, so you add an equal volume of water and shake it, then let it stand for a few minutes. It’ll settle out into two layers: pure diethyl ether in the top layer and everything else in the bottom layer. You then take the diethyl ether and introduce it into the house. It vaporizes at around thirty-six degrees centigrade, so surrounding it with hot water would do the trick, and you can use a rubber pipe to direct it into the house.’

‘You know your stuff,’ Lapslie admitted. ‘I didn’t realise you had to know how to make your own anaesthetics. I thought you just bought them wholesale.’

She laughed. ‘I had some odd friends at medical school. They used to try all kinds of tricks.’ She thought for a moment, her face becoming more serious in the headlights of the oncoming cars. ‘The alternative is something like propane. That’s not narcotic, but it does replace the oxygen in the air, and effectively suffocates people. The trick is to stop pumping it in before they die. Either way, I wouldn’t want to try it myself. Too much risk.’

‘Okay.’ He let the thoughts coagulate in his brain. ‘Thanks.’

The main flow of traffic was heading out of London, not in,
and they got to the Thames Embankment within an hour. Charlotte parked in a slot in a car park next to St Thomas’s Hospital. ‘Medical perk,’ she said as he raised an eyebrow.

He’d already guessed that they were heading for the South Bank Centre, and he was right. Charlotte took his hand and guided him through the concrete pathways towards the Festival Hall. She stopped in front of a row of restaurants and bars that ran alongside the Hall, between it and the trains coming off Hungerford Bridge. ‘We’ve got half an hour,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘Time for a quick bite. You up for it?’

‘OK.’ He looked along the line. ‘Not sure I can choose. I’m still trying to get used to the concept that tasting something can be pleasurable, rather than painful.’

‘Then let’s go for sushi,’ she said. ‘It’s fast and it’s not in-your-face. Or, in your case, in-your-mouth.’

The restaurant was small and basic, and the food was indeed fast, but with little explosions of flavour. On Charlotte’s advice he avoided the wasabi sauce, but the slices of vividly fresh fish against the plain rice backdrop were amazing. When she told him it was time to pay up and go, he was disappointed.

She took his hand and led him into the massive bulk of the Festival Hall. He tried to see if there was a poster or a sign advertising what they were about to see, but there were too many posters advertising too many forthcoming events for him to make anything out. Not a theatrical event, not in the Festival Hall. An orchestra? A recital? What? The unexpected anticipation was making him feel tense.

She already had tickets, which she produced from her bag.

‘What if I’d been late?’ he asked. ‘I’m on a case. Things can drag on.’

‘Then we’d have missed tonight’s event,’ she said. ‘Things happen. I’m a doctor in a hospital, remember? I work unusual
hours too. That’s no reason not to plan on going out. If the plan fails, it fails.’

Overcome by a sudden rush of emotion, he pulled her to him and kissed her. She responded, surprised. ‘What was that for?’

‘For reminding me that life should be lived, not endured.’

She stopped at a kiosk to buy a programme, and then they entered the hall itself, which was already nearly full. The sound of hushed conversations would previously have made Lapslie feel like he was drowning in his own blood, but now he could taste nothing apart from the lingering remains of the sushi. Even the nervousness with which he normally faced large crowds was nearly absent.

The tickets put them at the front of the main circle. The stage was bare apart from seven chairs and music stands, a piano, two electronic keyboards and what looked like a couple of xylophones or vibraphones, although Lapslie wasn’t sure he’d seen a xylophone since school. Like a recorder, it had always seemed to him to be an instrument designed solely for schoolchildren to use.

‘OK,’ Charlotte said, leaning towards him so that their heads were touching. ‘I’ll put you out of your misery. It’s a performance of a piece of music called
Music for Airports
, which was written by Brian Eno. It’s an example of what’s called “ambient music”.’ She opened her programme. ‘It says here that he’s described ambient music as being “music that’s designed to modify one’s perception of the surrounding environment”.’

‘Ah,’ Lapslie said, disappointed. ‘Elevator music.’

‘Exactly the opposite,’ she said, smiling. ‘Elevator music is the equivalent of painting everything beige. It’s just music to fill a gap. Ambient music is designed to be more like an aural sculpture. You can listen to it, you can ignore it, or you can let your mind shift between the two. There’s going to be nothing
in the music to offend or surprise the listener, but it shouldn’t bore them either.’

‘I’ll give it a whirl,’ he said doubtfully.

‘You haven’t got a choice. If you try to leave, I’ll scream.’ She squeezed his arm gently. ‘If we’re going to get you going out more, we need to ease you gently into the real world. So – no Wagner, no Mahler. Something soft and inoffensive, but still interesting, to start.’

Inoffensive, but still interesting. Okay, he’d have a go.

Before he could ask anything else, the lights dimmed in the auditorium and a group of musicians entered and crossed the stage, to a subdued but still warm round of applause. Without acknowledging the audience, the musicians sat, sorted out their music scores, paused for a moment, and then started to play.

And Lapslie was entranced.

The piano player led the piece, with the keyboards and vibraphones providing accompaniment, but the piano appeared to be playing the same few notes over and over again in different ways rather than an actual melody, while the accompaniment was a background of what appeared to be randomly played notes which melded together to form a rippling surface upon which the piano floated gently. It should have been boring, but it wasn’t. Each moment was different from the previous ones, but linked to them. It wasn’t so much a musical journey as a musical drift through a fascinating aural landscape. There was no destination in mind, as Lapslie would have expected with most music, no rush to get to the climax, just an appreciation of the moment. Of every moment.

He sneaked a glance at Charlotte. Her eyes were closed and her lips were curved into a secret smile. She was more beautiful than he had ever seen her, and he realised at that moment that, yes, he
did
love her. For years he had been at war with
himself, trying to be what he thought Sonia and the rest of his family wanted him to be. Not only did Charlotte want him to be himself; she wanted him to find out what ‘himself’ actually was. And he wanted to let her.

His mind drifted back to the music. It seemed to be exactly where it had started, and yet at the same time it had moved on to other, mysterious places. In a strange way it wasn’t music at all, but highly structured noise. Abstract music, paralleling abstract art. There was no development, but there was a sense that it was building, growing, developing organically.

When the music finally drifted to a close Lapslie found that he had lost all sense of time. It might have been playing for ten minutes or an hour. As the last notes faded away, and just before the audience applauded, he felt a sense of loss. Something beautiful had been present, and it had gone, and he couldn’t even put a name to it.

‘Let’s get a drink,’ Charlotte said. She seemed nervous.

He squeezed her hand, and smiled. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was incredible. I’ve never heard anything like it.’

She gazed up at him. ‘Are you sure? We could leave now …’

‘No, let’s stay. What happens next? More of the same?’

‘Some more Brian Eno music. I think they’re doing his set of variations of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”. You’ll like it.’

‘You know, I think I will.’

They headed out of the auditorium to the bar. Lapslie, uncharacteristically, ordered a glass of red wine. Charlotte had the same.

They moved out onto the terrace, overlooking the Thames. The lights of the distant City of London glittered in the choppy waters. He sipped at his wine. It tasted of summer fruits, vanilla, oak.

Something dark drifted past in the water. The policeman part
of Lapslie’s brain wondered if it might be a body, but he pushed that to one side. Tonight wasn’t the time for him to be a policeman. Tonight was an opportunity for him to see if he could be a complete human being.

He slipped an arm around Charlotte’s waist. She nestled against his side and said, ‘I’m looking forward to getting you back to my place later on.’

‘DCI Lapslie?’

The voice broke into his contemplative state of mind. He recognised it before he turned around.

‘Mr Stottart.’

‘I thought it was you.’ The man’s face was flushed. Behind him, Lapslie spotted his daughter, Tamara, along with a woman of about Lapslie’s age and a son of about nineteen or twenty. The girl was glaring at Lapslie. Her mother was looking embarrassed, and her brother was looking bored, as all teenage boys did.

Charlotte moved away from Lapslie slightly, straightening up. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Charlotte. Charlotte Meyer.’

‘Steve Stottart. I’m in a therapy workshop with your husband.’

‘Partner,’ she corrected.

‘At least, I thought that was the only contact we had. Turns out he’s also been investigating my daughter behind my back. He thinks she’s a murderer.’

Behind him, his daughter flushed and turned her head away. Her mother put an arm around her shoulder. She shrugged it off.

‘Mr Stottart,’ Lapslie said calmly, but with a warning tone in his voice, ‘I’m off duty. I can’t talk about anything to do with the case.’

‘I put in a complaint,’ Stottart said. He’d been drinking. It made his Mancunian accent seem thicker.

‘I know,’ Lapslie said. ‘You have that right.’

‘Damn straight I do. I hope they
crucify
you. Disrupting our lives like that: it’s just gash. Tamara is distraught.’

The word flashed across his mind like a firework fired into the night.
Gash
. The voice on the sound file had said, ‘No, that’s gash. That’s just gash.’ Lapslie had presumed the voice was referring disparagingly to the woman who was blundering through the wire maze, slowly bleeding to death. Referring to her in terms of her genitalia. But Steve Stottart had used the word in a different context. Gash, as in wrong. Some kind of northern slang that Lapslie hadn’t come across before. But what if the voice on the sound file had meant there was something wrong with the sound of the woman’s
voice
– something ‘gash’? The fact that the killer and Stephen Stottart had used the same unusual word wasn’t evidence that he was involved, but it was indicative of a connection.