The Mushroom Man (8 page)

The final act was to stitch up the cadaver and make it reasonably presentable for the grieving widow to mourn over. Tuke allowed his assistant to do this. He peeled off his gloves, discarded his plastic apron and white overall and was immediately transformed from slaughterhouse
worker into university professor. After he’d scrubbed his hands up to his elbows he walked over to Peterson and offered him something.

‘Little present for your Black Museum, Oscar. Don’t deny it; I know you have one somewhere in that desirable residence of yours.’ He dropped a shotgun pellet into the DI’s palm. ‘I haven’t recovered them all,’ he went on, ‘but I’d say it was one barrel from a twelve-bore, at a range of one metre to four feet.’

‘Side by side, over and under, or
single-barrelled
?’

‘Almost certainly. Ruptured his aorta, amongst other things. Must have pumped all his blood over the floor before he died. Bit like when the pipe comes off the washing machine.’

‘Do you have to be so bloody graphic?’ protested the DI.

‘Sorry. Interesting case, though. His arteries were in a shocking state. Somebody wasted a shotgun cartridge on him; he was heading for a massive heart attack in the next few months.’

‘Fascinating. Time of death?’

‘Oh, between six and seven last night.’

‘Thank you, Alan. Is there anything else you can tell me, or will it all be on my desk in your report by ten a.m.?’

‘No chance,’ replied the Professor. ‘There was one odd thing though. Don’t go away.’

He left the DI and went over to the trolley that stood alongside the operating table. He returned holding a small piece of paper.

‘What’s this?’ asked Peterson, taking it.

‘Found it when we went through his clothing. It was just stuffed into the breast pocket of his jacket. Does it mean anything?’

The DI held it by the corner between two fingers, as if holding a cigarette. ‘It’s just a picture of a mushroom,’ he stated.

‘Not necessarily,’ replied Tuke. ‘It could be a death cap, they’re very similar. Odd thing to cut out and put in your pocket, though, don’t you think?’

Peterson shrugged. ‘Don’t make it complicated, Alan, this is reality. Maybe he was a fungi…something-or-other.’

‘Fortunately, that’s your problem. Come on. I’ll treat you to a bacon sandwich in the canteen.’

Peterson got to his feet and they walked out of the lab. He was as near to being shocked as he’d been for many years.

‘A bacon sandwich!’ he protested. ‘After that!’ He gestured with a nod of his head back to where the violated body lay.

‘Got to look after the inner man, Oscar.’

‘I’d have thought you’d seen enough of the inner man for an hour or two. And what about his stuffed-up arteries?’ Peterson worried about arteries.

‘I’m hungry. PMs are hard work. All that sawing and pulling gives you an appetite.’

They were approaching the big glass doors that led out onto the street.

‘I’m worried about you, Alan. You’re turning into a bloody ghoul,’ Peterson said. He went on: ‘What moves you? When was the last time you had tears in your eyes? Watching a Lassie video on Christmas Day, I expect.’

‘They’re dead when I get them, Oscar. You have to deal with the living. I’d find that hard.’

They’d reached the doors. The Professor paused with his hand on the handle. ‘Trent Bridge,’ he said. ‘About five years ago.’

‘What was?’

‘Last time I wept. You asked me, remember?’

‘Cricket?’ queried the DI.

‘That’s right. I’ll never forget it.’ A faraway look came over his face and his eyes fixed on a spot high on the wall. ‘David Gower was batting. He’d been pinned down on ninety-eight for about fifteen minutes. It was the last over, and they brought on Curtly Ambrose to try to shift him. He was bowling out of the sun, and he unleashed one that went down like a ballistic missile. Gower stepped forward and drove it into the crowd for six. You could have heard the cheers at Headingley.’

When he was certain the Professor had stopped, Peterson said: ‘So what did it? Gower’s elegance?
His courage? Or was it just his boyish good looks?’

‘No, none of those,’ replied the Professor, pulling the door open. ‘It hit me on the kneecap. I was walking with a stick for a week.
Ciao
, Oscar.’

‘S’long, pillock,’ Peterson chuckled, and walked out into the night.

Denise Davison – wife of Reg, eager-beaver sales manager of Wimbles Agri – was watering the plants in the front bay window when the police car pulled into the street. She was filling the saucers under the cyclamen, being very careful not to wet the corms. As she watched the car go by she overflowed onto the windowsill, and as it turned round at the end of the cul-de-sac and began to creep back towards her she irrigated a Capo di Monte figurine of a shepherdess that Reg’s parents had given them as a wedding present eighteen years earlier.

The police officer climbed out of the car, looked the front of the house up and down, and opened the gate. Mrs Davison wiped her hands on the front of her dress and waited for his knock. She opened the door instantly.

‘Yes?’ she quavered.

‘Sorry to trouble you, ma’am. Are you Mrs Davison?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, good.’ He introduced himself. ‘Could you tell me if Mr Davison is at home?’

Her eyes opened wide in her pale face. ‘No. I mean…you mean…’

‘Mean what, Mrs Davison?’

‘I thought…I thought you’d come to tell me… Perhaps you had better come in.’

She led the young PC into the obsessively tidy sitting room and gestured towards the settee. He sank into it while she sat on an upright chair opposite him.

‘Now, Mrs Davison,’ he intoned, ‘what is it you want to tell me?’

‘Nothing,’ she whimpered. ‘I thought you’d come to tell me about Reg…Mr Davison.’

‘Tell you what about him?’

‘I don’t know… That you’d found him…’

‘No, Mrs Davison. I’m just making routine enquiries of all owners of blue Volvos. You may have read about it in the papers. We’re trying to trace one that was involved in a hit-and-run accident several weeks ago. I think you’d better start at the beginning. Why should we have found Mr Davison?’

She looked confused. ‘He…he didn’t come home last night,’ she stammered.

‘I see. Has this ever happened before?’

‘No. He often works away; he’s a sales manager
and has to stay overnight sometimes, but he always lets me know.’

‘Have you reported him missing?’

Mrs Davison shook her head. ‘No. I thought he was doing it to hurt me. Things have been…strained between us these last few weeks.’

‘Strained? In what way?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s hard to say. He’s seemed so touchy lately. It’s his job; he has a lot of responsibility.’

‘I see.’ The PC was enjoying this. He was amazed how compassionate and responsible his own voice sounded, and Mrs Davison did have rather shapely legs. ‘When did you last see your husband?’ he continued.

‘Yesterday morning. Tuesdays I have an evening class in word processing; I have a part-time secretarial job but I’d like to try for something a bit more permanent. I left Reg a meal ready to warm in the microwave, like I usually do, but he never came home for it.’

‘What frame of mind was he in when you saw him last?’

‘Annoyed. We were arguing. He stormed out in a mood.’

‘Right. Well, my guess is that he’s just cooling down somewhere and will come back when he’s ready. You can formally report him as missing, but I have to tell you that the police will take little
action. I’m afraid the law regards it as a person’s privilege to go wandering off if they so wish. As there is no suspicion of a crime, our hands are tied.’

‘I expect you’re right,’ she sniffed.

‘I’m sure he’ll be back soon,’ he added comfortingly, as he watched her uncross her legs. ‘Now, about the car. I presume your husband does still own a blue Volvo?’

‘Yes, well, it’s the company’s.’

‘I see. And he’s taken it with him?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Does he normally keep it in the garage?’

‘No, out on the drive.’

‘Right. In that case I will have to call back in a few days to see Mr Davison, presuming he returns home.’ And if he hadn’t? Well, in that case she’d need a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, wouldn’t she? He’d always fancied older women.

The PC got to his feet and started towards the door. He was hoping that he would be offered a cup of tea, but perhaps the circumstances were too fraught for that. Next time, perhaps. He hesitated, trying to second-guess the sergeant he would have to answer to when he returned to the station after a fruitless mission.

‘Have you checked to see if the car is in the garage, Mrs Davison?’ he asked, after a rare burst of inspiration.

‘Why, no.’

‘In that case, do you mind if I have a look now?’

‘If you insist, but I can’t imagine Reg putting it away and then going off somewhere – he drives everywhere.’ She took a key from a hook just inside the kitchen door and handed it to him. ‘This fits the side door. Just leave it in the lock when you’ve finished.’

The side door to the garage evidently wasn’t used much. It was seized with paint, and some gardening tools were leaning on the inside of it. He pushed and the tools fell over as the door creaked open and the evening sunlight spilt in.

The blue Volvo was there. So too was Reg Davison. He was hanging from a roof joist by a length of electric flex. It had bitten so deep into his flabby neck that the skin had met around it. There could be no doubting his determination when he’d kicked the buffet from under himself, but he’d soon changed his mind as the wire cut into his throat. The boot of the Volvo bore the scratches his flailing feet had made as he desperately tried to get them back on something solid.

Our valiant PC looked at the grotesque face, like a fermenting pumpkin, and was promptly sick in the corner. It would come to visit him many times in the next few months. He relocked the garage door and walked slowly to his car, wiping his mouth. After radioing for assistance he sat quietly
for a few moments, composing himself and a short speech to the long-legged Mrs Davison, informing her that she was now eligible for a widow’s pension.

Inspector Peterson’s parents, May and Joe, had been desperate to give their first born a name to remember. Something with style. A few days before the birth they saw
Citizen Kane
at the Tivoli and decided on Orson. He grew up hating the name. Throughout his school years he was known to children and teachers alike as Orson Cart. In 1962 the musical genius he shared a surname with came to town and someone accidentally called him Oscar. He made no attempt to correct them and it just grew from there. His wife, Dilys, had thought this was his name until two days before their wedding, when he realised that a before-the-altar revelation might be his undoing. Even so, he distinctly heard gasps of surprise from his friends in the pews behind as the vicar addressed him.

None of the detectives he was now deep in a brain- storming session with knew his secret. The warbling of the internal phone interrupted them and a DC answered it.

‘Yes, sir.’ He pulled a face, pointed upwards with his index finger and passed the instrument to Peterson.

‘Yes, sir, right now.’ Peterson put the phone back
in its cradle. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen, but the Screaming Skull wants me to go up and check if his parting’s straight.’

A minute later he knocked on the door of Chief Superintendent Tollis’s office and went in.

‘Come in, Peterson, and sit down. This won’t take a minute. First of all, any new developments in the Reverend Conway case?’

‘No sir, not since our morning meeting.’

The morning meeting had concluded less than an hour earlier, so the chances of further revelations were slim.

‘Quite. Right then, let me show you what I received in today’s mail.’

The Superintendent picked up a large manila envelope and drew its contents out onto the top of his desk. There were three large cuttings from newspapers. One described the death of the Reverend Gerry Wilde, who had fallen down his church tower; the next told of the brutal murder of Father Harcourt; and the third was a front-page splash from a tabloid describing the last moments of the Reverend Conway.

‘Obviously some crank, cashing in on other people’s misfortunes,’ stated the Superintendent. ‘Can’t think why he’s sent them to me, though.’

Maybe it’s because you’ve let all the press know that you’re the officer in charge, thought Peterson. He didn’t dwell on the thought. He would have
been delighted to hand over this investigation to anybody who wanted it. He could see his retirement date slipping away, like a pair of tail lights receding into the motorway fog. This was going to be a big one, and he needed it like the Super needed a comb.

He sat there, transfixed by the three cuttings. Neatly pinned in the top left-hand corner of each was a picture of a mushroom, similar to the one found in the Reverend Conway’s top pocket.

‘No, sir,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s not a crank. We’ve got a fuckin’ loony on the loose.’

Up to then the investigation into the murder of Ronald Conway had been a parochial affair. Everybody who’d known him was in the process of being interviewed. Detectives were knocking on doors, working outwards from the vicarage in an ever-widening circle. Questions were being asked and people encouraged to gossip. There was plenty of gossip about Reverend Conway.

Enquiries with Criminal Records showed that he’d received a caution for an unspecified sexual assault when he was seventeen.

‘I don’t believe any of the dirt that’s coming up about him,’ asserted DI Peterson in one of the morning meetings. ‘It’s all hearsay. OK, so maybe he flashed in the park when he was a kid. That doesn’t mean anything. From then on it’s been handed down, following him around like a starving
dog. If he’d been a member of some paedophile group, or into SM, we’d have found out about it by now. All the evidence is that he was a decent, devout, happily married bloke. It’s not the angle we’re looking for.’

I’m not so sure, Peterson,’ stated the Superintendent. ‘The leopard can’t change its spots. That sexual offence must show what type of man he is.’

‘With respect, sir, there are only two types of men.’

Eight pairs of eyebrows shot up. The Super’s went so high they’d have vanished into his hairline, if he’d had one.

‘Wankers and liars,’ the DI explained.

Now the murder was linked with the other deaths the scope of the inquiry widened. Peterson visited Norfolk and obtained the relevant hies. The evidence that Father Harcourt was knocked off his bike by Reg Davison was fairly conclusive. The jack in his car boot had almost certainly been used to finish the priest off. To Reg, the archetypal salesman, appearance was everything. He’d topped himself because the hopelessness of his situation, and the disgrace that would follow, were more than he could bear. Gerry Wilde could have fallen down his tower accidentally, but he could have been pushed. It didn’t make sense, but murder often doesn’t.

There was still a mood of discontent in certain branches of the Church of England over the ordination of women priests, but they hadn’t resorted to terrorism yet. And investigations showed that Conway was in favour of them, Wilde almost certainly against. Any Roman Catholic movements in that direction were invariably aborted immediately after conception.

Possible unification of the C of E and RC churches raised emotions to a level that were completely beyond Peterson’s grasp. He sent a lone officer down this avenue, as he did with the sexual and anti-women theories. The bulk of his team were dedicated to following the hypothesis dictated by the feeling in his bile ducts: that they were looking for a loony; a loony with a mission.

Take a look at this, guv,’ said one of the DCs when Peterson arrived back in his office. He placed a large but slim hardback book in front of the Inspector. It was called
Mushrooms and Toadstools
, by Jacqueline Seymour. When Peterson had read the title the constable flicked the book open to page five. In a comer was a colour picture identical to one of those sent to Superintendent Tollis.

‘See what it’s called.’ He ran his finger down the text until it was under the name.

‘Good God,’ muttered Peterson. He riffled through the pages of the book and said: ‘Is this yours, Trevor?’

‘Yes, guv. Well, my daughter’s.’

‘Are any of the other pictures in here?’

‘No. I’ve had another look at them and reckon they’re three different pictures of the same type of mushroom. Or toadstool, to be precise – it’s poisonous.’

‘Mmm. I’m not surprised, with a name like that. So he must have cut the pictures from three different books.’

It looks like it.’

‘And where would be the best place to do that?’

‘The library?’

‘Just what I’m thinking. Get your coat; let’s educate ourselves in matters fungoid.’

They intended walking the quarter of a mile to the library, as they knew it would be difficult to park nearby, but it had started to rain. Fortunately a police car came into the yard at the opportune moment, so Peterson hijacked it and had the driver take them there.

The library was a purpose-designed building, constructed when the town centre was redesigned about fifteen years previously. It was airy and pleasant, and well used by all sections of the community. The Inspector was surprised to see shelves and racks filled with videos and CDs, as well as books. It was a long time since he’d had the time to visit a library.

‘First,’ he said to DC Trevor Wilson, ‘let’s just see
how many books we can find on fungi.’

They located one each, in the section marked Natural History. A short while later DC Wilson found another on a shelf for books that were oversize – the ones filled with glossy photographs and normally described as Coffee Table, because they cost about as much as one. All three were intact – no pictures had been cut from them. They asked an assistant if they could see the chief librarian.

She disappeared through a door marked Staff and came back a few seconds later with a tubby little man wearing rimless spectacles and a blue suit.

The two detectives produced their ID cards. ‘This is Detective Constable Wilson and I’m Detective Inspector Peterson. You are…?’

‘Oh, goodness me. I’m Mr Treadwell. This is most unusual. Er, what exactly can I do for you, gentlemen?’