The Red Room (8 page)

9

The next day, when I went into Stretton
Green for a meeting, Oban gave me a hug, which
made me feel more like a favorite niece than
a professional consultant. Then he led me through
the office to meet the largely new team that was
investigating the canal murder. "Thanks for last
night," he said. "Delicious food. Tell
me." He looked round with a quizzical
expression. "When did you and, er, Julie
meet?"
"I don't know. Years ago. She was a friend
of friends of mine. I'm not really--was
"Nice," he said. "You two make a good,
erm--was
"Look," I said urgently. "I think I'd
better--was
I broke off because Oban was now leading me through
the open-plan office, which looked a bit as if a
burglar had got in recently--filing cabinets
with all their drawers open, files lying scattered
on a table, cardboard boxes half filled with
stained mugs.
"Moving," said Oban, kicking a roll of
Sellotape out of his path.
"I kind of gathered."
"A bloody disaster is what it is. Have you ever
moved house?"
"Yes. Awful."
I looked around for Furth but, to my relief,
I couldn't see him. And then I got 119
irritated with myself. What did I have to feel
bad about? I hadn't asked for this. We stopped
at the far side of the office, in a corner.
Oban signaled to various people hunched over
desks, and phones were replaced, files closed
and a small group of detectives, male and
female, gathered round. Oban gave an
introductory cough.
"This is Dr. Kit Quinn. She's attached
to the Welbeck Clinic and to Market Hill
Hospital for the Criminally Insane." He
turned to me. "I won't introduce you
to everybody now. You'll probably run up against
most of them."
"Hello," I said, trying to aim a smile
at the whole room. At that moment, Furth came
in. He stood by the door and folded his arms across
his chest.
"It was because of Dr. Quinn," Oban continued,
"that we let Michael Doll go." This statement
wasn't exactly greeted with a round of
applause. Instead there were some murmurs at the
back and a shuffling of feet. "And if anybody
has a problem with that, I'd like them to come and see
me. If this case had gone in front of a
judge, it would have been tossed straight back in
our faces. I won't repeat here what I said
in private to Guy, but let's do some
old-fashioned legwork, all right? And in the
meantime, give Dr. Quinn what she needs."
More murmurs. I sensed that not everybody was
delighted to have me foisted on them. "Kit, is
there anything you want to say?"
I started. I hadn't been prepared for this. I
looked at the slightly sullen faces that were
pointed at me. "Well," I said. I hated
beginning sentences when I had no idea what was
going to come next. "I just want to say that I'm not
here to tell you how to do your job. The best I can
do--perhaps--is to help by pointing you in one direction
rather than another, making suggestions."
"It was Doll," someone said. I couldn't see
who.
"Was it?" I said, for want of a more
effective riposte.
"Yeah."
I could identify the speaker now, a man at the
back in shirtsleeves, tall, the build of a
rugby player.
Oban stepped forward. "Then find some 121
real evidence, Gil," he said.
"What if you were wrong? What if Doll did
it?"
"Look, I never said Doll was innocent. I
said there was no evidence. What I want to do is
look at what you've got and pretend that I never
heard his name." Somebody muttered something I
couldn't hear and someone else guffawed.
"That's enough," said Oban sharply.
"Meeting's over. Sorry, Kit," he said,
looking over his detectives with an expression of
disdain. "I'd say they aren't a bad lot,
really, except it's not true. But I know you can
stand up for yourself. I'll leave you with Guy. All
right?"
"Fine." It wasn't.
Oban left and the others drifted away, not
looking very busy. I looked at Furth. "Can
I get you some tea?" he asked, with careful
courtesy.
"In a minute, thanks."
"Got any ideas, then?"
"No," I said, honestly. "I haven't.
Anyway, at this stage, ideas would be an
obstacle. I want to look through the material with
an empty mind."
Furth gave a thin smile. "I don't see
why we need to hire empty minds as long as
we've got Gil. But I told you already, this is
just a simple case."
"Really?"
"A runaway found dead by a canal."
"Is that simple?"
Furth shrugged and looked around, almost as if he
was embarrassed that anybody should be eavesdropping
while he stated the obvious to a stuck-up shrink.
"Perverts pick on prostitutes and runaways
because they're easy targets. They pick on them
by canals because they're deserted. No passing
traffic."
"Yes. I've read all that."
"You disagree?"
"Can I make a suggestion?"
Furth tightened his lips. I think he wanted
to tell me to fuck off out of the station and not come
back, but this wasn't allowed. "That's what
we're paying you for," he said.
"Sometimes it's too easy just to put a label
on someone. It might help not just to think of
Lianne as a runaway. It stops you 123
seeing her as an individual."
"She .was a runaway."
"I know," I said. "She may have been other
things as well."
"Like a prostitute, you mean?" He half
laughed, then stopped when he saw the look on my
face. I had had a sudden flash of him when he
was a boy, pushed around by other boys until he
developed his hard-man act.
"No. I don't mean that. She was a young
woman. She had a history, a past, a
family, a name."
"Which we don't know."
"How old was she, about?"
"Sixteen, seventeen--maybe a bit less,
maybe a bit more."
"How do we even know she was called
Lianne?"
"We don't. We just know that's what she
called herself. Character named Pavic, who runs a
local hostel, identified her."
"But presumably it's just a matter of time before
you find out how Lianne actually was, where she
came from."
"What makes you think that?" He had a slight
smile on his lips.
"Everyone's on some list, some computer, some
register, aren't they?"
"Do you know how many runaways there are?"
"A lot, I know."
"Tens of thousands."
"I know," I said.
"Those are the ones we know are missing, but can't
find. The ones someone, somewhere, wants us to find.
What about all of the others, like Lianne, who
nobody really gives a fuck about, who just
drifted off one day and never came back? How do
we find them, if no one's reported them as
lost? It's like a fucking missing-luggage
department in an airport. Have you ever been in one
of those? I have, in Cairo--a great warehouse of
suitcases, most of them completely hidden from
sight, gathering dust, being eaten by rats. Hard enough
to find your bag even if it's got a label on,
but if it hasn't, you might as well forget it."
"Lianne's not a piece of luggage."
He stared at me. "I didn't say she was
piece of luggage," he said. "I said she was like
a piece of luggage."
"My point is that we have to think of her 125
as a girl, not a stray item. Not just "the
runaway.""
"What about the canal? Are allowed to call it
that or do you think it might be a river in
disguise?"
"I was trying to say that it helps to come to things
fresh. But maybe that's really a reminder for myself
rather than you."
"Good," he said, very quietly. "We're
eagerly awaiting your contribution. What can I
get you?"
"Didn't Oban tell you?" I tried hard
to sound authoritative and as if I knew
exactly what I was doing. "I want a quiet
room and then I'd like to look through everything you've
got."
"Anything else?" This last was said with grim
politeness.
"Tea would be nice, please. Just a drop of
milk. No sugar."
Furth took me to a small windowless room that
smelled as if it had been previously used for
storing something corrosive and illegal. There was
nothing but a desk and a plastic chair. Within a
couple of minutes two female officers arrived
carrying a bundle of files. It seemed
disappointingly flimsy. Almost nothing was known about
Lianne's life, and they hadn't even
accumulated much data on her death. I started
to read. I sat in the room for an hour and
three-quarters. I read about puncture wounds,
I read some statements, I looked at
photographs of her pale body at the scene,
face down in the scrubby grass behind some bushes
by the canal and at the end I thought: Is that it?

10

On the radio they said it was the wettest summer
since 1736. I parked in a puddle and sat for a
minute, while water cascaded down the
windscreen and bounced off the hood. I closed
my eyes and heard the rain inside my head like a
roaring. I have not become used to seeing dead
bodies.
The pathologist was waiting for me. Alexandra
Harris. I'd met her before. She didn't
look like a pathologist, whatever a pathologist
is supposed to look like, more like an aging
B-movie actress from the thirties, 127
voluptuous in her white coat, with dark hair
falling in ringlets around her creamy oval face
and a dreamy, passive air about her. Or maybe
she was just tired. There were dark rings under her eyes.
"Alexandra," I said, as we shook hands.
"Thanks for giving me your time."
"That's OK. It's my job. Guy said you'd
already looked through the files."
"Yes. It wasn't you who did the autopsy,
though?"
"No, that was his lordship. I mean Brian
Barrow. Sir Brian. He's teaching today.
What are you looking for exactly?"
"I just want to get an impression," I said.
"An impression?" She gazed at me
doubtfully, as if suddenly this wasn't such a good
idea.
"A feel for her," I added inadequately.
"Lianne."
"Have you seen a cadaver before? There's not much
to see."
"Seen one?" I asked. "I trained as a
doctor. I had one of my own for six months."
"Sorry. Do you want me to take you straight
through?"
"Might as well."
My fingers slipped on the handle of my
briefcase. I wanted to see Lianne; really
see her, not just flick through the ghastly color
photographs looking for clues. She'd had a
short, lonely life, with no one to miss her much
now that she'd died. I wanted to touch her; stand
by her body for a while. I didn't think
Alexandra would understand that, and I'm not sure I
understood it either.
"Do I need to change?" I asked.
"You mean into a ball-gown?" Alexandra said,
with a grin. "No, we dress pretty informally
around here."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm fairly
new to this. I haven't learned to treat it all as
a joke yet."
"You want me to talk like an undertaker?"
"I want to see Lianne," I said gently.
Alexandra's smile faded. She wasn't quite
as friendly anymore. I followed her through two
sets of swing doors, hearing the click of my
heels across the linoleum. Here we were in another
world, cold and silent and sterile. An underworld, I
thought. Beneath my thin summer clothes, my 129
skin was covered in goose-bumps. I could hear
my heart thumping--how strange, all these
bodies in here, but only our two hearts beating.

I could see what Alexandra had meant.
Lianne looked as if every trace of evidence that
she had lived in the messy crowded world outside
had been scoured off her body. She was very, very
clean. Not clean like when you wash your hands. Clean
like when you've been scrubbing a sink and your hands are
wrinkled and raw. With her head exposed, the one
scrap of her life I could see was the tiny fold
of a hole in an ear-lobe. Sir Brian
Barrow had had a tricky job. He had cut
round her neck slightly above the laceration. His
own incision had now been sewn back up. The
knife wound remained but, cleaned up with no
blood, it had a look of padded plastic. I
had attended surgical operations before and the strong
cat-food smell of meat and blood had never
left me. But this was different. Just a sharp
medicinal odor that burned my nostrils.
Lianne's face was round. There was a
scattering of freckles across the bridge of her
nose. Her mouth was small and colorless. I
laid one finger against her cheek, felt the stony
flesh. Death at my fingertips, so chill and hard
it made me gasp. She had coppery hair,
long, shaggy, and parted crookedly in the middle.
When I leaned forward, I could see the split
ends. Hair appears to go on growing after death,
everyone knows that. Hair and nails--but when I
cautiously lifted up one side of the sheet
to expose an arm, I saw that Lianne's
fingernails were chewed to the quick. She had tiny
plump hands. Somehow, it was the hands that moved me
most. They still looked soft, as if they could curl
and hold. I touched her palm, and it was stony
too.
I took a deep breath and pulled off the
covering, so that only her feet were still hidden. I
took in her whole body; it was as if the sight of
her was pouring into my skull and fixing there. Once
more there was Sir Brian's long incision down from
her neck to her reddish pubic hair. Not quite
straight. There was a little cut around her
belly-button, like a road forking at an
ancient monument. The wound had been neatly
sewn up, like a demonstration in a
home-economics lesson. I needed 131
to concentrate on the relevant wounds. Her
throat was neatly and efficiently cut, side
to side, but there were also these small stab marks on
her stomach, her shoulders, her thighs. There were
seventeen of them--I lost count the first time and had
to start again. Her high, shallow breasts were
untouched; so too was her genital area. I knew
from the autopsy report that there had been no
injuries inside either the vagina or the perineum.
I stepped closer to Lianne. I tried
to keep calling her that in my mind. Her legs were
unshaved. Her arms were downy. There were a couple
of violent scratches on her left wrist--those
would be from where she'd lain among brambles by the
canal. A scar on her left knee. Maybe
she'd fallen over when she was little. I imagined
her when she was still in pigtails, with gaps in her
teeth, running around some garden one summer when it
didn't rain, thinking life would be happy. That's
what is so touching about children: They are sure that
life will be grand for them. Ask a six-year-old
what they want to be when they grow up, and they
say, a pilot, a prime minister, a ballet
dancer, a pop star, a footballer, a
millionaire. What had Lianne wanted
to be, I wondered. Well, whatever her dreams
had been, there were no dreams now. Here she was--
except, of course, Lianne wasn't here at
all, only her wrong-colored, chilled
corpse. There was nobody here except me. No
breath of life in the room except my breath.
I had never before had such a sense of absence.
I lifted the sheet off her feet, and saw that
the nails were painted red, the varnish chipped. I
touched the scar on her knee. I touched her hand
again, with its pathetic bitten nails. I lifted
up a strand of copper hair. Even her hair
felt dead. Each cell and particle of her had
stopped in its track. I could feel the blood
hammering round my body, the air rushing through it, the
images flooding through my eyes, the hair
prickling on my clammy skin.
Enough. I pulled up the sheet, made sure
it entirely covered Lianne, not even a strand of
hair showing. I wanted to say something, anything,
to break the silence, but I couldn't think of anything
to say so I cleared my throat loudly instead.
Immediately Alexandra clipped back into the room.
She must have been waiting just outside.
"Finished?" 133
"Yes."
Lianne was lying in a drawer and with an effort,
Alexandra pushed it back as if into a giant
filing cabinet. "Nothing you couldn't have found in the
report, was there?" she asked, with a touch of
sharpness.
"I wanted to look at the wounds," I said.
I collected my case, my mac, stumbled
through the door into the drenching downpour. I lifted
my face up to the sky and let rain stream over it
like tears.