The Yard (6 page)

“Work here was too untidy for the likes of him.”

“A nice little shop in the Midlands is what a personality like his calls for,” Cox said. “Probably serving tea to old ladies at this very moment.”

“Discussing the weather, they is.”

Wiggins minced about the room and pitched his voice high, mimicking an old Black Country woman. “Oh, it’s quite brisk out today, don’t you think, Mr Gilchrist?”

“If it’s brisk you want,” Crockett O’Donnell said, “then you’ll want a holiday in London right about now.”

“Oh, did you know I used to be police round in London?” Boring said. Day was sure Gilchrist couldn’t possibly have sounded like Boring’s lisping impersonation. It was more likely a sign of contempt. One of their own had washed out and left, his tail between his legs. Gilchrist had failed. There was probably a certain amount of fear in Boring’s mimicry:
There but for the grace of God go I, and do I have what it takes for the long haul?

“Why, let me tell you about a grisly murder I saw there, Mrs Dalrymple,” O’Donnell said. He, too, had pitched his voice high and sounded much like a teenaged girl.

“Oh my, no. That sounds dreadfully … well, dreadfully dreadful, Mr Gilchrist.”

“More tea, then?”

“Yes, please. And some for my dog as well.”

By now the other men were laughing despite themselves at the impromptu play being enacted by their friends. They were all exhausted and worried and they had lost a colleague. The laughter eased the pressure in the room. Day was laughing along with them, despite never having met Patrick Gilchrist. A small part of him, the part that was always the outside observer, felt silently pleased to be included.

“But why you?” Wiggins said. His voice had returned to its normal pitch.

The laughter gradually died and the detectives’ eyes all turned toward Day.

“Pardon?” he said.

“Why did Sir Edward choose you for this one? You didn’t even know Little.”

“I was first at the station when the trunk was opened. I don’t think there’s more to it than that, but I have to think it’s something of a relief for you, since all of you are so overworked. I don’t have many cases yet and have more time to dedicate to this.”

“There’s time and there’s skills,” Ellery Cox said. “The one’s of no use if you haven’t the other.”

“Go to it, then,” Tiffany said. “Just don’t come to me when you get stuck. I’ve plenty enough to deal with.”

“Little was one of our own, Jimmy,” Cox said, “and he still deserves the best we’ve got. Not a fresh-faced kid. No offense intended.”

“How do we know Day’s not the best we’ve got?” Blacker said. “He could be.”

The others stopped arguing and looked at Blacker. There was a long silence. Finally, Tiffany cleared his throat.

“I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?” he said.

He walked back to his desk, sat down, and began sorting files. One by one, the others followed suit, returning to their desks, until Day and Blacker were left standing in the middle of the squad room alone.

“Thank you,” Day said.

Blacker shook his head.

“Don’t prove me wrong,” he said.

N
evil Hammersmith lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. He blew the smoke upward and inhaled the scent of it. Across the room, Dr Kingsley arranged a freshly laundered sheet on the bare wooden examining table. The table had been washed down countless times with lye and water, and the timber gleamed in the light of a nearby electric lamp before the white sheet settled gently down atop it.

A girl leaned against the far wall of the laboratory hugging a large tablet of paper to her chest. Hammersmith estimated her age at somewhere between twelve and fourteen. Her long hair fell straight past her shoulders and her dress was too short; she had clearly outgrown it. She kept her eyes on Kingsley. The girl had not responded to Hammersmith’s greeting, and Kingsley hadn’t made any attempt to introduce them.

The odor in Kingsley’s laboratory was almost unbearable, but neither the doctor nor the girl seemed to notice. Detective Inspector Little’s body had spent a night and the better part of the next day inside a trunk in a warm train depot, and there were no windows in the cramped lab. Hammersmith couldn’t blame Constable Jones for leaving immediately after they’d delivered the trunk. It would be up to Hammersmith to assist the doctor with his examination.

“Here now, we’re ready for him,” Kingsley said.

Hammersmith took another drag of the cigarette and ground it out against the inside of a spittoon next to the door. He positioned himself between the trunk and the girl and made a point of looking the other way as he reached into the trunk. Little’s body was solid, heavy like a river rock. The detective hadn’t been a thin man in life, and death had somehow added weight. Hammersmith struggled with the legs while Kingsley lifted the dead man from the other side, his hands hooked under Little’s armpits. The two
men shuffled sideways and gave a great heave. Little flew through the air, bounced once, and settled on the table. Maggots plopped loose onto the wood and wriggled around looking for shelter while Kingsley scurried about, straightening the sheet under the body.

While Kingsley busied himself, Hammersmith stooped and peered into the empty trunk. There was a shoe, flattened and wet. Reflected light glistened on the laces. Something small and round, about the size of his thumbnail, was partially hidden beneath the toe of the shoe, and Hammersmith poked at it. The object moved. He got a fingernail under its edge and peeled it away from the bottom of the trunk. A thick dollop of congealed blood clung to his finger and a sticky black web stretched out toward him as he lifted the object. He wiped it on the leg of his trousers. Under the green light of the laboratory, the object appeared to be a smooth button, wrapped in fabric and stained with blood.

“Fascinating,” Kingsley said. “Come here, Constable.”

Hammersmith reluctantly approached the table, where Kingsley had already removed Inspector Little’s jacket. The doctor was carefully cutting the dead man’s shirt off. The shirt was rigid and stained brown, with irregular patches of its original white showing here and there. Hammersmith noticed a small mustard stain on Little’s shirtfront and focused intently on it.

“I may have found something, sir.”

“Something?”

Hammersmith held out the round object, and Kingsley peered at it. He picked up a pair of metal tongs from a nearby table and plucked the object from Hammersmith’s hand, holding it up to the light.

“It’s a button,” he said.

“It doesn’t appear to match Mr Little’s clothes,” Hammersmith said.

“Very good, Constable. No, I’d say this is a furniture button. From a sofa or a chair, perhaps, or possibly even a mattress.”

“Not from the trunk.”

“No, the trunk is riveted, not buttoned. This may be relevant, Mr Hammersmith. It’s a good find.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Kingsley plunked the button into a shallow enameled dish and turned back to the corpse on the table.

“Now, let’s see what Mr Little’s body can tell us, shall we?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re going to be looking for an amateur, I think, Hammersmith.”

“An amateur, sir?”

“Yes, look at the sheer number of wounds here.”

Kingsley paused and looked at the ceiling. He smiled.

“Sheer. Remember that, Hammersmith,
sheer
. I’ll want to come back to that in a moment. What was I saying?”

“Sheer?”

“No, the other thing.”

“The number of wounds.”

“Yes, the number of wounds. This wasn’t the work of someone who’s killed before. This person was desperate or very angry. I count—”

Kingsley stopped talking while he rolled the body on its side. Little’s arms and legs remained twisted and stiff. Kingsley rummaged around on a side table until he found a magnifying lens, and he stooped over the table, scrutinizing Little’s back. Hammersmith craned his neck, surprised that the rolls of fat around Little’s midsection hadn’t moved when the body did. The back of the corpse was bruised a deep purple, mottled with black around a ring of pale white where the body had rested against the bottom of the trunk. Already the sheet covering the examining table was sticky with old blood.

The girl followed Kingsley around the table and he murmured under his breath at her, pointing out areas of interest on the body, which she seemed to be sketching in her pad.

Kingsley jabbed his finger in the air repeatedly, silently counting, and turned to Hammersmith with a scowl.

“There are at least twenty-two separate puncture wounds here, most of them nonfatal.”

“Lord.”

“Indeed. Little was in the fight of his life. Many of these wounds were shallow and occurred perhaps at the beginning of the altercation, before the
killer had committed to the deed. There’s a great deal of distortion in the wounds, as well, most likely from Little’s twisting and turning his body as he struggled with his assailant.”

Kingsley demonstrated by twisting and turning his own body, holding his arms up as if to ward off an unseen assailant.

“I believe this was not a premeditated attack. If I were to guess, I would say the killer made up his mind to murder Little on the spur of the moment and followed through with increasing determination as they fought.”

Hammersmith lit another cigarette and noticed that his hand shook as he tried to hold the match steady. He took a small black notebook from his pocket and endeavored to take down what Kingsley was saying. Detective Inspector Day would get a report from the doctor when his examination was complete, but early information might help in the investigation.

“Now, I asked you to remind me of something,” Kingsley said.

“You did?”

Hammersmith looked up from the notebook. Behind the table, with its ghastly banquet, a gasogene bubbled quietly. The green liquid inside it cast a faint sickly glow over the immediate surroundings. An enormous jar on the back counter held a pair of thick rubbery babies, joined at the skull. A man’s face floated in another jar, the skin pulled taut with nearly invisible wires. Hammersmith could see the man’s eyelashes and upper teeth, all carefully preserved.

The girl, seemingly oblivious to the horrors surrounding her, was bent over her tablet of paper, a chunk of charcoal in one hand. Her light-colored hair shimmered with green highlights. Hammersmith felt seasick.

“Yes,” Kingsley said. “I distinctly remember asking you to remind me of something.”

“What was it?”

“I put it out of my head because you were going to bring it back up.”

“Oh.”

“Well, come on, man.”

“Sheer,”
the girl said. “You mentioned the word
sheer
as you rolled the policeman over.”

Her voice was flat and soft, and she never looked up from her tablet of paper. Hammersmith moved closer and peered over her shoulder. She had sketched the body and was carefully noting the positions and sizes of Little’s wounds on her drawing. Hammersmith thought the likeness was amazing.

“Yes. Yes, thank you, my dear. That’s what you’ll be looking for, Hammersmith. The weapon.”

The doctor stared at Hammersmith, who shifted his weight to his right foot and licked his lips. He wasn’t sure what Kingsley wanted from him.

“The weapon?” Hammersmith said.

Kingsley smiled and nodded. “Just so,” he said. “Of course, it’s generally impossible to determine the type of instrument used in a stabbing death. I can often tell you how long a blade was, if there happens to be a secondary wound made by a hand guard. That sort of thing can point conclusively to the length of the blade.”

Hammersmith nodded, but he didn’t write in his notebook.

“But this,” Kingsley said, “this is a slightly different matter. First, you’ve no doubt seen for yourself that there are no incision wounds.”

Kingsley’s eyes gleamed in the room’s greenish glow, and Hammersmith didn’t see any point in correcting him. Hammersmith hadn’t noticed anything about the wounds because he had tried hard not to look directly at them. Kingsley went on.

“Every wound on the inspector’s body is a stab wound. No blade was ever drawn across his flesh. When we couple that fact with my theory that this was a first-time killer, it becomes remarkable. Was there no hesitation on his part, no stuttering of the blade before it plunged in? And there is ample evidence of a struggle, so why aren’t Little’s hands cut? We know he tried to stop his attacker.”

Kingsley indicated Little’s right hand, gesturing for Hammersmith to lean in for a better look.

“You see? But that is only our first clue as to the murder weapon. Now here…”

Kingsley swept his hand across the small table behind him until he found a short ruler. He measured several of the larger wounds. He set the ruler
down next to the body and pried one of the wounds open with his fingers, bending over Little’s torso.

“Rigor should leave the body within the next few hours, and then I’ll be able to get in there and tell you more, but even now…”

He worked a finger deep inside the body and nodded to himself.

“As I thought. Here we have our second clue. Those wounds that measure the same width across—in other words, those that were inflicted late in the attack and were the deepest, using the entirety of the blade—those wounds taper within the body. Do you see?”

Hammersmith shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

Kingsley sighed and frowned at Hammersmith. A teacher addressing a slow student.

“The weapon used here was shaped like a spade, sharp at its pointed end, but widening as it neared the handle. And it had no blade. Or, if it did have a blade, that sharp edge was covered or otherwise protected, which is why we find no slashes on the detective’s body, only stab wounds.”

“So he was killed with a spade? No, he was killed with a pair of shears, wasn’t he? That’s what you’re getting at.”

Kingsley beamed at him. “Exactly. The detective inspector was stabbed repeatedly with a pair of shears. They were closed at the time.”

He picked up the scissors he had used to cut Little’s shirt off and turned them around to hold them under the handles, bringing his hand down above the body in a stabbing motion.