We Are Death (8 page)

They were back, of that there was no question. It was just a question of who
they
were.

*

M
orlock hated opulence. Of course, he embraced it too. He was staying at Claridge’s, under the name Thom Carlton. That evening he had three prostitutes to his suite. No drugs, no alcohol. Not tonight. He ate lightly cooked vegetables and rice noodles, drank spring water and green tea, had finished eating for the day by six o’clock, and the prostitutes arrived at seven-thirty.

He did not talk to them. They got the sense, as they discussed later, that he might be one of the dangerous ones. Good looking and rich, it was odd from the start that he would have to pay for anything. Usually things, women included, came free to such men.

But Thom Carlton paid well, and they allowed themselves the false sense of security with numbers on their side. Fortunately for them, Morlock was interested in nothing other than sex and was happy to let them walk out the door. Morlock lasted three hours, and the women left, well compensated, shortly afterwards.

Thom Carlton was booked into the hotel for three nights, but he intended to leave, having paid the bill, the following morning. He was the ghost who had slipped into the country under one name, hired a car under another and was staying at the hotel under a third, murdering Evan Carter along the way, and no one had the slightest idea who or where he was.

Morlock did not cover his tracks. Morlock did not make tracks in the first place.

––––––––

J
ericho slept uneasily, frequently waking and staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows cast by the moon. Kangchenjunga filled his thoughts in a way in which it hadn’t done for many years. He’d never forgotten, but he had certainly stopped thinking about it. Didn’t want to think about it. Yet now, unsurprisingly, it was back, swept in on the same tide as so many other strange occurrences.

The window was open, and he found himself cold at some point, with the duvet consigned to the floor and sleeping beneath a sheet. It seemed like a while since he’d been cold. He retrieved the duvet and slept better thereafter.

Awake at five thirty, he decided to go for a walk before getting ready for work. Into town, up the back way towards the moat and then away from the city across the fields, heading towards Dulcote.

He stopped in the middle of the second field and looked back, as morning swept over the land, bright and sunny. The sky was clear, set for another warm day, but at least there was an early morning coolness in the air which hadn’t been there for the past few days.

He was leaving his post in a month, and yet it felt too early to be thinking about leaving, to be applying for other jobs or making the positive decision not to. He genuinely believed what he’d said to Haynes, that they didn’t want him, that he wouldn’t get another job. That he’d be humiliating himself by even trying. They surely expected him to understand and play the game. And yet, it was not his practice to walk away from anything. If they wanted to get rid of him, then he should make them actually do it. At the very least, milk them for gardening leave as long as possible.

But that wasn’t his way either.

He looked at his watch. Plenty of work to do, for once, but he decided to take the rest of the walk round the path and back up over the top road, rather than turning back. He could afford to be a little later than normal.

*

D
ylan’s door was closed as usual. For the first time in several days, Jericho was not looking forward to stepping into the air conditioning. It wasn’t going to be too cold for him, he just didn’t need the relief it had been giving.

Told on his arrival that she wanted to see him, he had reverted to type and, on the way to her office, collected himself a coffee to hide behind if needed.

At some stage during his walk over the fields, he had come to the conclusion that he was definitely getting the worst of this. He wasn’t one to complain or care about being disrespected, but this attitude from Dylan, this new affability, wasn’t it just because she was getting what she’d wanted for so long? Jericho would be leaving.

He knocked, opened the door and entered. There was a woman sitting opposite Dylan. Short auburn hair, this year’s glasses, slim, a grey suit, three-inch heels. There was a small blue suitcase placed against the wall near the door.

Jericho took it all in, made the instant judgement that this would be someone from another police organisation come to take over the investigation, then stepped forward, closing the door behind him.

‘Robert, come in,’ said Dylan. ‘This is Detective Inspector Badstuber of the Swiss police. She heard about our murder yesterday and wanted to take a look.’

‘You’re investigating the Connolly murder?’ asked Jericho, bypassing the small-talk and getting straight to business.

‘That is correct.’

She stood and they shook hands. Jericho stepped back, taking a sip of coffee. There was a slightly awkward moment, as though Dylan and Badstuber expected Jericho to say something. He looked between them, then finally gave in to the peculiar pressure of the relentless gaze of two women.

‘We’re losing the case?’ he asked. ‘Is it going to become some sort of international effort?’

‘Not at all,’ said Dylan. ‘Quite the contrary, in fact. I’ve just been discussing it with the Inspector. Possibly the best way forward would be for you two to take it up and work together. Not sure if that will play out, but while you take the Inspector to see the corpse and murder site, I’ll make some calls. It might be a fruitful way for you to spend your last few weeks here, Robert, rather than slowly rotting into your chair.’

She smiled. Jericho had one of those dark moments of wanting to decapitate her with a painfully slow, blunt instrument, before displaying her head on a spike outside police headquarters in Bristol as a warning to other senior officers.

‘Sgt Haynes isn’t in?’ she asked. ‘I thought someone said he was here earlier.’

‘Had to go up to London,’ said Jericho.

Dylan seemed to lean forward slightly in her seat.

‘May I ask why?’

Jericho held her gaze for a moment. Here we go, he thought. It always comes to it. There wasn’t really much you could do without it coming to the attention of your boss.

‘An insurance case. I authorised it.’

She pursed her lips, not at all convinced.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Maybe, later, you could let me see the file.’

‘Of course.’

As she said it, she realised that the words were probably futile. Jericho would either vacillate long enough that she’d forget, or else he would let her see some other case report that really would have required Haynes to go to London.

He looked back and forth between the women again, then opened the door behind him.

‘I should be getting on. Come through and see me when you’re finished here,’ he said to the Swiss DI. She acknowledged him with a slight movement of the head.

Jericho was gone, the door closed behind him.

––––––––

J
ericho was back at the site of the murder for the first time since the previous morning. There was only one officer on guard now, although the road had not yet been opened back up to the public.

The murder site was taped off. The steady stream of onlookers, which had grown immediately after the restrictions had been lifted, had dwindled again late at night and would be unlikely to get going again that morning. Life was back to normal. Any new murder tourists were probably travelling from a distance, and would be low in number.

Badstuber had wandered away from the markings that indicated Carter’s final resting place. She was standing in the middle of the road, staring off across the low-lying land to the hills a couple of miles away. Occasionally she would lift her head, as if smelling the air.

Jericho watched her for a while, then wandered over. They hadn’t spoken much. She had read the reports, and she wanted to see the scene of the crime. She seemed to think – as Jericho would have done under similar circumstances – that it was too early for words.

‘Seen enough?’ he asked.

Badstuber turned.

‘I think so. I could have left a while ago, but I like it here.’

She glanced back round at the spot where Carter had been shot.

‘A good place to die.’

Jericho wasn’t sure how to take that, so he nodded slightly, following her gaze.

‘Connolly,’ she continued, ‘he also died in a nice spot. Our killer picks his locations. Of course, more likely it’s all about timing, and the attractiveness of the surroundings is incidental.’

Jericho found himself smiling. She had a nice mouth. If nothing else, he thought, he could enjoy watching her lips while she talked. And the thought had him shaking his head.

‘Don’t be getting any ideas, Chief Inspector.’

He asked the question with a raised eyebrow.

‘I know your reputation, there was quite enough written about you in the newspapers this year.’

‘You believe everything you read in the papers?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps you’re right. Particularly not your newspapers. Even so, you did admit, did you not, to sexual relations with your colleague on what became the Durrant case?’

Jericho held her gaze for a moment, then lowered his eyes. He surprised himself by having to stop a smile crossing his face. She was so much more direct than the stuffy panel of suits who’d interrogated him two days earlier.

‘So,’ she continued, as she had also learned of Jericho’s legendary taciturnity – although that was less in evidence in these dying days of his career – ‘you should know that I’m happily married and have three children under the age of ten. There will be nothing between us.’

He looked at her again. This time he did smile.

‘Quite a relief,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’

‘I find you unattractive. I am unsure how you have managed to charm so many women.’

Jericho let his eyes drift off to the side, a rueful look. He didn’t think he wanted her saying anything else.

‘Although you’re not as rude as everyone said you’d be.’

‘Are we done here?’ he asked.

She seemed to be surprised that he’d cut her off in the middle of her psychological assessment, then she shrugged and said, ‘Yes, of course. I said I was done.’

*

T
he body was laid out in traditional fashion. The head, which had been split apart by the bullet, had now been deconstructed further.

Trueblood was still at work. Jericho and Badstuber stood on the other side of the table, watching. There had been little conversation. Trueblood appeared to be humming
Chim Chim Cher-ee
. Jericho, as ever, found himself fascinated. He enjoyed the slow movements of her hands, the delicate insertions of the scalpel, the occasional heavy lifting of viscera.

Badstuber did not seem quite as enthusiastic. Her face was tight, tense, as though she was having to stop herself vomiting. She hadn’t spoken beyond a quick hello on being introduced to the doctor.

‘You dug out the bullet?’ asked Jericho, as Trueblood seemed to have come to the end of a verse.

‘Yep. It’s off to Bristol, you’ll need to speak to them to get specifics.’

‘OK, thanks. Anything further on the point of entry? Can we rule out the midget?’

Trueblood looked at Jericho and smiled.

‘I’m afraid not, your midget is still in the frame. The gunshot was fired, as we thought, from very close range. Definitely no more than three feet. And it entered the forehead travelling up at an angle of around sixty degrees. So, as we talked about, either someone was sitting in a car, or the killer was a lot shorter than the victim.’

‘Or maybe they’d bent down, say to tie their shoelace, caught Carter unaware, he looked down at him and caught a bullet in the face.’

Trueblood considered this and then nodded.

‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘Definite possibility.’

Without a word, Badstuber backed away from the table, then walked quickly from the room, her hand to her mouth. They watched her until the door closed, then turned back to the cadaver.

‘It’s not for everyone,’ said Trueblood. ‘She seems nice.’

‘How would you know, she hasn’t said anything?’

‘I mean, nice-looking. Attractive.’

‘Yes,’ said Jericho.

Trueblood smiled. ‘You’re probably off co-workers.’

‘I’ve already been warned off.’

‘By whom?’

‘Her.’

‘God, what did you do, Robert?’

‘I didn’t do anything. She knew me by reputation, so felt the need to let me know she’s happily married with three kids.’

‘No way!’

‘Yes. That happened.’

‘Well, good for her. She saw you coming.’

‘I wasn’t going to do anything.’

Trueblood gave him an eyebrow, then looked back down at the corpse.

‘Anyway, I completely approve. I should have warned you off too. Bit disappointed that I never actually had to.’

‘I already knew you had three kids and were happily married before we met.’

‘Well, maybe I’ll let you off.’

She let out a sigh, then looked up from what was left of Evan Carter’s face.

‘What else can I tell you? He hadn’t had sex recently, he’d been drinking but not to excess, not even remotely. I mean, I doubt he would even have been drunk at all. No drugs in his system. Pretty clean all round. Very fit.’

‘So I’ve been hearing.’

‘Shame.’

‘Loss to the gene pool?’

‘Exactly... Any idea who killed him?’

He shook his head, nodded as a way of indicating that he was done standing over the corpse.

‘We’ve only just started,’ he said.

*

S
itting in the car on the way back to Wells. Briefly on the M5, before they would turn off and head for Street and Glastonbury. Badstuber staring straight ahead. No conversation since they’d left Taunton. Jericho wondered if she’d been sick.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I don’t like cadavers,’ she said. ‘I can look at pictures, but the real thing is upsetting for me.’

‘That’s reasonable,’ said Jericho.