A Taste for Death (30 page)

Dalgliesh said:

'If he did it might not have worried him too much after the first shock of discovery. He'd tell himself that we'd assume Berowne used the matches from the chained box, or that we'd think that the matches had been burned with the diary. Or perhaps we'd argue that he could have used a match from one of those packets you can pick up in hotels and restaurants, small enough to burn away without a trace. Admittedly, Berowne wasn't a man likely to collect restaurant matches but defence counsel could argue that it

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happened that way. This isn't exactly a propitious time to ask for a conviction on forensic evidence alone, certainly

not on one inch of a half-burned match.'

Kate asked:

'How do you think it happened, sir?'

'Possibly much as you've described. If Sir Paul had been faced with a naked and armed assailant, I doubt if we'd have found what we did find at the scene. There was no sign of a struggle. That suggests that he must have been knocked out first. That done, the killer got to work swiftly, expertly, knowing just what he was about. And he didn't need much time. A couple of minutes to strip and lay his hands on the razor. Less than ten seconds to do the killing. So the knockout blow need not have been heavy. In fact, it would have had to be nicely judged if it weren't to leave a suspiciously large bruise. But there's another possibility. He could have slipped something over Berowne's head and dragged him down. Something soft, a scarf, a towel, his

own shirt. Or a noose, a cord, a handkerchief.'

Kate said:

'But he'd have to be careful not to pull it too tight, not to throttle his victim. The cause of death had to be the slit throat. And wouldn't a scarf or handkerchief leave a mark?'

Dalgliesh said:

'Not necessarily. Not when he'd finished his butchery. But we may get something from this afternoon's PM.'

And suddenly, she was back in the Little Vestry, looking down again at that half-severed head, seeing the whole picture, vivid, clear-edged, bright as a coloured print. And this time there was no blessed moment of preparation, no chance to compose her mind and muscles for what she knew she would have to face. Her hands, white knuckled, tightened on the wheel. For a moment she imagined the car had stalled, that she had stepped on the brake. But they were still riding smoothly, down the Finchley Road. How strange, she thought, that the horror, briefly recalled, should be more terrible than reality. But her companion was speaking. She must have lost a few seconds of what he

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was saying. But now she heard him talking about the time of the post-mortem, saying that she might like to watch. Normally the suggestion, which she translated as an order, would have pleased her. She would have welcomed it as one more affirmation that she was really part of his team. But now for the first time she felt a spasm of distaste, almost a revulsion. She would be there, of course. This wouldn't be her first autopsy. She had no fear of disgracing herself. She could gaze and not be sick. In detective training school, she had seen her male colleagues topple in the PM room while she had stood firm. It was important to be present at the PM if the pathologist would allow it. You could learn a lot, and she was eager to learn. Her grandmother and the social worker would be waiting for her at three o'clock but they would have to wait. She had tried, but not too hard, to find a moment in the day to ring and say that she couldn't be there. But she told herself that it wasn't necessary; her grandmother knew that already. She would try to drop in at the end of the day if it wasn't too late. But for her, now at this moment, the dead had to take priority over the living. But for the first time since she had joined the CID, a small treacherous voice, whispering in self-distrust, asked her what exactly it was that her job was doing to her.

She had chosen to be a police officer deliberately, knowing that the job was right for her. But she had never, even from the first, had any illusions about it. It was a job where people when they needed you demanded that you should be there at once, unquestionably, effectively, and when they didn't preferred to forget you existed. It was a job where you were sometimes required to work with people you'd rather not work with and show respect for senior officers for whom you felt little or none; where you could find yourself allied to men you despised and against some for whom, more often than you'd bargained for, more often than was comfortable, you felt sympathy, even pity. She knew the comfortable orthodoxies, that law and order were the norms, crime the aberration, that policing in a free society could only be done with the consent of the

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policed, even presumably in those areas where the police had always been seen as the enemy and had now been elevated into convenient stereotypes of oppression. But she had her own credo. You kept sane by knowing that hypocrisy might be politically necessary but that You didn't have to believe it. You kept honest; there was no point in the job otherwise. You did the job so that your male colleagues had to respect you even if it was too much to expect that they would like you. You kept your private life private, unmessy. There were men enough in the world without being trapped by propinquity into sexual entanglement with your colleagues. You didn't fall into the easy habit of obscenity; you had heard enough of that in Ellison Fairweather Buildings. You knew how far you could reasonably hope to rise and how you proposed to get there. You made no unnecessary enemies; it was hard enough for a woman to climb without getting kicked in the ankles on the way up. Every job, after all, had its disad-vantages. Nurses got used to the smell of dressings and bedpans, unwashed bodies, other people's pain, the smell of death. She had made her choice. And now, more than ever, she had no regrets.

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The hospital where Miles Kynaston held his appointment as consultant pathologist had needed a new PM room for years but facilities for the living patients had taken priority over accommodation for the dead. Kynaston grumbled but Dalgliesh suspected that he didn't really care. He had the equipment he needed and the PM room in which he worked was sparse familiar territory in which he felt as comfortably at home as he might in an old dressing gown. He had no real wish to be banished to some larger, more remote and more impersonal quarters, and his occasional complaints were no more than ritual noises made to

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remind the medical committee that the Forensic Pathology Department existed.

But there was, inevitably, always something of a squash. Dalgliesh and his officers were there primarily from interest rather than necessity, but the exhibits sergeant, the finger-print officer, the scene of crime and exhibit officers with their envelopes, bottles and tubes, took up necessary room. Kynaston's secretary, a plump, middle-aged woman, cheerfully efficient as a president of the Women's Institute, sat in her twin-set and tweeds, squashed in the corner with a bulging bag at her feet. Dalgliesh always expected her to take out her knitting. Kynaston had always disliked using a tape-recorder and from time to time he turned towards her and dictated his findings in low, staccato sentences which she seemed to understand. He always worked to music, usually baroque and often a string quartet, Mozart, Vivaldi, Haydn. This afternoon's recording was one Dalgliesh immediately recognized since he, too, owned it, Neville Marriner conducting Telemann's Viola Concerto in G. Dalgliesh wondered if its enigmatic, richly melan-cholic tone provided Kynaston with a necessary catharsis; whether it was his way of attempting to dramatize thc routine indignities of death; or whether, like house painters or others less singularly employed, he simply liked music while he worked.

Dalgliesh noted with a mixture of interest and irritation that Massingham and Kate kept their eyes fixed on Kynaston's hands with an attention which suggested that they were afraid to shift their gaze in case inadvertently they should happen to meet his eyes. He wondered ho they could possibly suppose that he saw this ritual dis-embowelment as having anything to do with Berowne. The detachment, which had become second nature to him, wa. helped by the matter-of-fact efficiency with which thc organs were drawn out, examined, bottled and labelled. He felt exactly as he had when, as a young probationer. he had watched his first autopsy; a surprise at the brig? colours of the coils and pouches dangling in the patl'-ologist's gloved and bloody hands, and an almost childis

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wonder that so small a cavity should be capable of accommodating such a large and diverse collection of organs.

Afterwards, as they scrubbed their hands in the wash-room, Kynaston from necessity, Dalgliesh from a fasti-diousness which he would have found difficult to explain, he asked:

'What about the time of death?'

'No reason to alter the estimate I made at the scene. Seven o'clock would be the earliest. Say between seven and nine. I may be able to be a little more precise when the stomach contents have been analysed. There were no signs of a struggle. And if Berowne was attacked he made no attempt to protect himself. There are no cuts across the gripping aspect of his palm. Well, you saw that for yourself. The blood on his right palm came from the razor not from defensive cuts.'

Dalgliesh said:

'From the razor or from the blood on lis throat?' 'That's possible. The palm was certainly more thickly coated than one might expect. Nothing complicated about the cause of death in either case. In both, it's a classical fine cut, through the thyro-hyoid ligament, severing everything from the skin to the spine. Berowne was healthy, no reason why he shouldn't have lived to a good old age if someone hadn't cut his throat for him. And Harry Mack was in better shape, medically speaking, than ! expected. Liver not too good but it could have stood a few more years' abuse before it actually gave out on him. The lab will get the throat tissue under the microscope, but I don't think you'll get any joy. There is no obvious sign of a ligature at the edge of the wound. The bump on the back of Berowne's head is superficial, probably made when he fell.'

Dalgliesh said:

'Or was pulled down.'

'Or was pulled down. You'll have to wait for the lab report on the blood smear before you can go much further, Adam.'

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Dalgliesh said:

'And even if that smear isn't Harry Mack's blood you still aren't prepared to say that Berowne wasn't capable of stumbling across to Harry even with those two superficial

cuts in his throat.'

Kynaston said:

'I could say it was improbable. I couldn't say that it was impossible. And we're not just talking about the superficial cuts. Remember that case quoted by Simpson? The suicide practically severed his head yet remained con-scious long enough to kick the ambulance man down-stairs.'

'But if Berowne killed Harry why move back to the bed to finish himself off?.'

'A natural association, bed, sleep, death. If he had decided to die on his bed, why should he change his mind because it was necessary to kill Harry first?'

'It wasn't necessary. I doubt whether Harry could have reached him in time to stop that final cut. It offends against common sense.'

'Or it offends against your idea of Paul Berowne.' 'Both. This was double murder, Miles.'

'I believe you, but it's going to be the devil to prove and I don't think my report will be much help. Suicide is the most private and mysterious of acts, inexplicable because

the chief actor is never there to explain it.'

Dalgliesh said:

'Unless, of course, he leaves his testimony behind. If Berowne did decide to kill himself I'd have expected to

find some kind of note, an attempt at explanation.' Kynaston said enigmatically:

'The fact that you didn't find it doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't write it.'

He drew on a fresh pair of gloves and pulled his face mask over his mouth and nose. Already a new cadaver was being wheeled in. Dalgliesh looked at his watch. Massingham and Kate could drive back to the Yard and get on with the paperwork. He had another appointment. After the frustrations of the day he needed a little light

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relief, even a little cosseting. He proposed to extract in-formation by more agreeable ways than a police inter-rogation. He had earlier that morning telephoned Conrad Ackroyd and had been invited to take a civilized afternoon tea with the owner and editor of the Paternoster Review.

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Conrad and Nellie Ackroyd lived in a gleamingly neat stucco Edwardian villa in St John's Wood with a garden running down to the canal, a house reputedly built by Edward the Seventh for one of his mistresses and inherited by Nellie Ackroyd from a bachelor uncle. Ackroyd had moved into it from his city flat above the Paternoster office three years previously following his marriage and had happily accommodated his books, his belongings and his life to Nellie's taste for comfort and domesticity. Now, al-though they had a servant, he himself welcomed Dalgliesh at the door, his black eyes as brightly expectant as a child's.

'Come in, come in. We know what you're here for, dear boy. It's about my little piece in the Review. I'm glad you haven't felt it necessary to come in pairs. We're quite prepared to help the police with their inquiries, as you so tactfully put it, when you've caught your man and he's having his arms twisted in a little backroom, but I draw the line at giving afternoon tea to some oversized minion who wears out the springs in my sofa and eats my cucumber sandwiches with one hand while taking down

everything I say with the other.'

Dalgliesh said:

'Be serious, Conrad. We're talking about murder.'

'Are we? There was a rumour-just a rumour, of course - that Paul Berowne could have made his own quietus. I'm glad it isn't true. Murder is more interesting and far less depressing. It's inconsiderate of one's friends to commit

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suicide; too like setting a good example. But all that can wait. Tea first.'

He called up the stairs:

'Nellie, darling, Adam is here.' Looking at him as he led the way into the drawing room, Dalgliesh thought that he never seemed a day older than when they had first met. He gave the impression of plumpness, perhaps because of his almost round face and the chubbiness of his marsupial cheeks. But he was firm fleshed, active, moving with the nimble grace of a dancer. His eyes were small and upward-slanting. When he was amused he would narrow them into twin creases of flesh. The most remarkable thing about his face was the restless mobility of his small, delicately formed mouth which he used as a moist focus of emotion. He would press it in disapproval, turn it down like a child's in disappointment or disgust, lengthen and curve it when he smiled. It seemed never still, never the same shape. Even in repose he would munch with it as if relishing the taste of his tongue.