Dear Departed (7 page)

‘Give that man a coconut. For a frenzied attack …’ Everyone says it, Slider thought resignedly ‘… there doesn’t seem to be very much damage. One, two three, four, five wounds in front and one in the back, but all except one are quite superficial. You see here, and here, the blade has hardly penetrated at all. This is the only deep wound, this one in the back. You can see from the pattern of flow on the skin and the T-shirt that most of the blood comes from here.’

‘Perhaps he couldn’t get near enough,’ Slider said, but immediately thought of the objection to that. The Park Killer had to be quick. His victim had to be grabbed, overpowered and killed within seconds. He couldn’t afford a lot of dancing about and light wounding, with her screaming her head off and passers-by coming to investigate.

‘Another thing,’ Cameron said. ‘Look at the way the blood has run from this wound in the back. Look at the flow pattern. What does it tell you?’

Slider saw it now. The lines of blood ran from the wound sideways around the victim’s ribs towards the front. ‘She was lying down.’

‘Correct.’

‘So he knocked her down first and stabbed her when she was prone?’

‘Cowardly,’ Freddie acknowledged.

After the wounds had been photographed, Cameron took a blood sample from the femoral artery, and then began his delicate butchery, laying open the body from chin to pubic bone. Slider found an excuse to turn his head away at the first stroke of the scalpel. From this morning’s sweet domesticity to the ugliness and stupidity of murder was too large a stride all at once. This young body and pretty face had so recently housed a hopeful life that he didn’t like to see it mutilated, even though it was now surplus to requirements. Once the first cut had been made, however, experience and professionalism took over. Laid open, it was not a person any more. He was always all right once the first cut had been made.

‘You see,’ Cameron said to Slider, ‘even the one deep wound doesn’t touch any of the important organs. I wouldn’t have thought it would be a fatal blow.’

‘You mean she bled to death? Or died of shock?’

Cameron shook his head doubtfully. ‘It wasn’t exsanguination. And shock? Unless there’s any congenital heart defect …’

He removed the heart to a separate table and cut it open carefully. A nice, clean, healthy heart – just what you’d hope for in a young jogger. No sign of disease. No infarction. Let’s have a look at the brain.’

It was the part Slider disliked most. He hummed inside his head as Cameron deployed the electric saw, breathing shallowly not to smell the barbecue reek of burning bone. Cameron removed the top of the skull, then ligated and lifted out the brain, which he sliced like a large, pallid loaf. ‘No sign of anything here. I’ll take a section to examine under the microscope, but it all looks nice and normal. I think we can rule out heart disease or stroke.’

‘So what killed her, then?’

Cameron turned a frank if rather bistred gaze on him. ‘You tell me, chum.’

‘Only if you hand over your pay packet.’

‘Fat chance,’ Freddie grinned. A forensic pathologist earned about three times what a detective inspector did. ‘All right, then, let’s see. She didn’t put up much of a struggle. No broken fingernails, no skin or blood under them – she didn’t scratch her assailant. Also – now, look here. Sandra, do you mind if I borrow your body for a moment?’

His assistant, used to these demonstrations, stood back from the table and waited. He walked behind her, put his left arm round her shoulders and positioned his left hand in front of her mouth, but without actually touching it, of course. ‘I grab my victim from behind, covering her mouth to stop her screaming. Probably use my right hand, like this, to get her by the upper arm. And I drag her backwards by her arm and jaw—’

‘Into the bushes, right,’ Slider finished for him.

‘But,’ Cameron said, ‘there’s no bruising to the face or arms. No bruising anywhere on the body.’

‘Well, that’s – odd,’ said Slider.

‘There’s more. Thank you, Sandra.’ Freddie released her and continued. ‘I knock her down without leaving a mark. Well, I suppose that’s possible, if I caught her off-balance, or simply threw her down. I stab her in the back – the first wound, deep, but not disabling. But she doesn’t scrabble away from me on hands and knees, or try to get up, she just lies there.’

‘Too shocked, too frightened to move?’

‘Perhaps,’ Freddie allowed, though without great belief.

‘Then he turned her over with his foot – or with the help of his foot,’ Slider said, ‘and stabbed her in the front.’

‘Very lightly,’ Freddie amended. ‘Restrained, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Not much like the Park Killer on his other outings.’

‘And when did she get the defence wounds on her arms and hands?’ said Cameron. Sandra was about to speak but he silenced her with a glance.

Slider thought. ‘I can’t work it out.’

‘I’ll tell you when she got them,’ said Cameron, with an actor’s timing. ‘After death. The cuts on the arms and hands are all post-mortem wounds.’

‘You’re sure?’ Slider said – but surprise makes you say foolish things.

‘Of course,’ Freddie said. ‘They aren’t even very convincing – in
the wrong place and at the wrong angles. I’ve seen enough of the real thing to know. So what we have here, old chum, is …?’ He paused invitingly.

Slider filled in the space. ‘A set-up.’

‘Exactement
,’ said Freddie. ‘It was only meant to look like a frenzied attack.’

‘Someone killed her and tried to made it look like the Park Killer’s work?’

‘Not terribly like. It was someone either not very bright or not very
au fait
with our methods, if they thought it would fool us for more than a few hours.’

‘I knew there was something wrong with it from the start,’ Slider said resentfully. ‘The marks on the ground: there were two long grooves going into the bushes, but if you were dragged in still on your feet, there’d be a lot of scuffing and digging as you tried to get a toehold and resist. This looked like the heel-marks of a corpse being dragged.’

‘Done afterwards, you think, to add verisimilitude …’

‘… to an otherwise unconvincing narrative,’ Slider finished. ‘But if she wasn’t stabbed to death and didn’t bleed to death, what killed her?’

‘Well, it is just possible that she died of fright, but it’s a very outside possibility. In an old, frail person it might be plausible, but a fit young person tends to be more tenacious of life. I think, old boy, that we may have to wander down the primrose paths of toxicology,’ Cameron concluded, with a sigh. ‘She looks a little cyanotic to me – wouldn’t you say, Sandra? And the lungs are too dark and show some congestion. I think she may have died of respiratory collapse due to an overdose of a depressant drug.’

‘You mean – he poisoned her, and then when she was dead stabbed her for effect?’

‘No, only the defence wounds were post-mortem. Certainly the main wound in the back was pre-mortem. Those in front have bled so little they might almost be
syn
-mortem, if such an expression were allowable. Of course, the killer might well have thought she
was
dead by then. She was probably so deep down, she was hardly breathing.’

Slider shook his head at the scenario that was opening up. ‘So what was the poison?’

‘Ah, that I can’t tell you,’ said Freddie. ‘I’ll send off a blood sample to the toxicology lab, but you know what they’re like.’

‘Yes, four to six weeks to get a result. You’ll have to help me out, Freddie.’

‘Well, there are the antidepressant drugs. Many of the tricyclic and tetracyclic drugs have an anticholinergic action that depresses the brainstem, which would lead to respiratory failure, but the trouble there would be that you’d need a pretty high dose. The sedatives, the benzodiazepines, are more likely culprits, and they leave no particular post-mortem appearances – though you might expect convulsions with a severe overdose, and there’s no sign she convulsed. And then,’ he added, with a faintly reluctant air, ‘there are the barbiturates, though they’re harder for the layman to come by. A high dose of one of the short-acting or ultra-short-acting barbiturates like thiopentone or hexobarbitone would produce rapid unconsciousness and death within ten or fifteen minutes.’

Slider met Cameron’s eyes, and saw in them the memory of an old case of some years back, the Anne-Marie Austin case, where such a drug had been used. It had come at a bad time for Slider and had almost tipped him over into a breakdown, as Cameron knew very well. First another body in the park, now another death by short-acting barbiturate? Was he to be forced to relive his past like a police version of
Groundhog Day?
On the good side, he’d get to meet Joanna again; on the bad side, he’d keep finding himself still married to Irene. He brought his errant mind back to the problem in hand.

‘But,’ he said, ‘if you want to poison somebody, you do it privately indoors. Why would you do it out in a public park in broad daylight with all the likelihood of being interrupted? And how do you get someone out jogging in the park to take poison anyway?’

‘That,’ said Cameron, ‘I gladly leave to you.’

He rang Joanna to tell her he was on his way home.

‘What do you think about James?’ she asked, as soon as she heard his voice.

To his credit, he caught on. ‘Do all women do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Think about babies’ names all the time.’

‘I don’t do it all the time. Anyway, you ought to know.’ He’d had two children with his ex-wife Irene.

‘Too long ago,’ he said. ‘Don’t remember.’

‘Well? What about James?’

‘It might not be a boy.’

‘Of course it will be. First time out – you want the teapot
with
the spout, don’t you?’

‘If you say so. But James Slider sounds like badly fitting false teeth.’

She sighed. ‘True.’

‘Freddie Cameron’s new grandson is called Seth.’

‘Flaming Nora,’ Joanna said. ‘Seth Slider’s even worse.’

‘I wasn’t suggesting it.’

‘No votes for anything with an
s
in it. When will you be home?’

‘Before you can say psephologically sesquipedalian.’

At least he had missed the evening rush hour. Traffic on the Uxbridge Road was down to tolerable levels, mostly people going out for the evening, pottering between traffic light and traffic light, off to the pub, to restaurants, to visit friends, to pick up a takeaway. Real life. None of them had spent the day pondering over a corpse.

Atherton phoned him with the identification when he was at the East Acton Lane lights. ‘Did your witness give you a next of kin?’ he asked.

‘No, she didn’t know. But she’s sure deceased wasn’t married and didn’t live with anyone, and I tried the home telephone number and there was an answering machine on. I tried her mobile number, too, but it was switched off.’

‘Odd that she didn’t have it with her,’ Slider said. ‘Young businesspeople are usually wedded to them.’

‘Maybe she wanted a bit of peace and quiet,’ Atherton said. ‘Or maybe the killer nicked it. How was the post?’

‘Interesting,’ Slider said. He told Atherton Cameron’s findings.

‘Oh,’ said Atherton. ‘Well, that’s – interesting.’

‘Is that the best you can come up with?’

‘I’m trying. It puts a whole new complexion on things. If it wasn’t a random killing, we’re back with the who-saw-her-last and what-enemies-did-she-have routines.’

‘Did you get any of that from your Marion Davies type?’

‘I didn’t ask, not knowing it was needed. She did say she saw the victim yesterday at around six p.m. and she was all right then. Just about to go out for the evening.’

‘With whom?’

‘As I said, I didn’t ask. But I’ve arranged to see her again, so I can ask then.’

‘See her again? What for?’

‘What for?’ Atherton repeated derisively. ‘She’s a bit of a sort, that’s what for.’

‘Oh,’ said Slider. The lights changed and he moved off and turned left down Stanley Gardens, which perhaps prevented him saying something he’d later regret.

‘Well, I’ve got the victim’s address, anyway,’ Atherton said. ‘Do you want to look at the house tonight?’

‘No. If she lived alone, tomorrow will do. Just put someone on the door. The media are still putting it out as the Park Killer, so the real villain will think he’s getting away with it. And I’m less than five minutes from home.’

‘Lucky man.’

Slider thought he sounded a little wistful, and said, ‘Joanna’s made a casserole. Do you want to—?’

‘Thanks, but no. I’ve got a date,’ Atherton said breezily.

‘Fine. Well, don’t let me keep you.’

He rang off, reflecting that it was just as well Atherton had refused, given that he was not Joanna’s favourite person at the moment. Besides, he really wanted to be alone with her this evening, to enjoy the peace and comfort of her company and whatever was simmering in the slow oven. Plus a bottle of good, hearty red. He wondered who Atherton had a date with, but as he was turning the last corner before home he didn’t wonder very much. There’s no place like home, he thought, because in fact home isn’t a place, it’s people. There is no place, only us. And a bottle of Saint-Joseph.

Porson was there when Slider arrived in the morning, as if he had never been home. He was stamping about his room like a man looking for a cat to kick. Top-brass meetings at Hammersmith always did nasty things to his blood pressure. Under the harsh neon light of his room his head had a
strangely bumpy look, like a bag full of knuckles. Bubbles of frustration trying to escape, perhaps?

‘You were off pretty sharpish last night,’ he snapped at Slider.

‘I went to the post mortem. Cameron put it on the end of his list.’

‘Oh. You could have let me know.’

‘I left a message on your voice-mail, sir.’

‘Oh,’ said Porson again. ‘I always forget about that bloody thing. Whatever happened to a piece of paper on your desk?’

Before he could think of anything else to complain about, Slider told him of the discoveries of the day before. His pacing slowed as he listened.

‘Not bad for a start,’ he said grudgingly, when Slider had finished. And then, ‘Good thought of Atherton’s to get the ID that way. He’s a smart lad.’ That was not always a compliment in the Job, but this time Porson meant it.