White Corridor Part 6

'What, you think the blow to his neck caused a blood clot, some kind of internal haemorrhage? That seems no more likely than the idea of him killing himself.'

'I'm not going to perform an autopsy on him, Janice,' stated Kershaw. 'Not only would it be unethical, the idea of using Finch's own medical instruments to divine the cause of his death would be highly inappropriate. We'd have to falsify the paperwork.'

'See, that's the difference between you and Oswald. He would never show such squeamishness when it's a matter of doing the right thing.'

'I'm not squeamish.' Kershaw bridled. 'It's a moral issue.'

The detective sergeant was not one to see the world in shades of grey. 'You knew about the unit's habit of ignoring the boundaries of propriety before you came to us,' she warned him. 'If you want to prove yourself a worthy successor to Oswald, this is where you start.'

'At least it's not difficult sealing off the site,' said Banbury. 'As far as I'm aware, there are only four sets of keys into the mortuary, including Finch's own. Giles, can you see if he has a set on him?'

Kershaw flicked a lick of blond hair from his eyes and knelt beside the body. He carefully detached a pair of keys, one Chubb, one Yale, from the pathologist's pocket and placed them in a plastic bag. As the unit had no photographer of its own, Banbury photographed the body's position and marked it. All that remained was for Finch to be lifted onto his own table.

'Well, we've got an instrument of death, but I don't think this was quite the simple accident it appears to be,' said Banbury.

'What do you mean?' Longbright studied his face for clues.

'Giles, is it okay to pick up the fan blade?'

'So long as you've grid-marked it.'

Kershaw raised the aluminium spinner by its fin. 'The central pin holding the propeller to the shaft has sheared. Looks to me like a slow stress fracture, and they take a long time to develop. You can see the thing was spinning anticlockwise because this edge'-he pointed to the top rim of the right-hand blade-'is covered by a thick layer of dirt, and so is the opposite side of the other blade. There's a dent on the very end, which I'm willing to bet will match the crescent dent on the fan housing.' He pointed upward. 'You can see the mark where it flew off from down here. So, let's piece the event together and find out what's wrong.'

Banbury had a commonsense att.i.tude to police work that the others sometimes lacked. You could see cogs turning in his head. 'I know that the fan housing fell off some weeks earlier-it's over there on its side, under Finch's desk, waiting to be reattached. Finch complained about it to anyone who would listen, and wasn't happy about having to operate beneath the uncovered blades. But I suppose he needed the air on whenever he was working. The pin finally snapped, and with nothing to stop it, the spinning blade dropped, bouncing against the housing, which would have sent it down into the room still spinning, but at an angle. But Finch was standing right underneath-we know that by the way in which he's fallen-so how on earth could he get hit by a fan blade that was veering away from him? That's one point. This is the other.'

He indicated the two clean edges of the blade. 'If the blade is spinning counterclockwise, it would be one of the two dirty edges that would hit him. However, as you can both see, the rims of dirt on either blade have not been disturbed, nor is there a dirt-mark on Oswald's neck. So, although this thing is the only potential weapon in the room that is likely to have caused such a bruise, it seems it didn't do so. If Finch wasn't killed by a falling fan, what did kill him?'

He led them over to the door handle. 'The lock hasn't been forced. If someone came here looking for trouble without having the right keys, Finch would have had to let them in himself. For any a.s.sailant, the obvious weapons couldn't be more visible.' He pointed to the gla.s.s cabinets where an a.s.sortment of scalpels and knives stood in their racks. 'He always returned them there after they'd cooled down from the steriliser. Suppose he somehow bashed himself on the furniture and suffered a trauma?'

'You're thinking he underwent a natural termination in the form of a cardiac arrest? It would make life easier to think so, but there's no sign of cyanosis, no muscle tension, no dilation of his pupils.' Kershaw knew that once accident, natural death and suicide were ruled out, only homicide remained. It was a conclusion he would be reluctant to reach. 'So what was it?'

In the faintly humming room, beneath bleach-white lights, the three officers stood looking about themselves, and wondered. 'He was argumentative and frail,' said Longbright. 'Suppose he fought with someone, and they lost their temper? All of us have wanted to thump him at one time or another. Some have more reason to do so than others.'

Both she and Banbury turned to look at Giles Kershaw.

15

MATRIARCHY 'I detest motorways,' Bryant complained for the third time as he attempted to realign his overcoat b.u.t.tons. 'How on earth are you supposed to know where you get off?'

'There are several absolutely enormous signposts along the way,' May pointed out.

Bryant squinted through the windscreen. 'Did I miss Taunton?'

'You slept through Taunton and Exeter,' said May. 'We're about to come off the M5 onto the A38. Why this spiritualists' convention has to take place in such a remote corner of the country is beyond me.'

'It's an area perfectly attuned to the mysteries of the netherworld,' replied Bryant. 'You clearly have no historical appreciation of the countryside.' This was a bit rich coming from a man who only left central London to attend funerals, and complained bitterly every time he did so. 'There's not much traffic, is there?'

'The journey's taking longer than I thought. Sensible people have probably been listening to the weather forecast. The Devon and Cornwall Police have been issuing warnings to stay indoors for the past hour. d.a.m.n, I've missed a sign now,' May rubbed his forehead wearily. 'I was looking out for Buckfast and Ashburton.'

Snow had been falling fast and hard for more than two hours, blotting the pallid sky and sheening the grey, half-empty road. Across the light woodland, a village spire flickered through falling flakes.

'I'll map-read for a while.' Bryant dragged the ancient guide out of his overcoat and leafed through it without recourse to his reading gla.s.ses. 'I knew you would eventually need me to get us there.'

'I've been meaning to ask you for years, Arthur, but we so rarely get the chance to talk like this. Where did your fascination with the occult and alternative religions start? I mean, all that stuff you believe in, psychogeography, pagan cabals, astromancy, witchcraft and predestination, where did it all come from? You're from sensible working-cla.s.s East End stock. I'm sure your mother didn't have time for such things.'

'That's the paradox,' said Bryant, popping a Milk Bottle into his mouth and chewing pensively. 'East-Enders are a prosaic but superst.i.tious lot. My father would never bring a budgerigar into the house or put his boots on the bed, or take photographs of babies, or hand a knife to a friend, or touch a Welshman...'

'Wait, what were those things supposed to signify?'

'Well, all house birds except canaries were considered bad luck because sailors left them at home while they were at sea. If they didn't return to claim them, the birds acted as reminders of lost husbands. Boots on a bed meant a death in the family, because that was how you chose the burial boots, by laying them out. Photographing babies was tempting fate when they were so likely to die before the age of two, and knives cut friends.h.i.+p.'

'And not touching a Welshman?'

'Oh, he just couldn't stand them. Take this next exit.'

'Are you sure? I thought we were supposed to stay on the motorway until it ended.'

'You wanted to bypa.s.s Totnes.'

'No, I said the A38 did that anyway.'

Earlier they had glimpsed the pale ribbon of the sea, but now to their right was the bleak vastness of Dartmoor, where the frosted roads dwindled into twisting corridors of hedge, and coasting winds could buffet snow into mazelike drifts. The dark hills had faded beneath an unblemished whiteness of freshly ironed tablecloths. Fat snowflakes almost blotted out the slate sky.

Bryant had been a good pa.s.senger for most of the journey by dint of the fact that he had been asleep, but now he was wide-eyed, aching and fidgety with boredom. 'It was difficult not to seek alternative meanings in our house,' he continued. 'My devout grandmother lost all three of her sons in the Great War, and my aunts lost their children in the flu pandemic that followed. Then, just when we all seemed to be recovering in the intervening years, my uncles were drowned at sea and we were bombed out of the family house in Bethnal Green. Where did our devotion to G.o.d get us? If you ask such questions as a child and don't receive any satisfactory answers, you start to look for other means of proof.'

'So you attend spiritualists' conventions. A bit outmoded isn't it, all that table-rapping?'

'Every street in London once housed a woman with so-called special powers, someone to whom the neighbours would turn for traditional remedies and health predictions,' said Bryant, pensively sucking his sweet. 'It was a strictly matriarchal network, of course. Mothers brought their babies around and wives would ask for advice on aches and pains, allergies, s.e.xual health and marital problems. Often the wisdom they received was based on sound psychological sense, and the kind of conservative values that required everyone to remain in his or her rightful place before the advice could work. Many of these superst.i.tion-based remedies were rendered nonsensical by the changing times, but some are still with us. And of course other, more alternative services were also offered: the psychic comforting that followed bereavement, predictions and palliatives linked by the searching-out of signs and symbols. My grandmother used to read tea leaves for the local ladies, and told them she saw angels. The tradition went back hundreds of years, and only came to a proper end in the 1970s.' Bryant paused for breath while his partner increased the speed of their windscreen wipers.

'Nowadays, increased awareness of mental and physical health means that the spiritual urban mother-figure has all but disappeared in Western society. Meanwhile, technology has supposedly given us the means to gauge psychic energy. I don't believe in the supernatural, just the untapped power of the mind. Look in the papers; we read about tiny women lifting cars off their loved ones and boat people surviving without water, and don't think it odd. Extreme situations can make heroes of us all.'

'Just because you trace your beliefs to your grandmother doesn't mean you should still believe what she told the neighbourhood.'

Bryant shrugged. 'I have to. She was so often right, you see, and she insisted that I, too, had her gift. Which I believe to this day.' He tapped his map. 'Next left.'

'I really don't think we're supposed to turn off yet,' May anxiously pointed out.

'The A38 takes us in a sort of horseshoe, but we can cut part of it off. We should be able to make up some lost time.'

It was against May's better judgement to take practical advice from his partner. Arthur's kaleidoscopic manner of determining complex solutions to simple problems could prove disastrous. Perhaps because he wasn't concentrating hard enough, perhaps because he was worried about the rapidly increasing intensity of the snowfall and reaching their hotel before night, he listened and acted accordingly, forgetting for the moment that Arthur was reading from a map printed before the a.s.sa.s.sination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

16

INTERNECINE 'There's no blood,' the detective sergeant remarked, searching the spot where Finch had fallen. 'He must have given his skull a good crack.'

'An autopsy will show if there's been any cranial bruising or bleeding into his internal cavities.' Kershaw sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. 'If I didn't know better, I'd think he did this to test me. Did Raymond tell you who Finch's successor is to be?'

'I really don't think this a good time to have that conversation,' said Longbright. 'I'm appointing you in charge of this case, Giles. You knew him well, and you're familiar with his room.'

'I'm technically a forensic scientist, not a coroner.'

'I a.s.sume you're fully trained in pathology, otherwise you wouldn't have been applying for Finch's job. I heard you received the highest pa.s.s-grade in your year.'

'But I could be prejudicial to the findings,' Kershaw warned. 'In these circ.u.mstances, you're meant to appoint an outsider.'

'I'm not meant meant to do anything,' Longbright informd him. 'This is the PCU, not the Metropolitan Police, and you're now in charge. Call Bimsley in and keep him on site until you've got some preliminary findings. I don't want you left alone in here.' to do anything,' Longbright informd him. 'This is the PCU, not the Metropolitan Police, and you're now in charge. Call Bimsley in and keep him on site until you've got some preliminary findings. I don't want you left alone in here.'

'I say, that's a bit strong.' Kershaw rose and flicked back his hair, affronted, his public school background drawn to the fore in any confrontation with someone he considered to be from an inferior cla.s.s. 'I'm a.s.suming you're appointing me because you trust me.'

'Yes,' Longbright admitted, 'but I also sent you down to visit the morgue earlier, which makes you a potential suspect with a strong motive, placed at a possible crime scene at the estimated time of death.'

For once, Kershaw was dumbfounded. 'Then I can't possibly be seen to be investigating my victim's murder. I can't find myself guilty.'

'You might try taking Mr Bryant's advice about thinking instinctively rather than putting all your trust in the circ.u.mstantial evidence. I want a report from you before we close tonight.'

Returning to the PCU, the detective sergeant found DC Mangeshkar at work in the office she shared with Bimsley. 'Why were you looking for Giles Kershaw this morning?' she asked. The forensic scientist had informed her of Meera's visit to the mortuary.

'I was going to ask him if I could help out with the unidentified female they brought in. I didn't think Finch would let me watch the postmortem; I just wanted to examine his case notes. I heard it had already gone down to Bayham Street, so I went there.'

'Did you take a set of keys with you?' Longbright asked, already knowing the answer.

'I had to, because when Finch is alone in the room with the door shut he keeps his headphones on and doesn't hear you knocking.'

'You found him, I take it.'

'Yes, but Finch told me to leave. He must have heard my key in the lock, because he opened the door before I could. But he wouldn't let me in.'

'Why not?'

'He was in the middle of an argument. Kershaw was asking him why he'd changed his mind about something. I didn't hear Finch's reply but he sounded b.l.o.o.d.y angry, told Kershaw that he was immature and careless. I decided to leave them to it, and came back here.' Presumably Kershaw had gone specifically to complain to Finch about being pa.s.sed over for his promotion, and the old man had given him a piece of his mind, after which Kershaw had left the coroner alone in the room.

A grim thought formed in Longbright's mind. Access to Bayham Street Morgue was restricted. The Met could arrange visits via its resident pathologist, as could members of the PCU. The room's tiny windows were all bolted, and its only door was locked. The good news was that all the sets of keys were now accounted for. Finch, Kershaw and Mangeshkar had been holding a set each, which left the final bunch of keys on the hook behind Arthur Bryant's desk, from where Banbury had borrowed them.

The bad news was that if Kershaw found enough reason to suspect homicide, the restricted access to the morgue limited the murder suspects to someone in the Peculiar Crimes Unit itself.

'Meera, you'll have to stay here, too,' Longbright said.

Mangeshkar looked more furious than the detective sergeant had ever seen her. 'That's ridiculous. I've done nothing wrong.'

'Wait, let me think for a minute.' Four sets of keys, four suspects, Four sets of keys, four suspects, she thought, she thought, but anyone in the unit could have walked into Arthur's office and taken them. If we have to suspect each other, all the trust we've built up over the years will be destroyed. Oswald's death could achieve something that none of our enemies has managed to do. It could divide us and bring about the end of the unit. but anyone in the unit could have walked into Arthur's office and taken them. If we have to suspect each other, all the trust we've built up over the years will be destroyed. Oswald's death could achieve something that none of our enemies has managed to do. It could divide us and bring about the end of the unit.

17

BLOCKADE 'Ah, Devon,' said Arthur Bryant, thumbing through his ancient map book. 'A million people and only fourteen surnames.' The battered white Bedford van left the arterial route at a junction and coasted onto a snowy tree-lined road free of traffic. Low clouds beyond the hills reflected soft saffron light from a distant town. 'You see,' said Bryant, 'that's Plymouth to the right of us. Five miles at the most.'

But the road curved away to the left down a one-in-seven hill, dropping them into a valley surrounded by wind-blasted woodland. By now the last vestiges of daylight had faded, and the snow bleached all remaining features from their surroundings. May turned the wipers up as high as they would go, but they could no longer keep the windscreen clear.

'I don't like the look of this.' He angled the heater nozzles so that they warmed the gla.s.s and provided him with some vague visibility.

The road ahead was as direct as desert blacktop, Roman in its refusal to deviate for the land's natural features. It cut over the far side of the valley in a perfect straight line, and was hemmed on either side by hawthorn hedge. May felt the traction in his tyres give as he started on the downward slope. The rear of the van fishtailed on the hardening snow tracks left by the previous vehicle. He gripped the wheel tightly, struggling to keep the van from ploughing into walls of dense brush. The engine squealed as the tyres spun, gripped, spun again.

'I was just thinking about the Malleus Maleficarum, Malleus Maleficarum, the Witches' Hammer,' said Bryant, who had clearly failed to notice that they were in difficulty. 'Have you ever actually tried reading the 1486 edition? I mean, it's intriguing that we vilify the Witches' Hammer,' said Bryant, who had clearly failed to notice that they were in difficulty. 'Have you ever actually tried reading the 1486 edition? I mean, it's intriguing that we vilify Mein Kampf, Mein Kampf, a volume with which it shares the same fundamental fear and hatred of anyone different, while most practising Christians still have the same beliefs that the Hammer puts forward, so that if you hold the contemporary view of piety that places Wicca on the opposite side of Christianity, you're aligned with the same witch-burning mentality that existed over five centuries ago.' a volume with which it shares the same fundamental fear and hatred of anyone different, while most practising Christians still have the same beliefs that the Hammer puts forward, so that if you hold the contemporary view of piety that places Wicca on the opposite side of Christianity, you're aligned with the same witch-burning mentality that existed over five centuries ago.'

He watched as the headlights flashed across bushes, then road, then bushes again. 'I mean, even Galileo was considered heretical for thinking about the planets in terms of their gravitational fields rather than their holy design. I suppose what I'm really trying to say is-'

May never found out what Bryant was really trying to say, for at that moment the wheel spun out of his hands as the tyres locked into a set of frozen truck tracks. He fought to correct the trajectory of the Bedford van, then changed gear and applied the brakes when that failed. Bryant was thrown against the pa.s.senger door as they slipped sideways across the road and came to an angled halt against the hawthorn bank.

May flooded the engine trying to restart it. As the snow clouds briefly parted, he saw that there were at least half a dozen vehicles littering the road ahead. Opening his window and looking back through the spattering white flakes, he could see a Spar supermarket truck coming in behind him, and another vehicle pulling up behind that. If they blocked the road, n.o.body would be able to leave.

As he closed the window, the wind rose in an ear-battering bl.u.s.ter, and the flurries turned back into a blizzard. 'Well, that's it,' he said, sitting back in his seat. 'We're not going anywhere tonight. We'll have to wait for the emergency services to come and dig us out. You realise this wouldn't have happened if we'd stayed on the main highway.'

'Don't blame me,' said Bryant indignantly. 'You should have paid more heed to the weather report. We can't just stay here. I have to be at tomorrow's opening ceremony in Plymouth.'

'Well, I wouldn't suggest trying to walk there tonight, especially as you managed to forget your stick. The snow's getting deep, and you'd never get across the fields while it's like this. I think we're on the closest main road running beside the southern part of Dartmoor. Your shortcut appears to have taken us over the most inhospitable piece of land in the whole of Southern England.'

'It looks like there are plenty of others in the same boat,' Bryant pointed out. 'At least we shouldn't have to wait here for very long.'

'I wouldn't bet on it. It looks like the road is already impa.s.sable. They won't be able to get a snowplough down here. When this happened last year, the Devon and Cornwall rescue services had to send out British Navy helicopters to airlift over sixty drivers and pa.s.sengers to safety. Their vehicles were flooded out when the thaw came.'

'This is exactly the sort of thing I always expect to happen in the countryside,' Bryant complained. 'You read about people falling into bogs and quarries, being trampled by cows and drowned in chicken slurry. You're better off getting mugged and stabbed in London. I read The Hound of the Baskervilles The Hound of the Baskervilles; I know about treacherous patches of quicksand lurking on the moors.'

May fixed him with an annoyed stare, but chose to remain silent.

'Look at the bright side, John. We've plenty of warm clothing in the back. You helped me pack all those outfits for the show.'

'If you think I'm sitting here dressed in a fig-leaf body stocking and a Protestant cleric's ca.s.sock, Arthur, you're sadly mistaken.'

Bryant huddled down inside his voluminous overcoat. 'It was just an idea. We still have plenty of Alma's sandwiches to keep us going. We could probably feed everyone who's been stranded here. I wonder why triangular ones are considered posher than oblong ones?'

'Most of the cars in front look empty,' said May. 'It looks like their drivers had the good sense to get out and head for the nearest town before the blizzard started up again. At least we know that things can't get any worse tonight.'

Just then his mobile rang. The display told him that Janice Longbright was calling from the unit. With a growing sense of ill-ease he tried to take the call, but the connection suddenly vanished.

18