Death of an Expert Witness (3 page)

Lorrimer’s hands. Howarth thrust the tormenting, brutally explicit images out of his mind. He had never before resented one of Domenica’s lovers. He hadn’t even been jealous of her dead husband. It had seemed to him perfectly reasonable that she should eventually wish to marry, just as she might choose, in a fit of boredom or acquisitiveness, to buy herself a fur coat or a new item of jewellery. He had even quite liked Charles Schofield. Why was it then that, even from the first moment, the thought of Lorrimer in his sister’s bed had been intolerable? Not that he could ever have been in her bed, at least not at Leamings. He wondered yet again where they had managed to meet, how Domenica had contrived to take a new lover without the whole Laboratory and the whole village knowing. How could they have met and where?

It had begun, of course, at that disastrous dinner party twelve months ago. At the time it had seemed both natural and civilized to celebrate the taking up of his directorship with a small private party at his house for the senior staff. They had, he remembered, eaten melon, followed by
boeuf stroganoff
and a salad. He and Domenica liked good food and, occasionally, she enjoyed cooking it. He had opened the 1961 claret for them because that was the wine he and Dom had chosen to drink and it hadn’t occurred to him to offer his guests less. He and Dom had changed because that was their habit. It amused them to dine in some style, formally separating the working day from their evenings together. It hadn’t been his fault that Bill Morgan, the Senior Vehicle Examiner, had chosen to come in open-necked shirt and corduroys; neither he nor Dom had cared a damn what their guests chose to wear. If Bill Morgan felt awkward about these unimportant shibboleths of taste, he should learn either to change his clothes or to develop more social confidence in his sartorial eccentricities.

It had never occurred to Howarth that the six senior staff sitting awkwardly around his table in the candlelight, unmellowed even by the wine, would see the whole occasion as an elaborate gastronomic charade designed to demonstrate his social and intellectual superiority. At least Paul Middlemass, the Principal Scientific Officer Document Examiner, had appreciated the wine, drawing the bottle across the table towards him and refilling his glass, his lazy ironic eyes watching his host. And Lorrimer? Lorrimer had eaten practically nothing, had drunk less, pushing his glass almost petulantly aside and fixing his great smouldering eyes on Domenica as if he had never before seen a woman. And that, presumably, had been the beginning of it. How it had progressed, when and how they had continued to meet, how it had ended, Domenica hadn’t confided.

The dinner party had been a private and public fiasco. But what, he wondered, had the senior staff expected? An evening of solid drinking in the private snug in the Moonraker? A free-for-all jollification in the village hall for the whole Laboratory including the cleaner, Mrs. Bidwell, and old Scobie, the Laboratory attendant? “Knees Up Mother Brown” in the public bar? Perhaps they had thought that the first move should have come from their side. But that was to admit that there were two sides. The conventional sophistry was that the Laboratory worked as a team harnessed by a common purpose, reins lightly but firmly in the director’s hands. That had worked well enough at Bruche. But there he had directed a research laboratory with a common discipline. How could you direct a team when your staff practised half a dozen different scientific disciplines, used their own methods, were responsible for their own results, stood finally alone to justify and defend them in the only place where the quality of a forensic scientist’s work could properly be judged, the witness box of a court of law? It was one of the loneliest places on earth, and he had never stood there.

Old Dr. Mac, his predecessor, had, he knew, taken the occasional case, to keep his hand in as he would say, trotting out to a scene of crime like an old bloodhound happily sniffing after half-forgotten scents, doing the analysis himself, and finally appearing, like a resurrected Old Testament prophet, in the witness box, greeted by the judge with dry judicial compliments, and boisterously welcomed in the bar by counsel like a long-missed old reprobate drinking comrade happily restored to them. But that could never be his way. He had been appointed to manage the Laboratory and he would manage it in his own style. He wondered, morbidly introspective in the cold light of dawn, whether his decision to see the next
murder case through from the call to the scene of crime to the trial had really arisen from a desire to learn or merely from a craven wish to impress or, worse, to propitiate his staff, to show them that he valued their skills, that he wanted to be one of the team. If so, it had been one more error of judgement to add to the bleak arithmetic of failure since he had taken up his new job.

It looked as if they had nearly finished. The girl’s rigid fingers had been prised from her handbag and Doyle’s hands, gloved, were spreading out its few contents on a plastic sheet laid on the bonnet of the car. Howarth could just make out the shape of what looked like a small purse, a lipstick, a folded sheet of paper. A love letter probably, poor little wretch. Had Lorrimer written letters to Domenica? he wondered. He was always first at the door when the post arrived, and usually brought his sister her letters. Perhaps Lorrimer had known that. But he must have written. There must have been assignations. Lorrimer would hardly have risked telephoning from the Laboratory or from home in the evenings when he, Howarth, might have taken the call.

They were moving the body now. The mortuary van had moved closer to the rim of the hollow and the stretcher was being manoeuvred into place. The police were dragging out the screens from their van, ready to enclose the scene of crime. Soon there would be the little clutch of spectators, the curious children shooed away by the adults, the Press photographers. He could see Lorrimer and Kerrison conferring together a little way apart, their backs turned, their two dark heads close together. Doyle was closing his notebook and supervising the removal of the body as if it were a precious exhibit which he was frightened someone would break. The light was strengthening.

He waited while Kerrison climbed up beside him and together they walked towards the parked cars. Howarth’s foot struck a beer can. It clattered across the path and bounced against what looked like the battered frame of an old pram, with a bang like a pistol shot. The noise startled him. He said pettishly: “What a place to die! Where in God’s name are we exactly? I just followed the police cars.”

“It’s called the clunch field. That’s the local name for the soft chalk they mined here from the Middle Ages onwards. There isn’t any hard building stone hereabouts, so they used clunch for most domestic buildings and even for some church interiors. There’s an example in the Lady Chapel at Ely. Most villages had their clunch pits. They’re overgrown now. Some are quite pretty in the spring and summer, little oases of wild flowers.”

He gave the information almost tonelessly, like a dutiful guide repeating by rote the official spiel. Suddenly he swayed and reached for the support of his car door. Howarth wondered if he were ill or whether this was the extremity of tiredness. Then the pathologist straightened himself and said, with an attempt at briskness: “I’ll do the PM at nine o’clock tomorrow at St. Luke’s. The hall porter will direct you. I’ll leave a message.”

He nodded a goodbye, forced a smile, then eased himself into his car and slammed the door. The Rover bumped slowly towards the road.

Howarth was aware that Doyle and Lorrimer were beside him. Doyle’s excitement was almost palpable. He turned to look across the clunch field to the distant row of houses, their yellow-brick walls and mean square windows now plainly visible.

“He’s over there somewhere. In bed probably. That is, if he doesn’t live alone. It wouldn’t do to be up and about too early, would it? No, he’ll be lying there wondering how to act
ordinary, waiting for the anonymous car, the ring at the door. If he’s on his own, it’ll be different, of course. He’ll be creeping about in the half-dark wondering if he ought to burn his suit, scraping the mud off his shoes. Only he won’t be able to get it all off. Not every trace. And he won’t have a boiler big enough for the suit. And even if he had, what will he say when we ask for it? So maybe he’ll be doing nothing. Just lying there and waiting. He won’t be asleep. He didn’t sleep last night. And he won’t be sleeping again for quite a time.”

Howarth felt slightly sick. He had eaten a small and early dinner and knew himself to be hungry. The sensation of nausea on an empty stomach was peculiarly unpleasant. He controlled his voice, betraying nothing but a casual interest.

“You think it’s relatively straightforward then?”

“Domestic murder usually is. And I reckon that this is a domestic murder. Married kid, torn stump of a ticket for the local Oddfellows’ hop, letter in her bag threatening her if she doesn’t leave another bloke alone. A stranger wouldn’t have known about this place. And she wouldn’t have come here with him even if he had. By the look of her, they were sitting there cosily together before he got his hands on her throat. It’s just a question of whether the two of them set off home together or whether he left early and waited for her.”

“Do you know yet who she is?”

“Not yet. There’s no diary in the bag. That kind don’t keep diaries. But I shall know in about half an hour.”

He turned to Lorrimer. “The exhibits should be at the Lab by nine or thereabouts. You’ll give this priority?”

Lorrimer’s voice was harsh. “Murder gets priority. You know that.”

Doyle’s exultant, self-satisfied bellow jangled Howarth’s nerves. “Thank God something does! You’re taking your time
over the Gutteridge case. I was in the Biology Department yesterday and Bradley said the report wasn’t ready; he was working on a case for the defence. We all know the great fiction that the Lab is independent of the police and I’m happy to go along with it most of the time. But old Hoggatt founded the place as a police lab, and when the chips are down that’s what it’s all about. So do me a favour. Get moving with this one for me. I want to get chummy and get him quickly.”

He was rocking gently on his heels, his smiling face uplifted to the dawn like a happy dog sniffing at the air, euphoric with the exhilaration of the hunt. It was odd, thought Howarth, that he didn’t recognize the cold menace in Lorrimer’s voice.

“Hoggatt’s does an occasional examination for the defence if they ask us and if the exhibit is packed and submitted in the approved way. That’s departmental policy. We’re not yet a police lab even if you do walk in and out of the place as if it’s your own kitchen. And I decide priorities in my Laboratory. You’ll get your report as soon as it’s ready. In the meantime, if you want to ask questions, come to me, not to my junior staff. And, unless you’re invited, keep out of my Laboratory.”

Without waiting for an answer, he walked over to his car. Doyle looked after him in a kind of angry bewilderment.

“Bloody hell! His Lab! What’s wrong with him? Lately, he’s been as touchy as a bitch in heat. He’ll find himself on a brain shrinker’s couch or in the bin if he doesn’t get a hold of himself.”

Howarth said coldly: “He’s right, of course. Any inquiry about the work should be made to him, not to a member of his staff. And it’s usual to ask permission before walking into a laboratory.”

The rebuke stung. Doyle frowned. His face hardened. Howarth had a disconcerting glimpse of the barely controlled aggression beneath the mask of casual good humour. Doyle said: “Old Dr. Mac used to welcome the police in his Lab.
He had this odd idea, you see, that helping the police was what it was all about. But if we’re not wanted, you’d better talk to the Chief. No doubt he’ll issue his instructions.” He turned on his heel and made off towards his car without waiting for a reply.

Howarth thought: “Damn Lorrimer! Everything he touches goes wrong for me.” He felt a spasm of hatred so intense, so physical that it made him retch. If only Lorrimer’s body were sprawled at the bottom of the clunch pit. If only it were Lorrimer’s cadaver which would be cradled in porcelain on the post-mortem table next day, laid out for ritual evisceration. He knew what was wrong with him. The diagnosis was as simple as it was humiliating: that self-infecting fever of the blood which could lie deceptively dormant, then flare now into torment. Jealousy, he thought, was as physical as fear; the same dryness of the mouth, the thudding heart, the restlessness which destroyed appetite and peace. And he knew now that, this time, the sickness was incurable. It made no difference that the affair was over, that Lorrimer, too, was suffering. Reason couldn’t cure it, nor, he suspected, could distance, nor time. It could be ended only by death; Lorrimer’s or his own.

At half past six, in the front bedroom of 2 Acacia Close, Chevisham, Susan Bradley, wife of the Higher Scientific Officer in the Biology Department of Hoggatt’s Laboratory, was welcomed by the faint, plaintive wail of her two-month-old baby, hungry for her first feed of the day. Susan switched on the bedside lamp, a pink glow under its frilled shade, and reaching for her dressing gown, shuffled sleepily to the bathroom next door, and then to the nursery. It was a small room at the back of the house, little more than a box, but when she pressed down the switch of the low-voltage nursery light she felt again a glow of maternal, proprietorial pride. Even in her sleepy morning daze the first sight of the nursery lifted her heart: the nursing chair with its back decorated with rabbits; the matching changing table fitted with drawers for the baby’s things; the wicker cot in its stand which she had lined with a pink, blue and white flowered cotton to match the curtains; the bright fringe of nursery-rhyme characters which Clifford had pasted round the wall.

With the sound of her footsteps the cries became stronger. She picked up the warm, milky-smelling cocoon and crooned
reassurance. Immediately the cries ceased and Debbie’s moist mouth, opening and shutting like a fish, sought her breast, the small wrinkled fists freed from the blanket, unfurled to clutch against her crumpled nightdress. The books said to change baby first, but she could never bear to make Debbie wait. And there was another reason. The walls of the modern house were thin, and she didn’t want the sound of crying to wake Cliff.