Death of an Expert Witness (9 page)

But no one ever does know that, he thought. Not really.

“Don’t expect me to be here when you get back.”

That was an old threat. He said easily: “Suit yourself. But if you’re thinking of driving, forget it. I’m taking the Cortina, the clutch is playing up on the Renault. So if you’re planning on running home to Mummy before tomorrow morning, you’ll have to phone Daddy to call for you, or take a taxi.”

She was speaking, but her voice, peevishly insistent, was coming from far away, no longer coherent words but waves of sound beating against his brain. Two hours. Whether or not she bothered to rouse him, he knew that he would wake almost to the minute. He closed his eyes and slept.

It was very peaceful in the front hall of Hoggatt’s at eight-forty in the morning. Brenda often thought that this was the part of the working day she liked best, the hour before the staff arrived and the work of the Lab got really under way, when she and Inspector Blakelock worked together in the quiet emptiness of the hall, still and solemn as a church, making up a supply of manila folders ready to register the day’s new cases, repacking exhibits for collection by the police, making a final check of the Laboratory reports to courts to ensure that the examination was complete, that no relevant detail had been omitted. Immediately on arrival she would put on her white coat, and at once she felt different, no longer young and uncertain, but a professional woman, almost like a scientist, a recognized member of the Lab staff. Then she would go into the kitchen at the back of the house and make tea. After the dignification of the white coat this domestic chore was something of a let-down, and she didn’t really need a drink so soon after breakfast. But Inspector Blakelock, who motored from Ely every day, was always ready for his tea, and she didn’t mind making it.

“That’s the stuff to give the troops,” he would invariably say, curving back moist lips to the mug’s brim and gulping the hot liquid down as if his throat were asbestos. “You make a nice cup of tea, Brenda, I’ll say that for you.”

And she would reply: “Mum says the secret is always to warm the pot and let the tea brew for just five minutes.”

This small ritual exchange, so invariable that she could silently mouth his words and had to resist an impulse to giggle, the familiar domestic aroma of the tea, the gradual warmth as she curved her hands around the thick mug, constituted a reassuring and comforting beginning to the working day.

She liked Inspector Blakelock. He spoke seldom, but he was never impatient with her, always kind, a companionable father figure. Even her mother, when she visited the Lab before Brenda took up her post, had been happy about her working alone with him. Brenda’s cheeks still burnt with shame when she remembered her mother’s insistence that she should visit Hoggatt’s to see where her daughter was going to work, although Chief Inspector Martin, the Senior Police Liaison Officer, had apparently thought it perfectly reasonable. He had explained to her mother how it was an innovation for Hoggatt’s having a clerical officer on the desk instead of a junior police officer. If she made a success of the job it would mean a permanent saving in police manpower as well as a useful training for her. As Chief Inspector Martin had told her mother: “The reception desk is the heart of the Laboratory.” At present he was with a party of police officers visiting the United States and Inspector Blakelock was totally in charge doing the two jobs, not only receiving the exhibits, making out the register of court attendances and preparing the statistics, but discussing the cases with the detective in charge, explaining what the Laboratory could hope to do,
rejecting those cases where the scientists couldn’t help, and checking that the final statements for the court were complete. Brenda guessed that it was a big responsibility for him and was determined not to let him down.

Already, when she had been making the tea, the first exhibit of the day had arrived, brought in no doubt by a detective constable working on the case. It was another plastic bag of clothes from the clunch pit murder. As Inspector Blakelock turned it over in his large hands, she glimpsed through the plastic a pair of dark-blue trousers with a greasy waistband, a wide-lapelled striped jacket, and a pair of black shoes with pointed toes and ornate buckles.

Inspector Blakelock was studying the police report. He said: “These belong to the boyfriend she was messing about with at the dance. You’ll need a new file for the report, but register it to Biology under the Muddington reference with a sub-group number. Then attach one of the red Immediate slips. Murder gets priority.”

“But we might have two or three murders at the same time. Who decides the priority then?”

“The head of the department concerned. It’s his job to allocate the work to his staff. After murder and rape, it’s usual to give priority to those cases where the accused hasn’t been bailed.”

Brenda said: “I hope you don’t mind my asking so many questions. Only I do want to learn. Dr. Lorrimer told me that I ought to find out all I can and not just look on this job as routine.”

“You ask away, lass, I don’t mind. Only you don’t want to listen too much to Dr. Lorrimer. He isn’t the Director here, even if he thinks he is. When you’ve registered that clobber, the bundle goes on the Biology shelf.”

Brenda entered the exhibit number carefully in the daybook and moved the plastic-shrouded bundle to the shelf of exhibits waiting to go into the Biology Search Room. It was good to be up to date with the entering. She glanced up at the clock. It was nearly 8.50. Soon the day’s post would be delivered and the desk would be heaped with padded envelopes containing yesterday’s blood samples from the drink-and-driving cases. Then the police cars would start arriving. Uniformed or plain-clothes policemen would bring in large envelopes of documents for Mr. Middlemass, the Document Examiner; specially prepared kits issued by the Laboratory for the collection of saliva, blood and semen stains; unwieldy bags of stained and dirty bed linen and blankets; the ubiquitous blunt instruments; bloodstained knives carefully taped into their boxes.

And at any moment now the first members of staff would be arriving. Mrs. Bidwell, the cleaner, should have been with them twenty minutes ago. Perhaps she had caught Scobie’s influenza. The first of the scientific staff to arrive would probably be Clifford Bradley, the Higher Scientific Officer in the Biology Department, scurrying through the hall as if he had no right to be there, with his anxious, hunted eyes and that stupid, drooping moustache, so preoccupied that he hardly noticed their greeting. Then Miss Foley, the Director’s secretary, calm and self-possessed, wearing always that secret smile. Miss Foley reminded Brenda of Mona Rigby at school, who was always chosen to play the Madonna in the Christmas nativity play. She had never liked Mona Rigby—who wouldn’t have been chosen twice for the coveted role if the staff had known as much about her as did Brenda—and she wasn’t sure that she really liked Miss Foley. Then someone she did like, Mr. Middlemass, the Document Examiner, with his jacket slung over his shoulders, leaping up the stairs
three steps at a time and calling out a greeting to the desk. After that they would come in almost any order. The hall would become alive with people, rather like a railway terminus, and at the heart of the seeming chaos, controlling and directing, helping and explaining, were the staff of the reception desk.

As if to signal that the working day was about to begin, the telephone rang. Inspector Blakelock’s hand enveloped the receiver. He listened in silence for what seemed a longer period than normal, then she heard him speak.

“I don’t think he’s here, Mr. Lorrimer. You say he never came home last night?”

Another silence. Inspector Blakelock half turned away from her and bent his head conspiratorially over the mouthpiece as if listening to a confidence. Then he rested the receiver on the counter and turned to Brenda: “It’s Dr. Lorrimer’s old dad. He’s worried. Apparently Dr. Lorrimer didn’t take him his early tea this morning and it looks as if he didn’t come home last night. His bed hasn’t been slept in.”

“Well, he can’t be here. I mean, we found the front door locked when we arrived.”

There could be no doubt about that. As she had come round the corner of the house from putting her bicycle in the old stable block, Inspector Blakelock had been standing at the front door almost as if he were waiting for her. Then, when she had joined him, he had shone his torch on the locks and inserted the three keys, first the Yale, and then the Ingersoll, and lastly the security lock which disconnected the electronic warning system from Guy’s Marsh Police Station. Then they had stepped together into the unlighted hall. She had gone to the cloakroom at the back of the building to put on her white coat and he had gone to the box in Chief Inspector Martin’s
office to switch off the system which protected the inner doors of the main Laboratory rooms.

She giggled and said: “Mrs. Bidwell hasn’t turned up to start the cleaning and now Dr. Lorrimer’s missing. Perhaps they’ve run away together. The great Hoggatt scandal.”

It wasn’t a very funny joke, and she wasn’t surprised when Inspector Blakelock didn’t laugh. He said: “The locked door doesn’t necessarily signify. Dr. Lorrimer has his own keys. And if he did make his bed and then come in extra early this morning, like as not he’d have relocked the door and set the internal alarms.”

“But how would he have got into the Biology Lab, then?”

“He’d have had to have opened the door and then left it open when he reset the alarms. It doesn’t seem likely. When he’s here alone he usually relies on the Yale.”

He put the receiver again to his ear and said: “Hold on a moment will you, Mr. Lorrimer. I don’t think he’s here, but I’ll just check.”

“I’ll go,” said Brenda, anxious to demonstrate helpfulness. Without waiting to lift the flap she slipped under the counter. As she turned she saw him with startling clarity, brightly instantaneous as a camera flash. Inspector Blakelock, with his mouth half-open in remonstrance, his arm flung out towards her in a gesture, stiff and histrionic, of protection or restraint.

But now, uncomprehending, she laughed and ran up the wide stairs. The Biology Laboratory was at the back of the first floor, running with its adjoining search room almost the whole length of the building. The door was shut. She turned the knob and pushed it open, feeling along the wall for the light switch. Her fingers found it and she pressed it down. The two long fluorescent tubes suspended from the ceiling blinked, then glimmered, then glowed into steady light.

She saw the body immediately. He was lying in the space between the two large central examination tables, face downwards, his left hand seeming to claw at the floor, his right arm hunched beneath him. His legs were straight. She gave a curious little sound between a cry and a moan and knelt beside him. The hair above his left ear was matted and spiked like her kitten’s fur after he had washed, but she couldn’t see the blood against the dark hair. But she knew that it was blood. Already it had blackened on the collar of his white coat and a small pool had separated and congealed on the Lab floor. Only his left eye was visible, fixed and dull and retracted, like the eye of a dead calf. Tentatively she felt his cheek. It was cold. But she had known as soon as she had seen the glazed eye that this was death.

She had no memory of closing the Lab door or coming down the stairs. Inspector Blakelock was still behind the counter, rigid as a statue, the telephone receiver in his hand. She wanted to laugh at the sight of his face, he looked so funny. She tried to speak to him, but the words wouldn’t come. Her jaw jabbered uncontrollably and her teeth clattered together. She made some kind of gesture. He said something that she couldn’t catch, dropped the receiver on the counter and raced upstairs.

She staggered to the heavy Victorian armchair against the wall outside Chief Inspector Martin’s office, Colonel Hoggatt’s chair. The portrait looked down at her. As she watched, the left eye seemed to grow larger, the lips twisted to a leer.

Her whole body was seized with a terrible cold. Her heart seemed to have grown immense, thudding against the ribcage. She was breathing in great gulps, but still there wasn’t enough air. Then she became aware of the crackling from the telephone. Rising slowly like an automaton, she made her way over to the counter and picked up the receiver. Mr. Lorrimer’s
voice, frail and querulous, was bleating at the other end. She tried to say the accustomed words “Hoggatt’s Laboratory here. Reception speaking.” But the words wouldn’t come. She replaced the receiver in its cradle and walked back to the chair.

She had no memory of hearing the long peal of the doorbell, of moving stiffly across the hall to answer it. Suddenly the door crashed open and the hall was full of people, loud with voices. The light seemed to have brightened, which was odd, and she saw them all like actors on a stage, brightly lit, faces made grotesque and heightened by make-up, every word clear and comprehensible as if she were in the front row of the stalls. Mrs. Bidwell, the cleaner, in her mackintosh with the imitation-fur collar, her eyes bright with indignation, her voice pitched high.

“What the hell’s going on here! Some bloody fool phoned my old man and told him that I needn’t come in today, that Mrs. Schofield wanted me. Who’s playing silly buggers?”

Inspector Blakelock was coming down the stairs, slowly and deliberately, the protagonist making his entrance. They stood in a small circle and looked up at him. Dr. Howarth, Clifford Bradley, Miss Foley, Mrs. Bidwell.

The Director stepped forward. He looked as if he were going to faint. He said: “Well, Blakelock?”

“It’s Dr. Lorrimer, sir. He’s dead. Murdered.”

Surely they couldn’t all have repeated that word in unison, turning their faces towards each other, like a Greek chorus. But it seemed to echo in the quiet of the hall, becoming meaningless, a sonorous groan of a word. Murder. Murder. Murder.

She saw Dr. Howarth run towards the stairs.

Inspector Blakelock turned to accompany him, but the Director said: “No, you stay here. See that no one gets any further than the hall. Phone the Chief Constable and Dr. Kerrison. Then get me the Home Office.”