Gone Tomorrow (3 page)

‘That stuff about bolt-cutters?’

‘If you were breaking into the park for nefarious purposes, would you bother to take the padlock and chain away with you?
Or having cut through them, would you just leave them lying where they fell?’

‘I see what you mean. So you think Whalley’s lying? He’s nervous enough.’

‘In his position I’d be nervous, whether I was lying or not. When a corpse is found on your watch it doesn’t bode well even if you’re innocent. It’s possible he merely forgot to lock the gates, and doesn’t want to admit it in view of the consequences.’

‘Point.’

‘The other possibility is that he’s in on it in some way. But what “it” is, we can’t know until we can find out who deceased is.’

‘Well, I can’t see Whalley as a criminal conspirator,’ Atherton said. ‘He’s a pathetic little runt.’

‘I expect you’re right. It’s just the padlock and chain not being there that bothers me. Our corpse was too nattily dressed for climbing over gates. Especially gates with pointy bits on the top.’

‘You think he had an appointment in the park?’

Slider shrugged. ‘Whatever he went there for, he went there. Alive or dead, he went through one of the gates or over it, and I can’t make myself believe in over.’

In the post-mortem room of the hospital’s pathology department, Freddie Cameron, the forensic pathologist, presented to the world an appearance as smooth as a racehorse’s ear. It was his response to the unpleasantness of much of his work to cultivate an outward perfection. His suiting was point-device, his linen immaculate; his waistcoat was a poem of nicely calculated audacity and his bow-tie
du jour
was crimson with an old gold spot.

All this loveliness, of course, was concealed as soon as he put on the protective clothing, but still he was positively jaunty as he shaped up to the corpse.

‘Anything’s better than facing another pair of congested lungs, old bean,’ he said when Slider queried his pleasure. ‘I’m even beginning to eye my bath sponge askance. This flu epidemic seems to have gone on for ever. Good to see you back,’ he added to Atherton. ‘Good holiday? You’re looking very juvenile and jolly.’

‘Fully functioning on all circuits,’ Atherton admitted.

‘So, you’ve no ID on our friend here?’ Cameron asked.

‘Not so far,’ Slider said.

‘Well, I’ll take the fingerprints for you, and a blood sample. Chap looks a bit tasty, to my view.’

‘I agree. Everything about him suggests there’s a good chance he’ll feature somewhere in our hall of fame.’

‘Right. Well, as soon as my assistant arrives, we’ll begin. Ah, here she is. Sandra, this is my old friend Bill Slider. Sandra Whitty.’

Slider shook hands. She was an attractive young woman, sensationally busted under her lab coat. Her lovely profile preceded
her into a little pool of held breath which had gathered round the table; broken a moment later as McLaren muttered fervently, ‘Blimey, she takes up a lot of room!’

Why is it we’re all so childish about bosoms, Slider wondered. He wasn’t immune himself. Charlie Dimmock had a lot to answer for. He met Miss Whitty’s eye apologetically. ‘Excuse the reptile.’

Fortunately, she only looked amused. ‘That’s all right, I keep pets myself.’

She obviously knew what she was doing, and handled the body with an easy strength as she and Freddie removed the clothing and put it into the bags McLaren held out. There was nothing in any of the pockets to identify the deceased. One jacket pocket yielded cigarettes – Gitanes, a rather surprising choice – and a throwaway lighter. The other contained a quantity of change and a crumpled but clean handkerchief. The inside jacket pocket contained a fold of notes held with an elastic band. When McLaren unfolded and counted them, it came to over a thousand pounds, in fifties, twenties and tens.

‘Now there’s a thing you don’t see every day,’ Freddie said. He breathed in deeply. ‘Ah, money! I can almost smell the mint.’

‘Evidently robbery from the person was not a factor,’ Atherton said.

‘But there’s no wallet, driving licence, credit card, or any of the gubbins a man carries about,’ Slider said. ‘Was he unusually self-effacing, or did the murderer cop the lot?’

‘If he did, why wouldn’t he take the money?’ Freddie added. ‘Only fair, after taking the trouble to kill the chappie.’

‘I’d have taken the jacket,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s a lovely piece of leather. I wonder where he got it?’ He looked at the label sewn inside just under the collar. ‘“Emporio Firenze”,’ he read. ‘Never heard of them. Still, it’s very nice.’

‘Nice watch, too,’ Sandra said.

‘Is that a Rolex?’ Atherton asked, leaning forward.

‘It only thinks it is,’ she said succinctly. ‘Good fake, though. Date, phases of the moon, two different time zones, alarm, stopwatch function and integral microwave oven and waffle maker. Not cheap.’

‘How do you know so much about men’s watches?’

‘I’ve handled a few,’ she said. Slider could see Atherton working it out and felt a mild urge to kick him. When it came
to women he had all the self-restraint of an Alsatian puppy on a bowling green.

‘Look here, Bill,’ Freddie said a moment later. ‘Someone has been into the pockets. You see here, the left inside pocket is stained with blood where it rested against the wound. Now, over here, a tiny smear of blood on the
right
inside pocket. Someone’s checked the contents of the left pocket and then transferred the blood on his fingers to the right.’

‘While looking for something,’ said Slider.

‘Which presumably he found,’ Atherton added. Any chance of a fingerprint?’

‘I’ll have a look under the microscope, but I wouldn’t hold my breath,’ Freddie advised. ‘It’s a very tiny smear.’

When the jumper was removed, it revealed a tattoo on the right forearm.

‘Nice,’ Sandra commented tartly. It portrayed a plump red heart with a steel-blue dagger thrust through it. There was a realistic drip of blood falling from the tip of the dagger, and around the heart was wrapped one of those heraldic ribbon scrolls bearing the word ‘Mary’. It was an unpleasant and disturbing combination of sentiment and violence. ‘Mary’s a lucky girl,’ Sandra said.

‘It may help to identify him,’ Slider said.

Atherton was not impressed. ‘He could have got it done anywhere, any time.’

‘Not any time,’ Cameron said. ‘I’d say it was quite recent – within the last couple of years.’

‘All right, but anywhere. If we’ve got to start trawling the tattoo parlours of the world—’

‘It’s better than nothing,’ Slider said.

‘Not by much.’

Slider knew what he meant. A tattoo was a bit like fingerprints – good for confirming an identity when you already knew who you had; but for plucking an identity out of the void, it was as useful as a fishing net on a stick for retrieving a ring you’d dropped over the side of the cross-Channel ferry.

When the body was naked, Cameron made his external examination, reporting as he went. There was a little click every time he activated the tape recorder by means of the foot button; that and his cultured voice were the only sounds that disturbed
the hum of the air conditioning. Slider thought it was a bit like being in his office, with the coo of a pigeon on the windowsill and the murmur of traffic outside. Strangely soporific. He found himself drifting a little.

‘Deceased is male Caucasian, height five feet eleven, age apparently mid-thirties. He appears to be well nourished and in good health. Good musculature. No skin lesions, no surgical scars. No sign of any drugs usage.’

He measured and described the knife wound in the chest, and continued, ‘No other visible wounds. Some evidence of bruising on the left side of the jaw, on the left upper arm and to the knuckles of the right hand. Bruising is not fully developed, suggesting that it was inflicted a short time before death.’

Slider jerked back to the present. ‘What sort of bruising?’ he asked when the recorder clicked off.

‘Looks as if he was in a scrap of some sort. This one on the arm, you see, shows the shape of knuckles: one, two, three lobes and a fainter fourth, the little finger, which has less impact because of the curve of the fist. A right-handed punch, delivered with great force.’

Slider looked, recreating it. ‘Probably turning away slightly, fielding it on his arm instead of his face.’

‘Well, that should help us identify him,’ McLaren said. ‘A man with a tattoo who was in a fight.’

‘Narrows the field wonderfully,’ Atherton agreed.

‘Right,’ said Cameron, ‘let’s open him up. Mints, Sandra.’

Sandra Whitty pulled out of her pocket the obligatory tube of Trebor and passed them round. Reaching for his long scalpel, Cameron began to whistle softly, a habit he hardly knew he had. The tune, Atherton recognised after a moment, was ‘Some Enchanted Evening’. Whistling, he slipped in the blade and opened the body like a man opening his mail.

A post-mortem is not a pleasant thing to witness, and it was good to have something else to focus on at particular moments. Slider found the lyricism of Miss Whitty’s moving torso very soothing. It was plain to Slider that she was quite well aware of the effect she was having. He liked a woman to enjoy her own prowess – why not? – but he couldn’t help thinking that it was not the best thing for a newly revitalised Atherton to be exposed to.
One
of them ought to have his mind on the job.

‘Well, what can I tell you?’ Freddie Cameron said at last, with a certain sympathy in his eye.

‘Some good news,’ Slider said.

‘If I had any of that, I’d open a shop,’ Cameron said. ‘Deceased died from a single stab wound from a double-edged, narrow blade, about five inches long, maybe longer – there’s always a certain amount of compression – which penetrated the heart. There’s no sign of any chronic disease or any other contributory cause.’

‘And there wouldn’t have needed to be?’

‘Oh, no. That wound is quite sufficient. Death would have been instantaneous.’

‘There’s no reason to think he was poisoned or drugged, is there?’

‘Nothing in the pathology. The stomach contents are well digested. It looks as if he hadn’t eaten for several hours, though I fancy he had a pint not too long before death. Do you want them analysed?’

‘Not at the moment. There’s the budget to think about, and we might have to have the DNA analysed. Any way of telling whether he was killed where we found him or moved after death?’

‘Not really. The hypostasis is consistent with the way he was found, but as you know it can be two or three hours before it settles, and even if the body is moved after it appears, it may well slip down to the new position anyway.’

‘And the time of death?’

‘Well, old dear,’ Freddie said cheerfully, ‘I can give you an educated guess. Based on the temperature, I’d say anything up to eight hours before I first saw him.’

‘That means some time after midnight,’ Slider said. ‘I could have told you that.’

‘But it could have been earlier,’ Freddie went on, ever more cheerfully. ‘He was a muscular chap, and it wasn’t a cold night;
and if he’d been kept bundled up or in a sheltered position – indoors, or in the boot of a car, for instance – he wouldn’t have cooled so quickly.’

‘I can’t think,’ Slider said with dignity, ‘why they call it forensic
science.’

Ah, if only I were a fictional character,’ Freddie said, ‘I could
take one squint and tell you he died at exactly twenty to three on Tuesday-was-a-week.’

‘If
he
were a fictional character,’ Slider capped him, ‘his watch would have stopped at the moment of death and I wouldn’t have had to ask you.’

Freddie took pity on him. ‘Absolutely best guess, between four and eight hours. But don’t quote me. And if you finally discover he was done at eleven pm or five am, don’t come crying foul to me.’

‘King Death hath ass’s ears,’ Slider said.

‘Sounds like one of those tongue twisters. “The Leith poleeth dismisses us.” Not easy to say with a mint in your mouth.’

‘Well, guys and gals, the bad news is that the fingerprints have come up with no match. Our deceased friend has no previous.’

There was a murmur. Atherton, sitting on a desk contemplating his shoes, said, ‘I must say that does surprise me. He looked like a villain.’

‘Maybe he was a successful villain,’ said DC Swilley. Her given name was Kathleen, but for phonetic reasons, as well as her ability to look after herself, she had always been known as Norma. For as long as Slider had known her she had been engaged to a man called Tony whom no-one had ever met. Swilley had always been reticent about him to the point of mystery; some –
generally those who had tried to make her and failed – had even said he did not exist. Then a couple of months ago she had electrified the department by actually getting married. Tony’s surname turned out to be Allnutt, and it had not taken much agonising for Swilley to decide to keep her maiden name while she was in the job. Life was hard enough, even for a tall, Baywatch blonde like her, without adding unnecessary problems.

Atherton for some reason had been very upset about Swilley getting married. He had told Slider he couldn’t bear to think of any man defiling her. Slider had pointed out that Mr Allnutt had of a certainty been defiling her for years, but Atherton claimed illogically that she was different since the wedding: less unattainably godlike, somehow diminished. Annoyingly, Slider knew what he meant. There was a strange ordinariness to Mrs Allnutt, a glow of domestic contentment, which was like polished
pewter to her previous burnished silver. He didn’t, however, go as far as Atherton and blame her for it.

So when Swilley said, ‘Maybe he was a successful villain,’ Atherton immediately contradicted her.

‘There’s no such thing.’

‘Don’t be such a dick,’ Swilley said impatiently. ‘Of course there is.’

‘Criminals are basically stupid. They always give themselves away in the end. We’d have had him through our hands.’

‘Yes, and if we’d had to let him go for lack of evidence or whatever, he wouldn’t have a record and the prints would’ve been destroyed,’ Swilley pointed out.