Antman (23 page)

'Even less fun for him.'

'Feel anything on your hand when she gave you the paper?' whispered Andy Dobbs.

'Piss off,' muttered Morrison.

Morrison and Livesey exchanged glances. Both knew the investigation was back at square one.

*  *  *

'You look brassed off,' said Tom.

'Don't ask,' said Chris. 'Police politics.'

Chris was brassed off. Tom wanted to know the source of her mood and was not surprised when she told him it was Bradshaw.

Eventually he spoke.

'I've met Mr Bradshaw, interesting man.'

'Not how I'd describe him.'

'I find it quite hard to guess in what way he's got to you unless you tell me.'

'In plenty of ways. The latest was going over my head to the officers in my team, ignoring me just because I happened not to be in the building at the time.'

'Perhaps it wasn't intentional.'

'He does it all the time, in his way. You know what they say. Once is an accident, twice a coincidence, three times is bloody nasty.'

'Did you sort it with him?'

'No, well kind of. Oh I don't know. Let's talk about other things. Look at this,' said Chris. 'A copy of the latest note received.'

Chris opened her case and passed Tom a sheet of paper, its vertical columns filled with tiny, obsessively neat handwriting. He sat reading in silence for several minutes. Occasionally, he took a heavy breath, or clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

I don't know what triggered this latest dream. I recall the surging ant hordes around the Formica Rufa, wood ants' nest – a large conical heap about two metres across, consisting of pine needles, situated at the roadside adjacent to the woods near my home. Its edges were flattened by the weather and its great age and the newer, steeper pile of pine needles stood towards the southern edge of this larger construction. On the southern slope of this smaller conical heap was a twitching mass of ants that appeared to be sunning themselves. I remember picking up a stout piece of branch. I couldn't resist sticking it violently into the midst of this ant cauldron, which duly bubbled up and spewed angry bodies down the sides of the heap in great confusion. Spurts of the formic acid that wood ants deploy against predators came up from the mound a dozen centimetres or so, like miniature jets of water from hoses. Ants ran everywhere in frenzies of confusion.

Occasionally, among the hosts of smaller ants, a large, soldier-like ant stood out, like a sentinel from a higher order of authority. It reminded me of crowds of beleaguered peasants under aerial bombardment in some foreign war. I recalled TV and press images of the teeming communities of Vietnam in the 1960s – the streams of pedestrians filling every road – momentary film sequences in the films Platoon and The Deer Hunter, of agitated soldiers in armoured vehicles driving through masses of blank-eyed refugees.

I realise my place is in the driving seat, manipulating these crowds. Is that what you do when you've time on your hands – recreate the world after your own fashion? Can you imagine other people as you would have them be, invest in yourself the power to breed a total response to an encompassing problem?

At the cinema, I used to jump onto the screen to help Superman out. Spreading oil over the water all round the stricken liner in the hurricane, diverting the flood from the threatened village with a mighty heave which threw rocks into the swollen river and changed its course, landing the aeroplane single-handed when the pilot had a heart attack.

After we've suppressed the strikes in St Petersburg, I act through the government to raise the bridges in the city. It's necessary to prevent people moving in large numbers from one part of the city to another. I ask the guards to take me out in my carriage to tour the city. I have to travel with care, of course. The populace are in a very disturbed state. One of the bridges – I don't know which one but it reminds me of one of the big bridges in London – is too big to lever upwards to the vertical position. As it slowly rises, a dead horse still harnessed to the shafts of its cart slips forward and it looks as though the entire load will fall into the river. But the cart jams against the ironwork and the horse is left hanging by its harness.

I returned to my spacious apartment. It wasn't long before the workers rose up and for two weeks they swarmed in thousands, looting and destroying any mementoes of the Tsar and his family, banners, flags, even huge statues – anything which reminded them of his years of tyrannical rule.

I talk to Lenin and his comrades. He listens to me. His speech-making voice is in my head. I worry about how to harness the massive power of the ant armies. The banners standing up from the masses of bodies on the film remind me of the occasional soldier ants running among their tiny comrades, on the march. The ultimate triumph of the workers over the middle class – as shortly before the middle class revolutionaries had themselves triumphed over the Czarate – was portrayed in their joyous faces, in the laughter of peasants and soldiers alike.

The ignorant bourgeoisie, they talk about me in corners. "Look at the boy, he never laughs. He spends all day watching those bloody insects." I shall show them. One day I shall rule this country and restore it to greatness.

The weather is unseasonably cold. As though Fate has stepped in, the very next day I wake to find the world completely white. The snow, they tell me, extends from St Petersburg to Moscow. This transformation impresses me very much. How clean every pavement and road looks. All the muck and rubbish from the fighting has been wiped away by the snow. It makes everywhere look new. That is how I see my life after the revolution, clean and white, the gold painted minarets of my dreams shining in the winter sun and this dreadful cough disappearing with the hard frost.

J

Tom finished reading and looked up.

'What do you make of the references to ants?' Chris asked.

'Not much I can say. Nothing particularly technical there. They're the kind of observations anyone could have made. That's the point. If it was written in the style of the professional entomologist, it would be recognisable as such.'

'What do you think about the way he writes? A cry for help perhaps?' Chris asked.

He shook his head. 'I'd say this man's articulate, but he's lost it in a big way. In this passage, look, he thinks he's some Russian leader. This reference to jumping onto the stage. He's at a cinema. These are films. I bet you this man sits watching videos.'

'Fancies himself as St George taming the dragon.'

'Unfortunately, it's more sinister than that. I once saw Eisenstein's film
Oktober
by accident, in one of those commemorative showings in October on late night television. That was at a time when I hardly knew anything about the Czar, the Bolsheviks, Lenin or the two revolutions of 1917 – the extermination of the Czar and his family and subsequently the overthrow of the democracy which replaced autocracy, and the establishment of Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat. This man – I'm sure our killer is a man – is switching between his own personality and that of one of those Russian leaders, Lenin or Stalin, I don't know which.'

'I wonder if he's schizophrenic. They have delusions and imagine being under the influence of well-known figures,' said Chris.

'My knowledge of psychiatry and mental disorder doesn't go that far,' said Tom. 'I tell you what though, I'm positive he's remembered that anecdote about the horse caught in its harness and hanging from the bridge, from the film
Oktober.
'

'Look at that last sheet,' said Chris. 'Something bizarre happens. That short paragraph. The handwriting is different. The rest looks pretty well identical with that first note we found. That single line, not only is it in a different voice, from a different person as it were. But look at this. The writing is different.'

'I don't know. You're more into it than me. I can't comment on handwriting. Don't ask me to make an interpretation. I'm a scientist. I leave interpreting to someone else.'

'I can make more informed comments if I've actually seen what the ants have done,' said Tom – a fatal remark to make at that time.

Less than two hours later, Chris walked with Tom from the car park and towards the front door of the mortuary.

'Has her family been contacted?' he asked suddenly.

'Apparently she lived alone.' Chris sounded surprised. 'The only known relative is a brother in South Wales.'

Tom was silent, before adding, 'It's a bad situation.' He shuddered. 'I wouldn't have known where this was before, if you'd asked me.'

'Nor would ninety-nine per cent of the population,' said Chris. He'd taken some persuading. In one way, she was surprised he had agreed. Tim Rathbone, pathologist, opened the door and led them into the mortuary.

'I've some preliminary thoughts, Chris. You won't be too happy with them, I guess. I want to reserve judgement till we've had longer to gather our thoughts together and till we've some more results back on the tissue tests. We've a puzzling quantity of insect predation, with no ready explanation as to how it fits into the total picture. Look at this tissue. This is unusual. Crenation of the edges is indicative normally of insect teeth marks and bites, but it seems totally out of place here. It's usually associated with post-mortem attack. No bleeding is evident, apart from the tiny amount in the actual vessels of the damaged area of the wounds. Also there's no active haemorrhage into the edges of the wounds. There is some oedema or reddening of the edges, which indicates an insect attack – if that's what it is – was ante-mortem, that’s before the death.'

Tom leaned on the door. His face was pale.

'Are you feeling all right? Please, feel free to go to the toilet if you need it. Straight through the door, first left.'

Tom came back and some of his normal colouring had returned. Tim carried on speaking. 'There are these abrasions to the neck, wrists and ankles, caused by ligatures. This person may have been bound and strangled, before being left in proximity to insects.'

'That seems possible,' said Chris. 'But what normal murderer would bother to do that?'

'I'm worried about you using the term
normal
in this context.'

'It's relative. There are murders and murders.'

'More seriously, from my experience of bee swarms, for instance, death could have been solely by asphyxiation without strangulation. For instance, a massive incursion of insects round the face and neck could have caused a panic attack, breathlessness and the inhalation of insects with each gasp. Whilst the victim would be retching and coughing these out again, there would be a tendency for insect traces to be left in the mouth, throat and windpipe. As for the marks on the neck, it was Shapiro, 1988 I think, who found linear lesions by insects can resemble ligature abrasions. In support of this, look at these tiny marks. They could be the beginnings of bites by insects. Small insects are likely to attack the softer parts of the head and extremities of the limbs where these are exposed – lips, eyelids and knuckles and so on.'

'I find the idea of asphyxia from a panic brought on by finding a few insects on your body rather far-fetched.'

'Okay, try this. The killer puts a polythene bag over the body, exposes the neck, dabs a sugar solution on it to start with. Unconsciousness follows as soon as the air supply in the bag is exhausted, death takes place within minutes. Meanwhile, the insects fill the bag as they are attracted to the sugar.'