Necrocrip (4 page)

‘Red herrings, I suppose?’ Atherton enquired.

‘Left-overs,’ Slaughter corrected him, with some relief.

‘The piece of cod which passeth understanding,’ said Atherton. ‘But what’s underneath, I wonder?’

He looked round him, picked up a yard broom, turned it up the other way, and used the end of the handle to push aside the top layer of rubbish. Underneath the
left-overs was a left foot.

‘Bloody ‘ell,’ Slaughter said softly, transfixed with horror.

‘I thought it’d been too quiet lately,’ Slider murmured.

‘The game’s afoot, Guv,’ said Atherton.

‘I was afraid you were going to say that,’ said Slider.

Slaughter burst surprisingly into tears.

‘I think we’re going to need help here,’ Atherton said under cover of the noise. He licked his lips, and Slider could see that his nostrils were flared with some emotion, distaste or excitement – either would have been appropriate.

‘We certainly will. I’m not looking through a sackful of dead fish for evidence,’ Slider agreed.

‘And that’s just one sack. There are enough of them out here to hold the whole body, assuming it’s in pieces.’

‘Right,’ said Slider. ‘Take Slaughter inside to the front shop and stay with him. I’ll call in. And be gentle with him. If there is a body out here, he must know about it.’

‘Okay,’ Atherton said. The colour was returning to his face, and with it the blood to his head. ‘If there is a body out here,’ he gave the words back with minor relish, ‘we’ve got ourselves a murder.’

‘You don’t have to sound so pleased about it.’

‘It’s better than endless burglaries and domestics.’

‘Yes,’ Slider assented minimally. His own pulse had quickened at this first, far-off sound of the hunt, but he never liked the part of him which felt excited at the beginning of a murder enquiry. It was someone’s life, after all. ‘Well, get on with it.’

The circus – forensic, fingerprinting, photography – had been and gone, and now Slider stood alone in the back shop looking round it contemplatively. It was small, drab, and even with the door open, stuffy. The floor was tiled in a chequerboard pattern of black and red, scuffed and pitted with age. The walls – what you could see of them –were tiled with large white ceramic tiles of the sort which first gave rise to the expression ‘bog standard’. The back
door was a massive thing of plain, impanelled wood, painted black, and with a splintered notch three inches above the lock where it had been forced on a previous occasion, according to Slaughter. The window, as Slaughter had said, had been blocked in rather crudely and was still awaiting any kind of finish to its raw bricks and mortar.

Two walls were lined with open shelves on which were stacked bags of powdered batter mix, boxes of Frymax cooking fat, jars of pickled eggs and pickled gherkins, cartons of crisps and outers of soft drinks. Along the third wall were ranged a large fridge which was mostly full of individual meat pies and drink cans; a huge chest freezer which contained nothing more sinister than packets of frozen fish, chicken portions and sausages; and a pallet stacked with paper sacks of potatoes.

Along the fourth wall, nearest the door, was a large sink with a stainless steel drainer to one side and a steel-topped work table to the other, above which, on the wall, was a rack containing an impressive array of butcher’s knives. Under the work table there was a small drain set into the floor, and a brief glance around confirmed that the floor was sloped to drain into it, presumably so that the whole thing could be hosed down for ease of cleaning. Next to the work table stood the peeling machine, a large metal drum on a stand, which looked like a cross between an old-fashioned ship’s binnacle and a What-The-Butier-Saw machine. Next to that was the chip-cutter. Slider tentatively felt one of its blades, and withdrew his hand hastily.

He stepped again to the back door and looked out. The yard had high wooden fences all round and one gate, secured by a padlock, leading to the alley. The alley had a high brick wall on one side, behind which were the back yards of the shops in the adjacent side-street, and on the other side the gardens of the houses down the opposite side-street. The back windows of those houses were out of sight because of a large sycamore growing in the nearest garden. The only windows which might have a view of the yard were upstairs in the dry-cleaners next door, and he
had already ascertained that the Patels used the upper floor only for storage – they lived in a semi-detached house in Perivale. So anyone might have come and gone through the alley-way with a good chance of not being seen.

The pathologist, Freddie Cameron, came looking for him. ‘I’m off now, Bill. I’ll let you have a preliminary report as soon as possible.’

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘The smell, old boy.’ Cameron shuddered delicately. ‘It’s the sort of stink you can’t get out of your nostrils for days.’

‘That’s something, coming from you,’ Slider said.

‘Not a Linger Longer Aroma,’ Cameron amplified, in retreat.

Slider smiled inwardly, wondering how many people would remember that particular advertisement, and nearly missed his chance. ‘Oy! Can’t you tell me something before you go? Anything, even if it’s only I love you.’

Cameron turned back reluctantly. ‘About the body?’

‘Certainly about the body. It is animal, vegetable or mineral? Can you eat it?’

‘Preliminary shufti suggests there’s just enough bits for one male Caucasian, rather small and slightly built, youngish. But it’s in a lot of pieces, so I’ll have to have time to lay them out before I can tell you any more about it.’

‘Have you got a head? If I can get a photograph right away—’

‘We’ve got a head, but I’m afraid a photograph won’t do you any good. It’s been rather heavily altered. The face has been obliterated.’

‘Obliterated?’

‘Removed,’ Cameron said uncompromisingly. ‘I suppose the bits may be in the sacks somewhere, but whether we’ll be able to make anything of them—’

‘Someone didn’t want him recognised, then.’

‘Right. And we haven’t found the hands, except for the one finger. Oh, and there’s no hair, either. The entire scalp has been removed. We may find that, of course, but—’

He let the sentence hang for Slider, who would just as
soon not have had it. Scalped? It sounded unpleasantly obsessive. Were they going to have to look for a homicidal Wild West fan?

‘I suppose the body’s badly decomposed?’

‘No, I’d say it was quite fresh. Probably not more than twelve hours old. I think you’re probably looking for a murder committed during the dark hours last night.’

‘Then it was the fish making the stink?’

‘Just the fish,’ Cameron agreed. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? If friend Atherton hadn’t been so fastidious, it might all have been carted away by the dustman and no-one any the wiser.’

He turned to go again. A murder during the dark hours, Slider pondered. ‘Freddie, all this cutting up – wouldn’t it have taken a hell of a long time?’

‘Not necessarily. There was that case last year, don’t you remember, of the serial killer who dismembered his victims. The first took him thirteen hours, the second he managed in just two and a half. It all depends on knowing your way round a carcase. With a skilled hand and good sharp knives – and I’d say this was a skilled hand. There’s no haggling. The body’s been disjointed very neatly.’

‘What about the cause of death?’

‘Impossible to say yet. I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Okay. Thanks,’ Slider said absently. A skilled hand and sharp knives – the back room with its steel table and floor drain. And yet Slaughter had seemed genuinely puzzled by the finger. Well, yes, perhaps he was – puzzled by how he came to miss it. A lot of pieces, Cameron said – not surprising one went astray, perhaps. Fell unseen into the chip tub. And Slaughter opened up the shop again just as usual the next morning. He must be a cool hand – God, he had to stop using that word! But then what could he do but open up? Anything else would have been suspicious. And when the schoolgirl began shrieking, what else could he do but call the police?

Step by step, landing himself in the soup. Or, as Atherton would undoubtedly say, the chowder.

POLLY JABLOWSKI, THE POLISH PLONK
, was in Slider’s office putting a folder on his desk. Slider stopped dead just inside the door, feeling a nameless sense of unease, almost dread. Something was not as it should be. It was like one of those dreams where something enormously familiar, like the house where one was born, suddenly takes on an air of inexplicable menace.

Atherton, just behind him, stopped perforce, and stared hungrily over his shoulder at Jablowski’s little spiky head and nude neck. The air crackled with impure thoughts; Slider’s ear grew hot.

‘Sir?’ Polish said, straightening up. Seeing Slider’s expression she said defensively, ‘I was just delivering this folder—’

‘Something’s wrong,’ he said. ‘This is my office, isn’t it?’

She grinned. ‘The windows have been cleaned, that’s all. By order of Mr Barrington.’

‘Blimey, he moves fast,’ Atherton murmured. ‘And when we’ve just got ourselves a nice murder, too.’

Slider shook his head, bemused. ‘It was such a shock.’

‘The CID room windows are clean, too,’ Polish mentioned.

‘There goes our centre-spread in next month’s
Toilet and Garden,’
Atherton said sadly. ‘That man has no respect for tradition.’

Slider crossed to his desk to look at the folder. It was new, crisp, and had a fresh white label on the cover with the circulation list for checking off. The list was very long. There was also a memo fixed to the cover by a paper-clip.

‘From Mr Barrington, sir,’ Polish said apologetically.

‘So I see,’ said Slider.
As of this date, circulation files will be read and passed on within 24 hours of receipt, unless there are exceptional circumstances which prevent this. Such exceptional circumstances must be advised in writing to IVNB.

‘Apparently we’re all to see all circulation files from now on,’ she explained. ‘Mr Barrington says we should be conversant with every new directive, whether it affects us directly or not. So the files have to go round more quickly, so that everyone gets a chance to read them.’

‘I see,’ Slider said with admirable restraint.

‘And the painters are coming in next week,’ she added, perhaps by way of providing a counter-irritant.

‘Oh good!’

‘There’s a colour-chart on its way to you. Mr Carver’s got it at the moment’

‘Splendid!’

‘Shall I get a cup of tea, sir?’ she enquired tenderly, like a nurse in casualty department.

‘Yes please. I need one. I think I’m getting a headache,’ said Slider.

‘The light’s shining right in your credulity,’ Atherton suggested.

Atherton entered the CID room and sat down on the cold radiator, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles in a way that was somehow essentially English. Norma glanced across with interest. He had elegant ankles. She secretly suspected him of wearing silk socks.

‘Well, it looks cut and dried, doesn’t it?’ he enquired rhetorically of the air. Beevers at the far desk grunted without looking up, like a sleeping dog hearing its name spoken. ‘I don’t think this one’s going to be a sticker.’

‘What, our homicide?’ Norma encouraged him kindly. ‘We don’t even know it’s a murder yet.’

‘I suppose the victim may have undressed and slipped himself through the chip-cutter for thrills,’ Atherton acknowledged. ‘Anyway, there’s no sign of forcible entry, and Slaughter’s at suicidal pains to tell us that no-one but him has been in the back room and no-one else has a key.’

‘I suppose the cutting-up was done there?’

‘There were traces of blood on the table, the sink, the drainer, the floor and the floor drain. Also between the blade and the handle of two of the knives.’

‘We don’t know for certain yet it’s human blood,’ McLaren offered indistinctly through the Mars Bar he was sucking. ‘We had a case once in Lambeth—’

McLaren had always had a case once that topped anyone else’s. Norma interrupted him witheringly. ‘I wish you’d make up your mind whether you want to eat that thing or mate with it,’ she said. You have the most disgusting eating habits of anyone I’ve ever worked with, and that’s saying something.’

McLaren opened his mouth to retaliate and Atherton hastily averted his gaze. He felt his speech was losing its audience. ‘Well we know it isn’t fish blood,’ he said loudly, ‘and there’s so much of it that the inference is plain.’

‘Inference?’ McLaren hooted derisively. ‘What’s that, some kind of in-house conference?’

A blob of half-melted chocolate slipped from his lips as he spoke and fell onto his powder blue sweater. McLaren was very proud of his sweaters. Atherton smiled tenderly and continued.

‘Especially as there were traces of blood and tissue in the chip-cutter. And fragments of finger-nail.’

‘I suppose that’s how the finger got into the chips,’ Norma said. ‘He shoved a hand through and mislaid one of the digits. What did he do it for, though, I wonder?’

‘Probably a joke,’ Beevers said.

‘If so, it was a bit near the knuckle,’ Norma got in first.

‘Perhaps he thought it might speed things up,’ Atherton said, ignoring her loftily. ‘He must have had a lot to do in a short time.’

‘Unless he hoped it would obliterate the fingerprints? He seems to have wanted to hide the identity of the victim. Did the scalp turn up, by the way?’

‘It wasn’t in the sacks. Nor the hands. Nor any of the victim’s clothing. God knows where they’ll turn up. But what bugs me is that he goes to all that trouble,’ Atherton complained, ‘and then makes no attempt to give himself an alibi.’

‘Perhaps he wants to be punished,’ Norma said. ‘Remorse. You said he was pretty upset when you found the foot’

‘Yes, but he might have the decency to wriggle a bit, though. The man is not a sport. I mean, where’s the challenge for us if he doesn’t make a chase of it?’

Mackay came in in time to hear the last bit. ‘Oh, has he put his hand up, then, Slaughter?’

‘As good as,’ Atherton said. ‘First he insists he went straight home alone and went to bed’