Читать книгу The Unquiet Dead - Gay Longworth - Страница 9

His skin was yellow and pulled taut over the bones. His eyelids sunk over the empty sockets. His lips were stretched back over his blackened teeth. His dark hair was slicked back and held in a ponytail. It was a terrifying death mask. His clothes had stiffened as hard as armour; each crease in the jacket, each fold in the shirt as unyielding as bronze. He was not a man any more, he was a mummy. The sleeves of his jacket were rolled up to the elbow, revealing more yellowing flesh that bore the signs of a vicious attack. Worse still, the tip of each preserved finger was missing. His thumbs were nothing but stumps.

‘What is it?’ asked DCI Moore. ‘And how the hell did it get here?’

‘It’s the corpse of a Caucasian male, approximately forty years of age.’

‘Is it real?’

‘Yes.’ Sally pulled on a pair of synthetic gloves and began to feel around the body.

‘Are you sure? It looks plastic.’

‘The corpse is showing visible signs of preservation. The body has been drying out, not decomposing. The skin takes on a leathery consistency, like biltong.’

‘How long has it been here?’ asked DCI Moore.

‘Check the date,’ interrupted Jessie, peering over Sally Grimes’ shoulder. ‘On the watch.’

Sally leant over so that she could get a better look. ‘That’s strange.’

‘What is?’ asked DCI Moore.

‘It’s today’s date.’ Sally put her ear to the timepiece. ‘It’s stopped.’

Mark Ward was pacing the perimeter of the room like a caged beast. One of the lights flickered on and off, making his actions look jerky and disconnected. He stopped and barked at Sally: ‘What does that mean, if he didn’t die today?’

‘I don’t know, but he definitely didn’t die today.’

‘What the hell can you tell me?’ DCI Moore’s red lips were outlined by a faint trace of blue. She’d been standing in the cold room for some time.

‘I’d say he’s been here since the eighties,’ said Jessie, jumping to Sally’s rescue.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mark. ‘A watch battery doesn’t last that long.’

‘Look at the clothes. My elder brothers used to dress like that – winklepickers, baggy trousers. Look how the jacket sleeves are folded and pushed up the arm. It’s the New Romantics: Depeche Mode, Nick Kershaw, Madness – remember?’

He clearly didn’t.

Sally bent down to get a better look. She carefully slipped her fingers into the back pocket of the jeans. She pulled. Nothing happened. After a few more attempts she took a pair of scissors and began to cut off the pocket. The square of stiff material came away in her hands. Sally turned it over. Stuck to the material was a canvas wallet of indeterminate colour. It was the type that folded over itself and fastened along a Velcro strip. She pulled the Velcro apart. The inside was orange. Bright orange with black edging.

‘I remember those,’ said Jessie. ‘They were very trendy. They came in all the fluorescent colours.’

‘So this man took his eighties retro look very seriously,’ concluded DCI Moore.

‘Not retro,’ said Sally. ‘This is genuine. Look at these –’ she held up some flimsy rectangles of paper – ‘one-pound notes.’ In the side zip pocket there was a collection of change. Sally ran her fingers over the coins. ‘I’d forgotten how big they were.’ The ten-pence pieces looked like giant money, filling her dwarf palm; the five-pence pieces were twice the size of the new ones, and there was something that Jessie had almost forgotten existed: a halfpenny.

‘Anything useful like ID in there?’ asked the DCI.

‘No.’

‘Are you telling me this man has been down there since the eighties?’

‘Not necessarily, but it looks as though he’s been dead since the eighties. He should have decomposed by now. Where did you find him?’

Moore pointed to the cleared site of the fourth open pit. ‘It’s an old ash pit – lead-lined and sealed.’

Sally touched the wall. ‘It’s very cold, but it would have to be dry, too.’

‘It was when we prised it open, but all four pits used to be connected to the sewers.’

‘And they’re not any more?’

‘We won’t know until the contractors have been down here. Something still is, you can smell it.’

‘What I can tell you is that he’s been in this foetal position for a long time. Either here, or a large domestic refrigerator. Because of his immaculate condition, the day he died, and therefore the way he died, is set in stone. I’ll get him to the lab and –’

‘No,’ said DCI Moore.

‘What? Why did you call me down here?’

‘As a favour.’

‘I don’t mind doing favours, Carolyn –’

‘DCI Moore.’

‘I don’t mind doing favours, DCI Moore, but I like to know when I’m granting them.’

‘I have to think about our budget,’ Moore replied tartly.

Jessie stepped forward. ‘But, boss, this is a suspicious death. Look at his hands – someone cut his fingers off. No fingers, no ID.’

‘That may be, DI Driver, but according to you he could have died twenty years ago. Hardly the sort of case we want to blow a lot of money on.’

‘Unlike Anna Maria Klein, you mean, who guarantees the police much more press?’

DCI Moore pulled herself up. ‘If you care so much about this, it’s yours. I’m putting you in charge. Identify him, find a match in Missing Persons and if any of his family are still alive you can let them know. But you don’t get Sally. Now that she’s a fully qualified Home Office pathologist she’s become far too expensive. Bad luck,’ she told Sally. ‘You’ve priced yourself right out of the market.’

Jessie turned to the scenes of crime officers. ‘Can we get a sample of –’

‘Hold your horses, Driver,’ said Mark, suddenly bounding forward. ‘This is my crime scene, my search party, my lads from SOCO. Off you go, boys – time for a break.’

‘Don’t go anywhere. I don’t mean to state the obvious, but Anna Maria isn’t here,’ said Jessie. ‘You heard the boss, this is my crime scene now.’

‘You don’t know that this is a crime scene,’ said Mark. ‘And we haven’t finished the search yet. You may not have noticed, but there are four old coal stores we haven’t investigated and below this level are the foundations of the workhouse that was originally built on this site. We haven’t even started this search.’

‘You think this guy mutilated his own hands and dropped himself in a hole and pulled the lid over his head? Come on, of course this is a crime scene. I can’t have you lot trampling all over it – you’ll contaminate it.’

‘That is quite enough melodrama, DI Driver.’ DCI Moore moved towards the exit. ‘Mark has a point. This place may still be unsafe. Let’s keep going with what is essential: finding Anna Maria Klein. When Mark is finished, you can continue with your investigation. But, please, don’t move the body until the hyenas have moved on. Sarah Klein and I are going to make a statement.’

‘I bet you are,’ whispered Jessie under her breath.

DCI Moore shot her a look, then left. Sally took out a card and quickly scribbled a name and number on it.

‘He’s a doctor, but he’s studying forensic pathology. He’s got great potential and passion, and he’ll relish a challenge like this. Send him the body. That way we’ll get it examined without the cost of a coroner, and if he finds anything we’ll go down the normal channels.’

DCI Moore reappeared as Jessie pocketed the card. ‘Sally, would you accompany me back up to ground level? There is something I’d like to discuss with you.’

‘It’s not balls this woman is after,’ whispered Jessie as Sally made to leave.

As soon as they were out of the door Mark moved in. He started by picking up one corner of the tarpaulin and dragging it across the floor. The stiff shifted.

‘Wait,’ shouted Jessie. ‘Let’s at least take a photo of it.’ She reached out to the police photographer hovering by the rusty boiler tanks.

‘No,’ said Mark. ‘I need you upstairs, where they found that blanket. Quick, before we lose this light.’

‘She isn’t here and you know it.’

He raised his heavy lids to meet her eyes then slowly rubbed his chest.

‘Fine,’ she retorted. Placing herself between the body and the hole in the ground, she pulled her backpack off her shoulder. ‘I have my own camera. So go to hell.’

The flickering light stopped flickering, popped and then went out, taking all the other lights out with it. A soupy darkness wrapped itself around them.

‘Shit,’ said Mark. Jessie heard a thud. The corpse of an unknown man being unceremoniously dropped.

‘No one move,’ shouted Jessie. ‘Torches, anyone?’

‘Someone go and find out what’s going on!’ shouted Mark.

‘No, don’t move. You don’t know where you’re walking. Burrows, you’re nearest the door, you go.’

Jessie heard a rustle.

‘No one else move, the pits are open!’

‘We’re not,’ came the chorus.

‘Someone is moving!’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Mark. ‘Fucking pussies, the lot of you.’ Jessie heard the strike of a flint. Mark was holding up a lighter. Two more strikes. Two more lighters. Then another, then another.

Mark started waving his lighter in the air. ‘It’s like a fucking Barry Manilow concert.’ There were a few laughs.

‘What can we conclude from this?’ asked Mark.

‘That the place is spooked?’ said a voice from the darkness that Jessie recognised as Fry.

‘No, lad. That coppers smoke too much.’ More laughter. ‘Now, let’s get the fuck out of here and have a break and a smoke, like I suggested.’

All the lighters moved at once.

‘Not all of you,’ exclaimed Jessie. But the lighters kept on moving until there were none left. Jessie felt warm air on the back of her neck. Finally she found her torch. She swung round with it, illuminating Mark’s face. He stood a few feet away.

‘Very funny,’ she said, with no trace of humour in her voice.

‘What? Get that light out of my face.’

‘Stop pissing about.’ She could feel little hairs bristle as she rubbed the nape of her neck. She shone the beam of light towards the floor. Open, empty eye sockets gaped back at her. Startled, she nearly let go of the torch. ‘Now look what you’ve done, Mark!’

‘What? I didn’t do anything.’

‘You dropped him.’

She passed the light over the body again.

‘I didn’t.’

Jessie frowned. The lids lay closed as before. Hiding the holes that lay beneath. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘it must have been a trick of the light.’

‘Trick of your mind, maybe,’ said Mark. ‘Don’t tell me this place is getting to you. Not the fearless, indomitable Jessie Driver.’ He took two steps towards her, snatched the torch from her hand and switched it off.

‘Mark, don’t!’

She could hear him moving about in the darkness.

‘This is so childish. You could fall.’

He didn’t reply. She imagined the infantile grin on his pasty face.

‘Turn the light back on before you do yourself an injury,’ said Jessie, following the sound of him feeling his way through the dark. Still he didn’t reply. He was mistaken if he thought she’d fall to her knees and sob like a baby. That was his speciality.

‘I thought you didn’t like the dark?’

Silence.

‘Remember? In the dark, alone, scared.’ A cold blast of air came from nowhere, wrapped itself around her legs and made her shiver. She could still hear Mark. His shuffling was getting closer. She braced herself for whatever was coming. Blinding light in her eyes. More warm air on her neck. A soft moan. Rattling chains. What? What was it going to be?

‘I can hear your elf-like footsteps, arsehole.’

There was a bang. The sound of something heavy being dropped.

‘Stop messing around and put the fucking light back on!’ she shouted.

A pale blue bulb popped and glowed, then another. They got brighter as the power seeped through the circuit, gradually illuminating the long-forgotten boiler room. Jessie looked around. She was all alone. Curled around her feet lay the lifeless body.

Jessie sat high up on one of the spectators’ benches. She’d watched the last of the police officers leave and was just waiting for Moore to phone her with the all-clear to move the body. She looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. It was Sarah Klein.

‘I didn’t know anyone was still here,’ said Jessie.

Sarah Klein sat down on the thin wooden seat next to her. ‘I can’t go out there.’ She looked at Jessie with red-rimmed eyes. ‘Just look at me.’

‘Ms Klein, did P. J. Dean really recommend me to you?’

She looked sideways at Jessie. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I thought – hell, what does it matter what I thought?’

‘What statement did you make?’

‘I told you, I couldn’t go out there. Your boss did it.’

They fell into an awkward silence. Jessie stared down at the empty pool and imagined what it must have looked like in its heyday. Line upon line of Italian marble tiles. Chlorine and laughter rising off the warm water. Sunshine streaming through the now filthy domed glass.

‘It’s a work of art,’ said a voice above them. Jessie and Sarah Klein jumped. ‘Do you know, that pool never leaked a fluid ounce of water since the day it was built? Not one. That’s real craftsmanship. Something to be proud of. Seeing it reduced to this … Well, it isn’t right, is it?’ He moved down the terraces. ‘Give me a shout when you want to go, and I’ll lock up.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jessie.

‘Who is that?’ whispered Sarah Klein.

‘The caretaker,’ Jessie replied quietly.

‘She isn’t here, you know,’ said the moustached man, looking back at them.

‘No, I don’t think she is either,’ said Jessie. Anna Maria didn’t look so lacking in streetwise that she would climb into a drug hovel for some spliff. In all likelihood she’d never been here. She was probably unaware such a place existed. In an area where space cost £60 per square foot, a disused building of this magnitude was unimaginable.

‘How do you know?’ asked the missing girl’s mother.

‘I’d have heard her.’ Jessie and the actress exchanged mystified glances. The caretaker looked back at the heavy set of keys in his hand. ‘Let me know when you want to leave.’

He climbed down the benches and disappeared through the double doors that led to the foyer.

‘What a strange man,’ said Sarah Klein.

‘Eccentric but harmless, I think.’

‘All mad people are harmless until they slash you with a razor,’ the actress said dramatically. ‘Maybe he did it.’

‘Did what?’

‘Killed my daughter.’

‘I don’t think so. The truth is, I don’t think your daughter’s dead,’ said Jessie. ‘And I’m not sure you do, either.’

The actress didn’t say anything.

‘I don’t even think you believe she’s been abducted,’ said Jessie, pushing a little further.

Sarah stared straight ahead. Finally she spoke, very quietly. ‘I did at first.’

‘But not now?’

She shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. According to your colleague, she hasn’t spent any money. That isn’t good, is it?’

‘Not necessarily. She might be staying with someone – a boyfriend … ?’

‘I’ve rung everyone.’

‘Everyone you know.’

Jessie watched the actress swill the thought around in her head, then dismiss it. ‘There is too much coverage of her disappearance. Even if someone had lent her a large sum, surely they’d come forward?’

‘Has anything been stolen recently, any money missing?’

‘What? No! Are you suggesting my own daughter would …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘There was …’ She stopped herself. ‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘There was what?’

‘It’s nothing to do with Anna Maria.’

‘Try me. Another person’s perspective may shed some light.’

Sarah Klein brushed the hair back off her face. ‘It was months ago, I had to sack a cleaner because a few things went missing. She was new.’

‘What did she take?’

‘Nothing much. A few knick-knacks, clothes, little items of jewellery and some foreign currency. Every time she came, something disappeared.’ Out of her handbag she began to apply a fresh face to her ravaged one.

‘Did she admit to it?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! Of course she didn’t. But who else would it have been?’

Jessie let the question hang in the air. Then she changed tack. ‘Why were you crying before, on the steps?’

Sarah Klein’s face turned sour. ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’

‘Because I don’t have children?’

‘I don’t mean that!’ she said, snapping the compact closed. ‘The director was all over me until I said yes to doing the part. Now he’s shagging someone else. Guess who – the fucking understudy. Christ, you couldn’t buy publicity like this and still the vultures are circling, “You’re under too much stress to come in to rehearsal,” he says, let the little tart cover while you get through this. As if I don’t know what’s happening, the bastard!’

‘Sarah, do you know where your daughter is?’

‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘Of course not.’ She stood up. ‘I need to get out of this godawful place. How do I look?’

Like Aunt Sally. ‘Much better,’ said Jessie.

Jessie followed her down the spectators’ benches and over the tiled floor where bare feet once reigned. Together they crossed the foyer. She opened the main door a crack. ‘I’m afraid they’re still here. Let me find the caretaker – there must be another way out of here.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Sarah Klein, removing a headscarf from the pocket of her coat and a large pair of tinted glasses from her bag. It was dusk outside. ‘I’ve got to face them eventually.’

‘One more question: is it true that there were the arguments between yourself and Anna Maria?’

‘She’s always pushing me to the limit,’ Sarah Klein replied defensively. ‘Anything for a bit of attention. I’ve no idea where she gets it from.’

‘Ms Klein, do me a favour, tell DI Ward about the thefts, I think it might be useful.’

‘Anna Maria didn’t steal from me, Detective. She may be lying in a ditch somewhere and you’re worried about a little problem with my domestic staff!’

‘You didn’t report it, did you?’

‘I didn’t want her to get into trouble.’

‘The cleaner?’

‘Of course the cleaner. Now, do you mind? I have to go.’ She put her hand up in front of her face before the first flashbulb popped.