Ash and Bone

'To tell the truth, sir, we've hardly noticed he's here.'

'Stepping quietly at first, I expect. Tactful.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Because if there is anything, I expect you to bring it in here. Nip it in the bud before it takes hold.'

Gardeners' bloody Question Time, Karen thought. 'Yes, sir,' she said. 'Though I'm sure there'll be no need.'

She could just see herself running into the AC's office, like some snot-nosed kid, the kind that was always telling tales. Please, sir, Billy Bang's stolen my pencil case. Please, sir, Frank Elder's stolen my murder investigation. Don't even think about it. Anything that wanted sorting out, she'd sort it out herself.

***

Mike Ramsden was at his desk, chair hiked back on to its rear legs, using the end of an unravelled paper clip to clean his nails.

'Any sign of him?' Karen asked.

'Who's that?' Ramsden said.

'Mike, don't play silly buggers. I'm not in the mood.'

When are you ever? Ramsden thought. 'Okay, okay,' he said. 'He rang in, left a message. Wants us to get together this afternoon.'

'What time this afternoon?'

Ramsden shrugged his shoulders. 'Didn't say.'

Karen swore and looked at the ceiling. What did Elder think? She was going to sit around cooling her heels till he condescended to grace them with his company?

'Where the hell are Furness and Denison?' she asked.

'Chasing down one of that last set of possibles the computer spewed out. Ealing somewhere. Some poor sod living in a bloody hostel. Waste of time, if you ask me.'

'One of the last. How many does that leave?'

Ramsden leaned across far enough to snag a sheet of paper. 'Two to go. Cricklewood and Dalston.'

'Okay.' She tossed him the keys to her car. 'You can drive. We'll do Cricklewood first.'

***

Change at Camden and go back on the Edgware branch to Belsize Park and walk. The hospital was up the hill and then down again at the end of a roughly cobbled lane. Elder remembered these things without being able to recall precisely when he'd been there before or why. Not his part of London, after all.

The pub on the corner was advertising its New Year's Eve party. Tickets in advance, only a few remaining.

Inside the hospital the corridors were broad, the ceilings low, posters warning of the dangers of smoking and obesity hung on the walls, along with artwork, bright and gestural, from a local primary school.

The pathologist was suitably cadaverous, with slender, reedy fingers and bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose; not for the first time, Elder wondered whether we chose our professions or whether, genetically marked, they chose us.

'It's Maddy Birch you're interested in?' He spoke a precise, educated Scots that Elder associated, perhaps wrongly, with Edinburgh.

'It is.'

'You know the body's been released for burial?'

Elder nodded. 'Like I said on the phone, I'm reviewing the investigation. I thought if you could spare me some minutes of your time…'

'Fire away.'

'You didn't find a trace of the attacker anywhere. No stray hairs, no skin, saliva, blood, nothing. That's right?'

'Absolutely.'

'How usual is that?'

'What's usual?'

'In your experience, then.'

'In my experience, it's surprising. Unexpected.'

'And does it suggest anything? About the attacker, I mean?'

'Aside from the fact that he was scrupulous, meticulously careful?'

'Aside from that.'

One of the overhead lights was buzzing slightly; barely diluted, the smell of chemicals permeated the room.

'Anything I say would be purely speculation. If anything, this sort of conjecture is far more your field than mine.'

'Feel free to speculate away.'

'Very well. It might suggest someone who, by instinct or by training, is highly methodical. Who, even though capable of great anger, is, nonetheless, able to exert an unusual degree of self-control.'

'You're thinking of the rape, the nature of the wounds?'

'Indeed.'

'The rape itself, it took place while the victim was still alive?'

'I've no reason to believe otherwise. All the signs of non-consensual intercourse were present – bruising, tearing. No semen, of course. Presumably a condom.'

'And the weapon that killed her?'

'Let's just take a look.' He reached for a set of photographs from a drawer. 'Some of the wounds, here on the arm, for instance, are slash wounds. Quite long, you see, but not so deep. Look at the tail there, indicating the angle of the blow, from above.'

'Tall, then? Whoever this was? Taller than her.'

'It's possible. But far from certain. She could have been falling, have been on her knees, he could have been standing above her. A host of permutations, I'm afraid.'

'And these?' Elder asked, pointing to the torso.

'Stab wounds. Quite different, almost certainly fatal. Both of them deep. And see here, where the opening of the wound is wider than the blade, the knife has been levered forward and back before being withdrawn.'

'What about the knife itself?'

'The blade was single-edged, you can tell from the square termination on the underside of the wound. To achieve this degree of penetration, almost certainly sharp at the tip. I should say a minimum of twenty centimetres in length, a good couple of centimetres across at the widest point.'

'A butcher's knife?'

'That sort of thing.'

Elder looked at the photographs. Extreme anger and control. The ability to switch between the two. Facility, maybe that was a better word. He talked with the pathologist for perhaps ten minutes more, without anything new surfacing.

'Good luck, Mr Elder.' When he bade him goodbye, the pathologist's hand was smooth and cold like porcelain.

On his way back down the hill, Elder stopped outside one of several charity shops and browsed through two boxes of books. Tom Clancy. Jeffrey Archer. Several women called Maeve. No matter, he still had another hundred or so pages of his Patrick O'Brian to go.

19

There was a photograph of Maddy Birch on the wall, staring back at the camera, unsmiling; recent, Elder assumed, lines on her face she'd not have liked, the odd grey hair.

Neither Karen Shields nor Mike Ramsden was on the premises; the message Karen had left was vague, they might be back, they might not.

A detailed map showed where Maddy's body had lain, where her clothing, her possessions had been found. Elder remembered standing there that morning, the relative quiet in the midst of so much inner-city activity and noise; imagined it again as it would have been that night, that evening. Maddy waiting, shifting her sports bag from one shoulder to the other, glancing again at her watch, the hands luminous in the half-dark.

Elder looked at the photographs once more, Polaroids taken at the scene. Maddy's arms were bare. No watch.

DS Sheridan was ensconced behind several hundred megabytes of PC.

'Sherry,' Elder said, 'disturb you for a minute?'

Sheridan pressed 'save', removed his glasses and blinked. 'Go ahead.'

'Her watch. Maddy's watch. Was she wearing one that evening? Do we know?'

Sheridan shook his head. 'Nothing listed as far as I can remember. I can check, but no, I'm pretty certain.'

'How many officers do you know,' Elder said, 'who don't wear a watch?'

'Not to say she wore one off duty.'

'In which case she'd have left it at home. The stuff that was in her flat, where's it all now?'

'As far as I know, everything was packed up and sent to her mother.'

'But there'll be an inventory?'

Sheridan nodded towards the computer. 'On here somewhere.'

'Check it out for me, would you? And maybe you could pass a message to double-check with the mother?'