‘I will need to speak to Mr Gilbey again soon,’ Kathy said.‘I’ll call back at eleven.’
Beaufort said,‘Reeves, old chap, how about making us some coffee?’ and the Special Branch inspector followed Kathy down the stairs.
‘Talks to me like a bloody butler,’ he said when they reached the kitchen. He seemed more amused than annoyed.‘Fancy a cup?’
‘A quick one, thanks. He is a bit of a pain, isn’t he? Is anyone really trying to kill him?’
‘Hard to say, but we don’t want anything to happen to him right now.’ Kathy caught Reeves’s glance at her, as if to see whether she’d followed the significance of the remark, but she hadn’t and he went on,‘Did you ever see him in court?’
‘No.’
‘Worth reading his sentencing speeches. Venomous, they are-a pungent mix of sarcasm, self-righteous outrage and contempt. The barristers say they’re an art form and should be published.’
Kathy smiled, thinking that his vocabulary was different from that of most coppers she met, and wondered if he was a reader. She noticed what looked like paperbacks in a carrier bag, and supposed he’d have plenty of time for that in his present job.
‘I’ve no doubt that anyone on the receiving end of one of those must have spent a good part of their time inside dreaming of putting a bomb under his car, or something worse… You’re thinking this woman’s murder has something to do with the missing girl, are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Must have.’ Reeves poured boiling water into the mugs.‘Milk? Sugar?’
Kathy shook her head. He took a splash of milk.
‘Smoke if you want,’ he said.‘Reg does.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Me neither.’ Kathy had the feeling she was being assessed.
‘They were setting up crime scene tapes closing the whole lane when we arrived.’
‘She was found in the building site.’
‘Really?’ He thought about that, sipping from the mug. ‘Have you seen how much they’re selling those flats for?’
‘No.’
‘Four hundred k each, off the plan, four in each house. I wonder how much they offered the mad woman. Or Gilbey, come to that.’
‘Mmm. Incidentally, did you tell Beaufort we’re from Special Operations?’
‘Didn’t need to. He’s come across Brock before. And then, of course, he has a particular interest.’
‘What’s that?’
Reeves lowered his voice. ‘He’s doing a review of SO for the Met. You didn’t know? No, you and I are too lowly to be told-strictly senior management only at this stage. I only know because I saw documents he was reading in the car and he dropped a few hints. Could be radical. He murmured ominously about amputations.’
‘Well, if he knows of Brock’s reputation, he should be kind to us.’
‘With Beaufort the opposite’s more likely to be the case. That’s something else he’s famous for-puncturing other people’s reputations.’
Kathy thought about the man upstairs and felt a sudden sympathy for the people who’d faced him in his court.
There was a roar from above. ‘Reeves! Where’s that bloody coffee? I can smell it! We’re dying up here.’
‘Promises, promises,’ Reeves murmured, and got reluctantly to his feet. ‘Funny thing… the morning after that bloke fell from the tower block, Saturday, his lordship had a session here. It was my day off and my offsider drove him. Afterwards he told me that Beaufort told him to drive here by way of the Newman estate, just to have a look.’
Another cry from above. ‘Reeves! Put that damn woman down!’
The inspector winced and picked up three mugs. ‘See you later.’
16
Mr Sundeep Mehta could usually be relied upon for a joke and a few wisecracks. When Brock and Kathy arrived at the autopsy room the pathologist was in the middle of a story about a man and a frog that he was relating to his unsmiling pathology technician and the bored photographer. For the benefit of the newcomers he quickly recapped, taking no notice of the grim looks on their faces.
‘Man walking down street, frog stops him and asks him to buy it a drink, takes it to a bar, frog also starving, man buys it sandwich, frog says it’s exhausted and could he give it a bed for the night? Man agrees, takes it home. Frog asks for goodnight kiss. Good Samaritan hides disgust, kisses frog, frog turns into beautiful princess. “And that, Your Honour, is how I came to be found in bed with an underage girl.” Ha!’
Nobody laughed.
‘Oh, come on you lot!’ Dr Mehta protested.‘What’s the matter with everyone this morning? Is it your dismal weather getting you down?’
‘Where did you hear that one, Sundeep?’ Brock growled.‘The Dirty Raincoat Club?’
‘Ah, Brock, your other case, of course. How tactless of me. But still, if we can’t laugh in the face of life’s tragedies we have no business coming to a place like this. So, let’s get to work.’
Betty was laid out on the table just as she had been found, hands bound and face blindfolded. Mehta removed the strip of cloth from around her head and set it aside for examination. Kathy confirmed the identification.
They photographed the corpse, turned it over and photographed it again. Mehta cut the tape from around the wrists, clipped nail and hair samples, and took a number of swabs. Then the technician washed the body and Mehta began a detailed examination. A mood of dispassionate routine established itself as he tonelessly described the injuries. He began with the head, noting a small contusion behind the left ear.
‘Enough to knock her out?’ Brock asked.
‘Mmm, possibly.’ The pathologist stroked the area, parting the strands of hair. ‘We may see more when we look under the skin. It’s not a big bump.’
He moved on to the throat, which had a broad band of bruising and discolouration.
‘This is not a simple hanging,’ he said.‘There are several overlapping rope marks. Notice the edges of the marks. No inflammation, no vital reaction. It looks as if she was hanged after she was dead.’
He peered more closely. ‘Difficult to detect external signs of strangulation beneath these rope lesions. Signs of petechial haemorrhages here and here… Now, these marks…’He began to work his way over the body, peering closely at each of the small brown marks in turn. Then he asked for the plastic evidence pouch containing the electrical lead with the exposed wire, and placed it against several of the wounds. Finally, he straightened up and said,‘It’s not easy to interpret electrical burns, you know, and we don’t see them very often. Mostly domestic accidents, housewives poking about in the toaster with a fork, that sort of thing. There was one fascinating case I recall of attempted autoerotic stimulation by connecting a penile vibrator to a mains plug- what a silly man! But the direct application of an electrode to the body is more unusual than you might think. Certainly I’ve never seen anything like this before…’
‘Come on, Sundeep,’ Brock interrupted. ‘You have a theory.’
The man smiled. ‘A hypothesis, perhaps, yes. There is a characteristic mark for electrode burns…’ He pointed to a burn on Betty’s left breast.‘It comprises a central area of necrosis where contact occurred, surrounded by a ring of white, which in turn is circled by a halo of dilated blood vessels.’
Everyone moved in closer to see what he meant, and the photographer took a close-up picture.
‘I can’t see the halo,’ Brock said, peering through the half-lens glasses on the end of his nose.
‘Exactly. Now look at these other burns,’Mehta went on, pointing generally across the abdomen and legs. ‘They all have the central brown burn, but none have the pink halo. Although I’ve never seen this before, it suggests to me that, as with the rope marks to the neck, there was no vital reaction. She was already dead.’
Kathy felt relief. She noticed the technician’s eyes widen behind her clear plastic visor, showing more than professional interest for the first time.
‘Why electrocute a dead body?’ Brock said.