When Sarah Fort finally got the call, it wasn’t the one she’d been expecting.
A Sergeant Price told her that Patrick had been arrested.
‘For what?’ Sarah asked. ‘Not wearing his helmet?’
‘Resisting arrest, theft and murder,’ said the officer, apparently reading off a list.
‘Murder?’ said Sarah.
‘Yes,’ she answered, as if this was old news.
‘Murder of whom?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that at this stage.’
‘Oh,’ said Sarah, because she didn’t know what else to say. She thought of the picture of the dead girl, and of the countless birds and animals Patrick had dissected over the years, and wondered whether he really did have it in him to kill a person.
Probably.
Didn’t everyone have it in them, if circumstances were bad enough?
‘Has he admitted it?’ she asked.
‘We haven’t questioned him yet. Is it true that he’s handicapped?’
Sarah had long since stopped getting angry about handicapped. Everything was a matter of degree. Patrick was handicapped, in the most literal way, by his condition – just as she was handicapped by him.
She said, ‘He has Asperger’s Syndrome.’
‘Is that like Alzheimer’s?’
‘No, it’s like autism. He finds it difficult to interact with people.’
‘Oh.’ Sergeant Price sounded disappointed. ‘We thought he was just rude.’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah, ‘he is rude. But he can’t help it.’
‘Hm,’ said Sergeant Price. ‘That’s what my sister says about her kids. But they can’t all be bloody autistic, can they?’
‘Probably not,’ agreed Sarah.
The officer sighed heavily. ‘Well then, in that case, he needs to be interviewed in the company of an appropriate adult. Can you come down to Cardiff?’
Sarah thought about that for so long that the officer said, ‘Hello?’
‘Hello,’ said Sarah back. ‘Yes, of course.’
She hung up and stared across the kitchen for an hour or two.
Then she fed Ollie and went to work, feeling better than she had in a long, long time.
Emrys Williams told DCI White to expect Mrs Fort any time now. Then he hung about, reluctant to go home, hoping White would remember him when it came to putting a team together – and when he spoke to the press. He also wanted to tell the head-in-the-fridge story to the day crew in person.
That was worth it. Colleagues laughed and shook their heads and said ‘lucky bastard’; WPC Dyer made a little paper nameplate for his desk that read HEAD BOY, and, before the hour was up, some joker had put a doll’s head in the vending machine where the Curly-Wurlys ought to be. It all gave him a warm glow.
And then – just after nine a.m. – a well-spoken young man came in, identified himself as Dr David Spicer and said he had come to report the theft of a head from the university medical school.
And just like that, the Big One was over. Emrys Williams could almost hear his career farting around the room like a balloon, and dropping into a corner, all sad and shrivelled and a bit of an embarrassment.
Patrick Fort was not a murderer; not a crazed killer; nothing to do with Darren Owens and his empty jogger. The Big One was just a student prank that had gone beyond the bounds of the acceptable because the student in question had a tentative grasp on what was normal human behaviour and what was not.
Williams felt the disappointment like a physical thing – a sharp pang in his belly and a burning neck of shame.
This was what they’d all remember now, every time they opened the staff-room fridge.
Still, he was not the type of man to leave someone else to clean up his mess, so he told Wendy Price he’d sort this one out on his own time, and then ushered Dr Spicer over to his desk and took his statement.
The more Spicer talked, the more it all made sense to Detective Sergeant Emrys Williams. Patrick Fort had been expelled and had apparently taken the head out of some kind of revenge.
‘He can’t help it,’ said Dr Spicer.
‘So we’ve been told,’ sighed Williams.
‘He’s not a bad kid. As long as we get the head back, I doubt the university will want to press charges.’
‘That’s very generous.’
‘What will happen to him?’ said the young doctor.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Williams, because that was true. ‘Would you mind reading that, Dr Spicer, and then signing your name at the bottom?’
Williams watched Spicer read the statement carefully and then sign his name.
‘Thank you.’
‘Not at all,’ said Spicer, standing up. ‘Where’s the head?’
‘It’s with our forensics team.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I would very much like to get it back to the university as soon as possible.’
‘Of course,’ said Williams. ‘But until we decide whether to charge Patrick Fort with a crime, the head is evidence.’
Spicer nodded slowly and chewed the inside of his cheek. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘The trouble is that the body is supposed to be released to the family on Monday for cremation. Obviously that can’t happen if it’s incomplete.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Williams. ‘I can assure you we’ll get it back to you as soon as we can.’
‘By Monday?’
‘As soon as we can.’
Still Spicer didn’t let it go. He stood there, drumming his fingers on the corner of Williams’s desk. ‘What if I personally guarantee that we will not press charges against Patrick?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Williams. ‘We have made an arrest and I cannot pre-judge the outcome of our own independent inquiries.’
‘What inquiries?’ said Spicer. ‘Surely it’s quite clear what has happened? It seems like a waste of police time to do more.’
‘It seems that way, sir, I agree. But we have our procedures. Believe me, when we are able to release the head, the university will be the first to know. Now, I’m on my way home, let me walk out with you.’
Williams pulled on his jacket and let them both out through the double doors. Spicer thanked him and left, but DS Williams stood and stared through the glass after him for so long that Wendy Price said, ‘You all right, Em?’
‘Yes,’ said Williams. ‘Just thinking.’
He was just thinking about Dr Spicer’s reluctance to leave the head in police custody.
And about the jagged scars around the tip of his index finger.
They did look like bite marks.
50
IT HAD BEEN a long night, but Emrys Williams still didn’t go home. Instead he copied Dr Spicer’s address off the statement, then drove his ten-year-old Toyota down to the Bay, against a tide of red-shirted rugby fans walking into town for the international.
It was only ten a.m. This wouldn’t take long and it was on his way.
Sort of.
He swung the car around outside Dr Spicer’s flat, and started to drive slowly back along Dumballs Road. It was Saturday, and most of the industrial units on the broad, grubby street were closed by steel shutters.
Williams stopped twice, once to look at broken glass that turned out to be a Heineken bottle, and again towards the station end of the road for a pigeon that refused to take off as he approached. It strolled defiantly across the road while he sat like a lemon, instead of like a vastly superior being on vital police business. Rats with wings, his father called pigeons, but Emrys Williams had always rather liked them – especially these city pigeons with the iridescent throats and all the attitude. So he watched in vague amusement as it strutted between two parked cars and hopped on to the pavement. If he hadn’t, he would never have seen the short skid mark that had left rubber on the kerb.