When he arrived in the suite in which his wife had been working, still in the sweater, shirt and slacks that he had worn for golf, the late Bartholemy Lebeau was still on the table. . at least, those parts of him were that had not been consigned to slides and jars for transfer to the police laboratory at Howdenhall, and examination by a toxicologist. He tried not to look at him.
Sarah was sitting on a workbench, waiting for him, as he swept into the room. ‘What have you got?’ he asked her, before the door had even closed behind him.
‘At first examination,’ she began, ‘I had some of the signs that I’m used to seeing in massive and instantaneous heart-attack victims, a little vein suffusion, mainly. It was only when I looked in the mouth that I saw something unusual, a violent irritation of the gums. After I opened him up and found no signs of cardiac malformation or malfunction, I went looking for something else, poisoning.’
‘Any specific poison?’
‘In a case like this, it’s usually cyanide, because it’s easy to administer and because it’s lethal in very small doses. The man who first isolated hydrogen cyanide in the eighteenth century died when he broke a jar of the stuff and inhaled it. It kills by inhibiting the ability of tissues to metabolise oxygen, and in sufficient quantity it will shut down the brain in seconds. Its most famous application was in the suicide capsules that were given to secret operatives in wartime, and used by some of the Nazi high command, like Goering and Himmler, to beat the executioner to the punch, but there are many examples of its criminal use, most notoriously, the Tylenol case in the US, twenty years ago.’
‘Can it happen accidentally?’
‘In theory it can, but this man did not have a large quantity of apricot or peach stones in his stomach, and he hadn’t eaten half a ton of chickpeas either. Forget accidental, Bob. Every case of cyanide poisoning I’ve heard of has involved the spiking of food. . apart, that is, from the people who were executed in gas chambers. . and apart from this one. I’ve sent the stomach contents for analysis, but there hardly were any. This man hadn’t eaten for several hours before he died.’
‘So how was it administered, if he didn’t swallow the stuff?’
‘Cyanide can be absorbed through the skin; the more tender the surface the quicker the absorption. That takes me back to the irritation of the subject’s gums. When he died, he was brushing his teeth. You’re looking for toothpaste, Bob. Take, say, three grams of hydrocyanic acid, about an ounce, and inject it into a tube; you have just laced it with sixty times the lethal dose. From the extent of the rash, and the rate of ingestion it implies, he’d have been dead before he’d even had time to wash his mouth out. Your friendly local undertaker did that for him but, fortunately, he left a trace between two of the back teeth. That’s one of the samples that’s going to Howdenhall.’
Sarah raised herself up and jumped down from her perch. ‘I may have been a little over-confident about that banker suicide the other day, Bob, but if this guy wasn’t murdered, I will quit and take up landscape gardening.’
Her husband threw back his head and let out a great sigh. ‘Just what I fucking needed,’ he exclaimed.
‘It’s not for you, is it? You delegate it to Division like everything else. I suppose that in this case it’s East Lothian, since the death occurred in Haddington.’
‘No way,’ said Bob, emphatically. ‘Greg Jay’s getting nowhere near this one. This man was due to play before the Pope in a few days’ time. That alone moves it on to a different level altogether, and makes it one I will definitely be keeping my hands on. But there’s another consideration too, one that makes my blood run cold.’
He took his phone from the pocket of his slacks, and scrolled through his phone book until he found the number he was looking for, under P. He called it and waited, until a gruff voice answered. ‘Dan? It’s the DCC here. How’s your Sunday been?’
‘Okay,’ said Pringle, cautiously, ‘but I’ve a hell of a feeling. .’
‘You’re right. It’s going to get worse. If there’s a saving grace, it’s going to make you feel like a real detective again.’ He smiled, wickedly. ‘Do you know that my wife’s a sort of old-fashioned fortune-teller? That’s right; she can look at your entrails and tell how bad your luck’s been. In this case she’s been looking inside a deceased Belgian, Monsieur Lebeau, who was signed off as a coronary case. Sarah says that’s wrong, though; she says he’s a cyanide case, and that it couldn’t have been accidental.’
‘Jesus. Where did it happen?’
‘Haddington, last night.’
‘East Lothian? Greg Jay, then.’
‘He’s not even in post yet, Dan. I want you to head this investigation personally. This isn’t your ordinary famous Belgian. This one’s a bandsman, and he was due to be playing for the Pope this week, at his personal invitation. That makes it a wee bit sensitive. Pick your own team, but run it hands on and keep me in touch all the way.’
‘Okay boss. I’ll use my own guy, Ray Wilding, for a start. I don’t suppose you’d lend me Jack McGurk, would you?’
‘You’re welcome. I was going to offer him anyway, as my eyes and ears.’
‘Good. Where do we begin?’
‘With the undertaker who moved the body from the house where he died. You need to talk to him and confirm that he washed residual toothpaste from the dead man’s mouth. We reckon that’s how the poison was administered. If he still has the wipes that he used, we’ll need to get hold of them, as evidence and on safety grounds. You come to Little France to meet up with me, then we’ll head for the house where the man died. I’ve got all the relevant notes here.’
He looked at the brief report of the attending constable, and read the address at which Lebeau had died. ‘While we’re doing that, get McGurk and Wilding out to the undertaker’s to interview him and take possession of anything that might be relevant. We’ll try to find the man’s toothbrush and toothpaste, although we’ll need to handle them with great care. The things are probably still lethal.’
‘I’ll bring evidence bags, then. I always keep some around.’
‘You do that, and. .’ His voice tailed off.
‘What are you thinking, Bob?’ asked Pringle.
‘I’m thinking what I’ve always been trained to think. . the worst. This man was killed by poison administered through toothpaste. What if the tube that he bought wasn’t the only one that was spiked? What if someone went into a chemist’s or a supermarket and planted a whole shelf of the bloody things? As well as your evidence bags, Dan, maybe you should bring a panic button. . just in case we need to press it.’
38
‘So what did you think of your first rugby international, Colin?’ Mario asked as they walked from the ground to his car, in the police park.
‘Impressive,’ the American admitted. ‘Some of those guys make our gridiron players look like pussies. It’s fast, it’s continuous. . we have time-outs in our game. . and it is certainly rough. Did you ever play the game?’
‘I played at school, and for a while after I left. I was a prop forward, but I was a bit light for the top class.’
‘You were? Man, you’re a brick shit-house.’
‘Maybe, but in those days my top weight was a hundred kilos. You try shoving against a hundred and twenty kilos for eighty minutes; it does your back in. I did think for a while about switching to the back row, but I was too slow for that.’
As they approached his car, a silver Alfa Romeo sports hatchback, he pressed a remote control to unlock it. They climbed inside and headed for the exit, McGuire flashing his warrant card at the young constable on traffic control to pull rank shamelessly on the civilian vehicles coming from their area.
Soon they were at the Western Corner traffic lights, where he turned left, heading westwards until he came to Clermiston Road. ‘It might seem like we’re going to Glasgow,’ he said, ‘but this’ll get us back quicker, I promise you.’