THIRTY-FOUR
Quinn noticed the gleam of a familiar excitement in Macadam’s eye as soon as he stepped back into the department.
‘There’s been a development, sir. They’ve found her. A girl with one eye missing. We’re to go to an address in Soho. Shall I fetch the Ford?’
‘How … how is she?’
‘She’s dead, sir. It’s a body they’ve found.’
Of course, he had known right from the start that that was what Macadam would say. He knew it as soon as he saw that gleam in his eye.
PART THREE
Death
THIRTY-FIVE
Quinn was aware of a ticklish apprehension, a sense of inevitability and dread. He had the feeling that they were moving under a cloud of spreading blackness, towards something very black indeed. And yet the day was bright enough. The blackness was of entirely psychological origin.
His encounter with the second Dr Casaubon had unnerved him. And the fact that the girl had now apparently turned up dead depressed him. It was another death that could be lain at his door. He had permitted the man who had called himself Dr Casaubon to take her away. Impressed by the man’s natural air of confidence and authority, and the superficial evidence he gave of medical knowledge, he had failed to ask for any credentials. But had instead surrendered a vulnerable, wounded girl to a complete stranger.
And now it seemed possible, if not likely, that this man was her attacker come to finish off what he started. If he had been wearing a mask at the time of the attack – a devil’s mask perhaps, in keeping with the woman’s insistence that she had been attacked by the devil – she would not have recognized him. Even more chillingly, perhaps he was a second predatory individual. One more violent than the original attacker, one drawn to the acts of horror that others had initiated, but prepared to take them to their ultimate conclusion. Prepared, in other words, to kill, whereas the first attacker had only maimed.
Macadam drove them north to Dean Street. A couple of uniforms on the street signalled the door they were looking for. Inside, Quinn’s psychological darkness was almost equalled by the gloom of the narrow stairway. Male voices, and the clumping of boots on boards, drew them up to the first-floor landing.
A door was open on to a small rented room. It was even darker in there than on the landing, as the curtains were still drawn from the night before. Hard to see what was what, especially as a wall of burly backs filled the threshold, screening the scene of crime from Quinn’s view.
Macadam took umbrage at this cluster of detectives from the local Great Marlborough Street nick. ‘What’s all this? Come on, out of the way, out of the way! Don’t you lot know anything about forensics? You can’t go clodhopping all over the place like this.’
The wall of backs parted. Several bewildered, bewhiskered faces turned at once to confront their admonisher. Initial aggression turned to chastened deference when they saw Quinn.
Macadam confirmed their suspicions. ‘That’s right. Special Crimes. It’s our case now. You men better make way.’
There was a moment while the locals filed out. In fact, there had only been three men in there, but the room was small, and the men were big.
The air was dead and stifling, filled with the odours of the night before. Alcohol and cigarette smoke were the strongest, but there were also more obscure and somehow more potent smells. Quinn was able to identify blood, the metallic tang of a body leeching out its life fluids. In the tenebrous gloom, it seemed as though her face had been painted black. But the darkness was especially thick around the left eye, or rather where the left eye had been. He realized it was blood that caked her face, not make-up. There was blood on her throat too, and a glistening disruption of flesh on one side.
Of course, he knew straight away. ‘This is not her. It’s not the girl who was attacked in Cecil Court.’
‘Are you sure, sir?’
‘You saw her, did you not, Macadam?’
‘That I did, sir. But it was dark.’
‘For one thing, it was the other eye. But this girl – this is someone else. This girl is an actress, of sorts. She was in the film, last night. And she was at the premiere. And I believe at the party afterwards.’ Quinn turned back towards the three policemen who were waiting out on the landing. ‘Do you have a name for her?’
One of the men stepped forward with a barely perceptible dip of the head, a gesture in the direction of a bow. His face was sunken-cheeked, its grey pallor tinged by bristles like iron filings. At the sides, the bristles burgeoned into mutton-chop whiskers. ‘The room was rented by a couple by the name of Novak. A neighbour has identified her as the wife. Dolores Novak.’
‘And her husband? Do you know where he is?’
‘Done a bunk, we reckon.’
Quinn nodded. This was consistent with the impression he had formed of the fellow from watching him the night before. ‘Have you circulated a description to the ports? The chances are he will try to get abroad.’
‘We thought of that, guv. He’s a foreigner, see.’
‘And has the medical examiner seen her yet?’
‘He has, guv.’
‘Did he have anything of interest to say?’
‘Cause of death as you’d expect, guv. Loss of blood caused by her wounds.’
‘Wounds?’
‘She had her throat cut as well as her eye taken out. He seemed to think it was a botched job. The entry point of the blade ought to have missed her carotid artery, according to the doctor. But somehow it found it.’
‘So there was a lot of blood?’ Quinn’s question might have seemed redundant, fuelled by simple ghoulishness.
‘You could say that, guv. It was that, coupled with the excessive shock to the heart what did for her. Whoever did this, left her to die.’
‘And her husband, if he was here, did nothing to help her either, it seems. Even if he is not the man who took her eye out.’
‘Neighbours attest to some rum comings and goings in the night, guv. Seems there may have been some other individuals here. No one saw anyone, of course. A question of raised voices.’
‘An altercation?’
‘There may have been. A level of intoxication was attested to. Some kind of party. If you take my meaning.’
Quinn at last identified one of the other lingering smells. ‘Did the medical examiner offer any opinion about whether there had been recent sexual activity?’
‘He did. And there had. Someone had shot their bolt inside her. It may or may not have been her husband. Them other individuals were thought to be men.’
Quinn gave voice to his thoughts: ‘Was she an actress or a prostitute?’ He scanned the room, as if he would find the answer nailed to the wall. ‘Or a little of both, perhaps?’ He remembered the interest the couple had seemed to be taking in Lord Dunwich. ‘Macadam, you stay here and look the crime scene over. You might also see if you can get anything else out of the neighbours.’
‘What am I looking for in particular, sir?’
‘Any evidence of her visitors would be helpful. If someone left in a hurry, there is a chance they might have left something behind.’
Macadam’s ruthless eye was already taking in the room. From his bearing, it was clear that he would consider it a matter of pride to come up with something.
Before he left, Quinn allowed himself one last glance at that centre of darkness in her face. In the dim obscurity of the curtained room it was hard to know what he could see and what he was imagining. The impossible depths of blackness that he had seen in the other cavity came back to him. In truth, they had never been far away. Last night, he had told himself that he never wanted to see that blackness again. Now he realized that was another of his self-deceptions. There was nothing he wanted more than to stare into it. It was with some effort of will that he tore himself away.