“That’s him, poor lamb.”
“Jack Soames? You’re certain?”
“Positive.”
I nodded to the mortuary assistant, who covered the dead face again.
Outside, I thanked Zara and asked her where she wanted me to drive her.
She asked, “Will I have to move out of Jack’s place?”
“Who paid the rent?”
“He did.”
“Then I reckon you will.”
“I can go to me Mum’s place. What killed him?”
“We’ll find out this afternoon, when they do the PM.”
In her grief, she got a bit sentimental. “I used to call him Jack the Robber. Like… ” Her voice trailed off.
I nodded. “So you knew he was an ex-con?”
“That was only through the toffee-nosed bitch he married.” Zara twisted her mouth into the shape of a cherry-stone. “Felicity. She claimed she didn’t know she was married to a bank robber. Where did she think the folding stuff was coming from? She was supposed to give him an alibi and she ratted on him. He done four years through her.”
“And when he came out he met you.”
“Worse luck.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I tried to console her. “It’s not your fault he went back to crime, is it?”
She didn’t answer, so I decided not to go up that avenue.
She said, “What did he want to do a piddling post office for?”
I shrugged.
“Where did you say it was?”
“Five Lanes.”
“Never heard of it. He told me he was going up the Benefits Office.”
“It’s a village three miles out. That’s where he was at nine-fifteen yesterday.”
“Get away,” said Zara, pulling a face. “He was still in bed with me at nine-fifteen.”
“That can’t be true, Zara.”
She was outraged. “You accusing me of lying?”
“Maybe you were asleep. You just thought he was beside you.”
“Asleep? We was at it like knives. He was something else after a good night’s sleep, was Jack.” The gleam in her big blue eyes carried total conviction. “It must have been all of ten o’clock before he left the house.”
“Ten? But he was dead by then.”
“No way.”
“How do you know?”
“Me watch.”
“It must be wrong.”
She looked down at her wrist. “How come it’s showing the same time as the clock in your car?”
My boss was unimpressed. “Why is she lying?”
“I’m not sure she is,” I told him.
“How can you believe her, dickhead, when you saw the body yourself at just after nine-twenty-five?”
“She’s got nothing to gain from telling lies.”
“She’s muddled about the time. She was in no state to check if they were humping each other.”
“She’s very clear about it, guv.”
“Get this in your brain, will you? Jack Soames was dead by nine-twenty.”
“Would you like to talk to her yourself?”
“No, I bloody wouldn’t. You say she identified the body?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.”
I had to agree. Something was wrong with Zara’s memory.
Horgan made the first constructive suggestion I’d heard from him. “Find the wife. She’s the next of kin. She’ll need to identify him.”
I didn’t fancy visiting that mortuary again, but he was right. I traced Felicity Soames routinely through the register of electors, a slight, tired-looking woman in her fifties, who lived alone in a semi on the outskirts of Salisbury and worked as a civil servant. She was not much like the vindictive creature Zara had portrayed.
“I don’t want any more to do with him,” she said at first. “We separated.”
“But you’re not divorced?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you’re still the next of kin.”
For the second time that morning, I stood well back while the mortuary assistant went through the formalities.
Felicity confirmed that the body was her husband’s.
Zara’s steamy sex with Jack that Monday morning was beginning to look like a fantasy, but I couldn’t forget the sparkle in her eyes as she spoke of it.
“Right, son,” said Johnny Horgan when I told him I had lingering doubts. “There’s one final check you can make. The post-mortem is at two. I’m not going to make it myself. Frankly, it’s not high priority any more, one old robber who dropped dead.”
My knees went weak. “You want me to…?”
He grinned. “There’s a first time for everything. Have an early lunch. I wouldn’t eat too much, though.”
“I’m sure the body is Jack Soames,” I said. “I don’t really need to be there.”
“You do, lad. You’re standing in for me. Oh, and make sure they take a set of fingerprints.”
My hand shook as I held my mug of tea in the mortuary office, and that was before.
“So you’re the police presence?” Dr Leggatt, the pathologist, said with a dubious look at me.
I nodded. This was a low-key autopsy. The man had died in furtherance of a crime, but there was nothing suspicious about the death, so instead of senior detectives, SOCOs, forensic scientists and photographers, there was just me to represent law and order.
Cosy.
“I’m supposed to go back with a set of fingerprints.”
“No problem,” said Dr Leggatt. “We’ll start with that. You can help Norman if you like.”
Norman was his assistant.
“I’d rather keep my distance.”
“Fair enough. Shall we go in, then?”
I fixed my gaze on the wall opposite while the fingerprints were taken. Norman brought them over to me and said I could stand closer if I wished.
I nodded and stayed where I was. They were still examining the body for external signs when I started to feel wobbly. I found a chair.
“Can you see from there?” the pathologist called across.
“As much as I want to.”
“Stand on the chair if you wish.”
“Coronary,” said Dr Leggatt when he finally removed his latex gloves.
“Natural causes, then?”
He smiled at the phrase. “Any middle-aged bloke who holds up post offices lays himself open to a fatal adrenaline response and sudden death. I’d call it an occupational hazard.”
Some people call me cussed, others pig-headed. I don’t particularly mind. These are qualities you need in police work. I refused to draw a line under the case.
Everything checked except Zara’s statement. The fingerprints taken at the autopsy matched the prints we had from Soames’s file at the National Identification Service. His mugshot was exactly like the man his wife and girlfriend had identified and the pathologist had dissected.
I tried discussing it with my boss, but Johnny was relentless. “Constable, you’re making a horse’s arse of yourself. Soames is dead. You attended the autopsy. What other proof do you want?”
“If he had a twin, or a double-”
“We’d have heard. Drop it, lad. Zara may be a charmer, but she’s an unreliable witness.”
“I know it sounds impossible-”
“So leave it out.”
I was forced to press on without official back-up. I won’t bore you with all the theories I concocted and dismissed. In the end it came down to whether Zara could be believed. And after hours of wrestling with the problem I thought of a way of checking her statement. She’d told me Soames had said he was going to the Benefits Office after he left her. If they had a record of his visit -after he’d died – Zara would be vindicated.
I called the Benefits people and got a helpful woman who offered to check their records of Monday’s interviews.
She called back within the hour. Zilch.
I was down, down there with the Titanic.