“He begins his examination, making a note that his victim has undergone a rushed sex-change. Owen Mills buzzes the door, blagging his way in as the partner of the deceased, and argues with Finch, begging him not to report what he knows. Being a stickler for the truth, Finch turns him down, and Mills is incensed-we know he slaps his hand down hard on Finch’s notes, leaving the imprint on his palm-but he leaves.
“Rattled but ever the professional, Finch returns to work, and now he makes a secondary observation, based on instincts honed across decades of dealing with human organisms: that there’s a slim chance the girl on his table may not, in fact, be dead after all. The distraction with Mills has lost him valuable time, even though it only lasted a few minutes. Having to guess at what might work, he quickly prepares the naltrexone and injects it as part of a cocktail of stimulants, but there’s no response. To prevent spasms he adds another drug, a muscle relaxant, vecuronium, which was also found in her system. What he doesn’t know is that the drugs are indeed taking effect.
“Angered by Renfield’s failure to involve the hospital when she might have been saved, he calls the sergeant to berate him. Now things should be quiet, but you turn up to talk about being passed over for the position of unit pathologist.
“And surprisingly, Finch is receptive to your case. He likes you-he’s always liked you-so he asks for your help. He’s been thinking about Lilith Starr, and has realised that all it would take is one little omission from his notes to prevent a young man’s life from being ruined. He no longer wants to report her case as a male undergoing gender reassignment, something that, according to Mills, has already caused her own family to disown her. That’s why he gets you to tear up his notes-at least he won’t have to lie himself-it’s just a few lines on a single page, which you destroy for him. You didn’t argue with him at all-that little shouting match was staged for Meera’s sake when she arrived at the morgue.
“And that should have been that. But the drugs Finch injected have now had time to cause an interaction. They can take longer than two hours to work, even longer in a cold room, and this one was warm. But the resuscitation goes horribly wrong.
“Lilith Starr wakes up in a state of shock, in terrible pain. The last thing she remembers is falling asleep in a shop doorway. Now she suddenly sits up on a steel table to find herself stripped to the waist, breasts exposed, with a horrible old man standing over her. Instinctively she fights him off-Finch is probably just as startled as she is-her hand seizes on the nearest object, the fan blade, and she strikes him hard in the chest with it, then lashes out a second time as he backs away. Oswald collapses, but the appalling shock to Lilith’s system is just as great, and she falls back. This time, she really is dead. The discrepancy in her time of death is hard to spot because her body has already had time to cool. That’s why there were no fingerprints on the blade; she wasn’t producing any sweat. And nobody else left or entered the locked morgue. So, after years of investigating similar crimes with the PCU, Finch becomes a victim of his own perfect murder.
“Except that we would have found Lilith’s body on the table, not in the drawer, wouldn’t we, Giles? I know you came back to Bayham Street because you called me from there at eleven thirty-five A.M., and I arrived ten minutes later. Another omission.”
Kershaw rubbed his face with his long fingers. “I was taken aback when Oswald asked me to help him. He was a scientist who believed that ethical issues had little relevance to his work. But Bryant was always going on to him about discovering a moral dimension to crime. And now he had come face-to-face with a genuine moral dilemma: to respect the wishes of the dead and thus help the living, or to stubbornly stick to the letter of the law and hurt everyone. I had never seen him so confused. I went out for a coffee and came back at eleven-twenty A.M. to reassure Oswald that he was doing the right thing, and instead I found him dead. It didn’t take me long to see what had happened, and I knew that anyone else arriving would quickly figure out the truth. So I put Lilith Starr’s body back in the drawer and locked it. We would assume, rightly, that Finch had suffered heart failure. Attention would be drawn away from the girl he had decided to protect, and I would have honoured his final wish. But as soon as I saw the bruises coming up on his neck and chest, I was faced with a dilemma of my own: to conceal them and start compounding the lie, or to report the facts and let everyone else decide what had happened. I thought about Finch’s professional opinion of me, and knew what he would have expected me to do. I didn’t obstruct, Janice, I just omitted. Now I’ve failed to carry out his wishes, as well as destroying my own career.”
Longbright reached out a tentative hand in sympathy. “No, Giles, you behaved honourably, and I know Arthur will consider that to be your saving grace. He worked the whole thing out while he was four hundred miles away, sitting in a snowdrift, but he wanted us to decide what action to take. I think I can answer that now. We’ll continue to honour Oswald’s wish, and close the case. You see, it was me who refused to countersign your application for Oswald’s position. But now, I’m ready to recommend you.”
“Thank you, Janice.” Giles raised his head and smiled ruefully at her. “I won’t let any of you down, I promise. What amazes me is how Arthur figured out the truth.”
“Oh, he’ll have read the answer in some dusty old book,” said Longbright, smiling to herself.
47
Arthur Bryant stood at the dark tunnel entrance and listened. The reflected light from the snow only lit the first five feet of the track, and he had left the Valiant, May’s trusty cinema torch, on the dashboard of the van. He looked back at Ryan, anchored to the bushes, and slowly advanced into darkness.
He heard dripping water, a click of flint. There was a scuffling sound somewhere ahead of him, a brush of material against rough brick. He was now moving in total darkness. By sliding one foot before the other around the edges of the sleepers, he was able to avoid the rails, staying close against the right-hand wall of the tunnel.
“I know you’re there,” Bryant called gently. “And I think I know the truth about you.”
There was a fresh sound of displaced gravel, much closer now. He stopped and listened to someone else’s ragged breathing. He was wondering whether to go further, and suddenly realised that he was afraid. Not for himself-death had long since ceased to hold any terrors-but because something was very wrong, and had been for a while now. This, he thought, is my hour of reckoning, the descent of my black angel.
He took a step forward, then another, still feeling for the edges of the sleepers. The bitter blanket of blackness pressed in on him, for it was even colder in the tunnel than it had been outside. It seemed that he could smell the cuprous tang of metal and coal-soot, although no steam trains had passed through here in decades.
His right boot pressed against something soft. Lowering himself to a crouch, he reached forward and felt around. The body lying beside the track was still warm to the touch, but there was no longer a pulse in its wrist.