Death of an Expert Witness (3 page)

It looked as if they had nearly finished. The girl's rigid fingers had been prised from her handbag and Doyle's hands, gloved, were spreading out its few contents on a plastic sheet laid on the bonnet of the car.

Howarth could just make out the shape of what looked like a small purse, a lipstick, a folded sheet of paper. A love letter probably, poor little wretch. Had Lorrimer written letters to Domenica? he wondered. He was always first at the door when the post arrived, and usually brought his sister her letters. Perhaps Lorrimer had known that. But he must have written. There must have been assignations.

Lorrimer would hardly have risked telephoning from the Laboratory or from home in the evenings when he, Howarth, might have taken the call.

They were moving the body now. The mortuary van had moved closer to the rim of the hollow and the stretcher was being manoeuvred into place. The police were dragging out the screens from their van, ready to enclose the scene of crime. Soon die re would be the little clutch of spectators, the curious children shooed away by the adults, the Press photographers. He could see Lorrimer and Kerrison conferring together a little way apart, their backs turned, the two dark heads close together. Doyle was closing his notebook and supervising the removal of the body as if it were a precious exhibit which he was frightened someone would break. The light was strengthening.

He waited while Kerrison climbed up beside him and together they walked towards the parked cars. Howarth's foot struck a beer-can. It clattered across the path and bounced against what looked like the battered frame of an old pram, with a bang like a pistol shot. The noise startled him. He said pettishly:

"What a place to die! Where in God's name are we exactly? I just followed the police cars."

"It's called the clunch field. That's the local name for the soft chalk they mined here from the Middle Ages onwards. There isn't any hard building stone hereabouts, so they used clunch for most domestic building and even for some church interiors. There's an example in the Lady Chapel at Ely. Most villages had their clunch pits. They're overgrown now. Some are quite pretty in the spring and summer, little oases of wild flowers."

He gave the information almost tonelessly, like a dutiful guide repeating by rote the official spiel. Suddenly he swayed and reached for the support of his car door. Howarth wondered if he were ill or whether this was the extremity of tiredness. Then the pathologist straightened himself and said, with an attempt at briskness:

"I'll do the P.M. at nine o'clock tomorrow at St. Luke's. The hall porter will direct you. I'll leave a message."

He nodded a goodbye, forced a smile, then eased himself into his car and slammed the door. The Rover bumped slowly towards the road.

Howarth was aware that Doyle and Lorrimer were beside him. Doyle's excitement was almost palpable. He turned to look across the clunch field to the distant row of houses, their yellow-brick walls and mean square windows now plainly visible.

"He's over there somewhere. In bed probably. That is, if he doesn't live alone. It wouldn't do to be up and about too early, would it? No, he'll be lying there wondering how to act ordinary, waiting for the anonymous car, the ring at the door. If he's on his own, it'll be different, of course. He'll be creeping about in the half-dark wondering if he ought to burn his suit, scraping the mud off his shoes.

Only he won't be able to get it all off. Not every trace. And he won't have a boiler big enough for the suit. And even if he had, what will he say when we ask for it? So maybe he'll be doing nothing. Just lying there and waiting. He won't be asleep. He didn't sleep last night. And he won't be sleeping again for quite a time."

Howarth felt slightly sick. He had eaten a small and early dinner and knew himself to be hungry. The sensation of nausea on an empty stomach was peculiarly unpleasant. He controlled his voice, betraying nothing but a casual interest.

"You think it's relatively straightforward then?"

"Domestic murder usually is. And I reckon that this is a domestic murder. Married kid, torn stump of a ticket for the local Oddfellows'

hop, letter in her bag threatening her if she doesn't leave another bloke alone. A stranger wouldn't have known about this place. And she wouldn't have come here with him even if he had. By the look of her, they were sitting there cosily together before he got his hands on her throat. It's just a question of whether the two of them set off home together or whether he left early and waited for her."

"Do you know yet who she is?"

"Not yet. There's no diary in the bag. That kind don't keep diaries.

But I shall know in about half an hour."

He turned to Lorrimer. "The exhibits should be at the Lab by nine or thereabouts. You'll give this priority?"

Lorrimer's voice was harsh. "Murder gets priority. You know that."

Doyle's exultant, self satisfied bellow jangled Howarth's nerves.

"Thank God something does! You're taking your time over the Gutteridge case. I was in the Biology Department yesterday and Bradley said the report wasn't ready; he was working on a case for the defence. We all know the great fiction that the Lab is independent of the police and I'm happy to go along with it most of the time. But old Hoggatt founded the place as a police lab, and when the chips are down that's what it's all about. So do me a favour. Get moving with this one for me. I want to get chummy and get him quickly."

He was rocking gently on his heels, his smiling face uplifted to the dawn like a happy dog sniffing at the air, euphoric with the exhilaration of the hunt. It was odd, thought Howarth, that he didn't recognize the cold menace in Lorrimer's voice.

"Hoggatt's does an occasional examination for the defence if they ask us and if the exhibit is packed and submitted in the approved way.

That's departmental policy. We're not yet a police lab even if you do walk in and out of the place as if it's your own kitchen. And I decide priorities in my Laboratory. You'll get your report as soon as it's ready. In the meantime, if you want to ask questions, come to me, not to my junior staff. And, unless you're invited, keep out of my Laboratory."

Without waiting for an answer, he walked over to his car. Doyle looked after him in a kind of angry bewilderment.

"Bloody hell! His Lab! What's wrong with him? Lately, he's been as touchy as a bitch in heat. He'll find himself on a brain shrinker's couch or in the bin if he doesn't get a hold of himself."

Howarth said coldly: "He's right, of course. Any inquiry about the work should be made to him, not to a member of his staff. And it's usual to ask permission before walking into a laboratory."

The rebuke stung. Doyle frowned. His face hardened. Howarth had a disconcerting glimpse of the barely controlled aggression beneath the mask of casual good humour. Doyle said:

"Old Dr. Mac used to welcome the police in his Lab. He had this odd idea, you see, that helping the police was what it was all about. But if we're not wanted, you'd better talk to the Chief. No doubt he'll issue his instructions."

He turned on his heel and made off towards his car without waiting for a reply. Howarth thought:

"Damn Lorrimer! Everything he touches goes wrong for me." He felt a spasm of hatred so intense, so physical that it made him retch. If only Lorrimer's body was sprawled at the bottom of the clunch pit. If only it were Lorrimer's cadaver which would be cradled in porcelain on the post-mortem table next day, laid out for ritual evisceration. He knew what was wrong with him. The diagnosis was as simple as it was humiliating: that self-infecting fever of the blood which could lie deceptively dormant, then flare now into torment.

Jealousy, he thought, was as physical as fear; the same dryness of the mouth, the thudding heart, the restlessness which destroyed appetite and peace. And he knew now that, this time, the sickness was incurable. It made no difference that the affair was over, that Lorrimer, too, was suffering. Reason couldn't cure it, nor, he suspected, could distance, nor time. It could be ended only by death; Lorrimer's or his own.

At half past six, in the front bedroom of 2 Acacia Close, Chevisham, Susan Bradley, wife of the Higher Scientific Officer in the Biology Department of Hoggatt's Laboratory, was welcomed by the faint, plaintive wail of her two-month-old baby, hungry for her first feed of the day. Susan switched on the bedside lamp, a pink glow under its frilled shade, and reaching for her dressing gown, shuffled sleepily to the bathroom next door, and then to the nursery. It was a small room at the back of the house, little more than a box, but when she pressed down the switch of the low-voltage nursery light she felt again a glow of maternal, proprietorial pride. Even in her sleepy morning daze the first sight of the nursery lifted her heart: the nursing chair with its back decorated with rabbits; the matching changing-table fitted with drawers for the baby's things; the wicker cot in its stand which she had lined with a pink, blue and white flowered cotton to match the curtains; the bright fringe of nursery-rhyme characters which Clifford had pasted round the wall.

With the sound of her footsteps the cries became stronger. She picked up the warm, milky smelling cocoon and crooned reassurance.

Immediately the cries ceased and Debbie's moist mouth, opening and shutting like a fish, sought her breast, the small wrinkled fists freed from the blanket, unfurled to clutch against her crumpled nightdress.

The books said to change baby first, but she could never bear to make Debbie wait. And there was another reason. The walls of the modern house were thin, and she didn't want the sound of crying to wake Cliff.

But suddenly he was at the door, swaying slightly, his pyjama jacket gaping open. Her heart sank. She made her voice sound bright, matter of-fact.

"I hoped she hadn't woken you, darling. But it's after half past six.

She slept over seven hours. Getting better."

"I was awake already."

"Go back to bed, Cliff. You can get in another hour's sleep."

"I can't sleep."

He looked round the little nursery with a puzzled frown, as if disconcerted not to find a chair. Susan said:

"Bring in the stool from the bathroom. And put on your dressing-gown.

You'll catch cold."

He placed the stool against the wall and crouched there in sullen misery. Susan raised her cheek from resting against the soft furriness of the baby's head. The small, snub-nosed leech latched on to her breast, fingers splayed in an ecstasy of content. Susan told herself that she must keep calm, mustn't let nerves and muscles knot themselves into the familiar ache of worry. Everyone said that it was bad for the milk. She said quietly:

"What's wrong, darling?" But she knew what was wrong. She knew what he would say. She felt a new and frightening sense of resentment that she couldn't even feed Debbie in peace. And she wished he would do up his pajamas. Sitting like that, slumped and half-naked, he looked almost dissolute. She wondered what was happening to her. She had never felt like this about Cliff before Debbie was born.

"I can't go on. I can't go into the Lab today."

"Are you ill?" But she knew that he wasn't ill, at least not yet. But he would be ill if something wasn't done about Edwin Lorrimer. The old misery descended on her. People wrote in books about a black weight of worry, and they were right, that was just how it felt, a perpetual physical burden which dragged at the shoulders and the heart, denying joy, even destroying, she thought bitterly, their pleasure in Debbie.

Perhaps in the end it would destroy even love. She didn't speak but settled her small, warm burden more comfortably against her arm.

"I've got to give up the job. It's no use, Sue. I can't go on. He's got me in such a state that I'm as useless as he says I am."

"But Cliff, you know that isn't true. You're a good worker. There were never complaints about you at your last lab."

"I wasn't an H.S.O. then. Lorrimer thinks I ought never to have been promoted. He's right."

"He isn't right. Darling, you mustn't let him sap your confidence.

That's fatal. You're a conscientious, reliable forensic biologist. You mustn't worry if you're not as quick as the others. That isn't important. Dr. Mac always said it's accuracy that counts. What does it matter if you take your time? You get the answer right in the end."

"Not any longer. I can't even do a simple peroxidase test now without fumbling. If he comes within two feet of me my hands start shaking.

And he's begun checking all my results. I've just finished examining the stains on the mallet from the suspected Pascoe murder. But he'll work late tonight doing it again. And he'll make sure that the whole Biology Department knows why."

Cliff couldn't, she knew, stand up to bullying or sarcasm. Perhaps it was because of his father. The old man was paralysed now after a stroke and she supposed that she ought to feel sorry for him lying there in his hospital bed, useless as a felled tree, mouth slavering, only the angry eyes moving in impotent fury from face to watching face.

But from what Cliff had let slip he had been a poor father, an unpopular and unsuccessful schoolmaster yet with unreasonable ambitions for his only son. Cliff had been terrified of him. What Cliff needed was encouragement and affection. Who cared if he never rose any higher than H.S.O.? He was kind and loving. He looked after her and Debbie.