Soul Seeker (24 page)

Lancefield took a moment to respond, doing so with a slow nod. She knew that she ought to have told Beverley about the real reason for her absence, but she found it impossible to speak about it, struck dumb with the awful shock; it was as if to share her grief with one such as Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton would be to dilute and pollute it; as if to share it would cheapen it.

‘Very well, sir.'

FORTY-TWO

T
hat Lancefield was subdued did not strike Eisenmenger; he was not particularly observant of those around him in general, but when he was working, he was dangerously prone to wreck his ship upon rocks that were quite obvious to everyone else. In this instance, though, he was safe, for Lancefield had thoughts of her own to contend with. Clive, too, was quiet, although this was characteristic of him during forensic post-mortems, and in complete contrast to his normal attitude, which was one of calculated cheerfulness. Forensics, Clive considered, were too important for unnecessary flippancy. He was a man who took his job seriously, even if his superficial manner was seen by some as flippant; he cared deeply about the service he provided, whether it be to pathologists, the bereaved, the coroner, the police or to undertakers, and was quick to let others know when he thought that they were not up to standard. It was one of the reasons he liked Eisenmenger, because the pathologist had a similar attitude; some of the pathologists he worked with did not, in his unstated but nonetheless cogent opinion, always behave as they should.

After five hours of near total silence, Eisenmenger had finished. He had worked first on the younger female then, as Clive reconstructed this one, on the older. He now said to Clive, ‘OK. You can put this one back together.'

‘Not much of a mess, at any rate.'

The autopsy on Malcolm Willoughby had been bloodless because his slow electrocution had cooked his blood into something approaching black pudding; in these two post-mortems, there had just not been much blood at all. Eisenmenger felt slightly put out by this, and was put out because he felt put out; a normal person would have welcomed this absence of gore.

Lancefield had been standing in the corner; it was cold in the mortuary but she looked as though she was only half aware of it to Clive; she looked, he decided, as if she was only half aware of everything. Eisenmenger, until now, only vaguely aware in his concentration on the task in hand that she was there, was slightly surprised when he had to address her twice to gain any attention.

Looking slightly startled, she said, ‘I'm sorry?'

‘The chief inspector will be wanting my provisional conclusions.'

‘Of course,' she said, but he was aware that she was playing catch up and he wondered where she had been.

‘Tell her that it looks as though my first impression was right. These two have been bled to death.'

She frowned, appearing to be trying to concentrate. ‘Is that a good way to go?'

It struck him as an odd question but he said only, ‘Better than Malcolm Willoughby's fate.'

She nodded absently.

Since Charlie Sherman had become a psychologist, she had been used to a commentary in her head, one that was above her emotions and thoughts, and that placed everything in context, that explained and therefore comforted her. It was as though she had been voyaging through life with a constant, reassuring companion – a nanny, perhaps – and she had not had to face the terrors of life alone. Yet now that voice, that explaining, soft and always-believable monotone in the background of her thoughts, was gone. She was alone, and she was suddenly facing the biggest challenge of her personal life without any benefit from her training and experience; it made her feel juvenile, almost adolescent, adrift and at the mercy of her emotions, those daemons that she had thought to have conquered.

She had been in control, she knew, until they had watched the web posting and then the voice had gone, neither fading nor saying goodbye, merely refusing to speak, deafening her with its obstinacy. At once, her life had changed and, worse, her perception of her life had changed; certainty became its converse, confidence froze and became immune to her, impenetrable; an alien thing that was now unknowable, and she did not know how it had happened, but happened it had during the hours in which they had viewed the web posting. In some way, her perceptions and thoughts during that period had altered – perhaps even damaged – the props that sustained her. The images themselves were appalling, sickening, unbearable, but she had guessed that they would be; they were worse than she had expected, but not beyond her endurance. She was well acquainted with the terrible things that human beings did to animals and to each other, but they seemed almost to reserve a special cruelty for the pain they inflicted on other members of their own species, as if the sentience of the victim gave a special piquancy to the pleasure.

But then there was the mind of the killer to think about. She was used to human emotions in their extremities, and until now had met them with professional equanimity. Her species, she was well aware, was governed by emotion, much as the higher socio-economic classes liked to think otherwise; in the world of psychological academe, the more refined might be aware of and be able to
use
their emotions – have ‘emotional intelligence' in the common jargon – but they could not escape them. If they should ever manage that particular feat, then this is what happened; someone who killed, not only without compunction but without interest or understanding, who could not conceive any difference between homicide and any other human activity, like defaecating or eating. There was a monstrous irony that this one was interested, obsessed even, in
life
, in the soul; the killing was done in order to find out about what makes humans live. How could any one mind, no matter how twisted, hold that extreme contradiction and still function? She was well aware that the human mind was quite capable of holding diametrically opposed opinions and believe either, depending on circumstance, but one that was so extreme, so incompatible, found her lost, both professionally and intellectually.

Yet she could have coped with even that, had she not just watched the man she thought she loved seem somehow to lose
his
humanity, as he had taken in all this other-worldly, surreal, hideous existence and been merely fascinated, merely intellectually aroused, much as he might have been by a crossword puzzle or a curious pathological finding, or even a well-played game of rugby union. This was what had truly frightened her; he was still the same human being she had met some months before, still the strangely elusive, slightly shy and extremely irritating middle-aged, greying (but not balding, thank God) man she had at first thought nothing of; now, though, she saw what he was capable of being, and it had frightened her. Or rather, he had shown what he was capable of not being, for he had not seemed to react as she thought he ought to have done. He had shown no emotion, no sign that he was affected in any way; he had almost, she dared hardly think, reacted like the killer.

And this scared her.

Eisenmenger had a name for the anonymous man with mesothelioma, although he still could not be sure that it was the right one. He had managed to talk to two of the three non-attendees and their carers (one was in a hospice and expected to die shortly), but Dominic Trelawney stubbornly refused to answer his phone. He had done all he could, done more than he should have, to help the investigation, and more mundane activities were calling. Ben Gosling had called in unwell with flu and he had to cover routine autopsies for him; time to make Beverley earn her crust. He picked up the phone to tell her his news.

FORTY-THREE

T
here was only one autopsy the next morning and Eisenmenger thanked goodness for that.

‘What do you think, Clive?'

And so, Clive considered.

Eisenmenger had known a great many mortuary technicians – or ‘medical technical officers', or ‘anatomical pathology technicians' or (a term he abhorred) ‘morticians' – in his career, and they proved a constant source of interest to him; humanity in general provided him with a steady parade of entertainment, a sort of never-ending rain of distraction and diversion from the dullness of existence, but this fine breed, these special men, were the epitome of human enterprise, the crown princes and crown princesses of endeavour, the A-list of the common herd. During his long and sometimes apparently tedious career, Eisenmenger had known, amongst many others, one who sang hymns while he cracked the ribcage open both with gusto and with stainless steel shears (and who had earned a subsidiary income by procuring abortions in his back sitting room), another who had had an unhealthy obsession with au pair girls (spending most of his spare time on websites and chortling in what could only be described as an unsettling manner), and one who had professed distinctly ‘un-PC' attitudes to both women and people of other races, and who had been heard to refer affectionately to ‘Uncle Adolf'.

There were some, though, who were to him priceless. They not only did what they were supposed to do – evisceration of the bodies followed by their reconstruction, scrupulous cleaning, preparation of the bodies for viewing by relatives, sensitive handling of the bereaved, keeping up to date with the intricate paperwork engendered by the Human Tissue Act (that the job was complex was, he knew, little appreciated) – but also pointed out to the pathologists things that they might have missed, took an interest in the autopsy and what the findings were. Clive was one such. Sometimes, of course, Clive got it wrong; pointing out irrelevancies or, through failing to spot things, making the pathologists' job harder. In the main, though, he was a useful man to have around.

Many mortuary technicians would have missed the small pieces of red lint that were under the lips. Unfortunately, he only spotted them after Eisenmenger had completed the organ dissection and when he was dictating his findings; thus he gave Eisenmenger a problem, for Eisenmenger had already found a perfectly acceptable cause of death. Betty Williams had had severe coronary atheroma – the arteries supplying the heart muscles were almost completely furred up – and this was a perfectly acceptable, and natural, way to die; indeed, a third of the population did so.

There is nothing a pathologist hates more than too many causes of death. The autopsy that does not immediately find a cause of death – that is ‘unascertained' in the parlance – is a nuisance, but not a disaster; in perhaps ten to twenty percent of post-mortem examinations more investigations are needed: examination of tissue samples under the microscope, expert opinion, toxicological analysis of blood and urine, asbestos fibre counts. Even after these, no definitive cause of death may be found, but the pathologist will be able to state with some assurance that there were no traumatic, toxicological or other unnatural factors. It is an outcome that is less than satisfactory, but has to be accepted. More than one cause of death makes life very difficult, however; doubly so when one of them might be unnatural. Lint in the mouth suggested that someone had smothered her.

Eisenmenger saw another evening disappearing in the dubious company of the local constabulary, and more trouble up ahead with Charlie. He sighed.

‘Shit.'

‘It happens,' was Clive's only comment, one that was of no help to Eisenmenger.

Eisenmenger peeled off his gloves and went to the alcove where the sheet with the details he had been given by the coroner's office was laid out. As he went to the phone, he glanced again at it and saw this time the significance of the place where she lived, that it was a place name he had seen before.

He began to wonder.

‘You alright?'

Lancefield had been staring at the computer screen but clearly not seeing it; even Fisher had noticed a degree of distraction. She looked up, but not in a particularly animated fashion. ‘Yes. Why?'

‘You've got a face like a slapped arse,' he replied cheerfully and with a characteristic lack of tact. ‘Been dumped?'

She was too far beyond anger to respond. Even Beverley's dressing down, mistaken in almost every way, had not been able to rile her beyond melancholia; Fisher's clodhopping banter was certainly not going to do the job. She merely returned to the computer screen while Fisher decided that he had been spot on; yes, he now knew, she had been dumped.

Beverley came out of her office. Fisher looked up to discover that she had not found the secret of undying happiness since the last time he had seen his boss. ‘Fisher? How far have you got with the missing mother and daughter?'

‘Nothing as yet, boss.'

‘Find them, fuckwit. It shouldn't be too hard, even for you. And whilst you're about it, find out all you can on this man.' She handed him a slip of paper with Dominic Trelawney's name on it. With that, she turned to Lancefield. ‘You're with me, inspector.'