The Art of Murder (4 page)

‘DCI Jack Pendragon accompanied by Sergeant Jez Turner. Three-forty-two, Wednesday the twenty-first of January,’ Pendragon intoned for the benefit of the digital recorder at the end of the table. ‘Norman Hedridge MEP
has volunteered his time to answer questions concerning the recent death of Kingsley Berrick. He is accompanied by his lawyer, Mr Maurice Strinner.’ He paused for a moment, waiting for Hedridge to engage with him. After a long pause, the man looked away from the imaginary spot on the wall and turned an imperious gaze upon him.

‘Mr Hedridge,’ Pendragon began slowly, ‘you knew the deceased?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘How would you describe your relationship?’

‘We were friends,’ Hedridge replied, giving the DCI a hard look.

‘Friends? As in intimate friends?’

Hedridge didn’t miss a beat. He simply turned to Strinner. ‘I don’t have time for this.’

‘Chief Inspector,’ Strinner began, ‘my client is here to help with your enquiries. As far as we are aware he has not been charged or even accused of any crime. I fail to see the relevance of the question.’

‘As both of you are aware, this is a murder investigation. Mr Hedridge is a known associate of Kingsley Berrick, and, according to a witness, left the gallery with the victim shortly before the murder took place. Indeed, Mr Hedridge may be one of the last people to have seen the victim alive.’

‘I object to the implication,’ Hedridge said coldly.

‘I’m not implying anything.’

There was silence for a few moments. ‘Mr Hedridge,’ Pendragon began again, ‘I am only concerned with solving this murder. I have no interest in your private life. But I feel that your relationship with Mr Berrick is pertinent to
this enquiry. Because of that, I must be blunt. Were you and Kingsley Berrick lovers?’

Strinner immediately began to protest, but Hedridge stopped him with a raised palm. Then the politician looked Pendragon straight in the eye. ‘No, we were not. And if any such accusation is made public, Chief Inspector …’

Pendragon had his own hand up now. ‘You’ll have me hounded out of the force? Blah, blah, blah. Do you think I haven’t heard it before?’

Hedridge froze and Pendragon fixed him with his hardest stare, watching the other man’s expression subtly reflect a series of emotions. After a moment, the politician broke into a politician’s smile, one that stopped at the corners of his mouth. ‘Very well, Chief Inspector. Very well.’ There was a barely audible edge of acceptance in his voice. It was as though Pendragon had passed a test. ‘Let us agree to avoid any hint of sexual reference, and I will agree to answer any reasonable questions you may put to me.’ He stared at Pendragon with a look that suggested the DCI was never going to receive a better offer in his life.

‘Talk me through the events of the evening, please.’

Hedridge looked down at the table for a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘I arrived late, about ten. I’d been at Westminster. There was still quite a gathering at the gallery. I had a chat with a few people I knew; drank a glass or two of champagne. Kingsley introduced me to a couple of artist friends. It was rather a jolly affair actually, and I lost track of the time. It got to about one o’clock and there were only half a dozen of us left. I admit, I was a little tipsy.’

‘And then you left with Kingsley Berrick?’

‘Yes, I did. I’d sent my driver home an hour or so earlier. We called a cab from the gallery. Kingsley lives … lived in Bethnal Green. I dropped him there and the cab took me home.’

‘I see. That was the last time you saw Mr Berrick?’

‘It was.’

‘Can you recall the name of the taxi firm?’

Hedridge paused for a moment. ‘Silver Cabs.’

Pendragon turned to the sergeant beside him. Jez Turner had already scribbled down the name.

‘How long have you known the deceased?’

Hedridge took a deep breath, leaned his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together. ‘Let me see … perhaps ten years. I met him by chance when the gallery was at its old site in Shoreditch. I bought a painting there, a Gary Heathcote. I was very grateful to Kingsley for that tip, it’s shot up in value.’

‘Was Mr Kingsley a popular man?’

‘Not sure what you mean.’

‘Sociable? A big circle of friends?’

‘Well, yes, I believe so. I think it goes with the territory.’

‘Any special friends?’

‘I have no idea, Chief Inspector.’

‘Would you consider yourself to have been a special friend?’

‘Where is this leading?’ Strinner interceded.

Pendragon turned to him. ‘I’m trying to build up a picture of the victim’s social circle. Does your client have a problem with that?’

Strinner looked at Hedridge, who sat staring coldly at Pendragon.

The DCI turned back to the politician. ‘Let’s put it another way, Mr Hedridge. Did Kingsley Berrick have any enemies?’

Hedridge looked a little startled for a moment. ‘Not so far as I’m aware, Chief Inspector. We were friends, but I had no inside information about how he ran his business. I can honestly say we rarely discussed the commercial aspects of the art world.’

Pendragon paused for a moment and the room sank into a heavy silence. He glanced at Turner and noted that he was still scribbling diligently in his pad.

‘My source suggests that your … relationship with the deceased had recently soured. Do you have any comment to make about that?’

‘No.’

‘Mr Hedridge, please don’t insult my intelligence. My source referred to you as Mr Berrick’s “ex”.’

Hedridge gave him a fierce look and Strinner started to raise a hand.

‘His words, not mine,’ Pendragon added.

‘Jackson Price, or “your source” as you prefer to call him, knows nothing about it, Chief Inspector.’

‘That may be so, but for now I have to assume he does. And if he is correct, and you and Mr Berrick were … intimately associated and had only recently become … disassociated, that would have a bearing upon my investigation. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Hedridge?’

‘Look, this is utterly ridiculous,’ Strinner exclaimed. ‘I’m sorry, but this line of enquiry is so far off beam as to
be ridiculous. My client has come here to help solve your case …’

‘That’s correct,’ Pendragon retorted.

‘But the intricacies of my client’s relationship with the murder victim …’

‘Are entirely relevant, Mr Strinner. Come now, you know that as well as I do.’

Hedridge placed a hand on the lawyer’s arm and gave Pendragon a pained look. ‘I thought we had a deal, Chief Inspector.’

‘The terms of a deal need to be clearly defined by both parties in advance, Mr Hedridge. You made a declaration of intent. I did not.’

Hedridge laughed briefly and turned to face his lawyer. ‘Maurice, I think it’s time we left.’

‘Well, that went well,’ Sergeant Turner said sardonically as the door closed behind Hedridge and Strinner.

Pendragon shook his head slowly. ‘Turner, when you are a grown-up copper, you might, if you’re very lucky, begin to realise that what seem like the worst interviews often yield the most useful facts.’

Turner raise his eyebrows. ‘Sorry I spoke.’

‘Good.’

‘But Hedridge was obviously lying out of his arse,’ the sergeant added.

‘About?’

‘His relationship with Berrick.’

‘Of course he was. Though, actually, Strinner was right. It isn’t strictly relevant.’

‘You sure, sir? Couldn’t Hedridge have killed Berrick after a lovers’ tiff?’

‘Oh, come on, Sergeant. How often does a “lovers’ tiff”, as you put it, end with one of the “lovers” boring a huge hole through the other’s head and propping them up in an art gallery as the centrepiece to a René Magritte-style tableau?’

‘Not often, I s’pose.’

‘Try “never”. Or perhaps Berrick committed suicide?’

And Pendragon gave his sergeant a withering look. ‘I think we’ll find that the nature of their relationship was the only thing Hedridge
was
lying about. He was protecting himself – understandably. According to his file, he’s married with two teenage children, and there’s his political career to think about too. I knew he would clam up about his relationship with Berrick. I wanted to throw him off-kilter. Push him just far enough to let something slip.’

‘Did he? I didn’t notice.’

Pendragon was staring at the wall, lost in thought. ‘No,’ he replied absent-mindedly. ‘No, he didn’t. He’s a politician, and a very clever one … Right, you can get busy, Turner,’ he said, snapping back to the task at hand. ‘I want you to check up on Silver Cabs. See if Mr Hedridge was telling us the truth about last night. I also want you to go through the entire guest list. Trace any connections between Kingsley Berrick and the names featured on that list, and then any links between Hedridge and those who were there last night. No matter how tenuous.’

‘Well, sorry I criticised your interview technique, I’m sure,’ Turner mumbled to himself as he walked off down the hall.

By the time Pendragon emerged through the main doors of the station it was dark outside, and it felt as though the temperature had dropped at least another five degrees. It wasn’t worth bothering with a car; a fresh layer of snow had fallen, making the roads even more treacherous. Instead, he turned up his collar, plunged his hands into his pockets and headed through the gate on to Brick Lane.

The human tide had turned. All those people who had headed west into the city for their daily labours were now on the homeward journey, back to husbands and wives, curries and fish and chips, TV and Sky Sports, the pub and the bottle of chilled Pinot Grigio in the fridge, phone calls to Mum and Dad, a snooze in front of the box or ten pages of a paperback before bed, a freezing cold quickie under the duvet perhaps, and then sleep; ready for tomorrow’s action replay.

The Milward Street Pathology Unit was only two hundred yards away. It was a single-storey red-brick building totally devoid of character. Thrown up in the 1950s, it was a monument to post-war austerity. Inside it was a little less austere. The hallway was painted a warm cream shade, and contained a cluster of chairs, a table with some two-year-old magazines on it, and a plastic palm in the corner. Pendragon strode along, ignoring his surroundings. He had been here on dozens of occasions, and almost every time the visit had involved his staring down at a corpse and receiving distinctly unpleasant information as to how the recently living person had become a dead one.

Jones saw him enter the lab and nodded before turning back to the latest arrival on the dissection table. The lab was a stark affair: whitewashed walls, scrubbed surfaces, and the irremovable stink of offal. Visible through an open door stood a wall of morgue drawers – the ‘sunbeds’ as the staff called them.

Jones looked up from the corpse. ‘You’re tired, Pendragon,’ he observed.

The DCI shrugged and stared down at the almost
surreal form of Kingsley Berrick. He was naked, his body split and clamped open, red and grey, as dead as a carcass hanging in a butcher’s window. He looked just like a thousand other corpses, except for the void where his face had once been, now backed by a circle of steel – the dissection table upon which his corpse lay.

‘It’s certainly a strange one,’ Dr Jones said. ‘I suppose you want the hows, wheres and whens.’

‘The whos and whys would be good too,’ Pendragon responded.

‘Yes, well, that’s your department. I’ve found a few answers to the obvious questions, though.’ He pointed with a scalpel inside the huge hole in Kingsley’s head. ‘This all started post-mortem. He was killed by a needle thrust into the nape of his neck, here.’ The pathologist turned Kingsley Berrick’s body on to its left side and indicated a red dot on the back of the neck. He then rolled the corpse back and matter-of-factly lifted the dome of the dead man’s head to reveal the brain. He removed this from inside the cranium.

‘I’ve had a good poke around,’ the pathologist went on. ‘It’s normal weight and in average condition for a man of Berrick’s age. But look here.’ He held the grey mass in his left hand and nudged a piece of tissue at the base of the organ. ‘A hole,’ he said. Placing the brain on a dish, he parted some folds. They could both see the red of a recent wound extending from the outer tissue of the brain almost to its centre.

‘It was a fine needle, but a long one,’ Jones said. ‘Sank in at least fifteen centimetres. Passed through the cerebellum and on into the centre of the brain, coming to rest
close to the thalamus. Would have killed him pretty quickly – massive haemorrhage. As you can see, here.’

Pendragon had never become accustomed to the offhand delivery style of pathologists, especially this one. But he had learned soon after meeting Jones that if he were to work with him, he would just have to blank out the man’s seemingly ice-cold professionalism. Jones had mocked him for his squeamishness when they had worked together on their first case. After that, the DCI had developed a thicker skin.

‘All right. Any thoughts on the hole?’ he queried.

Jones returned the brain and closed the cranium. Then he ran the end of the scalpel around the inside of the opening in Berrick’s head. ‘It’s a neat job. The hole is 12.1 centimetres in diameter, a fraction larger than a CD. It’s more ragged at the back than the front, which implies to me that the killer used some sort of heavy-duty punch to smash out the centre of the hole. The head must have been clamped meanwhile. Look here, at the temples. Rectangular impressions in the shallow flesh. No bruising, which indicates it was clamped post-mortem.’

‘Yes, but surely something so heavy-handed would have shattered Berrick’s skull completely?’

‘I thought precisely the same thing. But I learned two interesting things about the method our killer used. First, I found a few tiny specks of metal around the rim.’ Jones walked over to a counter parallel to the dissection table. Returning, he held up a pair of microscope slides sandwiched together. With the light behind the pieces of glass, Pendragon could just make out a few particles of silvery material.

‘This actually confused me even more for a time,’ the pathologist went on. ‘But then, as I was cleaning up the inside of the hole, I noticed a few dots of liquid oozing from the skin. Most of the interior of the hole here …’ and he pointed to the opening ‘… has been cauterised. But a few bits have been missed. I tested the liquid.’