The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (19 page)

Suddenly Eisenmenger felt very elated, very intrigued and very sorry. Once more he went through the slides and, now that he knew what he was looking for, he found three other slides that were almost certainly small intestine, although they had been labelled differently.

He turned slowly to the blocks, his head full of wonder. He picked each one up and examined it minutely. They each bore a unique identifying number corresponding with the Sweet autopsy. On one — only one — he saw that another number had been previously erased. It was a section of lymph node.

The case had been faked.

All he had to do was find out why, which was the reason he sat now with Belinda and tried to find out a little more about Mark Hartmann and, knowing what he knew, why he found Belinda's reluctance to speak intriguing. "So, what do you think of Hartmann?"

"He's … okay."

"Okay as what? A pathologist, a human being or both?"

"As a human being he's fine. He's probably the most approachable consultant we've got."

"But as a pathologist he's not going to ignite the world."

She shrugged. Words, it seemed, were too powerful a magic to be used at this point.

He tapped the table with a beer mat, thinking. "He's not a lymphoma pathologist, is he?"

Perhaps feeling on safer ground she said with more confidence, "Up 'till now he's just been breast, but he's recently taken on lymphoreticular." This strange construction and phrasing, so wide open to misinterpretation that it could have accommodated a pantechnicon, made perfect sense to Eisenmenger. "And would you say he's a good pathologist?"

But again she was unwilling to say, which was sad but clear testimony on the point. He admired her loyalty.

"And yet he made the diagnosis of Burkitt's lymphoma. Not an easy one to make. Certainly not with that presentation." He looked up. "Did he show it around? Send it away for an expert opinion?"

"I don't think so."

He waited a moment, idly looking at a ruddy-faced, emaciated man who was sitting alone at the bar drinking steadily from a glass of Guinness. Eisenmenger suspected he would be there at closing time, just as he had been there at closing time for a thousand or more nights before.

Then he turned to Belinda. "I had a look at the case today."

He paused and looked at her but she didn't react. She doesn't know, he decided; her reluctance was not borne of guilt.

"He's fabricated it," he said simply.

Again he found reassurance in her response. She was astounded. Her eyes widened and her face became almost slack with the shock of his words. "What do you mean?"

"What I say He's concocted the set of blocks from other cases of Burkitt's. I expect if you searched on the computer database for Burkitt's over the past ten years and looked for the blocks, I bet you'd find some of them missing."

"But why? Why would he do that?"

The obvious answer would be because he didn't know what the real diagnosis was, but Eisenmenger was always wary of the obvious. It explained so little more, like why didn't he just show the case around if he didn't know what the tumour was? And why did Eisenmenger so profoundly suspect that the convenient disappearance of Millicent Sweet's body was closely related to all this?

"I don't know, Belinda, but it's why I need to know what Hartmann is really like."

And then she told him. Told him of his mediocrity and his lack of confidence, told him of what she had seen at the autopsy on Millicent Sweet's body.

"More than one tumour?"

"More than twenty, from what I saw. Dr Hartmann seemed to think that there were multiple tumours as well. He was wondering about a cancer syndrome."

Not unreasonable, so why suddenly concoct a story?

"Have you read his report?"

She didn't like the question; Eisenmenger saw that in her eyes as they dropped their gaze to the table and her hands as they fidgeted. "Have you?" he asked again.

She nodded; a quick, jerked action, perhaps to get it past the radar.

"And?"

Slowly, she admitted, "It wasn't quite the way I remember it."

Somehow he had suspected as much.

"When did he change his mind?" His drink was finished but as the beer had been flavourless, lifeless and almost beerless he wasn't inclined to repeat the experience. Belinda's orange juice was still two thirds there.

"The following week. He said that we'd been mistaken. He said that he'd looked at the tissue samples and they showed Burkitt's. He showed them to me."

"Can you remember the day of the week?"

She pursed her lips. "Tuesday, I think."

The post-mortem had been carried out on Friday. Between then and the following Tuesday, something had happened to make Hartmann falsify a Coroner's post-mortem and thus endanger his career. The very fact of this made Eisenmenger intensely curious, without even considering why it should have happened.

He drew a long breath; he had a feeling she wasn't going to like what he had now to say. "Belinda, I need a favour."

As if she had guessed, her eyes held suspicion and anxiety. "What is it?"

"I want you write down what you remember from that post-mortem. Everything. Especially what you saw in the body."

She began to protest, shaking her head and twice saying, "No."

He cut through her refusal. "It's important, Belinda. It won't go any further, I promise, but I must have some idea of what the true autopsy findings were."

She didn't look convinced but she wasn't protesting any more either. Into this stretched veil of uncertainty he said only, "Please?"

At last she nodded and he smiled his gratitude.

Then, as they were leaving, he asked, "He didn't take any other samples, did he? For frozen section or suchlike?" It was asked out of weak hope and for completeness, but it made Belinda stop suddenly, just inside the pub door, where someone had carved the words "Grentz is a git" down the frame.

"He made me destroy the samples!" She said almost with wonder and he didn't know what she was talking about. She had to explain. "I persuaded him to take samples for molecular biology; samples from all the different tumours. I had put them into digest to extract the genetic material but he made me destroy them."

It certainly seemed to be more evidence of Hartmann's culpability but apart from that …

"He said that now we knew the cause of death, the Coroner wouldn't allow any further investigation."

Quite correct. The rules were strict. Unless it was to determine the cause of death, no tissue could be retained for analysis; if Hartmann had been interested in doing further research, he would have required written permission from the next of kin.

Eisenmenger said, "It's a pity, but it can't be helped. Those samples might have been very interesting to look at … "

"But you don't understand," she insisted, "The samples in digest were destroyed, but they were only half of each tissue piece that I took. Those are still there, in the deep freeze … "

*

Hartmann found that he couldn't work that afternoon. Two registrars had come to his office with work for him to check, but he had sent them away claiming that he was too busy, despite his melancholic presence behind an empty desk. By his microscope the EQA slides were still piled, the top ones gathering a light coating of dust, whilst on the other side there was a tall pile of his reports from two days before, still awaiting correction and approval. He knew that he had to prepare a lecture to be given in two days, and there were six letters still awaiting his reply. Yet despite the pressure of this accumulation of undone tasks he did nothing. His mind was tethered by his crimes and the dread that they were gradually, inevitably, being uncovered, tethered by a leash that was not only short and unbreakable, but becoming shorter and sharper with each day, so that now it was cutting into his neck, strangling his ability to function.

He was becoming nothing but guilt, every moment's thoughts directed solely to explanation and justification of why he had done those things, why he carried no blame or responsibility; and yet every moment's thoughts were also small pebbles of further guilt adding to the weight and adding to the self-loathing. He had passed the stage of attempting to act normally, even with Annette, and was now submerged into what was almost a fugue, where the external world impinged only in a woolly and muffled way, and where the internal world had assumed nightmarish, surreal characteristics; where silence and taciturnity were both his sanctuary and his torment. He only talked with the children at any great length, and then his conversations were soaked so thoroughly in self-pity and self-disgust that even they must have wondered what was wrong with him.

Eisenmenger's arrival in the department had seemed to him like the start of the end, the event that heralded his eventual immolation, but only after a long, slow process of pain and misery, public humiliation and private hatred; a time in which the anger and bitter enmity felt towards him by Annette and her family would only be superseded by that which he felt for himself. Twice he had walked to the door of the room where Eisenmenger was working, ready he thought to talk, to confess as if Eisenmenger were not only a judge and therefore an executioner but also a redeemer. Yet he had gone away both times because he had still harboured a hope that his subterfuge might work, that he might have obliterated the traces of his crime; and the act of his going away, of turning away from confession and thereby redemption had only added to his sense of desolation. He was beyond hope and beyond goodness.

He left the department at five and was home by six-thirty, no longer caring how much time he spent with Annette and the children. He was just closing the garage door when from behind him came a soft, cheerful, chilling voice.

"My dear chap. How good to see you."

Hartmann turned to find Rosenthal. There was a smile on his lips that Hartmann found far more frightening than any scowl would ever be. Hartmann said nothing, feeling the fear liquefy his soul. Perhaps Rosenthal failed to notice Hartmann's pallor, the way his lips trembled, for he asked, "How are things? I was worried. Thought it best to pop over and see you."

He looked up at the large residence behind Hartmann. "Lovely place."

Hartmann at last found a voice, although it was not his normal one. "What do you want?"

Rosenthal expressed surprise. His reaction suggested shock, even affront.
What
a
suggestion
!
Why
would
I
want
something
? He said, "Why, nothing at all. I merely called to make certain of your happiness. Ensure that you — and your lovely wife and children — have no reason to … fret."

The sentence was full of nuance and inflection, its meaning warped away from the words.

For a moment Hartmann wondered what to do. Tell him about Eisenmenger and risk perhaps anger with all its consequences? Or keep silent, risking then that Rosenthal was already well aware of the situation, that this was a test of his loyalty? The dilemma lasted perhaps two beats of his heart, beats that passed in time like aeons, then one fear overcame the other and, "There's been someone in the department. He's been asking more questions."

"But I thought the matter settled. The internal enquiry … "

"This is different. He's a pathologist. Employed by the father's solicitor, I think."

Rosenthal lost the smile, but none of the menace. He was, thought Hartmann, forever threatening of extreme violence, as if this fulmination was his skeleton on which the flesh and the sentiency hung.

"A pathologist?"

Hartmann nodded, thinking that he should have kept quiet, that clearly this was unwelcome news. Rosenthal said, "I trust that there is no chance that he will uncover your little … subterfuge?"

And the question could only be answered in the negative, for any other answer, Hartmann knew at once, would prove disastrous. He nodded, trying to construct confidence out of nothing.

For a short while Rosenthal stared at him from eyes that had lost everything except a dark coldness; then suddenly he smiled. "Well then, old chap. What is there to worry about?" He put his hand on Hartmann's back; it was a gentle hand presumably meant to comfort, but Hartmann felt only the touch of a killer.

"When will it end?" asked Hartmann. He addressed the question as much to God as to Rosenthal, but only Rosenthal replied.

"Don't worry," he said, the smile returning. "I'll take care of things."

He turned and walked away and Hartmann heard him whistling cheerfully. It took Hartmann five minutes to stop his heart speeding and his fingers trembling. When he finally walked through the front door, Annette came from the sitting room and asked curiously, "Who was that man you were talking to?"

Hartmann opened his mouth but he was so flustered nothing dropped from it for what seemed like a day. "He just wanted directions," he lied. "To the police station."

He dropped his head and walked quickly upstairs, aware that the lie behind him lay ugly and unwanted before Annette. He didn't see how her face contorted as she tried to stop screaming at his back, screaming out all the anger and fear. And when no sound came because her upbringing denied her such directness, she squeezed back tears and turned away, whispering again and again, "What's wrong, Mark? What's going on?"