The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (30 page)

Another part of it — and she was forced to concede this quietly, when no one was listening — was because she was going to have to tell John Eisenmenger nearly all that had happened. It was a prospect that did not please — far from it — but at least she had hoped, as she finally accepted the inevitable and invited him up to her flat, that admission of the events would palliate the symptoms.

It didn't seem to work.

Eisenmenger listened to everything she said, ignoring the faltering of her words, the facial grimaces she had involuntarily allowed. When she finished, he had merely sat there and looked thoughtful. She felt like a stripper who had been upstaged by a televised football match; naked and for nothing.

For a while he said nothing and she, equally silent, was forced to endure it. Then, "Of course, you realize what this means?"

It meant many things to Helena but she had the feeling that few of them had impinged on John Eisenmenger. "What?" she asked tiredly.

"There's a clear link between this 'Alasdair' and Pel-Ebstein. That can only mean that this is even bigger than we thought. First the bug on the car, now this."

Big
deal
.

She felt so exhausted she was ready to drop. She asked, "You keep saying this is big, but do you have any idea of what, precisely, is going on?"

He raised his eyebrows, looking at her with half a smile, half an apology. "I think I know what killed Millie Sweet. What I don't know is why she died when she did. Or, for that matter, why she got what killed her." He took a breath after that, then went on, "Although I have some theories."

Eisenmenger was a simple soul, so what came next was a very small piece of a very large surprise.

"In the name of all that's holy!" Helena screamed rather than spoke. "When will you stop speaking in bloody riddles? What's the matter with you? Do you enjoy driving people round the bloody bend with your superior bloody knowledge?"

Eisenmenger, until now immersed in possibilities, was abruptly brought out to face realities. The transition, much as had probably occurred when sea creatures had first flopped upon the land, took some adjustment. Indeed, for a while he was actually fighting for breath.

Helena found herself also exhausted by the outburst. She closed her eyes upon Eisenmenger's look of complete bewilderment.

Eventually, almost as if a very small and very lost little boy were calling for big sister, she heard him say, "Helena?"

She opened her eyes to find him looking with a frightened expression at her, leaning forward, hands clasped and stretched out. "I’m sorry, Helena. I … I didn't realize."

She snorted.

He hesitantly got up and then came and sat next to her on the sofa, allowing a small gap between them. "I knew that what you were saying was hard for you. I guess I thought that by ignoring how you felt it would help you."

She sighed. "When are you going to learn, John?"

"Learn what?"

"That emotions are just as much a means of communication as talking is. If you ignore them, you're blind. In fact, you're worse off than the blind, because emotions don't just convey information, they
heave
. They move and they shift, shaking the ground of those who experience them and those who are near, so that if you don't recognize that they're there, you're going to fall down, and you're going to keep falling down."

He considered this. "Pathologists do terrible things, things that most people would find impossible, but we tell ourselves that we're doing them for the best of motives. But I'm not sure that's enough to excuse to ourselves what we do. So the next trick is to ignore the emotions. Become 'clinical,' in the jargon, so that the autopsy is just an intellectual exercise, the body no longer a human being, just a puzzle."

"So all pathologists have lost their emotions?"

"I wouldn't go that far. I think most of us can switch them on and off, when appropriate."

"And you?" she asked, her voice softer now.

"I got stuck in the 'off' position. First Tamsin, then Marie. The world seemed safer that way."

She put out her hand, touching his. "I know how you feel."

They exchanged uncertain smiles, the moment subsiding.

"What now?" asked Helena.

"Tomorrow, I take these sequences that Belinda's produced and see if I can find someone at the Medical School who can make sense of them. If I can do that, I'll be a lot nearer some sort of answer."

She nodded. "Let me know if you have any luck." She paused and suddenly seemed embarrassed. He thought that perhaps he ought to leave, but as he rose her hand shot out and held his wrist. When he followed her arm to her shoulder and thence her face, her eyes were large and bright.

*

Rosenthal's instincts were shouting at him to speed down the motorway but he knew that to be caught and documented by the police would be disastrous. His whole life depended on being transparent, there but hard to see, so he kept to the speed limit, never exciting curiosity.

He was angry. The surveillance operation on Arias-Stella had gone wrong, for which disciplinary action would have to be taken. The cover on all the Proteus subjects had not been total, but it had been designed to detect two things — sudden illness or a change of address. That it had failed was his ultimate responsibility but he would see to it that the retribution was shared appropriately.

Still, there were other questions to be answered more immediately. Where had Arias-Stella gone? Was this Inspector Wharton genuine and, if so, why were the police now interested in Carlos?

The implications were disturbing. Perhaps Hartmann had gone to the police as well as the lawyer. Perhaps the lawyer had amassed enough evidence to go to the police herself.

But neither of these seemed to explain matters satisfactorily. If someone knew enough to locate Arias-Stella, presumably they knew a whole lot more, and that implied that someone knew almost everything about Proteus and the work that had produced it. Yet if that were true, the whole house would be falling in on him. Him and PEP.

And also, he thought it odd that this police inspector had phoned. Surely a personal call would be normal procedure?

Despite the urgency to return, he stopped at the next service station to make some calls, not daring to use his mobile while driving. He initiated some enquiries into Inspector Wharton and he also ordered twenty-four-hour surveillance on Helena Flemming and John Eisenmenger. Most importantly, he started the search for Carlos Arias-Stella.

*

Siobhan Turner was still in mourning, but had plastered over it phlegm and stoicism and resolve. Unfortunately, so thick and uneven was this layer of normality, this facade, it was little better than a mask. When Beverley Wharton called on her that evening she found the sight almost painful.

"I'd hardly got to know him." This wasn't quite her opening sentence as they sat down in the large conservatory at the back of the large house, but it was fairly early on in their relationship. It didn't require Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the glue holding her together wasn't yet dry. There was a pungent odour of lilac around them.

"How long were you married?"

"Only a year."

Beverley had the inkling that discovering the truth of Robin Turner's relationship with Millicent Sweet was going to be a delicate business.

"Not long, then."

She laughed. She was smoking her second cigarette of the interview and had insisted that Beverley join her in a gin and tonic. There had been a kind of desperation in her invitations, her tone, her whole demeanour. Beverley hadn't had the cruelty to refuse her.

"You're an attractive woman, Inspector." This was as between two attractive women and, in truth, Beverley had to admit that, despite being closer to her last breath than her first tooth, Siobhan Turner was not a plug-ugly female of the species. "Are you married?" When Beverley shook her head, the Professor's widow said, "Would that be because you've also found men to be bastards?"

"Most men. I'm waiting for one of the few who isn't either a bastard or already chained."

Mrs Turner laughed at that. "I was luckier. Oh, yes, the first time I caught one of your bastards with my chain. He was not only a philanderer, he was a crook. Caught by Customs and Excise for VAT evasion, then topped himself on the day before the trial. The second time I got it right."

Beverley had been in the force long enough to know that there was never going to be a right time to dip into the bag filled with awkward questions. "Does the name Millicent Sweet mean anything to you?"

She frowned whilst breathing in smoke. "She worked with Robin, didn't she?" There was a pause and the furrows of her frown deepened. "Didn't she die? Just before Robin did."

"That's right. Did he ever talk about her?"

For the first time she showed something less than total openness. "What's this about?"

Beverley had anticipated this and hadn't come up with an entirely satisfactory response. "I just want to make sure that it was nothing more than a coincidence," she began, but suddenly things were getting rocky. At once Siobhan Turner was asking, "Why shouldn't it be?"

"We have to check, Mrs Turner." This anodyne had no effect at all.

"I don't understand. Why are the police interested in Robin's death? It was an accident, wasn't it?"

"Of course." Beverley layered on reassurance like antiseptic cream on a spot. "Of course. Millicent Sweet's death was natural. With the inquest on your husband's death coming up, I'm just making absolutely certain that there was nothing we've missed. The Coroner's office is fairly certain that it was accidental, I just need to make that one hundred per cent."

It was a fairly good story. It was plausible and Frank Cowper had agreed to back her up should Mrs Turner have a suspicious mind, albeit at a price yet to be negotiated.

"I was told he was drunk. That wasn't like him. And what was he doing in that car park at that time of night?" She finished her cigarette by sucking out its life as if it were giving her more than early death, or perhaps because it
was
giving her early death.

Beverley also had wondered these things, but she wanted answers, not more questions. She glided over Siobhan Turner's suspicions. "As far as you know, he had no enemies, did he?"

She suddenly took a downturn. "Everyone loved Robin." She sipped her drink.

Taking this impossibility with inscrutable fortitude, Beverley asked, "Where did he meet Millicent Sweet?"

"It was before I knew him. They both worked in the same laboratory. He worked for Pel-Ebstein then."

Pel
-
Ebstein
again
.

"So your husband was there when the accident happened? The fire?"

She nodded.

"Did he talk about it?"

She was lighting another cigarette as she tried to remember. A glance at her watch told Beverley that her time was limited.

"There was a fire, I think. I don't know what caused it — he didn't seem to know. Anyway, once it started, it couldn't be put out. Not surprising, judging by what Robin said."

"Which was?"

"The lab was old. Almost a ruin already. There were inadequate fire prevention precautions and the lab was so isolated once the fire started, there was no one to put it out."

"Isolated?"

"Oh, yes. Somewhere off the Scottish coast, I think. He used to joke that the only thing to do was shag the sheep."

Or
each
other
.

Siobhan Turner continued, "You know, I always thought it was odd. Such a big company like Pel-Ebstein, and they have a laboratory like that."

Aware that at any moment Mrs Turner might realize that none of this could be of any relevance to her husband's fall, Beverley could only press on and hope. "What work was he doing?"

A shake of her head. "He would never say." A nostalgic smile. "Said once that it was something to do with national security. I ask you! He was only a virologist!"

Only
?
As
if
such
people
were
failed
roadsweepers
. But it was clearly meant affectionately.

"Then why wouldn't he tell you what he did for Pel-Ebstein?"

"I don't know! He was usually quite happy to chat about his work. Some nights he used to bore me rigid. I couldn't understand half of what he was doing."

Beverley noticed tears in her eyes as she imbibed a large measure of gin. She had lit another cigarette and was giving it a good going over.

"Did he tell you who else was working with him when the fire happened?"

For the first time Mrs Turner seemed to think that this line of questioning was odd. A fleeting frown, though, was the only signal. "Not many people, I think."

"Did he have any records from that time? Research papers, that kind of thing?"

This time she reacted. "What's this got to do with how he died?"