Too Much of Water (2 page)

‘Load of bollocks!' said the bully-boy on the other side of the table. But he spoke automatically and there was apprehension rather than conviction in his voice as he went on, ‘I was provoked. It wasn't me who struck the first blow, and you'll never be able to prove it was.' He glanced automatically at the lean figure beside him, hoping for approbation from his brief.

He got none. The young man was a member of the National Front, but he was regretting offering his legal expertise to them. They were all brawn and no brain, the ones who got themselves into trouble. And they blundered on like this young tough, spewing forth hate and insults when they should button their lips and leave the talking to their lawyer. He said as confidently as he could, ‘Mr Benson has nothing to say at this stage. However, he will certainly deny any charges of the sort you have indicated. As far as I can see, there is little or no evidence to support them.'

‘Oh, I think there is plenty of evidence,' said Lambert grimly. ‘When we put what Mr Benson has volunteered alongside the statements which have already been made by his companions, I think you will find that there is a very strong case against him. That is the reason we are contemplating such a serious charge. The court will decide the matter, of course, but I have little doubt that a custodial sentence will be the outcome. Quite a long custodial sentence, I expect.' He nodded his satisfaction on that point, secretly elated by the fear which crept over the big face opposite him as he enunciated the familiar phrases.

‘You'll have to prove it first, pig. And you've bugger all evidence.' But conviction was draining from the voice even as he tried to show his scorn.

‘We've the man in hospital, for a start. Four fractured ribs, a broken nose and internal injuries which are yet to be fully investigated. I shouldn't like to be in your shoes, Benson. Or rather your boots. Especially when forensic get busy on the photographs of the injuries. They're quite hopeful of a match with the boots you wore to kick him so hard when he was down.'

‘He won't give evidence. The silly black sod will keep shtum when …'

The guttural voice faltered and died. His eyes dropped too late to the slim hand his lawyer had raised in ineffective warning.

It was Lambert's turn to allow a smile to steal slowly onto his long, lined face. ‘When your friends have finished intimidating him? I'm glad we've got this on tape, and that you've been so helpful to us with your brief sitting beside you. Because your lawyer only wants to see justice done, of course.' He let his world-weary contempt for lawyers who chose to defend actions such as this flood into his voice.

The thin-faced young man roused himself in the face of the superintendent's contempt. ‘I would remind you that my client has done no more than give his opinion that this man in hospital will not give evidence against him. That is no doubt because Mr Benson is not the man responsible for these dreadful injuries. Any comments he has made here should not be construed as more than a routine “no comment”. The tape to which you refer will not be admitted as evidence, as Mr Benson has not yet been charged.'

Lambert looked hard into the narrow, crafty face, hating it at that moment far more than that of the coarse-featured brute beside him. This man was educated, qualified to practise the law which was the basis of a civilized society. And yet he was sitting here defending the indefensible, the random racially motivated violence where might was right and was all that mattered. Lambert looked in vain for a mistaken fanaticism, for an attitude driven by a conviction, however mistaken. He saw none: despite his membership of the National Front, this slim figure with the sly, knowing features was motivated purely by mischief, by a desire to make trouble and enjoy it.

The superintendent told himself that this was a game which had to be played, a game where policeman and brief knew exactly where they stood. But another, more insistent voice told him that there should be no game, that the stakes were too high for that. And this second voice told him that he was too old for this grim charade, that he was demeaning himself to be going through the motions of a game when there was no game.

He reached across and slammed his hand down on the stop button of the recorder, shouted, ‘Why the hell do you—'

He was saved by the sudden opening of the door. He caught the startled look on the face of his young female colleague as he whirled at the interruption, knew in that moment that he had been saved from an indiscretion which might have cost him dear.

DI Rushton was apologetic but insistent. He glanced at the thug and his lawyer, then took Lambert outside the door and out of earshot. ‘Very sorry to interrupt, sir, but I thought you'd want to know immediately. There's a body been fished out of the Severn down at Lydney. Looks like a suspicious death.'

Relief flooded over Lambert, followed immediately by an access of guilt. Some poor soul was dead, probably murdered, and here was he exulting in the fact. There must be something seriously wrong with his personality to find relief in an event like this.

It was a fleeting guilt. His self-reproach lasted no longer than a moment. It was overtaken by that eagerness to begin the chase which was a familiar feeling after a quarter of a century of detection. Every CID man is a hunter, and the most efficient ones are the men and women who have the exultation of the hunt coursing most strongly through their veins. A murder: the most serious crime of all. Evil clearly defined, after the untidy edges of the violence he had just left behind him in the interview room.

Superintendent Lambert almost raced out to his car, in his eagerness to begin his pursuit of this unknown, welcome killer.

T
he tutor was harassed. He had to see the dean of the faculty later that morning, and he had been told that the students had made complaints about his teaching. He did not know whether it was really so – you could never be sure when that young fool who taught psychology was serious – but it was worrying. When he had begun working at the university, no one had ventured to comment on your efficiency.

And now here was this grave and serious young woman, taking his time up when he wanted to be alone to compose himself. He said, ‘This is not something I should get involved in, you know.'

The girl frowned. ‘But you are Clare's personal tutor, as well as mine. I thought I should come to you first.'

Harry Shadwell pondered the implications of that word ‘first'. Could he be accused of dereliction of duty, if she went to someone else after he had done nothing? Life was all very confusing, nowadays. This was another complication in it: one he could have well done without. As often when confronted with some human dilemma, he was confused. Shadwell knew a lot about the sociology of groups, could give a whole series of lectures about it, but he was not very good with people.

He said desperately, ‘How old is Clare?'

‘Twenty-five, I think. She's definitely older than me. Classified as a mature student, for grant purposes.'

‘Then she's definitely an adult, you see. Students are classed as adults at eighteen, as you know. Clare's much older than that, and definitely in charge of her own life. We shouldn't interfere with the actions and decisions of students. It's not part of our remit as tutors to do so.' Harry smiled weakly as he repeated this useful mantra, and tried not to sound too satisfied with it. He failed dismally.

‘You think we should do nothing?'

Shadwell pursed his lips and steepled his fingers on the untidy desk in front of him, seeing the opportunity to pass the buck back whence it had come. ‘As her friend and flatmate, you must make your own decisions, Anne. I really think it's not our province as tutors to interfere.'

‘Even when she's missed three days of lectures and a personal tutorial?'

‘Students do miss classes. It may be regrettable, but we have to allow them a certain degree of latitude.'

‘Clare hasn't missed them before. She's very conscious of the opportunity that's been offered to her. Most mature students are.' Anne Jackson was surprised at her boldness. It wasn't characteristic of her, but she was annoyed by the inertia of this balding figure with the thick-rimmed glasses and the hunted air.

And Shadwell in turn was irritated by her persistence. It irked him all the more because she seemed to have a valid point. ‘Clare may have gone home to see her parents for the weekend, as you suggest. She may have found sickness or some other crisis there which needed her attention. If she has, I don't think she would welcome our interference. She is, as you have pointed out, a mature young woman of twenty-five, with her own concerns and her own decisions to make.'

It was as dismissive as he could get. He stirred the papers vaguely on his desk to indicate his multitudinous other concerns. Anne Jackson wanted to go on arguing with him, but she saw that she was going to achieve nothing. She stood up and said, ‘I thought you would feel that the disruption of Clare's studies warranted your attention. My own feeling is that something is wrong.'

Shadwell stood up also, glad to indicate that this tiresome interlude was at an end. He sought for some compromise on which to end the exchange, sensing that he ought to give the girl something if she was not to go away and grumble to her peers. ‘It does seem that Clare is a conscientious student, and that this is a disruption of the normal pattern of her life. If she has not returned to her work and her residence by the end of this week, I suggest that you should report her absence to the relevant authorities.'

Anne thought that she had just done that. It seemed not. The problem was back with her. She wondered when she had left the tutor's office just who these mysterious ‘relevant authorities' might be. The police, perhaps.

Like most law-abiding people, Anne Jackson shrank from the thought of informing the police. There was surely some rational explanation for her flatmate's absence. She decided that she had better leave matters as they were for a little longer.

Hadn't her personal tutor just told her that this was the right thing to do?

Detective Sergeant Bert Hook wondered why he had volunteered himself for the post-mortem examination. It might be more than usually harrowing. No one knew how long the corpse had been in the water when the walkers discovered it in the Severn.

He smiled to himself as he went into the laboratory and caught the familiar scent of the formaldehyde. This was the one area where he was better than John Lambert, whose stomach had remained sensitive through a quarter of a century of CID work and experiences like this. Bert knew he wouldn't throw up, would remain professionally inquisitive and alert throughout the pathologist's dismemberment of the corpse. He was too old a hand now to be shocked by the innards of a human body and whatever they might reveal about the life that was gone.

He began his notes on the information which the Home Office pathologist spoke tersely into the microphone at his lips as he proceeded. Oldford CID would have the full report in due course, but Hook could save time by noting anything of interest now. The doctor had the microphone attached to his neck by an adjustable collar, so that he had both hands free for his work. Those hands now moved with swift efficiency into actions which laymen found gruesome but the pathologist had long since learned to regard as purely scientific.

Bert Hook, watching unobtrusively as the police representative beside the table where the scientist worked, tried hard to see the thing beneath those expert hands as merely material for intelligent work and scientific conclusions. But despite considerable and various experience in such situations, he remained a policeman, not a medic. What lay on the bench might now be meat and bone which could be dismembered for its revelations, but Bert Hook's reactions were dictated not by what this material was but by what it had so recently been.

The corpse which had brought him here today remained to Hook a young woman, a life which had been abruptly arrested for ever in its prime.

For that much already had been made evident. The pathologist had told his recorder before he made the first cut on the body that this was a young woman, probably between the ages of twenty and thirty, who had no external evidence of serious disease. Now, in less than a minute, he removed the breastplate to look at the heart and lungs. The quiet, unemotional voice told its microphone that the heart had been healthy; that it was still in its pericardial sack and not enlarged; that it had no apparent abnormalities. It weighed three hundred and forty-seven grams. The pathologist drew a sample of blood from the heart to send for toxicology. You could be much more certain of your conclusions with a corpse than with a living being.

The lungs contained only a little river water and had been darkened by the sucking in of blood, the pathologist announced in calm, deliberately matter-of-fact tones. DS Hook knew well enough what this meant. This woman hadn't died by drowning. She had been dead when she was put into the river. The ‘suspicious death' of the police jargon had in this moment been translated into a coroner's court verdict of ‘murder, by person or persons unknown'.

And now, without any alteration in tone, the pathologist announced calmly, ‘The cause of death is almost certainly strangulation. There is severe bruising about the throat and the carotid artery has been crushed.' It was what Hook expected. There was other, more superficial damage to the young skin, cuts and abrasions which could have occurred during the body's journey down the river, but the blackness around the throat had always suggested a strangling.

Body odours are what any attendant at a post-mortem examination remembers most vividly. Bert Hook was not going to retch and run for the lavatory bowl, as many novices in these things did. But he had to steel himself and his nostrils all the same as they reached the fourth part of the examination, the stomach and its contents, when the scents of the investigation prevailed over even the smell of the formaldehyde, which had originally seemed all-pervading.