Page 11

chapter eleven

The morgue at the hospital was deserted.

James sent Hartridge back up the stairs to enquire where the pathologist could be, while he paged through the book at an empty reception desk for any sign of when the body he was looking for had been admitted.

The victim had been found just under a week before, so he only had to go back one page, and he found her, logged in at 11 am the morning the allotment farmers had called the police.

They had brought her to this hospital, declared her dead, and sent her straight down here.

The signature of the doctor was indecipherable.

A door opened behind him and he turned to find a man a little way down a dimly-lit passageway, rubbing his head like he’d just woken up.

The man staggered toward him and then came to a stop, swaying slightly in surprise at the sight of him.

“What time is it?” he asked.

James checked his watch. “Nine thirty.”

The man rubbed his head again, then belched. Thumped his chest.

James studied him. He couldn’t work out if he was overworked, or drunk.

Then he shuffled closer, and the smell of him hit James.

The mystery was solved.

“Are you drunk?” he asked, politely. It was a rhetorical question.

“No.” The man managed half-hearted affront. “Worked all night, is all.”

An orderly or a doctor, James wondered. Given the lack of concern he seemed to have at being found in the state he was, James guessed he was a doctor.

He looked down at the book he was still holding. “I would like to be shown a body that was brought in five days ago. And your post mortem report, please.”

“Who’re you, then?” The man dragged a white coat off a hook on the wall, and struggled to put it on.

“Detective Sergeant Archer, of the Metropolitan Police.” He pulled out his warrant card, but the man waved it away without even looking at it. “And you are?”

The man flashed him a look, thumped his chest again. “Dr. Venables. Who’re you looking for again?”

James turned the book around to face him, pointed to the entry.

Venables squinted at the page, then shrugged. “This way.”

He shuffled over to a door, unlocked it with the key that was already in the lock, and then entered. James followed, and found himself in a cold room with four stretchers, although only two were in use.

“This one,” Venables said, and pulled back the covering sheet.

James looked down. “No. The victim in this case is a woman.”

“Oh.” He shuffled to the second body, and pulled the sheet back a little too hard, so the victim’s upper body was exposed.

James pulled the sheet up again, so it lay across her collarbone. “What was cause of death?” he asked.

Venables walked to the end of the stretcher, lifted the clipboard that hung from the back. Stared at it for a long time. “Haven’t got ’round to this one, yet.”

James studied him for a beat, then turned on his heel and walked out of the room. He knew some of the fury he felt was a result of what had happened with Wilcox, but he no longer had patience for incompetence or disinterest.

He had seen a telephone on the reception desk and he lifted it and put a call through to Dr. Jandicott. While he was arranging for the body to be transferred into Jandicott’s care, Venables had come out after him, and was now leaning against the wall, arms and legs crossed.

“So I don’t have to do the post mortem?” he asked when James replaced the receiver.

“No, the body will be transferred to Dr. Jandicott.”

“That’s good.” Venables pushed away from the wall, then turned as the door to the stairs opened and Hartridge stepped out.

“Eh?” Venables asked, looking between them.

“We’re going, Hartridge.” James noted down the time the body had been admitted to the hospital from the book, and then turned back to Venables. “You can go back to bed now.”

Venables looked at him, unsure, and then muttered something as he stumbled back down the passage, into the room he’d originally emerged from.

“What is that smell ?” Hartridge waved a hand in front of his nose. “Whisky?”

“I think so.” James led the way up the stairs.

“What did he say was the cause of death?” Hartridge asked.

“Fortunately for us, he hadn’t started the post mortem, because given the state of him, you couldn’t rely on a single finding.” Which wasn’t right.

James asked the way to the superintendent’s office, and made a formal complaint.

“That’ll cost him his job,” Hartridge said as they got back into the Wolseley. “The staff I asked when I went to look for him said he’s often absent and has a drinking problem.”

“Then they should have told the superintendent. If this becomes part of a criminal case, and it came out in court what kind of state he’s in while on the job, there’d be no justice for the victim.” James was aware he sounded strident, and softened his tone. “If he’d called it an accidental death, and we weren’t looking into it, then whoever’s responsible would have gotten away with killing her, and that’s not right.”

Hartridge was silent as they drove away, and James didn’t try to draw him into conversation.

He headed over the Thames to speak to a Mrs. Jenkins, who’d reported her daughter missing.

Of the eight missing reports, Mrs. Jenkins had made hers ten days ago. That would coincide with the death of victim two almost exactly.

They pulled up outside a home in East London, a tiny three story row house, sitting at the end of a long stretch of red brick houses, all with doors opening straight onto the street.

Mrs. Jenkins’ door was black and nicely painted.

James knocked and waited, aware of eyes on him and Hartridge from up and down the street.

A few curtains twitched across the road, and passers-by slowed, watching them with eyes that held more than a little hostility.

The door opened a little and he saw a sliver of a woman’s face.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Jenkins? I’m Detective Sergeant Archer, here to follow up on a missing person’s report you made over a week ago?” He held out his warrant card.

She made a sound of surprise and pulled the door open. She was standing in house slippers and had obviously just taken off her house coat at the sound of the knock, as her jumper was on a little skew, and the coat itself swayed on the coat stand.

“You have news?” she asked, breathless. “News about my Beth?”

“No,” James said, and he didn’t hide his regret. “We’re just getting more information, if you don’t mind?”

She looked suddenly deflated, but shuffled back a little more. “Come in.”

“This is Detective Constable Hartridge,” James said, as he stepped in. “We don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“If it would get me my Beth back, I’d stand around on one leg and chat until hell froze over.” Mrs. Jenkins straightened her jumper, and her eyes snapped. “Would you like tea?”

“No, thank you.” James could see she was far too upset to make them some, anyway. Best to get this done.

She led them through to the sitting room, and he sat carefully on the edge of a sofa, while Hartridge wisely chose to stand against the wall.

“Can you tell me the circumstances of Beth’s disappearance?” James had the report, but he detected a distinct lack of detail in the wording.

“You have the report the police took from me?” Mrs. Jenkins asked, looking at the folder he held in his hands.

“I do, but I’d prefer to hear it from you. DC Hartridge will take notes while you talk, if that’s all right?”

She looked over at Hartridge, gave a nod, and settled down in the armchair she’d chosen. “She was coming home from work at the hospital. She’s on the late shift, and it was one of those nights we had the bad fog.” She waved her hand at the window. “Dark and gloomy all day, it was.”

James felt something in him stir. Percy, the little boy who lived opposite the site where the woman was left by the killer, had said it was foggy the night he saw the man with the wheelbarrow.

And Mr. Stanhope said there’d been a storm the night before they found the body in the ditch.

This killer used the weather to give himself cover. James made a mental note to check when the next fog or storm was predicted.

“And as far as you know, she left at the usual time and was coming straight home?” James asked.

Mrs. Jenkins gave a tight nod, her lips pinching under her teeth. “Spoke to the nursing sister myself, I did. She told me my Beth left at the usual time. Said she was looking forward to getting home out of the pea soup.”

“Can you tell us her usual route?” Hartridge asked, and James looked over at him with approval.

It was a good question.

Mrs. Jenkins told them the bus she took, and her usual route from the final stop to home.

“Does Beth have a dentist?” James asked.

Mrs. Jenkins made a sound, standing quickly, arms tight around her middle. “You’ve found someone? Someone dead?”

“We investigate suspicious deaths all the time,” James soothed her. “We’d just like to have her dentist’s name for the report in case we do think we’ve found her and need a method of identification.”

Suspicious, but unwilling to go down the road she’d started on any further, Mrs. Jenkins gave them the name of a local dentist. She let them look around Beth’s neat, spotless room and then saw them off from her doorstep, arms still tightly crossed, as if she might unravel if she let go.

“You think one of the bodies is Beth?” Hartridge asked as they walked toward the Wolseley.

“She didn’t run away. She has no reason to leave her mother to worry like that. Her room, the way her mother talks about her . . . they were close. And when we talk to the hospital where she worked, my guess is they’ll tell us Beth was never so much as late, let alone one to miss nearly two weeks of work.”

If she’d taken a few days to go off with a man she’d met, or off on a holiday she hadn’t told anyone about, she’d be back by now.

“If she’s not one of the three bodies we’ve already got,” James said, “then it’s because we haven’t found her yet.”