Tooth and Claw (16 page)

‘Make sure you tidy up after yourselves,’ Jane said over her shoulder as she walked off. ‘Don’t forget – perishable goods!’

Lapslie turned to Emma. ‘How are we doing with the investigation.’

Emma shrugged. ‘It’s currently stalled like an old Austin Metro in a puddle,’ she admitted. ‘You heard the interview with the boyfriend?’

‘Yeah – I was listening to it when you came to pick me up.’

‘His alibi checks out, and I didn’t pick up anything in his attitude that made me wonder. He’s obviously as thick as pig
shit, but equally obviously he felt something for her as close to love as his Neanderthal mind could manage. Oh, and he did confirm that she’d not got any tattoos, which means we still have no real explanation for the flesh being removed from the arm.’

‘Okay. Check on his alibi in more detail. I want to know if his friends might have any reason to lie for him. Maybe he’s supporting them financially or something. I’m not convinced he’s innocent. What about the security cameras around the house?’

‘They were connected up to a home computer system with a humungous hard disc. They must have got someone in to set it up; I can’t see either the victim or loverboy having the technical nous to do it. Sean Burrows took the hard disc away for analysis, but the video for the past two days has been wiped and he can’t get it back.’

Lapslie considered for a moment. ‘Would it take a lot of expertise to wipe the files?’

‘Nah.’ Emma shook her head. ‘Just click on a few files and say “OK” when it asks if you’re sure. One day, the world is going to end like that.’

Lapslie let his mind wander across the other parallel aspects of the investigation. ‘Fingerprints?’

‘Hers, loverboy’s, the cleaner’s, and that was it. The last time the cleaner did a thorough scrub was Monday, and it looks like nobody unexpected has been in the house since then.’

‘We’ve ruled the cleaner out, have we? Please tell me we’ve ruled the cleaner out.’

Emma laughed. ‘Next best thing to the butler doing it, you mean? Yeah, she was at home with her husband and her unfeasibly large family. Eight kids. And all she can do for a living is go out and clean someone
else
’s house. Weird.’

The skin on Emma’s arms was turning to goose-flesh, and Lapslie could feel the chill seeping into his bones too. ‘Okay,’ he said with finality. ‘It looks like we’re stymied unless this stun gun lead takes us further forward. Are there any other lines of enquiry we’re following?’

‘The usual,’ Emma replied, crossing her arms in front of her chest to ward off the cold. ‘I’ve got guys going through her fan mail and her emails, but there’s nothing there obviously weirder than celebrities normally get. No death threats. People seemed to genuinely like her. And we did check on whether she’d been involved in any contentious reports or investigations, but the riskiest one we could find was a voice-over she did for a documentary on growth hormone abuse by athletes in the run-up to the Olympics. And if someone was going to take exception to that, they’d have gone for the reporter or the director first, not the voice-over artist.’

‘Mobile phone?’

‘All of the calls have explanations.’ She frowned. ‘Apart from one. She called a garage in Chingford shortly after she got home. They were closed, but the call seemed to go on for a minute or so.’

‘Get her car checked over for problems. And make sure there was nobody working late at the garage – maybe she’s got a bit of rough on the side, and she was arranging an assignation when her boyfriend arrived home unexpectedly and overheard.’

She frowned. ‘It’s a stretch, boss.’

‘Yeah, but it’s the only theory we have at the moment. You’ve checked her bank records?’

‘Yes. Apart from the fact that she was being paid an obscene amount of money for having make-up slapped all over her and reading off an autocue every night, nothing. No strange payments to drug dealers or blackmailers. She did have a direct
debit to Save The Children every month, which made me feel slightly better towards her. Then again, she could afford it.’

‘Okay.’ Lapslie sighed. ‘Keep the team working on it, but it looks like we’re going to need a miracle to progress this case along.’ He exerted himself, and slid the metal tray containing Catherine Charnaud’s body back into the wall. ‘You and I might as well apply ourselves to this bombing for a while, if that’s what Rouse wants. You head back to Chelmsford; I’m going to hang around here for a while.’

Emma eyed him curiously. ‘Some other lead you’re not telling me about?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s just quiet here. Very, very quiet.’

‘That’s because they’re all dead, apart from Dr Catherall and Dan.’

‘I don’t care what the reason is – I just appreciate the peace.’

Once Emma had gone, Lapslie wandered back to where Jane Catherall was working on Alex Wildish’s blasted body.

‘This may seem like a stupid question,’ he said, ‘but do you have any spare office space around here?’

Jane looked over at him, head on one side like a sparrow. ‘We have a couple of empty rooms with desks,’ she said. ‘Why?’

Lapslie sighed. He always felt awkward, having to explain his neurological condition to people, although he suspected that Jane would be more understanding than most. ‘I’m having some … problems … that mean I need somewhere quiet to work,’ he said. ‘This mortuary is one of the most peaceful places I’ve found. I’d like to use it as a refuge, if I may.’

‘Problems as in medical problems?’

He sighed. ‘It’s called synaesthesia—’ he began.

‘Ah, the rare case where cross-wiring in the brain means that inputs from one sense can trigger responses in another sense,’ she said, straightening up from the corpse.

Lapslie was taken aback. ‘You’ve heard of it?’

‘It’s a fascinating illustration of how the brain works,’ she replied. ‘I have read several articles in neurology magazines concerning the things synaesthesia can teach us about the way we interpret the vast flood of data that enters the brain every moment. Tell me, Mark – what form does your synaesthesia take? The most common, I believe, is where sounds give rise to the sensation of colour, although one of the more interesting ones I have come across is the man who can actually feel tastes on his skin. Chicken, apparently, is spiky, while wine is spherical and cold.’

‘With me,’ he said, taking a deep breath, ‘things that I hear get translated into tastes in my mouth. It’s not everything, but most things I come across in everyday life cause me to have a reaction of some kind. Lorries are flavoured like asparagus. A fountain or a shower taste of cauliflower.’

‘Both of them vegetables,’ Jane observed.

‘Badly chosen examples. My mobile phone makes me taste coffee when it rings. And, before you ask, your voice tastes of brandy and soda.’

‘There are worse things,’ she said, smiling. ‘You must have been asked that question so many times before.’

‘I have, but don’t let that stop you asking anything you want. I realise it’s an interesting subject for anyone who doesn’t suffer from it.’

‘What does your voice taste of?’ she asked.

Lapslie found himself frowning. Nobody had ever asked him that before. In fact, he’d never even thought about it before. ‘I don’t think it tastes of anything,’ he said slowly, savouring the words as they came out and finding them lacking any flavour.

‘That’s instructive. What about your parents?’

‘I don’t remember. They died when I was quite young.’

‘Have you always been synaesthetic?’

‘No – it seemed to develop when I was a teenager, in a mild form, and it suddenly deteriorated about seven years ago. It’s been stable since then, but over the past few days it’s suddenly got a lot worse, to the point where it’s stopping me from carrying out my investigations properly.’ Now that he had started speaking, he couldn’t seem to stop. The words came spilling out of him. ‘And I think I’m beginning to hallucinate. I keep hearing drums. Loud drums.’

She frowned. ‘But this is happening in reverse, surely? You are hearing a noise which is not there, implying that it is being triggered by something else. Does that happen?’

‘Occasionally,’ he admitted. ‘There are one or two tastes or smells that cause the synaesthesia to go into reverse. Seafood that’s going off makes me hear high-pitched violins, for some reason. And when I first entered this mortuary, a year or so ago, the smell of the bodies and the bleach made me hear church bells.’

Jane nodded. ‘And is that what’s happening now? You’re smelling something, and it’s causing you to hear the sound of drums?’

‘It’s possible, I suppose, but what is it?’

‘You said you had heard the sound before. When was that?’

Lapslie considered for a moment. ‘The first time was in Catherine Charnaud’s house in Chigwell; the second time was on a roof used by the bomber in Braintree.’

‘And the cases are not connected?’

‘We have no evidence that they are.’

‘If you ask me,’ Jane said, ‘and you usually do, I would suggest that there is a connection between the murders. They each have a certain smell about them that only you can pick up, and I don’t mean the smell of death. Somehow, I believe you are smelling the murderer.’

Water trickled down the inside of Carl Whittley’s collar, cold and irritating against the skin of his neck but growing into a warmer tickle as it made its way round his collar bone and across his chest. He ignored it as best he could. Intermittent rain was hitting the waterproof groundsheet above his head like fingers impatiently tapping a table, and despite his best attempts to string the sheet between two bushes so that it kept him dry, whilst allowing folds and channels for the water to drain away safely, some of it was collecting underneath and hanging in bulbous, quivering drops before falling onto him.

The only good thing about the fact that the sun wasn’t shining was that the rash on his arms and hands had subsided. The itching was barely noticeable now, and he was grateful. He’d been slathering it with his father’s chlorhexidine antiseptic talc, just in case it was an infection of some kind, but it hadn’t helped. He really needed to make another appointment at his local surgery. He’d been putting it off for weeks, if not months, but things were starting to slide out of control.

Time passed slowly when you were watching a fixed spot and waiting for a bird to fly back to its nest or an animal to emerge from its burrow, the seconds trickling past like drops of water and puddling into minutes, hours, days. Lying there between the groundsheets, feeling the dampness beneath his stomach and the trickles of water investigating his body like fingers, Carl shifted position slightly and reached out his hand to pat
the rifle beside him reassuringly. It was an old Lee Enfield; light and still fully functional despite the number of years since it had been made. He had stripped it down, oiled all the components and put it back together again that morning, gaining immense satisfaction from the way that each part fitted perfectly against the others. He’d bought it from a man he’d met through the Essex Hunt, when he was younger and used to attend the meets.

The rifle had been buried near the estate, like the Semtex and the detonators, but not with them. There were caches of equipment all around the salt marshes, and Carl carried with him a mental map of where everything was, just in case he needed it.

The rain shouldn’t affect the rifle; the film of oil that covered it should protect it against damp, and as long as he kept the barrel pointed slightly downwards then water wouldn’t trickle inside. He would strip it down and clean it again when he had finished with it, but for the moment he trusted it.

A movement out in the salt marshes attracted his attention. It was midday, and the weak sunlight filtering through the clouds cast no discernible shadows, making everything appear flat and slightly unreal. A bush moved slightly, although there was little breeze, and a head poked out. Short, reddish muzzle with white patches, little eyes that looked black from that distance and pointed ears that twitched from side to side, targeting slight disturbances. A fox; barely more than a cub. Probably female, judging from the shape of the muzzle. It was alert, hesitant, aware that something was amiss but unsure what it was.

Carl slid the rifle closer to his body and used his right arm to bring it up in front of him. The stock fitted perfectly into the curve of his shoulder. He slid his forefinger around the
trigger and moved his head slightly to one side so he could see through the sights on top.

The fox trotted a few more steps out into the open. Its fur was a rich reddish-brown. It raised its head, scenting the air, and something seemed to spook it. Carl had taken pains to make sure he was downwind, but the fox could sense that he was there, somewhere.

He centred the sights on the fox’s neck, just below the ears and on a level with the eyes. A shot there would sever the fox’s spinal cord, killing it instantly. If it had been a stag he would probably have gone for a chest shot – larger animals like stags moved their heads more than they moved their bodies, and there was always the chance that a shot might miss because the target shifted position suddenly – but the fox was standing stock still and Carl was at the wrong angle to get the heart.

He squeezed the trigger. The rifle jerked against his shoulder, pulling smoothly backwards rather than kicking up. He absorbed the impact, hearing the deafening
crack
of the bullet as it broke the sound barrier. Smoke momentarily drifted across the sight, obscuring the fox, but when it cleared he saw the fox’s body collapse gracelessly to the wet earth, its neck gashed open and head lolling forward. A spray of blood was caught in the air, drifting like smoke.

The fox lay still. Beads of blood caught on the blades of grass around it, carmine on green.

Silence rolled across the salt marshes like the antithesis of thunder. Birds fell silent. Even the rain seemed to cease, waiting. Then, after a few moments, the birds started to sing again; first one and then, gradually, more and more.

Carl waited for twenty minutes before emerging from his hide.