Tooth and Claw (24 page)

‘Yes, but there’s more to it than that.’ He gazed back at her, evaluating her the way she had evaluated him. Things were bad enough already. If he told her the truth about what had happened, would he find it used against him one day?

Whatever. Nobody could really predict the outcome of even the simplest set of events. The only proper way to live your life was to stick to a simple set of rules, and one of his was: ‘Tell the truth whenever you can.’ Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly cynical, he would add: ‘If for no other reason than it really confuses your enemies.’ ‘You remember in Catherine
Charnaud’s bedroom, when we were there with the body, I thought I heard drumming? Loud drumming?’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘You thought there was a radio playing.’

‘And again on the rooftop of the shopping mall in Braintree Parkway, where we think the bomber was positioned?’

‘Yeah.’ She was intrigued now, frowning. ‘What’s that got to do with the murders? I assumed it was your synaesthesia playing up again.’

‘It was, but not the way you think. It was as if the synaesthesia kicked into reverse. Rather than a sound causing a taste, a taste – or rather, a smell – caused a sound. A drumming. And Jane Catherall believes that the smell was something to do with the murderer.’ He opened his mouth to tell Emma that the murderer must also have been at the press conference, but he held himself back. That would have been an improbability too far.

Emma looked at him expressionlessly, waiting for him to continue.

‘I know it sounds insane,’ he said urgently, ‘but stay with me. We know the murderer pissed on the rooftop of the shopping centre. What if they also used the toilet at Catherine Charnaud’s house, and left some traces, some splashback? And what if there’s some chemical in their urine that I can smell, something that only they give off?’

‘I guess it’s … possible,’ Emma said judiciously. ‘Whenever I eat asparagus, I can smell it within half an hour. Same with mushrooms. Goes right through my system like a dose of salts. But …’ She moved her hands as if trying to grasp something that was hanging just in front of her. ‘But it beggars belief that these two cases are connected.’ She saw the expression of hopelessness that he was trying to hide. ‘Look, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll treat this theory as if it’s real, and I’ll go back and look for
connections between the two cases. Your part of the bargain is to treat this theory as if it
isn’t
real. As if you’re hallucinating. Tell your doctor. Get him to refer you to a psychiatrist, or a neurologist, or something. While I’m investigating the cases, I want someone investigating you. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that’s the way it has to be.’

He thought for a moment. She was right – it
was
a reasonable request. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that Jane Catherall was right, but people who heard voices in their heads telling them to kill were just as convinced that those voices were real.

‘It’s a deal,’ he said. ‘First thing – get that toilet bowl in Catherine Charnaud’s bathroom checked for traces of urine, and chase up the tests on the urine patch we found at the shopping mall.’

‘I’ll get right on it,’ she said. ‘And when I come back I want to hear that you’ve been talking to someone with credentials.’

After Emma left, Lapslie drifted for a while, suspended in the timeless routine of the hospital. If it hadn’t been for the way the light from the window pushed the shadows across the room he wouldn’t even have been able to tell that time was passing. Breakfast arrived, and he ate listlessly. The food had no flavour, no texture, and he found that comforting. He was tired of tastes.

He must have fallen asleep again, because when he opened his eyes the shadows had moved again and a young doctor in a white coat was standing at the end of the bed holding a clipboard.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was drifting.’

‘Don’t worry.’ The doctor consulted the clipboard. ‘I was just checking your vital signs.’ Lapslie detected something tropical about his voice. Papaya, perhaps? Mango? The drugs had clearly worn off.

‘When can I go back to work?’ Lapslie asked, levering himself upright in the bed.

‘Let’s not rush things.’ The doctor’s face was open, pleasant. ‘Everything in its own time. You’re in the police force, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Stressful job, I imagine.’

Lapslie pursed his lips. ‘Can be. Is that why I collapsed?’

‘That depends. What cases are you working on at the moment?’

A small bud of suspicion began to unfurl in Lapslie’s mind. ‘I’ve got a couple of cases on the books.’

‘What about that newsreader? Is that one anything to do with you?’

‘I wanted to ask a question about my medication,’ Lapslie said, changing the subject deliberately. ‘What drugs am I being given?’

The doctor looked at the clipboard. ‘Just the ones I’d expect, given your condition. Do you have any leads on the case?’

‘What is my condition, exactly?’

‘I understand the boyfriend, Darren Barlow, is still under suspicion. Is that true?’

‘What dosage of medication am I on?’ Lapslie snarled.

‘Are you aware that he already has a criminal record for aggravated assault?’

‘Are
you
aware,’ Lapslie said with quiet menace, ‘that it’s an offence to impersonate a doctor?’ He had no idea whether it was or not, but he was willing to take a chance on it being true.

The doctor smiled. ‘You can’t blame a man for trying. We’ll offer £25,000 for an exclusive interview.’

‘And I’ll offer a broken nose if you don’t get out of my sight now.’

‘It’s a good offer.’ He raised his shoulders and spread his hands in an exaggerated gesture of fairness. ‘Look, we can either interview you here, or we can just make it up and say you said it. Given how doped up you’ve been, you won’t be able to prove otherwise. Be sensible – take the money. We’ll pay cash, if that’s a problem.’

‘
Security
!’ Lapslie shouted.

The doctor backed away, still shrugging. ‘It’s not like you’ve got a career left in the police,’ he said. ‘Give it a few days and you’ll wish you had a nest egg.’

Two nurses ran into the room, but by that time the man had vanished. He explained what had happened, but he could tell from their faces that they were dubious. Rather than press the point, he asked if he could see someone from Psychiatry. He owed Emma that much.

Lapslie obsessed about the fake doctor’s words for a while. So easy to earn a few months’ wages – just give them some juicy quotes and let them do the work. And it wasn’t as if his loyalty to the police force was going to be repaid. He was pretty sure that, after what had happened, he was going to be left to twist in the wind. Early retirement beckoned, and what was he going to do then? Live a silent life for the rest of his days? No noise, no taste, nothing but a flat, empty existence until he died?

‘“And we are here as on a darkling plain, Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night”,’ he murmured softly.

‘Matthew Arnold?’ Another man in a white coat was standing by the end of the bed. He was middle-aged, with an absurdly large grey moustache. His voice was rather like the taste of a rubber balloon. ‘Not often we get anyone quoting twentieth-century poetry in here.’

‘Sorry. It’s a bad habit.’ Lapslie squinted at the man. ‘Who are you?’

‘Dr Garland. From the Psychiatric Unit. Apparently you wanted to speak to someone.’

‘Can you prove your identity?’

Garland laughed. ‘It’s usually me that asks patients that, although to be fair, that’s after they’ve told me they’re either Napoleon or the Deposed Secret Leader of the World.’ He fished around in his pocket, and brought out a laminated pass with his photograph on it. ‘Should do the trick. Doesn’t get me a discount in the canteen, but I can park in the reserved spaces with it.’

Lapslie examined the pass. ‘I realise this looks like paranoia, but I had a journalist here earlier pretending to be a doctor.’

‘Ah. Heard about that.’ Garland gazed at Lapslie. ‘You’re the policeman. Saw you on the news.’ He hooked a chair over with his foot and sat down. ‘Tell me everything.’

So Lapslie did. He explained about his synaesthesia, about the effects on his life and on his career. He explained about the two cases, about the drums and about his collapse. He even found himself talking about Jane Catherall, and the way he trusted her to get to the heart of any problem. He spoke for half an hour in a low, intense monotone and found himself close to tears on two occasions. Garland listened, nodding every now and then; maintaining eye contact and not taking any notes.

‘So that’s it,’ Lapslie finished. He felt exhausted. ‘If you
are
a journalist then I’m buggered, but frankly you deserve a scoop for listening patiently to all that guff. What do you think?’

‘What do I think?’ Garland stretched and glanced out of the window. ‘I’m no expert on synaesthesia, although I know enough to know it’s a neurological rather than a psychiatric problem.
Don’t think you’re hallucinating. Think your colleague’s theory is probably a good first assumption. Assume the cases are connected and see where that gets you.’ He made eye contact with Lapslie again, and his gaze was disconcertingly warm and understanding. ‘Think I can probably help you to integrate the synaesthesia and your work at the same time. There are some exercises I can take you through. Neuro-linguistic programming.’

‘Sounds like brainwashing.’

‘More like brain spring-cleaning. I’ll drop you a line in the next week or so. Make an outpatients appointment.’ He got up.

‘So, can I go?’ Lapslie asked.

Garland shrugged. ‘Assuming there are no after-effects from the fall, I think you can be discharged. I’ll talk to the nurses.’

He left. Lapslie pondered for a moment. He was feeling strangely upbeat.

When he looked up, Dain Morritt was standing beside the hospital bed.

‘Dain.’ Lapslie nodded, surprised and disconcerted. How much had Morritt heard?

‘Sir,’ Dain acknowledged briefly. As before, his voice had no taste.

‘I’m surprised you’re here,’ Lapslie said. ‘I would have expected you to be busy taking over the investigation, tracking down the bomber.’

‘Chief Superintendent Rouse asked me to accompany him. He’s talking to one of your doctors now.’

‘Ah.’ Lapslie hoped to God it wasn’t Garland. ‘He’s not expecting me to be able to continue with the investigation.’

‘You collapsed in front of the assembled press. That doesn’t make him look good.’

‘It didn’t do a lot for me either.’

Morritt continued as if he hadn’t heard Lapslie interrupt.
‘Rouse has to be seen to do something. You’re a liability now. We need to make sure that the chain of command on this case is clear. We’re risking evidence falling through the cracks if the troops don’t know who to report to.’

‘And that person is you?’ Lapslie asked.

Morritt looked away. ‘We both know that Rouse put you in charge of the case because he doesn’t know what else to do with you. Your … disability … makes you difficult to place in normal police work.’

Disability. There was that word again.

‘I’m not blind or deaf,’ Lapslie said quietly. His head hurt, and he was tired, but he knew that this conversation was probably going to set the tone for the rest of his working life, and he needed to get it right. Somehow, the talk with Dr Garland had given him more confidence. ‘I don’t need special access into buildings. I can hold coherent conversations. Once I get out of here I’ll be able to get right back to work, if Rouse lets me. And, just in case the thought had occurred to you, I’m not using disability legislation to force Chief Superintendent Rouse to give me work.’

‘Then why did you take over my case?’ Morritt said bluntly.

‘It was Rouse’s call, but my guess is that before we knew the details of the bombing there was a strong chance that it was either linked to terrorism or gang-related activity. A bomber on a rooftop – think about it. That’s not standard police business. It’s like something you hear about in Basra or Islamabad. Chances were, when this started, that we’d immediately find ourselves working across constabulary boundaries, and possibly with SOCA as well. And separately from that, the press were bound to be all over it like ants on a picnic, looking for discrepancies, things to exploit in the headlines, signs of weakness. Everyone’s watching us on this one. No reflection on you,
but you’ve not had the experience of working at that level. If I had to make a guess, it’d be that Rouse wanted to ensure that he had someone at the top of the investigation with the clout to function at that level.’

‘Not any more.’ Dain’s mouth didn’t smile, but his eyes did, and it wasn’t a friendly smile. ‘I’m back in charge.’

‘And yet …’ Lapslie felt along the fragile thread of thought that was unspooling in his mind. ‘—And yet he’s here. He didn’t send you to tell me. He came himself.’

Morritt glanced out of the window, irritation on his face. ‘I hate these places,’ he muttered. ‘Everyone thrown in together. No dignity.’ Pulling his attention back to Lapslie, he continued, ‘Rouse likes you. God knows why. As far as I’m concerned you’re a dead weight dragging us back and you ought to be cut free and left to sink or swim, but Rouse seems to want to keep you around.’ He smiled, with no humour. ‘You used to work together, didn’t you?’

Lapslie nodded. ‘But I don’t see him being overly sentimental about it.’

‘Overly sentimental about what, Mark?’ Chief Superintendent Rouse said, entering the room. He was in a suit, but he still made it look like he was wearing uniform. He was older than Lapslie, and bigger around the stomach, and the expression on his fleshy face made him look like a bulldog chewing a wasp.

Sitting in bed wearing a hospital gown, Lapslie felt suddenly vulnerable. ‘DI Morritt was just giving me his opinion that you kept me around out of some misplaced sense of friendship, given that we used to go drinking together in Brixton. Or perhaps he thinks I’ve got some blackmail material on you from all those years ago. Naked photographs of you and some Polish waitress.’