Post Mortem (21 page)

Then there was the head. They spent a lot of time on that, fussing and talking, considering and commenting. The whine of the Stryker saw and the smell of burning. The flaps of skin pulled down either side. The face peeled away. It was a three-man job. Neal taking the weight of the metal vice so that no more damage would be caused and the technician levering the plate of bone away with a chisel. Lizzie remembered her mother slipping the blade of a knife under the metal plate of a pickling jar. The vice lifted. The pathologist leaned in with tweezers, examining, probing. The camera too, pointing in and peering. Eventually the brain: lifted from the skull by the pathologist, bubbles of something like blackcurrant jam emerging from the grey cerebellum. The body was empty. A hollow shell. No purpose to it. But this eviscerated cadaver, this corpse, this meat and bone and gristle, this skin and hair and hands, this seeming, this absence: this
thing
was still, strangely, Cosmina. Lizzie was there to bear witness to that.

Jack was interviewing Lizzie on tape. He took notes. Lizzie sat with her elbows on the table and her chin resting in her hands. Another takeaway coffee was getting cold on the desk beside her. She must have been falling asleep because Jack said, ‘You all right to continue?'

She covered her face and yawned. ‘Yes.'

‘So you put the door in?'

‘Well, that is, we got the witness to do it.'

‘You got the witness to do it?'

She remembered Hadley's eyes.
Watch yourself
.

‘Yes, there were no other units available and neither of us could manage it.'

‘Tell me about that.' He was scribbling in his notebook.

She told him about going up the stairs. The first sight of Cosmina, bathed in tungsten light. The relief of the tattoo of her pulse. Joe's laughter and hers.

The memory of Cosmina, feisty, arguing her corner, made her think again, abruptly, relentlessly, of that new image recently garnered from the mortuary's fluorescence. She'd felt something like embarrassment: the ridiculous formality, the time it took to confirm that this was indeed Cosmina. Almost out of good manners she had looked for longer than the identification required, as if demonstrating the act of looking. Now she realized that it was really a kind of hypnosis. The body had seared itself into her and it would always somehow be with her. It was one of those behind-the-curtain moments offered to police.
Here, Officer, look, see
. The corpse held a staring fascination, like a sum that could never be worked out.
Continuity
. Yes, that was the essence of it: Cosmina alive, arguing, laughing. The Gap sweatshirt and the too-tight stone-washed blue jeans. And – the swish of the magician's curtain – the progression. Cosmina naked, dead, silent, hollowed. Cosmina with no more say on any matter and indifferent not only to Stefan's fate but also to the pathologist's tools that sheared her open. The whine of the bow saw, the change of tone as it bit. The smell of burning.

‘Hang on a minute,' said Jack. ‘I need to clarify this. The witness was inside the crime scene?'

Lizzie felt her face tighten. This was the essence of her job – preserve the scene, avoid contamination. She had not only not saved Cosmina, she had also let down the investigation.

She said, ‘I'm really very tired.'

‘We're nearly done now.'

‘The witness – Joe – he had let himself in of his own accord.'

‘It's not a problem,' Jack said, confirming for her that it was. ‘And then what happened?'

She saw it through the detective's eyes. Christ, the whole borough had been up there. No excuse.
No one unnecessary in the scene
. Where had her training gone? How many officers had been up there? How many paramedics? The detective was patiently listing them all. Doing his job. She could imagine him talking behind closed doors about how useless the response team's actions had been. Fucking amateurs.

‘Tell me about Cosmina.'

‘She didn't want to go.'

‘Tell me about that.'

‘She said she loved Stefan . . .'

From this distance it all felt very different. Then she had been busy saving a life. Now she was seeing all the mistakes she had made.

‘And how did you persuade her to leave?'

She sighed with exhaustion and despair. She could think of nothing to say but the truth. ‘It was Hadley got her out. He threatened to section her.'

‘To section her?'

‘Yes.'

‘OK.'

The detective made another of his notes.

She remembered Hadley's own words:
Hardly a lawful use of the Mental Health Act, was it? You going to make me face a disciplinary for saving that girl's life?

She went to the canteen to pick up one last cup of coffee. The DC had finished the interview and left to brief his boss. The murder squad had downloaded the images from the digital camera that she
and Hadley had used at the hospital. She had been told to exhibit the prints before going off.

Other officers acknowledged her as they made their way to the tables with plates of sausages and fried eggs. ‘All right, Lizzie?' She was experiencing the brief celebrity that went with being a significant witness to a murder. She said hello and thanked them for their interest and support and generally did what was expected of her. Inside was a hidden disintegration. One minute she had thought she was one thing and the next moment she realized she was another thing altogether. Climbing the stairs, finding Cosmina: in her story of herself she had been a heroine. Now it turned out that she had been doing everything wrong. She had not been a heroine at all. She had been a fucking amateur. Not only had she not saved a life. She had also not protected the crime scene of a murder investigation. What was she for, then? What was the point?

She took a deep breath against the tears that threatened. They were brimming up inside her and she felt a tight constriction in her throat. The woman behind the counter handed her a bowl of porridge and Lizzie turned to find a seat. Hadley was sitting at a table at the back of the canteen. He had a full English breakfast and a copy of a tabloid on the table in front of him. He caught her eye and offered her a questioning thumbs-up. She hesitated and then walked over to him.

He said, ‘All right?'

She wanted to cry and for a moment she couldn't speak. He tilted his chair back and stretched.

‘OK. Bloody sit down, then.'

Lizzie sat. She had a pain in her throat that felt as though it was choking her. Hadley put out a huge paw and held her arm. He said nothing and this, somehow, was the kindest thing in all the world. Then, suddenly, he laughed out loud. It was a huge, generous guffaw, and marvellously genuine. He couldn't speak for laughter
and Lizzie found herself smiling even though she didn't know what was funny. Finally Hadley spoke through helpless snorts.

‘I can't believe we got that poor fella to put the door in.'

He was again engulfed in laughter, and suddenly she found it funny too. She managed to get out, ‘The look on his face when you asked him.' She paused to laugh and then was able to continue. ‘You look like a strong fella!'

Hadley said, ‘Bet the Met wishes it had sent more bloody units now.'

They laughed till they cried. Lizzie coughed away the throat constriction. They both wiped their tired eyes. There was a brief silence. She took a mouthful of porridge and laughed again.

Hadley said, ‘At least we did our best.'

‘Mmm.'

Stuffed away in some corner of her mind was that image of Cosmina. The woman was a stranger. She should not have had the right to see her dead on a trolley.

She said, ‘Hadley, I told the DC you threatened to section her.'

Hadley shook his head at her. ‘Honestly. You are a—'

‘I know. I'm a chocolate teapot.'

He gave a grudging smile. ‘Doesn't matter.'

‘Sorry.'

‘No, don't be. Honestly. It won't matter.' Then, after a pause, ‘They make you feel bad?'

She began to cry. All at once it had engulfed her and she was able to give into it and admit to being exhausted and out of her depth. All the mistakes she had made, and after it all, Cosmina just dead, dead, dead. The smell of the mortuary. The bag of liver. The glass jar of her brain. What was the point? What was the fucking point? Christ, without Hadley they wouldn't even have got into the house. They wouldn't even have
gone
to the house. And she hadn't managed to keep Hadley out of trouble. Snot was coming
down her nose. Hadley handed her one of the canteen's scratchy paper napkins.

‘At least blow. You're letting down the uniform.'

She checked to see if he was being serious and saw his sceptical face. He put his paw on her again. ‘Do you know what you are?'

She shook her head. ‘Like I said, a chocolate teapot?'

‘No, a shit magnet.' He laughed again. She felt relief but also an indefinable sensation, as though she were finally giving up on something to which she had always clung with determination.

‘Sorry,' she said again.

‘You 'fessed up to everything?'

‘Yes.'

‘The witness in the crime scene?'

‘Yep.'

He shook his head. His reaction was ambivalent: she read it as part compassion, part frustration, but was uncertain of the ratio of the ingredients. ‘Listen,' he said. ‘If you had ever wondered, then there's your reason why we call them cunts. They always know best but they're never there when you need someone to put the door in. Didn't your mum and dad teach you anything?'

She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Here was no place to try and express the confounding complexity of what her mother and father had taught her. Somehow Hadley's comment was another refutation of everything she had thought she stood for. The world was not a complex place: it was straightforward.

‘Don't worry,' he said. ‘Fuck 'em. It'll all come out in the wash. You'll see. They'll have their fun – the solicitors, the press, all the know-nothings – casting doubt and criticizing, but it won't make any difference. Stefan killed her. We were the last people she spoke to and you've got it all in your pocket book. I bet you did a good job too, Lizzie. I'm sure you've written a good statement. You can do that, at least. After all the quibbling and griping, the
bastard's going down for sure. Life. That's what matters. Don't worry about it. You wouldn't believe the shit I've survived in nearly thirty years in the job. To your own self be true, Officer. We did our best. End of.'

They finished their coffee. Hadley got up. He opened his bear arms and she allowed herself to be hugged. He lifted her from the ground and squeezed her and then put her back on the floor. He stepped back and contemplated her with an ironic smile.

‘If I were you,' he said, ‘I'd finish off what you've got to do and go home before you confess to any outstanding murders or anything.'

She should have listened to him.

She had sat in the parade room waiting for the terminal to load. It took ages, the blue obstinate screen. While she waited, she flicked through the A4 images of Cosmina that she and Hadley had taken in the hospital. The bruised face, the yellowing skin provoked an uncanny sensation in her. It was some stepsister to horror and grief, an emotion peculiarly alienated by the fact that she hadn't really known Cosmina. It was both to feel and not to feel. Like watching a gripping film without the sound on. All she had known of Cosmina was these bruises, this argument about leaving the flat, her surprising confidence with a digital camera, and then her emphatically dead body. And then she had seen that other thing . . . She shook her head to dispel the memory. The chest cracked open . . . Of course these things were true, but she did not want to see them starkly. Tired as she was, the image of Cosmina on the gurney in the brightly lit tiled room presented itself to her again, unavoidable and emphatic. A woman transformed into evidence, an object for investigation.

Lizzie passed her hand over her face. She turned to the photograph of Hadley and herself that Cosmina had taken in the hospital. They were both laughing, pale under the hospital's fluorescent strip lighting.

‘Christ help me,' Cosmina had said.

‘Best police force in the world, I think you'll find,' Hadley had answered.

Gazing at the image, Lizzie discovered a sudden new respect for Hadley's claim. She had always thought of him in a certain way, as a type of PC, and she, with her intelligence and her education, she could sum him up – as she realized she undoubtedly had – as an aphorism. He was a dinosaur, an old sweat. Now she had stepped through a looking glass and Hadley appeared altogether different, the hero unmasked. Faced with a firearms incident, an unhelpful Control, an obstructive victim, he had battled single-mindedly to save Cosmina. He had persuaded that young man to put the door in. He had gone into an abandoned house with no backup. He had forced Control to send him more officers, and when Cosmina had refused to go to hospital he had threatened her with an unlawful use of his powers. And in all this, what help had Lizzie really been? She had tagged along, followed his lead. Hadley's readiness to ignore the rules seemed now not something dubious, but rather an act of unpublished courage repeated endlessly, day after day, for twenty-seven years. All that law, all those standard operating procedures: without Hadley they would still be standing outside the door. It seemed to her all of a sudden that courage lay somewhere other than the place she had imagined, and that integrity too was quite a different thing.

Downstairs, Stefan was in custody, waiting. Was he lying on the plastic mattress, catching forty winks? Perhaps he was one of those bastards who made a show of reading the fucking Codes of Practice. Or was he having a custody meal from a polystyrene tray? Coffee or tea?
I asked for sugar!
Was he sitting in an interview room with his lawyer advising him and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act protecting him? Would he say
No comment
, or would he say,
She's always stealing my beer
?