Rubbernecker (29 page)

‘You gave up before the war memorial,’ Patrick corrected her.

Sergeant Price blushed and snapped the flap shut.

She lowered her voice and added, ‘I think he knew Darren Owens.’

Williams looked at her sharply. Darren Owens who had been found in the park, up to his elbows in a disembowelled jogger? ‘What makes you think that?’ he asked.

Sergeant Price shrugged. ‘They said something to each other in Reception. I don’t know what, but I’d definitely say they’d met before.’ She lifted her cardboard cup in a toast of ‘You’re welcome,’ and disappeared through a doorway.

Emrys Williams watched her go, and – with a growing sense of foreboding – wondered just how much he’d really discovered when he opened that fridge door this morning.

If the boy knew Darren Owens, then a severed head might be just the start of it.

He looked through the flap again with new eyes.

This is how things change
.

When Sarah Fort finally got the call, it wasn’t the one she’d been expecting.

A Sergeant Price told her that Patrick had been arrested.

‘For what?’ Sarah asked. ‘Not wearing his helmet?’

‘Resisting arrest, theft and murder,’ said the officer, apparently reading off a list.

‘
Murder?
’ said Sarah.

‘Yes,’ she answered, as if this was old news.

‘Murder of
whom
?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that at this stage.’

‘Oh,’ said Sarah, because she didn’t know what else to say. She thought of the picture of the dead girl, and of the countless birds and animals Patrick had dissected over the years, and wondered whether he really did have it in him to kill a person.

Probably.

Didn’t
everyone
have it in them, if circumstances were bad enough?

‘Has he admitted it?’ she asked.

‘We haven’t questioned him yet. Is it true that he’s handicapped?’

Sarah had long since stopped getting angry about
handicapped
. Everything was a matter of degree. Patrick
was
handicapped, in the most literal way, by his condition – just as
she
was handicapped by
him
.

She said, ‘He has Asperger’s Syndrome.’

‘Is that like Alzheimer’s?’

‘No, it’s like autism. He finds it difficult to interact with people.’

‘Oh.’ Sergeant Price sounded disappointed. ‘We thought he was just rude.’

‘Yes,’ said Sarah, ‘he
is
rude. But he can’t help it.’

‘Hm,’ said Sergeant Price. ‘That’s what my sister says about
her
kids. But they can’t
all
be bloody autistic, can they?’

‘Probably not,’ agreed Sarah.

The officer sighed heavily. ‘Well then, in that case, he needs to be interviewed in the company of an appropriate adult. Can you come down to Cardiff?’

Sarah thought about that for so long that the officer said, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello,’ said Sarah back. ‘Yes, of course.’

She hung up and stared across the kitchen for an hour or two.

Then she fed Ollie and went to work, feeling better than she had in a long, long time.

Emrys Williams told DCI White to expect Mrs Fort any time now. Then he hung about, reluctant to go home, hoping White would remember him when it came to putting a team together – and when he spoke to the press. He also wanted to tell the head-in-the-fridge story to the day crew in person.

That was worth it. Colleagues laughed and shook their heads and said ‘lucky bastard’; WPC Dyer made a little paper nameplate for his desk that read HEAD BOY, and, before the hour was up, some joker had put a doll’s head in the vending machine where the Curly-Wurlys ought to be. It all gave him a warm glow.

And then – just after nine a.m. – a well-spoken young man came in, identified himself as Dr David Spicer and said he had come to report the theft of a head from the university medical school.

And just like that, the Big One was over. Emrys Williams could almost
hear
his career farting around the room like a balloon, and dropping into a corner, all sad and shrivelled and a bit of an embarrassment.

Patrick Fort was not a murderer; not a crazed killer; nothing to do with Darren Owens and his empty jogger. The Big One was just a student prank that had gone beyond the bounds of the acceptable because the student in question had a tentative grasp on what was normal human behaviour and what was not.

Williams felt the disappointment like a physical thing – a sharp pang in his belly and a burning neck of shame.

This
was what they’d all remember now, every time they opened the staff-room fridge.

Still, he was not the type of man to leave someone else to clean
up
his mess, so he told Wendy Price he’d sort this one out on his own time, and then ushered Dr Spicer over to his desk and took his statement.

The more Spicer talked, the more it all made sense to Detective Sergeant Emrys Williams. Patrick Fort had been expelled and had apparently taken the head out of some kind of revenge.

‘He can’t help it,’ said Dr Spicer.

‘So we’ve been told,’ sighed Williams.

‘He’s not a bad kid. As long as we get the head back, I doubt the university will want to press charges.’

‘That’s very generous.’

‘What
will
happen to him?’ said the young doctor.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Williams, because that was true. ‘Would you mind reading that, Dr Spicer, and then signing your name at the bottom?’

Williams watched Spicer read the statement carefully and then sign his name.

‘Thank you.’

‘Not at all,’ said Spicer, standing up. ‘Where’s the head?’

‘It’s with our forensics team.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I would very much like to get it back to the university as soon as possible.’

‘Of course,’ said Williams. ‘But until we decide whether to charge Patrick Fort with a crime, the head is evidence.’

Spicer nodded slowly and chewed the inside of his cheek. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘The trouble is that the body is supposed to be released to the family on Monday for cremation. Obviously that can’t happen if it’s incomplete.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Williams. ‘I can assure you we’ll get it back to you as soon as we can.’

‘By Monday?’

‘As soon as we can.’

Still Spicer didn’t let it go. He stood there, drumming his fingers on the corner of Williams’s desk. ‘What if I personally guarantee that we will not press charges against Patrick?’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Williams. ‘We have made an arrest and I cannot pre-judge the outcome of our own independent inquiries.’

‘What inquiries?’ said Spicer. ‘Surely it’s quite clear what has happened? It seems like a waste of police time to do more.’

‘It seems that way, sir, I agree. But we have our procedures. Believe me, when we are able to release the head, the university will be the first to know. Now, I’m on my way home, let me walk out with you.’

Williams pulled on his jacket and let them both out through the double doors. Spicer thanked him and left, but DS Williams stood and stared through the glass after him for so long that Wendy Price said, ‘You all right, Em?’

‘Yes,’ said Williams. ‘Just thinking.’

He was just thinking about Dr Spicer’s reluctance to leave the head in police custody.

And about the jagged scars around the tip of his index finger.

They
did
look like bite marks.

50

IT HAD BEEN
a long night, but Emrys Williams still didn’t go home. Instead he copied Dr Spicer’s address off the statement, then drove his ten-year-old Toyota down to the Bay, against a tide of red-shirted rugby fans walking into town for the international.

It was only ten a.m. This wouldn’t take long and it was on his way.

Sort of.

He swung the car around outside Dr Spicer’s flat, and started to drive slowly back along Dumballs Road. It was Saturday, and most of the industrial units on the broad, grubby street were closed by steel shutters.

Williams stopped twice, once to look at broken glass that turned out to be a Heineken bottle, and again towards the station end of the road for a pigeon that refused to take off as he approached. It strolled defiantly across the road while he sat like a lemon, instead of like a vastly superior being on vital police business. Rats with wings, his father called pigeons, but Emrys Williams had always rather liked them – especially these city pigeons with the iridescent throats and all the attitude. So he watched in vague amusement as it strutted between two parked cars and hopped on to the pavement. If he hadn’t, he would never have seen the short skid mark that had left rubber on the kerb.

He double-parked and got out. Only one tyre mark was visible
from
the road; the other was under one of the newly parked cars. He got down on his knees to look. There were fragments of red plastic in the gutter under the car. He picked up the largest of them, which was about the size of his thumb. It looked like part of a lens cover. A brake light, maybe?

He checked the lights of the parked car, then stood up and stared around. He was standing near the corner of a brick-built unit. SPEEDY REPAIRS AND MOT. Williams walked to the end of the building, which was the last in the row before the multi-storey car park. Between the two was an alleyway, a patch of littered grass, a steel fence.

And, behind the fence, a bicycle.

It was years since Emrys Williams had climbed anything, and he’d got heavy or his arms had got weak – one or the other. Maybe both. He got halfway up and then just hung there, and three men in Wales shirts stopped and shoved him the rest of the way with encouraging grunts and a general-purpose ‘Ooooooooh’ as he hit the ground on the other side.

He brushed himself down from the ungainly drop and thanked them, and they waved and went on walking.

Williams gazed down at the bike. It was an old Peugeot ten-speed racer, but it had been in good condition until whatever had happened had happened to it. Now it was just a Chinese puzzle of blue and chrome, the chain drooping and the wheels twisted rubber loops.

The lens of the rear light had been smashed. Williams put the thumb of red beside it.

It matched.

He hauled himself back over the fence with new gusto and twisted his ankle as he dropped on to the pavement. He cursed out loud and vowed to start jogging again. He walked feelingly back to the car and drove the short distance to the car park.

He found one of the few spare bays on the second level and got
out
. From here he could see the back of the station, through the bare branches of a tree.

I had to jump out of the car park and into a tree
.

With curiosity bubbling in his belly, Emrys Williams walked as briskly as his ankle allowed to the concrete wall that hemmed the second level. It was chest high. You’d have to be mad to jump it. Mad or desperate.

Cars were parked all along the wall and he squeezed behind them.

Directly opposite the tree, the concrete wall was cracked and missing several large chunks, which lay on the ground, along with more broken glass – clear and orange this time. Headlight and indicators.

Williams leaned against the wall and looked over the parapet. It was a good twenty-five feet to the grass below. The dark branches of the tree were flecked with raw cream, where boughs and twigs had snapped and splintered as something large had fallen through them.

Something as large as Patrick Fort.

It was eleven forty-four.

Emrys Williams thought the dissecting-room technician looked like a cadaver himself. He was gaunt and pale and had a funereal air about him. He also smelled of rotting flowers.

Williams did his best to hold his breath while he spoke, which was less than successful.

‘I understand you are missing one of your heads,’ he opened.

Mick Jarvis looked at him in almost comic astonishment.

‘
What?
’ he said. ‘First I’ve heard of it.’

‘Really?’ said Williams. ‘That does surprise me. Would you mind checking?’

The technician immediately strode to the back wall of the hangar-like room and started unzipping what Williams now realized were body bags. He kept his distance.