“Double murder in Acton Street!” he called in his singsong voice. “Two ’alf-naked women found broken-necked in artist’s rooms! Stop a few minutes an’ I’ll tell yer all abaht it!”
Half a dozen people accepted his invitation, and coins chinked in his cup.
Runcorn swore again and plunged on, pushing his way between a large City gentleman in pinstriped trousers who blushed at being caught listening to the gossip, and a thin clerk clutching a briefcase who only wanted to attract the attention of the ham sandwich seller.
“See what I mean?” Runcorn said furiously as they reached the morgue and went up the steps. “Story’s got arms and legs even before we’ve said a word to anyone. I don’t know who tells them these things! Seem to breathe it in the air.” He pushed the door open and Monk followed behind him, tasting the sweet-and-sour odor of death, which was always made worse by carbolic and wet stone. He saw from the tightness in Runcorn’s face that it affected him the same way.
The police surgeon was a dark, stocky man with a voice like velvet. He shook his head as soon as he saw Runcorn. “Too soon,” he said, waving a hand. “Can’t tell you any more than I did this morning. Think I’m a magician?”
“Just want to look,” Runcorn replied, walking past him towards the door at the other end of the room.
The surgeon regarded Monk curiously, raising one eyebrow so high it made his face lopsided.
Runcorn ignored him. He chose not to explain himself. “Come on,” he said to Monk abruptly.
Monk caught up with him and went into the room where bodies were kept until they could be released to the undertaker. He must have been in places like this all his professional life, although he could remember only the last five years of it. It always knotted his stomach. He would not like to think he could ever have come to such a place with indifference.
Runcorn moved over to one of the tables and pulled the sheet off the face of the body, holding it carefully to show only as far as the neck and shoulders. She was a tall woman, her flesh smooth and blemishless. Her features were handsome rather than beautiful, and the bones of her cheek and brow suggested her eyes had been remarkable, and now her lashes stood out against the pallor of her skin. Her thick hair was tawny red-brown and lay about her like a russet pillow.
“Sarah Mackeson,” Runcorn said quietly, keeping his face averted, his voice catching a little as he tried to keep emotion out of it.
Monk looked up at him.
Runcorn cleared his throat. He was embarrassed. Monk wondered what thoughts were going through his mind, what imagination as to this woman’s life, the passions that had moved her and made her whatever she was. Artists’ models were by definition disreputable to him, and yet whatever he meant to feel, he was moved by her death. There was no spirit, no consciousness in what was left of her, but Runcorn seemed discomforted by her closeness, the reality of her body.
A few years ago Monk might have mocked him for that. Now he was annoyed because it made Runcorn also more human, and he wanted to retain his dislike for him. It was what he was used to.
“Well?” Runcorn demanded. “Seen enough? Her neck was broken. Want to look at the bruises on her arms?”
“Of course,” Monk replied curtly.
Runcorn moved the sheet so her arms were shown, but very carefully held it not to reveal her breasts. Without wishing to, Monk liked him the better for that, too. It didn’t occur to him that it could be prudery rather than respect. There was something in the way Runcorn held the cloth, the touch of his fingers on it, that belied the idea.
Monk bent and looked at the very slight indentations on the smooth flesh, barely discolored.
“Dead too quickly for it to mark much,” Runcorn explained unnecessarily.
“I know that,” Monk said. “Looks as if she fought a bit.” He picked up one of the limp hands and looked to see if she might have scratched her killer, but none of the nails were broken, nor was there any skin or blood underneath them. He put it down and looked at the other, finding nothing there either.
Runcorn watched him silently, and when he had finished, pulled up the sheet again and walked over to the next table. He lifted the sheet from the face and shoulders of the woman there.
Monk’s first reaction was to be angry that Runcorn had made such a disturbing mistake. Why couldn’t he have been careful enough to have got the right body? This could not be Kristian Beck’s wife. She was very slender, and must have been almost as tall as Kristian. Her cloud of dark hair was untouched by gray, and her face, even without the spark of life in it, was beautiful. Her features were delicate, almost ethereal, and yet haunted by an element of passion that remained even now in this soulless place with its damp air and smells of carbolic and death.
He did not care in the slightest what Runcorn thought of her, yet he had to look up at him to see.
Runcorn was watching him. Through the trouble and the uncertainty in his eyes there was a sudden spark of triumph. “You didn’t know her, did you? You were expecting someone else. Don’t lie to me, Monk!”
“I didn’t say I knew her,” Monk replied. “I know her husband.”
The momentary satisfaction died from Runcorn’s face. “He’s still too shocked to make any sense, but we’ll have to question him again. You know that?”
“Of course!”
“That’s why you’re really here, isn’t it? You’re afraid he did it. Found her with Allardyce and killed her. . . .” His voice was harsh, as if he were angry with his own vulnerability, and deliberately hurting himself by saying something before anyone else could.
But she had the kind of face that affected people in such a way. It was that of a dreamer, an idealist, someone intensely alive, and it twisted some secret place inside to see her broken. He looked up and met Runcorn’s angry gaze with an equal anger of his own. “Yes, of course I’m afraid he did it! Are you saying you’ve only just realized that?”
Now Runcorn had to say yes, and look stupid, or no, and leave himself no reason to change his mind about
