Finally he was left with two items, a watch and the old man’s walking stick. The watch was a heavy Rolex and Henry looked at it longingly. One day, he promised himself, and logged it, tagged and bagged it, then moved on to the stick. It was silver tipped with an intricately carved wooden handle. Henry held it up and his eyes skimmed it, but just as he was about to drop it into a polythene bag, something on the shaft caught his eye, about two-thirds of the way down from the handle. He frowned, then packed and did the paperwork for the stick.
The only things he hadn’t recorded were the keys.
He held them up on the simple ring and said, ‘But no ID,’ to himself. He scratched his ear thoughtfully.
An old man, out and about at night with no form of identification. How weird was that? Well-dressed — slightly dashing if anything — well nourished, a bit of money in the wallet. And a not-so-old bullet wound in the ribs.
Unless something turned up in the meantime — such as, ‘My old grandad’s not come home,’ and here Henry thought that unless grandad was a dirty stop-out, that ‘meantime’ might well have passed as it was now well into the early hours — one of the first tasks of the morning would be to flood the area with uniforms knocking on doors armed with an artist’s impression of the old man’s face, as a direct photo might have been a tad too gruesome to shove under peoples’ noses at breakfast time. Although Henry realized he was making an assumption, he’d lay odds that the guy was on his way home — but from where and to where?
Already the questions and ideas were starting to mount up and Henry’s mind, fatigued as it was, was starting to marshal these thoughts. He sat down at the desk in the mortuary office and jotted down a few ideas about the way forwards with the investigation in the notebook. He’d hardly had time to scribble down three headings on separate pages — ‘Victim’, ‘Location’, Offender’ — when someone came into the office and interrupted him.
It was DS Alex Bent, who tapped lightly on the glass door, even though it was open. He was drenched, looked exhausted. ‘Boss?’ he said, quietly but urgently.
Henry squinted at him. ‘I was just about to solve this murder by cracking the intricate medieval and religious code I found in this book,’ he said seriously, tapping his finger on the notebook.
‘Really?’ Bent said, Henry’s little joke flying right over his head.
‘Yeah — so this better be good.’ Henry closed the notebook, realizing it was completely the wrong time of day to have a stab at humour. ‘What?’
‘Well, you being the only SIO in spitting distance — do you want to turn out to another job?’
The shiny, perfectly sharpened dissecting knife was poised above the old man’s chest, ready to make the first incision: the classic cut down the middle of the body from the soft skin just below the Adam’s apple, all the way down to the pubes. From that first cut, the outer layers of skin and subcutaneous fat would be pared away to expose the ribcage which, depending on its condition, would be removed by use of shears, not unlike those found in a garden shed. It would then be lifted off like the lid on a square biscuit tin. Only difference was there wouldn’t be any goodies in this tin, but a squashed heart, lungs, liver and kidneys — organs that would then be hacked out for examination.
‘Don’t even think about it.’ Henry said mock dramatically as he swung through the mortuary door.
The pathologist, Keira O’Connell, paused, keeping the knife hovering just inches above the flesh like the Sword of Damocles. She inclined her head and peered over her facemask. ‘And why not?’ she asked, voice muffled. ‘Has this man actually died of natural causes, meaning a post-mortem is no longer necessary?’
‘Would it be possible to delay?’ Henry asked.
‘Give me one good reason.’
‘Another shooting’s come in — young lad up on Shoreside. No more details as yet, but I’d like you to come to the scene if possible.’
‘OK…’ O’Connell checked the clock and for the benefit of the recording equipment stated the time and date and that the PM was being suspended for the time being, then asked the mortuary technician to turn off the machine. He obeyed, using a remote control. ‘Not much detail you say?’ she said, stepping away from the slab and replacing the knife in its position in the line of tools, then removing her mask, ‘but you must have something?’ she asked Henry. She walked towards him, peeling the latex gloves off, then unpinning her hair, which she shook free and patted into place, even though the expensively cut bob tumbled out perfectly.
Something clogged up Henry’s throat as he replied, ‘No, nothing,’ dreamily.
Ten minutes later the body had been stored on a tray in the chiller, his belongings secured in a locker — Henry taking the key — and they were en route to the scene in his car.
‘You know, if this isn’t a murder, I’ll still have to claim a call-out fee.’
‘It’s a murder. I have enough faith in my officers for them to be right about that — so you’ll be handsomely recompensed for your troubles and you can continue to live in the style to which you’re accustomed. How much for tonight? A grand, I’m guessing.’
She guffawed. ‘I wish.’
They drove on in silence for a few minutes. Rain continued to lash down heavily, the windscreen wipers trudging manfully against the deluge that was like buckets of water being thrown repeatedly over the car. A strong wind was also getting up.
Henry glanced surreptitiously at his passenger — just as she was doing the same at the driver. Both shuffled uncomfortably as their eyes locked briefly.
‘You’re a superintendent now?’ O’Connell said. Henry nodded. ‘Well done. Last time we met I remember you being unceremoniously dumped off an investigation — the Asian woman who’d been set alight.’
Henry swallowed at the memory. Not one of the highlights of his topsy-turvy career.
‘Dave Anger, wasn’t it?’ O’Connell went on. ‘Your boss at the time? He’d got it in for you. Your nemesis, I think you called him.’
‘Yeah,’ Henry growled and added creepily, ‘but vengeance was mine.’ He raised his eyebrows.
‘And we went out for a drink.’
‘Mm — and I blew it, as I recall.’ So she did remember. He squirmed.
‘You did, rather. All me, me, me.’
‘C’est la me,’ he shrugged. They’d reached the outskirts of Shoreside. He drove to the front of the shop parade and pulled up. There was a lot of police activity.
‘And I was in a relationship then, and you were, and then I wasn’t, and you were… and then I wasn’t…’ Her voice dried up and he yanked up the handbrake. She gulped. ‘Still not,’ she said and gave Henry a meaningful look.
‘Just my luck,’ Henry said. He paused, sighed, then clambered out into the rain again. He was almost thankful for the drenching which had the instantaneous effect of dousing his easily aroused ardour. Just the thought of what might have been had been enough to trigger numerous snapshots in his mind’s eye of the ways in which a pretty female pathologist might be naughty. He tugged his hood over his head, banished the images, and dashed over to Alex Bent, who, having made to the scene ahead of him, was waiting under the awning that covered the walkway in front of the shops.
O’Connell was right behind, having flicked open her mini-umbrella. She also carried a medical kit with her.
The trio made their way to the rear of the shop parade — although the term parade was a bit of a euphemism. The only two shops left on the block were the chippy and a newsagent. The others — formerly a hairdresser, bakery and launderette — had closed, were ‘steeled’ up, rather than boarded, victims of the credit crunch and the encroachment of vandalism and intimidation from Shoreside yobs.
Henry’s face ticked uncomfortably with the memory of the last serious incident he’d dealt with on the tract of ground behind the shops, which was part car park, part rubble heap, part fly tip. A wild young man had been stabbed to death in a gang feud, a case that not reached a satisfactory conclusion.
Henry had lost count of the number of crimes committed in this area. This no-man’s land between civilization and the jungle that was the Shoreside estate. People crossed it at their peril, night or day, to get from the shops to Song Thrush Way. And that did not include the incidents that had taken place in the alley itself. Gangs congregated and sorted out their differences, drug deals were done, rapists and flashers lurked, robbers waited, hiding patiently for their next victim… and occasionally, people were murdered. Henry was very much aware of the local name for the alley.
It was such a hot spot that it had the unusual honour of having its own incident location ID in the police logging system. Unusual because most incident locations related to large areas, such as council wards, not mini-
