“He said the girl was in ana-ana-‘ Renfield stuttered.
“Anaphylactic shock?” asked Kershaw.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“It’s an extreme allergic reaction to a particular substance,” the young forensic scientist told Longbright. “Her immune system would already have been compromised because she was a junkie. Under anaphylaxis, the system decides that some alien substance poses a danger, and overreacts by creating huge quantities of the antibody immunoglobulin E. The body releases an excess amount of histamine and the throat closes up, making it difficult to breathe.”
“What happens after that?” asked Longbright.
“All sorts of problems can occur,” said Kershaw, “but mainly, immunoglobulin E expands blood vessels, causing a drop in blood pressure, which leads to loss of consciousness.” As if to avoid letting Renfield off the hook, he added, “There are usually visible signs a paramedic would immediately notice. Swelling and rashes on the skin, or on the lips and tongue if it was something ingested orally.”
“Even Finch didn’t know what had set her off,” snapped Renfield. “It’s a mistake anyone could have made. He said it could have been any number of things.”
“That’s right. Nuts, drugs like morphine or X-ray dye, dental painkillers, something in the dope she’d taken,” Kershaw confirmed.
“Finch’s competence in diagnosing her isn’t the matter at hand,” said Longbright. “I want to know whether he made you so angry that you attacked him.”
“Of course not. God, he’d made me angry often enough in the past. You think I couldn’t take it from him? He had a go at me, and I left.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us when we first talked?” Longbright demanded.
“Because he and his lads dropped off a woman at a morgue who wasn’t dead,” said Kershaw disgustedly. “He didn’t turn up at Bayham Street with a paramedic, just one of his constables. When they’d found her in the doorway, her body was cold to the touch and showing signs of cyanosis. They couldn’t find a pulse, so they made an assumption, when a hospital might have saved her life.”
“It wasn’t you who found the body, was it?” said Longbright. Renfield was too experienced to have made such a mistake.
“My PC is nineteen years old, Longbright. The kid’s in shock; it’s his second week on the beat. She would have died anyway, if not this week then the next. Finch didn’t care about that. It was my call, but he told me he was going to report the boy.” Renfield looked miserable. “He never let anything go. That’s why he wouldn’t support your promotion, Kershaw. He didn’t trust you not to make the same kind of mistakes.”
“So before you left the mortuary, you waited until his back was turned, then tore the pages out of his report and destroyed them.”
Renfield shook his head violently. “No, I never saw any report. I didn’t think he’d had time to write it up, and wouldn’t have touched it if he had.”
Longbright left the interview room in a bad mood. Whatever else Renfield was, he wasn’t a liar. She went to Bryant’s desk and sat down behind it, rubbing her eyes, hoping that being in his tobacco-stained room would somehow provide her with inspiration. On the chart before her was the time line of Finch’s final hours. All the question marks and gaps she had left were now filled in, and they were no closer to the truth.
She checked the clock on the wall: two forty-five P.M. Two and a quarter hours left before the Princess turned up with her entourage to find the staff under arrest and the place in shambles. She could almost see Kasavian and Faraday rubbing their hands with glee. There was still one loose lead to tie up. The missing boy, Lilith’s former lover, Samuel. She was considering the problem when Kershaw knocked on her door and stuck his head through. “Can I let Renfield go, Janice? He’s kicking up a fuss.”
“Apply the same restrictions I’ve applied to everybody else, then get back to the morgue. I want you to test out something for me. It’s a ridiculous idea, but it’s the only one left. This is my last shot before we’re out of time.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Assume Finch was in pain, on medication, not thinking clearly. He knew he wouldn’t live to enjoy his retirement. I want you to see if it’s at all possible…‘ She wondered if she could even bring herself to say the words. Kershaw waited obediently. ”Could it have started with an accident? Knowing that he was dying and contemplating suicide, could he have pulled the ultimate practical joke on his old nemesis? When the fan blade came loose and fell on him, you don’t think he could have decided to make it look like murder, just to get the most bitter last laugh of all on Arthur?“
43
Longbright looked around at Arthur Bryant’s memorabilia. On the opposite wall was a sampler stitched in gratitude by the Oregon Ladies’ Sewing Bee after he had solved the Chemeketa Rain Devil case for them in 1963. It read
She missed him looking over her shoulder, discoursing on any bizarre subject that took his fancy. She missed the stagnant reek of his pipe, his furtive watering of the sickly marijuana plant beneath his desk, the tottering stacks of mouldy books he dumped on her, the impossible requests, the childlike innocence in his eyes whenever she suspected him.
She studied the books on the shelves, trying to imagine Bryant in the room, arguing with John about methodology. He’d be stepping off on a tangent, refusing to follow the obvious routes of detection, leaving the doorstepping and data-gathering to others while he blew the dust from volumes of ancient myth and folklore. It was amazing how he managed to reach accurate conclusions by examining the case from the wrong end, and no matter how often he explained the process to her, it still didn’t make sense. She read the spines on the opposite shelves:
Lilith Starr had suffered an allergic reaction to something other than the chemicals in the recreational drugs she had taken, but what? Longbright took down
She looked up to see April dashing past with a bowl of wilted nasturtiums. “What are you doing?” she called.
“The Princess is going to be here with half of the Home Office in two hours, and we’ve fulfilled none of the requirements on Rosemary Armstrong’s list.” April looked as if she could do with some help.
“A few crummy old garage flowers aren’t going to make any difference to our future now,” said Longbright despondently.
“No, but until I can come up with something better they will have to do,” April replied, not pleased at having to shoulder the responsibility alone.
“April, what did you do with that photograph of Lilith Starr? The one her father gave me?”
“It’s on your desk in the file. Want me to get it?”
“Please.” Longbright placed herself in Bryant’s seat, spreading her hands on his desk, amid the perfumed aroma of exotic rolling tobacco and the weird aftershave he favoured that no-one had sold for forty years. April returned with the photograph and handed it to her.
She examined Lilith’s face, her clothes. Her arms. Digging into the desk drawers, she found Bryant’s horn-
