May sat down beside his old friend. Bryant looked done in. “What happened?” he asked.
“She suffered some kind of seizure. Violent convulsions, uncontrollable muscle contractions consistent with poisoning. It was terrible to watch.” He looked along the deserted corridor, listened to the distant clatter of the awakening hospital. “She seemed like a good woman,” he said sadly.
The administering doctor was about to go off duty, and stopped by to see them. “I wouldn’t want these notes to be used as a basis for any kind of evidential document, Arthur,” she explained, holding the file against her bosom, “but you’d better have them.” Bryant imagined that the last thing she had wanted to do after a long shift was fill in paperwork as a favour to the police, but the young Irishwoman had helped him a number of times in the past, and always did so without complaint.
“It’s very kind of you, Betty. I’ll leave you something in my will.”
“You’d better leave your friend your overcoat,” said Betty, glancing at May. “He’s going to catch his death dressed like that.”
As they walked back along the corridors, Bryant thumbed through the neat handwritten pages. “At first they thought it was tetanus, but it looks like strychnine poisoning,” he said. “I thought it would have to be. She died of asphyxiation and exhaustion. There’s only so long the body can stave off a total attack on the central nervous system before it gives in. The reaction time of the poison is normally ten to twenty minutes, but it was slowed because she’d eaten earlier, and because I was able to administer Valium to reduce the spasms. There was no point in pumping her stomach because the symptoms had already begun. Instead they intravenously administered succinylcholine to slow down the convulsions and take the strain off her heart. I suppose it didn’t work.” He closed the folder.
“What did she eat?” asked May. “Did you see?”
“She ate from the salad bar everyone else used. And she sat through the whole of the first act without showing any symptoms. She was just a few feet away from me.”
“Did she consume anything during the performance? Chocolates?”
“No. There was champagne, both before and during the intermission.”
“Did you see any of it being opened?”
“There were quite a few bottles, but as far as I know they were all sealed. I kept an eye on the one Bella drank from. She uncorked it herself and we all had a glass. John, we need to get everyone back to that box and re- create this thing while it’s still fresh in their minds. And I want the press kept out. They’ll catch wind of it soon enough.”
They ran through the rain to the waiting car.
¦
Dr Raymond Land, the acting chief, was not a man who enjoyed life, and today he was liking it even less than usual. His narrow shoulders rose and fell as he fidgeted with frustration behind his empty desk. His hand frequently rose to pat the greying hair combed in thin bands across his head. He did not want to be here at all, but if he had to be, he wanted his tenure to be a quiet one. This new unit was too experimental, too chaotic, too unregulated for his taste. Hopefully someone else would arrive to take responsibility for the division. All he had expected to do was keep his head down and stop his wayward detectives from embarrassing everyone, but now they had been landed with this ridiculous case, and he could see shame and public humiliation looming.
Land did not look up when Arthur Bryant entered the room. “I know that you and your partner have evolved your own odd methods of working,” he began, attempting to keep a quiver from his voice, “but this investigation will destroy the unit. Four people, Bryant!” he exploded. “This latest death managed to make the late-morning editions. The press are having a bloody field day. The
Bryant was well aware of this. Indeed, he had attended Land’s recent lecture on the subject at Hendon Police College.
“Statistically, we’re catching fewer criminals. You know as well as I do that a murder file can only stay open while we receive help from the public. We can’t be expected to search for eternity. And we’re marking more and more homicides unsolved. Now we have three blood relatives in the same family dead in six days, and so far no forensic indications, no decent witnesses, no outside information. These aren’t random acts of violence, for God’s sake. Someone is playing a deliberate, arrogant game with us. What I want to know is, how can so much happen with so little result from this department?”
“Our problem lies in the evidence,” explained Bryant, “or rather the extraordinary surfeit of it. It’s as if there was a team of people involved in each act, altering everything that might be turned to our use. We have plenty of fingerprints but none of them match. Then there’s the problem of motive.”
“What about this German business the
“The design of the Whitstables’ sacred flame is admittedly similar to the wartime assassination symbol, but I’m positive it’s just a coincidence. There are no other corroborating factors.”
“You’re positive, are you? How did you manage to protect Bella Whitstable so well that she died while she was in your care?”
“As we have yet to discover how she died, I consider that an unfair remark,” replied Bryant, stung. “And I’d like to point out that in a murder investigation of this sort I would normally have expected as many as sixty men to be drafted on to the case. May and I are working with barely half a dozen staff. It’s essential that we talk to the surviving partner at Jacob and Marks, but because their office is in Norwich neither of us has had time to go there yet.”
“I know,” said Land angrily, “and at the moment there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. It’s this place you’ve built for yourselves. How can you expect organization without structure? It’s all very well wanting to conduct your investigations creatively, but you need to cover the groundwork, just as the Met have to. There’s no hierarchy here – ”
“That was intentional.”
“And assuming your information is fully collated, which I doubt, there’s nothing you can do with it because your system doesn’t cross-reference every piece of information received by the police.”
“We have many lines of inquiry that need to be followed,” said Bryant wearily. “What we need is greater manpower.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Land, picking up a folder and removing its contents. “But I don’t need to tell you that there’s a lot of resentment about this unit. Quite a few lads in the Met think you’re being elitist, that the old system isn’t good enough for you any more. They’re waiting for you to hang yourselves. But unless I receive positive proof that someone is physically trying to hinder the investigation, there’s nothing I can do. At least I’ve had a chance to go over your report,” said Land, brandishing a sheaf of paper. Bryant was pleased that he had found the time to do so; he’d been up most of the weekend assembling it.
As little as he cared for the superintendent, Bryant knew that Land was a reasonable man, and at the moment represented their only path to increased resources. It was important to have him on their side.
“Before you go through it, I need to explain something to you,” said Bryant. “It’s something I haven’t put in that document. Little more than a feeling, really. We’re looking for more than just a clever murderer. This is about revenge.”
“Don’t start, Bryant. I have a limit.”
“The methods rely on a knowledge of the victims,” Arthur continued, “and the approach is theatrical, as though each death is intended to act as some kind of warning. The standard investigation procedures can’t apply, because these are cold executions, cutting off branches of the family tree. I’m not sure there’s even any malice. It’s more a matter of – pruning. Something quite unprecedented in my experience.”
“Do you have any information on the Whitstable woman’s cause of death yet?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Land was clearly dissatisfied with his own powerless role in the proceedings. He stood at the window picking a flake of paint from the peeling ledge. “I want our backs covered with this one,” he said carefully. “There are
