his opportunity...
‘I was told you two were temporarlily suspended pending the accident investigation. That’s just shit.’
‘Due process.’ Ferra replied, shrugging his shoulders. ‘That’s why we’re in today. They know it wasn’t our fault. Doesn’t stop them making you feel as if it was though.’
‘You both okay?’ Calbot asked.
‘Been better,’ Bryant replied, looking Calbot straight in the eye..
‘Yeah, well,’ Calbot continued, unsure of what to say. ‘Not your fault. That’s clear as day. Tough on you though.’
His colleagues simply nodded. There was an awkward pause.
‘Actually, I’ll grab this lot later.’ Calbot looked across to the cashier. ‘You could stand here all day waiting for her to get your change right. Catch you tonight. I owe you both a pint.’
‘Tell us about it.’ Ferra called after his colleague, ‘We were thinking you’d had your pockets sewn up.’
Calbot entered the office to find Sullivan still rifling through the files - a mountain of seen and to-see on either side of her.
‘Sorry, no coffee. The queue was running out of the building’
‘That’s ok.’
‘How you getting on?’ he asked.
‘Fine.’ Sullivan barely raised her eyes from the files, trying to keep conversation to a minimum.
‘Fancy seeing a corpse?’ Calbot asked, reaching for his mobile phone.
‘Corpse?’ Sullivan looked up, her attention finally having been secured.
‘The boat mechanic’s wife. Thought a trip to pathology might break your morning up a bit.’
‘Well, put so sweetly, how could a girl refuse?’
Sullivan was up and out of the door before Calbot could compose a retort.
‘She was flat as a pancake when we got to her,’ Calbot said, finishing off the ham panini he had stopped off for on the way to the hospital. The pair made their way through the main reception avoiding the lifts in favour of the stairs.
‘What?’
‘Well, not completely flat, but... well, you’ll see. Never seen anything like it myself. ‘
They headed down to the basement level, through double doors and into a long corridor with many other corridors running off it. Calbot strode on as Sullivan followed.
‘It’s a maze down here,’ Calbot told her. ‘You’ll get used to though’
‘Pathology departments always seem to be hidden away,’ Sullivan observed.
‘That’s because it’s the last department anyone wants to have to find.’ Calbot responded. ‘Besides, half of the people who come down here don’t come back out again. Not right away anyhow.’
The pathology department located, Calbot and Sullivan pushed the double-doors aside and entered. On the right was the door to a consulting room. There was a name upon it : Prof. Gerald Laytham. Calbot tapped and entered straight away.
Standing at his desk was a tall, avuncular looking man in his mid-fifties. Calbot breezily made introductions.
‘Morning, Professor Laytham. This is DS Sullivan. On secondment from the Met.’
The professor held out his hand in greeting. Sullivan shook it and smiled.
‘Pleased to meet you, Sullivan. I’m fairly new here myself. Welcome, I suppose. Shall we visit the dead?
Laytham led the two detectives out of his office and across the corridor to the pathology theatre. The large cold and austere space had a covered corpse on an examining table at its centre.
‘Not much I can offer you, I’m afraid,’ Laytham remarked, as he peeled back the cover to reveal the wildly distorted shape of what was once a middle-aged woman. ‘Mrs Bassano’s death was instantaneous, there’s no doubt about that. Multiple internal organ rupture, haemorrhaging, you name it. The weight of the boat, plus gravity, and you can imagine what happened. Like stamping on a balloon full of water, really.’
‘Thanks for that, Prof.’ Calbot replied, his ham panini beginning to trouble him.
The viewing over, Calbot and Sullivan made their way back towards the unmarked police car parked outside the hospital. A dog started to bark and Sullivan looked around her. Calbot answered his mobile and the dog stopped. How irritating, Sullivan thought, to be caught out so easily. Calbot smiled smugly and spoke into his phone.
‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Laytham just confirmed the cause of death, guv. Where are you now? What? I can’t make you out. Where? Guv?’
It was Calbot’s turn to be irritated.
‘Bollocks.’
‘What did he say?’ Sullivan asked.
‘Dunno. Couldn’t understand a word he was yelling at me. Oh, except one that is. How do you fancy a trip to the waterfront?’
Sullivan had already decided that, for today at least, Calbot could lead and she would follow.
7
The two detectives had driven along the Rosia Road turning off into a maze of industrial units leading down to the water’s edge. Amongst them stood an older building with a large sign anouncing marine enegineering services. Back in the eighties when the site was being developed, a preservation order had been slapped on it just days before it was to be pulled down. Although no beauty, it was certainly an eccentric looking building , complete with ample living quarters above the vast catacomb of the building itself.
As they approached, Sullivan and Calbot could see an old Mercedes estate had been parked at an alarming angle on the hard standing at the front.
‘Brace yourself,’ Calbot replied, nodding in the direction of the Mercedes. ‘That’s the guv’nor’s car.’
Parking up, the two walked towards the open doors which led to the inside of the large building. Just yards from the doors, Sullivan spoke.
‘Don’t look now, but there’s someone watching us.’
‘Calbot scanned the vicinity. “What? Where?’
‘First floor window. Behind the net curtain.’
Calbot looked straight up at the window, catching a glimpse of a hand as it retreated behind the curtains. Sullivan looked at the Detective Constable with disapproval.
‘I hope you don’t respond to all orders in that way, Calbot?’
‘You what, Sarge?’
‘I said,
‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry,’ Calbot half heartedly apologized as Sullivan led the way into the building.
Both officers now saw that a large area within had been cordoned off with police tape. A hydraulic boat lift rose from the decking within the area - a fifteen-foot motor launch attached to it. Although she had little doubt that it presented no danger, the whole set-up looked fairly precarious to Sullivan. Suddenly, from behind the boat, a middle-aged man appeared wearing old overalls.
‘If this is your boss, tell him to stop. Stop now!’ the mechanic yelled, pointing in the direction of the lift’s control panel. As he spoke, the hydraulic lift sprang to life, the boat dropping a couple of feet in nanoseconds, causing Calbot and Sullivan to spring back in surprise.
Walking briskly around to where they had been directed, Sullivan could see a grey haired and somewhat deshevilled looking man standing at the controls. He seemed unsure of how to work them. Eventually he gave up, switched off the controls and glanced over towards Calbot and Sullivan. Sullivan had assumed, even before spotting the heavy swelling on the side of the man’s face, that this was Chief Inspector Broderick.
‘Bruddy thing!’ the man cursed, dismounting the machine.
‘It’s a skill, you know,’ the mechanic barked. ‘You can’t just turn up and expect to be able to work a machine like that.’
