The Chalon Heads Page 17

  The pathologist shakes his head sadly. ‘Rigor has disappeared from the facial muscles, and there is no sign of the onset of putrefaction. But the temperature that the doctor who attended the scene took from the inside of the mouth was only five degrees centigrade, on a warm summer’s morning, so it’s quite possible that the head was frozen or chilled, and if that was the case, I couldn’t hazard a guess. Sorry,’ Mehta continues. ‘We’ve taken swabs of the cosmetics, to see if we can match them to those found in the house and the apartment.’

  ‘Could you say how long they might have been applied before death?’

  ‘That would be clever, now wouldn’t it? But I’m afraid not. I can tell you that her eye makeup hadn’t been disturbed by tears, and her lipstick could have been smudged by a kiss, but I couldn’t add any scientific substance to what you can observe for yourself.

  ‘Shall we proceed?’ Mehta asks, and takes hold of the head while Annie turns away for a scalpel. While Mehta holds Eva steady, Annie plants the tip of the knife firmly into her scalp above the left ear, and draws it slowly across the top of her head until she reaches the right ear. Then she works back across the cut, easing the scalp away from the skull with the blade, until the whole forward half is loosened. She puts the scalpel aside and takes hold of the flap of scalp with both hands and folds it neatly forward, until it lies, inside out, over Eva’s face. She picks up the scalpel again and detaches the back half of the scalp similarly, pulling it away so that the top of the skull is entirely exposed.

  Annie turns back to the bench and lifts a power tool from a wall bracket. It has a circular saw blade at one end, and a heavy waterproofed cable extending from the other to the wall. Mehta nods to Brock to step back, while he continues to hold the head still for his assistant.

  Brock turns away. He has known young officers to become fascinated, even obsessed, with this place and others like it, taking every opportunity to attend autopsies, not because they were ghoulish but because they thought that they sensed, in the calm efficiency and control of the procedures, and the lurid reality of the evidence, that such places contained some great truth about their own mortality. But this is an illusion, Brock thinks. The only truths here are the little ones, commonplace and sordid, that Mehta and his colleagues can tease out of the fabric of broken bodies.

  Annie’s bone saw is screaming as it cuts two clean arcs across the top of Eva’s skull. At last it stops, and Annie sets it aside. She prises a steel tool into the cut, turns it, and the top of the skull cracks open like a coconut shell. She lifts away the separated piece, and looks inside to the brain.

  Brock is thinking of Starling’s final comments, about people being merely sacks of potatoes. The sentiment is undeniable in here. Yesterday, perhaps, this beautiful young woman was a personality, changing other people’s lives; today she is being taken apart with cool precision on a stainless-steel disassembly line for failed human machines. The miracle isn’t that these human contraptions stop functioning all of a sudden, but that they somehow keep going for as long as they do.

  Which is Keller’s modest aim in life, apparently: to keep going until tomorrow. It seems a reasonable ambition.

  Annie has removed Eva’s brain from the skull, and turns to lay it in the pan of a weighing machine on the side bench. Dr Mehta releases his grip on Eva’s head and flexes his arms as Annie puts her hands under a running tap, then takes up a marker pen and writes on the white board fixed to the wall above the bench:

  name: Starling

  brain: 1386

  Meanwhile Mehta has begun work on Eva’s brain. He holds a long, straight-bladed, square-ended carving knife, which he uses first to separate the brain into its component parts—cerebrum, cerebellum and stem—and then to cut them neatly into quarter-inch slices. He spreads them out on the steel worktop, with the expertise of a chef on a TV cooking programme. Each slice has the pattern of a spreading tree, like a sectioned floret from a cauliflower. Mehta lifts three pieces and drops them into a jar of fluid in front of him. The rest he leaves for Annie to scoop into a small plastic bag while he runs his gloved hands under the tap and returns to the head on the table.

  ‘All looks normal. But I was wondering earlier about her nose . . .’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’

  Gently he folds Eva’s scalp back over her missing section of skull, and considers her face. ‘Dear, dear.’ He chuckles. ‘Those naughty dogs! Didn’t leave us much of the left side, did they? Labradors, you say? I’ll be a bit more respectful next time I meet one. But the right nostril is quite intact.’ He lifts a scalpel and slices into it. ‘Ahaa! Have a close look, Brock!’ Mehta beams.

  ‘If I must. What am I looking at?’

  Annie stands impassive in the background while the two men peer at Eva’s nostril. She removes her protective glasses and watches unblinking as her boss clowns around. Brock is aware of this, thinking that she looks like every efficient female assistant contemplating an older male supervisor, silently willing him to stop wasting time so that she can get on with her next job. He wonders if Kathy ever looks at him in that way.

  ‘The membranes in the lining of her nose. They’re damaged, see? In fact . . .’ Mehta delicately scrapes the flesh with the tip of his scalpel ‘. . . there’s been so much tissue damage that the cartilage dividing the nostrils has been eaten into. And it looks as if she may have an abscess in the bone of the sinus.’

  ‘Cocaine?’ Brock suggests.

  He nods. ‘She had quite a habit.’

  ‘So, she wasn’t such a good girl, after all. A heavy user, you say?’

  ‘A gram-a-day girl,’ the pathologist pronounces decisively. ‘Probably been on the stuff for at least a year.’

  ‘Really?’ Brock says. ‘That is interesting.’

  ‘Didn’t you expect it?’ Mehta asks.

  ‘We haven’t found any drugs so far.’

  ‘What about signs of bleeding?’

  ‘Nosebleeds?’

  ‘Yes. Especially at night, while she slept. Cocaine shrinks the blood vessels on contact when it’s inhaled. The circulation to the membranes would be impeded, and tissue would die and become detached. A girl this dedicated, her pillow would very likely have blood on it in the morning.’

  ‘Interesting. Something to look for. Many thanks.’

  ‘Not to mention the money,’ the pathologist goes on. ‘A gram would set her back—what? A hundred quid? That’s forty thousand a year. Strictly cash. Good grief, that’s more than my kids demand for their pocket money!’

  Five minutes later Dr Mehta is still chuckling about that as Annie puts the plastic bag of Eva’s brain back inside her head, packs out the cavity firmly with shredded cotton waste, replaces the skull top and sews up her scalp with twine. By the time she’s finished, and has hosed down the head and table, Eva’s right profile looks almost herself again, wet from a swim in her pool, apart from the nasty damage to her nose.

  10

  Sew Sally

  Kathy spotted Brock on the far side of the reception area, talking into his phone. From the set of his shoulders and the look on his face she thought he was having an argument, and waited for several minutes while his conversation continued. Eventually he snapped the instrument off and turned towards her, frowning deeply. He hardly acknowledged her as they went out into the street, and continued to be preoccupied as they walked to the car.

  ‘Been raining, has it?’ he asked suddenly when they reached it, as if he’d only just noticed the wet pavements and tarmac shiny black.

  ‘Yes, we had a thunderstorm. More on the way. Didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘You can’t hear anything down there. Did you track down Sally Malone?’

  ‘I’ve got two addresses, both in South London. One her home in Peckham, and the other a business address, Sew Sally.’

  Kathy got behind the wheel, conscious of him watching her as she put the car into gear and moved off. She continued to have the unset
tling impression that he was examining her as she drove south towards Vauxhall Bridge.

  ‘I called at the Cinema Hollywood on the way. They were taking the manager in to make a statement. She says that she knows Eva well, but insists that they never saw her accompanied by a man.’

  Brock said nothing.

  ‘Anything useful from Dr Mehta?’ she asked eventually, when his silence showed no sign of breaking.

  Brock grunted and turned to stare gloomily out of the window at the post-modernist office building that MI6 flaunted at the south end of the bridge. ‘It seems that Eva used cocaine.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘As much as a gram a day.’

  ‘Hell. Surely Sammy must have known.’

  ‘One would think so. We’ll have to search the house and the flat again. Leon and his pals need to come up with more than they have so far.’

  Kathy wasn’t sure if there was criticism in this. The old man definitely seemed out of sorts. ‘That reminds me, Leon phoned. He wants to meet us after we’ve seen Malone,’ she said. ‘He suggested six o’clock at Queen Anne’s Gate. He said it’s important, but he wouldn’t let on what it was.’

  Brock grunted again. He was wiping the side of his face with a handkerchief, then examining the white cloth. He caught her sideways glance at him as she drove.

  ‘I thought . . . Stupid question, but I haven’t got any spots of blood on me by any chance, have I?’ he asked.

  ‘No. No, there’s nothing.’

  He put the handkerchief away. ‘I always feel I need a shower when I come out of that place.’

  ‘Doesn’t he give you a face mask?’

  ‘He doesn’t bother when they’re HIV negative. But the test is a quick one, and not a hundred per cent reliable.’

  ‘He seems to know what he’s doing.’

  ‘Hmm. His assistant is good. Annie. Have you met her?’

  Kathy shook her head. Large dollops of rain were beginning to smack the windscreen again, the tyres swishing as they hit puddles on the road surface.

  ‘Very efficient. Don’t know how she puts up with old Sundeep.’

  ‘No choice, I expect,’ Kathy said, and immediately became aware again of Brock’s glance in her direction.

  Sally Malone’s home was one of a curving terrace of small late-Victorian houses, each with its own rather absurdly grand portico sheltering its front door. There was a builder’s skip at the kerb in front of hers, and several of the houses appeared to be in the process of restoration. Estate agents’ boards cluttered the silent street. There was no reply to their knock, so they returned to the car and drove west along Peckham High Street towards Camberwell.

  They found the sign Sew Sally in a side-street over a grimy shop-front behind which a chaotic variety of refurbished over-lockers, blind hemmers, sewing-machines jostled for attention. There seemed to be the hint of an electric light in the depths behind, despite a Closed sign on the door. The rain was streaming down now, warm as soup. Brock got out of the car, strode over to the doorway and hammered with his fist. Kathy used an old newspaper abandoned on the back seat to cover her head as she ran after him. As they waited, him knocking again, she watched the shoulders of his grey suit turn dark as the water saturated the material.

  ‘No luck,’ he growled in disgust, and was about to turn away when the blind covering the inside of the glass door twitched, and a sharp little nose peeked around its edge, at about waist height. Suspicious eyes examined them up and down, then the door clicked open on a chain.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ a female voice complained. ‘Can’t you see the flippin’ sign? We’re closed.’

  Kathy flicked her warrant card in front of her eyes. ‘Let us in, will you, love? We’re getting soaked.’

  The face disappeared and the door banged shut. Then a chain rattled and the door swung open for them. They pushed inside and stood dripping on a grubby strip of carpet, confronted by a small elderly woman armed with a large carving knife.

  When Peter White had described Sally Malone as a ‘character’, he’d had in mind one of those tough little cockney women portrayed in films about the Blitz, a sparrow who could take any amount of punishment without complaint, and whose indomitable spirit more than made up for her diminutive size. This was somewhat fanciful, for although she had begun life in poverty, Sally had experienced enough years of comfort to have developed an irritating whine when things didn’t go her way. But her toughness was beyond question, as was her combativeness where her own interests, and those of her friends, were concerned.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ She peered up at Brock’s face.

  There were no lights on in the interior of the shop, and the daylight filtering through the rain-drenched shop-front gave the place an eerie underwater atmosphere, like a submarine graveyard for old sewing machines. Brock, with water dripping from his grey hair and beard, looked the part of King Neptune.

  ‘Hello, Sally. It’s been a long time.’ He waited for her to register his face.

  ‘Gawd,’ she muttered finally, her eyes widening in alarm. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We’ve come to talk to you about Eva. When was the last time you saw her?’ Brock stooped towards her, peering down at her upturned face.

  ‘Eva? Sammy’s Eva?’

  ‘That’s the one. When did you last see her, then?’ Brock insisted quietly.

  ‘Months . . . years ago. I don’t know.’

  Brock frowned at her, looking unhappy. ‘How about last week?’

  ‘Last week? No, no!’ The suggestion seemed to alarm her more. ‘Why are you asking?’ she countered, trying to get some of the initial truculence back into her voice. ‘Why do you want to know? Are you looking for her? Is she missing or something?’

  ‘She’s dead, Sally. Eva’s dead,’ he said flatly.

  Sally froze. ‘No. How?’ Her whisper was barely audible above the swish of the rain against the window of the shop and the rumble of distant thunder. ‘Has there been an accident?’

  ‘She’s been murdered.’

  Sally’s little fist rose to her mouth, muffling her cry. ‘Oh, Gawd! Sammy?’

  She looked from one to the other of her visitors, aware of them both studying her reactions.

  ‘Sammy?’ Brock prompted.

  ‘Is Sammy all right?’ she asked, forcing firmness into her voice.

  Brock nodded.

  ‘When did this happen? I didn’t see nothing in the papers.’

  ‘You will tomorrow.’ Brock looked around them in the gloom. ‘What about a cup of your famous extra-strength tea, Sally? I think we could all do with one.’

  She seemed reluctant but when Brock showed no sign of relenting she led them down a short corridor, jammed with cardboard boxes and drums of fluids, to a small room at the back lit by a fluorescent ceiling baton. There was a table in the centre of the room, and seated at it a man even smaller and more wizened than Sally, with grizzled grey hair and a pair of thick-lensed glasses perched on the end of his nose. He looked up from the machine he was repairing, a tiny screwdriver in his hand.

  ‘This is my partner, Rudi Trakl,’ Sally announced, and to him she added in a mutter, ‘Old Bill.’

  The little man raised his eyebrows. ‘Trouble?’ he asked, in a quavering voice.

  ‘You remember Sammy Starling, what I used to work for, Rudi? His wife’s been murdered.’

  ‘No!’ His eyes followed Sally over to the kitchen sink, where she returned the carving knife to a drawer and filled a kettle with water. Outside the window a small cat spotted her and began plaintively scratching the frame. Bedraggled, it was pressed against the glass to avoid a cascade of rainwater from a broken gutter overhead, which drowned its cries. Sally ignored it. ‘Go on, then,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘I’d like to wash my hands, Sally,’ Brock said. ‘Kathy’ll fill you in.’

  He followed her directions back along the corridor, and they heard a door close and the sound of a tap. Kathy sat down and gave Sall
y a short account of Eva’s kidnapping. The little woman sat motionless on the other side of the table, hands clenched on her lap, from time to time exchanging glances with Rudi, until Kathy came to the discovery of Eva’s head, when Sally’s hands shot to her mouth again, smothering her cry.

  ‘That’s horrible!’ she moaned, voice quavering. ‘Who could do a thing like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kathy said. ‘Who?’

  The kettle began to whistle. Sally got shakily to her feet, unplugged it and began the automatic actions of making a pot of tea. ‘I still don’t see why you should come to me,’ she muttered. ‘It’s three years since I’ve seen Sammy. I haven’t seen either of them since I moved out.’

  Kathy noted that this wasn’t quite what she’d said when Brock had asked her how long it had been since she’d seen Eva. ‘How long did you live with the Starlings?’ she asked.

  Sally sniffed. ‘Since 1964.’ She swore softly at the cat, which was still scratching the window-frame, and reached across the sink to open the window for it. It slid in quickly, and stalked, still mewing, to the fridge. Sally followed it and reached inside for a bottle of milk. She poured some into a saucer for the cat and the rest into a small jug, which she placed on the table with the pot of tea.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ she complained to Kathy, perking her head towards the sounds of a running tap.

  Kathy shrugged. ‘What made you go and live with Sammy and his wife in 1964?’ she asked.

  Sally put some mugs on the table and sat down with a sigh. ‘My Colin was killed in an accident on the buses. Brenda and Sammy had just moved north of the river, to a big house in Tottenham. Brenda felt sorry for me, being left on my own, and asked if I’d like to do their cleaning, and soon I was living there, doing their cooking an’ all. That would have been when I first met Mr Brock, too,’ she added.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. That was his beat then, Tottenham.’

  ‘He came to Sammy’s house?’ Kathy was intrigued. She knew almost nothing about Brock’s early career.

  ‘I suppose. I didn’t get out much, bringing up the little kid.’