Death Watch

35

The Ark was already bathed in early morning sunshine, the brickwork sickly orange, shimmering in a mirage created by the morning rush-hour on the ring road. Shaw had a large sheet of paper spread out on the Land Rover’s bonnet: a plan of the Queen Victoria hospital, Level One. The spreading, almost organic chains of rooms and corridors reminded him of a map he’d once seen of the Valley of the Kings. Ancient designs, superimposed on shapes, on patterns long lost. Valentine leant on the side of the Land Rover, a mobile to his ear, getting the latest from Twine.

Shaw drank from a takeaway cappuccino, bouncing on his toes. Valentine cut the line to the murder suite. ‘We’ve got two hundred rooms — well, they call them rooms, some are nothing more than cupboards,’ he said. He didn’t have a hangover, despite the late-night binge. But the confrontation with Cosyns meant he hadn’t slept. So he was struggling to keep it clear, keep it simple. ‘But they’ll check them all. They’ve checked one already — the Hearing Voices Network. Nothing — just a PC, a few chairs, and a kettle. Most of the rest are going to storage — loo rolls to splints, scalpels to intubation bags, whatever the fuck they are. And the services, gas, electric, oil tanks. Foodstuffs for catering — tins, oils, dried food. Stairwells, lift shafts, piping. You’re right, it’s a maze.’

‘My guess,’ said Valentine, ‘is that as soon as Judd turned up as crispy duck they packed up shop.’ He snapped his fingers, then drank from a plastic cup, picking tea leaves from the end of his tongue.

Shaw studied the map, unmoved by Valentine’s pessimism. Hendre’s description of the room in which he’d woken up was a match for Level One — down to the incessant hum and the metal riveted doors. But was the operating theatre down there too? Could a patient have been taken up for the operation, then back down? That was more likely. What about one of those convenient gaps in the schedule at Theatre Seven? Then the patient recovered in secret — but never far from the hospital’s vital services.

Valentine rummaged in his coat pocket and produced a faxed statement. ‘This is the best Middlesbrough can do — it’s a note of the interview with Ben Ruddle, Norma Jean’s boyfriend, taken six weeks ago.’

The conversation had been chaotic, and Shaw noticed that whoever had conducted the interview had scribbled a note in the margin:

Alcohol/uppers/disco biscuits!!!

Ruddle had told the social worker he was living rough because he liked to see the sky. He’d given up the job at the market garden because they’d made him help out on deliveries and he didn’t like the van. And he had to leave anyway — because he had something he had to do. Valentine had highlighted the paragraph:

R says he has score to settle. Advised to avoid violence. R says too

‘And there’s this,’ said Valentine, producing a black and white passport-style picture stamped with a prison number. The image bore little resemblance to the file picture from 1992 — the face had filled out, hardened.

It might have been Blanket: dark, Celtic, the wide gap at the bridge of the nose.

‘Question is,’ said Valentine, ‘why’d he come back?’ Shaw thought his way through an answer — because he’d loved Norma Jean, because he’d never stopped grieving for the child he’d lost, and now he had a chance to make the pay-off, buoyed up by drugs and booze. Maybe. But did Ruddle know who had killed Norma Jean? Or had he come back to Erebus Street, on the anniversary of her death, to make up his mind?

They heard the bells of St Margaret’s on the Tuesday Market chime the hour. Inside the Ark they found Justina Kazimierz ready to begin the internal autopsy on the body they now suspected to be that of the man known as John Pearmain, itinerant tramp, whose corpse they’d found on Warham’s Hole, minus the tell-tale upper joint of the second finger on his right hand, and minus his corneas, as well as the rest of the contents of the orbital cavities.

Shaw got into a surgical gown, then pushed his way through the heavy clear-plastic swing doors into the morgue, followed by Valentine. The stone carved angel looked down on the aluminium tables. Four were empty. A fifth held Pearmain’s body, naked and white, like

Kazimierz didn’t bother with any pleasantries. ‘ID is confirmed, by the way — although the missing finger didn’t leave a lot of doubt. His medical records are extensive and held at the GP centre which runs a clinic for the men at the Sacred Heart, so we’ve got matches on teeth, and a skull fracture.’

She began dictating notes into a headphone, making a brief external examination. ‘Three points of interest, externally,’ she said. ‘The eyes, obviously. Both have been removed. One can only surmise that was in order to cut out the corneas — it’s not necessary to remove the whole eye to do so but a lot easier if the body is not going to be subsequently viewed by relatives. Gunshot wound. The bullet went through the heart. Luck or skill? Who knows, but my money’s on skill. And this…’ She used a gloved hand to indicate a scar on the lower abdomen, left side, which meant she had to lift the corpse slightly. Valentine winced at the sound of creaking joints.

‘This will, I suspect, turn out to indicate a kidney removal. I’ll know once we open him up. There are other operative scars — all long healed. We’ll take a look inside in a minute. But first…’

She turned to the other occupied mortuary table and pulled the shroud clear as if she was launching a new

‘This will be Dr Rigby’s last post mortem examination for the West Norfolk Constabulary,’ she said. ‘I suspect an early retirement is about to be announced.’

Shaw stepped in. ‘What did he miss?’

She laughed into her face mask. ‘What did he catch is an easier question. The subject’s overweight, so there are folds in the skin, and there’s the pitting. But there’s no excuse…’

Valentine noted the stitched autopsy incision down the chest bone and relaxed slightly, letting his eyes follow the pathologist’s fingers as she held apart two folds of skin on the lower abdomen.

‘Keyhole again; two incisions — just like Pearmain. I’ve ordered up the records on the other two names you gave me — Foster and Tyler, we may be lucky and get an ID. There are other scars.’ She indicated a ten-inch incision on one leg, running into the groin. ‘Vein removal… the key point, however, is that only the keyhole kidney surgery is recent. Very recent — perhaps less than forty-eight hours. All the other scars have healed, and healed well. That’s why Rigby missed them. But that’s not all. There’s something wrong with the kidney keyhole surgery — the stitches are poorly executed, and the wound itself, the interior trauma, shows signs of post-operative pyrexia…’

Valentine failed to deliver a polite cough.

She touched a finger to her forehead. ‘Sorry. Jargon, I know. Well, it’s an infected wound. That could have been caused by a whole list of things. We know the patient

‘And the botched stitching?’ asked Shaw. ‘Could he have died on the table?’

‘No. Absolutely not. There is some healing of the wound — very little, but some. No, death is post-operative. But, as I say, the work looks very — well, amateurish. Which hardly matches the evidence of the keyholes — an advanced procedure — or the other scars, which all appear perfectly professional.’

The pathologist straightened her back. ‘We may know more once we’ve looked inside Pearmain’s body. Which is why we’re here.’

She smiled broadly at Valentine, pinging the surgical gloves on both hands, turning back to the eyeless corpse.

She made the initial surgical incision, holding the blade of the scalpel up to the green-tinged sunlight coming in through the old chapel windows, before pressing down into the bloodless flesh, running a wound from shoulder tip to shoulder tip, then down the line of the sternum to the pubic bone. Shaw stepped in to watch but he could hear Valentine’s laboured breathing behind him. The DS had gone for the full face mask. He was ten feet away, and he wasn’t getting any closer.

The Stryker saw created a thin film of bone dust as the pathologist cut through the ribs, then lifted clear the chest plate.

She made a quick examination of the principal organs. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Now that is not what I expected.’ She

‘Tell me,’ said Shaw, as the pathologist re-examined the outer flesh on the abdomen wall.

She flipped the microphone back into place and told the tape. ‘The left kidney, the one beneath the surgical incision, is missing — as we would expect. The right kidney is in place — here.’ Shaw stepped an inch to one side to let the floodlight illuminate the plump organ, the colour of a bean in a plate of chilli con carne.

Her hands dropped inside the torso cavity. ‘And here, the liver — which is in situ — but you can see the scars? Someone has performed a hepatectomy, a partial removal of the healthy organ. A graft, if you like — common now, but sophisticated. This isn’t some backstreet surgeon-barber at work. There’s nothing amateurish about that.’

‘Why would you need a bit of healthy liver?’ asked Shaw.

‘Transplant. Essentially it’s grafted onto the failing liver in the recipient and takes over some of the workload. Very popular, of course, because you can have a live donor, not a cadaver. LDLT — live donor liver transplant.’

‘So three different procedures?’ asked Shaw. ‘The corneas, the kidney, and the liver graft. At least three. Timings?’

She smiled, looking at Shaw as she might have looked at a favourite son. ‘The question. The corneas postmortem, the kidney before that — maybe two weeks, but the liver… I’d say that happened between six to eight months ago. The liver has partially regenerated itself at

Shaw thought about the timescale. They thought Pearmain had been taken off the streets about six months earlier. That’s when the liver op would have taken place. Then he returns to the operating table for a kidney transplant. Then he dies and the corneas are removed before the body is dumped. Where had he been between the operations?

Meanwhile the other victim — possibly Foster or Tyler — has had several procedures as well, and then dies after a botched kidney removal. An operation which had taken place in the last few days. That didn’t make sense either.

‘Can we match either of these two to the organ we found on the incinerator with Bryan Judd — the kidney?’

‘We can try,’ said Kazimierz. ‘It’s not Pearmain’s — the blood group is wrong. The other one — Rigby’s floater — is a match for blood, but the rest of the tests will take time. At this stage all I can say is that we can’t rule him out.’

Finished, Kazimierz made notes, walking back out into the CSI office on the far side of the partition. On a desktop was a bagged plaster cast of the knife Shaw had taken from Father Martin’s bloodwood chest.

‘As for this, it’s possible the wound in Bryan Judd’s chest was produced with this weapon. Possible. Nothing more.’

They broke for coffee. Valentine took his mug outside with a cigarette.

Kazimierz took Shaw to her desk. There was a pile of thin manila files.

‘These are the parish records your team collected from

Shaw butted in, aware that he should have asked this question at the start of the inquiry. ‘Is that usual, that a church would have copies of medical records, other documents?’

‘No. I asked. It all goes back to the priest…’ She consulted her notes. ‘Dr Martin? The GP admin people said he’d made a request to copy over the files and other information to aid his research work on the impact of poverty on health — particularly bone structure. That was his specialist area — rickets. He’d written academic papers on the work he’d done in Brazil — the Sao Paulo shanty towns. I’ve checked the references: reputable journals, important work.’

‘Right,’ thought Shaw. ‘Unfortunately he was struck off in ’94, which might explain why he failed to flag up his interest in the files to me. Even if it was a lie by omission. He said Kennedy, the hostel manager, looked after the files. He didn’t mention his own interests. That’s the innocent explanation — that he was trying to carry on his work, but knew we might check back on his record.’

Kazimierz thought about that, and then picked up three files, weighing them in her hand. Valentine came

The pathologist dropped the files and used both hands to massage her neck.

‘Hendre is the odd man out,’ she said. ‘It’s bizarre — he’s the only one of these men with a history of alcohol abuse. Long term, from early teenage years. The reported mental problems — paranoia, anxiety — may well be related to that. In contrast, look at Tyler, for example. Council care, reform school, recidivist. Nicotine was his addiction; two hundred a day at one point.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Valentine. ‘Human kipper.’

‘Indeed. But not a drop of alcohol, according to the records. Which means his kidneys were in perfect condition.’

She pushed the coffee mug aside.

‘Which was all in the files…’ said Valentine.

‘All in the parish files.’

Her grey eyes pulsed with light. ‘I cross-checked. The GP files are held at the hospital because the funding comes from the primary care trust. They are a decent match with the parish files except in the case of Hendre. The file on him up at the Queen Vic is completely wrong — he’s listed as forty-six years of age, for example. He’s thirty-three. So I checked through and found the obvious

Shaw and Valentine looked at each other, then back at the pathologist. ‘Where are both sets kept and who has access?’ asked Shaw.

‘The parish ones were, I understand, under lock and key in the presbytery. The hospital records are held in the usual way and accessible to doctors on a case-by-case basis.’

‘Which doctors?’

‘Good question. GPs at the community health centre — and those with sufficient seniority on the hospital staff.’

Hadden thudded through the Ark’s main doors. Shaw knew that in major inquiries the CSI man hardly slept, setting up a makeshift bed in the organ loft above the lab. He looked ill, his eyes puffy, with the ghost of a sunburn across his freckled forehead.

‘Sodding sands,’ he said. ‘No shade.’ He caught Shaw’s eye. ‘Wait — I’ve got something for you.’

He booted up the PC, then tapped his way into his e-mail basket, then leant back so that Shaw could read the note from the Forensic Science Service at Birmingham. The milk bottle used for the firebomb attack on the electricity sub-station had been drunk from by the neck, so they’d matched the DNA extracted from saliva against all those whose samples had been taken in the inquiry so far and they’d got a direct match, high-probability, with

‘So Andy Judd set out that Sunday to inflict a little more exquisite pain on Jan Orzsak,’ said Shaw. ‘Either because he believed he’d murdered his daughter, or because the vendetta deflected attention from the fact that he himself had been the killer.’

But was that his only motive for cutting the power, thought Shaw. They knew a bit more about Andy Judd now and it made him increasingly wary about brushing him aside as some kind of disturbed vigilante. First, there was the eighteen-year-long feud with Bryan Judd about the death of his twin sister, Norma Jean. That, surely, was the definition of bad blood. Second, while Andy Judd had an alibi for the time of his son’s death, it was underpinned by his network of friends in the street — hardly witnesses beyond reproach. And now they knew he was a regular outpatient at the hospital. A man in desperate need of a liver transplant, an operation he couldn’t get because of his addiction to alcohol, and his inability to overcome that addiction. Was there another reason that Andy Judd — or someone who had power over him — wanted darkness in Erebus Street the day Bryan Judd died? A darkness which had also shrouded the abduction of the homeless Blanket from the Sacred Heart?