Riptide

§ 26

Came a lull in the day. A message on his desk told him to collect a bloodstained dress and a shoe from Forensics. They could just as easily send them, but Troy saw an opportunity to indulge a copper’s nosiness. He drove out to Hendon, to the Metropolitan Police laboratory, in search of Ladislaw Konradovitch Kolankiewicz, the Polish beast, one of the lab’s senior pathologists-a protégé of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, an exile of indeterminate age, extraordinary ugliness and foul, fractured English that Troy had long ago come to regard as a form of colloquial poetry.

He was scrubbing up. Hairy arms sluiced under the tap. A corpse under a sheet on the slab. A young woman in white perched on a high stool. Flipping through a shorthand notebook and reading bits back to Kolankiewicz.

‘Displacement of first three vertebrae, resulting in severance of spinal column from… brain stem… would appear to be result of… I’m sorry, I can’t read my own writing.’

Kolankiewicz elbowed the taps, turned round to argue and noticed Troy.

‘Ah, smartyarse. What brings the Plattfussivunderkind to my lair?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Troy. ‘Just a hunch.’

‘Ah! Copper’s hunch. That and three ha’pence would just about buy me cup of tea. Now, pretty boy, since you were last here we have a new addition to death’s family. Mrs Pakenham, my lab assistant. She joined us in the New Year and is now learning shorthand-the hard way-as the War Office saw fit to call up my stenographer.’

The young woman stopped reading her notes and scratching her head with the pencil.

‘Sergeant Troy,’ said Kolankiewicz. ‘Brighter than your average flatfoot, but still total pain in arse.’

This was mild. Kolankiewicz was minding his manners. The woman must be good. It could not last. He relished the English language with all the fervour of a convert. It held no traps and no taboos as far as Kolankiewicz was concerned. ‘Fuck’ was never far from his lips at the worst of times, and those were all the times he and Troy had had between them.

The young woman looked up. The merest flicker of a smile. A cut-glass English voice.

‘Anna,’ she said. ‘Anna Pakenham.’

It was a little like looking into a mirror. A short, slim woman, thick black hair-pulled back with a working-day severity-pale skin like his, and eyes like his-black as coal.

‘Frederick Troy. Murder Squad.’

It sounded like the most unattractive calling card in the world-indeed, Troy kept calling cards without rank or job just to drop on the silver plate without causing alarm-but she said, ‘I’ll suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of you, then?’

No, he thought. Kolankiewicz had got through so many stenographers and assistants since the war started. This one would not last. They none of them did. She’d volunteer for the ATS or the WRNS or go off to wear jodhpurs and dig spuds in the darkest shires. A pity. Married or not, she was a looker.

‘You get sick of the sight of him,’ said Kolankiewicz. ‘Now, whatever it is, spit it out.’

‘I was wondering about a body. A Dutchman found dead in Hoxton Street last night.’

Kolankiewicz whipped back the sheet.

‘This fucker?’

Troy found himself staring once more at the unearthly, drained, white-beyond-white corpse of Jeroen Smulders, fresh stitching loosely holding incisions Kolankiewicz had made. He glanced sideways at Mrs Pakenham. She was not reacting, either to the corpse or to Kolankiewicz’s lapse into plain speaking. She had the makings of a good Kolankiewicz assistant. Blanch not at the bodies nor the beast.

‘Yes. That’s him. Are you done? Do you know how he died?’

‘This not your case, Troy. That big bastard Stilton, the one with the silly accent, sent him over. I had him on the phone at crack of dawn this morning.’

‘I know. I checked with his office. I’d just rather know for myself than wait for him to tell me. It was my case. I was the one who was called out to the scene. I have a feeling about this one.’

‘Two hunches in two minutes? I’ll have arrowroot biscuit with my tea. Anna?’

‘It says… violent pressure on the head and neck, clockwise twisting of the neck, evident in subcutaneous bruising. At least I think it says “clockwise”. I’m terribly new to shorthand.’

The contrast between the formal, procedural English of an autopsy, and Kolankiewicz’s colloquial mode never ceased to startle Troy.

‘Enough?’ he was saying. ‘Enough for a nosy rozzer?’

‘I was wondering about the hands.’

‘Hands?’

‘Hands.’

‘What about his hands?’

‘If you fall down a staircase conscious you try and stop yourself. You grab onto something. You flail about. Chances are there’ll be marks on the hands. Bruised knuckles. A torn nail.’

They both looked at Mrs Pakenham.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘No bruises. Nothing.’

‘And,’ Troy went on, ‘if you fall down dead, you don’t. As simple as that really.’

‘He was dead, believe me, Troy, he was dead.’

‘And?’

‘I tell you what I tell Stilton. The killer was right-handed. Taller than this bloke, but not necessarily stronger. It’s more of a knack than brute force. Snap a neck in a single movement. Death was instantaneous. A pro job. You happy now?’

‘Happy?’ said Troy. ‘No, I’m not happy. I just have a feeling that this one will come back to me.’

‘Three hunches! I’ll have buttered scone and jam dollop too.’