Seventy-Seven Clocks

∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

4

Liquefaction

The stalking man halts dead in his tracks, and I rush up behind him at such a terrible speed that I can’t stop, and the future turns, and the vile beast is at once both familiar and strange, horrific and inevitable. My mouth stretches wide to scream, but he reaches out and fills the betraying cavity with his hand, and I can’t breathe. His fingers reach into my throat, nails tearing at my mouth, reaching deeper and deeper towards my soul, and I know that I will die in a matter of seconds…

Her scream was muffled by the bedclothes knotting themselves around her. Jerry fought her way free and jumped from the sweat-soaked bed. She fell to the floor and lay naked on the carpet, waiting for her heartbeat to return to normal.

She had never seen anyone die before. Was it any surprise she was having nightmares? He was supposed to have suffered a heart attack. But why had there been so much blood? The man was old enough to die, perhaps his time had come – and yet – to be confronted with such sheer, overpowering finality. Her childhood had passed in the quiet frustration of being seen and not heard, in the patient wait for a chance to show the world what she could do – and to be confronted with mortality now, to be gripped by a man in the very act of leaving the world, what could be a more terrible omen for the future?

The dream was an old one in a new guise. As she angrily thumped the pillows, determined to blot out visions of darkness, she knew that something had awoken inside her.

The therapist would want to know why she had missed her last session; he’d be waiting to report her latest imagined ailment back to Gwen. At least lying to him gave her something to look forward to.

Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 7 December 1973

VANDALIZED PAINTING SPARKS SECURITY ROW

The National Gallery is at the centre of an escalating international row following an incident yesterday afternoon when a valuable artwork was vandalized beyond repair. The painting, The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius, by the Victorian artist John William Waterhouse features seven Roman dignitaries, and was one of several pictures on loan from the Australian government for the largest exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite art assembled in England this century.

The Australian minister for the arts, David Carreras, has lambasted the National Gallery for its ‘shoddy and inadequate’ security arrangements, and is said to be considering legal action against the British government.

As this year’s Commonwealth Congress is expected to examine new European rulings on the movement of national treasures between member countries, Mr Carrera’s rebuke could prove to be an ill-timed embarrassment for the government. In the light of the vandalism, the Greek government is expected to renew its campaign for the return of the Elgin marbles.

Leslie Faraday, the newly appointed junior arts minister, is now likely to head an inquiry into the gallery’s security arrangements. Faraday’s appointment is a highly controversial one. It is only two weeks since he allowed New York’s Museum of Modern Art to purchase Andy Warhol’s Coca-Cola Bottle from the Tate Gallery, describing the sale as ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’.

The offices of North London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit had finally been settled directly above the red-tiled arches of Mornington Crescent Tube station. After two months the space was still cramped and overflowing with packing crates, most of which were filled with bulky pieces of technical equipment.

The unit had left its old home in Bow Street (where it had been housed for more than thirty years) to devote more time to its specialized investigations away from the distractions of round-the-clock petty crime. Set up by a far-sighted government during the war, the PCU remained the last resort for unclassifiable and sensitive cases. Police stations like Bow Street and West End Central were occupied by the daily churn of ordinary criminal offences, crowded with colleagues asking for advice and reports waiting to be filed. Too much procedural paperwork, too little room to think. One day, the detectives hoped, the Peculiar Crimes Unit would be freed from the Met’s interference in their business, but that time was still a long way off.

Here, above a busy junction pulsing with traffic, it would at least be possible to concentrate on complex cases serially, with less interference and interruption. Only time would tell whether the new system worked or not. Failure would prove costly for police and public alike.

A series of piercing horn blasts caused John May to tip his chair forward and watch from the arched window as, two floors below, another black diplomatic limousine was escorted through a red traffic light by police motorcycles. He’d read that Common Market delegates were gathering in London for next week’s conference. That meant the usual abuse of diplomatic immunity privileges, traffic accidents and shoplifting charges quietly folded away. Momentarily distracted, he missed what Oswald Finch was saying.

“Repeat that?” he asked, pressing the receiver closer to his ear.

“…Vascular dilation to an extraordinary degree, and tissue lesions you could poke your fingers through…”

“Wait, backtrack a minute, Oswald, you’re losing me.”

There was a sigh of impatience on the other end of the line. “Really, John, it would be better if you came and saw this for yourself. He’s laid out right in front of me. It’s absolutely incredible.”

“Oswald, do I absolutely have to?” John grimly recalled the stench of chemicals and cheap aftershave that always accompanied his meetings with the pathologist. Finch was a brilliant man, but possessed the same graveyard enthusiasm for his job that troubled children had for picking insects apart. His was not just a career chosen by individuals for whom death holds no terror. It was chosen because he really, really liked it.

“You know, autopsies usually only take a couple of hours, but so far I’ve spent over seven on this one. It’s playing havoc with my timesheet. You really should see what I’m seeing, John.”

“All right. Give me fifteen minutes.” May replaced the receiver, checked the baleful sky beyond the window, and reached for his raincoat. He needed to find his partner, and he had a good idea where to look.

The strength of John May’s surprisingly handsome features, the straightness of his spine, and the clarity of his eyes commanded immediate attention. Those unfamiliar with his profession would have marked him for a corporate head, a natural leader. He continued to dress fashionably, although it was difficult in a London currently enslaved by cheap Lord John suits with foot-wide lapels, and although his immaculately groomed mane showed a few grey flecks he continued to enjoy the fascinations of his youth, those fascinations being, in no particular order: police investigations, gadgets, women, classic cars, television (all three channels), and science fiction. Members of what were once called The Fair Sex still featured in John May’s life; he would always turn to appreciate an attractive face or figure, and would be flattered to find his attention still reciprocated. The minefield of modern sexual politics lay waiting in the future.

The girl standing behind the multicoloured counter of the Brasilia Coffee House smiled when she saw him enter. “If you’re looking for Arthur, he’s back there,” she told May, pointing to the rear of the steamy café. “He’s very moody this morning. It’s about time you did something to cheer him up.”

“All right – I get the hint.” He threaded his way to the back of the room.

May’s partner could not have been more unlike himself. Arthur Bryant was three years his senior and considerably more shopworn. Perched on a counter stool, he looked like a jumble sale on a stick. He seemed shrunken within a voluminous ill-fitting raincoat picked out by his landlady; a small balding man with no time for the urgency of the modern world. Bryant was independent to the point of vexation and individual to the level of eccentricity. While his partner embraced the latest police technology, he proudly resisted it. He was a literate and secretive loner, whose mind operated – when it found something worthy of its attention – in tangential leaps that bordered on the surreal.

It should have irritated Bryant that his partner was so gregarious and popular. May was a methodical worker who grounded his cases in thorough research. For all they had in common, their friendship should not have worked at all. They made a rather ridiculous couple, but then, they were little concerned with orthodoxy.

Although they had grown a little more like each other with the passing years, it was the clash of their personalities that remained the key to their success as detectives. Neither man had much regard for the politics of power, and none of their investigations ever followed the official line. They were tolerated because of their success rate in solving serious crimes, and were admired by the younger staffers because they had chosen to remain in the field instead of accepting senior positions. During the part of their week not taken up with teaching, the pair would arrive for work early so that they could filch the most interesting cases from other officers’ files. At least, they had been able to do that until two months ago. Now they were out on their own.

“Want another?” May pointed at his partner’s empty coffee cup.

“I suppose so,” said Bryant listlessly, unstrangling his scarf. “There’s been no sign of my acid-thrower.”

“Somebody must have seen him leaving the gallery. Sounds as if he was wearing fancy dress. Barking mad, obviously.”

“That’s the point. I don’t think he was.” Bryant’s aqueous blue eyes reflected the café lights. “He pinpointed a particular painting for destruction. He knew exactly where to find it. The exhibition had only opened the previous week, so he must have visited it earlier to work out his escape route. Perhaps the opportunity didn’t arise for him to inflict damage on his first trip. Also, this was sent up from Forensics.” Bryant rummaged around in his overcoat and produced a typed note. His sleeves were so long that they covered the ends of his fingers. “The acid used was a compound, ethyl chlorocarbonate, chloracetyl chloride, something else they can’t identify – it was constructed to do the maximum amount of damage in the shortest possible time. And it did. The painting isn’t salvageable.”

“Not at all?”

“A little at the edges. The canvas has been eaten right through. It would mean starting from scratch, and although there are transparencies of the work on file they don’t reproduce the exact pigments used. Apparently we can’t produce paints in the same manner any more. Their reflective qualities are hard to reconstruct accurately. The original has gone for ever. I dread to think what will happen when the Australian government finds out.”

“Why?”

“Their arts minister is trying to get a number of aboriginal artefacts returned, but we’ve been refusing to give them up. The Aussies were extremely reluctant to loan us any Pre-Raphaelites at all. This will only prove that their fears were well founded.”

“Do you have anything to go on?”

“Not much,” admitted Bryant, sipping his fresh coffee. “There were no prints on the acid bottle, and no one in the surrounding streets saw him, despite his extraordinary appearance. The weather was terrible. People tend to keep their heads down in the rain. I’m one of the few reliable witnesses.”

“You were in the gallery?” said May, surprised.

“Purely by chance. I know the concept of looking at pictures is anathema to you, but you should try it some time. The chap who put the exhibition together is an old friend of mine. I’m seeing him tomorrow. Come along if you want.”

“Not me.” May drained his cup. “I have to go to the Savoy Hotel. Last night one of their guests dropped dead while reading his newspaper in the lobby. The house doctor thought at first that he’d had some kind of a haemorrhage.”

“And he hadn’t?”

“Oh, he had all right. With a vengeance. Finch did an autopsy on him last night and found his innards in a state of complete liquefaction. Apparently the ambulance men were lucky to make it out of the foyer without their load falling to bits. I’m told that there’s absolutely no known medical condition that could account for such a thing. They wondered if he could have drunk some kind of chemical compound.”

“While sitting in the lobby of the Savoy? I thought their cocktails were supposed to be first rate. Wouldn’t the taste have tipped him off? It’s very hard to drink a poisonous liquid. The more potent it is, the more pungent it tastes.” Bryant’s eyes took on a rare gleam. “How very odd.” He drained his cup and set it down.

“It would be if it was in your jurisdiction,” said May. “It could be – if you wanted to join me at Mornington Crescent.”

Bryant pointedly examined his hands. “I was wondering when you were going to offer me a position.”

“I was waiting to be given full authority from above. Of course, it’ll mean sharing an office for a while, until we get everything sorted out.”

Bryant had been holding out at Bow Street, a small stab at independence that was really an excuse to make everyone miss him. “Are you still smoking those filthy cigars?” he asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Have they told you who the acting superintendent will be?”

“Raymond Land. I know you don’t get on with him, but he’ll only be there until a permanent replacement is decided upon.”

“I’m not sure. I’ll be sorry to leave Bow Street.”

“Don’t lie to me, Arthur. You know very well they’re going to close Bow Street down eventually.”

“The word around town is that you’ll be able to choose your own investigations. People are already getting jealous.”

“That’s not quite true. It’s strictly a high-profile murder squad, no more diamond robberies or gang beatings. It’ll include a lot of long-term unsolved stuff. That means research-heavy crimes.” They were Bryant’s speciality.

Until now no permanent murder squad had ever been set up in Great Britain. This was partly because the country had a comparatively low per capita murder rate. There was virtually no gun crime. Squads were only formed to solve individual murders, with superintendents drafted in from an Area Major Investigation Pool (AMIP), supported by local detectives from other cases.

Now the system was changing. If the freshly separated PCU worked out successfully, it could affect the structure of the Metropolitan Police. Other specialized units would be formed. John May was aware that quite a few of his colleagues in the AMIPs were happy with the system in its present state, and would be glad to see the new division fail. Consequently, he needed all the friends he could get. More than that, he needed his old partner back.

“This office of yours,” said Bryant, “does it have decent-sized windows?”

“Huge ones.”

“Good. I need more light these days. Could I have the room painted? I can’t think clearly in tasteless surroundings.”

“Choose any colour you like. How’s your present caseload?”

“I’ll follow through this business with the National Gallery. The rest can be dumped on to someone I hate. I must say your proposal isn’t entirely unexpected. You took your time.”

“I had to get the place up and running first. You didn’t think I’d leave you behind, did you?” May smiled. He knew how much the daily routine at Bow Street bored his old partner, and hated the thought of Bryant’s mind going to waste. As he rose to leave, the afternoon sun threw a lurid glare across the smeary windows of the café. We finally have a chance to make a real impact on the system, he thought. He decided not to tell Bryant that they had only a two-month trial period in which to do so.

♦

“I made a standard Y incision from the shoulders to the chest and down to the pubis, as you can see,” Finch began, pointing at the splayed corpse in front of them, “and I couldn’t believe my eyes. The organic damage is quite phenomenal.”

Finch was tall and thin, with spiky hair and bony raw hands, and his knee joints creaked like desk drawers when he sat down. A suntan gained on a recent holiday was all that prevented him from looking like Stan Laurel. As usual, the sickly smell of cheap splash-on deodorant rose from his skin.

“I don’t see anything wrong.” May forced himself to study the body. The whiteness of the skin contrasted shockingly with the crimson hole that had been formed by pinning back the victim’s flesh.

“I’ve seen an awful lot of insides, John, and I know when something isn’t kosher,” said Finch, wiping his hands on his lime-green plastic apron. “Tell me what you know about him.” He moved to the scales and made a note of the calibrations before removing a kidney from the tray.

“Maximillian Jacob, fifty-nine years old, five feet eleven inches, fourteen stone two ounces, partner of the law firm Jacob and Marks, based in Norwich. He checked into the Savoy last Friday. He was visiting London on unknown business – at least, he seems to have given his wife and partner two different stories for leaving town. No history of medical problems, nothing much out of the ordinary, but we’re still searching.” He looked back at the corpse on the table. It seemed that the more cleanly a man lived his life, the harder it was to find anything out about him when he was dead. “At the moment he’s just a statistic, Oswald. I wish he’d been a criminal. At least we’d have somewhere to start.”

“Well, you know that someone hated Mr Jacob enough to want to kill him,” said Finch.

“Nobody mentioned murder.”

“Then let me be the first. Take a look at this.” The pathologist beckoned May to advance on the cadaver. “Jacob’s stomach is a mass of dissolved tissue. Extensive haemorrhaging here, here, and here.” Finch prodded beneath a bloody flap of flesh with the end of his pen. Thick streaks of yellow fat surrounded an abdominal incision. “And here in the heart, the liver, and lungs.”

“What are you putting down as the actual cause of death?”

“Cardial dysfunction. The heart couldn’t pump properly because the vascular bed surrounding it had become riddled with lesions. It had to be some kind of corrosive fluid, but as there were no burn marks in the mouth or trachea I ruled out ingestion and started searching for an injection site. It’s not hard to see once you’re looking for it. Here.”

He turned Maximillian Jacob’s head to one side and pointed to a spot below the corpse’s left ear. A swollen patch on his carotid artery was pinpricked with coagulated black fluid.

“If you examine the wound closely, you’ll find not one puncture mark but two, like a vampire. Beauties, aren’t they?” He twisted Jacob’s head and revealed a pair of tiny livid pinpricks.

“And it’s become gangrenous. The flesh around it has turned to diseased mush. I carried out the routine toxicology tests, checked for alcohol, cocaine, barbiturates, and so on; nothing much there. I didn’t want to run up a bill testing for more exotic stuff, but this had me beaten. I sent blood and tissue samples to the National Poisons Reference Centre for analysis, not expecting to hear back for several days.” Finch absently prodded the end of his nose with his pen. “Instead, the results were telexed back just over an hour ago. Seems this got them all excited. It’s a cottonmouth.”

“Sorry, what?” John had been transfixed by the cadaver on the table. It was hard to believe that poor, putrefying Jacob would be stitched back together and buried beneath a headstone engraved with a soothing phrase like Just Resting. “Foot and mouth?”

“Cotton mouth. That’s the common name. Latin, Agkistrodon piscivorus, from the family Crotalidae.” The pathologist’s enthusiasm was always more pronounced when he had just discovered something in an opened body. “It’s called a cottonmouth because it threatens with its mouth wide open, and the inside of the mouth is white.”

“Oswald, what the hell is a cottonmouth?”

“That’s the odd part.” He thoughtfully probed his left ear with his pen. “It’s a North American snake.”

“You’re telling me this man was bitten by a snake?” John threw his hands up helplessly. “They must have made a mistake.”

“No mistake. They cross-checked their results.” Finch pointed at the corpse. “You can see the extraordinary effect it’s had, even on the minor organs. This is a very particular venom, apparently found only in aquatic pit vipers.”

“God, Oswald – a water snake? In the lobby of the Savoy Hotel?”

“I must admit it’s a bit of a puzzle,” Finch casually conceded. “The cottonmouth is more commonly found in marshland.”

“Don’t you find that just a little bit strange?”

“Every unnatural death is strange, John.”

“Did they give you an idea of the reaction time between infection and death?”

“Oh, yes. Immediately after the bite, the wound turns itchy, then the victim gets irritable. After this he settles into a quiet aphasic state, and then he suddenly collapses and dies. Ten minutes in total. There’s one other thing I wanted to show you.” Finch raised a plastic bag and gently emptied the contents into a bowl. May found himself looking at Max Jacob’s brain.

“As you probably know,” said Finch, “the human brain has the consistency of a well-set blancmange. Fluid protects it from thumping into the skull wall. Look at this.” He touched his pen against a darkened patch on the frontal lobe of the brain. “When you’re hit on the head you get a bruise on the scalp, perhaps a fracture underneath it, and a bruise on the brain below that. All three are on top of each other; that’s what we call a coup injury. Jacob’s brain is marked at the front, but there’s no corresponding damage to his scalp.”

“Why?”

“Instead there’s a bruise on the back of his head. If someone passes out and the back of their head hits the floor when they collapse, the brain is driven forward and bashes itself on the inside front of the skull. That is a contra coup, and that’s what Jacob has. It looks like your man took a fall sometime shortly before his death.”

“Thanks, Oswald, you’ve done a great job.” May hastily made his apologies and left the room. The combined smell of disinfectant and antiperspirant was starting to get to him.

“Let me know how this one turns out,” said Finch with a cheery wave as he turned back to the corpse. “And John – don’t be such a stranger in future. I’m always delighted to see you down here.”

♦

The lobby of the Savoy was in chaos. Commonwealth speakers had begun to arrive in force, and stacks of expensive luggage stood in corners among the arrangement of dried plants arranged to resemble harvested corn bales. Jerry had spent the morning easing guests into rooms with the aid of encouraging smiles and pidgin English.

“He’s no spring chicken, is he?” muttered Nicholas disparagingly. “They could have sent someone a bit more with it.”

“Keep your voice down,” said Jerry, embarrassed. “He’ll hear you.”

“Intelligence is a compensation for the departure of youth, Sonny.” John May set a heavy Dictaphone on the counter. “As even you may discover one day. I need to talk to this young lady for a few minutes, so perhaps you could busy yourself dealing with the minor grievances of your guests.”

Jerry smiled to herself. There was something instantly appealing about the detective. The old guy looked like a man who had retained much of his own youth by listening to the young. “There’s a room we can use behind here,” she said. “It’ll be quieter.”

Once they were seated in the small cream-painted staffroom, May dragged his own transistorized recorder from his bag and switched it on. “I trust you’ve fully recovered, Miss Gates. It must have been a nasty shock for you.”

“I fainted, that’s all,” she explained. “He was spraying blood all over the place.”

“I’ve read your admirably lucid statement. There are just a few points I need to clear up. You checked Mr Jacob in last Friday, is that correct?”

“I took his filled-in reservation form, gave him the carbon copy, and arranged for his baggage to be sent up. He was booked for a double room even though we had singles available.” She cleared her throat, more nervous than she had realized. “Nicholas – the other receptionist – made a remark at the time. He handled the actual room allocation because he’d taken the original telephone booking.”

“You think Mr Jacob was planning to meet up with someone? A female companion, perhaps? He’d left his wife and family at home in Norwich. He didn’t sign in as Mr Smith, did he?” The detective’s friendly smile was designed to relax.

“Mr Jacob didn’t look like an adulterer, if that’s what you mean,” she replied. “You can usually recognize them.”

“Oh?” May cocked an eyebrow, obviously intrigued. “How?”

“Small things. Their clothes are too sharp. You know, dressed up for a date.” She recalled some of the guests she had checked in. “Often they’re not at ease in a smart hotel. They don’t tip at the standard rate, usually go over. Mr Jacob wasn’t like that. He was old school.”

“How do you know that?”

Jerry shifted in her chair, trying to visualize the man who had walked toward her across the lobby last Friday. “He had a club tie, done up with a small knot. Very neat. Starch in the shirt. A wet-razor shaver.” She shrugged, hoping she didn’t sound foolish. “Well, it was late afternoon when he arrived, and he didn’t have any stubble. Short hair, brilliantined. Expensive shoes, carefully polished. Ex-military, I imagine. He had the look.”

“You don’t miss much, do you, Miss Gates?” May smiled again, and re-examined his notes. Jerry wished she could see what he had written down.

“Let’s move on to Monday. You say he was sitting in the lobby for about half an hour. Did you see anyone approach him in that time?”

“No one. It was raining heavily, and hardly anyone came in or went out.”

“Before he fell asleep with the paper over him, did anything happen that was out of the ordinary? Anything at all?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You seem like a bright young lady, so I’ll let you into a secret.” May beckoned her closer with his fingertips. “I have reason to believe that your guest did not die a natural death.”

Jerry had not considered the possibility of murder. The concept seemed so alien and theatrical. “I thought he just had a heart attack,” she explained. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“Try to recall the evening in the light of what I’ve just told you, and see if you can think of anything else that happened. Mr Jacob came downstairs, sat down in the chair, and died half an hour later. Knowing what we do, something else must have occurred. Take your time about it.”

Jerry thought for a minute, pleased that the detective had clicked off the tape until she was ready to answer.

“There was something wrong with the lights. They kept flickering. Because of the storm, I suppose. It didn’t disturb Mr Jacob.”

“Anything else?”

“Wait a minute – I think he went to the washroom,” she said suddenly. “He wasn’t gone for long.” She hadn’t mentioned this in her statement to the policewoman who had interviewed her yesterday. “I guess it’s not the sort of thing you really register,” she added lamely.

“I quite understand,” said May. “Under normal circumstances it’s far too commonplace an event to take note of.” He had clicked the tape recorder back on. “Can you recall any change in Mr Jacob’s behaviour when he returned? Try to imagine him sitting back in the armchair…”

“He was scowling,” said Jerry, surprising herself. “Fidgeting about. I remember looking up from the duty book several times. And he kept scratching his neck.”

“Thank you very much for your time, Miss Gates,” said May, closing his notebook with another twinkling smile and rising.

The abruptness of his leavetaking unsettled her. Having witnessed such a grotesque departure from life, she was anxious to know more, and to see what the police would do next. To them, it was just another unexplained death. To her, it was a window to a world she had no way of understanding.