The Art of Murder

Chapter 30

Pendragon was staring into space, his feet up on his desk, chair tilted back. Outwardly, he might have been recalling a favourite holiday or reliving some other fond memory, but in fact his mind was churning over the facts of his current investigation. For him this was a pleasurable exercise, in spite of the gruesome details. Naturally, he wanted to solve the puzzle as quickly as possible. He had Superintendent Hughes breathing down his neck for a start, and she would have her boss, Commander Ferguson, breathing down hers, but Pendragon had become a policeman primarily because he loved solving puzzles. For him the thrill of what he did lay in the intellectual exercise, the chase. But there was no denying that this case was proving frustrating, to say the least.

Three murders, each incredibly contrived… the most contrived he had ever experienced, in fact. In spite of what he had said to Gemma Locke about the choice of paintings, he couldn't get out of his head the idea that there was some sort of message in the way the bodies had been arranged. Why would anyone do this? That was the question underlying the whole investigation. But all he had to go on were scraps, a few of the jigsaw pieces, and so many others were still missing. The solution seemed to be receding rather than becoming clearer. The first two murders had been linked in more ways than their gory scenarios. The two victims had known each other, intimately. It had even seemed possible then that the killings were somehow linked to the personal relationships within the relatively small group of artists and dealers in the East End. But then Pendragon had been thrown two curveballs. The first was the fact that Kingsley Berrick had gangland connections, and then, more importantly perhaps, the fact that the third victim, Michael O'Leary, had been a priest with seemingly no connection whatsoever to the art community.

Pendragon pushed back his chair and swung his legs off the desk. He leaned forward and punched in the number of a local pub, the Duke of Norfolk. It was Sammy Samson's favourite and he could usually be found there at most times of the day. Jack spoke to the landlord, Denny West, who had always been civil towards the DCI, and in a few moments Sammy was on the other end of the line.

'Jack, old boy. What may I do you for?'

'A little more digging, Sammy. If you're up for it?'

'Always happy to help.'

'Good. I'm after any information you can find on a company called Rembrandt Industries… Yes, as in the painter. It was the one who rented the warehouse in West India Quay, remember? My lads are doing their bit, but I wondered if you'd heard anything about the firm on the grapevine.'

'Can't say I have, dear boy. But that doesn't mean I won't… if there's anything to find out. What sort of thing do you want to know?'

'Well, they seem to be a fly-by-night operation. I'd be particularly interested if any of your associates had had any dealings with them, anything at all.'

'All right, leave it with me.'

Pendragon put the phone down and dialled Colette Newman's number at the Lambeth Forensics Lab.

'Inspector,' she said, 'we must have a telepathic connection. I was just about to call you.'

'Oh?'

'I've found something I think you might be very interested in.'

'A DNA trace?'

'Can you come over?'

'Absolutely. I'm putting on my coat as we speak.'

Pendragon strode along the corridor. It was quiet and he realised he had lost all track of the time. Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see it was only five o'clock. He nodded to Terry Vickers who was on duty at the front desk and stepped out into the freezing evening. The traffic was building up, but he felt unusually calm as he drove along the slushy streets. It was good to be alone, without even Turner in the seat beside him. He had always been a private – even occasionally isolated and closed-off – man who enjoyed his own company, but for the past six months, he had been unusually busy and it was only at moments such as this that he realised how claustrophobic and intense his London life was. He suddenly felt the press of people all around him.

He'd had an active, busy professional life with the Thames Valley Police, and had enjoyed his work there, but it had not been quite so full-on. Although he had not realised it at the time he was working in Oxford, he had been ready for a big change. Then Jean had left him, forcing him into a life-altering situation, and, strangely perhaps, that change had energised him, kick-started something that was long overdue.

He still only vaguely understood his reasons for returning to the place of his birth. Intellectually, it was obvious. He was trying to reclaim the security of childhood, hoping to return to a simpler, more innocent time. But, on an emotional level, he could not quite come to grips with this thought. He was far too much of a rationalist to do that. He could recognise emotional frailty in others, but found it inconceivable that the idea could apply to himself.

The streetlights flashed by; the icy slush off the road slapped against the underside of the car. From far away, he could hear a siren and glimpsed the flashing light of an ambulance down a side street. By the time he reached the Forensics Laboratory on Lambeth Road, he felt himself engulfed in an almost Zen-like calm he had not experienced in years.

'Inspector,' Dr Newman said, opening the door on to the corridor outside her office. She waved him to a chair and handed him a read-out. He tried to decipher it as he sat down. Colette Newman perched herself on the edge of the desk. She was wearing an unbuttoned white lab coat with, underneath this, her usual ensemble of knee-length skirt and pristine blouse.

'We found some strands of waxed cotton and paint that match those from the cherry-picker,' she told him. 'Also, samples of blood and tissue from both of the first two victims, Berrick and Thursk. But the most interesting thing is this read-out.' She handed the DCI a single sheet of paper that had been lying on the desk. 'There were half a dozen hairs on the floor close to the metal hole punch in the warehouse,' she said, coming straight to the point. 'Long blonde hairs, so clearly not from any of the three victims. It was a bit touch and go getting a usable DNA sample from them, but we managed it.'

'So it's a question of hoping we can get a match from the national database?'

'It's done.'

'What?' Pendragon looked astonished, then shook his head. 'Fantastic.'

'Sort of.' Dr Newman tapped at her keyboard and turned the screen so they could both see it. 'Here.' And she positioned her index finger a millimetre from the screen. 'We have ten matching markers linking the sample from the hairs in the warehouse with this individual on the database, number 3464858r.'

'Well, that's pretty conclusive, isn't it?'

'Oh definitely. There's no doubt that the hair belongs to this person. That wasn't the problem, but the "r" in the designation was. It stands for "restricted".'

'Ah.'

'Yes, ah. Naturally I got on to the database administration centre right away. But they knocked me back. Seems there are levels of "r" ratings in the database designation system. The highest level "r" is given to politicians, senior civil servants and top military brass. But until the rules were tightened up in the late nineties, it was also awarded to a few very wealthy private citizens.'

Dr Newman saw Pendragon's disappointed expression. 'However, I am nothing if not dogged,' she said quickly and raised her eyebrows. 'I contacted a senior colleague at Cambridge University who has a Level Three Civil Service clearance, and owes me one. He had the identity of our restricted individual within half an hour.'

Pendragon exhaled loudly through his nose. 'Okay. Who is it?'

'A former female patient at Riverwell Psychiatric Hospital in Essex.'

'Former? When did she get out?'

'Depends what you mean by "getting out", Inspector. Number 3464858r died in 1996. Her name was…' and she flicked through three pages of notes on her desk '… Juliette Kinnear.'