The Dead Place

28

The office was deathly quiet when Cooper returned to West Street later that afternoon. Only Diane Fry was in the CID room, working her way through a stack of reports she’d been neglecting. One of the reports was waiting for Cooper on his desk. It was an initial forensic report on five sets of cremains. No points of comparison.

‘I wonder if Vernon has ever told the old man how badly Melvyn Hudson treats him,’ said Cooper when he had Fry’s attention.

‘Why?’

‘Sometimes people who’re bullied on a regular basis feel ashamed of it and don’t tell anybody. It’s a particular problem with children in schools. And Vernon still seems to be a child, in some ways. He might be afraid of admitting to his grandfather that he’s too frightened to stand up for himself.’

‘Especially as he’s in a position of the carer now?’ said Fry.

‘That’s it. Vernon will know that Abraham wants to see him as somebody strong. Besides, what could the old man do, except have a row with Hudson?’

‘I wonder if Vernon could afford to give up his job at the firm?’

‘It depends how much money he was left by his father. He has the house, but that’s not worth anything unless he sells it. He may have no other income.’

‘The old man is probably worth quite a bit, given his half-share in the firm.’

‘You think that’s what Vernon is hoping for, to inherit from the old man too?’

Cooper looked at her. ‘What do you think?’

‘They certainly sound an odd pair. Some bond is keeping them together.’

‘They’re family. That’s enough for most people.’

But Cooper was thinking about his last visit to Vivien Gill’s house, and the family gathered in the sitting room. People held together by that kind of bond weren’t always good news for everyone else.

‘Oh, of course,’ said Fry. ‘Family.’

A phone was ringing somewhere down the corridor, but no one was answering it. Cooper felt a strange sense of isolation, as if the whole building had been evacuated, except for him and Fry.

‘Diane, last time I saw Vernon Slack, he had red weals on his hands. They looked to go part way up his arms, too. They were so bad I thought at first they were burns, but he said it was an allergic rash.’

‘So?’

‘I’m wondering if they might have been formaldehyde burns.’

‘An accident at work?’ said Fry.

‘Possibly. But why wouldn’t he have said so? Why lie about them? And why did he seem so frightened? He was moving stiffly, too, as if he was bruised.’

‘You think somebody beat him up and shoved his hands into formaldehyde — what, as a warning? “Look, Vernon, this is what will happen to you if you don’t keep quiet”?’

‘Something like that.’

‘But who would do that?’

‘Two people spring to mind. For one thing, I don’t believe Melvyn Hudson could have been entirely ignorant of what was going on. But he doesn’t seem the type for direct intimidation either. He’s a bully all right, but his bullying is psychological, not physical. He’s quite capable of scaring Vernon without throwing formaldehyde on him.’

‘Agreed.’

‘But then there’s Billy McGowan.’

Fry flicked through the files on the Hudson and Slack staff. ‘Yes, I remember him. A nasty-looking customer, all right — I wouldn’t want him handling my dead relative. But we shouldn’t make assumptions from the way a person looks, should we? Mr McGowan could be a PhD in Nuclear Physics, just filling in time between Nobel Prizes.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Mmm. He has a handful of convictions for assault and affray, according to the PNC. Suspended sentences and probation, so he’s never actually been inside. Intelligence links him to organized theft from industrial premises, but only as casual labour on heavy jobs. He’s a smash-and-grunt man. It’s all pretty low-level stuff, Ben.’

‘Well, I didn’t suppose he was the brains behind the operation.’

‘You think he’s doing the dirty work on behalf of Hudson?’

‘Well, that’s basically what he’s paid to do at Hudson and Slack, isn’t it? How big a step is there between what he does with a dead body and what he might feel capable of doing to a living one?’

Fry seemed not to have heard him as she turned a page. ‘And no educational qualifications, to speak of. So I don’t suppose he’s won any Nobel Prizes, after all.’

‘I’d like to look into McGowan a bit more, Diane.’

‘OK, you do that.’

She was silent for a moment, deep in thought. ‘Speaking of Nobel Prizes,’ she said finally, ‘this Professor Robertson of yours — how did he come to be involved in this case, exactly?’

‘He knows a member of the police committee. Wasn’t that who recommended him? I’m sure Mr Hitchens said it was.’

‘Yes, but was Robertson asked to help out? Or did he volunteer?’

‘Meaning what, Diane?’

‘Look, we all know there’s a certain type of creep who’ll commit a murder, then go to any lengths necessary to get himself involved in the investigation. That’s so he can watch what’s going on and laugh at us getting things wrong. It’s usually the creep who thinks he’s much cleverer than the rest of us.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘You’ve just got it in for Freddy Robertson because he rubbed you up the wrong way the first time you met.’

‘You can’t deny that he fits the profile, Ben,’ said Fry. ‘Let’s face it, as smug, arrogant creeps go — he’s the smuggest.’

‘It’s just his manner.’

‘OK. So you think it’s a coincidence that he knows all about the same subjects that interest our killer?’

‘Professor Robertson is an expert in Thanatology. That’s the point. That’s why he’s involved.’

‘I called the anthropologist at Sheffield University,’ said Fry. ‘He said there’s no evidence for any of it.’

‘For what?’

‘All that stuff about sarcophagi. He said archaeologists have never established clear evidence of burial rites from that time. Excarnation just seems to have been one variant. At some sites skeletons have been found separated from their small bones. But, as we know, those are the bits most likely to fall off if a body is moved after skeletonization. The rest of it is conjecture.’

‘Well, experts disagree sometimes,’ said Cooper. ‘Anyway, Professor Robertson seemed to know all the details.’

‘You know what these enthusiasts are like — they develop their own theory from selective evidence, and then there’s no hope of convincing them they’re wrong. They carry on riding their hobby horse no matter how many times it’s shot from under them.’

‘Would you describe Freddy Robertson as an enthusiast?’

‘Probably. If only to avoid a slander charge.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, there’s a very fine line here, isn’t there? A fine line between enthusiasm and obsession.’

‘And you think Robertson might have crossed that line?’

Fry shrugged. ‘It isn’t always easy to tell. He might just have been having a joke with us.’

‘A joke?’

‘There’s one other thing I’ve been thinking about, in relation to our caller. It concerns educational qualifications.’

‘You don’t need any to be a crematorium technician. You don’t need GCSEs to carry a coffin or drive a hearse either.’

‘Exactly. But we’re looking for somebody well educated, aren’t we?’

‘Are we?’

‘You heard the tapes. Eros and Thanatos. The life instinct and the death instinct. Even without the Freud references, he talks like an educated man. Someone who needs to show off his education, in fact. I think this is a man who likes to feel superior to everyone else.’

‘So who qualifies, by your definition?’ said Cooper reluctantly.

Fry dropped a file on the desk. ‘Melvyn Hudson is a graduate. He studied at Hallam University in Sheffield.’

‘What subject did he take?’

‘Media Studies.’

‘Oh, what? Another thwarted TV presenter? I can’t see him as a chat-show host, somehow.’

‘Nor me.’ Fry looked up. ‘Do they study Sigmund Freud in Media Studies, do you think?’

‘I’ve no idea, Diane. But the tone of the messages is certainly pretentious enough to fit some of the media students I’ve met.’

‘It’s all part of an elaborate act, isn’t it? The caller is putting on a bit of a show — and we’re his audience.’

‘You could say that. And Hudson is ideally placed to do it, at first glance.’

Fry perched herself on the edge of Gavin Murfin’s desk. It seemed to be one of her favourite places to sit, because she could look down at Cooper in his chair. She was close, without being unreasonably close. She must have known that he found it uncomfortable.

She placed a second file on top of the first. ‘So what about Christopher Lloyd? He has an Open University degree in English Literature.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m perfectly serious.’

‘People are full of surprises.’

A memory was triggered in Cooper’s mind, a voice quoting Shakespeare to him in a churchyard a few days ago. Oh that this too, too solid fleshwould melt. Hamlet, of course. But it hadn’t been Christopher Lloyd doing the quoting.

‘Some of the same things apply to Lloyd,’ he said. ‘I take it he knows the Hudsons.’

‘Certainly. They must have met professionally many times. I wonder if they have any contact socially. Well, that’s one possibility to follow up,’ said Fry. She covered the two files on the desk with a third. ‘And then there’s Barbara Hudson.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘The caller was a man. No doubt about that.’

‘Ben, when Liz Petty demonstrated the voice changer, she proved to my satisfaction, and the DI’s, that the voice could equally be a woman’s.’

‘All right, but it seems unlikely. And Barbara Hudson — ’

‘- has a doctorate in Sociology. The subject of her PhD thesis was the study of social influences on styles of moral reasoning.’

‘Really? How do you know that, Diane? Did you ask her?’

‘No, I enquired at her former university in Nottingham.’

‘A PhD?’ said Cooper. ‘So she’s actually Dr Hudson. She doesn’t use the title.’

‘Very few people do. Not in this country. They know that members of the public assume you’re a medical doctor and want to tell you about their chronic piles at every opportunity.’

‘OK. Any more?’

Cooper didn’t really have to ask. He knew perfectly well there was one more. He could see the last file clutched in Fry’s hand. Without a word, she placed it on the desk with the name face up, so that Cooper could read it for himself.

‘Well, what a surprise,’ he said. ‘Professor Freddy Robertson.’

‘You made enquiries about him yourself,’ pointed out Fry.

‘I was curious.’ Cooper turned back the pages in his notebook. ‘Look, he does a lot of work for the Rotary Club, Eden Valley Hospice, Cancer Research.’

‘So? Public charity and private iniquity?’

He looked up from his notebook. He wasn’t sure if Fry was quoting or not. But he was growing used to it from the time he’d spent with Robertson, so he didn’t bother asking.

‘Since he retired, he’s developed this interest in Thanatology.’

‘Yes, but …’

‘I’ll make the call, shall I?’ said Fry.

Cooper could tell that Freddy Robertson answered the phone almost immediately. Perhaps he spent his time waiting anxiously by the phone for someone to ask him for his advice. All he wanted was a chance to share his knowledge.

‘Oh, Sergeant …’ said Robertson when he answered his door a little while later. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve already forgotten your name.’

‘DS Fry, sir.’

The professor smiled. ‘DS Fry, yes.’

Fry stood in the hallway and looked at the coat rack, listening to Robertson’s chatter about his Edwardian gentleman’s residence without really hearing a word. It was Robertson himself she was interested in. And his voice. Particularly, she wanted to listen to his voice.

‘Thanatology,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘What does that mean exactly?’

‘It’s named after Thanatos, the personification of death. In Greek mythology, he’s the son of Nyx, the goddess of night. His Roman counterpart is Mors.’

‘Oh? Is that Inspector Mors?’

‘No. The Latin Mors, the Roman god of death, from whom we get mortality and mortuary.’

‘I was joking,’ said Fry.

Robertson inclined his head. ‘I apologize, Sergeant. I don’t always appreciate other people’s humour. You were making a reference to a well-known television programme perhaps?’

‘Yes.’

‘That sort of reference always goes over my head, I’m afraid. I’m rather out of touch with popular culture.’

He walked on ahead into the house. Fry looked at Cooper. ‘Was he apologizing just then?’

‘I think so, Diane.’

‘So why do I feel as though I’ve been insulted?’

In the professor’s study, the atmosphere was cool. No drinks offered, no pleasantries, no invitation to take the most comfortable seat. Fry pulled a chair close to Robertson’s desk and rested her elbows on it, forcing the professor to lean backwards to avoid appearing too confrontational.

‘In your discussions with Detective Constable Cooper, you’ve been very helpful over the past few days, sir,’ she said.

‘I’m gratified to hear it. I do my humble best.’

He looked towards Cooper, beginning to form a smile. But Fry wasn’t going to let his attention drift, or the mood soften.

‘You might be able to assist us even more, sir.’

‘Oh?’

‘Looking at the facts we’ve gathered in our enquiries so far, it seems rather strange that you’ve been able to cast light on almost every aspect.’

‘Strange? Why should it be strange? This is my area of expertise, Sergeant. My role is to cast light where it’s needed.’

He was trying to keep his tone breezy, but Fry knew she’d needled him.

‘Yes, sir. But I find it particularly interesting that you’ve several times managed to cast your light before you were asked the appropriate question.’

‘I have no idea what you mean.’

‘The sarcophagus, for example. The “flesh eater”. You were very keen to tell us all about that. So keen, in fact, that you mentioned it to DC Cooper before he had any idea of the relevance himself.’

Robertson tried for another conspiratorial smile with Cooper, but it wasn’t working. For once, Cooper was obeying the instructions she’d given him and was staying detached.

‘The same applies to some of the other references in the messages,’ said Fry.

‘Ah, the messages.’

Fry felt a surge of surprise and excitement. ‘You admit that you know about the messages?’

‘I know nothing about any messages,’ said Robertson. ‘Except that your colleague mentioned them to me yesterday.’

And now the professor smiled. Fry heard a squeak of leather, and sensed Cooper shifting uneasily in his chair. So she knew it was true. But she had to press on.

‘Professor Robertson, I think you already knew about the calls that have been made to us during the past week. I believe you’re familiar with their exact content. Do you own a device called a voice changer?’

‘Sergeant, this is quite intolerable. When I agreed to put my time and expertise at the disposal of the police, I didn’t expect to be treated in this way.’

‘May I see your car keys, sir?’

She’d struck home this time. Fry saw the professor’s eyes widen and his nostrils flare as his expression tensed. He jerked forward in his chair as if she’d prodded him with a sharp needle.

Fighting to control his anger, he opened a drawer and tossed a ring of keys on to the desk between them. Fry didn’t touch them, but separated the keys one by one with the end of her pen. Robertson’s face suffused with blood as if she’d uttered the most deadly insult.

There was no device of the kind that Liz Petty had showed her, nothing like a garage-door remote with a tiny built-in microphone that would disguise a caller’s voice. But Fry wasn’t entirely disappointed. She pushed the keys to either side and left the keyfob lying on the desk on its own. It was a piece of ivory about two inches long, beautifully carved in the shape of a human skeleton, the skull and ribs smooth and shiny where they’d been rubbed by someone’s fingers. It wouldn’t actually glow in the dark, but to Fry it shone with significance.

‘Now, that is strange,’ she said. ‘To carry a reminder of death around with you wherever you go. What do you gain from that, Professor? Does it make death feel closer? Does it give you a greater understanding of it?’

‘I already know about death,’ snapped Robertson. ‘I know all about death.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you do, sir.’

The professor’s hand was shaking as he looked at the bottle of whisky on the shelf. But before he reached for it, he glared his anger at Fry.

‘In the final analysis, Sergeant, I’m just like everyone else — it’s life that I don’t understand.’

When Melvyn Hudson had put on his protective clothing, Vernon helped him get the body on to the stainless-steel table. They stripped off the shirt, jeans, underwear and shoes, and Vernon shoved everything into a bin liner. They removed the watch and glasses, and taped over the wedding ring. Vernon handed Hudson the disinfectant spray, and he sponged the body down, looking for infestations in the groin and around the face. He disinfected the mouth and nose with cotton swabs, then noticed some fluid in the back of the mouth.

‘Help me roll the body, Vernon,’ he said.

‘What’s up?’

‘A bit of purge from the stomach. I might have to tie off the trachea and oesophagus when I open the neck.’

Hudson massaged the limbs, then stretched them out, letting the forearms hang off the edge of the table so the blood would drain into them and expand the vessels. He rolled a thin film of superglue on to the inside of each finger and closed them together. Then he lifted the head and slid a block underneath to keep it above the level of the body. If blood ran into the head, it could discolour the tissues.

After Vernon had brought the bucket of bleach solution, Hudson washed the body again, cleaning under the fingernails and looking for staining on the hands and face. He thought about using superglue on the eyes, too, but instead he placed two plastic eyecaps over them and closed the lids so that they were held shut by the little knobs on the caps.

He looked up at Vernon. ‘Did the police talk to you today?’

‘Someone came to the house. Detective Constable Cooper.’

‘Did he talk to Abraham?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about, Vernon?’

‘I don’t know. He was already in the house when I got home.’

The face looked a bit tense. Hudson massaged the forehead and the area around the eyes to relax the dead muscles, then stood back and examined the effect. The upper lids of the eyes had to meet to the lower lids about two thirds of the way down to get the peaceful look. Too high or low, and it made the deceased appear to be in pain, or squinting.

‘Vernon, I know you’d be careful,’ said Hudson. ‘But do you think your grandfather understands?’

‘Understands what?’

‘The importance of appearances.’

Hudson packed the throat with gauze, put the dentures back in and slid a mouth-former over them, so that its ridges of plastic knobs would keep the lips closed. He shut the mouth permanently by stitching the lips together with a needle and thread, checking that the line of the mouth wasn’t too tight before tying the thread off. Then he tilted the head slightly to the right, so it would face the grievers when they viewed it in the chapel of rest.

‘Does he look OK?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’

‘I think he looks ten years younger,’ said Hudson, and laughed. It was exactly what the grievers always said.

Finally, he packed the anus with cotton wool soaked in cavity fluid and rubbed a light coating of grease on to the face, neck and hands.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now the fun starts.’

Hudson used bruise bleach to remove a couple of blackened areas, spread more superglue to close the small wounds, and replaced the missing tissue with putty and hardening compound. He remembered one occasion when he’d been given a body that had been decapitated. He’d had to insert splints to stop the head sagging to one side, then he’d trimmed the edges of the skin and sewn the head back on with dental floss. The suture line had been hidden by a high collar and a tie when the time for viewing came around.

Behind his respirator mask, Hudson was doing his best not to breathe in the vapours from the body cavity fluids and formaldehyde. The preparation room was claustrophobic and sound-proofed to prevent the noise of the pump or the splash of fluids from reaching the public rooms.

‘I noticed those burns on your hand earlier,’ he said.

‘It’s nothing.’

Hudson looked at Vernon over his mask. ‘As long as it wasn’t an accident at work. We wouldn’t want that.’

‘I know,’ said Vernon. ‘Bad for the image.’

Then Hudson made the first incision. He’d decided on arterial embalming for this job. But the decision had been an easy one, really. Cavity embalming took such little skill that it gave him no satisfaction. The belly punchers and the throat cutters — there were always derogatory terms for every speciality.

The scalpel felt cool and familiar in his gloved hand as he incised the skin over the left carotid artery and lifted a section clear of the surrounding tissue. Carefully, he inserted the canula into the artery, then attached a drain to the femoral vein in the groin and let the tube hang off the table into the guttering. For a body this size, he’d have to pump in about seven pints of formaldehyde solution, so there’d be a lot to drain away. As the fluid circulated, the muscles would firm up. In about ten hours’ time, they’d be so hard that he wouldn’t be able to alter the body’s position any further.

‘Just remember, Vernon,’ he said, ‘there are a lot of things around here that can be dangerous, if you don’t watch your step.’

‘Yes, Melvyn.’

Hudson took a grip on the trocar and thrust the sharpened point through the skin and into the belly with one firm stroke. He was pleased with his ability to do this. So many embalmers jabbed and lunged, as if they were spearing fish. All it took was the confidence to make a firm thrust through the abdominal wall, and the assurance to leave the trocar in place as it began to release the gases and liquids that had built up in the body’s cavities.

He infused about sixteen ounces of preservative into the abdomen through the trocar, and the same amount into the chest. He examined the genitals in case they needed a thrust of the trocar too, but decided his technique had been good enough for the formaldehyde to reach all the small blood vessels.

Then he thought about the skull. How much gas and fluid might have collected in the cranium? It was possible to pass the trocar up through the nose and into the skull through the thin bone at the top of the nostrils. He could instil cavity fluid and pack the nose with cotton wool to prevent leaks. But he looked at his watch and decided it wasn’t necessary. Instead, he used a series of trocar buttons to close up the holes he’d already made.

Then Hudson realized that Vernon was watching him across the corpse, his eyes wide and anxious over his mask.

‘Well, Vernon,’ he said, ‘that’s a good job done. Let’s get it back into the freezer. This is one corpse that won’t decompose in a hurry.’