The Scent of Death

Chapter 8

I was still fuming as I went back to my car. Mears might look young, but he wasn’t lacking in ego. Or nerve. I’d come across more than a few prima donnas in my work, but the forensic taphonomist came close to the top of the list. I wasn’t impressed with Ainsley either, patronizingly offering me career advice after instigating my removal from the investigation. Or this part of it, anyway. And while I didn’t blame Ward for what had happened, she should have told me sooner. Not let me wander into a crime scene believing I was going to be working on it.

Feeling aggrieved and hard done by, I wrenched on the zip of my coveralls as I made my way through the parked police vehicles. It was only when I was nearly at my car that I realized I’d gone past the bins left out for discarded coveralls.

Wonderful. But the slip was enough to puncture my sulk. As I turned around and walked back the air began to leak out of my indignation. There were bigger things at stake here than pride, I reminded myself, looking up at the austere walls of St Jude’s. At this time of day the sun was behind the old hospital, casting its shadow across the car park. When I stepped into it there was a noticeable drop in temperature, as though the hospital’s dank atmosphere extended even out here. I didn’t want to imagine what it must have been like for the two victims I’d seen, strapped to the beds inside a sealed room. The memory of that scene swept away the last of my self-pity. It was hard to say how long their bodies had been there, left to die and decay in the cold darkness. But in those conditions — dry with a cool, constant temperature, insulated from even the summer heat — it would have been months. Perhaps even years, because once the decomposition was in its final stages a sort of stasis would be reached, the remaining physical changes slowing down and down until they were almost imperceptible.

I paused by the bins, for the first time really taking in the hospital’s size. It was huge. With its blackened walls and boarded-over windows, it looked like a giant, derelict mausoleum. A tomb. Seeing it from the outside, I gave an involuntary shiver.

What else is in there?

Turning away, I retraced my steps back to my car. I would have liked a chance to examine the two interred victims, to find out what their remains could tell me. Even so, as St Jude’s receded in my rear-view mirror, I wasn’t sorry to see it go.

I’d forgotten about the media pack outside the hospital gates. As I approached I could see it had grown since that morning. A sizeable crowd was now gathered outside the gates, along with the press. Demonstrators carrying placards spilled off the pavements on to the road in front of the entrance. They were a mix of ages and ethnicities, and more police officers had been brought in to keep them out of the hospital grounds. Portable metal railings had been set up between the stone gateposts, forcing me to slow as I reached them. I wound down my window.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked the young PC who came over.

‘Bit of a protest,’ she said, sounding unimpressed. ‘They’re not causing any bother, just showing off for the cameras. Hang on, we’ll let you out.’

I waited while the railings were swung back. The placards bore messages ranging from straightforward pleas to Save St Jude’s to more political slogans. A home-made banner proclaiming People need homes, not offices was fixed to poles carried by protesters, and underneath it a man stood on a bench as he spoke to the crowd. I wound down my window further to hear what he was saying.

‘… should be ashamed! Ashamed that innocent people are scared to walk their own streets. Ashamed of the deprivation families in this borough are forced to endure. And ashamed that individuals could be left to die like animals in what used to be a hospital! That’s right — a hospital!’

He was in his thirties, strikingly handsome in a black jacket and white shirt that set off his dark skin. Pausing for emphasis, he looked around the crowd.

‘Are the politicians, and the corporate investors who pull their strings, are they blind to the tragic irony of that? Or don’t they care? What happened to community? Shops are forced to close, houses boarded up. And now this!’ He extended an arm, finger pointing towards the hospital. ‘We tried to save St Jude’s from closure and were ignored. We tried to have new homes built, instead of offices that will stand empty for years. And were ignored. Well, how much longer are we going to let ourselves be ignored? How many more of us have to die?’

An angry cheer went up, placards were waved and arms thrust in the air. I began to edge my car forward as the police barrier was opened. The fringes of the crowd moved aside to let me through, but I had to stop again as a young woman pushed in front of my car. She crammed a leaflet behind one of the windscreen wipers, and as a PC began to steer her away she thrust one through my open window.

‘Public meeting tomorrow night! Please come,’ she said as she was led off.

The leaflet had landed on my lap. It was cheaply printed, with a black-and-white photograph of St Jude’s in all its dilapidated glory. Below it was the caption Don’t let this be a symbol for our lives! together with details of the meeting’s location and time.

Putting the leaflet on to the passenger seat, I closed my window. As the glass slid up, I glanced back at the speaker. His attention must have been drawn by the disturbance, because at that moment he looked directly at me. For a second I thought there was something like recognition in his eyes, then the moment had gone. Leaving him exhorting the crowd, I put the car into gear and drove through the gateway.

Pulling out, I saw a lone figure standing at a bus stop on the opposite side of the road, well away from the demonstrators and press. The only reason I noticed him was because of the rapt way he was staring at the hospital. Ward should sell tickets, I thought uncharitably, as I drove away.

It was far too early to even consider going back to the apartment, so with my afternoon unexpectedly empty I went into the university. Buying a sandwich and a coffee at the cafeteria, I took them up to my cramped office and switched on my computer. I hadn’t checked my emails while I’d been at St Jude’s, so went through them now. There was nothing of note, only another request for an interview from Francis Scott-Hayes, the freelance journalist. The man just couldn’t take no for an answer, I thought, irritably deleting it.

That done, I opened the crime-scene photographs from the loft. As a rule, I prefer to take my own, but as there hadn’t been the opportunity to do that at St Jude’s Ward had given me access to the SOCOs’. Although they were high resolution and competent, they didn’t convey anything of the atmosphere inside the old hospital. Still, the images were stark and shocking. Bleached out from the flash, the desiccated remains looked utterly out of place in the loft. The pregnant woman and her unborn child lay in the dirty insulation like skeletal Russian dolls. Looking at them again now, it was depressingly obvious how hard it would be to produce an accurate estimate of time since death.

I spent a while considering the gaping abdominal cavity and its pathetic jumble of tiny bones, then systematically did the same for the rest of the woman’s body. Although I’d be able to examine her remains at the mortuary the next day, it didn’t hurt to remind myself of how her body had looked when it was found in the loft. I paused when I came to the right shoulder. There was something wrong with it, I decided, zooming in on the image. The angle seemed unnatural and, while that could just be how the body was lying, it might also suggest something else.

I also spent time studying the wrists and lower legs, at least as much of them as was visible in the photographs. Like Parekh, I hadn’t missed the fact that only two of the three beds in the walled-in chamber had been occupied. So it was possible that the third might have been meant for the pregnant woman.

But if she’d somehow escaped, she’d managed it without suffering any injuries from the straps. Unlike the other two victims, there were no signs of any abrasions or cuts to her bare forearms or lower legs. The skin had mummified and shrunk, but the photographs showed that it was still intact. I found myself wishing I’d taken photographs of the two victims interred in the chamber, then I remembered that wasn’t my case any more. I needed to focus solely on the woman and baby and forget the rest.

It was late by the time I switched off my computer. I sat back, rubbing my eyes and feeling my lower back protest from the length of time I’d been at my desk. There’d been no need for me to stay as long as I had, except that I was in no hurry to go back to the empty apartment. One by one everyone else in the department had gone home, Brenda pointedly reminding me that the office cleaners would be in at seven the next morning. I’d smiled and assured her I’d be going home soon.

That had been some time ago, though, and now I was the only person there. Dusk had settled outside, I realized, seeing my reflection looking back at me from the window. Turning off the lights, I closed the door on my office and took the lift to the ground floor.

I didn’t even think about using a different exit until I was going out of the main doors. I offered a silent apology to Rachel and Ward, but I was tired and couldn’t be bothered to use one of the side entrances. If Grace Strachan was waiting outside, then too bad, I thought, pushing through the doors.

It was a cool evening. The Indian summer seemed long gone and there was no denying the autumn chill in the air. I’d parked a few hundred yards away, and the streetlights threw multiple shadows as I walked across the concourse. Except for me, it was empty, deserted by the staff and students that filled it during the daytime. As my footsteps rang on the concrete I was thinking about Rachel, wondering whereabouts she was now. I was halfway across before I registered the sense of unease that had begun to settle over me. I stopped, looking around. There was no one in sight.

The hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle.

Under the skin, we’re all just animals. The same survival mechanisms that protected our primitive ancestors are still present, atrophied and below our awareness most of the time, but there all the same. I could feel my pulse speed up, the shakiness in my muscles as adrenaline was dumped into my system. What the hell’s this…?

And then I smelled it.

It was only faint, the merest hint of a spiced, musky perfume, but it ran through me like an electric shock. I heard the scrape of a shoe behind me and spun round.

‘’Night, Dr Hunter.’

Two of the department’s post-grad students smiled as they went past, giving me a curious look. I hadn’t been the last to leave after all, I realized, raising my hand in a weak acknowledgement. Their footsteps receded as they disappeared across the concourse.

My heart was still thumping, though more slowly now. I looked around again, but I was alone. The air held only exhaust fumes and the burnt-leaves smell of autumn, without any trace of perfume.

If there ever had been.

That was the power of suggestion for you, I thought, setting off across the concourse again. I’d been thinking of Grace Strachan as I’d left the building and my imagination had done the rest. Grace had been one of the most beautiful women I’d ever met. Raven-haired and with a dazzling smile that blinded almost everyone to her fractured, psychotic nature, her physical presence had been overwhelming. Her distinctive perfume had been the last thing I’d been aware of when she’d stabbed and left me for dead. It had branded itself into my memory, and for a long time afterwards I would have panic attacks, believing I could smell it and that Grace was nearby. The clinical term was phantosmia, or olfactory hallucination, but I thought I’d put that behind me.

Until now.

Annoyed with myself, I walked to the back of my car, throwing my bag into the boot with more force than was necessary. I switched on the car radio as I drove off, catching the tail end of a news report about St Jude’s. The demonstration outside the gates had brought a fresh element to the story, allowing the old grievances against the hospital development to be aired again. But when the report had finished the rest of the news failed to hold my interest. Although I tried to forget about it, the incident outside the university had rattled me. I drove automatically, without paying attention to where I was going, and it was only when a road sign registered that I realized I was heading for my old flat.

Oh, great. I was well over halfway there now, on a ring road that didn’t allow me to turn around. The next exit would take me close to where I used to live anyway, so I decided to carry on. It wasn’t as if I had anything to hurry back to Ballard Court for.

It seemed preordained that, on a street lined both sides with parked cars, there’d be a vacant space right outside the Victorian villa. I pulled into it. Despite Ward’s warnings, this wasn’t the first time I’d visited my old flat. I’d driven by two or three times, but this was the first time I’d stopped. Objectively, I knew Ward — and Rachel too, for that matter — was right. If Grace Strachan were still alive and intended to try to kill me again, this was where she’d come. It would have been stupid to stay there.

Yet moving out still seemed like running away.

The freshly painted front door, where Grace’s fingerprint had been found after the attempted break-in, had lost some of its shine since the last time I’d been here, but otherwise the house looked as it always had. The ground-floor flat was still empty, its ‘To Let’ sign standing on a post by the path. Rachel had suggested I sell it, but I’d baulked for the same reasons I hadn’t rented it out. For one thing, I wasn’t quite ready to give it up. Not yet.

For another, if there was even a slight chance that Grace Strachan was back, then I couldn’t let anyone else live there.

But I didn’t believe that any more. My panic at the university seemed embarrassing now, a momentary lapse. I put it down to lack of sleep and an overactive imagination: the oppressive atmosphere at St Jude’s must have got to me more than I’d realized. Still, coming here had resolved one thing, I thought as I pulled away. With Rachel in Greece there was no longer any reason to stay at Ballard Court. Once the investigation was over I’d look at moving back into my old flat.

I’d had enough of hiding.