The Scent of Death

Chapter 10

I missed the first ten minutes of the meeting. Although the church hall wasn’t far from where the old woman lived, there were no road signs and by then I was already running late. In the end I had to resort to my satnav, which took me back to streets I’d already been on at least once, before leading me to one that had been frustratingly close all along. The rain was still holding off as I locked my car and hurried across the road. Only a few drops pattered down, but the smoke-coloured clouds overhead promised the break was only temporary.

The church was a severe Edwardian building, with a mismatched 1970s extension protruding from one side. A fug of humidity and wet clothing greeted me as soon as I stepped through the doorway. Posters for social clubs and events decorated the walls, and a torn trampoline was folded and propped up against one wall. I’d expected the weather would put a lot of people off, but the hall was full. All the seats were already taken, and people were standing in the aisles and at the back. Someone on a stage at the front was already speaking as I went in, the amplified voice constantly on the verge of feedback.

Half a dozen people sat behind microphones at a long trestle table. The speaker was in the middle, a tired-looking woman with cropped hair and an assortment of necklaces and bangles dangling over a brightly coloured top. Standing at one end of the table but set slightly apart from it was an empty chair. It looked out of place on the stage by itself, as though it had been put there deliberately. Sitting at the table next to it was the man who’d been speaking at the demonstration outside St Jude’s. Once again he wore a plain black jacket, jeans and crisp white shirt, and while there was nothing flamboyant about him he was by far the most imposing figure on the stage. Even silent he managed to command attention. The woman who was speaking kept glancing his way, as though checking for approval. A discernible flush made its way up her throat when he nodded in agreement, the lights in the hall gleaming off his shaven head.

I saw space against a wall and made my way over. Although I tried not to make a noise, my entrance hadn’t gone unnoticed. As I eased into the gap I realized I was being watched. Turning to the stage, I found the man who’d been at St Jude’s was staring at me. I’d thought I must have imagined the recognition in his eyes the day before, but there was no mistaking it now. He gave me a short, barely perceptible nod before switching his attention back to the woman speaker.

Do I know him? Baffled, I racked my brain to recall. If we’d met before I didn’t remember it, yet he seemed to know me. I was still puzzling over it when a low voice murmured next to me.

‘Wasn’t expecting to find you here, Dr Hunter.’

The Geordie accent identified Whelan before I even looked round. The deputy SIO squeezed in beside me, giving a quick smile to a woman who shuffled aside to make room.

‘You must be a glutton for punishment,’ he whispered. If he’d seen the nod I’d got from the man on stage, he didn’t mention it. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Just curious,’ I said, keeping my own voice down as well. I could hardly admit I’d nothing better to do.

‘Does DCI Ward know?’

‘I didn’t know myself until about an hour ago.’ If I’d had a chance I might have cleared it with Ward, but I couldn’t see there was any real need when it was a public meeting. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, just keeping a quiet eye on things.’

‘Is Ward expecting trouble?’ She’d told me that local feelings over St Jude’s were running high even before the bodies had been found. But there weren’t any uniformed police in the hall, and I couldn’t see any other of Ward’s officers.

Whelan shook his head. ‘No, nothing like that. Doesn’t hurt to keep tabs on these things, though. You never know who’s going to turn up.’

Or not, I thought, looking again at the unoccupied chair at one end of the trestle table. I nodded towards the people on stage.

‘Who are these?’

‘Community leaders and small-fry activists, mainly. The woman talking now’s a councillor. The one next to her runs a food bank.’ He shrugged. ‘Well-meaning, most of ’em.’

‘What about the man sitting by the empty chair?’

A hard smile touched the policeman’s lips. ‘The jury’s still out on that one. That’s Adam Oduya. Local activist, but in a different league to the rest of them up there. Used to be a human-rights lawyer but he’s set himself up as a self-styled campaigner for “social justice”. He orchestrated most of the protests and rallies to save St Jude’s, and he’s the one who got the bat-protection league or whatever involved. Without him the place would’ve already been flattened.’

There was no clue there why this Oduya might think he knew me. ‘He won’t be popular with the developers, then.’

‘I doubt they’re losing any sleep over it. They’re some big international conglomerate so it’s just figures on a balance sheet to them. It’s the poor sods who live here that get the shitty end of the stick.’

‘You sound like you’re on the protesters’ side.’

‘I’m sympathetic, I don’t deny it. You might not think it to hear me talk but I grew up only a few streets from here.’ He nodded at my surprise. ‘I lived in Blakenheath until my folks moved to Newcastle when I was eight. Married a Londoner, that’s how come I’m back, but this is the first time I’ve been here since. Shocking what’s happened to the place. It was never a rich neighbourhood but not like this. Drugs everywhere, everything knocked down or boarded up, and a twelve-mile trip to the nearest hospital since St Jude’s closed. It’s enough to make you weep.’

He’d begun speaking more loudly, earning an irate look from the woman who’d made room for him. He gave her an apologetic nod and leaned closer, dropping his voice again.

‘The whole area’s crying out for redevelopment, but instead of affordable housing the developers want to throw up another shiny office block. And they’re trying to get their hands on the woods behind St Jude’s as well. It’s ancient woodland, but they say if they’re allowed to develop it they’ll be able to build houses. Oduya says they’re blowing smoke up everyone’s arse, and he’s probably right.’

‘So what’s your problem with him?’

Whelan hitched a shoulder. ‘I can’t disagree with a lot of what he says, I just don’t buy this “social messiah” act he puts across. He’s too much of a self-promoter for my liking. He’s got a popular blog, a massive Twitter following, and he knows how to play the media. Photogenic bugger, I’ll give him that, but I’m not convinced he doesn’t have his own agenda. St Jude’s hasn’t exactly done his profile any harm.’

I looked at the handsome man sitting on the stage. He wore a thoughtful frown as he listened to the woman drone on. ‘What sort of agenda?’

‘Who knows? Whatever ambitions made him jack in a law career. Politics, maybe. The man’s a natural politician, and he could pick his own ticket around here. Ah, here we go. The main event’s starting.’

The speaker was finally winding down, turning to Oduya as she introduced him. As she sat back in her chair, he applauded enthusiastically, prompting a more muted response from the audience. Then, instead of staying seated like the last speaker, he lifted his microphone from its stand on the table and rose to his feet.

‘Thank you, Tanja. And thank you all for coming here tonight. If not for the rain, we might have had a full house.’

He gave an easy smile, deliberately looking around the crowded hall to underline the joke. Amplified, his orator’s voice was even more impressive, and a ripple of laughter came from the audience. It quietened as he grew serious again.

‘Some people say there’s no such thing as community any more, that the ties binding our society have broken down. That nobody cares.’ He nodded, pausing for effect. ‘Well, standing here tonight that’s not what I see. What I see are people who do care. People who’re concerned for their families and neighbours, people who want to make better lives for their children. People who are sick and tired of not being heard!’

His voice climbed to echo off the hard walls of the church hall, earning a spontaneous round of applause. But I noticed how he also moved the microphone slightly away from his mouth, so there wouldn’t be feedback. Whelan was right: Oduya knew exactly what he was doing.

For the next ten minutes he spoke eloquently and with controlled passion. I already knew some of the background to St Jude’s, but then so did everyone there. It made no difference. Oduya commanded everyone’s attention, and I doubt there was an eye in the hall that wasn’t fixed on him.

Coming out from behind the table, he made a show of stepping around the empty chair as he came to stand at the front of the stage and stared out. A hush fell on the audience. He let the silence build.

‘I know I’m not saying anything you haven’t heard from me before.’ He was speaking more quietly now but still held everyone gripped. ‘The closure of our hospital, the theft — and it is theft — of our rights and land to satisfy corporate greed, that’s all old news. We’ve been there and done that. But this isn’t just about land, or buildings, or greed any more. This is about lives. People have died. Yet what do we have from the police? Silence.’

‘Uh-oh,’ Whelan muttered, straightening.

Oduya swept an arm towards the empty chair on the stage. ‘This was an opportunity for the police to speak directly to the people of this community, but instead they chose to say nothing. So where are they? Why aren’t they here?’

Whelan’s voice was tight with anger. ‘This is a stitch-up. We weren’t bloody invited.’

But Oduya’s words went down well with everyone else. A threatening rumble went up from the audience as he stood beside the vacant chair. A prop, I saw now.

‘All we know is that three individuals have died, their bodies left to rot in what was once a hospital. We don’t know who they are, we haven’t been told anything about them. But one thing is for sure. They didn’t deserve to die like rats, as neglected and forgotten as St Jude’s itself. And neither does anyone else!’

There was furious applause, whoops and angry shouts of assent. Oduya was prowling around the stage now, his voice rising.

‘How can it have come to this? Are lives — our lives, yours and your children’s — are they really worth so little? Because make no mistake, it is our children’s lives that are at stake here! I have it on good authority that one of the poor souls who died in there was pregnant…’

Beside me, Whelan stiffened. ‘Oh, shit.’

‘The police don’t want you to know that, because they’re ashamed. And they should be ashamed!’ Oduya was impassioned now. ‘What’s happened at St Jude’s isn’t just a tragedy, it’s a symptom. A symptom of the infection that’s affecting our society. Are we really going to sit quietly and do nothing while it spreads even more?’

People were on their feet now, applauding wildly and shouting their outrage. Whelan was already on his way out, pushing his way through to the exit. And in the calm centre of it all Oduya stood at the front of the stage silently now.

Head held high as he soaked it in.

I stayed until the end, but after Oduya the other speakers were an anticlimax. They did little more than add their voices to his, trying unsuccessfully to tap into the same wellspring of feeling. The man himself remained in his seat, apparently content to sit back and politely listen to the rest. But people were already starting to leave before the last speaker had finished.

When the meeting finally wound down I joined the shuffling queue for the doors. There was no sign of Whelan, but he’d be busy briefing Ward on what had happened. There would be some furious discussions going on after Oduya’s bombshell. He’d blindsided the police completely, revealing sensitive details no one outside the inquiry team should have known, clear proof there was a leak from within the investigation. Now Ward was facing a PR nightmare and had some hard questions to answer.

The rain was still holding off when I left the church hall, although there was a faint mizzle in the air that promised the lull wouldn’t last. A few people were still trailing out, but I was one of the last. Feeling the chill through my jacket, I set off back to where I’d left my car. I hadn’t gone far when there was a shout.

‘Dr Hunter!’

I turned to see someone hurrying over. As he drew closer I saw with surprise that it was Adam Oduya. He was smiling broadly.

‘I thought it was you when I saw you yesterday. How are you doing?’

My face must have shown my incomprehension. His smile became rueful.

‘It’s been a long time. We met, oh, must be eight or nine years ago now. The Gale Fairley case? I was on Kevin Barclay’s defence team.’

It took me a moment to place what he was talking about. Gale Fairley was a runaway seventeen-year-old whose decomposed body had been found in woodland. Kevin Barclay, an unemployed thirty-year-old with learning difficulties, had been charged with her murder after police found items belonging to her in his bedsit. I’d been brought in as an expert witness for the defence and had managed to establish that the teenager had been dead for between four and six weeks when her body was found. Since Barclay had been in hospital after a car accident during that time, he couldn’t have killed her.

It hadn’t gone down well with the police or the CPS. The prosecuting counsel did her best to undermine my findings during the cross-examination, but they couldn’t argue with the facts. Barclay was cleared, and a short time later his housemate was charged and later found guilty of murdering Gale Fairley.

But although I could recall the case, I couldn’t remember Adam Oduya.

‘I had hair back then,’ he said with a grin, passing a hand across his smooth skull. ‘You probably didn’t notice me much anyway. I was only a junior barrister so I was in the background most of the time. Most of your dealings were with James Barraclough.’

Barraclough I did remember, an officious Queen’s Counsel with an overblown sense of his own importance. And now I was beginning to place Oduya.

‘Quite a change from criminal counsel,’ I said, glancing at the church hall. ‘Interesting speech you gave in there.’

‘It needed saying. And I’ll keep on saying it until people start to listen.’

‘It looked to me like they already were.’

‘It’ll take more than a few hundred people in a church hall to change things.’ For a second he sounded dispirited. ‘Look, I’ve got to tie up one or two things inside, but how about grabbing a beer afterwards?’

The warning bells that had been sounding began to clamour more loudly. ‘Thanks, but I can’t.’

‘Some other time, then? We could meet up for a coffee if you’d rather.’

‘I don’t think so.’

He smiled, giving me a quizzical look. ‘Don’t want to collaborate with the enemy, is that it?’

He’d seen me at St Jude’s, so he already knew I was part of the inquiry team. ‘Let’s just say I don’t want a conflict of interest.’

He raised his outspread hands, signifying surrender.

‘I’m not looking to put you in a difficult position, I give you my word. Believe it or not, we’re on the same side. You want to help victims and give them justice. So do I.’

‘By giving away leaked details from a murder inquiry?’

‘If you’re talking about one of the victims being pregnant, then yes. I notice you aren’t denying it.’

Careful. ‘It’s not down to me to confirm or deny anything. Where’d you hear about it, anyway?’

The leak could have come from anyone connected with the investigation. As well as dozens of police officers, it could have been someone at the mortuary or even one of the fire officers or paramedics who’d been at the scene.

Oduya smiled, shaking his head. ‘You know I can’t tell you that. But it’s from a reliable source.’

‘And you think using it to score cheap points is the best way to help?’

‘Is that what you think I was doing?’ He seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘Each of those victims has a family or friends somewhere. Don’t you think they’ve a right to know what happened to them?’

‘Of course, but not like that.’ I didn’t need a lecture from him, not after what I’d been doing at the mortuary that afternoon. ‘It’s not your decision to make.’

‘Oh, come on, Dr Hunter! You’re seriously suggesting we should blindly trust the authorities? You’re not that naïve.’

Stung, I was about to argue before I stopped myself. This was what Oduya wanted. He was a former barrister, trained in adversarial argument. I wasn’t going to let him provoke me into giving anything away.

Perhaps realizing this, he changed tack. ‘Look, I promise I’m not after information, that’s not why I came after you. I mainly wanted to say hello. We’ve worked together once, and I’d like to think we can again. Perhaps not now, but sometime.’

‘OK.’

His smile was regretful. ‘I can see you don’t trust me. That’s fair enough. All I ask is that you keep an open mind.’

‘I always try to.’

‘Then I can’t ask any more.’ He held out a card: after a moment I took it. ‘Good to see you again, Dr Hunter. Despite what some of your associates in the police may say, I’m really not the enemy. I hope you’ll remember that.’

I put the card in my wallet as I watched him walk away.