The Scent of Death

Chapter 29

They brought out the first body just before midnight.

The rescue operation had started even before the dust swirling over the rubble had begun to settle. Grim-faced rescue workers tried to clear a way inside, ferrying equipment and machinery from fire tenders and vans. More floodlights were set up, replacing those shattered in the blast, and the strobing blue lights of emergency vehicles added an icy hue to the scene. The old hospital had been mortally wounded. Debris littered the ground in front of it, glass and shredded timber scattered like fallen leaves. One wing had been destroyed, the loft where we’d found Christine Gorski and the hidden room beneath completely obliterated. The other, including the main entrance, was still standing and retained most of its roof. But only the exterior walls were intact. The explosion had brought down the internal walls and floors, reducing most of the interior to a vast heap of broken stone and plaster. What windows remained had been blown out, leaving blind, blackened holes edged with jagged shards and broken frames.

All had been confusion in the minutes after the explosion. As the last rumbles died down, Whelan had taken a few steps towards the hospital before stumbling to a halt as the smoke and dust had cleared to present a view of the wreckage.

‘Oh, Jesus Christ…’

My ears were ringing, and the air had held an acrid stink I could taste at the back of my throat. ‘What can I do?’

He’d looked at me as though he’d forgotten who I was. ‘Stay here.’

Then he was running towards a group of officers, yelling orders. Ignoring his instructions, I’d headed for the ruined hospital until a police officer in body armour grabbed me by the arm.

‘You! Where’re you going?’

‘To help,’ I said dumbly.

‘You think anyone’s walking out of there? Stay behind the trailers!’

With that, he’d hurried away. He was right, I’d realized, as another group of uniformed officers rushed past. There was nothing I could do here. Dazed, I’d gone back to the trailers.

By contrast, everyone else had seemed galvanized with purpose. A semblance of order had already been established as the honk of fire engines blared in the distance, steadily growing closer. I’d slumped down on to the steps of a trailer, staring at the devastated hospital. In front of it, Jessop’s van stood on flat tyres, paintwork dulled by dust and grit. Its door was hanging off and its windscreen had been stoved in by the broken plywood board that lay across its crumpled bonnet. I’d felt nauseous. I hadn’t believed he’d do it. In spite of everything, I’d thought the contractor would allow himself to be talked down, would have let Ward leave.

Not this.

The cloud of dust had began to thin when movement caught my eye above the hospital. Black wisps were trickling from the undamaged section of roof, fanning out against the darkening sky. Please don’t let it catch fire, I’d thought, my stomach tightening. Then a breeze had cleared the dust and I’d realized it wasn’t smoke.

The surviving bats were leaving St Jude’s.

As night fell the rescue operation had taken on the relentless quality of a machine. I would have liked to help, but my offers had been tersely refused. No one had told me to leave, though, so I hadn’t. At one point I’d seen police and fire officers huddled over building plans, and shortly afterwards rescue workers had began venturing through the main doorway. Ainsley had arrived not long after that, leading a tall man in casual clothes to a trailer. The man was in his forties and had walked with the shell-shocked look of someone who’d found himself in a nightmare. Although I’d never met Ward’s husband, I hadn’t needed to be told this was him.

One look at his face had made that clear.

It was an hour or so later when there was activity around the main entrance. Its doors had been blown off, leaving a raw opening like a toothless mouth. Now shouts came from inside. I scrambled to my feet as I saw paramedics jogging towards the entrance with an empty stretcher.

An odd silence fell just before they brought the body out. I was too far away to make out any details, and the figure on it was covered. But the funereal pace of the bearers as they carried it down the steps was message enough. In the bright floodlights and flanked by the tall stone pillars, the procession looked almost theatrical. Desperate to know who it was, I looked round and saw Whelan watching solemnly from nearby. I hadn’t seen the DI since just after the explosion. He looked exhausted, glancing at me without interest as I hurried over.

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

Whelan didn’t take his eyes from the slow procession. ‘Jessop.’

He said it without emotion. A little of the tension went from my shoulders as I watched the stretcher being loaded into a waiting ambulance.

‘What about Ward?’

‘Nothing yet. It was pure chance they found him. He was in the basement, on the edge of where half the floors above came down. It looks like he’d set the charges but wasn’t anywhere near them when they went off. There wasn’t… they haven’t found anyone nearby, but it’s going to take days to clear the rubble.’

His face reflected the bleakness in his voice. It confirmed what I’d known but not wanted to admit. This was a recovery operation now, rather than a rescue.

Whelan turned to me as the ambulance doors were slammed shut. ‘I didn’t know you were still here.’

‘It’s better than waiting at home.’

He nodded. ‘You should go, though. There’s nothing you can do here, and it’ll be hours before… Well, before there’s any news.’

‘I’d rather stay.’

‘Up to you. In that case you might as well…’

A shout came from the entrance to St Jude’s. There was some sort of commotion going on among the rescuers gathered by the main doorway, a commotion spreading outwards from them like ripples in a pond. Seeing it, Whelan tensed, and as though on cue his phone rang.

Snatching it from his pocket, he squared his shoulders as though preparing himself. I watched him, my stomach knotting.

‘You’re sure?’ he said, his expression carefully guarded. ‘There isn’t any…?’

There was a long pause. I watched the broad shoulders sag. He put his phone away.

‘They’ve found her.’

Rachel called me at seven o’clock that morning, nearly beside herself with worry. She’d heard about the explosion at St Jude’s on the BBC’s World Service. It had said only that there had been casualties following a hostage situation, but she hadn’t been able to get through on the boat’s satellite phone. She’d had to wait until they put into the nearest marina before she’d been able to contact me.

‘You’re sure you’re all right?’ she kept asking.

‘I’m fine,’ I assured her.

Her call had woken me from an exhausted sleep, but I didn’t mind. It was good to hear her voice. I didn’t know what time it was when I’d got back to the apartment, except that it was late. I’d taken a taxi, since my car was still out of bounds at St Jude’s for the time being. Even though I hadn’t been close to the blast, I was still gritty with dust. But I’d been too tired to shower. After everything that had happened I just wanted to sleep.

It had taken several hours to bring Ward out. After instructing me to stay put, Whelan had hurried off, leaving me alone with my thoughts as I’d stared at the floodlit shell of St Jude’s. Ward’s husband had emerged from a trailer with Ainsley not long afterwards. He’d looked unsteady and almost overcome with emotion as they’d headed towards the ruined building.

For a long time after that nothing had happened. Then I’d seen a sudden flurry of activity outside the hospital. I’d moved to get a better view, hands clenched so tightly my fingernails dug half-moons in the skin of my palms. Emergency workers were trooping back from behind the shattered building, the reflective strips on their dirty protective clothing glinting under the floodlights. Paramedics came next, bearing a stretcher, and while I could only see a blanket-covered form strapped to it, I’d recognized Ward’s husband walking alongside.

Then an arm had emerged from beneath the blanket as Ward reached up to grip her husband’s hand.

Whelan came back over after the ambulance had left. He’d still looked drained, but now it was from relief instead of tension. He’d handed me a bottle of water.

‘I wouldn’t want another night like this,’ he’d said, his voice hoarse.

Neither would I. The call Whelan had received earlier had been to tell him that rescuers had heard banging from beneath the rubble. When they’d hammered in return, the bangs had repeated the same rhythm. Somehow, Ward had survived the explosion and the building’s collapse. After consulting blueprints supplied, ironically enough, by Jessop himself, they’d realized she was in the underground tunnel linking the basement to the now-demolished morgue at the back of St Jude’s.

There was no way they could get to her through the hospital. The tunnel’s entrance was buried under hundreds of tons of debris and any excavation would risk bringing the surviving structure down as well. Instead, the decision was taken to free Ward from the other end of the tunnel, clearing a route to her through the more manageable wreckage of the morgue.

The rescue had seemed interminable, and must have felt even longer for Ward and her husband. With her phone unusable so far underground, no one had any idea of her condition until the rescuers actually reached her.

‘She’s in pretty good shape, considering,’ Whelan had told me, taking a drink of water. ‘Shaken up, and she might have a perforated eardrum from the explosion, but other than a few cuts and scrapes she came out in one piece.’

‘What about the baby?’

‘They’ll check her out at the hospital, but so far everything looks OK. She’s a tough one, the boss. Tougher than a lot of people give her credit for.’

There’d been fondness as well as pride in his voice. I’d looked at the ruined shell of St Jude’s, remembering the force of the explosion that had brought it down. Even now I still found it hard to believe anyone could have survived.

‘How did she get away from Jessop?’

‘She didn’t. He let her go.’ Whelan recapped his water. ‘From what she’s told us, he was hitting the vodka while he went round rigging the explosives. She managed to get him talking, and by the time they got down to the basement he was getting pretty maudlin. She tried to persuade him to give himself up, but he lost his temper and yelled at her to get out before he changed his mind. She’d made it as far as the tunnel when he triggered the charges, so she ran in there as the place came down.’

Remembering the tunnel’s dark mouth, criss-crossed with police tape and asbestos warning signs, I didn’t envy her. Trapped and alone underground, it must have been a hellish experience.

‘Did she think he meant to do it?’

‘God knows. By the sound of it he was drunk and not making much sense towards the end. But he did what he said he was going to, and if anyone deserved to have that place dropped on his head it was that murdering bastard.’

I wasn’t about to disagree. But even through the fatigue and relief something didn’t seem right.

‘Why did he let her go?’ I’d asked.

‘She didn’t say. Maybe because she was pregnant.’

‘That didn’t help Christine Gorski.’ She’d been stunned by at least one electric shock before being left to die in the hospital’s loft. And the degree of cruelty evident in the deaths of Darren Crossly and Maria de Souza, even the brutal snuffing of Adam Oduya’s life and the callous disregard for Mears, were hard to reconcile with Ward being allowed to escape.

Whelan had shrugged, growing irritable. ‘Then perhaps he had a fit of conscience, I don’t know. He did, that’s the main thing.’

It was, and that wasn’t the moment to be questioning such an unexpected reprieve. Whelan left shortly afterwards, heading for the hospital for a more formal interview with Ward. With my car still off limits, I’d called for a taxi to meet me outside the main gates and then walked down the long, unlit driveway to the main road. Halfway along I’d stopped and looked back. The floodlights bathed the shattered hospital in a white glow, hard edged against the black sky. Like the church ruins in the woods, there seemed something natural about it, as though St Jude’s had always been destined for this end.

Turning my back on it, I’d walked away for the last time.

The street beyond the police cordon had been packed with waiting media vans, cameras and spectators. I’d kept my head down as I hurried past, ignoring shouted questions as I saw my taxi waiting. One persistent journalist ran after me as I climbed in, but I’d slammed the door on her and told the driver to set off. Ignoring the woman’s angry yell, I’d sat back in the seat, wanting nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep.

Which I had, until Rachel’s call woke me. Finally reassured that I wasn’t hurt, her attention swung to Ward.

‘It’s a miracle she got out alive. And the baby’s OK as well?’

‘So far as I know.’

I heard Rachel give a long sigh. ‘God, when I heard it on the news… I thought you said it wasn’t dangerous?’

‘I didn’t think it was. Things just… developed.’

‘Developed? Jesus, David, you could have been killed!’

‘I was a bystander, that’s all. It was Ward who was inside the hospital, not me.’

‘And what about the hit-and-run? The news report said that someone from the investigation was hurt then as well. It could have been you.’

I hadn’t told her it nearly was, and decided that now wasn’t the time. ‘I’m fine. Really. If you were here, you’d see that for yourself.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, taken aback. ‘I just meant… there’s nothing for you to worry about.’

‘Seriously? I get to hear on the news that you might have been blown up, and then have to wait hours to find out you’re OK? You call that nothing to worry about?’

I massaged the back of my neck, amazed at how quickly this had turned into a row. ‘Look, I’m sorry you were worried. But it wasn’t something I could do anything about.’

It sounded feeble even to me. I could hear Rachel breathing on the other end of the line. The silence grew awkward, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t make it worse.

‘I didn’t mean to bite your head off,’ she said more quietly. ‘This just isn’t… I’ll phone you later, OK?’

The line went dead.

Sleep was out of the question after that. The sky was lightening as I stared through the window at the apartments’ tree-covered grounds below. From up here it was possible to see how well screened the place was, isolated from its neighbours by its high fence and electric gates. There and then, I made up my mind that I would move back into my own flat as soon as I could arrange it. It had been a mistake coming here, and there was no point in staying any longer.

I’d had enough of hiding from ghosts.

A hot shower and breakfast helped me feel more human, although the conversation with Rachel still preyed on my mind. My restless mood wasn’t helped by lack of sleep, or the feeling of being in limbo. I’d been expecting to continue with the cadaver dog search at St Jude’s for a day or two yet, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen now. It left me with nothing planned, and nothing to do. I wasn’t good at down-time and, while there was always work for me to do at the department, for once I didn’t feel like going there either.

You really do need a change.

I’d made myself another coffee when my phone rang. This time it was Whelan, and my first thought was that something had happened to Ward or the baby.

I needn’t have worried. ‘They’re fine,’ the DI told me. ‘They’re talking about discharging her later today. Like I told you, she’s a tough one.’

He sounded back to his no-nonsense self, the emotions he’d let slip the night before stowed safely out of sight again.

‘Are you going to be around later?’ he asked.

‘I can be,’ I said, trying not to sound too eager. ‘Why?’

‘There’s something I wanted to ask you about. Might be nothing, just something the boss said that got me thinking.’

Now I was intrigued. ‘About what?’

‘Tell you later. There’s a couple of things I want to do first. Let’s say two o’clock at St Jude’s. Don’t bother checking in, I’ll see you by the main gates.’

‘You want to meet at the hospital?’

I couldn’t keep the dismay from my voice. I thought I’d seen the last of that place, and I couldn’t see any reason to go back now it was destroyed.

But Whelan was giving nothing away. ‘I’ll explain later. Do me a favour and keep it under your hat for now. Like I say, it might come to nothing.’

My restlessness was forgotten as I put my phone away. With Jessop dead and the crime scenes buried under tons of rubble, I’d assumed the investigation would start winding down. I couldn’t imagine why Whelan would want to go to St Jude’s again. Or why he needed to meet me there.

I looked at my watch, impatient at having to wait to find out. I still had a few hours to kill, but now I thought about it I could put the time to good use.

There was something I had to do as well.