The Scent of Death

Epilogue

The sky was threatening snow. The low clouds were featureless, and dusk was already falling although it was barely three o’clock in the afternoon. In the room, though, it was stiflingly hot. A fluorescent light shone from the ceiling overhead, further muting the world beyond the glass.

‘Won’t be long now. Can I get you anything?’ the overweight young man asked from by the door.

‘No, thank you.’

He went out. I shifted position on the hard plastic chair and looked at my watch. I’d been waiting almost an hour and I’d a long drive ahead of me. I wanted to set off before the snow came down. But I knew that wasn’t the reason for my impatience. I was nervous.

I should have done this long ago.

My phone chimed with the arrival of a text. I took it out and smiled. The image on the screen showed a red-faced infant, eyes screwed up and tiny fists balled. The caption with it said Emma Louise Ward, born this morning 3.25am, 6lbs 3oz. It was signed Sharon and Doug.

Still smiling, I texted congratulations and put my phone away. The news was a welcome patch of brightness, and there had been few enough of those recently. Not since the afternoon when Grace Strachan had walked back into my life.

I’d been at the hospital when Ward and Whelan had caught up with me. Staring into space in a busy A&E waiting room while Rachel had her wound stitched and dressed.

‘How is she?’ Ward had asked, taking the seat next to me while Whelan stood.

I looked at her. ‘You told me Grace was dead.’

‘I’m sorry, we thought she—’

‘You said it was her body in the car.’

‘Calm down,’ Whelan cut in.

‘Calm down? Are you serious?’

‘We fucked up,’ Ward said bluntly. She looked around the crowded waiting room. ‘Let’s go and get a cup of tea. I’ll make sure they send for us if there’s any news.’

We found an empty table in a corner of the hospital cafeteria. My insides still felt coiled with tension, an anger that was directed at myself as much as anyone else.

‘I called you straight away, as soon as we got the DNA results back,’ Ward told me, her face strained. ‘We honestly thought the woman in the car was Grace Strachan.’

Until that moment I hadn’t stopped to think what it had to mean for Grace to be alive. It felt like another punch to the heart. ‘Who was she?’

‘Her name’s Belinda Levinson, a freelance web designer. Her boyfriend’s a journalist who… What’s wrong, are you OK?’

I’d bent over, suddenly feeling sick. A rushing like water filled my ears. ‘Is his name Francis Scott-Hayes?’

The police had found the journalist’s body at his isolated cottage in the Kent countryside. He’d died from multiple stab wounds and the condition of the body suggested he’d been dead for several weeks. As far as they could tell, Grace had been living on her boat since returning to the UK earlier in the year, when she’d hitched to London and made her abortive attempt to break into my flat. The Oare Marshes, where her yacht was found, were only a few miles from where Scott-Hayes lived. He’d returned to the UK early from a two-month stint covering the war in Yemen, and it was thought he must have given her a lift at some point.

‘We don’t know why he took her back to his cottage instead of her boat,’ Ward had said. ‘Can’t rule out sex, but he’d got a long-term girlfriend and by all accounts wasn’t the sort to go for casual pick-ups. And he was a lot younger than Grace. If she still looked like she used to it might be different, but… Well, you saw how she is.’

I had. The Grace Strachan I remembered had exuded a powerful sexual appeal, but there had been nothing of that evident in the pathetic scarecrow on my kitchen floor. ‘Do you think she pulled a knife or forced him somehow?’

Ward gave a shrug. ‘It’s possible, but he’d still have to have stopped for her first. I think it’s more likely he just felt sorry for her and took her to his house to freshen up. We’ve checked the weather reports, and there was heavy rain around the time he came back to the UK. A middle-aged woman, wet through and on her own at the side of the road wouldn’t have looked much of a threat.’

No, she wouldn’t, I thought. Freshly back from a war zone, the journalist must have felt safe in the familiar landscape near his home. Bloodstains showed Scott-Hayes had died in the hallway of his house, probably not long after returning with his guest. His decomposed body was found in a small stone outbuilding behind his cottage, a former piggery now used for storage.

‘How badly decomposed?’ I’d asked automatically.

‘Bad enough. And the answer’s no, so don’t even think about it.’

I hadn’t been going to ask to take a look myself. Not right then, anyway. I’d not interrupted again as Ward explained how Grace had abandoned her boat and moved into the journalist’s cottage. Isolated and quiet, it made a perfect hideaway, well away from social contact where her erratic behaviour might have been noticed. There was no immediate danger of Scott-Hayes being missed. He’d set up an automated email response before his trip — the same one I’d received myself — and the volatile nature of his job meant he was prone to changing his plans at short notice. Even his lack of social media posts didn’t raise much concern at first, since he frequently worked in remote and inhospitable regions far from any wi-fi or internet connections. And, while she was unlikely to have planned it, at some point Grace must have realized that her dead host’s occupation presented her with a rare opportunity.

Living in his house, it wouldn’t have been difficult to gain access to his email account. While his phone and laptop required fingerprint verification, that would hardly have posed a problem with his body there. So Grace had stolen his identity as well as his life, emailing me in the hope of drawing me out. And when that had initially failed, another opportunity had offered itself.

‘We found Belinda Levinson’s car outside the cottage,’ Ward had told me. ‘Her friends say she was concerned when Scott-Hayes missed her birthday. She tried contacting his editors but no one seemed sure if he was back in the country or not, so she went to check on him. When she didn’t come back her friends assumed the two of them must be enjoying their reunion.’

I rubbed my temples. ‘Did Grace stab her as well?’

‘The fire made it hard to tell if there were any stab wounds on the body, but we found a second blood type at the cottage. We can’t say yet if it’s Levinson’s or not, but we’re assuming it is. The likeliest scenario is that Grace killed her as soon as she turned up at the cottage, and then… Well, when St Jude’s hit the news we think she probably put the body in the boot of Scott-Hayes’s car and took it to London.’

I shut my eyes. Jesus. Grace had never planned far ahead when I’d known her before, but then she’d never had to. Her brother had always been there to look after her.

‘You thought Scott-Hayes’s car had been stolen,’ I said, trying to keep the accusation from my voice. ‘Didn’t anyone go out to his house to check on him?’

‘Of course they did. We asked Kent police to look into it. But at that time Jessop was still the chief suspect for the hit-and-run and there was no reason to think anything might have happened to the car owner. We knew Scott-Hayes worked abroad, so when there was no one at home…’

Ward gave an apologetic shrug. I didn’t have the energy to argue, and I wasn’t blameless myself. I’d agreed to be interviewed without bothering to speak to the journalist in person. Even emailed Grace Strachan my address. When the concierge had called through on the intercom I’d heard only what I’d expected: Francis, not Frances, the female variant of the name she’d given him. And Rachel had simply assumed I’d made a mistake over the journalist’s gender. She’d never met Grace, so had no way of knowing who was outside the door. If I’d been the one to answer it, I doubted I’d have recognized her straight away either.

Then it would have been a whole different story.

Rachel’s injuries hadn’t been serious. The scalding to her hand was superficial, and although the knife had sliced through the muscle of her upper arm almost to the bone, the doctors assured us that there would be no long-term nerve or tendon damage. Even so, because she’d lost enough blood to need a transfusion, she’d been kept in hospital overnight.

It gave me a chance to clean up the apartment. By the time I collected Rachel in a taxi next morning, there were no visible signs of what had happened. But the less tangible effects were harder to erase.

In the days following the attack, we’d tried to pretend everything was normal, but it was a strain for us both. Rachel found it hard to sleep, growing quiet and short-tempered. I’d never liked the luxurious apartment and now, even with its alarms and concierge, she no longer felt safe. We’d had a blazing row over moving back to my flat, and while we made up afterwards, things were never quite the same.

By mutual consent the registry office was quietly cancelled. We pretended to ourselves it was only postponed, but we both knew it was more than that. We just didn’t want to admit it.

One evening two weeks after the attack, Rachel had been even more subdued than usual. It was during dinner. She’d been pushing her food around listlessly on her plate when she set down her fork.

‘I’m going back to Greece.’

Although I’d been half expecting it, that didn’t soften the blow. Objections and arguments flashed through my mind, until I looked at her face. Thinner than it had been, with shadows under her eyes. Rachel had always been strong, but there was a brittleness about her now I hadn’t seen before.

I’d put down my own cutlery, what little appetite I’d had gone.

‘When?’

‘Sunday. They’re letting me rejoin the boat for the rest of the research trip. And they’ve…’ She’d paused, forcing the words out. ‘There’s a chance I can extend my contract. For another year.’

There was a dull ache in my chest. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘No,’ she blurted. ‘But we can’t go on like this. I can’t… I don’t want to break up, but this is… I just need some time.’

I got up and went over. Her tears had wet my shirt as I held her, staring past her at the doorway through which Grace had entered our lives.

We’d sat up most of that night, talking it through. I didn’t want her to go, but she’d made up her mind even before she’d told me. And part of me knew it was best for her. Violence had visited us twice in the short time we’d known each other, and that always came at a price. Rachel was still coming to terms with her sister’s murder, so this attempt on our lives — in a place she’d felt safe — had struck at her core. She’d responded with violence herself and, justified or not, the world seemed a different place after that. We couldn’t pretend nothing had changed, and trying would have been slow torture. She deserved better.

Three days later, on a grey October afternoon, Rachel flew back to Greece. ‘It isn’t all that far. You could still come out for a holiday,’ she’d said, as we’d stood in the hallway by her suitcases.

I’d smiled. ‘I know.’

We’d see.

I’d moved back into my old flat. I’d wondered if it might feel strange, like going back in time. It didn’t, but it didn’t feel particularly good either.

Just familiar.

Professionally, I was more in demand than ever. There was a gruelling trip to Ireland that I wasn’t physically ready for but took anyway, followed by a bizarre series of murders in the Welsh Borders. And I’d received another job offer, much more intriguing than the one from BioGen. A private company was looking to set up a new anthropological research facility, the first of its kind in the UK. There were legal and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome, but they felt it was something I’d be ideally suited to, given what they called my ‘unique experience and expertise’. The letter didn’t say what the facility was, but I could guess.

I’d trained at one like it in Tennessee.

I’d yet to make a decision, and meanwhile the fallout from St Jude’s continued to rumble on. I’d watched on TV as a crane swung a wrecking ball into the surviving walls. After all the protests and demonstrations, all the needless blood and tears, the old hospital came down meekly in a billow of dust. One good thing that might yet come out of this was that, after such negative publicity, the developers were showing signs of backing down. A new proposal had been put forward to redevelop the entire site for social housing, and a petition had already been set up to name it Oduya Park.

Coincidentally, the day after that I’d heard from Ward that the activist’s police ‘source’ had been found. He was a PC whose wife had given birth to their twin daughters in St Jude’s and who was now approaching retirement. The officer’s name meant nothing to me, until Ward mentioned it was the older partner of the young PC on the gates. He wasn’t part of the main investigation team, but he had ears and people like to talk shop, regardless of their profession.

No one had the stomach for any more negative headlines, so the PC’s retirement had quietly been brought forward. I was glad he wasn’t punished more severely, though I wondered how things might have played out if details of Christine Gorski’s pregnancy hadn’t been leaked. Would Oduya still have spoken to me after the public meeting if he hadn’t wanted to confirm what he’d been told? And if not, would events still have conspired to make him shout my name across the rainy street, just as a hooded Mears was crossing the road? Or would the course of all our lives have been changed, and I been the one picked out in Grace Strachan’s headlights that night?

There was no way of knowing.

I’d met with Oduya’s family, including his partner, a thoughtful man in his forties who I’d already met to collect paperwork for the pro bono case Oduya had wanted me to take on. The activist’s parents had been restrained in their grief, not outwardly blaming me for their son’s death. Still, it was a difficult meeting for all of us.

Though not as difficult as the one that followed. One afternoon, against Ward’s advice, I’d gone to see Mears. The forensic taphonomist was out of bed when I went in, sitting in a wheelchair in dressing gown and shorts. One thin leg was bare, the other ended in a bandaged stump above the knee. He was staring into space, an open book face down on his lap. The red hair was lank and uncombed. At first he didn’t see me, then a spectrum of expressions crossed his face. A flush flared on his cheeks.

There was an empty visitor’s chair by the bed, but I didn’t sit down. ‘How are you?’ I asked, the words sounding trite.

In answer he spread his hands, offering himself and the bandaged stump as evidence. ‘How do you think?’

There’d been an intensity to his stare that made it hard to meet his eyes, but I wouldn’t let myself look away. For days I’d been wondering what to say, and now I was there all the ideas I’d had deserted me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I’d told him.

I knew he’d been informed about who’d been driving the car that had hit him. And why. Mears tried to give a laugh, but it wouldn’t come. The flush had spread across his entire face and neck, making the hollow eyes look feverish.

‘You’re sorry. Well, that’s all right then. That makes everything hunky-fucking-dory, doesn’t it?’

‘Listen, if I could—’

‘Could what? Could go back in time? Give me my leg back?’ He’d turned his head away, his mouth trembling. ‘Just leave me alone.’

Ward had been right: I shouldn’t have gone. Wordlessly, I’d started to leave.

‘Hunter!’

I’d stopped and turned. Patients in the other beds were staring. Mears looked close to tears, his hands clenched on the arms of the wheelchair. His voice shook.

‘It should be you sitting here. Don’t forget that.’

I’d let the doors swing shut behind me.

Ward continued to give me periodic updates about the St Jude’s investigation. Professor Conrad was released from hospital and was expected to return to work before much longer. And Wayne Booth’s condition continued to improve with treatment and therapy, although he would never regain anything like full mobility or speech. As for Lola, Ward had told me that she’d suddenly stopped cooperating, refusing to respond to or even acknowledge the charges against her. Her silence came after the police made another discovery.

‘We dug back into the patient death the neighbour told you about. The fourteen-year-old boy who died from the insulin overdose,’ Ward had told me. ‘Lola wasn’t prosecuted because there was no reason to think she’d done it deliberately. Everyone assumed it was an accident. But we’ve found out the boy went to the same school as Gary Lennox. He was two years older, so there wasn’t an obvious connection, but guess who he’d been bullying before he went into hospital?’

‘She killed a child because he’d bullied her son?’ Even after everything else she’d done, I was still shocked by that.

‘She’s not admitting it, but that’s what we think,’ Ward said. ‘If it wasn’t tragic, it’d be funny. All those people died because an overprotective mother thought they’d hurt her son. And then she ends up killing him himself.’

Ward had started her leave shortly after that, understandably deciding to concentrate on more positive maternal issues of her own. It was high time. The only loose end from the St Jude’s investigation was that Gary Lennox’s remains were still missing, and there seemed little prospect of his mother revealing where they were. Whelan had speculated that she might have simply dropped them into a wheelie bin, but I disagreed. The shrine she’d created on the cabinet hadn’t been solely to torment Wayne Booth. It had been just that — a shrine. Lola wouldn’t have disposed of her son’s burnt bones simply to get rid of the evidence.

Not long after Ward had started her leave I’d had a call from Whelan.

‘Fancy taking a dog for a walk?’ he’d asked.

The church ruins had looked even bleaker at this time of year. Ivy still clung to the crumbling gable wall, and the moss looked thicker than ever on the fallen stones. But the trees surrounding it were bare now, the fallen leaves forming a rotting mat underfoot. A few rooks looked down from the black branches, feathers ruffled against the wind and rain. It was a foul day, but one member of the party didn’t mind. Star trotted happily around the woodland clearing, the scents here far more to the Labrador’s liking than the fustiness of the old hospital.

It had been Whelan’s idea to walk the cadaver dog along the route Lola would have taken as she’d brought her son’s bones back from the boiler. We’d started at the demolished morgue, its mound of broken bricks now dwarfed by the rubble of St Jude’s, and let the dog sniff its way through the waste ground to the woods behind the hospital.

We found Gary Lennox’s remains in the clearing. Or rather the Labrador did. They weren’t even well hidden. After snuffling around the church ruins, the dog made a beeline for the lightning-struck oak. Split a few feet off the ground, the rooted part of the trunk was hollowed out by rot and surrounded by the bush of straggling shoots thrown up by the dying tree. At the base of the hollow, all but invisible inside the trunk, were charred human bones. The skull was at the very bottom. It was blackened and cracked, and its upper jaw was missing its front teeth.

As the last of Gary Lennox’s bones were removed from inside the rotting tree, I’d thought about when I’d seen Lola there. How annoyed she’d been to find someone else in the church’s crumbling remains. It had always seemed out of character for her to be collecting litter from around the clearing, but now I understood why.

She’d been tending her son’s grave.

It had begun to snow outside. Small flakes clung to the barred window, slowly sliding down the glass as they melted. I shifted again on the uncomfortable chair, tempted to use the weather as an excuse to leave. Now I was here I wondered what I’d hoped to achieve. I still couldn’t say for sure why I’d come, except that it wouldn’t have felt right not to.

It was just something I’d felt I had to do.

I felt my stomach tense as I heard footsteps approach in the corridor, as though the scar beneath my ribs had a memory of its own. The door opened and an orderly entered. I half rose to my feet as the woman shuffled into the room behind him. She was painfully thin, dressed in a plain white gown through which the bones of her shoulders clearly showed. The wispy grey hair was short and bristly above one temple where it had been shaved, showing the line of a healing scar.

Whatever threat had once existed in the frail figure had burned itself out. The orderly held on to her arm, guiding her into the chair opposite mine. The skin on her face was still livid and raw, although the scalds had now largely healed. But that wasn’t the real damage. The eyes that darted fretfully around the room were milky, as though clouded by cataracts. The boiling coffee had been strong and viscous, badly burning the delicate corneas and causing permanent scarring. Surgery might have restored some sight but, even if the courts were to allow it, the psychiatrists felt the trauma would be too much for her fragile psyche. From now on, her world would be a grey mist.

She tilted her head, listening anxiously.

‘Who’s there?’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘Michael, is that you? I’ve been so scared.’

There was a desperate eagerness about her. For a moment, I saw a hint of her former beauty, the ghost of the woman she used to be. Then that too burned out and disappeared. I forced myself not to recoil as the blue-veined hands groped across the table towards mine. Her skin was icy to the touch.

I caught a faint smell of soap from her. Nothing else.

‘Hello, Grace,’ I said.