The Scent of Death

Chapter 3

‘Back! Everyone get back!’ Ward yelled, coughing.

The air was smoky with dust and sparkling glass fibres. Everyone around me was coughing, the paper face-masks inadequate against the miasma that now filled the air. My eyes felt full of grit as I looked down into the gaping hole that had opened up. One of the spotlights had toppled over when the plate fell and lay canted beside it, its beam shining into the darkness below.

‘That means you, too,’ Ward said from beside me. Moving past, she edged closer across the stepping plates towards the hole. Torn lengths of insulation hung down into it, snagged on the ends of splintered joists that jutted out like javelins.

‘Professor Conrad! Are you all right?’ she called.

There was no answer. This was a Victorian building, and the ceilings were high enough for the fall to break bones even without roof timbers and metal plates cascading down as well.

‘Don’t bloody stand there, get downstairs and see how he is!’ Ward snapped at the officers nearest the loft entrance.

‘The joists must be rotten,’ Whelan said as the officers hurried off. ‘Ma’am, you should…’

She nodded, reluctantly turning away from the hole. ‘OK, everybody out! Nice and steady, single file and don’t get too close together. Come on, move!’

Coughing, we made our way in an uneven line across the stepping plates. They bounced under the scuff and thump of feet, and I was relieved to reach the stepladder. After the dusty heat of the loft, climbing down into the cooler air below was like descending into cold water. Ward and Whelan were last out. She clambered quickly down the ladder, followed by her DI.

‘Get paramedics up here, now!’ she demanded, pushing through the crowd of overalls gathered around the stepladder. She looked around for the officers that she’d sent to help the pathologist. ‘Where the hell are Greggs and Patel?’

There was a commotion from further down the long hospital corridor. A young female officer with a torch emerged from the doorway to a ward, looking harassed.

‘Here, ma’am.’

Brushing aside a proffered bottle of water, Ward went over. ‘How is he?’

The young woman shook her head, blinking nervously. ‘Uh, I don’t know…’

‘You don’t know? Oh, for… Come on, get out of the way!’

She unceremoniously barged past the young officer to go into the ward. ‘He’s not in there, ma’am.’

‘Then where the hell is he?’

‘We, uh, we can’t find him.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t find him? He can’t have bloody vanished!’

Ward turned as a torch beam appeared further along the unlit corridor. It bobbed towards us as the other police officer she’d sent down from the loft hurried to join us.

‘There are more corridors branching off from this,’ he said, breathlessly. ‘We looked in the ward we thought was underneath where he fell, and I’ve just been to the next one along, but he’s not in either of them.’

‘Well, he can’t have wandered off, not after a fall like that!’

‘No. I mean, he might have, but…’ The police officer hesitated, as though reluctant to go on. ‘I can’t see any hole in the ceiling.’

‘Then you’re looking in the wrong bloody place, aren’t you? Here, give me that.’ Ward snatched the torch from his hand and turned to Whelan. ‘Jack, I want this floor searched. Every room. And where are the bloody paramedics?’

‘On their way, ma’am.’

I moved forward as well, as Whelan began firing off commands, but he gave a quick shake of his head. ‘Not you, Dr Hunter. All due respect, but we’ve lost one forensic expert already. Until we know none of the other floors are going to collapse you’re staying put.’

I could see there was no use arguing. Frustrated, I remained by the foot of the stepladder as the others hurried off, torch beams zig-zagging in the blackness. One by one they cut out as they disappeared into adjoining corridors and rooms. As the shouts and footsteps receded, I looked up at the loft entrance. Whelan had told me to stay put, but I couldn’t stand around doing nothing.

I climbed up the stepladder until my head and shoulders were in the loft. A haze of dust still filled the air, hanging like smoke in the floodlights. From below, calls echoed along the corridor from the searching police officers. By the sound of it they still hadn’t located the pathologist, but I could see now that finding where he’d fallen might not be so straightforward. It was thirty or forty yards from where I stood on the ladder to where Conrad had gone through the ceiling, and the layout of the floor below was completely different to the loft’s open expanse. Evidently, it wasn’t proving easy to negotiate the warren of NHS wards, corridors, offices and waiting rooms, or to determine which one of them the pathologist had fallen into.

Even so, they should have found him by now. I shifted uncomfortably on the stepladder as the searchers continued to call to each other. Come on, what’s taking so long? Several minutes had already passed since the loft had collapsed. If Conrad had an open wound, he could be bleeding out while everyone ran around trying to find him.

‘Professor Conrad!’ I called.

The shout died away. I started to head back down the stepladder, intent on joining the search despite Whelan’s warning, when I thought I heard a noise. I stopped, my head cocked to listen. It didn’t come again. It hadn’t sounded like the searchers, though.

It had sounded like a moan.

‘Professor Conrad! Can you hear me?’

Nothing. I stared at the pool of brightness made by the floodlights. Earlier that year I’d been forced to watch helplessly while a man died. I still woke thinking about it, and the idea of history repeating itself was unbearable.

To hell with it.

I climbed the rest of the way into the loft. I tested the stepping plates before trusting them with my weight, but although the joists underneath them creaked and flexed they seemed solid enough. The ceiling below had only given way when Conrad landed directly on them. Providing I didn’t do the same, I should be OK.

I hoped.

The loft had been eerie enough when there were other people up there. It was even more so now I was on my own. The glow from the lights strung out along the stepping plates only made the shadows beyond them seem even darker. I kept a wary eye out for bats as I walked across the flexing boards, not wanting to be taken by surprise like the pathologist, but there was no sign of the timid creatures. I guessed the noise and commotion had scared them away.

The tarpaulin-wrapped body lay where we’d left it. It hadn’t been disturbed by the collapse, which was something. I edged around the woman’s remains, feeling vaguely disrespectful at leaving her alone up here. But it was the living who demanded attention now.

Carefully crossing the stepping plates, I approached the ragged hole. I didn’t trust the nearest plates, so I hooked an arm over a roof beam to anchor myself before craning to see down into the room below. Dust swirled slowly upwards, caught in the glare from the toppled floodlight, but it was too dark to see what lay at the bottom.

‘Professor Conrad!’

Nothing. Taking out my phone from inside my overalls, I switched on its torch. The shadows grudgingly retreated to reveal a chaotic pile of broken timbers, plaster and insulation. Leaning out further, I tried to see more. The torch beam passed over something blue. I shone it back, searching for it again. It was hard to make out, but then I realized what I was looking at.

A plastic overshoe, protruding from underneath a sheet of insulation.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

I almost dropped my phone. Keeping a firm hold on the roof timber, I looked round as Whelan clomped across the stepping plates.

‘You were told to stay put. Out. Now!’

‘I can see Conrad.’

He hesitated. ‘Let me have a look.’

I moved aside. ‘Have you found which room he’s in yet?’

‘Not yet. The layout down there’s all messed up. We’ve got to go along another corridor and then double back, and it’s all divided up with panelling and partition walls. Makes it hard to get your bearings.’

It shouldn’t be that hard, I thought, but the DI’s bristling attitude made it clear he didn’t need me to tell him that. Grabbing on to the same roof beam I’d been holding, he leaned out over the hole and shone his torch into the room below.

‘Can you hear me down there, Professor?’ he called.

There was no reply. ‘Can you see him?’ I asked.

‘I can see something,’ he grunted, squinting into the hole. ‘Looks like his foot. Maybe we could—’

Footsteps on the stepping plates alerted us to Ward’s approach. ‘Jesus, Jack, what the hell are you doing?’

We turned to see Ward angrily coming towards us. For the first time I noticed she seemed to be moving awkwardly, bulky in the baggy overalls.

‘Sorry, ma’am, I was just—’

‘It’s my fault,’ I told her. ‘I thought I heard a moan.’

‘What, all the way from here?’ She gave me a sceptical glare. I was beginning to wonder myself if I’d imagined it. But I’d heard something.

‘We can see him,’ Whelan said, saving me any more explanation.

‘Bloody hell.’ Ward glanced down at the woman’s remains as she caught her breath. ‘Is he conscious? Please tell me he’s still breathing.’

‘Can’t say. He’s buried under half the ceiling, but he’s not moving.’

‘Let me see.’

‘Come on, ma’am, it’s not safe,’ Whelan warned. ‘You shouldn’t be up here.’

I don’t know which surprised me most, the fact he’d say something like that to his SIO or that Ward didn’t take his head off for it.

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ she said, holding on to the roof beams for balance as she made her way over. She stopped by the huddled remains in the centre of the stepping plates, still breathing heavily in the mask. ‘A fire crew’s on the way with rescue equipment, as well as an ambulance and paramedics, but we still can’t bloody find him! Jesus Christ, this is ridiculous!’

‘I could go down—’ I began.

‘No!’ Ward and Whelan snapped in unison. She shook her head. ‘The fire crew’ll be here soon. They’ll have proper rescue equipment.’

‘He could be dead by then.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’

Whelan cleared his throat. ‘Hate to say it, but Dr Hunter’s got a point, ma’am. We don’t know Conrad’s condition, and the fire crew have still got to get here and lug all their gear upstairs. I could at least go down and take a shufti, see how things are.’

Ward stared down at the floor, hands bunched on her hips.

‘Do it.’

Instructions were shouted at the officers on the floor below and a telescopic ladder was quickly hustled up into the loft. Ward wouldn’t allow more than a handful of officers up there to minimize the risk of another collapse. She’d been reluctant to let me stay, until I’d pointed out that my medical background might be useful until the paramedics arrived.

In all of this, the reason why we were all there in the first place was almost forgotten. The body of the dead woman and her unborn child lay off to one side, far enough away from the hole not to be disturbed by the frenzied activity. At my request, a new plastic sheet was brought into the loft, and as Whelan and another officer set about extending the lightweight ladder into the hole I spread it over the near-mummified body. The plastic crinkled as I carefully drew it over the desiccated face, its leathery skin pulled drum-tight over the bones. The sheet would prevent any further contamination from the dust and glass fibre that had been stirred up, though I admitted to myself that wasn’t the sole reason I’d wanted to cover her. She’d lain here, alone and undiscovered, for God knew how long.

It didn’t feel right to ignore her now.

To my frustration, Ward made me stay well back while Whelan lowered the ladder, careful to avoid the debris that buried the pathologist. Floodlights had been repositioned to throw light into the space below, but the angle restricted our view. They cast enough light to see the mound of timbers and insulation covering Conrad, but beyond that the room disappeared into impenetrable shadow.

Rather than trust the ladder against the hole’s crumbling edge, Whelan leaned it against one of the roof timbers overhead and secured its top with a length of nylon rope. He gave it a shake, then swung himself out on to the rungs.

‘Watch yourself, Jack,’ Ward told him.

‘Just like cleaning windows,’ he quipped, climbing down.

The aluminium ladder bounced and creaked rhythmically as he descended. In a few seconds it stopped as he reached the bottom. From where I stood he was out of sight, but his voice carried clearly enough.

‘OK, I’m down. Let me get some of this stuff off him…’

There was a grunt, then the sound of scrabbling. A plume of dust rose up from the hole as the sergeant shifted the debris from on top of the pathologist.

‘That’s better.’ He sounded out of breath. ‘He’s pretty banged up. Still got a pulse but he’s in a bad way. One leg looks broken, and… OK, there’s a lot of blood.’

‘Where from?’ I called. ‘Is it arterial?’

‘I don’t know, I can’t see where it’s coming from. Looks to be from his leg but it’s pinned and I don’t want to risk moving him. Ma’am, if we don’t get this sorted quick we’re going to lose him.’

I turned to Ward. ‘Let me see if I can—’

Impatiently, she raised a hand to silence me. ‘We need to get in there, Jack. Can you see a door or a way out?’

‘Hang on.’ There was a pause. ‘Looks like a small ward. Still some beds and other junk down here, but I can’t see a door.’

‘There’s got to be one somewhere.’

‘No, it looks like one wall’s been bricked up and — fuck!’

There was a sudden clatter.

‘Jack? Jack! Are you all right?’

Seconds passed before Whelan replied. ‘Yeah, I just… I dropped my torch.’

Ward sagged with relief. ‘Bloody hell, Jack, what are you playing at?’

‘Sorry, ma’am. It’s the beds…’ His voice was strained. ‘There’s people in them.’