The Scent of Death

Chapter 4

Ward didn’t want to let me go down to Whelan. ‘I’m not risking anyone else, not until I know what we’re facing.’

‘We know what Conrad’s facing. He’s going to bleed to death unless we stop it.’

‘The paramedics and fire crew will be here in five minutes—’

‘He might not have that long. Come on, I can at least try and slow the bleeding until they get here!’

‘Jack’s trained in first aid—’

‘And I’m a trained doctor! If you’re worried I might contaminate a potential crime scene—’

‘That isn’t it, and you know it!’

‘Then let me get down there!’

Ward put her head back. ‘Jesus Christ! All right, but for God’s sake be careful!’

I didn’t wait for her to change her mind. Swinging myself out over the ladder, I began clambering down. It creaked and bucked under me but I took no notice. Whelan reached out to steady it as I reached the bottom.

‘Careful where you step.’

It was like being at the bottom of a well. Shafts of brightness from the floodlights came through the hole in the ceiling but illuminated only a small area around us. Everything else was in blackness. Whelan was crouching by a mound of broken plaster and timbers, focusing his torch on Conrad. The DI had cleared off most of the debris — at least it wasn’t heavy — and the pathologist lay twisted on his side in a nest of torn insulation. Caked in plaster and dirt, his face looked pallid and drawn, blood on it glistening darkly. He was unconscious, and I didn’t like the sound of his breathing.

But it was the wound to his leg that was most urgent. Clogged with plaster and glass fibres, blood had formed a pool around his lower body. It was coming from the leg Conrad was lying on, and to get to it would mean moving him. I could see now why Whelan had been reluctant. After a fall like that the pathologist could easily have a spinal injury, and from the rasping breaths I thought a rib might have punctured a lung. He needed more help than I could give him, but at least I could try to see he stayed alive until it got here.

‘Hold him still if he moves,’ I told Whelan, and slid my hands under the pathologist’s trapped leg. Trying not to disturb his position, I gently probed around where the bleeding seemed to be coming from. I was hoping I wouldn’t feel a shard of broken bone sticking through the muscle of his leg. If that was the cause of the bleeding there might be little I could do, especially if the bone had nicked one of the arteries. In that case Conrad might well be dead before the paramedics even got here.

But there wasn’t the sharp edge of splintered bone I’d been dreading. Instead, through the thin membrane of my gloves, I felt a rip in his coveralls and trousers on his thigh and the warm slickness of blood underneath. Conrad must have caught his leg on a nail or broken joist as he fell through the ceiling. Bad, but hopefully not an artery.

‘Get ready,’ I told Whelan. ‘I’m going to apply pressure.’

My gloves were far from sterile, but they hadn’t come into contact with the victim’s body in the loft. And infection was the lesser risk facing the pathologist just then. Relying purely on touch, I bunched up the fabric of his trousers over the wound and pressed hard.

He gave a low groan and tried to move.

‘Keep him still,’ I said.

In response Whelan clamped the injured man more tightly, using his weight to keep him pinned.

‘What’s happening?’ Ward’s voice floated down from the hole in the ceiling. ‘Is he all right?’

‘How far away are the paramedics?’ I called back.

‘They’ve just come through the gates. Two, three minutes.’

It couldn’t be soon enough. Still pressing on the wound, I shifted to a better position and concentrated on maintaining the pressure. Only then did I take the time to look around.

It was too dark to see much. Whelan had said it was a small ward of some kind, but beyond our island of light the rest of the room was in shadow. As my eyes adjusted, the blockwork of an unplastered wall took shape ahead of me in the gloom. Further away, blurred by the fog of dust, was the angular framework of a hospital bed. Lying on it, little more than a patch of grey in the blackness, was a still figure. I thought I could make out another bed beyond it, although that could have been the shadows playing tricks.

But whatever else this place contained, it would have to wait. Closing my mind to the growing cramp in my forearms, I kept up the pressure on Conrad’s wound and willed the paramedics to hurry up.

There was a faint lightening of dawn in the sky as I pulled up outside Ballard Court. I waited for the automatic gates to open, the hum of their motor a bass accompaniment to the morning birdsong. Driving through, I parked in the subterranean car park and switched off the engine. The lift doors chimed open, revealing my neighbour from across the hall. His eyes passed disapprovingly over my rumpled state before he gave a cursory nod as he walked straight past me.

‘And good morning to you, too,’ I said to the empty lift.

My footsteps clipped out a tattoo on the marble floor as I walked down the hallway to the apartment. I let myself in as quietly as I could, but the smell of bacon told me I was wasting my time. Rachel was at the hob, slicing mushrooms next to a sizzling frying pan. She was already dressed, looking lovely and a lot fresher than I did.

‘Hi,’ she said, taking the pan off the heat. She came over and put her arms around me, tilting her face up for a kiss. ‘Good timing.’

I breathed in the scent of her hair, still slightly damp from the shower. ‘There was no need for you to get up yet.’

‘Yes, there was. I wanted to cook breakfast. I knew you wouldn’t bother if I didn’t. Have you even eaten anything since yesterday’s lunch?’

I thought back to the over-stewed tea a PC had brought for me earlier.

‘I had something.’

Rachel arched a sceptical eyebrow at me before turning back to the hob. ‘You’ve time for a shower.’

I smiled at the unsubtle hint: after hours sweating inside my coveralls I needed one.

But my smile faded as I went into the bedroom and saw the packed suitcase standing by the door. Rachel’s flight wasn’t until late morning, but she’d have to allow for traffic and delays in getting to the airport. I felt a hollowness under my ribs at the thought.

It wasn’t how I’d wanted our last night to be.

The paramedics hadn’t taken long to arrive, but it had seemed an endless few minutes. I was grateful to hand over to one of them, a young woman who quickly took over applying pressure to Conrad’s wound while her colleague ripped open packets of dressings. I stood back to give them room, holding my bloodied hands away from me. No longer crouched over the pathologist, I was better able to take in my surroundings. The extra light from the paramedics’ torches revealed three beds in the shadows. The furthest one was empty, but the other two had motionless figures lying on them. I didn’t attempt to go over, knowing better than to contaminate the scene any more than it had been already. But any hopes I’d had that this might have been some sort of hoax, a pair of shop mannequins left in beds by pranksters when the hospital closed, soon disappeared. There was an odour in the air I’d been too busy to notice before. Faint and masked by the smell of dust and plaster from the collapsed ceiling, it was the foully sweet scent of decay. From what I could make out, both bodies were fully clothed, and I could distinguish dark bands across their chests and legs. At first I couldn’t think what they could be, but then I realized.

They’d been strapped to the beds.

There was a nudge on my arm. ‘Let’s give them some room,’ Whelan said. ‘Here.’

He held out a pair of clean nitrile gloves. Having peeled the soiled ones off, I put them on as the paramedics worked on Conrad, and then went back to the ladder. I paused at the bottom, taking one last look across the shadowed chamber. No doors or any way in or out, as Whelan had said. Only the blank face of the unplastered wall, indistinct in the darkness.

I was ushered out of the loft and back downstairs. I passed the fire crews on the stairs, standing aside to let them past with their equipment. It was a relief to step outside into the cool night. I was sweaty and itching from the loft insulation, glad to be able to take off the filthy and bloodstained protective gear. A sickle moon hung low in the sky, ringed by a milky penumbra, as I accepted a cup of tea from a friendly PC. I stood on the steps outside the doorway to drink it, and hadn’t finished when the paramedics emerged from inside. They were carrying Conrad on a rigid stretcher. The pathologist looked in a bad way. His face was bloodied and he was still unconscious, secured by straps and with a cervical collar immobilizing his head and neck.

As soon as he was on board, the ambulance set off in a blare of sirens and blue lights.

Ward appeared not long afterwards. She spoke to several other people, gesticulating angrily at one point, before heading over to where I stood. She’d pulled off her mask and hood and gave a heartfelt sigh as she leaned against one of the stone pillars that flanked the steps.

‘Jesus, what a night.’ She began peeling off her gloves. ‘Thanks for what you did in there for Conrad.’

‘How is he?’

She blew a strand of sweat-damp hair from her eyes. ‘Too soon to say. The paramedics were able to stabilize him while the fire crew set up the lifting gear. His pupils are responsive, which is a good sign, but until they get him X-rayed and scanned they won’t know how serious it is.’

‘They brought him out through the loft?’

‘It was quicker than knocking through the wall.’ She bent and began tugging off her overshoes. ‘Took us a while to find the bloody thing, even knowing what we were looking for. It’s been built across a sort of anteroom at the end of a ward and painted on the outside to match the rest of it. If you didn’t know it was there you wouldn’t give it a second glance. Someone went to an awful lot of trouble so it wouldn’t be found.’

There was an obvious question waiting to be asked. ‘Do you think it’s connected with the woman in the loft?’

‘Honestly? I haven’t a clue.’ She threw a wadded-up overshoe at a plastic bin. ‘Hell of a coincidence if not, but until we can take a better look at what’s in that bricked-up room I’m not jumping to any conclusions.’

I nodded up at a boxy camera fixed high up in the hospital wall, its lens pointing at the pillared entrance. ‘What about the CCTV?’

Whoever bricked up the ward had to go in and out, but Ward shook her head. ‘They’re dummy cameras. Apparently, the developers decided it wasn’t worth the expense of real ones. Not that they’d be much help anyway. Recordings are usually erased after a few weeks, and we’re looking a lot further back than that.’

‘So there was no security here at all?’

‘There were security guards to start with, but that was more to keep the protesters out than anything. The office development’s caused a lot of ill feeling locally. Social activists think the land should be used for housing, and conservation groups want to have St Jude’s listed and a protection order slapped on the entire site. The grounds back on to woodland where there’s a ruined Norman church or something. There’s been a campaign to have it declared an area of special scientific interest, like Lesnes Abbey Woods in Bexley. Except that’s got an abbey and fossils going for it, so they’re probably on a hiding to nothing.’

Ward unzipped her coveralls and began wrestling her way out of them. I noticed she seemed to have put on a little weight but didn’t think anything of it.

‘Once the developers realized it was going to be a long haul, they cut back on security,’ she went on, tugging an arm free. ‘Usual story. Made do with fences and “keep out” signs and left the place to fall down by itself until they got the green light to demolish it.’

‘Until the bats.’

She gave a wry smile. ‘Until the bats.’

I looked up at the boarded-up building. ‘You think this could have anything to do with the protests?’

‘It’s somewhere to start. First off, though, we’ll need to make sure the building’s safe before we send anyone else inside. I’m not risking any more injuries, and we’ve already contaminated enough crime scenes for one day. Whatever’s in that room we found, I don’t want any more ceilings dropping on it.’ She yanked at one of the coverall sleeves that had become stuck. ‘God, I’d forgotten how much I hate these bloody things.’

With a grunt, she finally shucked free. My first reaction was that she’d put on more weight than I’d thought, but then I realized. She cocked an eyebrow at me.

‘What’s up? Wondering if I’ve eaten all the pies?’

I smiled. ‘How far along are you?’

‘Just over six months, but it seems like a bloody age. And, before you say anything, yes, I do know what I’m doing. It’s not as if I’m on foot patrol, so I can work as long as I feel fit. I’m not missing my shot at SIO to sit at home knitting bootees.’

I understood now why Whelan had been so concerned about her being in the loft. And why Ward had been so affected by the sight of the dead woman and her unborn child. The victim’s pregnancy had been at a similar stage as her own.

‘Boy or girl?’ I asked, feeling the familiar stab of loss as I thought back to my own wife’s pregnancy.

‘Don’t know, don’t care. My husband’s hoping for a boy, but I told him if he wants to know the sex he should have got pregnant himself.’

I knew she was married but I’d never met her husband. Although Ward and I had worked together several times, we’d never socialized, and on the occasions we’d met our private lives hadn’t really been on the agenda.

Still, her news was a bright note in an otherwise grim evening. I waited by my car, while Ward went into a briefing with senior members of her team and fire-safety officers. Shortly afterwards they were joined in the mobile command post by three more people, a short-haired man in his forties whose authoritative demeanour suggested he could be Ward’s superior, and a younger man and woman who trailed behind like his entourage. None of them looked happy. Not only had the pathologist been seriously injured, but now we were looking at multiple homicides that might or might not be connected.

What had seemed like a routine investigation had become a different beast altogether.

After twenty minutes, a PC came over with the message that I might as well go home. All further work had been suspended until the loft was safely shored up and given the all-clear by health and safety: I’d be contacted when I was needed again.

And so I’d driven back to Ballard Court. There was no question of trying to sleep before Rachel left, so after a shower and breakfast we sat at the table over coffee, trying to pretend it was just another morning. That grew harder as the time approached for her to leave. She didn’t want me to drive her to the airport, as that would only prolong the goodbye, and I felt my heart sink when her phone chimed to announce the taxi’s arrival. I held her close, breathing in the clean scent of her hair to memorize it.

‘See you in three months,’ she said, giving me a final kiss.

When the door had closed behind her, I turned back to the empty apartment. The gleaming kitchen seemed even more clinical than usual, the abstract paintings on the walls of the lounge and hall more alienating than ever. I was used to being there on my own, yet Rachel’s absence shouted out everywhere I looked.

Tired, but knowing sleep was out of the question, I loaded the breakfast plates into the dishwasher and made myself another coffee. The apartment had an elaborate barista-style machine that ground beans, frothed milk and carried out any number of other esoteric tasks. Rachel loved it, but to me it seemed a lot of fuss for a cup of coffee. Taking a jar of instant from a cupboard, I poured myself a mug in half the time and sat down with it at the granite kitchen island.

Now Rachel was gone I felt at a loss. I’d probably head in to the university department later, but that still left me with a few hours to fill. Restless, I went online to see if the grisly discoveries at St Jude’s had made it on to any of the news sites. The story was buried away in the regional sections, short on details except that human remains had been discovered at the derelict hospital. There was no mention of either the sealed chamber or Conrad’s accident. The site was too public for the police to keep a lid on what had happened for very long, but Ward was evidently hoping to delay the media frenzy as long as possible.

Good luck with that, I thought.

Having read what little coverage there was about the investigation, I ran a quick search on the hospital itself. There was no shortage of information about St Jude’s, from petitions and blogs rallying support against the hospital’s demolition to amateur websites detailing its history. It had started life in the nineteenth century as a charitable infirmary run by nuns. By the 1950s the hospital had begun to expand, the stern Victorian building presiding over the new departments and facilities built in its grounds. There were numerous photographs chronicling the stages of its life, from sepia prints that showed raw, new-looking stonework and sapling-dotted grounds to more recent snaps taken when the building was a boarded-up wreck. One image that looked to have been taken in the 1970s showed St Jude’s in its bustling prime. Where now only rusted posts survived, a large sign detailing the hospital’s departments stood next to the main doors. Walking past it were two nurses caught mid-stride, laughing as they smoked cigarettes. Behind them a man and child — boy or girl; it was impossible to tell — were frozen in time as they passed through the big doors.

There was something melancholy about seeing all those images of past lives. It wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on right then, and the background reading into St Jude’s hadn’t provided any great insights. Still, looking at my watch, I saw I’d killed almost an hour. Long enough for me to head into work.

Shutting my laptop, I put it in my bag and collected my jacket from the hat stand in the hallway. Then, with a sense of relief, I went out and closed the door on the opulent apartment.

For the past few years I’d held an associate position in the forensic anthropology department of one of London’s larger universities. It was an association based on mutual convenience. My teaching duties were minimal, but it provided me with an income and facilities and allowed me the freedom for police consultancy work. Earlier that year my tenure had looked shaky when I’d been unofficially blacklisted by police forces after an investigation had ended badly. But since the Essex case my star was on the rise again, and I’d recently been offered another two-year contract, on better terms than before.

Yet I’d been putting off signing it. Although my position at the university seemed secure enough for now, I’d no illusions what would happen if my star waned again. And after the uncertainty and upheaval of earlier that year, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to wait for that to happen. Rachel’s arrival in my life had been a huge change, one that had given me a fresh perspective.

Perhaps it was time for another.

I parked my car a few streets away from the university and walked back to the building that housed the forensic anthropology department. Ever since Grace Strachan’s fingerprint had been found on the doorway of my old flat, Ward had advised me to vary my routes into work. Just in case, she’d said. It had seemed a pointless exercise then, and felt even more so now. But I’d promised Rachel, so each day I parked in a different spot and used one of the side doors into the building instead of the main entrance.

The new academic year had started, and the university’s chaotic bustle was a welcome distraction after the empty apartment. Brenda, the department’s office manager, looked up from behind her desk when I walked in.

‘Morning, David. How was your weekend?’

‘Good, thanks.’

‘I wasn’t expecting to see you back so soon. Don’t forget there’s a faculty meeting this afternoon.’

Damn. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘I can see that. Oh, and that freelance journalist’s emailed again. Francis Scott-Hayes.’

I sighed. Scott-Hayes had been pestering me for an interview for weeks, emailing both me and the department in the hope of a response. Or rather, the response he wanted. I’d politely declined his first request, less politely refused the second and ignored his subsequent emails. I wasn’t even sure how he’d heard of me. Usually, my involvement in police investigations was strictly behind the scenes, which was how I liked it. Unfortunately, my name had appeared in news reports when two cases I’d worked on made national headlines, one the previous year in Dartmoor, and more recently the Essex inquiry where I’d met Rachel. It was a safe bet that the journalist had seen one of them and decided I’d make a good story.

The fact I disagreed didn’t seem to bother him.

‘Just ignore him,’ I told Brenda. ‘He’ll get the message eventually.’

‘You sure? He writes for all the nationals. Might be nice to get your picture in a magazine.’

‘Did I hear someone say “magazine”?’ A voice came from behind me.

My heart sank as I turned to find Professor Harris, the Head of Department. Polished briefcase gripped firmly in hand, he was regarding me with a smile that was affable and entirely insincere. He’d been markedly less friendly when my police consultancy work had dried up, but now that the situation had changed, so had his tune.

‘It’s just some journalist who won’t take no for an answer,’ I told him, as Brenda mouthed sorry and busied herself on her computer.

He nodded, still smiling. ‘Then perhaps you should consider it. You know what they say about publicity, and a nice interview would do wonders for your profile.’

And the department’s. ‘Perhaps later,’ I said.

His eyes lit up. ‘Ah, yes, I heard a body had been found in an abandoned hospital. Somewhere in North London, wasn’t it? Are you, ah, working on the case? Quite convenient, really, having it so nearby.’

Not for the victims, I thought. ‘I can’t really say anything…’

‘No, no, of course. Well, ah… good luck with it. And the interview.’

Brenda gave me a wry smile as he bustled off. ‘The answer’s still no,’ I told her.

Going into the cubbyhole that passed as my office, I began sifting through my emails. They were the usual mixture of departmental trivia, newsletter subscriptions and a couple of queries from post-grad students about their research projects. The latest interview request from the freelance journalist was also waiting in my inbox. My first instinct was to delete it, but after the conversation with Brenda I felt obliged to see what he had to say. It was pretty much the same pitch he’d made before. I had to admit he wrote for some prestigious newspapers and magazines and supposed I should be flattered he’d take an interest in me. Perhaps Harris had a point: it would raise my profile, and God knows that had taken enough of a beating recently.

But whatever drove me to do what I did, it wasn’t to see my picture in a magazine. I pressed delete and the email disappeared.