The Scent of Death

Chapter 5

It was the next day before Ward called to let me know they’d been given the go-ahead to recover the mummified remains from the loft. My first reaction was relief. I’d heard from Rachel the night before, tired after her journey but excited at the prospect of starting work. By now she’d be on a marine research vessel, perhaps already heading out for some of the more inaccessible Aegean islands. They’d be spending an extended period out at sea and, while the boat had a satellite phone, it was only for emergencies. She’d only be able to get in touch when they were in range of phone or wi-fi reception, so it could be several days before we’d be able to speak again.

Although we’d known that before she left, when the call had ended I felt her absence more keenly than ever. So when Ward told me they were ready to resume work, I’d cleared the rest of my schedule and driven out there to attend the SIO’s briefing. The media had finally realized that whatever was going on at the abandoned hospital was a bigger story than the accidental death of a vagrant or drug addict. Broadcast vans bristling with aerials lined the road, and a cluster of cameras and journalists had congregated outside the main gates. My arrival caused a stir of interest that just as quickly faded as the PCs on the gate let my car through the cordon.

St Jude’s didn’t have quite the same intimidating presence in sunlight as it had at night. The looming shapes and shadows that had lined the sides of the driveway were revealed as piles of rubble and the empty shells of part-demolished buildings, overgrown with weeds. Without the concealing mask of darkness, the hospital was displayed in all its decaying glory. Once upon a time it would have had the grandeur of a stately home. Two long wings stretched out either side of the faux-Grecian portico that housed the main entrance, its supporting pillars giving it the look of a mausoleum. Wide steps led up to tall double doors inside it, their symmetry marred by the addition of a concrete wheelchair ramp. It was still an impressive structure, but the years of abandonment had taken their toll. Weeds grew through gaps in the stonework, and the pollution-blackened walls were streaked with bird droppings and graffiti. The ranks of high windows that once stared out across landscaped grounds were now boarded up and sightless, while the old signs for long-vanished medical departments added to the sad air of dereliction.

The briefing was held in a police trailer outside the old hospital. It was Ward’s first as SIO, and she was clearly nervous. At one point she dropped her notes, offering a muttered ‘shit’ as she bent to collect them. She left immediately afterwards, so there was no opportunity to speak to her. But after I’d changed into forensic coveralls and made my way through the ranks of police and support vehicles, I saw Whelan at the foot of the hospital steps. A uniformed PC stood nearby, her expression closed as she stared at the third member of the group. He was a big, heavily built man in a yellow high-visibility jacket, and I slowed when I realized they were arguing.

Or rather the big man was. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, raw-boned and thick-set, with a barrel stomach that thrust out in front of him like a statement of intent. His yellow jacket was battered and ingrained with dirt, while steel toecaps showed through the worn tan leather of his safety boots. His face had the broken-veined, coarse-pored look of a heavy drinker, and right now it was flushed crimson as his angry voice reached me.

‘… bad enough with bats! Fucking bats, for Christ’s sake! And now this! I’m trying to run a business here, do you know how much this is costing me?’

He was a full head taller than Whelan and was using it to full advantage, towering over the deputy SIO, his stubbled jaw thrust out belligerently. Whelan was having none of it, though. His own face was set and impassive as he stared back at the bigger man without giving an inch.

‘Like I say, we’re sorry for any inconvenience, but—’

‘Inconvenience? Jesus wept!’

‘—this is a crime scene now. We can’t allow any more work here until we’ve finished our investigations.’

‘And how long will that take?’

‘Unfortunately, we can’t tell you that at the moment. But the sooner we finish, the sooner you can get your men back to work, so it’s in your interests to cooperate.’

‘Well, that’s bloody great! What am I supposed to do in the meantime? Pay my men for sitting on their arses all day?’

‘We’re not unsympathetic, Mr Jessop, but it’s out of our hands. Now, if you wouldn’t mind going with the PC and waiting in the trailer until—’

‘Yeah, more fucking waiting! Like I’ve not had to do enough of that already!’

Turning his back on Whelan, he stomped off, followed by the stony-faced PC. I moved aside as he swept towards me, grubby yellow jacket flapping as he marched past. Something fell from it and clattered to the floor as he went. I looked down and saw a pair of spectacles lying there, one lens fallen out and lying on the gritty tarmac.

‘You dropped these,’ I called, picking them up.

He looked round, glaring at me as though unable to process the words. Then, leaving the PC to wait, he came back.

‘Thanks,’ he muttered, snatching the glasses from me.

‘There’s this as well,’ I said, holding out the lens.

A stale smell of sweat, cigarettes and unmetabolized alcohol came off him as he stood blinking, looking down at the broken glasses in his hands. For a bizarre second I thought he was going to cry. Then he turned on his heel and strode off, leaving the unimpressed PC to follow after him.

I went over to Whelan. ‘He didn’t seem happy.’

‘Noticed that, did you? That’s Keith Jessop, the demolitions contractor hired to level this place. What with the planning protests and bats, he’s been waiting months already, so he’s not a happy bunny at the moment.’ He gave a cheery smile. ‘The good news is we might be seeing more of him. He knows as much about the structural side of St Jude’s as anyone, so we’ve asked him to help locate any more hidden rooms there might be. As you saw, he’s only too happy to assist.’

‘You think there might be more?’ It was a stupid question: I’d been so busy thinking about the pregnant woman and the other two victims that it hadn’t occurred to me there could be others.

Whelan considered the dark face of St Jude’s, blackened walls looming above us with their blind windows. ‘We’ve found three bodies already without even trying. The size of this place, God knows what else is in there.’

He motioned with his head for me to follow him.

‘Come on. Before you start on the recovery there’s something else you need to see.’

The ward was in the paediatric wing. It was on the top floor, some way further along the corridor from the loft hatch I’d used before. I’d forgotten how cold it was inside the hospital, and the odour of damp and mould was heavy in the breezeless air. A daisy chain of floodlights had been rigged up along the corridor here as well, spaced out to show the way but creating pools of shadows in the corners. The floor was littered with rubble and broken plaster that crunched underfoot, the larger pieces big enough to turn an ankle. Posters warning against tobacco, alcohol and drugs hung from the walls, while others forbade the use of mobile phones. We passed a large area of curtained cubicles, where a sign declared X-ray: Do not enter when light is on next to a cobwebbed red bulb.

The ward was a little way past that. Its double doors had been propped open and more floodlights set up inside. They cast a harsh, ethereal light on the dingy walls, where faded murals of cartoon characters capered to an empty room. The smell of mould was even more overpowering in here. Dangling sockets for oxygen cylinders protruded from the walls, and an assortment of broken junk was scattered about: a rusted bed frame lacking a mattress, a bedside cabinet missing both cupboard door and drawer, even a pair of old car batteries. A worn teddy bear slumped tiredly against the skirting board, next to a broken abacus whose colourful beads had spilled off the wires.

‘I know. Gets you, doesn’t it?’ Whelan said, seeing me looking round.

‘Can’t you take some of the boards off the windows?’ I said, sobered by the atmosphere in the dank ward. Some of the windows still had ragged curtains hanging over them, but all were boarded up so that not a chink of daylight penetrated the darkness.

‘We could, but then we’d be letting any nosy bastard with a drone or telephoto lens get a good look inside as well. At least this way we know what we’re doing isn’t going to be on the front pages tomorrow.’

He continued to the far end of the ward, where bigger floodlights illuminated a group of anonymous figures in blue coveralls. They were working in front of what at first appeared to be an ordinary wall. Four yards long and three high, it was made of breezeblocks painted a close match to the pale green of the other walls. It was easy to see how the police officers searching for Conrad had overlooked it. Completely featureless, there was nothing about it to attract a second glance.

Not unless you knew what lay behind it.

It was only when you looked more closely that the false notes began to sound. Whereas the interlocking rectangles of the individual blocks were clearly visible on this area of wall, the rest of the walls had been finished in plaster. And instead of the blocks being keyed into the walls on either side, they’d been crudely butted up to them, as though there’d been an opening here that had been filled in.

‘How’s it coming along?’ Whelan asked, stopping by an assortment of heavy-duty electric power tools, lump hammers and chisels assembled nearby. His voice echoed in the empty room.

One of the figures working on the wall paused to answer. ‘Not far off now. We’ve been in the other side and rigged up a plastic sheet to keep down the dust and stop any fragments flying into the room. It’s about as good as we’re going to get.’

‘It better be. We can do without any more mishaps.’

Whelan didn’t make it a threat, but it didn’t sound like a joke either. As the hammering started up again, I noticed an empty paint tin and plastic decorator’s tray in the corner. Both were smeared with the same colour emulsion as the breezeblock wall. Next to them was a large paint roller, its sponge caked with green paint and set rock hard.

‘Are they what I think they are?’ I asked.

‘Yep,’ Whelan said. ‘Somebody went to all this trouble to camouflage the wall, then left their tools behind. We lifted some nice sets of fingerprints off them, too. Even left a thumbprint in the mortar, which was considerate. Big bugger, if the size is anything to go by.’

‘Seems a bit of an oversight, doesn’t it?’

He shrugged. ‘It happens. People try to be clever and then cock up something obvious. Anyway, let’s leave them to it. We’re back out here.’

We went into the corridor again. The floodlights continued past the ward and around a corner, ending at a doorway. Beyond it was a flight of wooden stairs, rising out of sight. We stood aside to let a SOCO come out, her coveralls blackened and grubby, then went through.

‘This leads to the clock tower,’ Whelan told me, as we climbed up the narrow stairway. There was a peppery smell of dust, and the wood creaked drily under our weight. ‘Nothing much up there any more. All the clock mechanism was taken for scrap, but we’re not going that far. This is us.’

We’d reached a small landing. A floodlight shone on a low doorway in the wall, no more than five feet high. The plaster on the walls around it had crumbled to expose the wooden laths underneath. The small door was open, smudges of talc-like fingerprint powder dusting the doorframe and edges. There was a sturdy catch on the outside to hold the door shut, a simple metal bar that swung down to sit in a bracket fixed to the frame.

‘There’s about a dozen hatches and access doors like this scattered around,’ Whelan said. ‘Apart from the one we used last time, this one’s closest to where we found the body. Mind your head.’

He ducked through the low doorway. I did likewise, straightening once I was inside. We were in a different part of the loft to where the pregnant woman’s remains had been found. The brick wall of the clock tower rose up at our backs, while in front of us the supporting timbers of the roof disappeared into darkness like the ribcage of a dead whale. The air in here was different to the rest of the building, closer and seeming to have more weight. It would be easy to give in to claustrophobia, I thought, turning to where Whelan was waiting.

A platform of stepping plates had been set up just inside the loft doorway, forming a temporary floor on the joists. A space had been left clear in their middle, exposing a patch of filthy loft insulation. In the white glare of floodlights, two SOCOs were poring over it on their hands and knees.

‘We found this a few hours ago,’ Whelan told me. ‘What do you make of it?’

I crouched down beside the uncovered area of insulation. It was very close to the doorway, and the uneven, dirt-matted surface was covered with hundreds of tiny dark specks, like grains of black rice. They were arranged in an approximate ring, more or less oval in shape. Its centre was almost clear, but then the flecks grew in density before thinning out at the edges.

I picked one up, turning it carefully in my gloved fingers. The papery husk was split in half and hollow, the creature it contained long gone. Most of the others were the same, although I could see a small number of whole pupae where the insect inside had failed to hatch. We were old acquaintances, Calliphoridae and I. The maddening buzzing of the adult flies provided an accompaniment to many of the crime scenes I attended. Although I’d no love for them, I respected the role they played. Not only in breaking down decaying organic matter, including human flesh, but in determining how long ago an individual had died. Blowflies were nature’s stopwatch, their lifecycle — from eggs to larvae to adult insect — an invaluable aid in estimating time since death.

The clock here had stopped a long time ago — too long to be any use now. Even so, that didn’t mean these empty shells had nothing to tell us.

‘I’d get a forensic entomologist to confirm it, but they’re mainly blue- and greenbottles,’ I said, examining the empty casing. ‘I can’t see any larvae among them, but there wouldn’t be after all this time.’

Any larvae would have either pupated and hatched, or died and disintegrated once the food source was no longer available. But although the body that once lay here was gone, there were clear signs of its presence. The glass-fibre insulation was stained and matted where decompositional fluids had leached on to it, and the random pattern of the discarded fly casings had been disrupted. In places the husks were crushed and flattened.

‘Looks like you were right,’ Whelan said. ‘The body lay here until it mummified, then it was moved further into the loft.’

‘Did you get anything from the tarpaulin she was wrapped in?’ I asked.

‘Maybe.’ He sounded deliberately non-committal. ‘There are what look like dog hairs on it, and we found a human hair caught in one of the eyelets. Different colour to the victim’s so it isn’t one of hers. We’ll check the DNA from it against the database, see if we can find a match, but that’s going to take time. The tarp itself is the sort of thing you could find in any DIY outlet or builder’s yard. The powder on it was a mix of cement and plaster dust like we thought, and the blue paint’s fairly generic, so we can’t pin it down to any particular brand. I’d say whoever moved the body was in a hurry and grabbed whatever they had to hand rather than buy a new one. Although that doesn’t explain why they waited so long in the first place.’

‘They?’

He gestured around us. ‘This is a good twenty or thirty yards from where we found her. Unless someone took the time to put boards down the body would have to be carried. Easier with it wrapped in the tarp, but I can’t see one person managing on their own. Not the weight so much, just balancing all that way on the joists without putting a foot through the ceiling.’

It was a good point. And if the woman’s body had been dragged it would have left a trail of disturbed insulation in its wake, as well as causing substantial post-mortem damage to the fragile remains. I’d seen no indication of that.

I looked again at where the body had been. As well as discolouration from the decomposition, there was a lighter patch of staining on the insulation, as though some paler fluid had dried there. ‘What’s that?’

One of the SOCOs shook her head. ‘Not sure. It’s not dark enough for blood. We found splashes of what could be the same stuff on the wooden steps outside, so it might not even be from the body. Could be something that somebody just spilled. We’ve sent samples for analysis, but whatever it is it’s too old and dry to tell us much.’

‘We did find something else, though,’ Whelan said. He pointed at the inside of the doorframe. ‘See here?’

There were splintered gouges in the unpainted timber, lighter than the surrounding wood.

Scratches.

‘Explains the damage we saw on the woman’s hands,’ Whelan said. ‘We dug one of her fingernails out of the woodwork. The door was fastened from the outside and it’s pretty solid. Too heavy for her to prise open or break down, but she gave it a good go.’

God, I thought, imagining it. We’d thought the woman had been killed somewhere else and then her body had been carried up to the loft. We were wrong.

Someone had locked her in here and left her to die.

‘What I can’t understand is why she didn’t get out through one of the other exits,’ the second SOCO said. He was an older man, with worried eyes above his mask. ‘It’s not like this was the only one.’

‘How would you feel, crawling around up here if you were pregnant? You made hard enough work of it with your beer gut,’ his colleague countered. ‘And how would she know where they were? It’d be pitch black, and we haven’t found a phone or cigarette lighter she could have used for light. One slip and she’d have been through the ceiling.’

‘I was only saying,’ he muttered, sounding hurt.

I was still trying to make sense of what had gone on here. ‘Why would anyone lock her inside and then just leave her?’

Whelan gave a shrug. ‘I suppose there’s a chance it could have been unintentional, some sort of prank gone wrong. People do all sorts of things when they’re drunk or high, and we know a lot of addicts use this place. But I can’t see a pregnant woman hiding in a loft for a laugh, high or not. I’d say someone either forced her in here or else she was being chased and tried to hide. Either way, someone fastened her inside and then left her. Leastways until months afterwards, or however long it was. Could be when they heard the hospital was going to be knocked down they decided to shift the body to where it was less likely to be found.’

It was as good a theory as any. But the idea of the pregnant woman being chased reminded me of something the SOCO had mentioned earlier.

‘The pale stains on the insulation,’ I said, looking at the matted glass fibre. ‘You said there were splashes of something similar on the steps outside. Could it be amniotic fluid?’

The female SOCO sat back on her heels, considering. ‘Yeah, I suppose it could. But I think the stains will be too old to say one way or the other.’

‘You’re thinking her waters broke?’ Whelan asked me.

‘It’s possible. But if they did, from what I saw of the foetus it would have been premature.’

‘So she could have died from that.’

I nodded, sobered by the thought. Without medical attention, if the membranes around the amniotic sac ruptured early it could be life-threatening in far better conditions than this. Trapped in a loft without even food or water, the woman and her child would have had no chance of survival. Only a slow death in the dark.

No one spoke, then Whelan turned back to the doorway.

‘Come on,’ he said heavily.

As we tramped down the wooden stairs I stopped by the dried splashes the female SOCO had spoken about. They were only faint, more like watermarks than blood. There were several of them, some little more than drops that led in an uneven trail up the stairs to the loft.

They might still be something entirely innocent, I reminded myself, some liquid spilled by a workman or some trespasser. It was easy to read too much into things, especially in an emotive case like this.

But as I followed Whelan back into the empty hospital corridor, the image of a young woman fleeing along it from some faceless pursuer — or pursuers — was hard to shake. She’d sought sanctuary in the loft, then found herself trapped there. I thought again about the scratches on the wooden doorframe, each gouge one of fear and desperation. Exhausted, her waters prematurely broken, she’d fought for her life and her child’s in the only way left open to her.

And when that had failed, she’d lain down in the filthy loft and died.