The Secret Hangman

28

‘I s this a takeover?’ Diamond asked.

The pathologist Jim Middleton was sitting with eyes closed, gently revolving in Diamond’s own chair and humming a tune as if his mind was on some intricate dance step. This at nine twenty the next morning.

‘Nowhere else to park myself, squire,’ Jim said, returning to the here and now. ‘Where have you been? I came in specially. They tried calling you at home, but you must have left.’

‘They wouldn’t have caught me at home.’

‘Don’t you have a mobile?’

‘I don’t use it in the car.’

‘I thought you people were working round the clock.’

‘We squeeze in an hour of sleep every three or four days. What have you got for me?’

‘Not what I expected,’ Jim said. ‘Not what you expected, I dare say.’ He reached for a scuffed brown briefcase and removed the folders containing the autopsy reports on John and Christine Twining. ‘Tell me about the fellow who wrote this stuff.’

‘Dr Shinwari? There isn’t much. He was attached to various hospitals in this area as a pathologist. He carried out hundreds, if not thousands, of autopsies. Eighteen months ago he resigned and returned to Pakistan.’

‘He’s definitely left the Health Service, has he? I want to be sure of this before I say any more.’ Jim, as ever, behaving as if he was treading on glass.

‘No question,’ Diamond said. ‘He’s left, decamped, quit the stage, flown the coop, hoisted the Blue Peter. No forwarding address. No contact numbers.’

‘Did you read these?’

‘I could follow some of it. At least they’re in simpler language than our friend Dr Sealy’s reports.’

‘The language is the problem.’

‘What are you on about, Jim?’

‘Is he a fluent speaker of English?’

‘How would I know? I’ve never met him. What problem?’

Jim’s eyes gleamed as they did when he executed a perfect chasse on the dance floor. He opened one of the reports. ‘There’s a section here. “Post Mortem appearance: face pale, lips, tongue and mucous membrane bluish. Petechial haemorrhages under the conjunctivae. Early putrefactive discoloration on the lower abdominal wall.”’

‘You’ve lost me already,’ Diamond said.

‘Follow the words I’ve marked in pencil.’ He handed the report to Diamond, and then turned to the second folder. ‘You’ve got John Twining. This is Christine. “Post Mortem appearance: face pale, lips, tongue and mucous membrane bluish.” And so it goes on, the wording precisely the same. That’s just one example. It goes on for pages.’

‘Well, if the method of death was the same, wouldn’t the appearance be the same?’

‘Peter, you don’t repeat yourself word for word. And no two autopsies present precisely the same symptoms. Look at the other section I marked. “The line of the ligature followed the line of the jaw, then passed obliquely upwards behind the ears, where it was commonly lost.” Exactly the same wording in both reports. But what does he mean by “commonly lost”? It makes no sense to me as a pathologist. Do you understand it?’

‘Read it to me again.’

‘It’s just the phrase “where it was commonly lost”.’

‘Don’t know. Typing error?’

‘I think he didn’t understand it himself. He’s used a crib.’

‘What — copied from something?’

‘And I’m damned sure where he got it from.’ Jim took from his case a black book that had the look of a much-thumbed Bible. He’d put markers between the pages. ‘This is Glaister’s Medical Jurisprudence, the standard work when I was going through college. Chapter 6: Asphyxia, sub-section 4: Hanging. See if this sounds familiar. “The line of the ligature must be carefully examined. In suicidal suspension, it usually follows the line of the lower jaw, then passes obliquely upwards behind the ears, where it is commonly lost.” Glaister is talking about the generality of suicides by hanging. In its proper context the word makes sense.’

Diamond studied the textbook and then the two reports. ‘You’re thinking Dr Shinwari didn’t know what he was writing about?’

‘That’s clear. The way he borrows the word “commonly” is the giveaway. He may have known how to dissect a corpse, but not enough English to report his findings.’

‘So he copied out of the textbook?’

‘I wouldn’t mind betting that if you checked other reports you’d find Glaister being quoted verbatim.’

‘To cover up Dr Shinwari’s poor English?’

‘That’s the obvious inference, isn’t it? Either that, or he was lazy and just copied out the same stuff each time.’

‘Poor English seems more likely.’

‘Whatever it was, he was going to get caught some time. My guess is that a coroner was on to him, which is why he quit the country. To avoid a scandal.’

‘But I was told he was one of their busiest pathologists. Wouldn’t he have been rumbled before this?’

‘Peter, you have a touching faith in the system. Believe me, you can get by for a long time in the Health Service before any failings are picked up by management.’

‘I’m surprised some lawyer didn’t notice.’

‘Dr Shinwari wouldn’t often appear in court. He isn’t a forensic pathologist. I would have known him if he was. He does routine autopsies.’

‘Suicides are routine?’

‘If the coroner decides so. If he has any suspicion about the death, he’ll call up someone from the Home Office list, not a jobbing pathologist like Shinwari.’

Diamond said in disbelief, ‘The Twinings were thought to be routine suicides?’

‘Hanging is, as a general rule. Firearm deaths and overdoses are more open to doubt. So is jumping off a building. If you want to do away with someone and pass it off as suicide, you’re unlikely to choose hanging.’

This was crucial to the suspicions Diamond had been forming. He needed expert help here. ‘Haven’t you ever come across a case of murder by hanging? Or murder dressed up as a hanging?’

‘Personally, no,’ Jim said. ‘It’s extremely rare. Off-hand, I can think of only two cases in recent times. There’s Roberto Calvi, that Italian banker found on the end of a rope under Blackfriars Bridge. There were suspicions that he was murdered first. You had the double ligature mark around the neck. Keith Simpson, the pathologist, decided the two marks were caused by the movement of the rope when the body was shifting in the water and subject to the tide. He went for suicide. But there have been at least three inquiries since, and it’s still an open question. Incidentally, one of the suspicious points was that the rope was fastened with a slip knot.’

‘Really? Like Danny Geaves.’

‘Yes. And the other suicidal hanging that some people say was suspicious was that of Rudolf Hess, the old Nazi in Spandau Prison. Once again, it was the mark that created doubt. It ran horizontally, rather than in the inverted ‘V’ that is typical. Several experts have concluded that Hess was strangled. But these are very unusual cases.’

‘Coming back to the Twinings, these reports are useless, then?’

Jim smiled. ‘He’s got the dates right. And the places.’

‘Big deal.’

‘It’s a pity there aren’t any photos. If these had been forensic autopsies, you’d have more to work with. This far on in time, an exhumation wouldn’t tell you much.’

‘Wouldn’t tell us anything. The Twinings were cremated. Thanks, anyway, Jim. You’re a star.’

The prospect of stardom didn’t appeal to Jim. ‘I don’t want publicity. It’s off the record, everything I’ve said. If this man comes before the Medical Council, I don’t wish to testify.’

‘He won’t. He’s scarpered.’

‘As long as that’s clear. And you will see about that licence?’

‘Licence?’

‘For the tea dances.’

Just in time, Diamond remembered. He winked and tapped the side of his nose with his finger. ‘Consider it done, old friend.’

For some minutes after Jim Middleton had left, Diamond pondered what he had learned. Dr Shinwari’s borrowings from Glaister meant that the autopsy reports were worthless, but it didn’t alter the fact that a couple had been found hanging two years ago in circumstances remarkably similar to Delia and Danny, in public places, the woman first, and then the man a day or so after. There had to be a link. His priority was to find what those four people had in common.

Keith Halliwell put his head around the door, usually the cue for a coffee. Not this morning.

‘Guv. We’ve been looking all over for you. That pathologist was here.’

‘Seen him. He’s left now.’

‘You were in here all the time?’

He exaggerated slightly. They didn’t need to know he’d turned up late for work, or where he’d spent the night. ‘When I walked through the office you weren’t about.’

‘I know. I was chasing all over the building.’

‘What’s the panic, Keith?’

‘There’s been another hanging.’