White Corridor

42

Giles Kershaw agreed to join Longbright for the interview. She had been planning to take Banbury in with her, as he was the burliest officer they had apart from Bimsley, but no-one knew where the detective constable was. The pair of them peered through the window before they went in.

Sergeant Renfield was squirming about on an orange plastic chair as if he had been tethered there. He was so furious that he had changed colour. His ears were white, his cheeks were a deep crimson, his nose almost blue. If his face had been rounder he would have looked like an archery target. He had once told Longbright that the Met was run like a doctors’ surgery and the unit behaved like a bunch of alternative therapists, and his detention today confirmed this belief. He had always fancied his chances with the detective sergeant, but now he was displaying the bitterness of a man who knew that he had been irrevocably rejected.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, bringing me in here?” He spat the words at her as she entered.

“I wanted to keep this more informal, but the heater’s broken in my room,” she told him. “And it’s less public in here.”

“You’ve lost the bloody plot, Longbright. I knew you lot were hopeless without your bosses around, but this is a bloody joke.”

“No joke,” said Janice. “You went back to the mortuary to see Oswald, didn’t you?” She knew she was chancing her arm with this supposition, but needed to provoke a reaction. If he decided to call her bluff and demand evidence, she was lost.

“I didn’t have much of a choice, did I? Finch phoned me and accused me of screwing up. He told me he’d put it in the report if I didn’t come over and sort it out at once.”

“So you went back to Bayham Street and had it out with him.”

“Finch hadn’t been out in the field for years; he had no idea what it’s like on the streets: the chavs, the drunks, the endless aggression. The Camden junkies are worse than their dealers, because they’re either whining excuses or angling for a fix, by which time they’re little more than animals. I’d seen that girlie on the street before, or if it wasn’t her it was someone damned well like her.” Renfield was eager to explain his side of the story. “Anyone who tells you that rehabilitation works is a liar. They’ll swear to God they’re clean, and you can lift the gear out of their pockets while they’re talking to you. No matter what they say, you know you’ll see them again, shooting up in a toilet or a shop doorway. That’s what we did when we picked up the girl; we dealt with the situation.”

“Then why did Finch call you back in?” asked Longbright.

“Listen, I’d been on duty all night, and she looked like another dead junkie.” Renfield’s body language proclaimed him guilty without the need to speak.

“You bypassed the hospital and sent her straight to the morgue, didn’t you?” said Longbright. “That’s why you went yourself. You didn’t call the paramedics.”

“I saved everyone a docket. You think you have the monopoly on unorthodox procedure? If it improves the situation for all parties concerned, do it without thinking twice. Bryant himself told me that. Finch was a doctor, he could have signed her off easy enough, but instead he had to make life difficult for everyone. My boys were coming to the end of a long shift; they were knackered.”

“What did Finch tell you about Lilith Starr?” asked Longbright.

“He said the girl was in ana-ana-‘ Renfield stuttered.

“Anaphylactic shock?” asked Kershaw.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“It’s an extreme allergic reaction to a particular substance,” the young forensic scientist told Longbright. “Her immune system would already have been compromised because she was a junkie. Under anaphylaxis, the system decides that some alien substance poses a danger, and overreacts by creating huge quantities of the antibody immunoglobulin E. The body releases an excess amount of histamine and the throat closes up, making it difficult to breathe.”

“What happens after that?” asked Longbright.

“All sorts of problems can occur,” said Kershaw, “but mainly, immunoglobulin E expands blood vessels, causing a drop in blood pressure, which leads to loss of consciousness.” As if to avoid letting Renfield off the hook, he added, “There are usually visible signs a paramedic would immediately notice. Swelling and rashes on the skin, or on the lips and tongue if it was something ingested orally.”

“Even Finch didn’t know what had set her off,” snapped Renfield. “It’s a mistake anyone could have made. He said it could have been any number of things.”

“That’s right. Nuts, drugs like morphine or X-ray dye, dental painkillers, something in the dope she’d taken,” Kershaw confirmed.

“Finch’s competence in diagnosing her isn’t the matter at hand,” said Longbright. “I want to know whether he made you so angry that you attacked him.”

“Of course not. God, he’d made me angry often enough in the past. You think I couldn’t take it from him? He had a go at me, and I left.”

“Then why didn’t you tell us when we first talked?” Longbright demanded.

“Because he and his lads dropped off a woman at a morgue who wasn’t dead,” said Kershaw disgustedly. “He didn’t turn up at Bayham Street with a paramedic, just one of his constables. When they’d found her in the doorway, her body was cold to the touch and showing signs of cyanosis. They couldn’t find a pulse, so they made an assumption, when a hospital might have saved her life.”

“It wasn’t you who found the body, was it?” said Longbright. Renfield was too experienced to have made such a mistake.

“My PC is nineteen years old, Longbright. The kid’s in shock; it’s his second week on the beat. She would have died anyway, if not this week then the next. Finch didn’t care about that. It was my call, but he told me he was going to report the boy.” Renfield looked miserable. “He never let anything go. That’s why he wouldn’t support your promotion, Kershaw. He didn’t trust you not to make the same kind of mistakes.”

“So before you left the mortuary, you waited until his back was turned, then tore the pages out of his report and destroyed them.”

Renfield shook his head violently. “No, I never saw any report. I didn’t think he’d had time to write it up, and wouldn’t have touched it if he had.”

Longbright left the interview room in a bad mood. Whatever else Renfield was, he wasn’t a liar. She went to Bryant’s desk and sat down behind it, rubbing her eyes, hoping that being in his tobacco-stained room would somehow provide her with inspiration. On the chart before her was the time line of Finch’s final hours. All the question marks and gaps she had left were now filled in, and they were no closer to the truth.

She checked the clock on the wall: two forty-five P.M. Two and a quarter hours left before the Princess turned up with her entourage to find the staff under arrest and the place in shambles. She could almost see Kasavian and Faraday rubbing their hands with glee. There was still one loose lead to tie up. The missing boy, Lilith’s former lover, Samuel. She was considering the problem when Kershaw knocked on her door and stuck his head through. “Can I let Renfield go, Janice? He’s kicking up a fuss.”

“Apply the same restrictions I’ve applied to everybody else, then get back to the morgue. I want you to test out something for me. It’s a ridiculous idea, but it’s the only one left. This is my last shot before we’re out of time.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Assume Finch was in pain, on medication, not thinking clearly. He knew he wouldn’t live to enjoy his retirement. I want you to see if it’s at all possible…‘ She wondered if she could even bring herself to say the words. Kershaw waited obediently. ”Could it have started with an accident? Knowing that he was dying and contemplating suicide, could he have pulled the ultimate practical joke on his old nemesis? When the fan blade came loose and fell on him, you don’t think he could have decided to make it look like murder, just to get the most bitter last laugh of all on Arthur?“