Dark Mirror (2 page)

‘Good.’ She felt some relief, tempered by a sense of frustration that this stupid business had gone on so long. The trial of the Fab Five—so called by the cops because of their sharp suits and hairstyles and breezy attitudes—had been endlessly prolonged by their individual windbag barristers, each intent on muddying the waters around their own client at the others’ expense, as well as by the highly imaginative alibis provided by their various perjuring mothers, girlfriends and mates. They had gone to a house to recover a drug debt, not realising that the man they wanted had moved on weeks before, and the new tenant was too drunk to explain their mistake before they beat him to death. They had taken a life, and
would certainly be found guilty, but any satisfaction was dulled by Kathy’s calculation, made while waiting on the corridor benches day after day, that all the time the police, the lawyers, the gaolers, the administrators, the forensic staff, the court officials, the jury and the witnesses had spent in achieving this would amount to another human lifetime, a good part of it her own. All for one utterly stupid mistake. This was not what she’d been made up to inspector for. She badly wanted a case that would allow her to flex her newly promoted investigative muscle, a case that would, well,
mean
something.

As she reached the main doors she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. It was Brock, sounding rushed. ‘Kathy, still tied up?’

A crisis was gripping Queen Anne’s Gate along with the rest of Homicide and Serious Crime Command, with the terrorist alert level newly raised to ‘severe specific’ at a time when an epidemic of spring flu had cut through the ranks. It had made her own inactivity all the more galling.

‘Just finished, hopefully for good. I’m leaving now.’

‘I’ve had a call from Sundeep, steamed up about something. Couldn’t get much out of him, except that it’s about an autopsy he’s doing. He said it was urgent. I’d go myself, but I’m due at a meeting in Broadway in ten minutes. Could you look after him?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good. I’ll get Pip to come and pick you up, shall I?’

That was another source of irritation: DC Philippa Gallagher, known as Pip, also as Flippa, on temporary rotation through the team, for whom Kathy was supposed to be acting as mentor. Too pretty and fragile-looking to be a police officer, Pip seemed oblivious to the stares of the male members of the team. She was very eager and had an annoying habit of asking questions to which Kathy didn’t know the answers, then staring with wide-eyed attentiveness as Kathy tried to improvise a reply. It was probably
the same look she’d given her teachers in the school she hardly seemed old enough to have left.

But when Kathy stepped out into the fresh air, her mood lifted. It was a beautiful day, sunlight glittering on the golden figure of Justice on top of the dome of the Old Bailey against a brilliant blue sky. She made her way through the knots of the usual suspects huddled along the footpath and bought a coffee across the road, then stood in the sun, waiting, wondering what Brock’s favourite pathologist was in a panic about.

By the time the unmarked car slid to a stop at the kerb in front of her she felt ready even for DC Gallagher.

‘Hi, boss!’

As a sergeant Kathy had occasionally been called ‘skip’, but no one had ever called her ‘boss’ before. She rather liked it. The girl gave her a big grin, and Kathy smiled back; maybe she’d been unfair to her. Pip was so keen, and Kathy had a sudden vivid memory of herself on her first murder case after making sergeant. That was when she’d first met Brock, and, come to think of it, Sundeep Mehta. It seemed a long time ago.

When they arrived at the mortuary they saw the little doctor waiting for them by the front desk, chatting up the receptionist with a kind of extravagant bonhomie that Kathy thought, as she caught sight of him, looked rather forced. The woman turned away to answer a phone call, Sundeep frowned, glanced furtively at his watch, then wheeled around to see Kathy and Pip approaching. He brightened, slipping on the cavalier persona he liked people to see.

‘DS Kolla!’ he beamed, teasingly formal. ‘How nice to see you again.’

‘DI,’ she corrected. ‘I’ve been promoted.’

He raised his hands in mock horror at his gaffe. ‘Inspector! Of course, I did hear. And so very well deserved. I’ve told Brock often
enough that you’re the only one to be trusted to do a decent job in that place. I’m so pleased he sent you. And
who
is this?’

‘Don’t flirt, Sundeep. This is DC Gallagher—Pip.’

‘How do you do, Pip.’ He shook her hand delicately, as if it might bruise easily, then gave them both visitors’ tags. ‘And why shouldn’t I flirt? Am I too old? Wouldn’t you call that discrimination, Pip?’

The usual patter, Kathy thought, but all the same she sensed his heart wasn’t in it. He was worried about something.

He led them over to the stairs and they descended to a corridor and an overpowering smell of fresh paint. It was sharply cooler down there, and somewhere up ahead a radio was playing tinny music. They reached a pair of double swing doors and Sundeep led the way into a brightly lit room in the centre of which was a series of stainless-steel tables. On the nearest a woman’s body was stretched out, naked and recently dissected, but not yet reassembled. Kathy sensed Pip’s stride falter at the sight. Her eyes moved from the woman’s opened abdomen to her scalp pulled forward over her face, the top of her skull neatly severed, the brain removed.

Kathy turned her attention to Sundeep, who offered her a photograph of a young woman, head and shoulders. Even without the stainless steel on which her red hair fanned, Kathy would have known that she was dead. Her green eyes were open but sightless, her flesh like yellow wax.

‘Her name is Marion Summers,’ Sundeep said. ‘She collapsed yesterday in the London Library in the West End. She was sick and passed out. When the ambulance arrived she was in a coma, from which she never woke. She was wearing a medical alert bracelet that said she suffered from type one diabetes, and a witness said she’d had fainting spells recently. The ambulance crew assumed this was the reason for her collapse, as did the doctor who treated her in A&E. They wondered if she might be in the early stages of
a pregnancy, which can upset the insulin–sugar balance. She died ninety minutes after admission.

‘I performed the autopsy a couple of hours ago. The toxicology results aren’t back yet, of course, and I may be jumping the gun, but I’m sure I’m right. There were distinctive signs—severe haemorrhaging of the mucosa, for instance. Then when I opened her stomach I noticed the smell, quite faint, a bit like garlic. Here . . .’

He reached for a beaker containing some dark fluid and sniffed it like a connoisseur, wrinkling his nose, then offered it to Kathy. Reluctantly she did the same, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She turned to Pip, whose eyebrows rose in consternation, and Kathy handed the flask back to Sundeep.

‘No, well, anyone else probably wouldn’t have noticed, because this is so unusual now, in this country—the first case I’ve come across, to tell the truth. But I remember that smell so well from my student days, in India. We opened up a number of victims—well, the stuff was readily available, you see, in herbicides and pesticides and industrial processes and God knows what. And they say now that the whole Bengal basin is sitting on a vast layer of it, and people are sinking their wells into it and drawing it up—my God, they say millions may die.’

Kathy waited, but he seemed momentarily at a loss. ‘What are we talking about, Sundeep?’ she asked gently.

‘Arsenic, Kathy. I’m almost sure that she died of arsenic poisoning.’

He saw the sceptical lift of her eyebrow and nodded quickly. ‘Yes, yes, I know, arsenic in the library, all very Agatha Christie. A hundred years ago arsenic was the height of fashion in England. You could buy it over the counter at the chemist, freshen your complexion with it, treat your syphilis, kill your rats, poison your husband . . . but not now. Where would you get hold of arsenic today?’ He paused, then stressed, ‘It is
very
unusual, Kathy.’

‘It does seem unlikely, doesn’t it, Sundeep? Shouldn’t we wait for the test results?’ She suspected there was some agenda here that Sundeep was holding back. She waited.

He sighed. ‘A dear friend of mine, a very distinguished surgeon, has a son, fresh from medical school, newly launched in his profession, working twenty-eight hours a day in accident and emergency. He examined Marion when she was brought in yesterday. His initial tests supported the ambulance crew’s assumption—there
was
a marked insulin imbalance. He treated this and decided to wait—there was so much else crying for his attention yesterday. That was perhaps a mistake, but an understandable one. If it was arsenic, you see, time was very short—in fact it was probably already too late. You only have about an hour to try to get the stuff out of the victim before it’s absorbed. Once that happens there’s no antidote.’

‘That’s terrible . . .’ Kathy hesitated, wondering how best to put this. ‘But it’s not something we can . . . cover up.’

‘Good Lord, no!’ Sundeep was shocked. ‘No one’s suggesting such a thing. No, no. We . . . I just want to find out what really happened. If it was murder . . .’

‘If?’

‘Well, I suppose you’d have to consider suicide. I saw that, too, in India, but only because the poison was available. And there are old self-harm scars on her wrists. But it would be a very unpleasant way to kill yourself. No, I was thinking, if it was a deliberate poisoning, how was it done, in a public place in the middle of the day?’

‘Her food or drink?’

‘Yes, a lethal drink-spiking, say. And then, was she deliberately targeted, or might it have been anyone? And if the latter, have there been other cases? It would be easy to misdiagnose, you see. Arsenic is not something one would normally test for, especially if the symptoms were masked, as here. And there might be no autopsy.’

‘A serial poisoner?’

‘Or something else; India isn’t the only country where arsenic wouldn’t be hard to find.’

The suggestion hung in the air for a moment.

‘A terrorist? Surely we’re getting ahead of ourselves, Sundeep?’

‘Yes, yes. I’m not wanting to go off the deep end, but with all these terror warnings, and it being such an unusual poison these days . . . I’ve advised the National Poisons Information Service and started phoning around colleagues in other hospitals.’

Kathy sighed inwardly. This was a babysitting job. Sundeep was having a panic attack. ‘All right. I’ll check our sources. What do we know about Marion?’

‘Not much. Age mid-twenties. I understand the hospital hasn’t been able to trace her next of kin yet. They say she was a student. I have her things.’ He indicated a number of bagged items on the bench against the wall.

‘And she collapsed in a library?’

‘In the London Library—you know it? Just off Piccadilly. Apparently she’s a regular there. They say she just returned from a lunch break and collapsed. I have a copy of the ambulance officer’s report.’

‘If she was poisoned, how long would it have happened before she collapsed?’

‘That depends on the concentration of the dose. She could have been feeling ill for hours, or it might have been more rapid, something in her lunch. I won’t be able to make a time estimate until I get the lab results.’

The pathologist’s assistant came towards them carrying a blue plastic bag. She looked at Sundeep through her visor and he gave a brief nod, at which she began to pack the bag, containing the remains of the soft organs, into Marion’s belly.

‘And were they right?’ Kathy asked. ‘Was she pregnant?’

‘No, she wasn’t.’

Kathy put on gloves and began to go through the woman’s possessions. There was an elegant watch—Omega—and three rings: ruby, amethyst and diamond stones on generous gold bands. ‘Which fingers?’

He showed her. ‘Not engagement or wedding rings, I assume. I think the hospital established that she wasn’t married.’

‘But nice things,’ Kathy said. ‘Not a penniless student. What about the clothes?’

She checked the labels. ‘Very nice.’

Marion’s wallet contained sixty-five pounds in cash, a credit card, a driver’s licence with an address in Stamford Street, SE1, and some receipts, as well as a number of identity and membership cards, including a student card for London University. Her bag contained make-up, keys, a phone and a thick notebook with handwritten entries that might have related to her studies. There was also a bag of sweets.

‘If their blood-sugar balance is unsteady,’ Sundeep said, ‘diabetics sometimes carry sugary sweets to help them adjust it. Maybe the same with the lunchtime drink. The sweetness would tend to disguise the taste of arsenic.’

‘Okay. I’ll make some calls, Sundeep.’

‘Use my office across the corridor, Kathy.’ He started to take off his jacket. ‘I have autopsies to perform. But thank you for coming so quickly. I’m sorry if I’m wasting your time. You’ll let me know?’

‘Of course. And ring me as soon as you get the test results.’

‘They’ve promised to do a Marsh test straight away. I may be completely wrong. Let’s hope I am, eh?’

Kathy led the way to Sundeep’s office. Pip’s face was very pale against her dark lipstick and eye shadow.

‘You okay?’

She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, yes . . .’ She swallowed.

‘You’re not going to be sick?’

‘No.’

‘Just sit down for a bit.’

Kathy took the big chair behind Sundeep’s desk and began by putting a call through to the anti-terrorist hotline, reporting Sundeep’s fears. They promised to get back to her. Then she ran a check on Marion Summers, quickly establishing that she wasn’t known to the police. She got the number for the student administration office at the university, giving them Marion’s name and student number, and was told that she was enrolled as a PhD student in the Department of European Literature. Their computer had no record of her next of kin. Kathy followed with a call to the London Library, arranging to meet the librarian mentioned on the ambulance officer’s report, and requesting contact details for the other person mentioned, a Mr Nigel Ogilvie. Apparently Mr Ogilvie, a regular, was at the library and would be asked to make himself available. Kathy thanked them and said she was on her way.