Dead Silent (7 page)

Harper placed the camera near Leonard Lawson’s feet and, with his colleague, turned the old man’s body on to his side. Dr Lamb moved from one side of the table to the next and back, inspecting the entry and exit points of the spear. She stopped, her expression reflective.

‘We’re going to have to remove the foreign object from the gentleman’s body before we do anything else.’ She scrutinised the site of the exit wound. ‘Which will involve removing his heart. Judging by the entry and exit points of the spear, whoever’s done this has gone directly through his heart.’ She sighed. ‘He’s got a rare congenital abnormality of the rib cage. Poland Syndrome. The absence of a pectoral muscle causes the ribs to bend out of shape. It’s probably how the spear came clean through.

Was he born like that
, thought Clay,
born to die and end up like this?

‘I’m sorry, Professor Lawson,’ said Dr Lamb, pointing the tip of her scalpel at his sternum. ‘But we’re going to have to pull what remains of you to pieces.’

At the window of Louise Lawson’s hospital room, Riley pressed record on her phone. Outside, the snow had stopped falling. The city skyline was capped white and the sky and river were suffused with an amber glow. It was as if all sound and motion had been muffled.

She stirred herself, spoke into her phone and was grateful for the Sunday School she’d been forced to attend as a child.

‘Back in the day, there was one language and a common speech. Humans understood each other perfectly. They decided to build a tower that could reach up to heaven. The Lord came down, saw that mankind was getting on just great and that nothing was impossible for it. So he scattered the people, stopped the building of the Tower of Babel and made the common language incomprehensible. Hence the six and a half thousand languages we have on earth today.’

Riley turned. Louise was watching her.

‘People blame God for everything,’ said Louise.

Riley walked towards her. ‘I don’t,’ she replied. ‘I’m a police officer. I’ve seen some dreadful things. I don’t blame God. I blame people.’

‘There’s a reason why God created so many languages for the people of the earth. Mankind was proud and God had to show the people of the earth that they couldn’t build a tower to reach into heaven and become like God themselves. It was God’s role to build a bridge to the earth in the form of Jesus Christ, God becoming man and not the other way round.’

‘I’d never thought of it that way,’ said Riley. ‘But God’s ways are mysterious.’ She sat on the edge of the bed. The gentle light of the arc lamp in the corner gave Louise a soft radiance. ‘To understand, as you clearly do, is good. But God’s deepest motives are his alone to know.’

She watched a barrier come down inside Louise Lawson. ‘That’s exactly what I think.’

Riley took Louise’s hands in hers. ‘Mind you,’ she said, ‘my sister’s a French teacher. God’s many languages keep her and many others in a job.’ As her attempt to introduce a note of lightness into the room died a death, it occurred to Riley that Louise no longer knew how to smile.

‘Louise, I’ve got a problem and I need your help.’ Their eyes locked and Riley waited until the invisible bubble sealed itself around the two of them, blocking out everything else.

‘I know you don’t want to talk about the dreadful things that have happened, and I can understand that perfectly, but the longer it takes for you to tell us what you know, the harder it will be for us to catch whoever’s responsible. And I’m very sorry and sad to say this, but if he’s done this once, he’ll want to do it again. Murder is like alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs. It’s highly addictive. I would be very grateful, Louise, if you would talk to me and my boss, DCI Eve Clay. I know she’ll want to be there when you speak about what’s happened.’

Louise was quiet for what felt like a long time. She closed her eyes and Riley watched her lips moving, deduced that she was praying to God for guidance. Then she opened her eyes and said, ‘I don’t want anyone else to die. I don’t want anyone else to go through this suffering. Call DCI Eve Clay. I’ll try my best to talk.’

Dr Lamb made an incision through Leonard Lawson’s skin from his sternum straight down to his pubic bone.

‘The probable cause of death is the head injury. I suspect the killer smashed the victim’s skull to disable him, so he could get on with the business of playing God with what remained.’ She looked directly at Clay for a moment and said, ‘I will of course give you a firmer conclusion once we’ve removed the top of his skull and explored the impact the bone fragments and splintering had on his brain.’

She looked down again. Her hand skipped deftly back to the top of the initial incision and with two swift, clean cuts she turned the straight line into a Y, the top points turning out to his shoulder joints.

‘Harper!’

That was all the instruction Harper needed. He handed Dr Lamb a cutter that Clay thought looked like it could be useful to prune back garden trees. Then, with two hands, he peeled back the withered skin of the old man’s chest to reveal the front of his asymmetrical rib cage and intestines.

With the rib cutter, Dr Lamb made incisions at either side of Leonard Lawson’s chest cavity. The sound of ribs snapping died fast in the flat acoustics of the autopsy suite, but the noise echoed as it entered Clay’s head.

‘Look,’ said Dr Lamb, catching Clay’s eye. ‘The spear’s gone in through his shoulder, diagonally through his heart, avoiding collision with his abnormal rib cage, and out through his back. Whoever’s done this was deadly accurate.’

Did they know you well enough
, Clay wondered,
to know of your condition?

Dr Lamb turned to her ATPs. ‘OK, one either side, please.’

Harper stayed where he was and his colleague moved to the other side of the table. The APTs looked at each other and, on a silent count of three, lifted the front of Leonard Lawson’s rib cage away from his body.

His pierced heart, with a length of spear poking out of it, made the skin on the back of Clay’s hands itch.

‘Let’s clear the decks and give us room to free his heart!’ said Dr Lamb.

Hendricks chuckled. All activity in the autopsy suite came to a standstill and everyone’s eyes turned to him. In the silence that followed, he explained. ‘That sounded like the opening line from a pretty corny love song.’

As Dr Lamb and her APTs returned to work, Clay smiled at Hendricks.

With a pair of large shears, Dr Lamb cut the attachment tissues of the intestines and, without pause, Harper and his colleague lifted the digestive system from Leonard Lawson’s body and placed it on a nearby aluminium trolley.

Harper removed his hands from the old man’s upper digestive tract and frowned.

‘What is it, Harper?’ asked Dr Lamb.

He stuck his hands back underneath the intestines and said, ‘Yes. There’s something hard in there.’

Clay clenched her jaw. This observation of Harper’s felt like a massive distraction when there wasn’t a moment to spare. She was desperate to get the heart removed from the spear so she could inspect the central shaft of the weapon.

‘Harper, we’ll find out what he had for his last supper later. I’m sure DCI Clay is eager to retrieve the foreign item from the victim’s heart.’

Harper, whose new beard did little to disguise his fat baby face, blushed and Clay said, ‘But thank you, Harper, for your keen sense of detail.’

‘Time to separate his heart from his lungs,’ said Dr Lamb. She stuck a finger through the transverse sinus and with her right hand divided the aorta and main pulmonary artery. With two more incisions, his heart was isolated from the other organs.

The top and lower end of the spear were clearly visible under the overhead fluorescent light. Dr Lamb nodded. Harper and his colleague reached inside and carefully lifted the impaled heart into the air.

‘Lower. Lower. Lower. Just there.’

Dr Lamb pulled a retractable metal tape measure from an open tool box to her left and, releasing the measure, placed it close to and in line with the section of spear. She pressed record on her dictaphone and said, ‘Section of spear inside Leonard Lawson’s body, twenty-one centimetres in length.’

Then she picked up a clean scalpel. ‘I’ll release the heart from the spear.’ She squeezed the muscle with the fingers and thumb of her left hand and sank the scalpel into the space she had created. She made a steady slice and the heart was open but still hanging on to the shaft.

Clay’s phone rang out. In the quiet of the autopsy suite, it sounded impossibly loud. On the display, she saw ‘Riley’.

‘What’s happening, Gina?’ she asked, still watching Dr Lamb.

‘Louise Lawson. She’s ready to talk. We’re on the eighth floor.’

Dr Lamb placed the heart in a silver tray.

‘I’m round the corner at the mortuary. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.’

As she closed down the call, Clay watched a trickle of blood seep from the heart into the silver tray. She pulled off the plastic apron, took off her blue smock and felt her pulse quickening. By the time she was on the stairs leading down to the ground floor of the mortuary, she felt a rush of nervous energy at the prospect of opening the doors that only Louise Lawson had the key to.

In the hours before dawn, the temperature had dipped a further three degrees below zero, but as Clay raced from the mortuary to the hospital, she felt feverish with the compulsion to know.

When she arrived at Louise Lawson’s ward, Clay paused in the doorway and saw Riley on the edge of the bed, dabbing the old woman’s face with a wet flannel. She noted the tenderness in Riley as she looked at Louise Lawson, her tough façade completely gone. She stepped out of sight and knocked on the door.

‘Hi, Gina!’

Riley’s back straightened and her expression returned to one of concerned neutrality.

Clay pulled up a chair and smiled at the elderly lady.

‘Is this...?’ Louise looked at Riley.

‘DCI Eve Clay,’ confirmed Riley.

‘How are you, Louise?’ asked Clay. Riley pressed record on her phone.

‘I’m exhausted.’

‘I’m sorry about your father. He was a very distinguished and intelligent man. You must be very proud of him, Louise.’

She closed her eyes and sighed.

Clay tried to take her to a good place. ‘All those books about art, ancient civilisations, old masters... I imagine when you were a small girl, Louise, your father must have taken you to many galleries and exhibitions.’

Louise was silent, seemingly remembering the past. Then she spoke. ‘During school and university holidays, he took me to art galleries in all the big cities of England. And Europe. The Musée d’Orsay, the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He loved religious art in particular, though I’m sorry to say he wasn’t a religious man.’ A look of profound sadness swept across her face.

Clay understood that what had happened to her father was looming large in her head. ‘We have something in common, Louise.’

Louise didn’t respond, but the lines on her brow creased enough for Clay to know she had hooked her interest. ‘The woman who raised me until I was six was a Roman Catholic nun. She loved art, particularly religious art, and she showed me all kind of pictures in colourful books. We lived near the city centre and we were always in and out of the Walker Art Gallery.’

Louise looked away, picked up the cup of water, drank, then placed it back down as if it was a poisoned chalice.

‘Thank you for agreeing to speak,’ said Clay.

‘Where is my father’s body?’

‘It’s being examined, and then it will be prepared for the chapel of rest.’

‘He’d just turned ninety-seven. He wanted to reach a hundred. But it wasn’t to be, was it?’

‘Your father...’ Clay dangled the unfinished question in the air and Louise returned her full attention. ‘Did he have a healthy lifestyle?’

‘To live so long?’ She nodded. ‘Oh yes! He walked for miles every single day, up until last Thursday.’ She looked into space. ‘Around and around Sefton Park. Thinking his thoughts. Dreaming his dreams.’

‘He was a creature of habit, your father?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you say he walked for miles every single day up until last Thursday?’

‘He didn’t seem himself on Thursday. On Friday he said his legs were sore. I asked him to go to the medical centre and he refused. I knew not to make a fuss over it because fuss makes him agitated.’

There was an innocent kindliness about the woman that made Clay think she had been sheltered from the world.

As Clay counted silently to five, a series of snapshots developed in her mind, images that acted as stepping stones into Louise’s life. At home, caring for her elderly but active father. Two old people who had probably lived together for well over half a century. A dutiful daughter with religious belief as possibly her only outlet. A life suddenly overturned by a violent crime that would rob her of the place she called home. But time was tight and the minutes were slipping by. She had to broach the unthinkable.

‘I’ve been inside your house on Pelham Grove,’ she said. Louise’s body sank and her lips moved as she averted her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Louise,’ said Clay, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.’ She zoned in on Louise’s mouth, tried desperately to lip-read, but the movements of the old woman’s lips were so small and subtle that nothing was given away.

Louise was silent. Clay watched the tension in her face as she mustered the strength to speak. Then, ‘I said, it is a house of horrors.’

Clay glanced over Louise’s shoulder at Riley.

‘Go on, Louise,’ said Riley. ‘Tell Eve what you mean by house of horrors.’

‘If you’ve been in the house, then you will have seen something... Something...’ Louise raised a hand to the top of her head. She pressed down on her scalp and took in a sharp breath of air. ‘
Even though... even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
I still have a father, a heavenly father. I must remind myself not to be afraid.’