THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (22 page)

Jake had heard enough and stood up. He shook Dr Watson’s hand, thanked him and left his office.

Lenny was outside the door. ‘They’ve preserved the sudden-death scene at the flat for us, guv,’ he said.

60

Wednesday

17 August 2005

1209 hours

Shepherd’s Bush, West London

It took them forty minutes to reach ‘Professor’ Groom-Bates’s flat. Jake didn’t need to look very hard to find it. There were two police cars, an ambulance and an unmarked black van all parked right outside the block she lived in.

Next to the black van were two men in black suits and black ties. The men in black worked for a secretive organisation and often encountered bugs and nasty-smelling things. Unlike the film with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, though, they didn’t hunt aliens. They worked for the undertakers. Jake always thought it was an awful job. They picked up the body regardless of what state it was in and how many pieces, placed it in a big bag, took it to their van and delivered it, in cases like these, to the local mortuary.

‘Morning, gents. What floor are they on?’ asked Jake.

‘Fifth floor,’ said one of the men in black.

Jake nodded at him in thanks and walked across the wide pavement toward the high-rise art deco building that was flanked by a lowly supermarket and an estate agent. ‘The Pennines’ was written in big, bold black letters on a white background above the doorway.

They took the lift to the fifth floor. The smell hit Jake as soon as he got out. Even fifteen minutes after death, bodies had an unmistakable smell. It was like nothing else. A hideous, sweet and musty stench with an excruciating cheesy undertone. It was a million times worse than a rotting carcass in a butcher’s overwarmed storeroom.

There were three uniformed officers standing at the threshold to flat 544. The wooden door had been forced open from the outside. The stench in the hallway was almost unbearable.

Jake wasted no time. ‘Morning all. I’m DI Flannagan. Who found the body?’

‘I did, sir,’ said a tall, nervous officer wearing a name badge. The name badge proclaimed him to be Brian Roberts.

‘And what was the reason for your visit here today, Brian?’ asked Jake.

‘Father called us from Australia; hadn’t heard from her for two days. Said it was really out of character as she called him every day. Always at the same time on the dot.’

‘You forced open the door?’

‘Yes, sir, I could smell it at the time. It’s gone now the door’s open.’

‘It stinks up here, Brian! You’ve just got used to it and can’t smell it now. What have you found out about the circumstances of her death?’

‘Neighbours say she is a professor or doctor at some big hospital in central London. They don’t know which one. Said she used to talk about herself a lot. Number 545 says that he saw her a few days ago and she ignored him – looked upset. She’s in bed. Looks like she died in her sleep. Nothing suspicious. Shall I show you, sir?’

‘Yes, please.’ Jake nodded.

Brian led Jake into an airy studio apartment. Light from a large window bounced off the blindingly white walls and laminate floor. A dark blue sofa bed sat opposite a huge television hung on the wall. The screen was off.

On the sofa bed, a white duvet was pulled back to reveal a woman’s naked body. She was lying supine, propped up only slightly by two pillows behind her head. Her dyed red hair looked lank and her skin had a yellowy hue to it. Large, well-fed bluebottles buzzed around the room. They’d clearly discovered the body before the police had.

Jake stood by the side of the bed and looked down at the body. She was skinny. Very skinny. Her breasts, despite being small, were sagging over her body. She was almost too thin. Drugs? Anorexia? Hyperactivity? Illness?

There was no blood. No fluid. No puncture wounds on her front. Her eyes were open and staring toward the TV. The white sheet that she lay upon was still white.

A small bedside table held a lamp, a phone and a glass of water. Jake checked around the bed. There was no sign of tablets or needles – or a remote control for the TV – anywhere in the vicinity.

She was thirty-six. How had she died?

61

Wednesday

17 August 2005

1230 hours

Shepherd’s Bush, West London

‘What did you do when you came in here, Brian?’

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘Was the TV on or off when you came in, Brian?’

‘It was on, sir, but…’

‘But you turned it off and didn’t think that was relevant?’

Brian sighed. ‘I turned the TV off, sir. Yes.’

‘Where’s the TV remote control now, Brian?’

‘I put it in the cabinet under the screen…’

‘Where did you pick it up from?’

‘Err, erm. Err, I, err, think I got it from the table there, but I can’t remember.’

‘How long have you been in the job, Brian?’

‘A year, sir.’

‘At how many sudden-death scenes have you been the first officer to attend, Brian?’

‘Two, sir. This is my second.’

‘Have you turned the body over, Brian? Looked at her back?’

Brian sighed again. Jake knew what was coming.

‘Err. No, sir.’

‘So you said you think she died in her sleep. But if the TV was on, she most probably had her eyes open because she was watching it? Not because someone suddenly woke her up in the dead of night and scared her to death?’

‘I’ve fucked up again, haven’t I, sir? Yes, you’re right. Sorry. Won’t make that mistake again. Fair point,’ smirked Brian.

Jake wasn’t amused. It was typical of uniformed supervisors to send inexperienced officers to sudden deaths. He couldn’t bite his tongue any longer. Brian was acting like a schoolboy. His attitude to this was all wrong. Someone had died. It was their job to find out how; find out if foul play was involved. This wasn’t a game or a maths lesson.

‘Are you fucking stupid, Brian?’ Jake’s tone was sharper.

‘In what way, sir?’

‘What if she’s got a knife in her back, Brian? What if this is a murder scene? What if the killer’s fingerprints were on that TV remote before you rubbed them off and moved it, so it looks like it’s not relevant to the investigation? What if she’s died from a highly infectious and communicable disease and you’ve just picked it up off that remote that you hid?’

62

Wednesday

17 August 2005

1245 hours

Shepherd’s Bush, West London

The colour drained from Brian’s face. Jake was astonished that Brian could not see the obvious nor understand how a crime scene should be treated.

‘Put your gloves on and turn the body over, Brian. Inspect it. It’s your job to determine if she’s been murdered. That’s why you’re here, you stupid idiot. This is a murder scene until you decide it’s not. You do not move objects anywhere. You
do not
pick things up and turn things off! Got it?’

‘Err. Yes, sir… Sir, I, err, I also turned her mobile off as well. It was ringing and getting on my nerves. So I turned it off. I’ve maybe rubbed the fingerprints off that too. I wasn’t wearing any gloves. If you do check it for fingerprints, mine will be on it.’

Jake rolled his eyes. What did they teach at police training school these days? He couldn’t remember being that stupid. Ever.

‘Where are your surgical gloves, Brian?’

‘In the car, sir.’

‘Go and get them. You need them at a crime scene, Brian. They are no fucking good in the fucking car, are they?’

Brian said nothing. He turned on his heel and jogged toward the hall. Jake was alone with the body in the bedsit. He just stood there. Lenny and the other two officers remained on guard at the door.

He always needed time at a scene, to just stand there and look – to understand where he was and how people would use the space in normal circumstances. It was important to think about the way people normally moved around in it. That way he could identify things that were out of place.

The place looked clean, spotless in fact. Everything was dusted to within an inch of its life. Groom-Bates was obsessively clean. The washing up was done. Was this a suicide? Had she cleaned it knowing that people were going to look around? Suicides normally did it clothed in Jake’s experience. He couldn’t remember attending a suicide scene where they had been naked. They were always clothed because they knew people would come and look at them. They thought about it before they acted. They wanted clothes on to protect their modesty – as if to ameliorate death, our most immodest state.

Jake surveyed the scene calmly and quietly.

The glass of water by the bed was half full.

She was naked and in bed, watching TV.

Her phone was by the bed. It was off, as Brian had said.

Jake figured there would be no last text messages or phone calls to friends and family, just a couple of calls from her father.

There appeared to be nothing out of place.

He knew suicide was far more prevalent amongst men. Three times as many men committed suicide compared to women.

In Jake’s mind this didn’t look like a suicide. But what was it?

Was it something she’d caught off the bus at the blast scene that had killed her?

Had she even been at the blast scene?

Brian ran back into the room, panting and holding a box of surgical gloves. Jake took a pair out of the box and pulled them on.

Brian just stood there.

‘Put a pair of gloves on, Brian. We’re going to inspect the body together.’

Brian donned a pair of gloves and followed Jake to the bed.

‘Right. We’re going to lift her up and look at her back. Help me out.’

They pushed their hands under the unyielding body of Groom-Bates. She was rigid. They could feel her cold skin through their gloves. It was fragile, like paper. They turned her on one side. A small pool of maggots sat under her body, eating away at the dead flesh of her back in a recess of the mattress.

‘So no knife, no bullet hole, Brian. You’re a very lucky man.’

And crucially, thought Jake to himself, no sign of any green gunge.

They laid the body back down again.

‘Right, Brian. We don’t know how she died. The post-mortem will decide that. I’ll talk to the coroner. I want you to seize all the prescription medicine in the flat and her mobile phone.’

‘Yes, sir. I forgot to ask, sir. Why are you interested in this case? Aren’t you Anti-Terrorist Branch?’

‘Forty days ago she claimed that she was at or near the bus bomb site. I need to understand what killed her.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Brian looked as confused as ever. Jake decided it was pointless trying to explain or asking him to do anything else.

Jake walked to the entrance where Lenny was waiting.

‘It’s time for lunch, Lenny. Let’s find a nice café while this little lot sort themselves out.’

63

Wednesday

17 August 2005

1317 hours

Shepherd’s Bush, West London

They hunted for a café as they walked. The place was awash with traffic, mainly large goods vehicles. Westfield Shopping Centre was under construction behind the row of shops on the other side of the green.

‘Jesus, it’s still pandemonium around here! They’ve been building that place for more than two years. How long is it going to take?’ shouted Jake above the noise of the lorries.

‘God only knows. Maybe till 2008, they’re saying. I dunno. Do they really need a shopping centre here, so close to London’s West End?’ Lenny was unimpressed.

Along the route, the eatery options that presented themselves were not particularly enticing. They had a choice of sharing a table with a fat, hairy trucker or dining next to a builder showing off his arse crack.

Jake turned and looked back at the Pennines apartment building where the men in black would be bagging up Groom-Bates by now.

‘Change of plan. Let’s to go the Regency, Lenny.’

The Regency was special.

Lenny smiled. They jumped in the car and drove to New Scotland Yard. The underground car park was full again. The security guard waved them away. Lenny parked on a double yellow line outside The Feathers pub on Broadway. They would get a ticket from the council traffic wardens but hopefully they’d get it written off.

They passed the three-sided, spinning New Scotland Yard sign, which cost the Met around £200 per year to power and rotate. Jake thought he recognised the face of a female reporter doing a to-camera piece for one of the television news channels. The Met were talking about buying the freehold for the Yard, which they currently rented. If the Yard ever moved, Jake wondered how many of the local businesses would survive the disappearance of all that ready cash flow. He couldn’t ever imagine it happening though. He was sure the Met were all set to buy the place.

The Regency Café was loved by detectives and worth the extra walk. Opened in 1946, its lavish interior had featured in several films. Daniel Craig had filmed a particularly brutal scene there for
Layer Cake
. The film had been so well received that the bookies already had Craig as favourite to snap up the role of 007 in
Casino Royale
.

On the way, they passed a newsagent and Jake noted that one paper had gone with the headline, ‘The Name’s Bland, James Bland’. They were touting Clive Owen as the better man for the job.

The café was buzzing as usual. Cappuccino-coloured tiles went from floor to ceiling. Formica tables with four fixed plastic chairs around each one meant you had to slide across clumsily to take a seat. Red gingham half-curtains were pulled across the lower panes of the windows, shielding customers from the road.

Jake and Lenny queued up diligently, ordered and paid.

Cash only and everything was cooked to order. The servers were in full voice, shouting out the orders ready for collection at the top of their lungs. The husband-and-wife team had the loudest voices Jake had ever heard. In another setting they could have been opera singers, he thought.