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  ‘Prefer what?’

  ‘Well, maybe some help. From one of – from a chap, mebbe, from the Home Office back-up team. I mean, it’s a very nasty –’

  ‘Mike, go and take your mealy-mouthed wee kirk notions away and fetch those lights. If Dr B. couldn’t handle this, she wouldn’t be in the business, right, George?’ And he almost leered at the tall woman as she looked from one to the other.

  ‘What is all this?’ she demanded. ‘Give me that torch, Gus. Let me see what the hell it is you’re all on about.’

  ‘Mike thinks it might upset your nice female susceptibilities.’ Gus grinned ferociously. ‘Me, what knows you so well, has no such fears. I’m not sure you’ve got any female susceptibilities at all, whatever they may be. You even have to be nagged not to ruin as handsome a dress as you’ve ever had by changing it to come to a scene of crime, hmm?’

  ‘Oh, Gus, do shut up,’ George said. She grabbed the torch and turned its beam on the body at their feet. She made it travel from one side to the other, slowly, letting it linger as it illuminated the horrible grinning throat, but making no sign or sound in response. The beam moved on, downwards, and then stopped as it reached the belly and she saw the mutilation; that brought out a short sharp intake of breath and Gus, at her side, said sardonically, ‘As they say in the movies, dolly, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Up and a bit to the right – no, your left, it’s the corpse’s right – yeah. That’s it. What do you think of that, then?’

  There was a short horrified silence and then George said, her eyes wide and her voice low, ‘Jesus. Jesus H. Christ.’

  2

  Even with the Tilley lamps rigged up and filling the yard with painfully white light, there wasn’t a great deal George could do at the scene. She made a cursory examination of the body and then supervised its packing into a body bag ready to be taken to her mortuary.

  ‘If you don’t take care that head’ll come right off,’ she said. ‘The neck’s as damn near severed as makes no matter, and the weight could – that’s right. Support it. Hmm. I’d better collect some blood from that mess. He can’t have a great deal left in him that’ll be any use for testing.’

  She busied herself with bottles and labels, crouching over the clotted patch on the concrete that had been revealed by the body’s removal, as Gus organized questioning of the keyholders of the adjoining buildings and had the area cordoned off till daylight would permit a more thorough examination.

  ‘Not,’ he said, ‘that I expect to find all that much. Mike did a good job, and so did the Soco. The answers to this one won’t be here, I don’t suppose.’

  ‘He certainly isn’t dressed like a local wino,’ George said. In her years as both Home Office forensic pathologist for the area and also resident pathologist at the Royal Eastern Hospital, locally known affectionately as Old East, she had become accustomed to the detritus of dead bodies left stranded in the neglected old houses, on patches of waste ground and beside (and in) the river that defined the southern border of Shadwell. This one was certainly of a very different ilk. ‘Have you an ID yet?’

  Gus shook his head. ‘Soco made no attempt to look for a wallet or anything else. Left it all to you. I wonder why?’

  ‘I wonder,’ George said sardonically. ‘You want the job done tonight, I take it?’

  ‘It’s up to you, dolly.’ Gus sounded unconcerned, but he was watching her carefully, she knew. ‘I’ll have to make a night of it, I imagine, and it’d help to know who the bugger is as soon as possible. Praps you could do the prelims – clothes and that – and leave the full PM till tomorrow?’

  ‘So much for our romantic anniversary,’ she said and his eyes glinted in the lights.

  ‘Once I’ve got the incident room set up and put the fellas to work, I’ll be able to catch up on my sleep,’ he said. ‘Like, tomorrow afternoon? And maybe you could get all your part of the job done by then too, and leave Alan and Jerry to hold the fort for you while you – um – do the same?’

  ‘The whole point of an anniversary is that it happens on the date the first event happened on,’ she said. ‘Not the day after. By tomorrow I’m back into the old routine, my friend. All the romance’ll have gone.’

  ‘Not quite gone, sweetie. Leave it to me, and you’ll be amazed what I can drum up for both of us.’

  ‘Goddamn it, Gus, do you ever think of anything apart from sex? Here we are with as weird a killing as any we’ve ever had, and all you can do is plan for –’

  ‘Nookie.’ Gus leered horribly. ‘It’s what refreshes me for the job in hand.’ He turned then irritably as a voice called him. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Me, Guv.’ A man came out of the darkness of the alley into the yard and George felt her face stiffen as he, for his part, gave her the sketchiest of nods, barely looking at her. She had never been able to get on to anything but the most frigid of terms with Rupert Dudley. He’d been a sergeant when they’d first met and almost from the beginning she’d managed to step on his toes. In two separate cases on which she and Gus’s team had worked, she had reached the answer before Dudley, a professional let-down for which he’d never forgiven her. Now he was an inspector, because Gus thought highly of him and had worked hard to get him on his team; but in spite of that George still couldn’t like the man. Discussion of or comment about Rupert Dudley was one of the few no-go areas between herself and Gus. So now she bit her lip and listened owlishly.

  ‘Hello, Roop,’ Gus said. ‘You didn’t have to turn out of your bed an’ all. We’ve got most of Ratcliffe Street’s CID here, as well as some of my own people from area office. You could have stayed in your bed.’

  ‘My patch, Guv, my case,’ Rupert said, primming his lips a little. George was maliciously amused. Gus would persist in calling him Roop in spite of appeals not to, and Dudley, hating the diminutive as he did, never failed to react. ‘Of course I’m here. I came as soon as I’d heard. And I wasn’t in bed. I was out. It’s Mrs Dudley’s birthday. Now, listen, I got here in time to see the body loaded in the van, and I took a look at him. I think I have a notion who he might be.’

  ‘That’s handy,’ Gus said, suddenly exhilarated. ‘A local toff of some sort, is he? Or just a spraunced-up chancer?’

  ‘Local, my foot,’ Rupert said, with a certain relish. ‘National, more like. In fact he might even be international, seeing his job, as I recall, was to do with export …’

  ‘So?’ Gus said sharply. ‘No riddles, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘MP,’ Rupert said. ‘Something to do with the Department of Trade and Industry, I seem to remember. Sam Diamond. I’m pretty sure that’s who he is, though he doesn’t exactly look the way he does in his pictures in the paper, or how he was when he came to speak to Mrs Dudley’s Ladies’ Lunch Club. She was President last year, so she got me to turn out. You know how these things are …’ He blushed a little and it was visible in the poor light. ‘So, I met him. That’s why I’m so sure.’

  ‘An MP?’ Gus said. ‘Oh, for crying out loud! That’ll put the fat in the barbecue and no error! We’ll have every lousy hack in Wapping here. Christ Almighty, that’s all we’re short of.’

  ‘I’ll work tonight,’ George said quietly into his ear. ‘See you at home.’ And then, more loudly, ‘Good morning, Roop,’ and smiled sweetly at Dudley as she passed him. That’ll show him, she thought and felt rather better.

  As she drove through the almost empty streets she was smiling a little. It had been a good evening up till now, and even this case wouldn’t spoil it. It was clearly going to be a real honey of a job; a bizarre style of murder and a VIP victim to boot. She shivered a little with agreeable anticipation of the work that was to come, tracking this one down. It was exactly the sort of puzzle she, and she knew Gus too (though he would never admit it in so many words) enjoyed.

  The day had started well. The carpets she had ordered all those months ago for their house in tiny Constom Square, just off Shad Thames on the other side of the river, had arrived early enough
in the morning for her to get them properly laid and the furniture arranged as she wanted it: the rewards of a rare day off she had allowed herself. The bedroom had looked lovely when Gus had come home and he’d been enchanted by it. Just as she had meant him to be.

  Moving into a house so old – Gus said 1815 wasn’t that old, but for a girl from Buffalo, George had told him, it was old enough – and so dilapidated had been a challenge, almost as much of a challenge as actually living together. But they’d done it, after that last case on which they had worked together and which had left her with such a loathing of her little flat in Bermondsey that she had had to move. Gus had decided to sell his handsome and costly shiny new flat in one of the more elegant of the new Dockside blocks over towards Wapping, and they had invested the shared result and a good deal more besides (George insisting on paying her full whack even though Gus had more than enough money in his own right to buy the place outright without a mortgage since he had inherited his father’s considerable fish and chip shop empire) and set up a joint home. Six months of what amounted to connubial bliss without a wedding ring had been smoother than George had expected, but not without its fireworks, of course. No one could live all the time with Gus and not have fights, for heaven’s sake. Especially as he maintained that it was she who caused the friction while he was, of course, the most emollient and easy of men.

  So they had their bad days, but today had not been one of them. At last the house was beginning to look as they both wanted it, from the long living room, with high windows at both ends and white walls, good modern paintings, a scarlet carpet and black furniture, which occupied the whole of the first floor; down to the snug wood-panelled dining room and pretty stone-floored kitchen on the ground floor; up to the two floors of bedrooms with the attics used as studies for each of them. For the first time in her professional life George had real space in which to work but she’d had no time since they’d moved in till today to do any professional work on the book she’d been planning about her more interesting past cases. Now, this afternoon, once the bedroom was straight, she’d actually had the chance to go up to her study and organize her desk; a major step forwards, and she had glowed with it all the time she was showering and dressing in a very special new dark emerald silk slip of a dress that clung to every curve and yet seemed somehow to make her seem better shaped than she knew she was. Her hair had gone just right, agreeing to be arranged in a most elegant knot at the back of her neck, and she’d been able to use her contact lenses without shedding a single excess tear. And the dinner hadn’t been all that bad: Professor Caversham had made quite a short speech, for a professor; the food had been surprisingly good for hospital eats; and the wine had been remarkably good for an establishment that usually spent as little money on entertaining its staff and guests as it possibly could.

  And then a call on Gus’s mobile phone had told them a body had been found on the Ratcliffe Street patch and had, as Gus put it, cast a blight on the rose. He had been determined she should go home and change out of her dress before joining him to investigate. She, in her usual impetuous fashion, hadn’t given a damn; dresses could always go to the cleaners if they got a splash of blood or mud on them. But Gus wouldn’t have it. And the maddening thing had been she had known he was right. It was a delicate dress which had cost her more than she’d ever spent on a single garment in all her life, and anyway, she needed her emergency kit to take to a scene of crime. Going home made sense. It had just infuriated her that Gus should take it upon himself to tell her so.

  Well, she’d deal with Gus later, she thought now as she guided the car expertly into her small space behind the path lab, so that she could let herself into the building with her own private keys instead of trekking all the way through from the front of the hospital. Old East was a great rambling place, and a lot of time could be wasted plodding its myriad corridors and walkways. Right now I have a tricky PM to deal with, she told herself and felt a small frisson of excitement as she considered Roop’s words. A Member of Parliament! Well, that would certainly cause a hullabaloo and there was little George enjoyed more than a hullabaloo. It added spice to the usual round of accidental deaths, battered wives and men slicing each other to pieces in pub fights which was all that had come her way lately. To have another case to work on with Gus would really be fun.

  ‘Darling,’ Mattie said, ‘it’s not like him, honestly it’s not. I’m truly, truly worried. I mean, there’s no reason –’ And she reached for her glass and, because her hand was shaking, knocked it over and swore.

  Susan Napper, hearing the clink as well as the loud, ‘Shit!’ guessed wearily what had happened and said loudly, ‘Mattie! I’ve told you before. He’s just been held up with business at the House. He’ll be home soon, I’m sure. As long as you’re certain you didn’t have any – disagreements. You remember what happened last time …’ She let the words hang in the air.

  Mattie sobbed and then sniffed thickly and at her end of the phone Susan’s gorge rose. She grimaced and made a soft sound. Beside her Marcus stirred and lifted his head blowsily.

  ‘Whassamarrer?’

  Susan didn’t even bother to put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Mattie. David hasn’t come home yet and she’s worried.’

  ‘Tell the silly bitch to stop fussing,’ Marcus grunted into his pillow. ‘Course he’s not in a hurry to get home. Bloody woman’s always pickled out of her skull.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not. Soos, honestly I’m not!’ Mattie wailed into Susan’s ear. ‘Tell Marcus I’m not pickled.’

  ‘My dear Mattie, you’re imagining things,’ Susan said with great briskness. ‘Marcus said nothing of the sort, he just said you were – um – sick with worrying, no doubt, but there’s no need. And I agree with him. David works hard at the House, you know that and –’

  ‘But he said he’d be home by midnight!’ Mattie wept. ‘He said he would. I cooked supper for him and everything. I’ve been trying so hard to be – not to – well, you know – and he didn’t come and I had to – Oh, shit!’ And she hung up the phone with a clatter and burst into even louder tears before getting to her feet, awkwardly avoiding the patch of wet carpet where the glass had fallen, and going to fetch the bottle from the kitchen. She’d put it there and taken her glassful into the living room, in the forlorn hope that she’d be too lazy to go and get another drink when she’d finished that one, but it wasn’t going to work. Not if everyone thought she was fussing over nothing. She’d been dry for almost a month and he had to go and choose tonight, when she’d actually managed to cook for him, to be late. Why should she bother to try, anyway, when people thought she was drunk when she wasn’t?

  This time she brought the bottle back with her to the sofa and sat and emptied a glassful of vodka before picking up the phone again.

  Gus was busily organizing the preparation of an incident room at Ratcliffe Street nick for the morning when he heard. Mike Urquhart had good naturedly agreed to help him, though he had every excuse to go home now if he really wanted to. Neither Rupert nor Gus would have stopped him because he’d worked almost half the night before over a hit and run which he’d successfully tied up. But he stayed, and that was why he happened to be within earshot when the call came in. He had been collecting extra stationery from the cupboard which happened to be tucked into a convenient corner of the Control Room when he heard the woman police constable on duty taking it.

  ‘If you could speak a little more slowly, madam. You say you expected him at what time? Nine o’clock. I see. Well, couldn’t he have been held up at his office? It does happen, doesn’t it? We’re always hearing of men who have to put in a lot of overtime and – yes, madam, I do agree, it is getting late. Hmm? Well, it’s after two. Er, maybe he decided to stay at the office till morning not to disturb you?’

  The PC caught Mike’s eye on her and put her hand over the mouthpiece under her chin. ‘She’s smashed out of her mind, Sarge, this one. Swears her husband’s run off and wants us to go and find him,
right now. I’ve tried to soothe her till the morning when maybe she’ll make more sense even if she has the hangover she deserves, but – What? Oh, yes, madam, I’m still here.’ She pulled her hand away from the mouthpiece and listened, her eyes staring into the middle distance, clearly unimpressed with her caller.

  ‘Well, madam, I don’t think we can do more. An adult man not getting home at his usual time isn’t the sort of situation we’d normally deal with in the small hours. Perhaps if you call again in the morning after you – after you call his office and see if they know? Where does he work, by the way? Oh! The House of Commons, I see.’

  Mike, who had been about to leave, came back from the door and stood over her. ‘Ask her what his job is there,’ he hissed.

  The PC looked startled, but obeyed. ‘Er, madam, what does your husband do there?’ she asked obediently and listened. ‘Oh? Member of Parliament, I see, madam.’ She looked up at Mike with her brows raised and the corners of her mouth turned down. ‘I see. Well, I’ll make a note of the matter and we’ll see what we can do. Could I have your full address and phone number again, madam? No, I took it down, but just to double check.’

  ‘What was that?’ Mike demanded as soon as she cut off the call. ‘When it’s a Member of Parliament you don’t treat it like the usual business of a fella after a bit of illicit nookie and a drunken wife in a tizz.’

  ‘I didn’t know before that he was an MP!’ The girl sounded aggrieved. ‘She didn’t say. Sorry, Sarge, but I mean, I never thought to ask, “Is he an MP?” I mean, you wouldn’t, would you? And anyway, even if he is –’

  ‘MPs aren’t like other citizens,’ Mike said. ‘Who is it?’

  The PC looked down at her notebook and snickered. ‘Sounds like a real Barbara Cartland hero, he does. David Caspar-Wynette-Gondor with two hyphens! How’s that for a mouthful? His wife’s name is Marietta. Blimey, there’s a name to go to bed with. Marietta Caspar-Wynette-Gondor.’