First Blood Read online

  ‘It was Bell,’ Dieter said.

  Sergeant Dudley quirked an eyebrow at him. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Our head porter. Very good chap. Came to see if Oxford was all right, saw he wasn’t, and thought he’d better come and get me. Which is why I’m here. But look here, how can you be so sure what happened? All this about your – er – Soco saying exactly what Bell did. How can he know?’

  ‘The sergeant looked at him witheringly. ’Because he’s a scene of crime officer,’ he said. – ‘Because it’s what he does, ’n’t it? Looks at traces at the scene, works out what happened.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dieter said and George jumped in before he could say more.

  ‘Why is there a Soco here anyway? Were you so sure there’d been a crime?’

  ‘Fair point,’ Dudley said. ‘No. He happened to be in the nick when the shout went out. So he came with instead of goin’ home to be called out again if it was necessary. He’s like that, Joe Sturridge is. Thinks ahead. Anyway, this time it wasn’t really necessary. Ah –’ and he turned as another plainclothes man came out of the flat.

  ‘Right, it’s all yours,’ he said. ‘Like I said, I don’t think this is one for CID. I’ll tell uniformed branch and they’ll take over, eh?’

  ‘Well, I’m here,’ Dudley said, with a slightly lugubrious note to his voice. ‘So I might as well make life easy all round. Perhaps you’d like to come in, sir.’ He had turned back to Dieter. ‘And we can sort this out.’

  Dieter moved towards the door and George started to follow. Dudley looked at her over his shoulder. ‘No need to bother you, doctor,’ he said firmly. ‘They’ll get this chap moved to your mortuary soon as they can, and I dare say the coroner and you’ll sort it out there, eh? It’ll be a PM, of course, seeing it’s unexpected. Or I imagine it will be?’ He looked at Dieter. ‘If this chap – I mean, did you know him well, sir? Did he have a history of illness? If he’s been seen by his doctor this past day or so then of course no need for any –’

  ‘I didn’t know him that well,’ Dieter said. ‘Not at all. He was a – a sort of colleague, if you like. Helping us at the hospital with a special appeal for the children’s unit.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that.’ Dudley looked interested. ‘We’re collecting for that at the nick, aren’t we?’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it. Anyway, as I say, Mr Oxford was due to compère a concert for us tonight and didn’t arrive. So, naturally, we were concerned, and since he didn’t answer his phone, his wife was most anxious. Said he’d never go out and not turn on his ansaphone. So I sent Bell to see what was what.’

  ‘Wife, sir? Oh dear. She’ll have to be told, then.’

  ‘Well, yes, of course.’

  ‘Before she comes home. We wouldn’t want to have her walk in here and be shocked.’

  ‘Oh, no need to worry about that. She won’t be coming here,’ Dieter said.

  Dudley looked at him sharply. ‘How’s that? Not on good terms, are they?’

  ‘They are on excellent terms,’ Dieter said repressively. ‘As far as I know. They choose not to live in the same place, that’s all. As I understand it. As I say, I’m not particularly close to them.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Dudley said. ‘Well, we shall see. Meantime, as I say, perhaps you’d like to come in and explain in detail about this chap Bell coming here with a key.’

  George again followed and again Dudley looked at her forbiddingly. ‘Really no need for you, doctor. If there’s to be an inquest you’ll get your body in good time.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not that hungry for bodies,’ George said tartly. ‘I’m not hanging around out of some sort of excitement, you know. But, like you and your Soco, I’m here, and there’s a good deal to be said for seeing a dead body in the setting where it got to be that way. If you don’t mind, that is.’ And she looked at him with a dangerous glint in her eye. He seemed to recognize it for he hesitated, then shrugged, and led the way into the flat.

  It was undoubtedly a rich man’s home, George thought, looking more expensive than even the outside lobby would have led her to believe. The place had clearly had a great deal spent on it; the entrance hall was wide, so wide that it looked as though the adjoining flat had been plundered for space; and then she saw the second main door further along and realized that she’d hit a homer. This flat was indeed a combination of two, making it extraordinarily spacious. It was panelled throughout with very pale, almost blond wood, and the carpet was a rich Persian one that glowed in the warm light like a basket of jewels: emeralds and sapphires and rubies. Beyond the hallway, there was a long drawing room, and it was there that Dudley led Dieter. The furniture was big and soft and deep, the carpet was even softer and deeper, and the curtains and upholstery were in a very fine white leather. There were two or three large fiercely modern paintings on the walls and a great many flower arrangements of great skill, but the whole room was dominated by a pair of pillars that stood on each side of the vast double windows which looked out on to the dark gleam of the river and the lights of the buildings upstream. The pillars were gleaming even more richly than the lights, for they were gilded, and George touched the surface of one of them and thought, with some awe, That’s gold leaf. It really had to be the most amazingly sumptuous room she’d ever seen.

  Dieter looked round with a wooden expression, and the policeman said sourly, ‘Juicy, eh? How the other half lives. Begging your pardon, sir. Seeing he was a friend of yours.’

  ‘I told you,’ Dieter said a little absently, still looking round. ‘He was more a colleague. Hardly a friend. Good God, that’s a Jackson Pollock!’ And he went and peered more closely at one of the paintings. ‘It must have cost a fortune.’

  ‘If you say so, sir,’ Dudley said, clearly unimpressed by the tangle of colour and line. ‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind just sitting down here and telling me about the events of this evening as you remember them …’

  George wandered off quietly. Out in the hall she looked at what was probably the kitchen door, hesitated and then couldn’t resist looking. It was all she’d expected: an expanse of white and black marble, the most coruscating of chrome fittings and an array of kitchen implements dangling from a central bar over the cooker hob and the sink, which were in an island bang in the middle, that would have done justice to a five-knife-and-fork Michelin Guide restaurant. She closed the door softly and turned to what was obviously the bedroom one, and pushed it open.

  Light was blazing everywhere, in the centre of the ceiling which was completely mirrored, on an elaborate chandelier and in the many sconces arranged in extravagant patterns on the walls. The sconces were as golden as the pillars in the drawing room, their lustre reflecting softly on the figured silk that hung on the walls from floor to ceiling in deep oyster-grey folds. The bed itself, an extremely large round one, was dressed in the same colour sheets and covers, and stood on a central dais over which a wide coronet, again with a coating of gold leaf, hung from the ceiling bearing floor-length drapes of translucent oyster tulle. The carpet again was the softest she had ever stood on and the room smelled faintly of flowers and herbs.

  She looked round in disbelief and wanted to laugh. She’d never seen anything like it, ever, not even between the pages of the most ridiculous of glossy lifestyle magazines. It was like every harlot’s fantasy rolled into one, she thought, and shook her head in amazement.

  The bed was what mattered, however, and she moved across to it and stepped up on to the goatskin rugs that covered the dais to stand beside the bed and look down on its occupant.

  He lay with his head turned slightly to one side, the face towards her, in the very centre of the bed, large though it was. The pillows beneath his head were large and round and covered in oyster satin slips, arranged in a sort of armchair, so that his arms were supported on them as well as his head. The indentation of the head was such that it was clear the pillows were very soft, and she reached out and touched one. Down, she thought. Very costly down. Both hands were resting on the top silk sheet,
in a relaxed and easy pose, and the pyjamas he was wearing, in a toning but deeper oyster, were also of heavy satin. He looked comfortable and undisturbed. If it had not been for the pasty yellowish colour of the face and the half-open eyes which stared blindly up at the artfully arranged tulle drapes, he could have been merely sleeping.

  But he wasn’t sleeping. Even without touching him it was clear that this was a very dead man. But she touched him all the same. Hands cold.

  And very stiff. She picked up the hand, or attempted to, but there was resistance. Rigor, she thought, and wished she had her equipment with her. She’d need to check the body’s temperature as well as the ambient temperature to estimate the time of death, but till then at least she could be reasonably sure the man had been dead between eight and thirty-six hours. Yet it was too wide a margin to be really useful.

  She lifted the covers and looked at the rest of the body. It too looked peaceful, with no signs of any undue disturbance. He didn’t even seem to have tossed and turned much in his sleep before he died, if it was his sleep he died in. But why am I being so doubtful? she asked herself, staring down at the expanse of satin. It’s obvious he did. We’ll probably find when we talk to his GP that he had some sort of heart problem. He certainly looked pasty enough the last time I saw him. And she looked at the face again and noticed that the puffiness seemed to have gone. Well, she thought, maybe he had a good night’s sleep before he popped off. That’d make him look as well as he does, and she felt a little giggle rising in her like a bubble. It was a tendency she’d always had, and needed to control. This was no time for levity.

  She touched the belly and then one of the legs and they confirmed her original estimate of the time that had elapsed since Oxford had died, and then, after a moment or two of struggle, managed to turn him slightly to one side and looked beneath the pyjama jacket. There were the patches of bluish-red hypostasis, the post-mortem staining that was to be expected, and she let the body fall back to its original position, and stood considering.

  Heart failure? It looked as though it might be. Certainly it wasn’t any sort of carbon-monoxide poisoning; there’d been nothing cherry-pink about that staining. Another sort of poison? It was possible …

  She pulled herself up and looked round the room once more. Why should she start to think this way? Was it that she wanted some sort of excitement to be found here? Could it be because of Toby’s comments about pathology being a ‘cushy option?’ Did she want this to be murder so that she could prove to him how important a person she was, and how valuable her job?

  She shook her head at her own foolishness and looked at the table beside which she was standing. A crystal decanter of water and a glass, clean and dry. Nothing else. She considered looking in the drawers and decided she’d better check first with the sergeant; it wouldn’t do to touch what she shouldn’t, just in case prints were to be taken. Though he’d said, hadn’t he, the Soco, that he’d finished? That it wasn’t a job for the CID but the uniformed branch. No need for fingerprints. But still she didn’t touch anything. Not yet.

  She stepped down from the bed dais and prowled a little, looking but not touching. A bookcase full of Oxford’s own titles, but with a few rather notorious erotic works tucked in among them. A small bar, open to view with crystal glasses and bottles arranged on mirrored shelves. How flaky can you get? she thought, looking at it. It’s the sort of thing that’d make my mother look away in embarrassment, priding herself as she did on her excellent taste. This time George would have had to agree with her.

  There was a door that led off on the far side of the bed and she opened it. The lights were on here too and the room blazed with brightness, for every surface that could be was mirrored. Of course, the bathroom, and she went round it, hooking her forefinger gingerly into the frames to open them: medicine cabinets loaded with all sorts of tubes and bottles. They would need to be looked at, though at first sight it all seemed commonplace enough. Vitamin pills, painkillers, athlete’s foot creams, haemorrhoid treatments, cough medicines, eye drops, the usual detritus of a modern man’s bathroom; and she closed the doors and was glad she didn’t have to sort it all out. Or at least I won’t unless we find something is odd about this death. But again she had to shake her head at her own unscientific thinking and made her way back to the drawing room. She left the lights on in the bedroom and bathroom. The GP when he came would have to see the chap, and he’d need light. Anyway, she didn’t want to leave the dead man alone in the dark. An irrational thought, but there it was.

  In the drawing room the sergeant was leaning back in his armchair, with the telephone clamped to his ear. Unsurprisingly, it was one of the most recent of designs and looked absurdly fragile in his large hand. ‘Are you sure?’ he said and listened.

  George looked at Charles Dieter who gazed back at her and lifted his brows in the sort of expression that pretends to be saying something but conveys nothing, and she looked back at Sergeant Dudley.

  He was still listening glumly and then said, ‘Well, fair enough. I’ll put a constable in overnight and you can come as soon as you’re able. But if, as you say, you haven’t seen him – mmm – Well, I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Thank you, doctor. Goodnight.’

  He hung up and looked at George. ‘Looks like one for you after all, doctor,’ he said. ‘That was the GP. We found the number on his list.’ He lifted up the white leather-bound book he had in one hand. ‘Says he hasn’t seen Oxford as a patient for over a year, that he knows nothing at all about his health on account of the fact the man insisted on taking himself to fancy Harley Street types who never write letters and there’s no way he’s coming out at this time of night to see a body that wouldn’t see him when it was alive. No point, he says, seeing as he couldn’t sign the certificate anyway. But he’ll come tomorrow for the look of it. Maybe. So there you are. We’ll have to get him shifted after that to you, right? And then you can tell us what he died of. Or tell the coroner, that is.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ George said. ‘The sooner the better. Tomorrow’s a fairly full day. I’ll book it in anyway. Meanwhile, has anyone checked all that stuff in the bathroom?’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Oh, pills and potions of all sorts. Herbal mixtures, cough stuff, skin creams – it’s all there. Someone ought to check, just in case.’

  He looked at her for a long moment and then shook his head. ‘Let’s wait to see what your PM shows us, eh, doctor? Then we can start worrying ourselves over the bathroom, if it’s really necessary. Well, thank you, Professor. No need to bother you again. I’ll have to talk to your man Bell, of course, just to keep it all tidy, but it’s clear enough. The man went to bed after setting his burglar alarm, died in his sleep, and the good doctor here’ll let us know why in due course, and Bell set off the alarm when he came to see why the fella wasn’t with you as promised. The wife gave him the key, so it’s all above board. Now, I suppose it’s the matter of the wife. Shall I tell her, or …’ And he looked invitingly at Charles Dieter.

  He sighed. ‘I suppose I will,’ he said unwillingly. ‘Better me than a – Well, better me, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ the policeman said, a little nettled. ‘We’re trained, of course. But I dare say you’ll do it better than an ordinary copper like me, hmm? Well, goodnight to you both. We’ll look forward to getting your report, doctor.’

  ‘You shall have it,’ George said and then stopped suddenly and said, ‘I’d better go and switch the lights off in the bedroom. No need to leave them burning all night.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dudley said, turning back to the Professor. ‘By all means. Professor, there’s just the matter of phone numbers. I’d better have contact numbers, if you don’t mind.’

  George went into the bedroom again, walked straight through to the bathroom, and put her hand round the door to switch off, though she remembered to use her handkerchief over her fingers before she did it. After all, you never knew … She came back to the bedroom to do the same there. But on the way
she stopped and stepped up on to the dais again to look down on the dead man. She didn’t know why, or even whether she was looking for something, but felt the need to do it. She let her gaze move across the pallid rather thick-looking skin, the half open eyes, the rigid muscles just showing under the pouched neck, and then turned to leave.

  And yelled. Standing at the door of the bedroom was a man in a track suit with a sweat band round his forehead. He was pink and perspiring and looking round the room as casually as if it were a shop he was considering coming into.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ she managed, moving a step backwards. He was tall and burly, and for a moment she felt a shiver of fear. ‘If you don’t go at once I’ll shriek the place down. There’s a policeman in the next room and –’

  He stared at her and then back at the room, and, moving easily with both hands tucked into the wide pockets on the front of his track-suit top, walked calmly forward. And she stared at him with dilated eyes and did the only thing she could.

  She screamed at the top of her voice.

  6

  She didn’t hear them come running because of the thickness of the carpets everywhere and for a sick moment she thought he was going to come directly towards her where she still stood beside the dead man. She was deeply, genuinely frightened. He was a big man with heavy muscles on his legs and chest and arms, clearly visible through the soft damp fabric of his track suit, and there was a smell of power about him that made her own muscles harden with tension. But he bypassed her and went to the other side of the bed to stand and look down on Oxford, just as Dudley and Dieter arrived breathlessly at the bedroom door, with the uniformed man who had been outside the front door right behind them.