Syndrome, page 2
She looked at her hand, an expression of stupor on her face, as though she’d already forgotten she’d threatened a physician while having a nervous breakdown. She slowly raised it and, with a snort of resignation, laid the piece of cutlery on the tray. Then she rubbed her face to wipe the tears that kept rolling down her cheeks.
‘Why don’t you go home?’ Catherine stepped back to let the nurse move on. ‘Jimmy needs to rest.’ She nodded, as if it made her words more convincing. ‘And you too …’
The nurse reached the bed of another child, who was playing with a tablet computer and wearing a pair of earphones. He didn’t seem to have noticed what had just happened. Or he didn’t care. The woman also started gathering the remainders of his dinner. An empty dish and a glass were piled in a precarious position on a stack of comics. She tried to take them with her free hand, but in doing so, a fork slipped and ended up on the floor.
Had Adele remained there when the nurse had exited, the latter would’ve seen her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the doctor, who had now moved closer to the child’s mother and laid a hand on her shoulder. That consoling gesture didn’t seem to have any positive effect, since the other woman kept sobbing. She was speaking, but in so low a voice that only a mumble left the room.
‘If you find it difficult to rest, I could prescribe you something.’ Catherine’s voice, instead, was sharp, confident. Her posture emanated professionalism and firmness, but while watching her, Adele had often seen flashes of kindness that reminded her of her own grandmother.
She shook her head at the strange comparison that increased her annoyance. The more she tried to seek information on Catherine, the more the image of a good person came out, and the more Adele herself persisted in digging. Afflicted by a feeling of powerlessness, she’d started to tail her, at first with caution, but then over time she’d become more audacious. The doctor didn’t know her. Even if she’d seen her once or twice, it wouldn’t be a problem. In any case, that tailing had led to nothing up until now. The unusual scene she’d just attended, however, had caused a strange sensation in her, like a sense of opportunity.
The door opened completely, and the nurse set foot in the corridor. At that moment, the fluorescent lamp flickered on, drawing her gaze. But it stopped on Adele, and the woman flinched, emitting a loud moan and dropping the contents of one of the trays.
The doctor and the child’s mother turned to the source of the racket. Adele first met the gaze of the former and then of the latter.
She felt a slight vibration on her hip. Lowering her eyes, she turned around and started walking briskly, while pulling her mobile phone out of her pocket.
She’d already passed a door and reached the stairs when she opened the message she’d just received. It came from a generic number in the department and included only an address, the one of a crime scene.
She was three hours from the end of her shift, so she couldn’t escape the call. Her little personal investigation was over for today. Anyway, she needed time to develop a new strategy, because the current one wasn’t yielding the expected results.
Perhaps she should’ve tried a more direct approach.
With its pristine walls and without furniture offering a sense of scale, the flat looked much smaller than it probably was. As she set foot in it, Adele couldn’t help but stop to look at it and imagine its potential. The little doorway room led to a bigger one, whose right wall, interrupted by two large windows, let in the faint light from the summer evening sun that could penetrate the barrier of clouds. The place had the evidence of a recent refurbishment. Some paper was still stuck on the window frames, an irregular layer of dust covered the floor, and some boxes lay discarded in a corner.
‘Hey, hello!’ Jane Hall had appeared by the door on the opposite side of the room, a camera in her hands. She was smiling. She beckoned to her come over. ‘The scene is this way …’ She stopped, her mouth still half-open. ‘But what are you doing here?’
For a moment Adele thought Jane was talking to her, even though she couldn’t understand why, given that the deputy team chief knew her shifts. Then she felt a brush on her shoulder, and a man walked past her in haste.
‘Ah, don’t mind me!’ George Jankowski, the detective leading another team in the forensic department of the Metropolitan Police, flashed his usual fake smile at Adele and then Jane, in whose direction he was headed. ‘I’m here to return Eric a shift. I’ll just give you a hand with the forensics in here.’ He raised his left hand while carrying his kit with the other. ‘But the case is all yours.’ He walked past his colleague and entered the room, from which a sudden chorus of greetings arose; those voices were as astonished as the way Jane herself was looking at Adele.
The latter shrugged. She knew as little about that as her superior. ‘The case is yours,’ she whispered, mocking Jankowski’s voice and crossing her eyes at the same time as an imitation of his slight strabismus.
A grunt escaped Jane’s mouth, while with the back of her gloved hand on her face, she tried to hold in her laughter, to no avail. ‘You’ve got a wicked streak!’
‘Oh, I can even be worse than this.’ She moved closer, addressing her with a conspiratorial smile. ‘I promise you.’
Jane really had no idea of how much it was true.
The meaning of that thought took a back seat as Adele walked past the other woman and saw the corpse in the middle of the second room.
It was a man, lying on the floor, face down. The filth covering his clothes, skin, even hair jarred with the whiteness of the place. Richard Dawson, the medical examiner, was kneeling beside the head. Bending forward, he was absorbed in observing an evident wound at the base of the skull as he placed a hand on the nape of the neck. Across the room, Miriam Leroux was talking to Sergeant Mills in a low voice, whilst Jankowski, who was donning a pair of latex gloves, stared in their direction, curiosity in his eyes.
He’d just give them a hand with the forensics. Yeah, sure. He was snooping about. And lately, given that time and again Eric and he swapped their shifts, he was doing that rather too often.
As if he’d sensed Adele’s eyes on him, Jankowski turned his to intercept them. ‘I reckon Eric had some personal business to attend,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Perhaps a date?’
What a bastard.
He was one of the few men, among those she had to deal with at the department, to show deliberate hostility towards her. Ultimately, Adele had expected that sooner or later she would meet her match. She knew she didn’t behave in the most appropriate way with her colleagues. The women who didn’t find her nice just ignored her, kind of like Miriam at the beginning. And she’d never given a damn about it. But the defiant pose displayed by a creep like Jankowski disquieted her, because she didn’t know how to handle him. Or rather, had she followed her instincts, she’d certainly find a way to wipe that smirk off his face. However, it was advisable to keep that side of herself at bay. Even though every time it just got harder and harder.
In the past he’d been friendlier with her, although she’d always sensed a certain deceit in him. But since word about the end of her affair with Eric had filtered out in the department, the man had become more aggressive in his attempts to stump her.
A fake cough from Miriam stopped the silent confrontation between the detective and Adele. ‘I think he had a thing with Brian.’
‘Ah, yes … his son, innit?’ Jankowski said.
‘Okay, conversation’s over.’ Jane stepped forward. ‘We have a scene to survey and, in the absence of DCI Shaw, I’m in charge.’
‘Yes, ma’am!’ the man exclaimed in a serious tone, but then winked at Adele.
She shook her head, took a deep breath. She knew better than to stoop to his level. She had work to do. Jane goggled at her and then rolled her eyes for a moment.
Something told her that even her superior must have been targeted by the other detective.
‘Oh, dear Adele, good evening.’ Dr Dawson, who until now had seemed oblivious to what was happening around him, had finally risen to his feet.
‘Richard,’ she greeted him, and immediately felt the corners of her mouth lift.
She’d never been accustomed to other women standing up for her and still found it hard to accept Jane’s and Miriam’s friendship. As much as she strove to reciprocate their kindness, she could barely appreciate its value. So now the fact she also had a man on her side in that room gave relief to her wounded ego.
‘What happened to this poor sod?’
‘Eh …’ The doctor sighed. ‘They shot him in the nape of his neck, I’d say, in fairly close proximity.’ He pointed to the corpse. ‘At least judging from the accuracy. Although I don’t think I can make out contact burns from the barrel in the wound area.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s also true that he’s so dirty that it’s rather difficult to see anything at all.’
Adele resumed observing the room. Everything was in perfect order, except the corpse. It was as if the body had materialised there out of thin air. Then her gaze was drawn by a set of dark gravitational drops sticking out on the pristine parquet flooring, about thirty centimetres away from her feet.
She squatted to take a closer look at them, slowly placing her case at a safe distance.
Yes, it looked like blood. But it didn’t show a clear correlation with the victim’s position.
She signalled Jane to hand her a numbered label. After positioning it, she grabbed the camera hanging from her neck and took a snapshot of the trace, then with a swab coming from her kit, she collected residue from one of the drops. It was reddish. She also pulled out a bottle and moistened the sample with a spray. The sudden change in colour to green, due to a chemical reaction with haemoglobin, gave her the answer she was looking for.
‘There’s blood over here.’
After placing the reagent flask on the floor, she closed the swab inside its plastic shell, wrote the data on the label and put it back into her kit, then she repeated the procedure on another drop, this time without testing it with tetramethylbenzidine.
‘No high-velocity impact spatters around the man,’ Jane commented, while taking some pictures of the corpse.
‘He wasn’t shot here, so perhaps this blood isn’t his.’ Adele had turned to Dawson again.
‘If he was shot with a not so fast bullet, we mightn’t have much spattering, beside that on his clothes and little else,’ Jankowski interrupted; he was now half kneeling beside the body, opposite to the medical examiner. ‘Maybe there was something that was taken away from the floor.’
‘Not so fast?’ Miriam stepped forward. ‘You think they could’ve used a silencer?’
‘Or he was killed elsewhere and then they dumped the body into an unlet flat,’ Adele exclaimed, preventing the man from replying. ‘Someone so meticulous as to kill and then clean the floor would immediately notice these drops.’ She pointed to the trace next to her.
‘Maybe they didn’t care ’cause it wasn’t their blood,’ retorted the detective. ‘It’ll turn out it’s something completely unrelated, like tomato juice.’ And he burst into laughter.
She was about to point out that she’d just tested it, but she knew better. Jankowski had seen her doing it. He was just baiting her.
‘Hey, hey, let’s focus on physical evidence and leave suppositions for later, shall we?’ Jane had addressed both of them, but then included Miriam in her gaze, like she was asking for help.
However, Adele didn’t need more details. ‘Are there wounds on the victim?’ Given that those drops definitely weren’t tomato juice, one had to continue by process of elimination.
‘Hmm.’ Richard cocked his head to one side and then to the other. ‘I haven’t seen anything so far, but if you all are finished with the photographs, we can turn him.’ He crouched down. ‘If you please.’ He beckoned Jankowski and together they laid the victim on his back.
A disappointed cry accompanied the unveiling of the chest. The shirt he was wearing was open. The skin was marked by several bruises and petechiae.
‘He may not have bled outside,’ the medical examiner commented. ‘But I certainly can’t say the same about inside.’
‘He was pretty beat up.’ Jankowski took a few pictures.
Some purple streaks crossed the dead man’s abdomen. ‘Those look like ligature marks,’ Jane said.
‘Yes.’ Richard lifted the victim’s right sleeve. ‘He’s got a few more on his wrists.’ He pointed to the feet. ‘And I bet that, when we remove his socks, we’ll find more on his ankles.’
‘He was tortured,’ Adele heard herself say, a shiver running through her body, but she couldn’t decide whether it was horror or pleasure, or a mix of the two. Air was entering and exiting her mouth at an accelerated pace.
‘Merde,’ Miriam murmured, breaking the vortex of thoughts that were sucking Adele up.
She looked away on purpose, pretending she was reacting to the detective’s curse. The latter had placed a hand on her gun and was slightly shaking her head in a tic.
Since Adele had started working at Scotland Yard’s forensic department, she’d often shared a crime scene with her, given that it was customary that Eric’s team followed the cases assigned to Miriam, and in the last two and a half years she’d already seen the other woman reacting that way at the slightest mention of physical abuse suffered by a victim. Who knew whether there was a specific reason for her behaviour? Although they were theoretically friends, and they kept being so even after her break-up with Eric, she couldn’t say she really knew her. She’d never bothered to, at least not more than it was necessary to please him.
‘It looks like they tortured him to get some information and then killed him, after he’d said what he knew.’ Jane had spoken; so much for her intention to focus on physical evidence and leave suppositions for later. ‘But how is it possible that nobody noticed anything? We’re in the middle of London. This is quite an elegant building.’
Meanwhile, Adele had knelt down beside the corpse. She’d taken some pictures of the wrist marks and was collecting the dirt from under the fingernails with a thin spatula. The fingers were filthy, as if he’d dug in the soil. She put what she found in a bag and moved away to store it, together with the rest of the evidence.
‘Most of the flats are unlet.’ Miriam was swiping her forefinger on the mobile phone screen. ‘Except two on the ground floor. However, there’s nobody now. We must track down the occupants and question them, but they are three floors down; this is an old style building, with thick walls. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t hear a thing.’ She let out a sarcastic snort. ‘Or if they deemed it more convenient to believe that it was someone watching TV at a tad too loud volume.’ She put her phone away in resignation. She looked tired. She’d confided to Adele that Jean, her son, would sometimes wake up before dawn and insisted on playing with his parents. Only Jonathan would always be dead to the world and seemed completely deaf to their child’s calls, so it was she who had to look out for him. In the end, when Jean fell asleep again, it was time for her to get up and go to work. ‘Perhaps they weren’t home. When can you narrow down time of death?’ she asked Richard, who had stuck a thermometer into the corpse’s abdomen.
‘Based on liver temp, I’d say approximately at three, four in the morning.’
Jane was using a portable device to collect the prints from the fingers, one by one. ‘They should’ve been home at that time.’ She lifted one of the sleeves, thus uncovering the victim’s right forearm. ‘Oh, a tattoo.’
As Jane eased down the limb again on the floor, to take a picture, Adele went over to the body so she could see better. It looked like one of those Celtic interlaced symbols. Nothing special, but perhaps it would come in handy for the identification.
‘It’s fake.’ Jankowski’s voice had come from her side, way too close.
Shooting a questioning look at him, Adele drew back to let the detective see the victim’s arm up close.
‘See here?’ He pointed to the upper edge of the tattoo. ‘It’s already fading away.’
Indeed, the colour was fading to lighter shades, as though something had partially washed it away. Adele zoomed in on the detail and took a picture.
‘I’m willing to bet that something about those fingerprints will pop out from IDENT1.’ He sneered.
‘You have any specific information to share with us, or are you going to make us guess?’ Miriam interrupted in a harsh tone.
The other detective straightened up. ‘One of my team’s cases from last year concerned a seventeen-year-old boy found dead from an overdose.’ His expression grew serious. ‘During the investigations, a man who was questioned mentioned drug dealers wearing fake tattoos, chosen each time from Celtic or tribal symbols, in order to be recognised by their customers.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘It was the first time we heard something like this, and anyway the bloke was a druggy, so his statements should be taken with a grain of salt.’ He walked around the corpse and stopped on the opposite side. ‘Unluckily that didn’t help us catch the dealer, but later on I often heard witnesses and informers talking about this temporary tattoo trend in Holloway. The problem is that they change it continuously, so it’s hard to keep up with it.’
‘A drug dealer abused and then killed,’ Jane commented.
Miriam had another faint tic. ‘Suddenly I’m a lot less sorry about his death.’
‘To be treated like this, he must’ve really blown it.’
‘Like misplacing a conspicuous amount of goods.’
‘Only we’re in Westminster, not Islington. What was he doing here?’ Adele kept sensing something abnormal in that scene. It was all so perfect. A drug dealer got caught screwing his boss and was tortured to reveal where he’d hidden the stolen goods. Then his life was snuffed out. For a man like this, it was an almost expected ending. The police conducted the investigation, but got nowhere and eventually didn’t bother that much. One less bringer of death walking the streets. But why there? If they hadn’t killed him there, as she was convinced, why had they dumped him in that flat? ‘Could be a message to someone who’s somehow connected to this place.’
