3
The living and the dead stainless steel: basins, scalpels, and scales disinfected and polished to a dull gleam under the halogen lights.
The mortuary is located in the new coroner's court basement and smells like a hospital, and looks like an office block. A ramp leads down the road to an underground parking area where Home Office' meat wagons' are parked in bays.
Pushing through swing doors, Brooks walks like a sailor in search of a fight. A white leads the way along brightly lit corridors. The place seems deserted until a cleaning lady appears wearing elbow-length rubber gloves. I don't want to contemplate what she's been cleaning.
Another door opens. Blanche Bradbury had her hands deep inside a butterflies ribcage. Half a dozen students are gathered around him, dressed in matching surgical scrubs and cloth caps.
"You see that?" Blanche questions, adjusting a lamp on a retraceable metal arm above her head.
Nobody answers. They're staring at the disembowelled body with a mixture of awe and disgust.
Blanche points and raises her eyes to theirs. Still no response.
"What are we looking for?"
One of the requests.
"Evidence of a heart attack or otherwise."
She waits.
Silence.
"I swear you're all blind. Right there! Damaged heart tissue. You don't always find the clot, but cardiac arrhythmia can still be the likeliest cause of death."
"He suffered a heart attack." So, exclaims one of the students.
"You think?"
Blanche's sarcasm wasted on them.
"Sew him up," she declares, peeling off surgical gloves. She tosses them overhead like she's shooting a netball.
Rattles the bin. Scores.
"You had something to show me," says Inspector Brooks.
"Absolutely."
Blanche then looks at me and smiles.
"It is good to see you, Quintus."
"And you, Blanche."
She leads us to a glass-walled office with a desk and filing cabinets. Having collected a manila folder, she waves it above her head like a tour leader, and we follow her down another corridor until she stops before a large steel door. Pulling down on the handle, she opens the door, breaking the airtight seal with a soft hiss. I feel a breath of frigid air as lights are triggered automatically to reveal four cadavers are on trolleys beneath white sheets. Three walls of the room have metal drawers. Bodies lie within.
Blanche checks a nameplate and tugs a handle. Another hiss as the seal breaks. Robbie Chase slides into view on metal runners. His joints are stiff with rigour mortis, and his skin marbled by lividity.
Blanche pulls on latex gloves.
"Toxicology tests show Robbie Chase was clean and sober when he fell."
"Nothing?" Brooks pressed.
"Nothing," Blanche responds.
"But he had a history of drug and alcohol abuse that brought on manic episodes."
"He is clean," Blanche re-emphasises. "However, in addition to injuries consistent with impalement, Chase also had a severe head injury, grazes on his arms, wrist, and thumb, and a cut on the tip of his middle finger."
"How did he pick up these additional injuries?" I ask.
"It is likely that Chase hit something as he fell," Blanche said, before adding, "sometimes people hit awnings."
"But there weren't any awnings on the houses in the square," I insisted.
"And no one checked whether he could have hit anything on the way down," Brooks added.
Blanche opens the folder and withdraws a forensic report.
"We pulled forty-two full or partial prints from the apartment. Some of them match Chase and his girlfriend and his wife. We collected fibres from the rug and the wound, and there might be DNA from the hand towel in the bathroom. There were old semen stains on the bedsheets and also on her underwear. DNA results won't be back for another five days."
I can hear the Inspector's teeth grinding.
"Check them against the victim. Then run them through the national database. Tick off the boxes."
Blanche slides Chase's body from view and opens a folder of crime-scene photographs. The first shows Chase lying face down impaled on the railings beside his arms outstretched, head to one side, eyes open.
"What about the wounds on his arms and hands," I ask.
"These are typical of falls because people can grip to stay inside. Except, of course, that Chase meant to have thrown himself out of the window deliberately."
"Do you think that the window would have been difficult to climb through?" I ask.
"Yes," Blanche acknowledges.
"What if he went through the window like this?" Brooks suggested, he postulated, stretching his arms forward like Superman, "front first and hands out."
There's no point in arguing because Brooks hasn't put a foot wrong procedurally. Meanwhile, I'm doing what I should never do, and I'm ignoring the obvious answers. There's only one greater sin, and that is embracing it.
4It's almost six by the time we reach Amber Chase's house. Blanche came with me as support and as my driver. I don't drive, never have done and never will do.Three cars parked in the driveway. Visitors. That makes it more difficult. Finally, the front door opened by a woman in her early twenties, red-eyed from crying. A young man, bearded and shaggy-haired, joins her, putting his arms around her waist. "I'm looking for Mrs Amber Chase," I say. "That's my mum," says the young woman. "I'm Louisa, and this is Jamie." "We phone ahead earlier," Blanche says, "I am the Home Office pathologist, and this is Quintus Noone." The young couple stares at me, n
5The Aeroflot jet touched down in Moscow on a bitter morning with thick snow lying on the ground. The customs men waved Amber Chase and me through as if uninterested, though they seemed to be taking apart a man of much my age on the next bench. No protest, no anger, nor, I could see, any apprehension.As we went on my way, one of the officers picked up a pair of underpants and carefully felt his way around the waistband.I was thinking purposefully of taxis, but it transpired that we had a reception committee. A girl wearing a knee-length black coat and a black knitted hat approached us tentatively and said, "Mrs Chase? Mr Noone?"She saw from our reaction that she had the right couple. She said, "My name is Julieann. We have a car to take you to your hotel."She turned towards a slightly older woman standing a pace or two away."This is my colleague, Miranda.""How kind of you to take so much trouble," Amber said politely. "How did
6Miranda waited, hovering in the dining room, and stepped forward as I appeared. She wore a blue wool suit with rows of bronze-coloured beads and would have fitted un-remarkably into the London business scene. Her hair was clean and well-shaped, and she had the poise of one accustomed to organising."You can sit here," she said, indicating a stretch of tables beside a long row of windows. "Mrs Chase will be joining you shortly.""Thank you.""Now," she said, "tomorrow….""Tomorrow," I said pleasantly, "I thought Mrs Chase and I would walk around Red Square before we meet with deputy prosecutor general Ozdoyev.""But we can add you on one of the guided tours," she said persuasively. "There is a special two-hour tour of the Kremlin, with a visit to the armoury.""We'd rather not," I said, "this is difficult enough for Mrs Chase as it is."She looked annoyed, but after another fruitless try, she told me that our lunch was
7After breakfast, the receptionist summoned us, where two prominent men stood with impassive faces, flat uniformed caps, and long grey coats.One of them handed Amber a stuck-down envelope addressed to her. Inside there was a brief hand-written note, saying simply. "Please, accompany my officers," and below that, "Deputy Prosecutor General Ozdoyev."During our progress through the foyer, there were several frightened glances. The bulk and intent of our two escorts were unmistakable. No one wanted to be involved in our situation.They had arrived in a large black official car with a uniformed driver. They gestured to us to sit together in the back, and I gave Amber a reassuring squeeze of her hand as the vehicle set off and made unerringly for Dzerzhinsky Square.The long façade of the Lubyanka loomed one side, looking like a friendly insurance-company building if one didn't know better. Finally, however, the car swept past its large sides a
8Unsurprisingly, Ozdoyev did not offer a lift, and after collecting our coats, shuddered out into the saturated air. As darkness fell, it seemed to be colder than ever, and Amber linked her arm in mine and moved closer to me so that we could share our little body warmth.There were even fewer cars than usual to mow one down and not another pedestrian in sight, let alone a policeman."Did I do the right thing?" Amber asked in due course."Of course, you did," I answer. "The Russian's want that hard drive as much as you want to know the whereabouts of your ex-husband's money."The Majestic Hotel lay in the distance down the hill, with its canopy stretching out over the street. I turned up my coat collar, wondering why most of the centre of the top was an intentional hole rectangular hole, like a skylight without glass, open to every drop of rain or snow which care to fall. As a shelter for people arriving and departing, the canopy was a non-starter.
9My room looked calm and sane to reassure me that tourists were safe to roam the city's main streets.It could happen in London, I thought. It could happen in New York and Paris, and Rome. What was so different about Moscow?I threw my coat and room key onto the bed, poured a large reviver from the duty-free whisky, and sank onto the sofa to drink it.The attack had been, perhaps, an abduction attempt. Without glasses, I could have been a pushover. They could have got us in the car. And the drive? To what destination?Did Amber expect me to stick to the task until I was dead? Probably not, I thought, but then I don't think Amber underestimated the whole situation.More than anything, I could be lucky again. But, failing that, I had better be careful. My heart gradually steadied, breath quietened to normal.I drank the whisky and felt better.After a while, I put down my glass and picked up the box containing a pay-as-you-go mo
10A limousine collected us about seven o'clock that evening, and we sped down the Komsomolsky Prospect, and I looked two or more three-times out of the window. A black car followed us faithfully, but we were on the main road where that would happen anyway.We arrived outside a restaurant ten minutes late because more snow falling clogged the public transport and taxis almost to a standstill. There was a short queue outside shivering, but the chauffeur led us past the row and opened the firmly shut door.The place was packed, and somewhere there was some music. Led to the one empty table, a bottle of vodka materialised within five seconds."Of the two decent restaurants in Moscow," a voice said behind us, "I like this the better."We turned to find Ozdoyev, standing there accompanied by a tall, slim, and beautiful young woman, wearing a deep-blue velvet jumpsuit and high-heels which made her taller than me, and I am over six-foot."This is m
11The flight home was met at Gatwick at three in the afternoon by Blanche, who, after dropping Amber off to re-join her children, whisked me off to another crime scene."What's happened?" I asked as we headed towards Ascot."Igor Akinfeev died this morning," she replies, her eyes fixed on the road ahead."Don't tell me, suicide," I say, without feeling."Police have been quick to announce that there is nothing suspicious about the death," she says."Who found him?""Avron Cohen, his bodyguard, returned from running errands early this morning. When he knocked on the bathroom door, there was no reply. The missed calls on the oligarch's mobile, which he rarely left unattended, was another reason for concern. So finally, Cohen, an ex-Mossad agent who had guarded Akinfeev for six years, kicked down the door. Inside, Akinfeev was lying on the bathroom floor on his back. A length of a scarf tied tightly around his throat. Overhead, another