Ally smiled at Neil. ‘That’s why we all know she’s dead,’ she said. ‘If she’d been alive, Bry would have known. Andy’s right. She’s not.’
Shaw tried one last time. ‘Mr Judd. Did you see Bryan yesterday – at the hospital?’
‘I’ve said no. I won’t say it again. I’ve told you who killed Bry – it was Holme. He got him hooked on that green slime he used to drink – then he made him steal. When Bry said he wanted out – Holme killed him. You’ve got your killer – he’s in a bed at the Queen Vic. Don’t let him get away with it.’
Shaw stood. ‘We need to get on. I’d like you all to stay in Lynn, please. Mr Judd, you will be formally interviewed a second time about the events last night after we’ve
Andy Judd spat in the grate.
At the door Shaw turned. ‘Two other things – any of you heard of a character known as the Organ Grinder?’
Neil shook his head. ‘You don’t see them any more, do you? Not here – it’s like rag-and-bone men. They’ve gone.’
Andy Judd had his eyes closed, back in the armchair, breathing heavily.
‘And you should all know that on the incinerator belt with Bryan’s body we found some human tissue – in a waste bag. We can’t find any record of its contents. It might have been put there by his killer. Do any of you know why that might be?’
The members of the Judd family swapped glances, a cat’s cradle of looks, then Andy Judd stood and went to the window, looking out into the street. ‘Human waste,’ he said. ‘The low life in the hostel. That’s what they were.’
The Ark stood just off the inner ring road, a broad avenue of swirling carbon monoxide and dusty plane trees which bypassed the medieval town centre. A former Nonconformist chapel, it had been converted into the West Norfolk Constabulary’s forensic laboratory in the nineties. Like most of the town’s Victorian red-brick buildings it seemed to suck up the heat on a summer’s day, its simple architectural lines buckling slightly in an exhaust-induced mirage. Shaw parked the Land Rover at St James’s and they walked across for their appointment with the pathologist, Dr Justina Kazimierz.
Inside the Ark the light was sea-green, filtered in through the original Victorian glass. The rectangular box-like nave – the origin, with its simple pitched roof, of the building’s nickname – was divided by a metal partition six feet high. Beyond was the pathologist’s lab: a small morgue, six dissecting tables, and the only piece of the original statuary to remain in the building – a stone angel, set on the wall, its hands covering its face. On this side of the partition was Tom Hadden’s kingdom – six ‘hot-desk’ PC stations, two lab tables bristling with racks of test-tubes, and an array of forensic kit. Along one wall, running through the partition, was a heavily lagged horizontal chute – a closed shooting gallery for the
Hadden sat at a desk, a laptop open, the screen saver a flock of marsh birds over a Norfolk beach.
‘Toy shop’s open, then,’ said Shaw.
‘Justina’s ready,’ Hadden said, closing his eyes, as he always did when he was thinking. ‘Then I’ve got something for you. You’ll like it – not all of it – but some.’
Dr Kazimierz pushed her way through a pair of barroom doors, topped up a mug of coffee, and retreated without a word.
They followed her through. The blackened corpse of Bryan Judd lay on the central autopsy table. To one side a white sheet covered another corpse – two limbs partially visible: a foot, the veins marbled blue, and an arm and hand, fallen to one side and outwards, as if the victim were signalling a left turn.
Dr Kazimierz saw Shaw’s interest. ‘That’s the floater. One of Rigby’s.’ Dr Lance Rigby was a former Manchester pathologist who had retired to the north Norfolk coast to be close to his boat. He picked up routine cases, private work, and consultancy. Dr Kazimierz had expressed the view to Shaw at the St James’s CID Christmas party that she knew several high-street butchers who were better qualified pathologists.
Something had caught Shaw’s eye. He knelt by the hand. The skin around the wrist was rucked, red, and showed the distinct imprint of a band of some sort. ‘Watch?’ he asked.
‘Maybe,’ said Kazimierz, refusing to quit her position
Shaw looked again. It didn’t look as if a watch strap had made the mark.
He put the detail aside and joined them. A mortuary assistant fussed, setting out instruments on an aluminium side-table. Valentine found himself a spot to one side where he could see Judd’s corpse, but where he could also see the clock which had been fixed on the chapel wall. He concentrated on the second hand, the juddering, metronomic movement. If he felt sick he’d look at this, thinking about the clockwork within, imagining the interleaving cogs, clean, crisp, and inhuman.
‘So – externals first,’ said the pathologist. She tapped the teeth with a metal tweezer. ‘Perfect match, by the way, for Judd’s dental records – so there’s no doubt, if there ever was any.’
She’d reconstructed the broken skull – as neat as a child’s jigsaw in 3D, held together with a plastic glue, clearly showing the small puncture-hole depression at the rear towards the apex of the spine.
‘This is an impact point,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me what – I can’t tell. Tom says you’ve got a ball-head switch? Well, I couldn’t rule that out. But that’s as far as I’ll go.
‘One surprise is this…’ She had a large magnifying lens on a tripod which she positioned over the chest. The blackened skin was taut, but just below the collarbone on the left side was a small hole. She worked the tweezers into the wound. ‘I need to cut through the tissue here to
‘Knife?’
‘Yes. Maybe. But it’s not a traditional kitchen knife, or a switchblade. The point is very narrow, almost like an épée – the heavier of the fencing weapons. So something very sharp, and narrow. It’s not fatal – that’s the skull wound, then the furnace. But it’s traumatic. His blood pressure would have collapsed pretty quickly if it severed any major arteries.
‘Now for inside.’ She began work, opening up the abdomen to gain access to the principal organs. While the exterior of the corpse had been sucked dry of any moisture the chest cavity had survived largely intact. The sound of trickling body fluids was set against the swish of cars on the ring road outside.
‘I’ve tested the blood,’ said Kazimierz. ‘We’re talking high levels of alcohol – twice the limit for driving, plus cannabis.’
‘Really?’ said Shaw. ‘Ingested when?’
She spilt the contents of the stomach into a metal bowl. ‘Here’s the culprit,’ she said, drawing off a sample by pipette from the pool of vivid green liquid. She removed a length of intestine and, effecting a precise longitudinal incision, examined the contents.
‘Well – it’s mostly still in the stomach. Let’s say eighty per cent – with the rest in the small intestine. There’s nothing in the colon…’ She held a length of large intestine up to the light and Valentine watched the second hand of the clock judder.
‘So – two hours maximum.’