“The shower was on when you found him?” asked Mrs. Singh.
“Yes. Him?”
“Male skeleton. Mid-thirties at a guess, not far off six foot. But this is what interests me.”
She pointed at the small collection of lead bullets that lay scattered beneath the corpse. They had dropped from the body as the surrounding tissue rotted away but were too heavy to be moved by the water. Mrs. Singh pulled out a Magic Marker and noted the position of one, and had the photographer take several pictures before she picked it up with a pair of forceps and looked closely at it.
“Looks like a .32. Make any sense?”
“There are .32 cartridges scattered all over the carpet just behind you.”
“Any idea who he is?” she asked without looking up.
“We think his name is Tom Thomm, aged thirty-four and a missing person—found his wallet in a pair of rotted 501s. Do I need to ask how he died?”
Mrs. Singh knelt by the shower basin. Jack squatted next to her.
“Not really,” she continued. “One shot grazed his lowest rib just here but was not fatal; another bullet that shattered the ulna indicates that he had raised his arm in an attempt to protect himself. There is another slug lodged in the hip joint which probably caused him to fall over, and the last two were fired to finish him off. One lodged in the side of his skull and the other nicked his rib.”
“How do you know two shots were fired to finish him off?”
She smiled and with a flourish drew back the shower curtain. It had three bullet holes at abdomen height and then two much lower down.
Jack looked at the holes and got up, rubbed his chin and stood just outside the bathroom door facing the shower. The ejected shell cases had been found there, so it was a fair bet that this was where the shots had been fired from.
“So they fire from here three times, hear the person slump in the shower and shoot twice more?”
Mrs. Singh stood up. “I’d say that’s about the tune of it. Get Skinner to have a look. I’ll leave the corpse there until he’s done.” She stared down at the body. “Seems hard to believe that a shower could be run for a year. Didn’t anyone complain?”
“Next-door neighbor. Lola Vavoom—”
“The actress?”
“The same. She complained, but they ignored her. No one lives below. It’s a mess down there, too. The damp has got into everything.”
Mrs. Singh was deep in thought, but not, as Jack found out, about the corpse.
“Lola Vavoom, eh?” she said excitedly. “I was about the only person who liked My Sister Used to Keep Geese, and my husband and I saw Fancy Free in Ludlow eight times. I must get her autograph.”
She hurried off, leaving them both staring at the shower curtain.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Jack.
“Mrs. Dumpty?”
“Bingo. First three shots at abdomen level. Humpty was about four foot six. If she thought he was in the shower, that’s where she would have aimed.”
“What did Mrs. Dumpty say in her suicide note?” mused Mary.
“‘I went to his home and prayed for God to forgive me as I pulled the trigger.’”
“Only when we came around to interview her,” continued Mary,
“she didn’t know we were investigating something that had happened that morning—she must have thought we’d just discovered the body.”
“It explains why Dumpty had been lying low,” added Jack. “He obviously didn’t want her to have a second go at him.”
He stared at the skeleton in the shower basin.
“I reckon he’d only just discovered Tom Thomm’s body when Lola saw him.”
“Why didn’t he report it?” asked Mary.
“Because,” said Jack simply, “he was up to no good—and up to no good big time. But it still doesn’t tell us where Humpty had been living this past year.”
“So… are we any closer to who killed Humpty?”
“We know they used a .44-caliber handgun, that it’s probable Winkie saw them do it and—” He thought for a moment. “And that’s about it.”
The rain had stopped by the time they stepped out of the building. The sky had darkened even though it was barely midafternoon, and cautious motorists had switched on their headlights, causing the wet road to glisten. The doorman, inspired by all the activity, had put his pillbox hat on at a jaunty angle and saluted as they walked past.
“Briggs called,” said Baker as he saw them to the Allegro.
“Let me guess. Press conference?”
“In one.”
30. Another Press Conference
CRIME BOSS JAILED
Notorious racketeer and underworld crime boss Giorgio Porgia was found guilty yesterday on 208 counts of “undertaking home improvements with menaces.” The court heard that Porgia and his gang would routinely use threats, violence and intimidation to sell unwanted home improvements to frightened residents. Loft conversions were carried out where no loft had been; double glazing was replaced up to seven times on the same property, and houses were unnecessarily rewired using string. Porgia was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison, having already pleaded guilty to token charges of wanton lack of taste, poor color harmony and badly aligned wallpapering. He was also banned for life from owning a conservatory.
“…but what was actually said at that fateful tea party, it was impossible to ascertain,” continued Chymes while the pressroom stared at him, hanging on his every word, “until I devised a forensic technique which I call ‘cake-crumb scatter-pattern identification.’ This works on the principle that if someone eats cake while talking, the crumbs are ejected from the mouth at different rates according to the syllables of the words spoken. By analyzing the pattern of crumbs on the tablecloth, I was able to deduce that the conversation was not about the weather, as Mrs. Pitkins claimed, but the subject of the misdiagnosis of botulism poisoning, a line of questioning that we were able to bring to our suspect, who soon confessed everything in a tearful scene that made a fitting end to the whole painful inquiry.”
Friedland was greeted by the usual standing ovation, which he modestly dismissed with a wave of the hand. There were a few technical questions about his new technique, regarding varying weights of the component parts of the cake and how far you might project a chocolate sprinkle when pronouncing “psoriasis,” something Chymes deftly answered with complicated diagrams on an overhead projector as DS Flotsam gave out printed copies of all the details.
Jack, Briggs and Mary were watching from the door of the anteroom.
“What am I doing here?” asked Jack. “I’ve got nothing really substantial to add—I don’t really know if Winkie’s death was even connected.”
“It’s from the seventh floor, Jack.” Briggs said it without enthusiasm. Someone was leaning on him.
“What’s going on, sir?”
Briggs looked down and rubbed his forehead. “The Guild is very powerful, Jack. I’m sorry.”
Before Jack could even begin to think what he might mean, Chymes strode past them as he walked out of the pressroom. He went back on to take a curtain call but then came off again, glared at Jack with a confident smile and said, “You want the heat, Jack? Try the fire.”
And he joined Flotsam and Barnes on the other side of the anteroom, where they attended to him as a manager looks after a boxer who has just come out of the ring.
Usually Jack waited for the journalists to file out, as they generally made a lot of noise, and if Archibald or anyone else was polite enough to stay, he would at least be heard. But today was different. Today no one filed out. There was silence. For a moment Jack thought Chymes was about to go back on, but he had already started to discuss the possibility of solving the Slough Thuggee cult murders in time for the early-evening news the following day.