SIX

Well, it’s Thornton Heath, isn’t it? I mean, to most people it’s just an anonymous place in South London that you might even not notice if you were in a hurry to get from Brixton to Horley, say; it barely registers on the radar for most people, but its citizens keep getting murdered. I am sure that in the future, people will say that it is a black hole of murder, a strange rift in the space-time continuum through which homicide seeps; or something to that effect. And, what is more, they keep getting murdered when I’m around. This, of course, is fascinating in and of itself – worthy, I think, of some sort of academic treatise – but it has certain unwanted effects on my life. The most acute and painful of these is that I come into regular contact with Inspector Masson.

It would be over-egging the pudding to say that he is my nemesis, but then he isn’t top of the list for my desert-island buddies; he isn’t even on the list; he isn’t even on the reject list. He’s on the list that also includes Benny from Crossroads, that bloody emu and Gary Glitter. He is small and grey and, well, not happy. Not happy, not contented, nor even, apparently, even merely disgruntled; he is as far from being gruntled as it is possible to get. He comes across as a fundamental force for grumpiness; he appears to see crime as a personal insult and, of course, murder as the most profane; that would be bad enough, but he does not take kindly to people trying to help him out of his grumpiness. I know nothing about him. I do not know if he is married or single, his age, where he lives or even if he is technically alive at all. On two previous occasions, I had attempted to help smooth his path through life, only to be met with less than enthusiastic gratitude; in fact, he had tended towards the contemptuous end of the spectrum, had even sometimes threatened me with prison for interfering with his enquiries.

And here we were again.

I knew enough not even to enter the gym when Dad and I had spotted its rather unpleasant exhibition, although I had had to hold Dad back, pointing out that the police would not be best pleased. ‘But we need to make sure that she’s dead. And you’re a police surgeon now.’

Which, although true, was not the point. The police invited me when they wanted me; it didn’t work the other way round. I looked across at the gym’s new exhibit. The body was suspended about four feet off the ground and under her was a pool of something that was undoubtedly drying blood; she had the clothing and the general build of the PE teacher I had seen the night before, but I couldn’t be sure because her face had been fairly severely battered. ‘I don’t think we need to worry too much about that, Dad . . .’

‘You’ve got to make sure, Lance,’ he insisted and by golly, I suddenly realized he was right; I was first and foremost a doctor and, as terrified as I might be of Inspector Masson, I had a duty to check that she, whoever she was, was not still alive. It didn’t take long, though. Her flesh was cold, waxen; her eyes (or, at least, what could be made out of them) were dried; her fingers were stiff. While Dad continued to tend to George (who was clearly in shock from what he had seen), I went at once to the small office where the PE teachers did whatever paperwork PE teachers have to do (presumably returns on numbers of pupils humiliated, ankles sprained, near-drownings in the swimming pool and cases of concussion following football practice) and dialled 999. The first police car arrived eight minutes later, two more straight after that, then an ambulance (who took over George’s care) and Masson after another fifteen, accompanied by a woman I had never seen before; her age was difficult to judge, because her eyes looked wise, her skin young. She had the high cheekbones of a young Afro-Caribbean woman, and, I noticed immediately, impossibly perfect eyebrows. Her demeanour suggested more than a hint of detachment; it was as if she was constantly judging what she saw.

Their arrival coincided with Mr Silsby’s, which made for an interesting spectacle.

Arthur Silsby had been a patient of our practice for far longer than I had been a doctor there. He had been born in the area and never moved except for teacher training; his first job had been at Bensham Manor and he was clearly going to work there until he retired or died (whichever came first). My impression of him had been that he was a kind and gentle man – clearly a good teacher – but a bit remote; if anything something of a martinet. He was quite close to retiring – near to sixty – perhaps six feet tall, thin with greying hair and one of those small tufty moustaches under his nose that is always a mistake; pre-Nazi Germany, I can see that some men might have thought it did something for their looks, but in the modern age, anyone considering facial hair of such a design should be taken into a corner and given a good kicking. Mind you, Mr Silsby would probably be able to give as good as he got; when he arrived to find his school full not of teachers and pupils – the police had been turning them away at the gate – but the boys in blue, he was not a happy headmaster; not happy at all. He demanded to know who was in charge, was pointed in the direction of my old mucker, Inspector Masson, and set to with a purpose, Masson’s new woman friend looking on. He wanted to know what was going on, why the school was being closed without his permission, what gave Masson the right to take charge of a Local Education Authority establishment and why he, Arthur Silsby, had not been at least kept informed at home.

I had not laid eyes on the Inspector for some months and I was pleased to see that he had yet to take advantage of any available anger-management classes. Dad and I were still in the office and the confrontation took place just outside, so we had a grandstand view, complete with sound (at least to start with); Sergeant Percy Bailey, who was in the office with us, decided it wise to shut the door after the preliminary exchanges, and so thereafter we could not hear what was said, but as a mime, it was second to none. Percy, too, found it fascinating; in fact he even commented that it could take off as a professional sport. At first, it did not appear to be an equal contest; Masson was shorter than Mr Silsby by a good head, and the headmaster clearly had a longer reach, which he demonstrated early on by jabbing his finger at Masson, then pointing all over the place, as if demonstrating the general geography of the school to a particularly stupid parent. Masson’s face clearly showed that he did not appreciate being on the receiving end of a bony finger, because he tried a little bit of his own, preferring to wave it somewhere in the vicinity of Mr Silsby’s nose, which, I noted idly, was sprouting a few stray hairs. Then Masson fronted up to him, hands on hips, mouthing something through rather tense lips, eyes aglow.

At this point, Mr Silsby’s face changed and I would guess that this was the point when it was brought in upon him that the local constabulary hadn’t taken over his school on a whim, and that they didn’t call out multiple squad cars and senior police officers because someone had stolen a box of HB pencils. The curtains that could divide the main gym hall had been pulled across obscuring the body, so he had had no idea of the atrocity that had occurred. Apparently now fully apprised of the situation, his demeanour changed; he shrank slightly, stepped back and looked a trifle wan. Masson, never a man to let the quarry go without giving it good mauling, took advantage and apparently put Mr Silsby fully in the picture regarding who gave the orders to whom.

There was worse to come for Mr Silsby, for Masson clearly needed someone to identify the victim of the slaughter. The look on the headmaster’s face was testament enough to be able to work out what he thought of that particular idea, but Masson did what Masson always did and, having established just who was the alpha male in the vicinity, Mr Silsby was prevailed upon by the good Inspector to enter the gym hall.

He emerged about five minutes later and although when diagnosing people I generally like to take a full history and do a thorough examination before reaching a diagnosis, I was fairly sure from just looking at the headmaster’s face and posture when he passed the office that he had been affected by the sight within. Masson followed him out, there was a brief exchange of words which ended with Mr Silsby nodding in a slightly bemused way and then he made his way out of the gym, presumably to find a bottle of something strong in the top drawer of his filing cabinet, or maybe to have his shoulders massaged by Mrs Ponsonby, his rather aged and prim secretary.

Whereupon Masson, now thoroughly steamed up, made his way back into the gym hall, but not before shooting a venomous – not to say, toxic – glance towards Dad and me. Percy turned around and smiled sadly. ‘I don’t think he’s happy.’

They let me phone the practice so that I could give my colleagues, Brian and Jack, the happy news that they would each have a fifty per cent increase in workload that day, and Percy even took pity on Dad and let him contact Ada to know that Texas Homecare was off for the day. Then we just sat there and waited. During the next hour, there was a lot of coming and going past the office, mostly police, although I did see one face that I recognized but couldn’t name. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked of Percy.

He was reading a copy of yesterday’s Daily Mirror and, I suspect, might even have been about to drop off. He just managed to snatch a glance at the man I was pointing at as he went into the gym. ‘Dr Bentham. He’s our new pathologist.’

Of course. I had been at St George’s with Mark Bentham but had lost touch with him. I had known that he had gone into pathology, but not that he had specialized in the forensic area. Time passed, as it generally does, after which Masson came out the gym followed by his new female friend and together they entered the office. He had not noticeably calmed down. He nodded curtly to Percy – who interpreted this as a suggestion that he might like to go forth – and I sought for a suitable adjective that could be used for his expression; I came to the conclusion that ‘baleful’ just about fitted the bill perfectly.

‘Why me?’ he asked. Before either Dad or I could suggest an answer, he then added in a somewhat anguished tone, ‘And why you?’

I said nothing, although it was hard; I am a doctor and I do not like to see people in pain. All Dad could manage was, ‘Ahh . . .’ in a sorting sad, dying fall. He offered something of a shrug and his face was a picture of unalloyed commiseration, but Masson just scowled. It began to feel, I thought, quite like old times.