CHAPTER THREE

 

 

TRINITY BROWN’S PARENTS were an odd pair. Helen felt bad for thinking it, but it was true, and it wasn’t something she could ignore. Family, friends, lovers... a murderer was still most likely to fit into one of those categories. She would get to friends and lovers eventually, but Trinity’s parents had already been on their way in before she’d begun her briefing with Devonshire and Desai. She’d had time to fast-track a Section 29 request for Trinity’s university file, but hadn’t had the time to do more than skim through its contents before Mr and Mrs Brown arrived.

“It’s just such a shock,” said April Brown. It was the fourth or fifth time she’d said it, but at least she was speaking; her husband Peter was pretty much monosyllabic.

They were sat in a drab interview room. Helen had arranged the chairs so they didn’t have a table between them. This wasn’t an interrogation, she needed them to trust her, needed them to open up. This wasn’t proving easy.

April looked almost a decade older than her husband. Trinity’s file said her mother was an only child. Helen’s mind took this information and started extrapolating. The older woman with the young soul meeting the younger man with the old soul, or was it something sadder: a lonely older woman who’d lowered her standards in desperation for a family? Helen had always sniffed at the notion of a woman being ruled by the biological clock, but it would explain more than the age-gap; it would explain the everything gap.

April was well-spoken and professionally dressed. Even without the information in Trinity’s file, Helen would have guessed she was a teacher. Peter she’d have said was something manual like a mechanic or a plumber, rather than the IT consultant he actually was. Whilst his wife had taken care before her trip to the police station, he seemed to have pulled on the nearest clothes to hand, including a grubby jumper you might wear to do the gardening.

Their body language was at odds as well: their seats were slightly too far apart; they didn’t touch one another, even when one of them was upset; in fact, they barely even looked at each other. Maybe opposites had attracted once, but that had been some time ago, and now with their only child dead they each gave the impression of wanting to grieve alone.

“I can only imagine how difficult this must be,” said Helen. She’d already said she was sorry for their loss when they’d first come in. She knew some officers who’d quite genuinely trot the phrase out over and over, but Helen thought it was trite—worse, she knew that the more often she said it the less sincere she sounded. “Once again, I’m sorry that I have to ask you these questions now, but given the nature of Trinity’s death, the more information we have, the more likely we are to be able to find out who did this to her.”

April shook her head. “Nobody would want to harm her, though, she was a lovely girl.”

“She was,” said Peter. It was the longest speech he’d made so far. His face was blank most of the time, but every so often he’d look like he was about to break down and cry. He never did, though.

“Were there any problems that you were aware of? Any arguments with people? Her university friends, an ex-boyfriend from home?”

April shook her head and blew her nose. “No, nothing like that. She never really had a boyfriend before she went to university.”

Helen nodded. “And her studies, how was she doing?”

April’s face suddenly brightened. Her eyes lit up and she smiled. “She was doing very well, her tutors were always praising her, saying she could easily get an upper second, maybe even a first. She wanted to go into politics one day.”

Helen narrowed her eyes. One of the things that had leapt out at her from her initial skim of Trinity’s file was that she’d passed her first-year exams by the skin of her teeth.

She thought about that poster on Trinity’s wall, and thought about the pressure a pushy parent could exert. “Was Trinity on any medication at all?”

“Just an inhaler for her asthma.”

Helen thought about the dust-free area on the bathroom shelf, where a bottle of pills could once have stood. “Mr and Mrs Brown, I hate to ask, but am I right in believing that Trinity made an attempt on her own life when she was seventeen?”

April’s eyes widened, her right hand rose and for a moment Helen thought she was going to clasp a hand to her mouth. Instead she pointed at Helen. “You said someone... someone hurt her. Are you trying to imply that she did it to herself?”

Helen quickly shook her head and raised a conciliatory hand. “Not at all, the evidence all points to foul play, but Trinity’s state of mind could have been a factor. If she was depressed, or anxious, it could have led her to become friends with someone she wouldn’t have ordinarily associated with. Someone dangerous.”

April shook her head. “She didn’t have many friends, she was too busy studying.”

“Always studying,” confirmed Peter.

“As for the supposed suicide attempt, I don’t know where you’ve got your information from, but what happened during her A-Levels was an accident. She was revising heavily and she was tired. She had a headache and took too many tablets, that’s all.”

“Of course,” said Helen. “I’ll need the names of any friends you’re aware of.” She stood. “One of my colleagues will see that you’re taken care of, and if there’s anything else you think of that might prove relevant please let me know as soon as possible.”

Peter Brown stood. “Of course,” he said. “Thank you.” His tone was flat, but Helen wondered when the dam would break, and how bad the flood would be when it did.

April Brown remained in her seat. The smile had turned melancholic. She looked up at Helen. “Trinity was going to get a first,” she said. “Trinity was going to go into politics.”

 

 

ROCK MUSIC OF indeterminate origin was playing as Helen entered the morgue. She knew what this meant even before she detected the irregular drumming masked by the music. She glanced towards the rows of drawers lining the far wall and wondered from which ones the noise originated.

It suddenly struck her that Trinity Brown’s non-resurrection might not be that unusual, it might just be that when it happened in other countries no one noticed. It wasn’t just the Saudi cops who carried swords these days, the Russians and Chinese did, even some nations closer to home like the Swiss. Severing the spinal cord before a body could rise was standard operating procedure in a lot of places, so how would you ever know if someone wasn’t coming back?

Once the initial outbreak had been contained, the process had been quickly reviewed in most Western nations. People were squeamish; they didn’t want to see granny decapitated right in front of them. Hence the hoods and restraints until a zombie could be taken somewhere more discreet.

“Sorry about the music,” said Rita. She was sat at her desk staring at her computer, but now she swivelled on her chair. She looked tired, but she was smiling. “I had to excuse my assistants for a few hours while I prioritised Miss Brown, so we’re running a bit behind.”

There was another swivel chair close by. Helen sat down. “No worries, I’m used to your lousy taste in music by now.”

“Charming.” Rita’s smile faded. “How’d it go with the parents?”

Helen told her about the odd couple. “Reading between the lines, I suspect Trinity was on antidepressants.”

Rita nodded. “Well, I won’t get the full the tox-screen back for a few hours, that’ll tell us one way or another.”

Helen glanced to the nearby metal table. There was a body laid out on it, but Rita had pulled a sheet over it; anticipating her visit, no doubt. Rita McDonald wasn’t one of those pathologists who thought of dead bodies as just meat. She was respectful to the end, even when she was severing their heads or cutting a Y incision in their chests.

“So what do you have?”

“Quite a bit, though I’m not sure how much of it is helpful. Cause of death was pretty obvious: a single gunshot wound to the chest. The bullet was still lodged in the tricuspid valve. Looks like a .380 calibre hollow-point, judging by the mushrooming; I’ve sent it over to ballistics. We were both right with our initial assessment; it was practically point blank range, twenty centimetres away at most.” She turned on her chair to check something on her screen.

Helen formed the fingers of her right hand into the shape of a gun and prodded the ‘barrel’ towards Rita. “This close, then?”

Rita jumped as if she’d actually been shot. “Shit, Helen!”

“It’s okay, it’s not loaded.” Helen laughed, but stopped when she realised how pale Rita had grown. “Hey, sorry. Just wanted to get a feel for how close the assailant would have been.”

Rita forced a smile. “I don’t know why I’m so jumpy. Just tired, I guess.”

Helen shrugged. “Despite everything, some things still catch us off-guard.” She glanced towards the covered corpse, then back at her friend. “Tell me you’re going home soon?”

Rita nodded. “Just as soon as we finish this conversation.”

“Okay, then, let’s make it quick. I’m heading over to EMU’s main campus after this.”

“Well, like I said, the tox-screen will take a while. I’ll pick up the email from home and forward it on, but I don’t need it to tell you that Trinity drank a lot of vodka immediately before her death. I emptied her stomach contents out and the smell hit me like a train. There wasn’t much undigested food in there, looks like she ate a snack a few hours before she died—a cheese sandwich and crisps.”

“Midnight snack? Even I wasn’t that bad as a student. So, we know how she died. How about the elephant in the room?”

“More like the brontosaurus.” Rita took a deep breath; for a moment Helen thought it was going to morph into a yawn but she held it back. “The trouble is that even after seven years, we aren’t that sure why the dead come back. Trying to figure out why someone doesn’t come back is trickier than you might imagine.”

“You’re one of the most experienced forensic pathologists in the country. You have to have found something.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere. But, yes, you’re right: I’m brilliant, and I have noted some anomalies. Okay, you know this already, but in the interests of clarity we know that some biological function occurs upon death. We don’t know why it happens, but we do know some of the accompanying symptoms, the most prevalent being the presence of huge quantities of the RBM3 protein.”

“The cold shock protein.”

“It’s so refreshing to work with professionals. Correct answer, Detective Inspector Ogilvy; ten points. Cold shock proteins kick in when the body temperature falls. It’s one of the reasons people can survive under the ice and still be revived without suffering major brain damage, but the amount of protein that floods the human brain after death these days is beyond anything that’s ever been encountered.”

Helen nodded. She knew of at least one wild theory that suggested the zombie outbreak had been the unexpected by-product of experimentation into cryogenic freezing that had escaped the lab. The thing about wild theories was that when the dead walked, precious few theories seemed quite that out there anymore.

“Large amounts, but not enough to prevent major brain damage after death,” said Helen. “Just enough to maintain the basic animal functions.”

“Exactly, just enough to walk and see, bite and claw...”

Which fed into another theory: bioweapon gone wrong—or, perhaps, gone exactly right.

“Okay, so you ran the Rueben-Sosa Test.”

“Another ten points. Yes. I ran the test and I got some interesting results. The levels of RBM3 were way above normal, but nowhere near the peaks seen in the resurrected. It’s like there was an initial surge of the cold shock protein, but then something turned the tap off.”

“Damage to the brain, obviously.”

Rita shrugged. “That’s the obvious explanation, the trouble is...” She spun back on her chair and tapped a few keys. On the screen the reams of text were replaced with a rotating 3D brain scan.

Helen leaned closer. She’d never completed her medical training—and even if she had, brain surgery hadn’t been high on her list of electives—but she’d seen enough brain scans during the last seven years to know what to look for. “No damage to the brain stem.”

“Not a whisker. Not to the medulla oblongata or the pons, and no damage further up. The midbrain’s intact, the cerebellum... sure, there’s degradation, but nothing abnormal, nothing that should have stopped Trinity Brown getting up and walking. She wouldn’t have been Trinity Brown anymore, there’d have been atrophy in the cerebellum meaning she’d basically shamble, and the neural links between the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the limbic system would have been frazzled...”

She didn’t go on, and Helen knew it all anyway. Throw in loss of hypothermic functioning, screwing with the body’s satiety, and you’re left with something barely human that remembers nothing of its former life and is both incredibly angry and incredibly hungry. Not for the first time that day Helen had to resist the urge to rub her left arm.

She sat back again.

“Have you opened her skull up?”

Rita gave her a withering look.

“Okay, stupid question.” She decided to change tack, focus on who’d killed Trinity rather than why she hadn’t come back. “Any other injuries aside from the gunshot wound?”

Rita shrugged. “A few bruises on her arms, but none of them are very major, and they’re scattered. I could be wrong, but they look like the result of everyday clumsiness rather than anything sinister.”

Helen started chewing on her bottom lip. “So no sign of a struggle, no defensive wounds, and she’d drunk a fair bit of vodka before she died. You know, if it wasn’t for the fact that we didn’t find a gun I might suspect she killed herself.”

“Well we didn’t find a gun, and there’s no gunshot residue on her hands. As for the lack of defensive wounds... well, her assailant had a gun. That tends to ensure compliance.”

Helen thought back to the flat. “No sign of a forced entry, though. It’s possible that a stranger knocked on her door first thing this morning and she opened it, but more likely she knew the person who killed her.”

“People usually do.”

“Any signs of sexual activity?”

“Nothing indicative of recent activity. Did she have a boyfriend?”

“Yes, a fellow student named Isaac Ziegler.”

“That why you’re heading to EMU?”

“No. Can’t get hold of him. He’s not answering his phone. Uniforms went round to his home, but no sign there. He didn’t even attend his morning lectures.”

“That isn’t that unusual, is it?” said Rita with a sly smile.

“For some of us, actually it was. Ducking lectures is one thing; ducking lectures, turning your phone off and going off-grid just after your girlfriend dies is something else.”

“You’ve pinged his chaperone, I take it?”

“Officers found it in a bin in Narrowmarsh; the interface had been hacked, so it didn’t go off when he removed it.” She shrugged. “That isn’t that difficult to do—there are whole websites dedicated to circumventing chaperones, after all—but...”

“It’s another tick in the guilty column.”

Helen nodded. “Shame the Pulse Amendment hasn’t been passed yet. We’d at least have live data up until he took it off, so we’d have a last known location for him. As it is, we can’t even be sure he dumped it in Narrowmarsh; he could have got a friend to do it.”

Rita’s frown returned, now more of a scowl. “I thought you were against the Amendment?”

Helen smiled. “I’m a pragmatist. Right now, it would help me find a potential murder suspect.”

“Slippery slope, though.”

“I know, I know. Anyway, if there’s nothing else I’ll leave you to finish up and go home.” She clambered off the chair. “You are going home, right?”

Rita nodded, even as she yawned.

Helen laughed. “So what’s campus like these days?”

Rita shrugged. “It’s a university campus. Same as always, I guess.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”