Chapter Five

‘Lies? What kind of lies?’ Austin asked, a little out of breath from trying to keep up with the inspector.

McLusky was walking away from Gooseford Farm towards the road, marching fast in order to return some warmth to his limbs. ‘Are you saying you don’t feel lied to?’

‘I’m a police officer, Liam, I expect to hear nothing but lies. But what’s suspicious about the farmer reporting the accident?’

‘Show you in a minute, when we get closer to the wreck.’

‘The road’s just there; we should be able to see it in a minute.’

‘You’re getting warmer, Jane.’

‘I wish that were true.’

Fifty yards before the lane joined the road on which the BMW had crashed, McLusky jumped the shallow ditch that ran alongside it. He waited for Austin to join him beside the electric fence that surrounded the meadow, the northern edge of which was formed by the hedge in which the car had ended up. ‘How can you tell whether these things are switched on?’ he asked, putting his index finger close to the wire.

‘Why? Are we climbing over it?’

‘I thought we might.’

Austin frowned into the mist. ‘There’s no cattle in the field, so I presume it’s not turned on.’

‘After you, then.’

‘Oh, thanks very much.’

‘Go on. Farmers are famously hard up. They’d never run current through it just for the fun of it.’

Austin hesitated for another second, hand hovering, then with the strength of his conviction grasped the top wire. No current. A minute later both of them struggled diagonally towards the hedge, with the wet grass sketching cold streaks of moisture across their trouser legs. They found themselves directly on the other side of the hedge to where the accident took place, confirmed by the landmark of the sole tree. Judging by the noise, a tow truck was just arriving.

McLusky rubbed his gloved hands for warmth. ‘What do you see, Jane?’

Austin scratched the tip of his nose. ‘I can see the crashed BMW. Well, I can see the exhaust system and bits of the underside showing through the gap there.’

‘And you can tell it’s a BMW because … you’re an expert in car exhausts?’

‘Erm, no, it’s because I know it’s a BMW.’

‘And so did Farmer Giles back there. Because if I’m not mistaken, he mentioned BMW before either of us did.’

‘I think he did.’

‘Seven o’clock this morning in thick mist with no street lighting and Farmer Murry is turning clairvoyant. He would barely have been able to see the bloody hedge, even on a quad or tractor with the lights turned on. Let alone spot a square yard of dark car metal in it and identify its make from this side. Yet he did want us to know he hadn’t been near the thing.’

‘You think our Mr Murry saw the crashed car in the lane, had a nosy round the dead man’s luggage and found something he fancied.’

‘It’s a distinct possibility.’

‘Are we going back to have a friendly word about it?’

McLusky sniffed, crossed his arms and blew a white cloud of breath through rounded lips while he thought. ‘We’ll wait for forensics on the car and luggage and the post-mortem results. Then we might have a better idea what happened here. And then we’ll pay him another visit, order a goose for Christmas and scare several types of shit out of him. Now let’s get back to your car before we perish out here.’

McLusky worked imaginary brake pedals as Austin drove. The inspector was himself quite happy to risk the odd speeding ticket while remaining utterly convinced that everyone else drove much too fast. The radio had been quiet, which could only mean that nothing had been found at Leigh Woods. By the time Austin once more parked the Nissan near the Mazda beside the woodland track, McLusky felt too comfortable to have much enthusiasm for searching the woods.

‘Searching for a dead body is a mug’s game. You feel bored and frustrated while you’re looking, and if you do find something you invariably wish you hadn’t. Especially if it’s kids. We don’t have any missing children on our books?’

‘Nothing recent.’ A hundred yards ahead Austin could just make out one yellow jacket ghosting in and out of the edge of visibility. ‘Are we joining the troops?’

McLusky felt the persuasive hand of lethargy push him deep into the car seat. He shook it off. ‘Why of course we are, my man,’ he announced with excessive cheer. ‘You try and stop me.’ He swung himself out of the car and strode off towards the swaying dragon lights among the trees, calling over his shoulder, ‘Why didn’t you try and stop me, Jane?’

Half an hour later, feeling as though every last bit of warmth had left his body, and with each sentence uttered among them now littered with swear words, McLusky called a halt. ‘Lunch! Go get some! Two more hours this afternoon is all I’m prepared to give this farce, then we’ll all go back to policing the city.’

He was the first to the cars and the first away. Driving the Mazda was like driving around in a fridge. Never before had the neon-lit cavern that was the Albany Road canteen looked such a desirable destination.

To say that she liked going to the mortuary might have been overstating it, but the drive out to Flax Bourton wasn’t too unpleasant and the new facilities were a great improvement on the ones they had replaced. From the outside the mortuary looked like a cottage hospital; inside it looked futuristic. Death in the twenty-first century. Inside it appeared highly technical, stainless and brightly lit, though the bodies Fairfield tended to see on these tables often arrived here via bloodstained kitchen floors, glass-strewn pavements or in this case the shopping centre toilets. From this state-of-the-art place of recorded facts and rationality the body would then be moved once more, into the world of ancient beliefs, of procession and candlelit rituals involving earth or fire.

In the viewing suite, separated from the actual body by glass and therefore spared the smells of the operation, Fairfield nevertheless felt she was as close to it as she could stand. Apart from the smell, all other aspects of the procedure were enhanced by the technology; the sound, and not just of the pathologist’s voice, was very clear. Details deemed important could be magnified with the aid of the mobile camera that transmitted live pictures to a large monitor on her right. There was no I’ll take your word for it, Doc here. The pathologist frequently moved the camera or had his assistant do so, to make sure Fairfield didn’t miss any of the gore. The doctor’s commentary, for the record and sometimes off the record, added a touch of docudrama to the proceedings.

Coulthart had yet to explain why the unfortunate yet utterly predictable death of this junkie should involve CID, and why the post-mortem had been almost instantaneous. Fairfield was about to press the intercom button to ask that very question when something else engaged her attention. Coulthart had moved the camera to give her a close-up view of the dead man’s left arm. All along it black and blue bumps and circles formed a hideous chain that made her think of the plague. She pressed the button. ‘What is that, Dr Coulthart? I’ve seen plenty of junkies before, but that’s unusual, surely?’

‘Very little escapes you, Inspector. I was just about to draw your attention to this unusual feature and, in a way, was playing for time. I’m expecting a telephone call … ah.’ The phone on the wall by the door rang and Coulthart’s assistant went to answer it. ‘This might be it, quick work if it is, but then I impressed on them the urgency of the matter. I earlier sent several samples off to the lab by courier, and unless the chap fell off his motorcycle or managed to get himself lost in the fog, then this should be it. Excuse me, Detective Inspector.’

Coulthart took the receiver that the assistant held out to him. He listened, nodded, talked, listened and talked some more, from time to time throwing glances in Fairfield’s direction. She knew that for him to send samples by motorcycle courier was unusual, and for a forensics lab to respond this quickly something of a miracle. At last the pathologist terminated the call.

‘Okay, enough build-up, Doctor, what have we got there? Tell me it’s not another plague that can be spread by sharing needles.’

‘No, not a plague, though I fear we may see more dead drug-users soon. Tell me, Inspector, what do you know about anthrax?’

‘Anthrax? That’s a poison, isn’t it? Didn’t someone send anthrax through the post in the States a while back?’

‘No, and yes. I must say you disappoint me, Inspector. Anthrax is a disease, not a poison, and it is caused by the aptly named bacterium bacillus anthracis. But yes, some deranged American sent some through the post to express his displeasure at this or that. Not that it matters, DI Fairfield. Somehow, in the past few years, a new delusion has begun to affect the weaker minds, which is that as a means of expressing your displeasure, it is quite acceptable to kill and maim a lot of people you have never met. Because otherwise of course no one listens. People used to stand on soapboxes; now they put ground glass into baby food or send diseases through the post. And there are a lot to choose from, believe me. Anthrax, smallpox, botulism, Ebola, plague. Not so easy to deliver, plague,’ Coulthart mused, nodding to himself.

‘So our customer died of anthrax?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘Not an overdose?’

‘No. He must have been feeling extremely ill by the time he entered the toilets. He tried to make himself feel better by injecting, but died of respiratory arrest.’

‘So how did he get it?’

‘He almost certainly contracted it from injecting contaminated heroin. He’d have been feeling ill for some time, high fever, trouble breathing. Probably thought he had a bad case of flu.’

Fairfield felt a shiver going through her. ‘How does heroin get contaminated with anthrax?’

‘That’s a very good question. The same way, I presume, that all the other rubbish gets into heroin. Someone puts it there.’

‘You mean someone laced his heroin with it? That means we’re looking at unlawful killing.’

‘That is for you to decide. But his was no natural death, I can say that much.’

‘But anthrax. I mean, isn’t that going a bit far? If you want to kill a junkie, you stick a knife into him while he’s distracted, which is pretty much all the time.’

‘I would agree.’ Coulthart paused for dramatic effect. ‘Unless of course it wasn’t just this one junkie you wanted to get rid of.’

Fairfield sat down on the padded bench by the observation window. ‘You mean someone with a grudge against junkies?’

‘That’s entirely possible.’

‘So there could be more out there.’

‘Oh, that’s a distinct possibility. As you said, lacing the man’s heroin with anthrax because you wanted to kill him would mean going to extremes of difficulty. Anthrax is lethal and doesn’t just lie around for you to use. The lab will try and identify the exact strain, which may help identify the source.’

‘So we’re going to see more cases.’

‘Unless he travelled here recently from elsewhere, carrying his own supply, the city could be awash with the infected drug. The injection sites on his arm suggest he’s used contaminated heroin several times. You must find the source of it or we will find ourselves chatting over the cadavers of many more of these unfortunate creatures.’

‘Just how infectious is anthrax? I mean, can you pass it on? Can you catch it just from handling the heroin?’

‘Person-to-person infection is normally rare. Sharing needles would certainly be efficacious. Infection can be effected both by inhalation and gestation. So extreme caution is advised when handling any heroin. But the surest way to contract it is, of course, cutaneous.’

‘Which means …?’

Coulthart zoomed the camera into a close-up of the blackened lesions on the dead junkie’s arm. ‘Injecting the stuff, Inspector.’