Quick and the Dead Page 3

  ‘Helena,’ I said quietly, and was met by silence. No tortured breathing. No sighing gasps. Just a stillness that made me bite my lip.

  Of course I knew all about contaminating the scene of crime, but sod that. Priority had to be given to finding out what state Helena was in. Was she dead, or still alive and breathing? As I hastily crossed the room and stood above the bed, I was thinking heart attack. At least I knew the procedures to follow while waiting for the paramedics to arrive. Because what else could it be? She had been perfectly fine when I rang her last night. And then I was looking down at a half-naked body lying on its side, its back to me, a tangle of ringletted blonde hair, a skull obviously stove in by a colossal blow to the back of the head, blood and brains mixed in with the hair, dried blood coming from the ears. An uneven red line encircled what I could see of the neck, as though she had been part-throttled prior to death.

  I reached down and gently touched her shoulder. Cold. Smooth as clay, and chill as stone. I would need time, and resilience, to take it on board. Whatever had taken place must have occurred last night. And given her fairly relaxed attitudes towards sexual partners, I could all too easily imagine her returning home with some unsuitable and ultimately homicidal pick-up.

  ‘Oh, Helena,’ I said sadly. ‘What the hell kind of a mess did you get yourself into?’ Horror and guilt weighed me down, so much so that for a moment my legs almost gave way. This was not an anonymous corpse, to be treated with concerned but brisk impartiality. This was my dear friend Helena. And I had been cussing her out while she lay dead – murdered – in her bed.

  There was movement, as though the corpse had previously been unbalanced and my touch had caused it to shift. I hastily drew back my hand, but too late. An air bubble forced itself from between the puffed-up lips, sounding like an enormous burp. The body rolled stiffly onto its back and I saw, with a massive sense of shock, that there were bloody holes where the eyes had once been; they appeared to have been pierced by the awl which was still protruding from the left one. Blood mingled with a jelly-like substance that welled from the wrecked eye sockets. There was a squelching sound, something I had heard before when attending other violent deaths. The bloodied face had been brutally battered into near-unrecognizability before death: nose and mouth were swollen to three times their normal size and streaks of blood, now dried and flaking, ran from the damaged eyes and clearly broken nose down the engorged upper lip.

  Perhaps most horrible of all was the fact that the nipple had been sliced cleanly away from her left breast, leaving a hole full of congealed blood. Dark stains had seeped from under what remained of the former human being, and darkened the sheets. More stains had dripped onto the floor, a darker red than the damp carpet. I bent and brushed my forefinger across them and brought it up to my face. I wrinkled my nose. It was blood all right.

  One look had been enough to make it clear that the woman was no longer alive. But the body on the bed was not Helena’s. It belonged to a younger, slimmer woman than my friend, though even her parents would find it hard to recognize her, whoever she was. Relief made me feel almost euphoric. Admittedly any man’s death diminishes me, but, to be brutally frank, somewhat less so if it is not Helena’s.

  And then I noticed something protruding from between the woman’s spread legs. It looked like rolled-up paper, once covered in typing, now bloodstained into illegibility before being rammed into her vagina. Without moving my feet, I bent closer. I could see two things. One, the genitals had been viciously disfigured, as though someone had tried to pull them open by sheer brute force, torn apart almost like a spatchcocked fowl. Secondly, here and there I could still make out a word or two on the paper: dei Branca. bute Mon. There were the straight edges of picture reproductions, the swirl of an apostolic robe, a monastery arch, all heavily besmirched with dried blood.

  My God! What kind of a sick pervert …? But that was for the police to determine. For a couple of moments, I stood quite still, trying to maintain my composure, then turned slowly in a full circle to survey the room, trying to note as many details as possible. Were there any clues as to who this dead person was? Or why she was lying semi-naked and brutally dead on Helena’s bed? Or where Helena herself had gone? No answers leaped out at me. No clues, apart from a flat gold circle, much too large to be a ring, which lay on the carpet, half-hidden under the bed. Was it something of Helena’s, or could it have come from a necklace or chain wrenched from around the corpse’s neck – which would explain why the marks did not completely fit the standard impression usually left by a ligature? Knowing my friend’s chronic untidiness, I guessed it was the former. I don’t know what prompted me to commit what was undoubtedly an indictable offence, but I took a paper tissue from the box on the bedside table, bent down and picked it up, a memento of my friend, before sliding it into my pocket.

  Carefully, I trod my way back to the landing, trying to place my feet exactly where I had stepped before. Then I pulled out my phone and dialled Emergency Services. I wanted to search the house, but my police training told me I should not disturb the scene any further than I already had. However, while I waited, I went out to Helena’s car. It was unlocked, as I guessed it would be. Using another tissue, I inched open the door and peered inside, front and back, lifted the boot and checked it out, but nothing in the muddle of old shopping bags, yellowing newspapers, boxes which had once held beef tomatoes or strawberries, struck me as significant. The portfolio she had mentioned during our phone call the previous night lay on the back seat.

  While I sat in my car, waiting for the police to arrive, trying to remain calm, I thought back to my first meeting with Helena, nearly four years earlier, shortly after the defection of my husband and the loss of my unborn child. I’d been invited to a publisher’s party, having contributed some picture editing work to a couple of their productions that year, and was standing by a tall, uncurtained window, looking out at the mist-shrouded lights of Trafalgar Square as the sky slowly faded behind Nelson on his column. I was wondering, as I so often did, whether leaving the police force had been a wise decision.

  Whether, in fact, to continue living was a wise decision.

  Someone came up behind me. ‘I can’t read what your label says, and I can’t be bothered to fish my glasses out of whichever pocket they’ve hidden themselves in, but you look interesting,’ said a Scottish voice as warm and seductive as melted caramel. ‘Are you?’

  I turned. ‘I’d like to think so.’ The voice said Confident, Humorous, No Longer Young: I registered all this in the time it took to focus on the woman who was standing in front of me, peering at the name badge pinned above my right boob. She was wearing rose-pink tights pushed into blue suede ankle boots, a green flower-printed summer dress and a shiny purple quilted jacket. I admired her eclectic dress sense as much as the gush of golden dreadlocks which streamed Medusa-like from her head. ‘I’m Quick. Alex Quick. And you?’

  ‘Helena Drummond. Art historian. Professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury, Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Consultant here and there.’

  ‘You sound very high-powered.’

  ‘I suppose I am rather.’ She said it so matter-of-factly that it didn’t sound in the least conceited.

  I liked her at once. Hoped to see more of her. The feeling was mutual. Discovering how near to each other we lived, we met several times over the next months. Despite the fact that we were a generation apart, we formed an instant friendship. When we had time to spare, we often spent it together, talking, talking, covering shared enthusiasms or joint dislikes. Helena came down to my parents’ house or lounged about on the long sofas in my flat on the edge of the sea on the south-east coast, devouring my large collection of crime novels; I often hung out in Helena’s house, a space as eclectically coloured and patterned as Helena herself. Sometimes she would telephone me to put off some arrangement we had made; her voice would assume a silky note and I would know that some man was in the offing. How I envied her. And how im
possible I found it to go in for casual pick-ups the way she did.

  ‘I’ve been married twice,’ Helena told me once, ‘but never again. One of them was a bit of a shit but a lovely feller all the same, and we still do stuff together – but he likes his own space and so do I. I want to be silent when I choose, I want to have a bath at three o’clock in the morning if I feel like it, I don’t want to lie awake at night listening to someone’s snores. I don’t want to explain myself, I don’t want to have to … ask permission.’

  ‘What about the other one?’

  She was uncharacte‌ristically silent. Then she said: ‘He was extremely charismatic, and an absolute bastard. The nearest thing I hope I ever come to a psychopath. Without feelings, without emotions … I don’t know how I survived three years with him. I think I was flattered that he chose me, when he could have had anyone. Or so he often told me – and I have to say women were always flinging themselves at him.’

  Compared to Helena, I often felt as staid and dull as a grocer. I very rarely went out on a date, not from lack of invitations but because I felt a reluctance, almost a fear of getting seriously involved with anyone in case I was dumped again. Sometimes colleagues from my days on the police force would invite me to functions with my old friends, but increasingly I turned them down.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ I had said, when Helena came up with her thesis on marriage. But truth to tell, I didn’t go along with all of it. Put quite simply, although I was perfectly able to manage my life without a man in it, I nonetheless longed to have someone to cherish. Yet it sounded too girly and wimpish to say so.

  It was eight months into our friendship that Helena picked up a copy of Tell Me a Story. ‘What a brilliant idea,’ she said, flicking through the pages. ‘Done any more?’

  I showed her the second one, Baby, Baby. ‘This is marvellous!’ she exclaimed. ‘Ever thought of expanding this idea into other artistic fields? I mean, with other themes?’

  ‘Yes. Often. But I’ve done nothing about it.’

  ‘Well, you should,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll come on board, if you like.’

  I did like. Very much. We gazed at each other and laughed.

  As easily as that, Drummond & Quick Ltd was born. We set ourselves up as a company, producing high-quality art book anthologies of pictures and appropriate text. And away we went.

  Eventually, we published two for very little more than expenses and a few free copies, and we both felt that some kind of turning point had been reached when our publisher offered exactly the same measly terms for our third effort.

  We knew that we deserved more. A lot more. Nonetheless … ‘Maybe it’s a case of better the devil you know?’ I’d said nervously, as we sent off our turn-down of the offer from Tyson Lowell, CEO of a small niche publishing house based in Amsterdam. ‘And he does do a terrific job of presentation.’

  Watch This Space, our most recent publication, putting together pictures of famous rooms with illustrative texts that were like miniature stories, had hit the book market just before Christmas, and thanks to Helena’s contacts and its suitability as a gift, had been a big success.

  ‘Granted.’ Helena was firm. ‘But eighteen months of research and writing, and that’s all they can come up with? Especially when they’re fully aware that Space was a minor bestseller. Fuck ’em, say I.’

  Tyson Lowell had phoned back immediately on receipt of our email of refusal. ‘That’s my best offer, ladies. Times are really hard,’ he whined accusingly.

  I had switched on the speaker-phone. ‘Not only for you, Tyson. Especially with what you’re offering.’

  ‘He means if he pays us a living wage, he won’t be able to afford that luxury yacht he’s set his heart on,’ snorted Helena loudly in the background.

  I frowned at her. ‘Mr Lowell, I’ll be quite frank. Your offer is ridiculous. You’re taking us for a pair of suckers. We’re both highly trained professionals, we both have a living to earn, we have multiple expenses to fork out for in the course of our research, which are not repaid until you accept the book and produce a contract.’ Highly trained professional was a bit of a stretch in my case, though not in Helena’s. I’m more of a highly trained amateur. ‘So all in all, we’d prefer to look elsewhere.’

  ‘And the best of fucking luck,’ Tyson had said malevolently. ‘I can make things very hard for you, by the way. I have contacts all over the publishing world. One word from me and you’ll never sell another book.’

  ‘Two words from me, you little creep,’ Helena had shouted, ‘and neither will you!’ She pressed the OFF button on my phone and made a face. ‘That’s not nearly as satisfactory as banging down a receiver, is it?’

  ‘Well, that’s one bridge burned good and proper,’ I said. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We wait.’

  And then, fortuitously, had come an expression of interest from Clifford Nichols, MD of ArtWorld Books, leading to this morning’s appointment to discuss Ripe for the Picking. ‘I loved the book you did a few years back, on paintings in the National Gallery, written for young people,’ he had enthused down the phone at me. ‘Such a clever idea. And with plenty of follow-up.’

  ‘Tell Me a Story, yes.’ My concept had been to take twelve pictures from the National Gallery and produce stories about them in a way that would engage the attention of children aged anywhere from eight to fourteen, make them really look at the paintings.

  ‘My mother picked up a copy in our local bookshop and said I must get in touch with you immediately, which I regret to say I didn’t do. Then she bought Watch This Space and more or less forced me to contact you before somebody else does.’

  ‘Somebody else already did.’

  ‘I’m aware. Your current publisher. With another insulting offer.’

  How did he know that? ‘Well, we haven’t accepted it …’

  ‘Insulting is the only word to use.’ He echoed Helena’s words. ‘Especially when Space was so good.’

  After the phone call, I’d checked him out on the internet and been impressed by his track record. In the past three years, he had published specialist books on subjects as varied as the Napoleonic Wars, the cult of voodoo in Haiti, vintage motor cars and, most recently, Japanese woodcuts. It looked as though he might be moving into art book production, and I very much hoped that Drummond & Quick could be part of it.

  ‘What I want, what I reely reely want, is this contract,’ I’d told Helena. ‘Reely reely.’

  ‘You and the Spice Girls?’ Helena had raised her eyebrows. ‘How far would you go to get it? Are we talking womanly wiles?’

  ‘If you mean batting my eyelashes, smiling winsomely, lightly touching his hand from time to time and laughing girlishly? Oh, all the way.’

  ‘Batted eyelashes might not be enough.’

  ‘If you mean yielding up my body to his coarse embraces, then no.’

  ‘Ach, weel. So then we’ll have to go back to Tyson Lowell and beg for favours.’

  ‘No way. Even if the bastard would take us back. And don’t forget there’s always self-publishing …’

  ‘For our kind of book? I don’t think so.’

  ‘We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and see how it goes.’

  THREE

  Inspector Alan Garside stared at me, his expression unsympathetic, his forehead wrinkled with hostility. ‘Let’s go through it once again, Miss – um – Quick. You say you arrived at this house – belonging to Mrs Helena Drummond – just after four thirty this afternoon.’

  ‘I don’t just say it, I did it.’ I sighed. ‘As I’ve already told your sergeant, twice. And it’s Doctor Drummond, not Mrs Drummond.’

  ‘Whatever, take me through the sequence of events once more.’ He opened his mouth to say something else, then stopped.

  I did so, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. I knew that witnesses were usually exasperated by having to tell the same story over and over again. But I also knew, from experience, that it was oft
en on the fourth or fifth telling that some small and significant detail might be mentioned for the first time. I had not yet informed him that I had once been on the force, had in fact decided that I would keep the information to myself, if he didn’t bring it up. Although I knew all about him, I had resigned a couple of years before he was transferred to our local CID.

  ‘And when you let yourself into the house this afternoon,’ he said, ‘there was no indication that anyone had been here last night except Mrs Drummond?’

  ‘Doctor Drummond? None whatsoever.’ Apart, I thought, from the mutilated body of the still-unidentified woman, now being extensively photographed and examined by the pathologist and scene-of-crime officers. ‘Everything seemed as it always was. Mind you, I didn’t go into any other rooms, only straight up the stairs and into her bedroom.’

  ‘Not even while you were waiting for the police to arrive?’

  ‘While I waited for the SOCOs, I sat outside in my car. Apart from going upstairs and across the carpet to the bed, then retracing my steps, I did nothing that could have contaminated the scene.’

  He looked slantways at me, as though wondering how I knew the jargon. Civilians usually did not, apart from a few phrases learned from the watching the television. I didn’t say that these days, most police-procedural crime novels are word-perfect in the language used in situations where the police are called in. ‘And the … uh … victim: did you recognize her?’

  ‘Considering her face had almost been obliterated, no, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘However, I can tell you that she is not Doctor Drummond, the house-owner. Who seems to have gone missing. Could she have been abducted by whoever did this? And if so, shouldn’t you have some kind of APB out, looking for her? The murder obviously took place while it was still dark outside, since all the lights were on when I arrived.’

  ‘Which was when?’

  ‘As I’ve already said, somewhere between four and four-thirty this afternoon.’