Leave the Grave Green (16 page)

The High Wycombe roundabout reminded Kincaid of a toy he’d had as a child, a set of interlocking plastic gears that had revolved merrily when one turned a central crank. But in this case five mini-roundabouts surrounded a large one, humans encased in steel boxes did the revolving, and no one in the Monday morning crush was the least bit merry. He saw an opening in the oncoming traffic and shot into it, only to be rewarded by a one-fingered salute from an impatient lorry driver. “Same to you, mate,” Kincaid muttered under his breath as he escaped gratefully from the last of the mini-roundabouts.

A holdup on the M40 had delayed him, and he arrived at High Wycombe’s General Hospital a half-hour late for the postmortem. Kincaid tapped on the door of the autopsy room and opened it just enough to put his head in. A small man in green surgical scrubs stood facing the stainless-steel table, his back to Kincaid. “Dr. Winstead, I presume?” Kincaid asked. “Sorry I’m late.” He entered the room and let the door swing shut behind him.

Winstead tapped the foot switch on his recorder as he turned. “Superintendent Kincaid?” He edged the microphone away from his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Sorry I can’t shake,” he added, holding up his gloved hands in demonstration. “You’ve missed most of the fun, I’m afraid. Started a bit early, trying to catch up on the backlog. Should have had your fellow done Saturday, yesterday at the latest, but we had a council housing fire. Spent the weekend identifying remains.”

Tubby, with a mop of curly, graying hair and boot-button black eyes, Winstead lived up to his sobriquet. Kincaid found himself thinking that his vision of Pooh Bear with scalpel in hand hadn’t been too far off the mark. And like many forensic pathologists Kincaid had come across, Winstead seemed unfailingly jolly. “Find anything interesting?” Kincaid inquired, just as glad that Winstead’s body blocked part of his view of the steel table. Although he’d grown accustomed to the gaping Y-incision and peeled-forward scalp, he never enjoyed the sight.

“Nothing to jump for joy over, I’m afraid.” He turned his back on Kincaid, his gloved hands again busy. “One or two things to finish up, then we could nip over to my office, if you like.”

Kincaid stood watching, the cold air from the vents blowing in torrents down the back of his neck. At least there wasn’t much smell to contend with, cold water and refrigeration having done a good bit toward retarding the body’s natural processes. Although he could look at almost anything, he still had to fight the gag response triggered by the odor of a ripe corpse.

A young woman in scrubs came in, saying, “Ready for me, Winnie?”

“I’ll just leave the tidying up to my assistant,” Winstead said over his shoulder to Kincaid. “She likes to do the pretty work. Don’t you, Heather darling?” he added, smiling at her. “Gives her a sense of job satisfaction.” He peeled off his gloves, tossed them in a rubbish bin and scrubbed his hands at the sink.

Heather rolled her eyes indulgently. “He’s just jealous,” she said sotto voce to Kincaid, “because I’m neater than he is.” She slipped on a pair of gloves and continued. “This chap’s mum would be proud of him by the time I’m finished, isn’t that so, Winnie?”

At least Connor Swann’s adoring mum had been spared admiring Heather’s handiwork, thought Kincaid. He wondered if Julia would defy convention to the extent of avoiding the mortuary and the funeral.

As Winstead ushered Kincaid from the room he said, “She’s right, I’m afraid. I get the job done, but she’s a perfectionist, and her hand is much finer than mine.” He led Kincaid down several
halls, stopping on the way to retrieve two coffees from a vending machine. “Black?” he asked, pushing buttons with familiarity.

Kincaid accepted the paper cup and sipped, finding the liquid just as dreadful as its counterpart at the Yard. He followed Winstead into his office and stopped, examining the human skull which adorned the doctor’s desk. Attached to the facial surface by pins were small cylinders of rubber, each of varying height with a black number inked on its tip. “Voodoo or art, Doctor?”

“A facial reconstruction technique, lent to me by an anthropologist chum. A guess as to sex and race is made by measuring certain characteristics of the skull, then the skin depth markers are placed according to information from statistical tables. Clay is added to a thickness that conforms to the markers, and Bob’s your uncle, you have a human face again. It’s quite effective, actually, even if this stage does look like something from
Nightmare on Elm Street
. Heather is interested in forensic sculpture, and with her hands I don’t doubt she’d be good at it.”

Before Winstead wandered too far on the subject of the lovely Heather’s attributes, Kincaid thought he had better redirect him. “Tell me, Doctor,” he said as they settled into worn leather chairs, “did Connor Swann drown?”

Winstead knitted his brows, an exercise which made him look comical rather than fierce, and seemed to bring himself back to the body in question. “That’s a pretty problem, Superintendent, as I’m sure you very well know. Drowning is impossible to prove by autopsy. It is, in fact, a diagnosis of exclusion.”

“But surely you can tell if he had water in his lungs—”

“Do hold on, Superintendent, let me finish. Water in the lungs is not necessarily significant. And I didn’t say I couldn’t tell you anything, only that it couldn’t be proved.” Winstead paused and drank from his cup, then made a face. “I’m an eternal optimist, I suppose—I always expect this stuff to be better than it is. Anyway, where was I?” He smiled benignly and took another sip of his coffee.

Kincaid decided Winstead was teasing him deliberately, and that the less he fussed the faster he’d hear the results. “You were about to tell me what you
couldn’t
prove.”

“Gunshot wounds, stabbing, blunt trauma—all fairly straightforward, cause of death easily determined. A case like this, however, is a puzzle, and I like puzzles.” Winstead uttered this with such relish that Kincaid half-expected him to rub his hands together in anticipatory glee. “There are two things which contradict drowning,” he continued, holding up the requisite fingers. “No foreign material present in the lungs. No sand, no nice slimy river-bottom weeds. If one inhales great gulps of water in the act of drowning, one usually takes in a few undesirable objects as well.” He folded down one finger and waggled the remainder at Kincaid. “Secondly, rigor mortis was quite delayed. The temperature of the water would account for some degree of retardation, of course, but in an ordinary, garden-variety drowning the person struggles violently, depleting the ATP in their muscles, and this depletion speeds up the onset of rigor considerably.”

“But what if there was a struggle before he went in the water? His throat was bruised—he might have been unconscious. Or dead.”

“There are several indications that he died quite a few hours before his body was discovered,” Winstead admitted. “The stomach contents were only partially digested, so unless your Mr. Swann ate a very late supper indeed, I’d guess he was dead by midnight, or as close to it as makes no difference. When the analysis of the stomach contents comes back from the lab you may be able to pinpoint that last meal.”

“And the bruising—”

Winstead held up a hand, palm out like a traffic warden. “There is another possibility, Superintendent, that would account for Mr. Swann having been alive when he went in the water. Dry drowning. The throat closes at first contact with the water, constricting the airway. No water gets into the lungs. But, as the laryngospasm relaxes after death, it is impossible to prove. It would explain, however, the lack of foreign matter in the lungs.”

“What causes a dry drowning, then?” Kincaid asked, willing himself again to be patient and let the doctor have his bit of fun.

“That’s one of nature’s little mysteries. Shock would probably be your best catchall explanation, if you must have one.” Winstead
paused and drank from his cup, then looked surprised that it hadn’t miraculously improved in the interval since his last tasting. “Now, about this throat business you’re so keen on. I’m afraid that’s inconclusive as well. There was some external bruising—I understand you visited the morgue?” When Kincaid nodded, he continued, “You’ll have seen it, then—but there was no corresponding internal damage, no crushing of the hyoid processes. Nor did we find any occlusion of the face or neck.”

“No spots in the eyes?”

Winstead beamed at him. “Exactly. No petechiae. Of course, it’s possible that either by accident or design, someone put enough pressure on his carotid arteries to render him unconscious, then shoved him in the river.”

“Could a woman exert that much pressure?”

“Oh, a woman would be quite capable physically, I should think. But I would have expected more than just bruising—fingernail marks, abrasions—and there were none. He was clean as a whistle. And I doubt very much if a woman could have rendered him unconscious without her hands suffering some trauma from the struggle.”

Kincaid digested this for a moment. “So what you’re telling me is”—he touched the tip of one index finger to the other—“that
a
: you don’t know how Connor Swann died, and if you can’t give me
cause of death
, I have to assume that
b
follows: you won’t hazard a guess as to
manner of death.”

“Most drownings are accidental, and almost always alcohol-related. We won’t know his blood alcohol until the report comes back from the lab, but I’d be willing to bet it was quite high. However”—up came the traffic warden hand again as Kincaid opened his mouth to speak—“if you want my off-the-record opinion…” Winstead sipped from his coffee again, although Kincaid had long since abandoned his, finding an inconspicuous spot for the cup among the litter on Winstead’s desk. “Most accidental drownings are also fairly straightforward. Bloke goes out fishing with his friends, they all have a few too many, bloke falls in and his friends are too pissed to pull him out. Corroborating stories from several witnesses—end of case. But in this instance,” the intelligent
boot-button eyes fixed on Kincaid, “I’d say there are a good deal too many unanswered questions. No indications of suicide?”

Kincaid shook his head. “None.”

“Then I’d say there’s not much doubt he was helped into that river in one way or another, but I’d also say you’re going to have a hell of a time proving it.” Winstead smiled as if he’d just delivered a welcome pronouncement.

“What about time of death?”

“Sometime between when he was last seen and when he was found.” Winstead chortled at his own humor. “Seriously, Superintendent, if you want my intuitive stab at it, I’d say between nineish and midnight, or perhaps nine and one o’clock.”

“Thank you, I think.” Kincaid stood up and held out a hand. “You’ve been… um, extremely helpful.”

“Glad to be of service.” Winstead shook Kincaid’s hand and smiled, the Pooh Bear resemblance more pronounced than ever. “We’ll get the report to you as soon as the lab work comes back. Can you find your way to the front? Cheerio, then.”

As Kincaid left the office he glanced back. The skull seemed to be superimposed upon Winstead’s chubby form, and as Winstead waved Kincaid could have sworn the skull grinned a little more widely.

Kincaid left the hospital feeling little further forward than before. Although now more certain of the fact, he still had no concrete proof that Connor had been murdered. Nor had he a plausible motive, or any real suspects.

Hesitating when he reached his car, he glanced at his watch. Once Gemma had managed to track down Tommy Godwin, she would be on her way to interview Dame Caroline, and as long as she was looking into the Asherton end of things, he had better concentrate on Connor. Connor was the key—until he knew more about Connor nothing else would fall into place.

It was time he did a little prying into the part of Connor’s life that did not seem to be connected to the Ashertons. Using his phone, he ascertained the address of Gillock, Blackwell, Gillock and Frye, then took the road south to Maidenhead and Reading.

*      *      *

He never came to Reading without thinking of Vic. She had grown up here, gone to school here, and as he’d entered the city from the north, he made a quick detour down the street where her parents had lived. The suburb boasted comfortable semidetached houses and well-tended gardens, with an occasional garden gnome peeking tastefully from behind a hedge. He had found the neighborhood dreadful then, and he discovered that time had done nothing to soften his opinion.

Easing the car to a halt, he let the engine idle while he studied the house. So unaltered did it appear that he wondered if it had been held in some sort of stasis while time eddied around it, and he had changed and aged. He saw it as he’d seen it the first time Vic took him home to meet her parents, down to the determined shine on the brass letterbox. They had looked upon him with well-bred disapproval, dismayed that their beautiful and scholarly daughter should have taken up with a policeman, and with a stab of discomfort he remembered that he had felt faintly ashamed of his less-than-conventional family. His parents had always cared more for books and ideas than the acquisition of middleclass possessions, and his childhood in their rambling house in the Cheshire countryside had been far removed from this tidy, ordered world.

He slipped the Midget into first gear and eased out the clutch, listening to the engine’s familiar sputtering response. Perhaps Vic had chosen someone more suitable for the second go-round. He, at least, was well out of it. With that thought came a sense of release and the welcome realization that he did, actually, finally, mean it.

The snarl of Reading traffic hadn’t improved since his last visit, and as he sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in the queue for city-center parking, he remembered how much he had always disliked the place. It combined the worst of modern architecture with bad city planning, and the results were enough to make anyone’s blood pressure rise.

Once he’d parked the car he found the modern block of offices which housed the advertising agency without too much difficulty. A pretty receptionist greeted him with a smile as he entered the
third-floor suite. “Can I help you, sir?” she asked, and her voice held a hint of curiosity.