Belinda Bauer - Rubbernecker

Spicer nodded slowly and chewed the inside of his cheek. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘The trouble is that the body is supposed to be released to the family on Monday for cremation. Obviously that can’t happen if it’s incomplete.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Williams. ‘I can assure you we’ll get it back to you as soon as we can.’

‘By Monday?’

‘As soon as we can.’

Still Spicer didn’t let it go. He stood there, drumming his fingers on the corner of Williams’s desk. ‘What if I personally guarantee that we will not press charges against Patrick?’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Williams. ‘We have made an arrest and I cannot pre-judge the outcome of our own independent inquiries.’

‘What inquiries?’ said Spicer. ‘Surely it’s quite clear what has happened? It seems like a waste of police time to do more.’

‘It seems that way, sir, I agree. But we have our procedures. Believe me, when we are able to release the head, the university will be the first to know. Now, I’m on my way home, let me walk out with you.’

Williams pulled on his jacket and let them both out through the double doors. Spicer thanked him and left, but DS Williams stood and stared through the glass after him for so long that Wendy Price said, ‘You all right, Em?’

‘Yes,’ said Williams. ‘Just thinking.’

He was just thinking about Dr Spicer’s reluctance to leave the head in police custody.

And about the jagged scars around the tip of his index finger.

They did look like bite marks.

IT HAD BEEN a long night, but Emrys Williams still didn’t go home. Instead he copied Dr Spicer’s address off the statement, then drove his ten-year-old Toyota down to the Bay, against a tide of red-shirted rugby fans walking into town for the international.

It was only ten a.m. This wouldn’t take long and it was on his way.

Sort of.

He swung the car around outside Dr Spicer’s flat, and started to drive slowly back along Dumballs Road. It was Saturday, and most of the industrial units on the broad, grubby street were closed by steel shutters.

Williams stopped twice, once to look at broken glass that turned out to be a Heineken bottle, and again towards the station end of the road for a pigeon that refused to take off as he approached. It strolled defiantly across the road while he sat like a lemon, instead of like a vastly superior being on vital police business. Rats with wings, his father called pigeons, but Emrys Williams had always rather liked them – especially these city pigeons with the iridescent throats and all the attitude. So he watched in vague amusement as it strutted between two parked cars and hopped on to the pavement. If he hadn’t, he would never have seen the short skid mark that had left rubber on the kerb.

He double-parked and got out. Only one tyre mark was visible from the road; the other was under one of the newly parked cars. He got down on his knees to look. There were fragments of red plastic in the gutter under the car. He picked up the largest of them, which was about the size of his thumb. It looked like part of a lens cover. A brake light, maybe?

He checked the lights of the parked car, then stood up and stared around. He was standing near the corner of a brick-built unit. SPEEDY REPAIRS AND MOT. Williams walked to the end of the building, which was the last in the row before the multi-storey car park. Between the two was an alleyway, a patch of littered grass, a steel fence.

And, behind the fence, a bicycle.

It was years since Emrys Williams had climbed anything, and he’d got heavy or his arms had got weak – one or the other. Maybe both. He got halfway up and then just hung there, and three men in Wales shirts stopped and shoved him the rest of the way with encouraging grunts and a general-purpose ‘Ooooooooh’ as he hit the ground on the other side.

He brushed himself down from the ungainly drop and thanked them, and they waved and went on walking.

Williams gazed down at the bike. It was an old Peugeot ten-speed racer, but it had been in good condition until whatever had happened had happened to it. Now it was just a Chinese puzzle of blue and chrome, the chain drooping and the wheels twisted rubber loops.

The lens of the rear light had been smashed. Williams put the thumb of red beside it.

It matched.

He hauled himself back over the fence with new gusto and twisted his ankle as he dropped on to the pavement. He cursed out loud and vowed to start jogging again. He walked feelingly back to the car and drove the short distance to the car park.

He found one of the few spare bays on the second level and got out. From here he could see the back of the station, through the bare branches of a tree.

I had to jump out of the car park and into a tree .

With curiosity bubbling in his belly, Emrys Williams walked as briskly as his ankle allowed to the concrete wall that hemmed the second level. It was chest high. You’d have to be mad to jump it. Mad or desperate.

Cars were parked all along the wall and he squeezed behind them.

Directly opposite the tree, the concrete wall was cracked and missing several large chunks, which lay on the ground, along with more broken glass – clear and orange this time. Headlight and indicators.

Williams leaned against the wall and looked over the parapet. It was a good twenty-five feet to the grass below. The dark branches of the tree were flecked with raw cream, where boughs and twigs had snapped and splintered as something large had fallen through them.

Something as large as Patrick Fort.

It was eleven forty-four.

Emrys Williams thought the dissecting-room technician looked like a cadaver himself. He was gaunt and pale and had a funereal air about him. He also smelled of rotting flowers.

Williams did his best to hold his breath while he spoke, which was less than successful.

‘I understand you are missing one of your heads,’ he opened.

Mick Jarvis looked at him in almost comic astonishment.

‘ What? ’ he said. ‘First I’ve heard of it.’

‘Really?’ said Williams. ‘That does surprise me. Would you mind checking?’

The technician immediately strode to the back wall of the hangar-like room and started unzipping what Williams now realized were body bags. He kept his distance.

‘Head,’ said Jarvis impatiently as he went down the row. ‘Head. Head. Head. Shit.’

‘No head?’ enquired Williams, and Jarvis nodded.

Jarvis called the chair of the medical school to report the theft, and then made them both a cup of strong tea.

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Jarvis. ‘That kid was always weird. He broke in twice before, you know?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Found him in here once, going through confidential files. Then one night he threw a shoe at me in the dissecting room. Biscuit?’

Williams took a HobNob. ‘How does one break into a place like this?’

‘Well, the first time he used his own entry code, but at a time when he was not allowed to be here. But that code was suspended once he was expelled.’

‘So how did he get in last night?’

‘Let’s see,’ said Jarvis, and fired up the computer. He stared at the screen, while making annoying little half-sounds that he seemed to imagine were keeping Williams informed.

‘That’s there. Here we… There. Now we’ll see… OK, I get it… Cheeky little bastard!’

‘What?’

‘He must have used another student’s code. Belongs to a girl called Megan Jones. Here, you see? At a quarter past midnight.’

Williams nodded slowly. He had a thousand questions, but as he dunked, he asked the one he felt was most pertinent. ‘This sounds like a silly question, Mr Jarvis, but I’ll ask it anyway. Is it at all possible that Number 19 was a murder victim?’