Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

‘Oh, I wouldn’t bet on it,’ grinned Bryant. He usually only smiled when hearing of someone else’s misfortune. Consequently, most of his acquaintances had learned to dread the glimpse of his ill-fitting false teeth. ‘Look at you, though. Not in bad nick for an old fart. Exactly how old are you now?’

He watched as the ancient pathologist, so pale and serious that permanent misery-lines had formed on either side of his mouth, eased himself from the counter to search the cadaver drawers. He still had the spiky hair and raw bony hands of his youth. Even in his twenties the sight of Finch, with his long death’s-head face, his creaking knees and lab coats that reeked of chemicals, caused all but the most optimistic people to avoid him. He still worked part-time at the Central Mortuary in Codrington Street, but was available to certain small, specialized branches of the Met because younger pathologists were considered more valuable employees, and therefore not a resource to be spared to such an esoteric, pointless unit as the PCU. And he wasn’t thrilled about being dragged over to the makeshift mortuary at Mornington Crescent on a Sunday morning.

‘I’m eighty-four,’ he said. ‘Or eighty-three. There were conflicting reports from my parents.’

‘Last time you told me there was coffee on your birth certificate,’ said Bryant. ‘You don’t have to lie about your age any more, Oswald, they can’t fire you now. You’re so far past retirement age nobody even remembers you’re still alive. Do you have a body for me? Fire victim, filed under Tate but we’ve no idea of his real name. Probably died of smoke inhalation.’

‘You might let me be the judge of that. I thought you were going to send over Kershaw. I liked him. Don’t tell me you’ve driven him from the unit already.’

‘Incredible as it may seem, he’s still with us. I’m just keeping him busy. He’s still getting used to the idea of having to work a seven-day week.’

Finch grunted as he struggled with the drawer, then tugged back a slick grey sheet covering the corpse. ‘We’re testing this out-bloody clever stuff. Made of the same material they use to cover satellites. Stops the skin fragmenting in cases of extreme epidermal damage.’

The body was charred as black as barbecue embers. Very little skin remained intact, and his eye sockets were empty. Only his feet had been spared the flames; his ankles were bizarrely still sheathed in trousers, his socks and shoes intact.

‘He would have been in better condition if the developers had insulated their floors properly. It’s the same old story: corners cut and lives lost. It’s all very well to spray the walls with fireproof resin, but not much good if you’re going to leave cavities under the carpets without any batt insulation. Protective foam or loose fill would have worked just as well. The residents sneak in booze, you see, usually high-proof spirits because they’re smaller to hide, then after a few drinks-’ He slapped his hand against the steel side of the drawer, ‘-whoosh-they knock over the bottle and it soaks between the floorboards. Not enough to start a fire from a falling match, you understand, but over time. . sounds as though this was arson, though. The lovely Longbright informs me that there was white-spirit residue all over the place consistent with someone splashing it from a bottle. Not my field of expertise, of course, I’m better off with the dead. Where’s my poking stick?’ He searched around for the car antenna he used for demonstrations. ‘Look at this.’ He wiggled the antenna through the tramp’s gaping jaw and carefully retracted it. ‘See on the end there?’

‘I haven’t got my glasses,’ Bryant admitted. ‘What is it?’

‘Soot. Burning is a common form of accidental death, rare as a method of suicide because it’s far too slow and painful, virtually unheard-of as a means of homicide, despite what you see on the telly. My second question is always, was the victim alive or dead when the fire started? Soot in the air passages suggests he was alive. I ran a blood test, and the presence of carbon monoxide and cyanide from the armchair fabric proves it, not to mention the fact that his blood is fire-engine red, which indicates the presence of poison. So we know he wasn’t fatally injured before the fire.’

‘What about those?’ Bryant pointed to what appeared to be knife wounds on the corpse’s upper arms.

‘Actually, they’re heat ruptures. Third-degree burns, partial destruction of the skin using the old Glaister six-degree methodology. Feet left intact because he fell head-first toward the door with his shoes against the building’s outer wall, which didn’t burn. Hyperaemia, that’s the clustering of leukocytes-white blood cells sent to heal damage-around the ruptures, which suggests to me that he was dead drunk when the blaze started, and blistered while he was still breathing, poor bugger.’

‘Why are his arms up in a boxing pose?’ asked Bryant. ‘He looks like Henry Cooper.’

‘Heat stiffening,’ Finch explained, snapping the plastic sheet back in place. ‘The muscles tend to coagulate on the flexor surface of the limbs.’

‘Did you get a chance to check gut contents?’

‘Of course.’ Finch looked at him as if he was mad. ‘I know how to do my job. He’d hardly eaten in days, but the stomach lining had plenty of alcohol damage. His liver was little more than a meaty lace curtain. You could stick your fingers through it. I presume your lad can set the time of the fire pretty accurately.’

‘So what’s the cause of death?’

‘Well, technically poisoning, but you can say fire.’ Finch swept the cloth back over the body like a magician covering an assistant.

‘Four deaths, four elements.’ This is where the trail stops cold, thought Bryant. I promised Raymond we’d wrap this up, but what the hell do I do now?

‘Kettle’s nearly boiled,’ said Finch. ‘I’m making Madagascan Vanilla Pod.’

‘Do you have any PG Tips?’

‘No, I gave up dairy the year Chris Bonnington climbed Everest. You should too, a man of your age.’

‘I am not a man of my age,’ replied Bryant indignantly. ‘I’m more the age of someone much younger.’

‘You think that,’ Finch morosely dangled his teabag over the mug, ‘but a look at your insides would tell a different story.’

‘Wait a minute. You said confirming whether the victim was dead or alive is always your second question. What’s the first?’

‘Well, am I sure the body is who it’s supposed to be, obviously. Death removes so many human characteristics that identification can be hard even for a close relative, and in this case we have no relations, close or otherwise, only your frankly inadequate description and that of the hostel clerk. Running a height-and-weight match was easy enough-I didn’t have to allow for fat burning or being drawn off because you don’t find much excess baggage on homeless men-and that was consistent enough.’

Bryant glanced at his old sparring partner with suspicion. ‘But what? You were heading for a “but” there, weren’t you?’

‘Well, it was the lack of positive identifiers,’ Finch complained. He suddenly looked uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. ‘We made the mistake with your false teeth after the unit blew up, didn’t we?’

Bryant harrumphed. ‘So what did you look for?’

‘I checked for signs consistent with long-term crippling on the left side of the body, severe bone-wear in the hip-joint, damage to the femur, then I checked the radius and ulna. Nothing unusual, perfectly normal limbs, no ligature damage apparent to the naked eye. Scar tissue doesn’t burn so easily, so I checked all over. Either your fellow was faking his disabilities-and why on earth would he do that? Didn’t you say he limped when trying to get away from you?’