Simon Beckett - The Scent of Death

It was a cool evening. The Indian summer seemed long gone and there was no denying the autumn chill in the air. I’d parked a few hundred yards away, and the streetlights threw multiple shadows as I walked across the concourse. Except for me, it was empty, deserted by the staff and students that filled it during the daytime. As my footsteps rang on the concrete I was thinking about Rachel, wondering whereabouts she was now. I was halfway across before I registered the sense of unease that had begun to settle over me. I stopped, looking around. There was no one in sight.

The hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle.

Under the skin, we’re all just animals. The same survival mechanisms that protected our primitive ancestors are still present, atrophied and below our awareness most of the time, but there all the same. I could feel my pulse speed up, the shakiness in my muscles as adrenaline was dumped into my system. What the hell’s this...?

And then I smelled it.

It was only faint, the merest hint of a spiced, musky perfume, but it ran through me like an electric shock. I heard the scrape of a shoe behind me and spun round.

‘’Night, Dr Hunter.’

Two of the department’s post-grad students smiled as they went past, giving me a curious look. I hadn’t been the last to leave after all, I realized, raising my hand in a weak acknowledgement. Their footsteps receded as they disappeared across the concourse.

My heart was still thumping, though more slowly now. I looked around again, but I was alone. The air held only exhaust fumes and the burnt-leaves smell of autumn, without any trace of perfume.

If there ever had been.

That was the power of suggestion for you, I thought, setting off across the concourse again. I’d been thinking of Grace Strachan as I’d left the building and my imagination had done the rest. Grace had been one of the most beautiful women I’d ever met. Raven-haired and with a dazzling smile that blinded almost everyone to her fractured, psychotic nature, her physical presence had been overwhelming. Her distinctive perfume had been the last thing I’d been aware of when she’d stabbed and left me for dead. It had branded itself into my memory, and for a long time afterwards I would have panic attacks, believing I could smell it and that Grace was nearby. The clinical term was phantosmia, or olfactory hallucination, but I thought I’d put that behind me.

Until now.

Annoyed with myself, I walked to the back of my car, throwing my bag into the boot with more force than was necessary. I switched on the car radio as I drove off, catching the tail end of a news report about St Jude’s. The demonstration outside the gates had brought a fresh element to the story, allowing the old grievances against the hospital development to be aired again. But when the report had finished the rest of the news failed to hold my interest. Although I tried to forget about it, the incident outside the university had rattled me. I drove automatically, without paying attention to where I was going, and it was only when a road sign registered that I realized I was heading for my old flat.

Oh, great . I was well over halfway there now, on a ring road that didn’t allow me to turn around. The next exit would take me close to where I used to live anyway, so I decided to carry on. It wasn’t as if I had anything to hurry back to Ballard Court for.

It seemed preordained that, on a street lined both sides with parked cars, there’d be a vacant space right outside the Victorian villa. I pulled into it. Despite Ward’s warnings, this wasn’t the first time I’d visited my old flat. I’d driven by two or three times, but this was the first time I’d stopped. Objectively, I knew Ward — and Rachel too, for that matter — was right. If Grace Strachan were still alive and intended to try to kill me again, this was where she’d come. It would have been stupid to stay there.

Yet moving out still seemed like running away.

The freshly painted front door, where Grace’s fingerprint had been found after the attempted break-in, had lost some of its shine since the last time I’d been here, but otherwise the house looked as it always had. The ground-floor flat was still empty, its ‘To Let’ sign standing on a post by the path. Rachel had suggested I sell it, but I’d baulked for the same reasons I hadn’t rented it out. For one thing, I wasn’t quite ready to give it up. Not yet.

For another, if there was even a slight chance that Grace Strachan was back, then I couldn’t let anyone else live there.

But I didn’t believe that any more. My panic at the university seemed embarrassing now, a momentary lapse. I put it down to lack of sleep and an overactive imagination: the oppressive atmosphere at St Jude’s must have got to me more than I’d realized. Still, coming here had resolved one thing, I thought as I pulled away. With Rachel in Greece there was no longer any reason to stay at Ballard Court. Once the investigation was over I’d look at moving back into my old flat.

I’d had enough of hiding.

The weather broke during the night. Rain pitched down from a gunmetal sky as I drove to the mortuary next morning, bouncing off the pavements and dashing the autumn leaves from the trees. I found a parking place nearby and ran through the downpour, pausing under the covered entrance to shake off my wet coat.

The mortuary was relatively new, a custom-built building that served most of this part of North London. I’d worked there in the past, though not for some time. Parekh was there already, and greeted me with her customary dryness.

‘You were a long time coming back yesterday afternoon,’ she commented, a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

I hadn’t seen her since the day before: when I’d come away from the sealed chamber at St Jude’s I thought I’d be returning soon.

‘There was a change of plan.’

‘So I gather.’

I hadn’t wanted to broach it myself, but I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t curious. ‘How did the recovery go?’

‘Slowly. There was a delay while more of the ceiling was shored up, so only one body was recovered. The other should be removed later today.’

‘And what about BioGen?’

‘Our new private service provider?’ She gave a shrug. ‘They have very nice grey outfits. Other than that, I had little to do with most of them. Although I found your replacement something of a surprise.’

Tell me about it . ‘Why’s that?’

‘I’ve never worked with anyone calling themselves a forensic taphonomist before. I have to say, if he hadn’t told me I would have thought he was just another forensic anthropologist. Grey overalls aside, obviously.’

I tried not to smile. ‘Apparently, he comes highly recommended.’

‘I’m sure he does. He seems capable enough. Young but very methodical. And certainly not lacking in self-confidence.’

That was one way of putting it. But then he wouldn’t have regarded a forensic pathologist like Parekh as a rival. Not if he’d any sense.

She smiled at me, her face cross-hatching with fine wrinkles. ‘Stings, doesn’t it?’

‘What does?’

‘Finding the next generation snapping at your heels.’

I started to protest, then gave it up. She’d known me too long. ‘Was I that arrogant when you first met me?’

‘Not arrogant, no. Confident, yes. And ambitious. But you’ve seen a lot more of life since then. I daresay Daniel Mears will improve once he’s had his own rough edges knocked off. And I’ve no doubt he will.’

I thought that was likely, too, but I didn’t really care. I’d already decided that the less I had to do with Mears, the better we’d both like it.

The SIO’s post-mortem briefing was scheduled for ten o’clock. Whelan and the other team members who were attending began to arrive fifteen minutes before the start, but Ward herself was late. She was the last there, shucking out of her wet coat as she bustled into the briefing room.