Barry Maitland - The Marx Sisters

‘Oh Christ, Caroline, you’re exaggerating. It wasn’t that long.’

‘So after you eventually spoke to your wife, sir, you turned directly back towards the City and went to your mother’s house?’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘Arriving there’-Kathy consulted her notebook-‘at6.33.’

There was a moment’s silence, and then Caroline got to her feet brightly. ‘I’ll make some tea,’ she said. ‘OK for everyone?’

Kathy got up too and said, ‘I’ll give you a hand, if that’s all right. I’m always nosy to see other people’s kitchens, actually.’

‘Oh well, you’ve come to the wrong place then,’ Caroline said as they went through a panelled connecting door. ‘I’m about to have all this redone.’

Kathy looked around at the gleaming appliances and crisp white ranges of cupboards and units. ‘Oh! It’s beautiful.’

‘No.’ Caroline curled her lip. ‘It’s all wrong. I’ve never liked it much. There’s much better equipment on the market now. And I’m going to have it all done in oak-to go with the house, you know?’

The worktop on the island unit in the middle of the room was covered with open magazines of kitchen designs, but there was no sign of food or recipe books.

Kathy looked round as the door from the hall clicked open and a young woman stood in the opening. She stared at Kathy in surprise.

‘Oh, this is one of our two girls, Sergeant. Alex, say hello to the Sergeant-I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

‘Kolla. Kathy Kolla. Hello, Alex. How are you?’

The girl muttered something indistinct and ducked her head. Kathy judged her to be hardly out of her teens. Beneath thick spectacle lenses her eyes looked red and blotchy, and her mother went over to her, crooning sympathetically.

‘All right, luv?’ She turned to Kathy as she put an arm round her daughter’s shoulder. ‘She was really cut up about her gran, weren’t you, luv?’

Kathy saw the girl wince under her mother’s grip. She seemed the most unlikely of offspring for the Winters, physically awkward, socially uncomfortable and apparently uninterested in her appearance. She stood for a moment, ungainly and morose while Caroline dug her long painted nails into her arm, then pulled away and ran back across the hall and up the stairs.

‘She’s upset.’ Caroline screwed up her cute little nose. ‘You don’t need her, do you?’

In the living room, Terry got to his feet. At first it didn’t look as if he knew why, then he pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Brock, who shook his head. Terry pulled out a small gold lighter and lit up, inhaling deeply on the first drag.

‘This ain’t easy,’ he said. ‘You can understand how someone feels when their mother’s just died. Especially if people are suggesting she might have been murdered.’

‘Of course,’ Brock said. ‘I remember when my mother died. She was in hospital. When I left I got on a bus to go home, and it reached the depot before I realized I’d gone in the opposite direction.’

Terry nodded.

‘The Sergeant wasn’t trying to be intrusive about her will,’ Brock said, his brows knitted with concern. ‘But it was a natural thing to wonder, when we heard the conditions. I suppose I might have been a bit annoyed with my old mum if she’d left me something, but then said in effect I couldn’t have it for, well, who knows? Twenty, thirty years?’

Terry looked at him suspiciously. ‘My aunts are entitled to feel some security at their time of life. I don’t begrudge them that.’

‘They’re quite a formidable pair, your aunts, aren’t they?’ Brock said.

‘Mad as hatters,’ Caroline replied, bringing in the tea, and then, seeing the expression on her husband’s face, corrected herself. ‘No, they’re sweeties really. I get on well with them, especially Peg. I think Eleanor disapproves of me sometimes.’

She giggled and poured out the tea.

As they were driving back into London against the evening tide of traffic, Dr Mehta came on the phone. ‘I thought you might like a preliminary report, Brock.’ The disembodied voice of the pathologist filled the car interior.

‘How does it look?’

‘Well, lots of nothing, frankly. First the heart. No significant narrowing of the coronary arteries, heart muscle healthy and no inflammation, no lesions of the heart valves, aortic valve in good shape.

‘Then the brain. No arterial blockage, no intracerebral haemorrhage, no brain artery aneurysm, no subarachnoid haemorrhage, and no tumours, abscesses or other brain lesions.

‘I’m still waiting for the chemical analyses, so some form of poisoning can’t be ruled out at this stage, but I don’t think it’s likely.

‘Of course there are other natural causes of sudden death. Anaphylaxis for instance. She could have had an acute reaction to some antigen she was sensitive to. There was no marked swelling of the lining of the larynx, however, or oedema of the lungs. I’ve spoken to her doctor again, and there’s no history to suggest anaphylaxis, or for that matter epilepsy, asthma or insulin medication.

‘Then there’s smothering, say with the plastic bag your Sergeant found, if the tests match the swabs. All right, there were petechial haemorrhages on the lungs and the pericardial sac-Tardieu’s spots-which certainly suggests terminal lack of oxygen, but not necessarily asphyxia-heart failure produces the same result. Again, the fluidity of the blood and some blue discoloration of the skin were also consistent with asphyxia, but blood fluidity and cyanosis aren’t certain tests, either.

‘So, as things stand, I couldn’t say that she died of asphyxia, only that the evidence is consistent with it. As you know, Brock, in about ten per cent of cases we see we simply cannot establish a cause of death from the forensic evidence. I think this may be one of those.’

‘Ten per cent!’ Kathy exclaimed.

There was a momentary pause while Mehta identified her voice, and then he crackled back, ‘Yes, Sergeant. Any experienced pathologist will tell you the same: no cause of death can be demonstrated either anatomically or by toxicological analysis in approaching one in ten cases. If they tell you otherwise, then they’re making guesses not justified by the evidence.’

‘Sundeep,’ Brock said, ‘if she was smothered by the plastic bag, how long would she take to die, and wouldn’t she have shown signs of a struggle?’

‘Not necessarily. Do you have Jaffe’s Guide to Pathological Evidence for Lawyers and Police Officers in your office?’

‘Yes, I’m sure we do.’

‘Well, there’s a photograph in there of a young woman who died by accident, while she was on the phone, when a plastic bag accidentally slipped over her face. A simple lack of oxygen isn’t distressful. If it’s sudden, unconsciousness comes very quickly. What is distressing in choking, say, or smothering, is when the exhalation of carbon dioxide is prevented. That’s what causes the panic we imagine with that kind of death. I’ll get back to you when the test results are available, but I think the coroner will have to reach a decision on this one without me.’

‘Thanks, Sundeep.’

When he’d rung off, Brock added, ‘Cagey as always. Still, it looks as if you were right, Kathy.’

‘Yes.’ She sat in silence for a moment and then said quietly, ‘I’d like to phone DC Mollineaux, sir. Get him to check that Terry Winter had a cup of coffee in the cafe next to his salon in Deptford, as he said. Then he can start interviewing the managers of each of the salons to see whether they can produce any of the paperwork Winter’s supposed to have done over the weekend.’

‘You didn’t like him?’