Michael White - The Art of Murder

Newman led them back across the room to a bench dotted with test-tube racks filled with coloured liquids. At one end stood a cluster of electronic devices. ‘We’ve also conducted a battery of chemical tests,’ Jones explained as they approached the bench. ‘Combining these with the images, we’ve been able to extract a few samples that may throw up some leads.’

On the bench lay three Petri dishes. In the first two were flakes of coloured material; the third contained a few threads of fabric.

‘We found these — paint in two different colours. The green we’ve narrowed down to what our universal palette catalogue calls “Cider Apple Green”. The other is plain white, but it comes from a metal surface. We’ve isolated traces of pressed steel. Almost certainly paint from a motor vehicle.

‘The grey fibres in the other dish are treated cotton. Under the microscope we can see a water-resistant wax coating on the threads. It’s most likely fibre from a tarpaulin.’

Pendragon looked admiringly at Dr Newman. ‘That’s very clever,’ he said. She reddened slightly.

Jones coughed. ‘There’s more, Pendragon.’ He picked up a sheet of paper from the counter and handed it to the DCI. Jones leaned in and pointed to a series of graphs. ‘The arrangement of spikes, there,’ he said, ‘indicates a large quantity of heroin.’

‘Heroin?’ Pendragon exclaimed, staring at the pathologist.

‘Even more interesting is this,’ Jones said, and handed him another sheet covered with a series of coloured lines.

‘What’s this?’

‘An analysis of Kingsley Berrick’s blood. Same spikes. An almost identical heroin level.’

‘You think the two victims were junkies?’ Turner asked.

‘A fair assumption, Sergeant, but no. These concentrations of heroin would kill instantly.’

‘So it was the means of dispatching them?’ Pendragon commented, studying the charts.

‘Remember the needle wound in Berrick’s brain?’ Jones said. ‘I thought he died from a massive haemorrhage. But it seems clear now that the hole was caused by the introduction of the drug. If Thursk still had a brain, or come to that a head I could study, we might find a similar mark.’ Then, after a moment, Jones added, ‘There’s one other interesting result.’

‘Oh?’ Pendragon said, looking from him to Colette Newman.

‘Dr Newman suggested we did a rape test on Berrick’s body.’

‘A rape test?’

‘It didn’t occur to me back at the Path Lab, but …’

‘It struck me as being prudent in light of, well … Mr Berrick’s sexual orientation.’

‘Okay,’ Pendragon said doubtfully.

‘Berrick had intercourse shortly before he was murdered. We ran DNA tests.’

‘And?’

‘We found traces of Noel Thursk’s DNA.’

Turner suddenly laughed, then put his hand to his mouth and rolled his eyes. Pendragon glared at him and turned to Dr Newman. ‘Wheels within wheels,’ he said, running his fingers over his forehead.

The rain had stopped by the time they left the Forensics Lab. Pendragon tossed the keys to Turner. ‘You drive.’

They pulled out into the heavy traffic and almost immediately ground to a halt again.

‘It’s hard to imagine how anyone could actually have performed those murders,’ Turner said, glancing over at his boss. ‘I mean, to have a steamroller and nobody see you using it. And Berrick, you’d need some sort of electronic press to do that to his head, wouldn’t you, guv?’

‘Yes, I think you’re right, Turner. I’ve been wondering the same thing and I’ve just thought of someone who might be able to give me some answers.’

Turner dropped Pendragon outside the Blind Beggar on Whitechapel Road. The rain was coming down harder now and the DCI made a dash for it between two market stalls selling knock-off saris and pirated Bollywood DVDs. Inside, the pub reminded him of a cave. There was subdued light from cheap plastic chandeliers fitted with green bulbs, dark wood panelling around the bar, heavily patterned wallpaper, and a carpet that had so much beer rubbed into it, it was impossible to tell what colour it might once have been. The place stank of alcohol and detergent.

The pub had just opened and he was one of only three customers. The other two sat at separate tables, each nursing a beer and staring silently towards the windows on to Whitechapel Road. Pendragon ordered a pint of bitter and sat in the corner furthest from the other patrons and well out of earshot. These days, the Blind Beggar was something of a tourist attraction. It had once been a favourite of the notorious Kray twins, who had run the most powerful crime cartel in the district back in the sixties and seventies. It was in this pub in 1966 that Ronnie Kray shot dead George Cornell, an associate of a rival gang, the Richardsons.

Pendragon saw Sammy Samson pass the window and enter the pub. He gave him a discreet wave. Sammy smiled and strode over to the table, extending one hand as Pendragon stood up. He was wearing an ancient double-breasted suit with stains down the front, the shoulders and elbows shiny with wear. His shirt was off-white with a ragged blue tie keeping the collar almost closed. He had shaved, but badly, leaving lines of half-shorn stubble here and there and a trail of bloodied nicks.

‘Pendragon, old boy,’ Sammy said. ‘It’s been a while.’ His voice was brandy-cracked and ravaged by tobacco and God knows what else, but Sammy still spoke the Queen’s English like the old Etonian he was. Pendragon indicated he should sit and called Sammy’s order to the barman before turning back to look at the man in front of him.

The Hon. Sammy Samson was the stuff of legend and Pendragon knew he should only take notice of a fraction of what was said about the man. What had passed through the DCI’s filter was that Sammy was a genuine aristocrat, the son of an earl who had lost the favour of his family decades earlier and been cut off without a penny. Back in the late sixties he had fallen into the drug culture, survived a spell managing a couple of bands, and then become a full-blown junkie. His father had expelled him from the family and none of his siblings would talk to him.

By that time, he was already enamoured with what had to him become a charming alternate reality: the East End and the ordinary lives of ordinary people. Even in his early twenties, he had felt more at home enjoying a pint of brown ale and a knees-up at the local boozer than back on the playing fields of Eton or at Royal Ascot. Rejection by his own family had strengthened these feelings, and with surprising ease he had become part of the Stepney scene. Later, he had fallen in with the gang lords, worked as an accountant for the Krays, spent five years in jail, and then simply turned to a life of wandering around the East End, day after day, week after week, decade upon decade.

As a boy, Pendragon had seen Sammy Samson around Stepney. Even then, the lapsed aristocrat had been a local celebrity. So it was perhaps not surprising that when Jack took the job at Brick Lane, Sammy had been one of the first people he had asked after. When he discovered the man was very much alive and an active police snout, he had reached out to him. Sammy always kept an ear to the ground, and what he did not know about the goings-on in the East End crime world was not worth pursuing. Now in his mid-sixties, Sammy looked seventy-five. He was pretty much broken beyond repair, surviving from day to day. Pendragon liked him a lot.

‘So what may I do for you, Pendragon?’ Sammy asked, knocking back his drink in one. ‘Might there be value in my enlightened observations on recent unhappy goings-on?’

‘I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, Sammy. You always were an astute man.’