Michael White - The Art of Murder

Pendragon walked into the corridor and headed for the gallery’s kitchen. Mackleby and Grant were there with Tom Seymour and Helena Lutsenko. ‘We’ll need you both to come to the station to give a detailed report,’ Pendragon said to the witnesses. Helena looked alarmed, but Tom Seymour simply nodded.

‘I’ve called into work to tell them I’ll not be in this morning,’ he said.

‘Good. Inspector Grant and Sergeant Mackleby here will escort you to the station …’

‘But, sir, I do nothing!’ Helena Lutsenko exclaimed, her eyes wide and dark with worry.

Pendragon found a brief smile from somewhere. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said gently. ‘We’re not accusing you of anything.’

‘But …’ she looked panic-stricken ‘… my job … have to finish …’

Before Pendragon could say anything more, Roz Mackleby stepped in and placed her hand gently on Helena’s elbow.

‘Really … we won’t bite,’ Sergeant Mackleby insisted.

Pendragon spun round as Sergeant Turner appeared in the doorway.

‘Lane’s closed off, guv,’ he said. ‘And Forensics just called to say they’re a few minutes away.’

‘Good. Sergeant, I need you to get a complete list of who was here last night from Mr Price, and take a detailed statement from him. I want a full background on the event plus names … who showed, who didn’t. Find out if anything unusual happened — everything you can get him to cough up. I’ll meet you back at the station.’

‘You’re walking?’

‘Need to clear my head.’

Before leaving, Pendragon turned back into the reception area, walked past Jackson Price and nodded to a uniformed officer posted at the archway to the main room. A police photographer was setting up a tripod and a digital camera a few feet from the murder victim. Jones was kneeling down in front of the dead man, peering into the gruesome void in his head and studying the apple.

‘First impressions?’ Pendragon asked.

There was an electronic whir from behind as the photographer ran off a couple of test shots.

Jones stood up. ‘Well, it’s a Granny Smith, Inspector.’

‘Dr Jones …’

‘Okay, okay.’ Jones had his hands up. ‘What can I say? Male, early to mid-fifties, average height, bit on the plump side. It’s impossible even to guess at the cause of death before I get the body to the lab. I’d say he’s been dead eight to ten hours, no more. The body’s stiff from rigor mortis. No need for the truss. But obviously the body was put here when it was still relatively pliable.’

‘All right. Forensics are on their way. I’ll have the body released to you ASAP.’

*

Pendragon stepped out on to Durrell Place as Dr Colette Newman, Head of the Metropolitan Police Forensics Unit, emerged from a white van parked behind Mackleby and Grant’s squad car. She strode towards him carrying a big plastic box similar to Jones’s.

‘Chief Inspector,’ she said in her clipped, old-fashioned accent. Pendragon had first met Dr Newman the previous summer when they had worked together on a series of mysterious poisonings that had turned out to be the work of a crazed serial killer. She had been instrumental in piecing together some of the clues that had helped solve the crimes. A pretty blonde in her mid-thirties, Pendragon knew her to possess a keen intellect and a sharp wit. He had a lot of respect for her, and he liked her as well. ‘Dr Newman,’ he said. ‘Sorry to drag you from your warm lab, but, well …’ And he nodded back over his shoulder towards the gallery. ‘This one should certainly pique your professional interest.’

‘Oh, goody,’ she said with a smile, and hurried past him towards the gallery door.

Pendragon had been only partially honest with Turner when he’d said he needed to clear his head. He needed to clear it of the horror, but he also needed to assimilate what he had just witnessed, to gather together his thoughts and begin to make some sense of it all.

It never got easier, he knew that. He had seen dead kids being dragged from lakes and old people sliced up on the swirly-patterned carpets of their tiny flats. No, it never got easier. Somehow, though, he had learned to deal with it; to ‘compartmentalise’ as American psychotherapists would have it. But fancy words meant nothing unless he really could compartmentalise, and sometimes he could only just manage to keep it together in front of his junior officers.

In his twenty-five years of police service, Kingsley Berrick’s was definitely the strangest murder Pendragon had seen. The body was what he had once heard described as a ‘statement corpse’. Someone had not simply killed the man, they had wanted to present him as something else. He had seen immediately that the murder tableau was an imitation of Rene Magritte’s famous painting The Son of Man , the classic Surrealist image of a bowler-hatted figure in a suit with an apple hovering directly in front of his face. But why had the murderer done it? And how? Answers to those questions would take a while to formulate, Pendragon knew that much.

The snow had stopped falling, but the recently swept pavements were now covered in a thin fresh coating that was starting to blacken and turn to slush. At the end of the narrow lane lay Vallance Road, usually a busy thoroughfare which today was almost empty.

At the junction with Mile End Road, Pendragon stopped at the lights. There were more pedestrians than normal, their cars left at home. The monolithic Victorian sprawl of the Royal London Hospital stood at the far side of the street. Snow had settled on the window ledges and the tops of archways leading through into its maze of interlinked buildings. But the white covering did nothing to soften the harsh lines of the place.

He turned right and merged with the other pedestrians, wrapped up in Puffa jackets and anoraks, imitation Russian fur hats and Doctor Who scarves. He saw Grant and Mackleby’s squad car turn out of Vallance Road and carefully negotiate the lights before slowly accelerating west, back towards Brick Lane less than a quarter of a mile away. He could just make out the backs of two heads in the rear seats, the unlikely pairing of Helena Lutsenko and Tom Seymour.

Kingsley Berrick’s ex, Norman Hedridge, proved extremely difficult to track down. Jackson Price had given Turner a phone number, but had warned him it wouldn’t be easy to get the man to the station for questioning. It was only after Turner had called the number and been put through to a secretary that he discovered the stumbling block.

‘Hedridge is an MEP,’ he declared, walking into Pendragon’s office. ‘And he’s in Brussels. Left on the early bird this morning.’

‘Well, we’ll just have to get him on to the first train back, won’t we, Sergeant?’

‘What’s the problem? I heard the letters MEP.’ Superintendent Jill Hughes was leaning on the doorframe, peering in at Pendragon and Turner. The DCI was at his computer, Turner had perched himself on the corner of the desk.

‘Morning, ma’am,’ Pendragon responded. ‘Someone we need to question straight away. Maybe the last person to see the murdered man alive.’

Hughes had been brought up to speed when Mackleby and Grant had arrived back at the station half an hour earlier. ‘You’re talking about Norman Hedridge, I take it?’ She held Pendragon’s eyes with a steady gaze. She was a tough station commander, and, at thirty-three, one of the youngest Supers in the country. Guarded and occasionally aloof, she was nevertheless experienced enough to have nurtured a loyal and solid team at Brick Lane.

Pendragon nodded.

‘I’ve already been on to the Commissioner about him.’