Simon Beckett - The Chemistry of Death

I hesitated, but he'd earned some sort of explanation. Without going into too many details, I told him.

'Jesus,' he said.

'Now you see why I don't talk about it. Or didn't,' I added.

'You sure you wouldn't just rather tell people? Get it out in the open?'

'I don't think so.'

'I can spread the word, if you like. Put it about what you've been doing.'

I could see the sense in that. But it still went against the grain. I never used to talk about my work, and old habits died hard. Perhaps I was just being stubborn, but the dead had rights to privacy just as much as the living. Once word got out what I'd been doing there would be no end to the morbid curiosity. And I was far from sure how Manham would feel about its doctor's unorthodox activities. I was well aware that my two vocations might not sit comfortably with each other in some people's eyes.

'No thanks,' I told him.

'Your choice. But there's still going to be talk.'

Although I knew as much, my stomach still sank. Ben gave a shrug.

'They're scared. They know the killer must live around here. But they'd still rather it be an outsider.'

'I'm not an outsider. I've been here for three years.' It rang false even as I said it. I might live and work in Manham, but I couldn't claim to belong. I'd just had proof of that.

'Doesn't matter. You could live here for thirty, you're still from a city. Push comes to shove, people look at you and think "foreigner".'

'In that case it won't matter what I say, will it? But I don't think everyone's that bad.'

'No, not everyone. But it only takes a few.' He looked solemn. 'Let's just hope they catch the bastard soon.'

I didn't stay long after that. The beer tasted sour and stale, though I knew it was as well kept as ever. There was still a numbness when I thought about what had happened, like the deadened moment before the pain sweeps in from a wound. I wanted to be in my own house when it finally caught up with me.

As I drove from the pub I saw Scarsdale leaving the church. Perhaps it was my imagination, but he seemed to be striding taller than before. Out of everyone, he was the only person who was flourishing from the events that had overtaken the village. Nothing like tragedy and fear to make a man of the cloth the man of the moment, I thought, and straight away felt ashamed. He was only doing his job, the same as me. I shouldn't let my dislike of him colour my thinking. God knew, I should have had enough of prejudice for one night.

A guilty conscience made me raise a hand in acknowledgement as I approached. He looked directly back at me, and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to deign to respond. Then he gave his head a short downward tilt.

I couldn't shake the feeling that he knew what I was thinking.

By Friday the press had started to drift away. The lack of any developments meant Manham was already losing its hold on the media's fickle interest. If something else happened they would be back. Until then Sally Palmer and Lyn Metcalf would steadily diminish in airtime and column inches, until their names faded altogether from the public consciousness.

As I drove into the lab that morning, though, my thoughts weren't on the fading media presence or, I'm ashamed to say, the two victims. Even the shock of finding myself regarded with suspicion in the village had been temporarily displaced. No, what fretted away at me was something far more trivial.

Dinner at Jenny Hammond's house that evening.

I told myself it was no big thing. That she, or rather her friend Tina, was just being friendly. When I'd lived in London a dinner invitation had been simply polite currency, offered and accepted without much thought. This was no different, I told myself.

It didn't work.

I wasn't in London now. My social life had become reduced to bland conversations with patients or a beer in the pub. And what were we going to talk about? There was only one subject in the village at the moment, and that would hardly make for light dinner-table chat between strangers. Especially not if they'd also heard the rumours about me. I wished I'd had the presence of mind to say no when the offer was made. I even considered calling with some excuse, offering my apologies.

But, as much as the thought of the meal unsettled me, I didn't make the call. Which was almost as unsettling in itself. Because, underneath it all, I was uncomfortably aware of why I was really so nervous. It was the thought of seeing Jenny again. It stirred up a complex silt of emotions I'd rather have left settled. Right up there among them was guilt.

It felt like I was preparing to be unfaithful.

Of course, I realized how ridiculous that was. I was only going for a meal, and since a drunken businessman had lost control of his BMW that afternoon almost four years ago, I was all too aware that there was no-one for me to be unfaithful to.

But again, that made no difference.

So as I parked the car and took the lift to the laboratory, I wasn't exactly focused. I tried to pull my thoughts together as I pushed open the steel door to the mortuary lab and went in. Marina was there already. The door was still swinging shut behind me when she spoke.

'The results are back.'

Mackenzie frowned down at the report I'd given him. 'You're sure?'

'Pretty much. The tests confirm that Sally Palmer had been dead for around nine days when her body was found.'

We were in the lab's small office. I'd offered to email the results, but when I'd called him he'd said he'd call around instead.

'How reliable is that?' he asked now.

'The amino acid analysis is accurate to twelve hours either way, which is as close as you're going to get. I can't tell you the exact time she was killed, but it was some time between noon on the Friday and Saturday.'

'You can't narrow it down any more than that?'

I resisted the urge to snap. I'd spent all morning working out the time-since-death equations. It was a complicated business, factoring in the test results with the average temperature and other weather data for the days that Sally Palmer's body had lain outside. Life's biggest mystery reduced to a banal mathematical formula.

'Sorry. But taking into account everything else, the maggots and so on, I'd put it pretty well in the middle of that range.'

'Call it midnight Friday, then. And she was last seen three days before that at the barbecue.' Mackenzie frowned at the implications. 'There's no way you can be as specific for the dog?'

'A dog's body chemistry is different to a human's. I could run the analysis but it wouldn't tell us anything.'

'Shit,' he muttered. 'But you still think it was dead longer than that?'

I shrugged. All I had to go on was the condition of the dog's body and the insect activity around it, and that was hardly an exact science. 'Pretty sure, but like I say, the same rules don't necessarily apply to dogs. But two or three days more, at least.'

Mackenzie pulled at his lip. I knew what he was thinking. This was the third day since Lyn Metcalf had disappeared. Even if the killer followed the same pattern as before and was holding her somewhere, we were entering the endgame now. Whatever warped agenda he was following, if it hadn't already run its course it soon would.

Unless she was found first.

'We've also got the analysis on the substance that was in one of the knife marks on Sally Palmer's vertebra,' I told Mackenzie. I read from my own copy of the report. 'It's a hydrocarbon. Fairly complex, but around eighty per cent carbon, ten per cent hydrogen, with small amounts of sulphur, oxygen, nitrogen and a few trace metals.'

'Meaning?'

'Bitumen. Common-or-garden bitumen. The sort of stuff you can buy in any hardware or DIY store.'

'Well, that narrows it down.'