Christopher Fowler - White Corridor

Bryant had been a good passenger for most of the journey by dint of the fact that he had been asleep, but now he was wide-eyed, aching and fidgety with boredom. “It was difficult not to seek alternative meanings in our house,” he continued. “My devout grandmother lost all three of her sons in the Great War, and my aunts lost their children in the flu pandemic that followed. Then, just when we all seemed to be recovering in the intervening years, my uncles were drowned at sea and we were bombed out of the family house in Bethnal Green. Where did our devotion to God get us? If you ask such questions as a child and don’t receive any satisfactory answers, you start to look for other means of proof.”

“So you attend spiritualists’ conventions. A bit outmoded isn’t it, all that table-rapping?”

“Every street in London once housed a woman with so-called special powers, someone to whom the neighbours Would turn for traditional remedies and health predictions,” said Bryant, pensively sucking his sweet. “It was a strictly matriarchal network, of course. Mothers brought their babies around and wives would ask for advice on aches and pains, allergies, sexual health and marital problems. Often the wisdom they received was based on sound psychological sense, and the kind of conservative values that required everyone to remain in his or her rightful place before the advice could work. Many of these superstition-based remedies were rendered nonsensical by the changing times, but some are still with us. And of course other, more alternative services were also offered: the psychic comforting that followed bereavement, predictions and palliatives linked by the searching-out of signs and symbols. My grandmother used to read tea leaves for the local ladies, and told them she saw angels. The tradition went back hundreds of years, and only came to a proper end in the 1970s.” Bryant paused for breath while his partner increased the speed of their windscreen wipers.

“Nowadays, increased awareness of mental and physical health means that the spiritual urban mother-figure has all but disappeared in Western society. Meanwhile, technology has supposedly given us the means to gauge psychic energy. I don’t believe in the supernatural, just the untapped power of the mind. Look in the papers; we read about tiny women lifting cars off their loved ones and boat people surviving without water, and don’t think it odd. Extreme situations can make heroes of us all.”

“Just because you trace your beliefs to your grandmother doesn’t mean you should still believe what she told the neighbourhood.”

Bryant shrugged. “I have to. She was so often right, you see, and she insisted that I, too, had her gift. Which I believe to this day.” He tapped his map. “Next left.”

“I really don’t think we’re supposed to turn off yet,” May anxiously pointed out.

“The A3 8 takes us in a sort of horseshoe, but we can cut part of it off. We should be able to make up some lost time.”

It was against May’s better judgement to take practical advice from his partner. Arthur’s kaleidoscopic manner of determining complex solutions to simple problems could prove disastrous. Perhaps because he wasn’t concentrating hard enough, perhaps because he was worried about the rapidly increasing intensity of the snowfall and reaching their hotel before night, he listened and acted accordingly, forgetting for the moment that Arthur was reading from a map printed before the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

“There’s no blood,” the detective sergeant remarked, searching the spot where Finch had fallen. “He must have given his skull a good crack.”

“An autopsy will show if there’s been any cranial bruising or bleeding into his internal cavities.” Kershaw sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think he did this to test me. Did Raymond tell you who Finch’s successor is to be?”

“I really don’t think this a good time to have that conversation,” said Longbright. “I’m appointing you in charge of this case, Giles. You knew him well, and you’re familiar with his room.”

“I’m technically a forensic scientist, not a coroner.”

“I assume you’re fully trained in pathology, otherwise you wouldn’t have been applying for Finch’s job. I heard you received the highest pass-grade in your year.”

“But I could be prejudicial to the findings,” Kershaw warned. “In these circumstances, you’re meant to appoint an outsider.”

“I’m not meant to do anything,” Longbright informed him.

“This is the PCU, not the Metropolitan Police, and you’re now in charge. Call Bimsley in and keep him on site until you’ve got some preliminary findings. I don’t want you left alone in here.”

“I say, that’s a bit strong.” Kershaw rose and flicked back his hair, affronted, his public school background drawn to the fore in any confrontation with someone he considered to be from an inferior class. “I’m assuming you’re appointing me because you trust me.”

“Yes,” Longbright admitted, “but I also sent you down to visit the morgue earlier, which makes you a potential suspect with a strong motive, placed at a possible crime scene at the estimated time of death.”

For once, Kershaw was dumbfounded. “Then I can’t possibly be seen to be investigating my victim’s murder. I can’t find myself guilty.”

“You might try taking Mr. Bryant’s advice about thinking instinctively rather than putting all your trust in the circumstantial evidence. I want a report from you before we close tonight.”

Returning to the PCU, the detective sergeant found DC Mangeshkar at work in the office she shared with Bimsley. “Why were you looking for Giles Kershaw this morning?” she asked. The forensic scientist had informed her of Meera’s visit to the mortuary.

“I was going to ask him if I could help out with the unidentified female they brought in. I didn’t think Finch would let me watch the postmortem; I just wanted to examine his case notes. I heard it had already gone down to Bayham Street, so I went there.”

“Did you take a set of keys with you?” Longbright asked, already knowing the answer.

“I had to, because when Finch is alone in the room with the door shut he keeps his headphones on and doesn’t hear you knocking.”

“You found him, I take it.”

“Yes, but Finch told me to leave. He must have heard my key in the lock, because he opened the door before I could. But he wouldn’t let me in.”

“Why not?”

“He was in the middle of an argument. Kershaw was asking him why he’d changed his mind about something. I didn’t hear Finch’s reply but he sounded bloody angry, told Kershaw that he was immature and careless. I decided to leave them to it, and came back here.” Presumably Kershaw had gone specifically to complain to Finch about being passed over for his promotion, and the old man had given him a piece of his mind, after which Kershaw had left the coroner alone in the room.

A grim thought formed in Longbright’s mind. Access to Bayham Street Morgue was restricted. The Met could arrange visits via its resident pathologist, as could members of the PCU. The room’s tiny windows were all bolted, and its only door was locked. The good news was that all the sets of keys were now accounted for. Finch, Kershaw and Mangeshkar had been holding a set each, which left the final bunch of keys on the hook behind Arthur Bryant’s desk, from where Banbury had borrowed them.

The bad news was that if Kershaw found enough reason to suspect homicide, the restricted access to the morgue limited the murder suspects to someone in the Peculiar Crimes Unit itself.