Daniel Blake - Soul Murder

That the fire escape and underground parking lot were risky methods of entry didn’t mean they were impossible. The parking lot had closed-circuit TV; the fire escape didn’t. The cops would trawl through the footage and see what they could find.

Failing either of those, could the killer have been a resident?

It seemed unlikely, to say the least. They’d spoken to all the residents, albeit briefly. None of them looked as though they could harm a fly, and none had an obvious motive to do away with Redwine.

The uniforms would follow up, of course, interviewing every resident properly.

What about one of the doormen? Probably not Foxworth himself – it would be hard to do it on one’s own shift, because it would have meant leaving the front desk unattended for too long – but one of the others, who was off shift? A doorman would know all the shortcuts and hidden entrances, and his presence wouldn’t be suspicious.

But again, it came back to the same stumbling block: why ?

Why had Redwine been killed, and why – the second sixty-four-thousand-dollar question – why in that way? Why burned, rather than, say, shot, or stabbed?

To hide something? If not Redwine’s identity, then something else?

To destroy something? Forensic evidence, or something less directly connected to the corpse, such as documentation or other items?

As punishment; a cruel and unusual way of murdering someone?

Or were all these delving too deep into something very simple? Had Michael Redwine been burnt to death simply because the killer had felt that was the easiest way of doing it?

Redwine had been a surgeon at Mercy, Pittsburgh’s largest and most famous hospital. Mercy was located uptown, a few blocks from The Pennsylvanian.

‘We’re going to Mercy?’ Patrese asked.

‘You got any better ideas?’

‘Matter of fact, I do.’

Patrese flipped open his cellphone and hit one of the speed dials. A woman answered on the second ring.

‘Hey, Cicillo.’

‘Hey, sis. Are you on shift?’

‘No, at home, all alone; Sandro’s taken the kids to his mom’s for a few days. Why?’

‘Can we come by?’

‘Who’s we?’

‘Me and Mark.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘Tell you when we get there. We’re leaving town now. See you in fifteen.’

He ended the call. Beradino looked across at him.

‘Who was that?’

‘Bianca. My sister.’

‘The one who’s a doctor at Mercy?’

‘The very same.’

Beradino smiled.

There were two ways to find out what Redwine had been like and why someone might have wanted to kill him in such a vile manner. There were formal channels, which involved managers, bureaucrats and warrants; and there were informal channels, which involved the promise of favors owed if you were lucky and good old dead presidents if you weren’t.

Either way, there were no prizes for guessing which method tended to be quicker and more effective.

‘You’re not as dumb as you look,’ Beradino said.

‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’

‘What was he like?’ Bianca considered the question for a moment. ‘He was Harvard med school. That’s what he was like.’

‘You mean he thought he was God’s gift?’ Beradino said.

‘In my experience, most Harvard med schoolers think God is their gift to the world rather than vice versa.’

Patrese laughed. That was his sister in a nutshell, he thought; tell it like it is, no matter the circumstances. Her patients tended to appreciate her straight talking, particularly when it came to diagnosing the severity of whatever they had. Most people with illnesses liked to know what they were dealing with.

She’d been shocked, of course, when they’d told her what had happened to Redwine. You wouldn’t wish that on your worst enemy – unless, of course, it was the fact that they were your worst enemy which had made you do it in the first place.

But doctors saw an awful lot of life and certainly too much of death, and so they didn’t tend to stay shocked for very long. Bianca was no exception.

So now she sat with her brother and Beradino in her living room and tried to think of who might have wanted Redwine dead.

‘How well did you know him?’ Beradino asked.

‘Well enough, but as a professional colleague rather than a friend. You understand the difference? I spent a lot of time in his company, but almost always at work. We rarely socialized. I knew a lot about his life, and he mine, because those details tend to get shared around when you’re talking; but if one or other of us had taken a job someplace else, I doubt we’d have stayed in touch.’

‘Personal life?’

‘Divorced. Couple of teenage boys.’

‘Nasty split?’

‘Quite the opposite, far as I know. In fact, I remember him telling me once both he and his wife – Marsha, she’s called – had been sacked by three successive sets of divorce lawyers because they weren’t being greedy enough.’

Beradino and Patrese laughed. Cops appreciated a dig at lawyers as much as anyone else; more than most, in fact.

‘Wife and kids still in Pittsburgh?’

‘No. They went out west, to Tucson. He used to go and see them several times a year. Hung out with the kids, stayed over at their house.’

‘He and Marsha still sleeping together?’

‘You’d have to ask her that. But I don’t think so. Maybe that was why they split up to start with. He told me once he thought of her more as a sister than anything else.’

‘He have anyone else serious?

‘Not that I know of.’

‘No,’ said Beradino thoughtfully. ‘I can’t imagine they’d have been too happy with him playing happy families with his ex, whatever the real story.’

‘But I doubt he ever lacked female company. He was handsome, he was smart, he was successful.’

‘And arrogant.’

‘Yes, and arrogant. Most surgeons are. It comes with the territory. You ask them, they’d call it self-confidence. Patients like a surgeon who’s sure of what he’s doing. The last thing you need when someone’s about to open you up is to find they’re suddenly iffy about the job.’

‘He was a good surgeon?’

‘One of the best. A real pioneer, always looking for new techniques, new ways to make things better. There are people walking round Pittsburgh today who are still here because of Michael Redwine; not just because he saved their lives, but because he did so with methods and equipment which simply didn’t exist several years ago, and which he helped bring into being.’

‘He ever make mistakes?’

For the first time, Bianca paused.

The house was suddenly quiet, which in Patrese’s experience was an event about as frequent as Halley’s Comet. If it wasn’t Sandro’s endless practicing – he was a violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony – it was the noise generated by three kids blessed with the kind of energy that ought to be illegal.

Vittorio was in ninth grade, Sabrina seventh and Gennaro sixth, and Patrese loved them all to bits. Acting the goofball uncle with them, taking them to Steelers games, playing touch football with them in the backyard till sundown – and telling them that Gramps and Gran were now in heaven, and holding them close when they cried.

‘All surgeons make mistakes,’ Bianca said eventually.

‘You sound very defensive about that.’

‘Yes, well…Listen, people expect doctors to be perfect, get everything absolutely right every time. But it doesn’t always work like that. We’re human, our knowledge is imperfect, some symptoms aren’t always clear-cut.’

‘I don’t think Mark intended it to be a value judgment,’ Patrese said softly.