The High Wycombe roundabout reminded Kincaid of a toy he’d had as a child, a set of interlocking plastic gears that had revolved merrily when one turned a central crank. But in this case five mini-roundabouts surrounded a large one, humans encased in steel boxes did the revolving, and no one in the Monday morning crush was the least bit merry. He saw an opening in the oncoming traffic and shot into it, only to be rewarded by a one-fingered salute from an impatient lorry driver. “Same to you, mate,” Kincaid muttered under his breath as he escaped gratefully from the last of the mini-roundabouts.
A holdup on the M40 had delayed him, and he arrived at High Wycombe’s General Hospital a half-hour late for the postmortem. Kincaid tapped on the door of the autopsy room and opened it just enough to put his head in. A small man in green surgical scrubs stood facing the stainless-steel table, his back to Kincaid. “Dr. Winstead, I presume?” Kincaid asked. “Sorry I’m late.” He entered the room and let the door swing shut behind him.
Winstead tapped the foot switch on his recorder as he turned. “Superintendent Kincaid?” He edged the microphone away from his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Sorry I can’t shake,” he added, holding up his gloved hands in demonstration. “You’ve missed most of the fun, I’m afraid. Started a bit early, trying to catch up on the backlog. Should have had your fellow done Saturday, yesterday at the latest, but we had a council housing fire. Spent the weekend identifying remains.”
Tubby, with a mop of curly, graying hair and boot-button black eyes, Winstead lived up to his sobriquet. Kincaid found himself thinking that his vision of Pooh Bear with scalpel in hand hadn’t been too far off the mark. And like many forensic pathologists Kincaid had come across, Winstead seemed unfailingly jolly. “Find anything interesting?” Kincaid inquired, just as glad that Winstead’s body blocked part of his view of the steel table. Although he’d grown accustomed to the gaping Y-incision and peeled-forward scalp, he never enjoyed the sight.
“Nothing to jump for joy over, I’m afraid.” He turned his back on Kincaid, his gloved hands again busy. “One or two things to finish up, then we could nip over to my office, if you like.”
Kincaid stood watching, the cold air from the vents blowing in torrents down the back of his neck. At least there wasn’t much smell to contend with, cold water and refrigeration having done a good bit toward retarding the body’s natural processes. Although he could look at almost anything, he still had to fight the gag response triggered by the odor of a ripe corpse.
A young woman in scrubs came in, saying, “Ready for me, Winnie?”
“I’ll just leave the tidying up to my assistant,” Winstead said over his shoulder to Kincaid. “She likes to do the pretty work. Don’t you, Heather darling?” he added, smiling at her. “Gives her a sense of job satisfaction.” He peeled off his gloves, tossed them in a rubbish bin and scrubbed his hands at the sink.
Heather rolled her eyes indulgently. “He’s just jealous,” she said sotto voce to Kincaid, “because I’m neater than he is.” She slipped on a pair of gloves and continued. “This chap’s mum would be proud of him by the time I’m finished, isn’t that so, Winnie?”
At least Connor Swann’s adoring mum had been spared admiring Heather’s handiwork, thought Kincaid. He wondered if Julia would defy convention to the extent of avoiding the mortuary and the funeral.
As Winstead ushered Kincaid from the room he said, “She’s right, I’m afraid. I get the job done, but she’s a perfectionist, and her hand is much finer than mine.” He led Kincaid down several halls, stopping on the way to retrieve two coffees from a vending machine. “Black?” he asked, pushing buttons with familiarity.
Kincaid accepted the paper cup and sipped, finding the liquid just as dreadful as its counterpart at the Yard. He followed Winstead into his office and stopped, examining the human skull which adorned the doctor’s desk. Attached to the facial surface by pins were small cylinders of rubber, each of varying height with a black number inked on its tip. “Voodoo or art, Doctor?”
“A facial reconstruction technique, lent to me by an anthropologist chum. A guess as to sex and race is made by measuring certain characteristics of the skull, then the skin depth markers are placed according to information from statistical tables. Clay is added to a thickness that conforms to the markers, and Bob’s your uncle, you have a human face again. It’s quite effective, actually, even if this stage does look like something from Nightmare on Elm Street. Heather is interested in forensic sculpture, and with her hands I don’t doubt she’d be good at it.”
Before Winstead wandered too far on the subject of the lovely Heather’s attributes, Kincaid thought he had better redirect him. “Tell me, Doctor,” he said as they settled into worn leather chairs, “did Connor Swann drown?”
Winstead knitted his brows, an exercise which made him look comical rather than fierce, and seemed to bring himself back to the body in question. “That’s a pretty problem, Superintendent, as I’m sure you very well know. Drowning is impossible to prove by autopsy. It is, in fact, a diagnosis of exclusion.”
“But surely you can tell if he had water in his lungs-”
“Do hold on, Superintendent, let me finish. Water in the lungs is not necessarily significant. And I didn’t say I couldn’t tell you anything, only that it couldn’t be proved.” Winstead paused and drank from his cup, then made a face. “I’m an eternal optimist, I suppose-I always expect this stuff to be better than it is. Anyway, where was I?” He smiled benignly and took another sip of his coffee.
Kincaid decided Winstead was teasing him deliberately, and that the less he fussed the faster he’d hear the results. “You were about to tell me what you couldn’t prove.”
“Gunshot wounds, stabbing, blunt trauma-all fairly straightforward, cause of death easily determined. A case like this, however, is a puzzle, and I like puzzles.” Winstead uttered this with such relish that Kincaid half-expected him to rub his hands together in anticipatory glee. “There are two things which contradict drowning,” he continued, holding up the requisite fingers. “No foreign material present in the lungs. No sand, no nice slimy river-bottom weeds. If one inhales great gulps of water in the act of drowning, one usually takes in a few undesirable objects as well.” He folded down one finger and waggled the remainder at Kincaid. “Secondly, rigor mortis was quite delayed. The temperature of the water would account for some degree of retardation, of course, but in an ordinary, garden-variety drowning the person struggles violently, depleting the ATP in their muscles, and this depletion speeds up the onset of rigor considerably.”
“But what if there was a struggle before he went in the water? His throat was bruised-he might have been unconscious. Or dead.”
“There are several indications that he died quite a few hours before his body was discovered,” Winstead admitted. “The stomach contents were only partially digested, so unless your Mr. Swann ate a very late supper indeed, I’d guess he was dead by midnight, or as close to it as makes no difference. When the analysis of the stomach contents comes back from the lab you may be able to pinpoint that last meal.”
“And the bruising-”
Winstead held up a hand, palm out like a traffic warden. “There is another possibility, Superintendent, that would account for Mr. Swann having been alive when he went in the water. Dry drowning. The throat closes at first contact with the water, constricting the airway. No water gets into the lungs. But, as the laryngospasm relaxes after death, it is impossible to prove. It would explain, however, the lack of foreign matter in the lungs.”
“What causes a dry drowning, then?” Kincaid asked, willing himself again to be patient and let the doctor have his bit of fun.
“That’s one of nature’s little mysteries. Shock would probably be your best catchall explanation, if you must have one.” Winstead paused and drank from his cup, then looked surprised that it hadn’t miraculously improved in the interval since his last tasting. “Now, about this throat business you’re so keen on. I’m afraid that’s inconclusive as well. There was some external bruising-I understand you visited the morgue?” When Kincaid nodded, he continued, “You’ll have seen it, then-but there was no corresponding internal damage, no crushing of the hyoid processes. Nor did we find any occlusion of the face or neck.”
“No spots in the eyes?”
Winstead beamed at him. “Exactly. No petechiae. Of course, it’s possible that either by accident or design, someone put enough pressure on his carotid arteries to render him unconscious, then shoved him in the river.”
“Could a woman exert that much pressure?”
“Oh, a woman would be quite capable physically, I should think. But I would have expected more than just bruising-fingernail marks, abrasions-and there were none. He was clean as a whistle. And I doubt very much if a woman could have rendered him unconscious without her hands suffering some trauma from the struggle.”
Kincaid digested this for a moment. “So what you’re telling me is”-he touched the tip of one index finger to the other-“that a: you don’t know how Connor Swann died, and if you can’t give me cause of death, I have to assume that b follows: you won’t hazard a guess as to manner of death.”
“Most drownings are accidental, and almost always alcohol-related. We won’t know his blood alcohol until the report comes back from the lab, but I’d be willing to bet it was quite high. However”-up came the traffic warden hand again as Kincaid opened his mouth to speak-“if you want my off-the-record opinion…” Winstead sipped from his coffee again, although Kincaid had long since abandoned his, finding an inconspicuous spot for the cup among the litter on Winstead’s desk. “Most accidental drownings are also fairly straightforward. Bloke goes out fishing with his friends, they all have a few too many, bloke falls in and his friends are too pissed to pull him out. Corroborating stories from several witnesses-end of case. But in this instance,” the intelligent boot-button eyes fixed on Kincaid, “I’d say there are a good deal too many unanswered questions. No indications of suicide?”
Kincaid shook his head. “None.”
“Then I’d say there’s not much doubt he was helped into that river in one way or another, but I’d also say you’re going to have a hell of a time proving it.” Winstead smiled as if he’d just delivered a welcome pronouncement.
“What about time of death?”
“Sometime between when he was last seen and when he was found.” Winstead chortled at his own humor. “Seriously, Superintendent, if you want my intuitive stab at it, I’d say between nineish and midnight, or perhaps nine and one o’clock.”
“Thank you, I think.” Kincaid stood up and held out a hand. “You’ve been… um, extremely helpful.”
“Glad to be of service.” Winstead shook Kincaid’s hand and smiled, the Pooh Bear resemblance more pronounced than ever. “We’ll get the report to you as soon as the lab work comes back. Can you find your way to the front? Cheerio, then.”
As Kincaid left the office he glanced back. The skull seemed to be superimposed upon Winstead’s chubby form, and as Winstead waved Kincaid could have sworn the skull grinned a little more widely.
Kincaid left the hospital feeling little further forward than before. Although now more certain of the fact, he still had no concrete proof that Connor had been murdered. Nor had he a plausible motive, or any real suspects.
Hesitating when he reached his car, he glanced at his watch. Once Gemma had managed to track down Tommy Godwin, she would be on her way to interview Dame Caroline, and as long as she was looking into the Asherton end of things, he had better concentrate on Connor. Connor was the key-until he knew more about Connor nothing else would fall into place.
It was time he did a little prying into the part of Connor’s life that did not seem to be connected to the Ashertons. Using his phone, he ascertained the address of Gillock, Blackwell, Gillock and Frye, then took the road south to Maidenhead and Reading.
He never came to Reading without thinking of Vic. She had grown up here, gone to school here, and as he’d entered the city from the north, he made a quick detour down the street where her parents had lived. The suburb boasted comfortable semidetached houses and well-tended gardens, with an occasional garden gnome peeking tastefully from behind a hedge. He had found the neighborhood dreadful then, and he discovered that time had done nothing to soften his opinion.
Easing the car to a halt, he let the engine idle while he studied the house. So unaltered did it appear that he wondered if it had been held in some sort of stasis while time eddied around it, and he had changed and aged. He saw it as he’d seen it the first time Vic took him home to meet her parents, down to the determined shine on the brass letterbox. They had looked upon him with well-bred disapproval, dismayed that their beautiful and scholarly daughter should have taken up with a policeman, and with a stab of discomfort he remembered that he had felt faintly ashamed of his less-than-conventional family. His parents had always cared more for books and ideas than the acquisition of middleclass possessions, and his childhood in their rambling house in the Cheshire countryside had been far removed from this tidy, ordered world.
He slipped the Midget into first gear and eased out the clutch, listening to the engine’s familiar sputtering response. Perhaps Vic had chosen someone more suitable for the second go-round. He, at least, was well out of it. With that thought came a sense of release and the welcome realization that he did, actually, finally, mean it.
The snarl of Reading traffic hadn’t improved since his last visit, and as he sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in the queue for city-center parking, he remembered how much he had always disliked the place. It combined the worst of modern architecture with bad city planning, and the results were enough to make anyone’s blood pressure rise.
Once he’d parked the car he found the modern block of offices which housed the advertising agency without too much difficulty. A pretty receptionist greeted him with a smile as he entered the third-floor suite. “Can I help you, sir?” she asked, and her voice held a hint of curiosity.
He knew she must be trying to catalogue him-not a familiar client or supplier, no briefcase or samples to mark him as a commercial traveler-and he couldn’t resist teasing her a bit. Her short bobbed dark hair and heart-shaped face gave her an appealing innocence. “Nice office,” he said, looking slowly around the reception area. Modular furniture, dramatic lighting, art-deco advertising prints carefully framed and placed-it added up, he thought, to clever use of limited funds.
“Yes, sir. Is there someone you wanted to see?” she asked a little more forcefully, her smile fading.
He removed his warrant card and handed her the open folder. “Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, Scotland Yard. I’d like to speak to someone about Connor Swann.”
“Oh.” She looked from his face to the card and back again, then her brown eyes filled with tears. “Isn’t it just awful? We only heard this morning.”
“Really? Who notified you?” he asked, casually retrieving his card.
She sniffed. “His father-in-law, Sir Gerald Asherton. He rang John-that’s Mr. Frye-”
A door opened in the hallway behind her desk and a man came out, shrugging into a sport jacket. “Melissa, love, I’m off to the-” His hand up to tighten his tie, he stopped as he saw Kincaid.
“Here’s Mr. Frye now,” she said to Kincaid, then added to her boss, “A man from Scotland Yard, here about Connor, John.”
“Scotland Yard? Connor?” Frye repeated, and his momentary bewilderment gave Kincaid a chance to study him. He judged him to be about his own age, but short, dark, and already acquiring that extra layer of padding that comes with desk-bound affluence.
Kincaid introduced himself, and Frye recovered enough to shake hands. “What can I do for you, Superintendent? I mean, from what Sir Gerald said, I didn’t expect…”
Smiling disarmingly, Kincaid said, “I just have a few routine questions about Mr. Swann and his work.”
Frye seemed to relax a bit. “Well, look, I was just going round to the pub for some lunch, and I’ve got a client meeting as soon as I get back. Could we talk and grab a bite at the same time?”
“Suits me.” Kincaid realized that he was ravenously hungry, a not unexpected side effect of attending an autopsy, but the prospect of the culinary delights to be found in a Reading pub didn’t fill him with anticipation.
As they walked the block to the pub, Kincaid glanced at his companion. Three-piece suit in charcoal gray, expensively cut, but the waistcoat strained its buttons; midday beard shadow; hair slicked back in the latest yuppie fashion; and as Kincaid matched his stride to the shorter man’s, he caught the scent of musky aftershave. He thought Connor had given the same attention to his appearance-and advertising was, after all, a business of image.
They made desultory chitchat until they reached their destination, and as they entered the White Hart, Kincaid’s spirits lifted considerably. Plain and clean, the pub had an extensive lunch menu chalked on a board and was filled with escapees from other offices, all busily eating and talking. He chose the plaice, with chips and salad, his stomach rumbling. Turning to Frye, he asked, “What are you drinking?”
“Lemonade.” Frye grimaced apologetically. “I’m slimming, I’m afraid. I love beer, but it goes straight to my middle.” He patted his waistcoat.
Kincaid bought him a lemonade and ordered a pint for himself, not feeling the least bit of guilt at giving his companion cause for envy. Carrying their drinks, they threaded their way to a small table near the window. “Tell me about Connor Swann,” he said as they settled into their seats. “How long had he worked for you?”
“A little over a year. Gordon and I needed someone to do the selling, you see. We’re neither of us really good at it, and we’d acquired enough clients that we thought we could justify-”
“Gordon’s your partner?” Kincaid interrupted. “I thought there were three of you.” He sipped his pint and wiped a bit of foam from his lip with his tongue.
“I’m sorry. I’d better start at the beginning, hadn’t I?” Frye looked longingly at Kincaid’s celery, sighed and went on. “I’m Frye, of course, Gordon is Gillock, and there isn’t a Blackwell. When we went out on our own three years ago, we thought Gillock and Frye sounded like a fishmongers’.” Frye smiled a little sheepishly. “The Blackwell was just to add a bit of class. Anyway, I function as creative director and Gordon does the media buying and oversees production, so we were stretched pretty thin. When we heard through a friend that Connor might be interested in an account executive’s position, we thought it was just the ticket.”
The barmaid appeared at their table with laden plates. Tall and blond, she might have been a Valkyrie in jeans and sweater. She bestowed a ravishing smile upon them along with their lunches and made her way back through the crowd. “That’s Marian,” Frye said. “We call her the Ice Maiden. Everyone’s madly in love with her and she enjoys it immensely.”
“Does the adjective refer to her looks or her disposition?” I Kincaid looked at Frye’s plate of cold salad and tucked happily into his steaming fish and chips.
“I’m not allowed fried things, either,” Frye said, eyeing Kincaid’s food wistfully. “Marian’s disposition is sunny enough, but she’s not generous with her favors. Even Connor struck out.”
“Did he chat her up?”
“Does the sun rise every morning?” Frye asked sarcastically, pushing a sprig of watercress into the corner of his mouth with his little finger. “Of course Con chatted her up. It was as natural to him as breathing-” He stopped, looking stricken. “Oh Christ, that was tasteless. I’m sorry. It’s just that I haven’t quite taken it in yet.”
Kincaid squeezed a little more lemon on his excellent fish and asked, “Did you like him? Personally, I mean.”
Frye looked thoughtful. “Well yes, I suppose I did. But it’s not that simple. We were quite chuffed to have him at first, as I said. Of course, we wondered why he would have left one of the best firms in London for us, but he said he’d been having domestic problems, wanted to be a bit closer to home, get out of the London rat race, that sort of thing.” He took another bite of salad and chewed deliberately.
Kincaid wondered if Frye’s sorrowful expression reflected his opinion of his lunch or his feelings about Connor. “And?” he prompted gently.
“I suppose it was naive of us to have believed it. But Con could be very charming. Not just with women-men liked him, too. That was part of what made him a good salesman.”
“He was good at his job?”
“Oh yes, very. When he put his mind to it. But that was the problem. He was so full of enthusiasm at first-plans and ideas for everything-that I think Gordon and I were rather swept away.” Frye paused. “Looking back on it, I can see that there was a kind of frantic quality to it, but I didn’t realize it at the time.”
“Back up just a bit,” Kincaid said, his forkful of chips halted in midair. “You said you were naive to have believed Connor’s reasons for coming to work for you-did you find they weren’t true?”
“Let’s say he left a good deal out,” Frye answered ruefully. “A few months later we began hearing trickles through the grapevine about what had really happened.” He drew his brows together in a frown. “Didn’t his wife tell you? You have spoken to the wife?”
“Tell me what?” Kincaid avoided the question, trying to fit the vivid image of Julia in his mind into that neutral possessive. The wife.
Frye scraped ham salad and shredded carrot into a neat pile in the center of his plate. “Con’s firm in London handled the ENO account. That’s how he met her-at some reception or other. I suppose she must have attended with her family. So when she left him and he had a…” Looking rather embarrassed, Frye studied his plate and pushed his food around with his fork. “I guess you’d call it an emotional breakdown. Apparently he went quite bonkers-broke down crying in front of clients, that sort of thing. The firm kept it all very hush-hush-I suppose they felt they couldn’t risk offending the Ashertons by publicly turning him out on his ear.”
They had all been very discreet, Kincaid thought. Had compassion entered into it at all? “The firm gave him a recommendation when he came to you?”
“We wouldn’t have taken him on, otherwise,” Frye answered matter-of-factly.
“When did things begin to go wrong?”
An expression of guilt replaced the embarrassment on Frye’s face. “It’s not that Con was a total washout-I didn’t mean to give you that impression.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Kincaid said soothingly, hoping to forestall Frye’s let’s not speak ill of the dead qualifications.
“It was a gradual thing. He missed appointments with clients-always with a good excuse, mind you, but after a few times even good excuses begin to wear thin. He promised things we couldn’t deliver-” He shook his head in remembered dismay. “That’s a creative director’s nightmare. And all those new accounts he was going to bring in, all those connections he had…”
“Didn’t materialize?”
Frye shook his head regretfully. “’Fraid not.”
Kincaid pushed away his empty plate. “Why did you keep him on, Mr. Frye? It certainly sounds as if he became more of a liability than an asset.”
“Call me John, why don’t you,” Frye said. Leaning forward confidentially, he continued, “The funny thing is, a few months ago Gordon and I had just about screwed ourselves up to give him the sack, but then things started to improve. Nothing earth-shaking, but he seemed to become a bit more dependable, a bit more interested.”
“Any idea what prompted the change?” Kincaid asked, thinking of Sharon and little Hayley.
Frye shrugged. “Not a clue.”
“Did you know he had a girlfriend?”
“Girlfriends, you mean. Plural,” Frye said with emphasis. With the resigned air of the much-married, he added, “Once my wife met him a few times, it was more than my life was worth to have a pint with him after work. She was sure he’d lead me into temptation.” He smiled. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, I never had Connor’s knack with women.”
The lunchtime crowd had thinned. Relieved from the crush at the bar, Marian came to collect their empty plates. “Anything else, lads? A sweet? There’s some smashing gateau left-”
“Don’t torment me, please.” Frye put his hands over his face with a moan.
Marian scooped up Kincaid’s plate and gave him a most un-icy wink. Smothering a chuckle, he thought that Frye’s wife needn’t have worried about Connor’s influence-her husband’s weaknesses obviously lay in other directions. That train of thought reminded him of a particular weakness they hadn’t addressed. “Were you aware of Connor’s gambling debts?”
“Debts?” Frye asked, draining the last drop of lemonade from his glass. “I knew he liked a bit of racing, but I never knew it was that serious.”
“Ever hear of a chap called Kenneth Hicks?”
Frye wrinkled his brow for a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t say that I have.”
Kincaid pushed his chair back, then stopped as another question occurred to him. “John, did you ever meet Connor’s wife, Julia?”
Frye’s reaction surprised him. After a moment of rather sheepish throat-clearing, he finally looked Kincaid in the eye. “Well, um, I wouldn’t say I exactly met her.”
Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “How can you ‘not exactly’ meet someone?”
“I saw her. That is, I went to see her, and I did.” At Kincaid’s even more doubtful expression he colored and said, “Oh hell, I feel an idiot, a right prat. I was curious about her, after all I’d heard, so when I saw the notice in the paper of her show in Henley…”
“You went to the opening?”
“My wife was away at her mum’s for the night, and I thought, well, why not, there’s no harm in it.”
“Why should there have been?” Kincaid asked, puzzled.
“I want to paint,” Frye said simply. “That’s why I studied art in the first place. My wife thinks it’s frivolous of me-two kids to support and all that-”
“-and artists are bad influences?” Kincaid finished for him.
“Something like that.” He smiled ruefully. “She does get a bit carried away sometimes. Thinks I’d bugger off and leave them to starve, I suppose, if someone waggled a paintbrush under my nose.”
“What happened at the opening, then? Did you meet Julia?”
Frye gazed dreamily past Kincaid’s shoulder. “She’s quite striking, isn’t she? And her paintings… well, if I could paint like that, I wouldn’t spend my life doing print layouts for White’s Plumbing Supply and Carpetland.” He gave a self-deprecating grimace. “But I can’t.” Focusing again on Kincaid, he added, “I didn’t meet her, but not from lack of trying. I’d drunk my cheap champagne-not without a good bit of it knocked down my shirt-front by careless elbows-and had almost made my way through the mob to her when she slipped out the front door.”
“Did you follow her?”
“Eventually I elbowed my way to the door, thinking I’d at least pay my respects on my way out.”
“And?” Kincaid prompted impatiently.
“She was nowhere in sight.”