"Gill, B M - Tom Maybridge 03 - The Fifth Rapunzel 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gill B M)

"What's Hixon trying to do," he asked, tossing the card over to Sofia, "trying to prove he's mad?"
"Only a lunatic would want to go to Broadmoor," she said and then, realising what she'd said, giggled. She examined the card and passed it back. "Professor Bradshaw had a lot of this sort of thing. Only worse. Obituary cards - some of them. Very stark. He tore them up."
Cormack, about to do the same, hesitated, decided not to, and put the card in the desk drawer. D.C.I. Maybridge was meeting him for a drink that evening. He'd been part of the Rapunzel team, too, and had probably been badgered in the same way. He wondered if Maybridge would object to talking shop over a couple of pints.
They were due to meet at the small pub near the docks at eight thirty. He would have preferred a different venue. The corpse of an elderly man, drowned a few days previously, had been caught in the propeller of a motorboat and brought ashore like a gutted fish. Hardened to his job, he had gone through the usual routine while one of the young constables, Radwell, he thought his name was, had crouched behind a bollard and been sick. Maybridge hadn't been present.
By eight thirty the small section of dockside had been washed clean. The evening sun shone on the mullioned windows of The Bell and on Maybridge, nattily dressed in a lightweight grey suit, who was standing by the entrance. He had arrived early. "Look," he said, without preamble, "if you'd rather go somewhere else, they serve good draught ale and a bar snack, if you want it, a couple of streets away. Radwell told me things were pretty messy over there."
"Pathologists, like policemen," Cormack assured him, "have selective memories. Just now everything is looking pretty good. The Bell will suit me fine."
Maybridge, who hadn't a selective memory and was plagued by horrific visions of violent death for quite a while after each case, thought he could detect bravado in Cormack's response. "Well, if you're sure." "Quite sure."
But the pathologist chose a table away from the window, Maybridge noticed. There are degrees of professional toughness. Age, in some cases, hardened the carapace, though mostly it was a matter of temperament.
When a newcomer joins a team you try to help him to settle in. Extending the hand of friendship to Peter's successor had been easier than Maybridge had expected. Peter himself would have approved of the appointment; there would be no stealing of his thunder. Cormack had a quality of Irish charm that was difficult to define and was probably best summed up as being easy with people. He was highly competent, but not aggressively so. Peter, at times, showed off. Played to the gallery. Part of his professorial role. Cormack wasn't professorial material and had no ambition to go in that direction. He hoped to stay put, he told Maybridge. He liked this part of the country. He had put his house in Sheffield on the market and was on the look-out for something not too big, but large enough for a family home. He and his girlfriend were planning to marry in a year or so when she returned from the States. She was nursing in a Chicago hospital. In the meantime he was living in digs and trudging around estate agents in his spare time. So far he hadn't seen anything that appealed. Or if it appealed, he couldn't afford it.
Over a second pint of Guinness he broached the subject again. "Your village, Macklestone, reminds me of a hamlet near Deny where I was brought up. If anything comes on the market there, would you let me know?"
Maybridge, guessing he had Peter's house in mind, explained the situation. "Bradshaw's son, Simon, has inherited the property - or is about to. It's much too large for a lad on his own, but it's too soon to approach him about selling up."
Cormack, who did have it in mind, was embarrassed. "Sure it is. No way would I worry him. God, I'd be no better than a bloody vulture if I did. But maybe later ... when he's had time to think ..."
Maybridge wondered to what degree thinking about it would hurt. Would it be turning the knife in the wound if Simon met his father's successor with a view to selling his home to him? Would it hurt less to sell it to someone else? Or would he be glad to be rid of it? Cormack seemed a decent enough bloke. Not insensi- tive. They could meet casually perhaps and the property needn't be mentioned until both were more sure about it. Simon might want to stay put. He suggested that Cormack might like to have digs in the village. "I could give you the addresses of a couple of farms that do B. and B. and an evening meal. It would give you a chance to have a proper look around. Something else might turn up in the meantime. Everything should be clearer in a few months."
Cormack, pleased with the idea, thanked him. There was no great hurry. The future, with average good luck, should last a long time. Simon's parents, he reminded himself, had probably thought the same. And the chap who had been fished out of the dock this morning. And all those unfortunate little tarts that Hixon had raped and strangled.
He mentioned Hixon's card but didn't show it. A cosy chat about an eminent predecessor's home and his son couldn't be concluded with Hixon's purple prose about Bradshaw's rotting in hell. A glossing over the contents, however, didn't fool Maybridge ...
"Derogatory about Bradshaw, and that's probably putting it very mildly. Did he threaten you?"
"No. Just pointed me in the direction of the fifth Rapunzel. Obviously likes the name the Press have tagged on to his victims. Seems to imply that she wasn't his victim and wants me to do something about it."
Maybridge was watching him keenly, his hand of friendship momentarily not quite so firm. "Your reaction?"
Cormack answered thoughtfully. "You tell a hoaxer to get lost. Someone who is dangerously paranoid, no matter what the shrinks might say, you ignore. I have no doubt whatsoever that the professor's forensic evidence was one hundred percent correct in all five cases." It was tempting to ask why Hixon should have settled on just that one case, but perhaps not politic. Instead he asked how Hixon had got hold of a card like that in the nick, written that sort of rubbish on it and got it past the censor.
"The same way he desecrated the wreath at the Bradshaw's funeral." Maybridge told him about it. "Someone on the outside does it for him."
"And someone on the outside informed him about my appointment - that's how he got my name?"
"Could be. Or he could have read about it in the local paper. Newspapers aren't banned in the nick. Most of what is reported in the Press is correct, though some information is withheld when it's a murder investigation. Afterwards, when the case is closed and it can be safely released, it is."
"Safely?"
Maybridge took a few sips of Guinness before replying. "Serial murders usually have method in common - one particular way of doing it. Or a bizarre way of signing off. If it's a knifing, a hieroglyphic in blood, perhaps, somewhere on the victim's body. A signature can be copied. It confuses the evidence. So the police keep quiet about it. But you must know all this. It's part of your job."
Cormack did, of course. But most of the cadavers he'd investigated had been straightforward killings. Run of the mill murders, the majority domestic, and reported freely during the Press conference. The Rapunzel murders had been unique. The common denominator: manual strangulation of five long-haired prostitutes, their hair plaited and tied tightly around their necks afterwards - like a noose. According to Bradshaw's reports.
"My job," he told Maybridge amicably, "is dealing with anything the police land on me. You haven't landed anything bizarre on me yet. No one has written a billet-doux on any of my cadavers' bellies. All has been sweet and simple. Or maybe simple but not sweet. You catch the murdering buggers at some risk to yourselves. I make a further mess of their victims at the autopsy, then bung off everything relevant to the forensic science laboratory. The experts get going with traces of semen, blood, hair fibres, human and otherwise, nail scrapings, etc, etc. They analyse this and that, feed the computers with data, and, hey presto, get an answer. Usually correct. But no acclaim whatsoever. Nice job, though. Not messy. Good if you want a quiet life."
"Hm," said Maybridge. Peter hadn't. He'd probably appreciated his back-up team, but he'd been standing out there well in front and obviously enjoying every minute of it. Simon doing a back-room job was easy to imagine. He might have his father's genes, but he certainly hadn't his temperament.

Genes. Genetic engineering. D.N.A. fingerprinting. All up-front words in common use bandied around by lay-men as well as professionals. Cormack had used the phrase 'usually correct' just now. Rightly. Even an exact science has a margin of error. D.N.A. fingerprinting had been ruled unsafe in a recent murder enquiry in the U.S.A. The fifth Rapunzel case had been particularly difficult. Unlike the others. He was relieved, however, that Cormack had dismissed Hixon's insinuation as paranoid. It was, of course.

It's easy to play the fool and get away with it if your audience is made up of amateurs. If they're a team of professionals, headed by a professional, it becomes rather difficult. The Mount's medical staff guessed that Donaldson was being well paid for turning a blind eye on Creggan and risked sounding him out about it at one of the staff meetings. Sue Raudsley, a psychotherapist who had only been on the staff a few months and didn't care if she were sacked, was spokeswoman and junior enough to sound naive. "What, if anything, is wrong with Paul Creggan?" she asked. Donaldson, anticipating the question at some stage, but not just then when he wasn't in the mood to answer it, had snapped back: "His desire to pitch a tent in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital, sleep on a trestle bed and eat appalling food. Normal behaviour, would you say?" The Raudsley woman, to his annoyance, had pressed on: Was Creggan suffering from stress, failure to respond to the para-sympathetic nervous system, perhaps? Or could his night walks be linked with depression and diurnal variation of mood? If so, why wasn't he on medication? Valid questions. Donaldson, furious that his ethical credibility was being impugned, had congratulated her drily on her text-book knowledge and suggested that she might learn to apply it more effectively when she had more clinical experience. It hadn't been a comfortable session and he had brought it to an abrupt end.
He was thinking about it now as he approached Creg-gan's tent. Creggan had his back to the tent flap, which was open, and was pulling a jersey over his head. His suit was on the floor, gathering dust from the tarpaulin and the sisal matting. The tent smelt of grass and Creg-gan's after-shave, which he wouldn't use again until he was back in London.
Donaldson greeted him coldly. "Welcome back. You left on impulse, perhaps. Your note was very brief. I would have appreciated being told. A few minutes of your time in my consulting room wouldn't have delayed you too much."
Creggan apologised. "You're right. It was discourteous of me. I attended the funeral and then ..." he spread his hands, shrugged. "It was upsetting. I didn't stop to think." He picked the suit up from the floor and put it on the bed. "Do sit down. It's good to see you again. Good to be here."
"I wasn't aware you knew the Bradshaws." Donaldson sat on the only chair there. It was made of wicker but with a thickly padded back and seat.
"No," Creggan said. "Put it this way, I joined the party like a great many more. The lady with the camera spoilt the show - or added more interest to it, depending on your point of view."
Had all The Mount patients attended, Donaldson felt like telling him, Press interest would have been intense, the villagers would have been outraged and he would have been reported to the G.M.C. for unprofessional conduct.
Creggan's answer to his question about knowing the Bradshaws hadn't been a clear negative. Donaldson put it to him again. "I wondered if you had met Mrs Bradshaw - Lisa - during one of her visits here."
"Here - to my tepee?" Creggan deliberately misunderstood him. "Oh, no, Doctor Donaldson. Far too primitive. Not at all the right surroundings for the lady - any lady. Fine for me, of course. And for my dog." He clicked his fingers. "Come on, boy, come and be introduced."
The animal, part basset, part rough-haired terrier of some sort, had been curled up asleep behind a wooden crate containing a dozen bottles of Dom Perignon champagne. Creggan's gift of appeasement.
"Champers from us both," he told Donaldson. "For you and your staff. Or just for you." He fondled the dog's silky ears. "He's called Perignon, too. Perry for short. Your delectable little Sally has suggested that he stays at White Oak Farm, if the farmer agrees and you won't have him. He has kennels, she tells me, and a cattery. I can collect him there for walkies."
Donaldson eyed the dog dubiously. It eyed him back, yawned, then wagged its tail. A cheerful animal. He remembered Creggan's allusion to the black dog of despair during the first interview. And his later attempt to bribe his way in. The champagne now was a bribe. How would pompous Miss Raudsley react to that? More importantly, how should he?
"I can't allow a dog on the premises," at least he could be definite about that, "and if you tried keeping it out here it could still wander indoors and be a nuisance to the patients. As for keeping it at Millington's farm - that would be all right by day - but going up there and collecting it at night and taking it on night walks in the country where there are sheep ..."
Creggan interrupted him. "On a lead, Steven. And not always at night. I promise you there'll be no trouble."
It was the first time Creggan had used his Christian name. It didn't signify anything, most of the older members of staff used it. Even so ... a growing familiarity? Or a touch of contempt?
"Medication might help you," he suggested, resuming the dominant role, "if you have trouble sleeping."
"Ah, but I do sleep," Creggan pointed out, "whenever I feel like it. Just as Perry sleeps whenever he feels like it. Look at him now." The dog had slumped down again and was resting its muzzle on its paws. Its eyes were closing. "Your therapy might seem unorthodox to some, but you've helped me enormously," Creggan went on, unaware that he couldn't have said anything more apposite. "It would help even more if I could have a companion on my walks. If you'd allow it I'd be immensely grateful."
Donaldson remembered a wet patch on the ceiling of his flat where the roof leaked. How grateful? Possibly that grateful? Creggan's attempt to bribe his way into The Mount had annoyed him. His conscience these days was less tender.
And he might have known Lisa. If so, he might be persuaded to talk about her, and that could be revealing.
As for the dog ... more unorthodox therapy? On the contrary. "All right," he conceded. "I'll try and fix things up with the farmer on your behalf. If Millington agrees, then the dog can stay."