Past Mortem Read online

  He struggled to readjust his gaze to focus fiercely on a wicker basket filled with pieces of double-choc muffin that were being offered up for free tasting that day.

  ‘I think he’ll kill again because I think the scenario he created indicates that he’s psychopathic, and being a psycho is not a part-time thing. Particularly if his problems are sexual, and, let’s face it, in the end all problems are sexual.’

  ‘Sexual? What’s sexual got to do with anything?’

  ‘I think it’s highly possible that this assailant had sexual and ritualistic motivations.’

  ‘Are all rituals sexual as well?’

  ‘Sadly, Natasha, I’ve come to a rather depressing conclusion that everything is sexual…Just look at that advert.’ Newson pointed to a framed poster on the wall featuring the coffee of the week, which boasted vanilla, coconut syrup and cookies ‘n’ cream. ‘Read it: hot, smooth, silky, frothy, warming, enveloping…Freud would have had a field day.’

  ‘Then Freud was a wanker.’

  ‘I think that fact’s well established.’

  ‘A vanilla, coconut syrup, cookies ‘n’ cream latte is not sexual; it’s a substitute for sex,’ said Sergeant Wilkie.

  ‘Well, you can’t get much more sexual than a substitute for sex, can you?’

  ‘What possible reason do you have for thinking that this was a sex crime?’

  ‘I’m not saying it was. I’m saying it might have been. The killer bled his victim to death in a carefully prepared and highly specific manner. In my experience people who feel the need to do that sort of thing are driven to it by a very deep-seated urge, and deep-seated urges are, of course — ’

  ‘Sexual.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  They had by now arrived at the counter. ‘One small latte,’ said Newson to the arrogantly handsome French youth who was facing him across the counter, impatiently awaiting his order.

  ‘One tall latte,’ the youth replied.

  ‘No, a small latte,’ Newson. corrected.

  ‘Tall eez small,’ the boy told him. ‘Eet dozen get any smaller zan tall.’

  ‘What do you mean, it doesn’t get any smaller than tall?’

  ‘Eet jus’ dozen.’

  ‘But that’s a contradiction in terms.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘Maybe you should tell eet to somebody ‘oo geeves a ferk.’

  ‘Am I tall, then?’ Newson asked.

  ‘Eef you wan’. One pound seventy-five, please,’ the youth said and turned to Natasha, who ordered a grande caramel-and-chocolate latte with mallows, for which Newson insisted on paying.

  ‘Grande’s medium,’ she informed him as they collected their drinks.

  ‘I know, I know, and medium is enormous. I have been in a Starbucks before, you know. I just think it’s important to confront these things. I mean, since when did the British start drinking coffee in pints?’ They found a table in the corner. ‘For centuries you either had a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and cups were cups. Now everybody’s walking round clutching a bucket of chocolate-flavoured froth with Smarties on top.’

  ‘I think it’s great,’ Natasha said.

  They sat down. Natasha dug in her briefcase and produced a sheaf of interview notes, which she placed on the table between them. The statements had been taken by ten constables, and the pile was a thick one. As Natasha leant forward to read the index her breasts touched the top of the pile. Newson stared at the ceiling and made a mental note to get a grip.

  ‘Over two hundred people spoken to so far,’ Natasha said. ‘In the street, in the pubs, the local shops and at Bishop’s yard. They divide into two groups: people who were terrified of Adam Bishop and people who hadn’t met him.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘Huge. All still connected and totally loyal.’

  ‘Terrified of him too, no doubt.’

  ‘Probably, but of course we haven’t talked to them properly yet. The doctor says we can interview the wife tomorrow. She’s all right, but a bit shocked.’

  ‘Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? Tied up in the kitchen all night listening to your husband being murdered.’

  ‘Yes, and from what I can gather so far it seems like the Bishops had a strong marriage. They took family very seriously and if Adam Bishop loved anything at all I think he loved his wife.’

  ‘And she reciprocated?’

  ‘We’ve heard no reason to presume otherwise.’

  ‘I suppose we should look into it.’

  ‘If you’re wondering whether she was involved, I think we’re going to turn up about a million more obvious suspects than her. I have a profile from the local police. They knew Adam Bishop well and he sounds like an absolute bastard. He ran a petty fiefdom in and around the Kilburn High Road. Neighbours, colleagues, business associates — all either danced to his tune or paid the price. The Willesden Bill don’t think this is a psycho thing at all, sexual or otherwise, and I don’t either. It’s a builder thing. Adam Bishop pushed his power too far and got done in by some angry rival or other.’

  ‘I don’t think angry rivals in the building trade do their killing with blunt five-centimetre-long spikes.’

  ‘Look, Ed, I know you’re very clever and all that, but don’t you think you’re being a bit too clever here? I mean, why don’t we just pursue the obvious?’

  ‘That’s what I’m doing, and it’s obvious to me that this is no ordinary revenge killing.’

  ‘And it’s obvious to me that it was. Adam Bishop was a disgusting, ugly pig of a man. I refuse to believe that anybody seeking psychopathic sexual gratification would choose a lump like that to stick his prick into, or anything else for that matter.’

  ‘Well, that’s a very blinkered thing to say,’ said Newson. ‘You’ve been a policewoman long enough to know that it takes all sorts to make a world. Just because a person is ostensibly unattractive doesn’t preclude them from sexual activity or from being sexually appealing. Otherwise where the hell would that leave me?’

  If Newson had hoped that Natasha would instantly assure him that he was not remotely ostensibly unattractive he was disappointed.

  ‘Look at the bloke, Ed,’ Natasha said, producing ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of Adam Bishop from her bag. ‘Tell me this killing is sexual.’

  ‘You’re being subjective. Go into Google and do a search on ‘torturing fat ugly men’. I bet you score twenty hits straight off. In fact it’s occurred to me that we may not be dealing with a murder here at all but a consensual sadomasochistic liaison that just went too far. Bishop may have wanted to be stabbed and milked of his blood.’

  ‘Stabbed in the eyes?’ Natasha asked rather too loudly, causing people around the café to look up from their frothy cups.

  ‘Yes, very possibly in the eyes,’ Newson hissed. ‘Remember the case in Germany where some nutter agreed to have his penis cut off and then watched as his assailant cooked and ate it? It must have been total agony, mentally and physically, yet it was his choice and you’ve got to suppose he enjoyed it.’

  ‘All right, it happens, but it doesn’t happen very often.’

  ‘Who knows how often it happens when it’s con-sensual? That man in Germany answered an internet search appealing for a person who would consent to be murdered and eaten. The internet has opened the door for loads of activities that in the past would probably never have found physical expression. I mean, who would ever have thought that anyone would dream of such a thing as eating people, let alone advertise for it. But someone did, someone wanted a hot, smooth, silky, frothy, warming, enveloping human corpse to eat and he went looking for it. The only thing more astonishing is that he found a volunteer. The cannibal got an email from his lunch and in due course they met up. They both got their wish. The penis was merely an hors d’oeuvre.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ conceded Natasha. ‘It could be sexual. It could be a black-magic ritual. Who knows? In a previous life Adam Bishop might have been a pincushion. There could be any number of motives
, but surely the most obvious one is that this is a builders’ tiff.’

  ‘Tiff? He was stabbed three hundred and forty-seven times.’

  ‘I knew Doctor Clarke would count them.’

  ‘She’s very thorough.’

  ‘She’s a very thorough pain in the arse. Look, those stabs were a warning. Bishop undercut someone, pinched one too many jobs, sold on a truckload of dodgy cement and offended the gyppos. Whatever. Someone needed to make him an example. That’s what this is about. Hard men doing each other in.’

  ‘You can’t say gyppos,’ Newson admonished.

  ‘Tinkers, travellers, boys from the black stuff, call them what you like. There’s a lot of very tough people in the building and associated trades. Bishop made the wrong enemies and they stabbed him to death to warn off others.’

  ‘Stabbed him to death three hundred and forty- seven times with a five-centimetre-long skewer?’

  ‘It would warn me off.’

  ‘I just think it seems like a very mean-spirited little weapon to use to kill so big and violent a man. Not the weapon I’d imagine avenging navvies or double-crossed Tarmac cowboys would choose.’

  ‘Perhaps they wanted to belittle him. You know, a little prick for a little prick, and we all know he did have a little prick.’

  ‘We don’t know any such thing,’ said Newson. ‘No six-hour corpse which has been systematically milked of nearly every drop of blood is going to appear well hung. Honestly, you girls, any opportunity to belittle the penis.’

  ‘It’s our job.’

  ‘Look how many times the attacker stabbed the scrotum. You can’t deny that the pricking is more intense there than on the limbs or back. And there’s also a thick cluster of stabs in the anus. Bishop must have been face down for hours. Look at the photos.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ve seen them,’ said Natasha. ‘I took them, and Mr Bishop’s lacerated arse is something I’m trying not to remind myself of.’

  Newson looked at the photos and was once again sickened to his stomach. These wounds were peculiarly horrible even to someone of Newson’s considerable experience. The killer seemed to have taken such care with his pricks; this was no frenzied attack, it was considered.

  ‘The killer took aim. He took aim three hundred and forty-seven times. He chose each new target carefully, took aim and drove in his spike.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it sexual.’

  ‘No, but it makes it very, very weird, and in my experience of police work, weird rarely happens only once.’

  FOUR

  Inspector Newson and Sergeant Wilkie drove to Willesden in Natasha’s Renault Clio, and stood once more before the house in which the horror had occurred.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen stone cladding on a house as big as this,’ Newson observed. ‘I’m amazed they got permission.’

  ‘The Bishops did exactly what they liked and got permission for exactly what they wanted. Guaranteed there’s a bloke on the council planning committee who was given the choice between a handful of wedge or a handful of broken fingers. One thing’s for certain, none of the neighbours were going to object.’

  The master bedroom was at the front of the house, with large bay windows overlooking the drive.

  ‘Bishop must have been in agony for the best part of twenty-four hours. Did nobody hear his screams?’

  ‘No, because of the music.’ Natasha referred to her notebook. ‘The Bishops played music most of the time, and they liked it loud. Early seventies middle of the road, mostly, Brotherhood of Man, New Seekers, Tony Orlando and Dawn with ‘Tie A Yellow Ribbon’. Demis Roussos. ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ was a big favourite. Imagine that at full volume.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Not normally all night, but late. On the night in question it was on all day and then all night, but nobody had the guts to complain. Nobody ever crossed the Bishops, or at least if they did they only did it once. Last year a family that lived two houses down actually moved out without selling.’

  Newson felt for these poor terrorized people. The possibility of noisy neighbours horrified him. He’d once lived next door to a family whose teenage sons tuned motorbikes all weekend and it had made him feel suicidal. ‘Perhaps the neighbours did it,’ he mused, looking up and down the quiet street.

  ‘Well, I can assure you that not one of them’s sorry he’s dead.’

  ‘It’d certainly explain why nobody seems to have seen anything.’

  Newson took out his mobile phone and scrolled down to ‘Clarke’.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Doctor, but I just wanted to make sure that there’s no chance that Bishop’s wounds could have been delivered by different hands. You know — left and right, weak and strong, that sort of thing.’ He had a vague memory of reading a novel or seeing a film in which the murder had been -solved along these lines. ‘It’s just we’ve been wondering about the neighbours. They all hated Bishop with a vengeance. Thought they might have made a party of it.’

  ‘I said to you at the time, Detective Inspector, it’s my considered opinion that the wounds were delivered by a single suspect and I’m not in the habit of altering my conclusions to fit vague, arbitrary police theories.’

  ‘What did she say?’ Natasha asked after Newson had put away his phone.

  ‘She said she thought it was a brilliant idea, but she still feels we’re dealing with a lone suspect. Come on, let’s go and talk to Lady Macbeth.’

  Mrs Bishop was clearly a proud woman and despite the horror of what she’d been through it was obvious to Newson that she had no intention of allowing herself to appear vulnerable, particularly to the police. Her eyes were still red and swollen but her gaze was steady, as was the hand with which she lifted her teacup and lit her long white Kool cigarette. She’d taken trouble to have her great cloud of dyed blond hair redone and she’d applied heavy make-up to the marks left around her mouth by the duct tape. The Bishops must have been a formidable couple.

  ‘Ad let him in, that’s all there is to it. There’s no way he could have forced his way through. Our house is Fort effing Knox. The only way in is the front door and no one gets through that ‘less Ad or me wants ‘em to. Ad’s a very big bloke, you know. Or he was.’

  Mrs Bishop’s voice cracked very slightly as she made this last comment, and briefly she looked away.

  ‘We can do this later if you’d prefer, Mrs Bishop,’ Newson said gently, but his only reward was an angry snarl.

  ‘There’s never a nice time to talk to the police, is there?’ she snapped back. ‘Just get on with it.’

  ‘You were saying that you don’t believe it would have been possible for an assailant to force their way past your husband.’

  ‘No effing way. Don’t be fooled by the fact that Ad was out of shape. He was fat, but he was hard.’

  ‘So you think that Mr Bishop might have known his assailant?’

  ‘I just know he let him in, that’s all. We’ve got a video-entry monitor. Nobody gets near us ‘less we want ‘em to.’

  Newson seized upon the point. ‘And yet this man got very close indeed to your husband. Mrs Bishop, forgive me for asking, but are you aware of Mr Bishop’s ever taking any interest in…um…alternative sexual practices?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To your knowledge, did your husband harbour any sadomasochistic or homoerotic instincts?’

  For a moment Mrs Bishop’s brittle confidence deserted her. She was genuinely shocked. ‘Are you saying my husband was a poof?’

  ‘I have to be open to all possibilities. You just said that nobody got close to Mr Bishop unless he wanted them to, but, as we know, his assailant got into his bedroom and tied him to a bed — ’

  ‘Take that back!’ Mrs Bishop snarled, eyes flashing. ‘Take that back, you little ginger wanker!’

  ‘It would not be the first time that a death has resulted from sexual experimentation gone wrong, and the families in such instances are rarely aware of — ’

  ‘Now you listen h
ere, you cunt — ’

  Natasha, who was standing behind Mrs Bishop, stepped forward. ‘Mrs Bishop, will you please address the inspector as Detective Inspector Newson, Mr Newson, or nothing at all. If you carry on effing and blinding like that I’ll caution you.’

  ‘Caution me! I’m the fucking widow, love! You can’t caution the fucking widow! Particularly seem’ as how your little shortarse mate here just called my poor dead husband who ain’t ‘ere to defend himself a poof!’

  ‘I shall take it, then, Mrs Bishop, that you do not believe your husband deviated from what might be called the sexual norm,’ Newson said. ‘Let’s move on.’ He smiled pleasantly but underneath he was angry. This woman did not have a solitary ounce of respect for him and why? Because he was five foot four and freckly. And Natasha, gorgeous Natasha, had felt the need to defend him.

  ‘Please tell us what happened on the morning your husband was attacked,’ he continued.

  Mrs Bishop obviously felt that she’d made her point and calmed down. ‘I’d been out at the shops and Ad was at home because he’d been on the piss the night before. Well, we all had. England — Turkey. Lovely night, it was. Ad hired the whole pub. Private function. Lock-in till three. Paid for the lot, food and all. Full buffet collation. Drink what you like, even champagne for the girls. Ad was like that.’

  ‘England won that game, didn’t they?’—

  ‘Of course we did.’

  Newson wasn’t interested in football, but everyone knew about England’s famous victory.

  ‘Anyway, Ad slept in the next morning and I went out at about nine while he was still asleep. I went down to Knightsbridge because Prada and Gucci were both having sales. I was gone about two hours. I took the Bentley because my little Merc was getting valeted. I let myself back in and was just shouting for Juanita to get my shopping in out of the boot when the bastard jumped me.’

  ‘From behind?’

  ‘Of course from behind. Otherwise ‘e’d ‘ave ‘ad me fucking Jimmy Choos in his bollocks, an’ mark my words, one day he will.’

  ‘So you were unable to struggle?’