Part 23 (1/2)
”I'm Detective Inspector James, Met CID,” she said, showing her warrant card. ”I'd like a word with Mr. Hart.”
”He's not here.” The girl showed not the least bit of interest, or apology. There was a hint of a dropped h in her accent. An authentic East End girl, and all the more trendy for it.
”Do you know when he'll be back?”
”Couldn't say.”
”Can you tell me how I can contact him?”
The girl shrugged and handed her a business card from a little silver stand on her desk. ”That's his mobile. But he never answers if he doesn't recognize the number, so you'll have to leave a message.”
”Great. Thanks.” What sort of message did you have to leave to get Caleb Hart to return your call? Gemma wondered. ”Maybe you could help,” she said to the receptionist with a smile. There was no harm in appealing to the girl's sense of importance. ”You're Mr. Hart's personal a.s.sistant, right?” She felt sure that receptionist would not be well received. ”Um-” She let the unspoken query dangle.
”Roxy.”
”Roxy. Oh, that suits you.” That bit of bubbly enthusiasm earned her a slight relaxing of the girl's facial muscles. ”Um, Roxy,” she went on brightly, ”we're just trying to clear up a few details regarding an incident in Crystal Palace on Friday night. I understand that Mr. Hart booked a band at the pub there. We were hoping he might have seen something that would help us clarify the time of this, um, incident.”
”I heard all about that murder,” Roxy said flatly, picking at a manicured fingernail, but Gemma thought she saw a little flare of interest in her eyes. ”Caleb said some policewoman came to the studio on Sat.u.r.day asking about a row the guy had with the guitarist in the band. But Caleb had already left the pub.”
”Oh, that's too bad.” Gemma did her best to look thoroughly disappointed. ”Do you happen to know what time that was?”
”Well, it would have been before ten, because Caleb never misses his Friday night AA meeting at ten. He calls that one Alcoholic's Prime Time. Weekends are tough, you know, when you're used to going down to the pub with your mates.”
”Yeah, I should think they would be,” Gemma agreed. ”Did he have far to go?”
”Dulwich. They meet in a community center there. Caleb organized it.” There was definite pride in Roxy's voice now. Beneath the girl's brittle exterior lay a kernel of hero wors.h.i.+p, thought Gemma. She hoped Caleb Hart deserved it.
”Thanks ever so much for your help, Roxy,” she said. ”And I'll just give Mr. Hart a ring later on to confirm.”
She let herself out, thinking that it was the AA meeting she would be confirming before she got in touch with Hart, and that all roads seemed to lead to Dulwich.
As neither Melody nor Amanda Francis had arrived when Gemma reached the visitors' lounge at the Royal London, she went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and searched out Ras.h.i.+d in his subterranean den. She always found Ras.h.i.+d's office a wonder-its ma.s.s of clutter and graffiti-art-covered walls seemed so at odds with the perfection of his accent-and yet it suited him.
”Gemma!” he said, looking up from a pile of papers. ”Lovely to see you.” When he smiled, his teeth were blindingly white against his olive skin. Today he wore a T-s.h.i.+rt which bore the slogan PATHOLOGY: LIVE THE DREAM, and she couldn't help grinning back at him.
”Ras.h.i.+d, you sound as if you've invited me for afternoon tea in the mortuary.”
He pointed to a shelf behind his desk. ”Kettle. Cups. Why not?”
”No, really.” She shook her head. ”I don't know what you've had in those. Eye of newt?”
”Gemma, I'm hurt. I put them through the instrument sterilizer every day.”
”Now I really will pa.s.s.” Gemma sat in the gray plastic chair-probably filched from the visitors' lounge-in front of Ras.h.i.+d's desk. ”What have you got for us?”
He put his papers, and his teasing, aside. ”I've zipped him up already, but do you want to have a look?”
”Not unless it will be useful.” Gemma had never succ.u.mbed to the fascination of the postmortem.
”Well, he was developing a nice layer of fat round his organs, and some blockage in his arteries. Not good for someone so young. He certainly needed to take up squash and watch his diet, although that's a bit irrelevant now.”
”Yes.”
”And he was certainly strangled, and with the scarf we found round his neck. But it might not have been necessary, if you look at what I found in the tox results.”
”Did he take an overdose of the Valium we found?” asked Gemma.
”Not an overdose, no, although I'd certainly say he was liberal with the prescribed dosage. But it was the combination of things that could very well have killed him without the manual a.s.sist. He was loaded with Xanax as well as the Valium, and his blood alcohol was sky high.”
”Xanax? But the SOCOs didn't find any in his flat.”
”No. Which means either he bought it or took it from someone, or-”
”Could someone have slipped it to him?”
”My thought exactly, unless the guy was a complete idiot who didn't realize you shouldn't mix the two drugs, and especially not with alcohol. My guess would be that it was in the gin and tonics. The bitterness of the tonic would have disguised the taste. And that the gins were doubles. Even if he'd been drinking all day, he'd have metabolized some of the alcohol, so I'd think it was administered over a fairly short time period.”
”No wonder he was sick,” Gemma said.
”Yes. And that might have been enough to save him, if someone hadn't throttled him.”
”Were there any signs that he struggled?”
”No. There was no tissue under his nails, or any bruising to indicate that he tried to fight at the last minute. Although if he was already turned over on his stomach with his hands bound behind him, and his feet bound, there wouldn't have been a whole lot he could do.”
”Did he trust whoever tied him up, or would he have been so out of it from the drugs and the alcohol that he didn't know what was happening?”
”Hard to say. He might have been slipping in and out of consciousness.”
Gemma tried to visualize the scene. ”Could a woman have done this?”
”The strangling, certainly. And the tying up, if he was either willing or too out of it to struggle. My question would be whether a woman could have helped him back from the pub, then got him undressed and onto the bed. He was a fairly big bloke. Fifty-fifty, I'd say.”
”Thanks, Ras.h.i.+d. That really narrows things down,” said Gemma.
”Glad to be of service,” he answered with a grin.
”The barman at the Prince of Wales didn't remember serving Shaun Francis more than one drink. I wonder if any of the other staff will remember someone ordering double G and Ts? We'll have to get someone-” Gemma's phone rang.
It was Melody. ”Boss, I'm upstairs, and Amanda Francis is here.”
”Hang on a sec.” Gemma looked at Ras.h.i.+d. ”The sister's here for the ID. Is he ready?”
”I'll have the attendants put him in the viewing room,” Ras.h.i.+d answered, already slipping out of the office to take care of it.