The Bat(10)

‘Er—’

‘Anyway, yesterday I’d had enough and marched in and switched off the sodding machine. “I need it to think!” screamed the boy. I said he would have to read like normal folk. “People are different, Dad,” he said, pissed off. Yup, he’s at that age, you know.’

McCormack paused and looked at a photograph on the desk.

‘You got kids, Holy? No? Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’ve done. What rat-hole did they book you into, by the way?’

‘Crescent Hotel in King’s Cross, sir.’

‘King’s Cross, OK. You’re not the first Norwegian to have stayed there. A couple of years ago we had an official visit from the Bishop of Norway, or someone like that, can’t remember his name. Anyway, his staff in Oslo had booked a room for him at King’s Cross Hotel. Perhaps the name had some biblical connotation or other. When the bishop arrived with his retinue one of the seasoned prostitutes caught sight of the clerical collar and harangued him with a few juicy suggestions. Think the bishop checked out before they’d even carried his bags up the stairs . . .’

McCormack laughed so much there were tears in his eyes.

‘Yeah, well, Holy, what can we do for you today?’

‘I was wondering if I could see Inger Holter’s body before it’s sent to Norway, sir.’

‘Kensington can take you to the morgue when he comes in. But you’ve got a copy of the autopsy report, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, sir, I just . . .’

‘You just?’

‘Think better with the body in front of me, sir.’

McCormack turned to the window and mumbled something that Harry construed as ‘fine’.

The temperature in the cellar of South Sydney Morgue was eight degrees, as opposed to twenty-eight degrees on the street outside.

‘Any the wiser?’ Andrew asked. He shivered and pulled his jacket tighter around him.

‘Wiser, no,’ Harry said, looking at the earthly remains of Inger Holter. Her face had survived the fall relatively well. On one side the nostril had been torn open and the cheekbone knocked into a deep hollow, but there was no doubt that the waxen face belonged to the same girl with the radiant smile on the photo in the police report. There were black marks around the neck. The rest of the body was covered with bruises, wounds and some deep, deep cuts. In one of them you could see the white bone.

‘The parents wanted to see the photos. The Norwegian ambassador explained that it was inadvisable, but the solicitor insisted. A mother shouldn’t have to see her daughter like that.’ Andrew shook his head.

Harry studied the bruising on the neck with a magnifying glass.

‘Whoever strangled her used his bare hands. It’s difficult to kill someone with that method. The murderer must be either very strong or very motivated.’

‘Or have done it several times before.’

Harry looked at Andrew.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘She has no fragments of skin under her nails, she has none of the murderer’s hair on her clothes and she has no grazing on her knuckles. She was killed so quickly and efficiently that she never had a chance to put up much of a fight.’

‘Does this remind you of anything you’ve seen before?’

Andrew shrugged. ‘When you’ve worked here long enough all murders remind you of something you’ve seen before.’

No, Harry thought. It’s the other way round. Work long enough and you see the tiny nuances each murder has, the details that distinguish one from another and make each one unique.

Andrew glanced at his watch. ‘The morning meeting starts in half an hour. We’d better get a move on.’

The leader of the investigative unit was Larry Watkins, a detective with a legal background, on a swift upward curve through the ranks. He had narrow lips, thinning hair and spoke fast and efficiently without intonation or unnecessary adjectives.

‘Or social antennae,’ Andrew said, not mincing his words. ‘A very able investigator, but he’s not the person you ask to ring the parents when their daughter has been found dead. And then he starts swearing whenever he’s stressed,’ he added.

Watkins’s right-hand man was Sergey Lebie, a well-dressed, bald Yugoslav with a black goatee that made him look like Mephisto in a suit. Andrew said he was usually sceptical of men who were so fussy about their appearance.

‘But Lebie isn’t really a peacock, just very meticulous. Among other things he has a habit of studying his nails when anyone talks to him, but he doesn’t mean it to seem arrogant. And then he cleans his shoes after the lunch break. Don’t expect him to say much, not about himself or anything else.’