The Bat(70)

Grumpy Engelsohn looked like a mad professor. The little hair he had stuck out in all directions and blond bristles were scattered randomly across his face.

‘Yes?’

Harry realised the man had forgotten the phone conversation of some two hours before.

‘My name’s Harry Holy. I rang you about the initial results of the autopsy on Andrew Kensington.’

Even though the room was full of strange smells and solutions Harry could still detect the unmistakable odour of gin on his breath.

‘Oh, yes. Of course. Kensington. Sad case. I spoke with him several times. When he was alive, mind you. Now he’s as silent as a clam in that drawer.’

Engelsohn motioned behind him with his thumb.

‘Listen, Mr . . . what was it again? . . . Holy, yes! We’ve got a queue of bodies here all hassling me to be first. Well, not the bodies, no, the detectives. But all of them will have to sit tight and wait their turn. Those are the rules here, no queue-jumping, understand? So when Big Chief McCormack himself rings this morning and says we have to prioritise a suicide, then I start wondering. I didn’t manage to ask McCormack, but perhaps you, Mr Horgan, can tell me what on earth makes this Kensington so special?’

He shook his head in a toss of contempt and breathed more gin over Harry.

‘Well, we’re hoping that’s what you can tell us, Doctor. Is he special?’

‘Special? What do you mean by special? That he’s got three legs, four lungs or nipples on his back, or what?’

Harry was exhausted. What he needed least of all now was a drunken pathologist trying to be awkward because he felt someone had stepped on his toes. And university-qualified people had a tendency to have more sensitive toes than others.

‘Was there anything . . . unusual?’ Harry ventured, trying another formulation.

Engelsohn regarded him with misty eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There was nothing unusual. Nothing unusual at all.’

The doctor continued to look at him with his head rocking from side to side, and Harry knew there was more to come. He had just inserted a dramatic pause which, to his alcohol-soaked brain, probably did not seem as long as it did to Harry.

‘For us it’s not unusual,’ the doctor continued at length, ‘for a body to be full to the brim with dope. Or, as in this case, with heroin. What is unusual is that he’s a policeman, but as we get so few of your colleagues on our tables I couldn’t say how unusual that is.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Didn’t you say you were the one to find him? What do you think you die of if you’re hanging from the ceiling with a cable round your neck? Whooping cough?’

Inside Harry, the fuse was beginning to burn, but for the time being he held the mask.

‘So he died of suffocation, not an overdose?’

‘Bingo, Horgan.’

‘OK. Next question is time of death.’

‘Let’s say somewhere between midnight and two in the morning.’

‘You can’t be more precise?’

‘Would you be happier if I said five minutes past one?’ The doctor’s already ruddy cheeks were even redder now. ‘OK, let’s say five minutes past one.’

Harry breathed in deep a couple of times. ‘I apologise if I’m expressing myself . . . if I seem rude, Doctor. My English is not always—’

‘—as it should be,’ Engelsohn completed.

‘Exactly. You are undoubtedly a busy man, Doctor, so I won’t delay you any further. I hope, however, you can confirm that you have taken on board what McCormack said about the autopsy report not going through the usual official channels but directly to him.’

‘That’s not possible. My instructions are clear, Horgan. You can pass on my regards to McCormack and tell him that from me.’

The mad little professor faced Harry with his legs akimbo and arms crossed, sure of his ground. There was a glint of battle in his eyes.

‘Instructions? I don’t know what status instructions have in the Sydney Police Force but where I come from instructions are there to tell people what to do,’ Harry said.

‘Forget it, Horgan. Professional ethics is obviously not a subject you’re familiar with in your dealings, so I doubt we’ll be able to have a fruitful discussion about that. What do you think? Shall we draw a line under this now and say goodbye, Mr Horgan?’

Harry didn’t move. He was looking at a man who believed he had nothing to lose. An alcoholic, middle-aged and middle-range pathologist who no longer had any prospects of promotion or getting to the top and who therefore had no fear of anyone or anything. Because what could they actually do to him? For Harry this had been one of the longest and the worst days of his life. And now he’d had enough. He grabbed the lapels of the white coat and lifted him up.