The hospital and the meat market occupied the same small corner of central London, the saviours and purveyors of flesh. In Queen Square, the doctors lurked like white-coated gang members, grabbing a quick cigarette before returning to their wards to administer health advice. Not far from them, in Smithfield, the last of London’s traditional butchers did the same thing. Both areas were at their most interesting before 7.00 a.m., when the doctors were intense and garrulous, the butchers noisome and amiably foul-mouthed.
Dr Benjamin Fenchurch’s parents had been among the first Caribbean passengers to dock in Britain from the SS Empire Windrush in 1948. He had spent his entire working life in the St Bartholomew’s Hospital Coroner’s Office. Over the decades, he had become so institutionalized that he hardly ever left the hospital grounds. He owned a small flat in an apartment building that was so close to his office he could see into it from his kitchen window. He ate in the St Bart’s canteen and always volunteered for the shifts that no one else wanted. Perfectly happy to cover every Christmas, Easter, Diwali and Yom Kippur, he actively avoided the living, who were loud and messy and unreliable, and always let you down. Bodies yielded their secrets with far more grace.
It seemed to Arthur Bryant that this was not a healthy way to live, and yet in many ways he was just as bad, preferring the company of his staff to the world beyond the unit. Working for public-service institutions had a way of making conscientious people feel as if they were always running late. They spent their lives trying to catch up with themselves, and Fenchurch was no exception.
Threading his way through a maze of overlit basement corridors, Bryant reached the immense mortuary that served both the two nearby hospitals and the City of London Police. In the office at the farthest end, Fenchurch was at his lab desk, hunched over his notes, lost in a world of his own.
Bryant cleared his throat.
‘I know you’re there, Arthur. You don’t have to make that absurd noise. I know the sound of your shoes.’ Even after all these years, Fenchurch had retained his powerful Jamaican accent. He removed his glasses and raised a huge head of grizzled grey hair.
Bryant was surprised. ‘Really? My Oxford toecaps?’
‘Nobody else I know still wears Blakey’s.’ He was referring to the crescents of steel affixed to Bryant’s toes and heels that saved leather and ruined parquet floors. ‘I haven’t seen you since that disgusting business with the Limehouse Ratboy.’
‘Yes, that was rather nasty, wasn’t it?’ Bryant looked around. ‘All by yourself today?’
‘Do you see anyone else? My assistant’s off having a baby. I mean it’s his wife who’s having the baby. Why he has to be there as well is a mystery to me. It’s a simple enough procedure. So, what have I done to deserve a visit?’
‘Amy O’Connor.’
‘Oh yes. Thought you might be sniffing that one out. Very interesting.’
‘That’s just what I thought.’
‘Pity it’s not your jurisdiction.’
‘It should have been. She died in a church. Part of our remit is to ensure that members of the general public aren’t placed in positions of danger. If people can’t trust the sanctuary of a church, what can they trust? But I’m not here in an official capacity. I thought you might like some company. Here, I brought you some sherbet lemons.’
Bryant rustled the corner of a paper bag. Fenchurch sniffed. ‘Not much of a bribe, is it?’ He fished inside and took one anyway.
‘We’re playing the Dagenham Stranglers at the Hollywood Lanes Saturday week. I’ll put you on our team.’ For some peculiar reason, bookish Bloomsbury was the home of two decent central London bowling alleys.
‘I thought you’d been banned after that incident with the nutcases.’
‘New ownership. Don’t think you should call them nutcases.’ Bryant sucked ruminatively on a sherbet lemon, clattering it loudly against his false teeth. Last year he had fielded a team of anger-management outpatients to play in a bowling tournament against a group of Metropolitan Police psychotherapists. The outpatients had proven to be sore losers. One of them had tried to make a psychotherapist eat his shoes before knocking him unconscious with a bowling pin. ‘Have you carried out a post-mortem yet?’
‘Last night. I’m afraid it’s going to be an open verdict.’
‘Why so?’
‘You know I’m not allowed to tell you.’
‘Oh come on, Ben, who am I going to tell? I’m old. Most of my friends are either dead, mad or on the way out.’
‘How’s John?’