‘Well, he’s fine, obviously. And he’s not a friend; he’s the other half of my brain. I’d discuss it with him, I admit, but it would go no further.’
‘Promise?’
‘Cross my hardened heart.’
‘To be honest it’s a bit of a puzzler, and I could do with some feedback. She had a slight contusion to the orbital frontal region, but was otherwise clean of any marks.’
‘You mean falling from the chair and banging her head wasn’t enough to kill her?’
‘Our bodies are a little tougher than that, Mr Bryant. Otherwise we’d be smashing ourselves to bits like bone-china teacups.’
‘Then what else could it have been?’
‘With the heightened body temperature it feels like toxicosis – systemic poisoning of some kind – but there’s no agent present that I could trace. No oesophageal trauma, so she hadn’t ingested anything severe. Stomach’s fine. That’s the thing with City of London workers – you always find the same gut contents, courtesy of our friends at Pret A Manger. The City workers tend to favour the crayfish and rocket sandwiches.’
‘She wasn’t a City worker. She had a job in a bar in Hoxton. No other marks on the body at all?’
‘None that I could see. The admitting officer says they checked the CCTV and she’d been alone outside the church and inside it. There was a boy working in the shop, but he was in and out – a smoker – and went nowhere near her. There’s a witness report from him that’s the blankest document I’ve ever seen. She was completely alone except for a couple of kids.’
Bryant’s ears pricked up. ‘What kids?’
‘The officer said it looked like she had an argument with two small children a few minutes before going into the church. She was trying to read. They were playing ball near her, annoying her apparently. Not hoodies – well dressed.’
‘Has anyone tried to track the children down?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. What would be the point? What could a small child do?’
‘You never know these days. Nothing else unusual at all? Clothes, personal belongings, mobile, handbag?’
‘You’d have to ask someone else about that. I’m only dealing with the physical remains. Wait a minute – there was one thing.’ He rose and went over to a stack of steel drawers labelled alphabetically. ‘Hang on, it’s gone.’
‘Not “C”,’ said Bryant. ‘Try “O” for “O’Connor”.’
‘Don’t know my own filing system.’ Opening the lower drawer, Fenchurch pulled out a clear plastic bag and held it up. ‘I hung on to this because I had to cut it off her body. She had a piece of red string knotted around her left wrist.’ He threw it over to Bryant. ‘My first thought was Kabbalah.’
‘No,’ said Bryant. ‘A Kabbalah string is usually a single strand of red woollen thread, and it’s associated with Judaism. It’s called a roite bindele in Yiddish. With a name like O’Connor she certainly wasn’t Jewish, and it wasn’t her married name because she’d never had a husband. St Bride’s is the church of St Bridget of Ireland, so I daresay it attracts Irish worshippers.’
‘Then maybe it was just decoration.’
Bryant turned it in the light, thinking. ‘St Bride’s. An interesting place to die. It’s one of the oldest churches in London, at least the seventh to have stood on that site. Wedding cakes.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘A baker called William Rich saw the spire from his window and had the idea for the shape of his daughter’s wedding cake. Oh, and journalists always used it. A few old ones still do. Suggestive, don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t, Arthur. My mind doesn’t store things up for later use like yours does. I prefer to have a brain, not a shed.’
‘A couple of things,’ said Bryant. ‘You had to cut the string off, yes?’
‘Yes, the knot—’
‘Precisely. Not the sort of knot you could do up by yourself. So someone else tied it on for her.’
‘What’s the other thing?’
Bryant had second thoughts. ‘Well, the colour is indicative – but I’ll have to do some research on it.’
‘Except that it’s not your case.’
‘I know, everybody keeps saying that.’ Bryant jammed his hat back on and walked to the door. ‘Ben, will you do me one favour for old times’ sake? Don’t file your conclusions for a couple of days. Say the printer ran out of paper or something. I want to try and get the investigation transferred to the unit.’