The Chemistry of Death Read online

  He gave a laugh. ‘Good answer. I’m not one of your patients. Remember that.’

  He paused while he held a match to the pipe bowl. ‘So,’ he said, puffing on it. ‘Going to be quite a departure for you after working in a university, isn’t it? And this certainly isn’t London.’ He looked at me over the top of the pipe. I waited for him to ask me to enlarge on my previous career. But he didn’t. ‘Any last-minute doubts, now’s the time to speak up.’

  ‘No,’ I told him.

  He nodded, satisfied. ‘Fair enough. You’ll be staying here for the time being. I’ll get Janice to show you to your room. We can talk more over dinner. Then you can make a start tomorrow. Surgery kicks off at nine.’

  ‘Can I ask something?’ He raised his eyebrows, waiting. ‘Why did you hire me?’

  It had been bothering me. Not enough to make me turn it down, but in a vague way nevertheless.

  ‘You looked suitable. Good qualifications, excellent references, and ready to come and work out in the middle of nowhere for the pittance I’m offering.’

  ‘I would have expected an interview first.’

  He brushed aside the comment with his pipe, wreathing himself in smoke. ‘Interviews take time. I wanted someone who could start as soon as possible. And I trust my judgement.’

  There was a certainty about him I found reassuring. It wasn’t until long afterwards, when there was no longer any doubt that I’d be staying, that he laughingly confided over malt whiskies that I’d been the only applicant.

  But right then such an obvious answer never occurred to me. ‘I told you I don’t have much experience in general practice. How can you be sure I’m up to it?’

  ‘Do you think you are?’

  I took a moment to answer, actually considering the question for the first time. I’d come here so far without thinking very much at all. It had been an escape from a place and people it was now too painful to be around any longer. I thought again about how I must look. A day early and soaking wet. Not even sense enough to come in out of the rain.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘There you are then.’ His expression was sharp, but there was an element of amusement. ‘Besides, it’s only a temporary post. And I’ll be keeping an eye on you.’

  He pressed a button on his desk. A buzzer rang distantly somewhere in the house. ‘Dinner’s usually around eight, patients permitting. You can relax till then. Did you bring your luggage or is it being sent on?’

  ‘I brought it with me. I left it with your wife.’

  He looked startled, then gave an oddly embarrassed smile. ‘Janice is my housekeeper,’ he said. ‘I’m a widower.’

  The warmth of the room seemed to close in on me. I nodded. ‘So am I.’

  That was how I came to be the doctor at Manham. And how, three years later, I came to be one of the first to hear what the Yates boys had discovered in Farnham Wood. Of course, no-one knew who it was, not straight away. Given its evident condition the boys couldn’t even say if the body was that of a man or a woman. Once back in the familiarity of their home, they weren’t even sure if it had been naked or not. At one point Sam had even said it had wings, before lapsing into uncertainty and silence, but Neil just looked blank. Whatever they had seen had overwhelmed any terms of reference they were familiar with, and now memory was baulking at recalling it. All they could agree on was that it was human, and dead. And while their description of the abundant sea of maggots implied wounds, I knew only too well the tricks the dead can play. There was no reason to think the worst.

  Not then.

  So their mother’s conviction was all the stranger. Linda Yates sat with her arm around her subdued youngest son, huddled against her while he half-heartedly watched the garishly coloured TV in their small lounge. Their father, a farm worker, was still at work. She’d called me after the boys had run home, breathless and hysterical. Even though it was a Sunday afternoon, there was no such thing as off-duty in a place as small and isolated as this.

  We were still waiting for the police to arrive. They clearly saw no reason to rush, but I felt obliged to stay. I’d given Sam the sedative, so mild as to be almost a placebo, and reluctantly heard the story recounted by his brother. I’d tried not to listen. I knew well enough what they would have seen.

  It wasn’t anything I needed reminding of.

  The lounge window was wide open, but no breeze came through to cool the room. Outside was dazzlingly bright, bleached to whiteness by the afternoon sun.

  ‘It’s Sally Palmer,’ Linda Yates said, out of the blue.

  I looked at her in surprise. Sally Palmer lived alone on a small farm just outside the village. An attractive woman in her thirties, she’d moved to Manham a few years before me after inheriting the farm from her uncle. She still kept a few goats, and the blood-tie made her less of an outsider than she might otherwise have been; certainly less than I was, even now. But the fact she made her living as a writer set her apart, and made most of her neighbours regard her with a mixture of awe and suspicion.

  I hadn’t heard any talk of her being missing. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because I had a dream about her.’

  It wasn’t the answer I expected. I looked at the boys. Sam, calmer now, didn’t seem to be listening. But Neil was looking at his mother, and I knew whatever was said here would be spread around the village the moment he got out of the house. She took my silence as scepticism.

  ‘She was standing at a bus stop, crying. I asked her what was wrong, but she didn’t say anything. Then I looked down the road, and when I turned back she was gone.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You have dreams for a reason,’ she went on. ‘That’s what this was.’

  ‘Come on, Linda, we don’t know who it is yet. It could be anyone.’

  She gave me a look that said I was wrong, but she wasn’t going to argue. I was glad when the knock came on the door, announcing the arrival of the police.

  There were two of them, both solid examples of rural constabulary. The older man was florid-faced, and periodically punctuated his conversation with a jovial wink. It seemed out of place under the circumstances.

  ‘So, you think you’ve found a body, do you?’ he announced cheerily, shooting me a look, as if to include me in an adult joke that was over the boys’ heads. While Sam huddled against his mother, Neil mumbled responses to his questions, cowed by the uniformed authority in their home.

  It didn’t take long. The older police officer flipped his book closed. ‘Right, we’d better go and take a look. Which one of you boys is going to show us where it was?’

  Sam burrowed his head into his mother. Neil said nothing, but his face paled. Talking was one thing. Going back there was another. Their mother turned to me, worried.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ I said. In fact, I thought it was a lousy one. But I’d dealt with the police enough to know diplomacy was usually better than confrontation.

  ‘So how are we supposed to find it when neither of us know the area?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’ve got a map in the car. I can show you where to go.’

  The policeman didn’t try to hide his displeasure. We went outside, squinting in the sudden brightness. The house was the end one of a row of small stone cottages. Our cars were parked in the lane. I took the map out of my Land Rover and opened it on the bonnet. The sun glanced off the battered metal, making it hot to the touch.

  ‘It’s about three miles away. You’ll have to park up and cut across the marsh to the woods. From what they said the body should be somewhere round here.’

  I pointed to an area on the map. The policeman grunted.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea. If you don’t want one of the boys to take us, why don’t you?’ He gave me a tight smile. ‘You seem to know your way around.’

  I could see by his face that I wasn’t going to have any choice. I told them to follow me and set off. The inside of the old Land Rover smelled of hot plasti
c. I wound both windows down as far as they would go. The steering wheel burned my hands as I gripped it. When I saw how white my knuckles were, I made myself relax.

  The roads were narrow and meandering, but it wasn’t far. I parked in a rutted semi-circle of baked earth, the passenger door brushing against the yellowed hedge. The police car bumped to a halt behind me. The two officers climbed out, the older one hitching up his trousers over his gut. The younger, sunburned and with a shaving rash, hung back a little.

  ‘There’s a track across the marsh,’ I told them. ‘It’ll take you to the woods. Just keep following it. It can’t be more than a few hundred yards.’

  The older policeman wiped the sweat from his head. The armpits of his white shirt were dark and wet. An acrid waft came from him. He squinted at the distant wood, shaking his head.

  ‘It’s too hot for this. Don’t suppose you want to show us where you think it is?’

  He sounded half-hopeful, half-mocking.

  ‘Once you reach the woods your guess is as good as mine,’ I told him. ‘Just keep an eye out for maggots.’

  The younger one laughed, but stopped when the other looked at him balefully.

  ‘Shouldn’t you let a scene of crime team do this?’ I said.

  He snorted. ‘They’ll not thank us for calling them out for a rotting deer. That’s all it usually is.’

  ‘The boys didn’t think so.’

  ‘Well, I think I’d rather see it for myself, if you don’t mind.’ He motioned to the younger man. ‘Come on, let’s get this over with.’

  I watched the two of them clamber through a gap in the hedge and make their way towards the woods. He hadn’t asked me to wait, and I couldn’t see any point in staying. I’d brought them as far as I could; the rest was up to them.

  But I didn’t move. I went back to the Land Rover and took a bottle of water from under my seat. Tepid, but my mouth was dry. I put my sunglasses on and leaned against the dusty green wing, facing towards the woods where the police officers were heading. The flatness of the marsh had already swallowed them from sight. The heat gave the air a steamy, metallic taint, full of the hum and chirrup of insects. A pair of dragonflies danced past. I took another drink of water and looked at my watch. There was no surgery today, but I had better things to do than stand around on a roadside waiting to see what two rural policemen found. They were probably right. It could have just been a dead animal the boys had seen. Imagination and panic had done the rest.

  I still didn’t move.

  A while later I saw the two figures heading back. Their white shirts bobbed against the bleached grass stalks. Even before they’d reached me I could see the pallor of their faces. The younger one had a wet stain of vomit on his front that he seemed unaware of. Wordlessly, I handed him the bottle of water. He took it gratefully.

  The older one wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘Can’t get a bloody signal out here,’ he muttered as he went to their car. He was trying for his earlier gruffness, but not quite making it.

  ‘It wasn’t a deer then,’ I said.

  He gave me a bleak look. ‘I don’t think we need keep you any longer.’

  He waited until I was in the Land Rover before he made his call. As I drove away he was still on the radio. The younger police officer was staring at his feet, the bottle of water dangling from his hand.

  I headed back to the surgery. Thoughts were buzzing away in my head, but I’d erected a screen, keeping them out like flies behind mesh. I kept my mind blank by an effort of will, but the flies were still whispering their message to my subconscious. The road leading back into the village and the surgery came up. My hand went to the indicator and then stopped. Without thinking about it, I made a decision that would echo down the weeks to come, one that would change my own life as well as that of others.

  I went straight on. Heading for Sally Palmer’s farm.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE FARM WAS BORDERED by trees on one side and marshland on the others. The Land Rover threw up dust as it jolted along the rutted track that led to it. I parked on the uneven cobblestones that were all that was left of the courtyard and got out. A tall corrugated-metal barn shimmered in the heat. The farmhouse itself was painted white, peeling and fading now, but still blindingly bright in the sun. Bright green window boxes were fixed either side of the front door, the only shot of colour in a bleached-out world.

  Usually, if Sally was in, her border collie Bess would set off barking before you had chance to knock. Not today, though. There was no sign of life through the windows, either, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. I went to the door and knocked. Now I was here my reason for coming seemed pretty stupid. I stared out towards the horizon as I waited, trying to think of what I should say if she answered. I supposed I could always tell her the truth, but that would make me look as irrational as Linda Yates. And she might misconstrue it, take the reason for my visit as something more than a nagging disquiet I couldn’t explain.

  Sally and I had, if not exactly a history, then at least something more than a casual acquaintance. There had been a time when we’d seen quite a lot of each other. Not too surprising, really: as outsiders who’d both moved to the village from London, we had our past metropolitan lives in common. Plus she was around my age, and the outgoing sort who made friends easily. And attractive. I’d enjoyed the few times we’d met in the pub for drinks.

  But that was as far as it had gone. When I began to sense she might want more I backed off. She’d seemed puzzled at first, but as things had never really had chance to develop between us there had been no ill feeling or embarrassment. When we bumped into each other we still chatted easily enough, but that was all.

  I’d made sure of that.

  I knocked on her door again. I remember I actually felt relieved when she didn’t open it. She was obviously out, which meant I wouldn’t have to explain why I was there. Come to that, I didn’t even know myself. I wasn’t superstitious, and unlike Linda Yates I didn’t believe in premonitions. Except she hadn’t said it had been a premonition, not exactly. Just a dream. And I knew all about how seductive dreams can be. Seductive and treacherous.

  I turned away from the door, and the direction in which my thoughts had started to travel. It was just as well she wasn’t here, I thought, annoyed with myself. What the hell had I been thinking of? Just because some hiker or birdwatcher had died was no reason to let my imagination run away with me.

  I was halfway back to the Land Rover when I stopped. There was something bothering me, but until I turned around again I didn’t know what it was. It still took me a few moments before I realized. It was the window boxes. The plants in them were brown and dead.

  Sally would never let them get that way.

  I went back. The soil in the boxes was baked hard. No-one had watered them for days. Perhaps longer. I knocked on the door, called her name. When there was no answer I tried the handle.

  It wasn’t locked. It was possible she’d got out of the habit of locking her door since she’d lived here. But she was from a city, like me, and old habits died hard. The door stuck as I opened it, caught on the mound of envelopes that lay behind. They slithered in a mini avalanche as I pushed my way in and stepped over them into the kitchen. It was as I remembered: cheerful lemon walls, solid rustic furniture and a few touches that showed she hadn’t been able to leave behind all traces of the city—an electric juicer, stainless-steel espresso maker and large, well-stocked wine-rack.

  Other than the build-up of post, at first glance there was nothing wrong. But the house had a musty, unaired smell, overlaid with the sweet scent of decaying fruit. It came from an earthenware bowl on the old pine dresser, a still-life memento mori of blackened bananas, apples and oranges furred white with mould. Dead flowers, now unrecognizable, hung limply over a vase on the table. A drawer by the sink was half-open, as if she’d been disturbed as she was about to take something from it. I automatically went to close it, but left it as it was.

  She could
be on holiday, I told myself. Or been too busy to bother throwing out old fruit and flowers. There were any number of possible explanations. But I think at that point, like Linda Yates, I knew.

  I considered checking the rest of the house, but decided against it. Already I was starting to think of it as a potential crime scene, and I knew better than to risk contaminating any evidence. Instead I went back outside. Sally’s goats were in a paddock around the back. One glance confirmed that something was badly wrong. A few were still standing, emaciated and feeble, but most were lying prone, either unconscious or dead. They’d almost stripped the paddock of grass, and when I went to the water trough it was bone-dry. A hose was lying nearby, obviously used to fill it. I hung it over the edge of the trough and followed the other end back to a standpipe. As water spluttered into the metal trough one or two of the goats tottered over and began to drink.

  I would get the vet over here, just as soon as I’d called the police. I took out my phone but there was no signal. Reception around Manham was notoriously patchy, which made mobile phones unpredictable at the best of times. I moved further from the paddock and saw the signal bars stutter into life. I was about to dial when I noticed a small, dark shape half-hidden behind a rusting plough. With a tense, oddly certain feeling of what it would be, I went over.

  The body of Bess, Sally’s border collie, lay in the dry grass. It looked tiny, its fur dusty and matted. I batted away the flies that left it to inspect my fresher meat and turned away. But not before I’d seen how the dog’s head had been almost severed.

  The heat seemed suddenly to have intensified. My legs automatically took me back to the Land Rover. I resisted the urge to get in and drive away. Instead, putting it between me and the house, I continued with my call. As I waited for the police to answer I stared at the far green smudge of the woods I’d just come from.

  Not again. Not here.

  I realized a tinny voice was coming from the phone. I turned away from both the distant wood and the house.

  ‘I want to report a missing person,’ I said.