The Oxford Murders Read online

  “But he took a rather strange route. He started visiting psychiatric hospitals and trying out his tests on lobot-omised patients. He collected examples of individual words and symbols written by people in their sleep. He took part in hypnosis sessions. But mainly he studied the types of symbols that brain-damaged patients in quasi-vegetative states used in attempts to communicate. Actually, he was trying to do something which by definition is almost impossible: to study what remains of reason when reason is no longer there watching over things. He thought he might be able to detect some kind of residual movement or stirring which corresponded to an organically imprinted track or routine pathway created by the learning process. I suppose he already had a morbid inclination which had something to do with what he was planning. He had just found out that he was suffering from a very aggressive form of cancer which first attacks the legs. All doctors can do is cut off limbs one after the other. I came to see him after the first amputation. He seemed to be in good spirits, considering the circumstances. He showed me a book his doctor had given him, containing photographs of skulls partially destroyed in accidents, suicide attempts, or smashed by bats. There was a comprehensive clinical account of the consequences and interconnections arising from brain injuries. Looking very mysterious, he pointed out a page which showed the left hemisphere of a brain with the parietal lobe partially destroyed by a bullet. He told me to read what it said below the photograph. The man, who had tried to commit suicide, had fallen into an almost complete coma, but for months his right hand had apparently kept drawing all kinds of strange symbols. Frank explained that, during his visits to hospitals, he had found a close connection between the type of symbols he was collecting and the occupation of the coma patient during their lifetime.

  “Frankie was extremely shy, and this was the only time he confided anything of a personal nature: he told me he regretted never having married and, with a sad smile, he said he hadn’t done much with his life, but he had drawn and manipulated logical symbols for forty years. He was sure he would never find a better subject than himself for his experiment. He was convinced that it would somehow be possible to read the coded residue or substratum that he’d been looking for in the symbols that he would draw. In any case he didn’t intend to be around when they came for his other leg. But he had one last problem to solve, and that was how to ensure that the bullet didn’t cause too much damage, that metal shards didn’t reach the nerve circuits affecting motor function. I’d become fond of him over the years and I told him that I wasn’t prepared to help him with his plan, so he asked if I’d be there to read the symbols, in the event that he succeeded.”

  We both suddenly noticed the hand tense spasmodically, gripping the pencil, as if receiving electric shocks. Fascinated and horrified, I watched the pencil move slowly and clumsily across the page, but Seldom seemed not to pay much attention.

  “He starts writing at this time of day,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice, “and he continues almost all night. Anyway, Frankie was highly intelligent, he found the solution. An ordinary gun, even a small-calibre one, would leave too great a margin of error because of possible bullet fragments. He needed something that could penetrate the skull and reach the brain cleanly, like a small harpoon. This wing of the hospital was undergoing building work at the time and it seems he got the idea from a workman with whom he had a conversation about tools. In the end, he used a nail gun.”

  I leaned forward to try to make out the confused marks appearing on the paper.

  “Until recently his handwriting was perfectly legible, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to read,” said Seldom. “In fact he’s only writing four letters, over and over again. The four letters of a name. All these years Frankie has never drawn a single logical symbol or number. The only thing he writes, endlessly, is a woman’s name.”

  Ten

  Could we go out into the corridor for a moment? I need a cigarette,” said Seldom. He tore the page Frank had just written from the pad and, after glancing at it, threw it in a wastepaper bin. We left the ward quietly and walked down the empty corridor until we found an open window. We watched as a male nurse slowly wheeled a trolley towards us. As he passed, I saw a body shrouded in a sheet, with its face covered. Only an arm remained outside. There was a tag hanging from the wrist with a name on it and underneath I could just make out some numbers which may have been the time of death. The nurse skilfully manoeuvred the trolley, turning and sliding it through a narrow doorway with ease.

  “Is that the morgue?” I asked.

  “No,” said Seldom. “There’s a room like it on every floor. When a patient dies, the body is immediately moved out of the ward so as to free up the bed. The doctor in charge of the floor comes and confirms that the patient is dead and writes out a certificate. The patient is then transferred to the hospital morgue, which is in the basement.” Seldom nodded in the direction of Frank Kalman’s ward. “I’m going to stay and keep Frankie company a little longer. It’s a good place to think. Well, as good as any. But I’m sure you’d like to visit the X-ray department,” he said with a smile. When he saw my surprise, his eyes twinkled and his smile grew even wider. “ Oxford ’s a small place, you know. Anyway, congratulations, Lorna’s great. I met her during my convalescence. She lent me a good number of her crime novels. Have you seen her collection?” He raised his eyebrows in awe. “I’ve never known anyone with such a fascination with crime. You have to go to the top floor,” he said. “Take that lift there on the right.”

  The lift went up with a heavy hydraulic moan. I walked through a maze of corridors, following the arrows to the X-ray department, until I came to a waiting room where a man with a faraway look was sitting, a book lying forgotten on his lap. Through a glass partition I caught sight of Lorna in her uniform, leaning over a bed. She seemed to be patiently explaining something to a child. I moved a little closer to the glass, but couldn’t quite bring myself to interrupt her. She placed a teddy bear on the pillow. The child in the bed was a pale little girl of about seven, with frightened but alert eyes and long ringlets spread out over the pillow. Lorna spoke again and the child hugged the teddy bear tightly. I tapped gently on the partition. Lorna looked up, laughed with surprise and said something I couldn’t hear through the glass. She indicated the door at the side and then, to the child, mimed, with an imaginary racket, that I was her tennis partner. She opened the door, gave me a quick kiss and asked me to wait for a moment.

  I went back to the waiting room. The man was now reading his book. He had stubble on his chin and reddened eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in a long time. With some surprise, I made out the title of his book: From the Pythagoreans to Jesus. The man suddenly lowered the book and met my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “my attention was drawn by the title of your book. Are you a mathematician?”

  “No,” he said, “but since you’re interested in the title I assume that you are.”

  I smiled, nodding. The man stared at me with disconcerting intensity.

  “I’m reading backwards,” he said. “I want to know how things were in the beginning.” Again, he fixed me with his slightly fanatical gaze. “I’m discovering surprising things. For instance, how many sects, or religious groups, would you say there were in Christ’s time?”

  I assumed it would be polite to venture a very small number but, before I’d had a chance to answer, the man went on:

  “There were dozens and dozens,” he said. “The Nazarenes, the Simonites, the Phibionites. Peter and the Apostles were only a tiny group. A tiny group among a hundred. Things could easily have been very different. They weren’t the most numerous, or the most influential, or the most advanced. But they had a shrewd streak that made them stand out from the rest; a single idea, a touchstone that enabled them to pursue and eliminate all other groups until they were the only ones left. While everybody spoke only of the resurrection of the soul, they promised the resurrection of the flesh as well. Coming back to life with one’s own bod
y. An idea which already sounded ridiculous and was already primitive in those days. Christ rose from the tomb on the third day and asked to be pinched and ate some grilled fish. Now, what happened to Christ during the forty days that he was back?”

  His hoarse voice had the somewhat fierce vehemence of the autodidact or the recently converted. He was leaning towards me slightly and an acrid, penetrating smell of sweat wafted from his crumpled shirt. I moved back involuntarily, but it was difficult to escape his fixed stare. I shook my head in appropriate ignorance.

  “Exactly,” he said. “You don’t know, I don’t know, nobody knows. It’s a mystery. All he seems to have done is be pinched and name Peter as his successor on earth. Rather convenient for Peter, don’t you think? Did you know that until then corpses were simply wrapped in shrouds. There was no notion of preserving the body. It was, after all, what religion considered the weakest, most ephemeral part, the part vulnerable to sin. Well, nothing but a few wooden coffins separates us from those times. There’s a whole world of coffins beneath this one. On the outskirts of every city there’s another underground city of coffins, neatly lined up, lids affectingly closed. But we all know what happens inside. In the first twenty-four hours, after rigor mortis, the body starts to dry out. The blood stops transporting oxygen, the cornea turns cloudy, the iris and pupils become distorted, the skin shrivels. On the second day, the large intestine starts to putrefy, and the first green patches appear on the skin. The internal organs have shut down, tissues become soft. The third day, as decomposition progresses, gas bloats the abdomen and the limbs take on a green, marbled appearance. A compound of carbon and oxygen emanates from the body, the same penetrating smell you get from a steak left out of the fridge too long. Corpse fauna, including necrophagous insects, begins to feed on the body. Each of these processes, each exchange of energy, involves an irreversible loss; there is no way a vital function can be recovered. By the end of the third day, Christ would have been a monstrous piece of waste incapable of sitting up, foul-smelling and blind. That’s the truth. But who’s interested in the truth?

  “You’ve just seen my daughter,” he said, and his voice was suddenly full of anguish and despair. “She needs a lung transplant. We’ve been waiting for a donor for a year, she’s on the emergency transplant list. She’s got a month to live at most. Twice now we’ve had a possible donor. Twice I’ve pleaded and begged. But both times the families were Christian and they wanted to give their children a Christian burial.” He looked at me hopelessly. “Do you know that under British law it’s forbidden for the organs of parents who’ve committed suicide to be transplanted into their children? That’s why,” he said, tapping the book cover, “it’s interesting sometimes to go back to the beginning of things. The ancients had other ideas on transplants. The Pythagoreans believed in the transmigration of souls…”

  The man broke off and stood up. The door opened and Lorna came through pushing a bed. The little girl seemed to have fallen asleep. The man exchanged a few words with Lorna, then left, pushing the bed down the corridor. Lorna stood waiting for me to come to her, with an enigmatic smile and her hands in her pockets. Her apron, of a very fine fabric, was stretched pleasingly tight over her bust.

  “What a lovely surprise,” she said.

  “I wanted to see you in your nurse’s uniform.”

  She raised her arms seductively, as if she were going to turn and show off her uniform, but she only let me kiss her once.

  “Any new developments?” she asked, wide-eyed with curiosity.

  “No more murders,” I said. “I’ve just been to the second floor. Seldom took me to Frank Kalman’s ward.”

  “I saw you being cornered by Caitlin’s father,” she said. “I hope he wasn’t too depressing. I suppose he told you about the Spartans, and was scathing about Christians. He’s a widower and Caitlin is his only child. He’s managed to get leave from his job, and for the past three months he’s been here almost all the time. He reads everything he can lay his hands on about transplants. I think by now he’s gone a bit…”-she tapped her temple-“cuckoo.”

  “I was thinking of going to London for the weekend,” I said. “Why don’t you come with me?”

  “I can’t this weekend, I’m on duty both nights. But come on, let’s go to the cafeteria, I can give you a list of bed-and-breakfasts and places to visit.”

  “I didn’t know Arthur Seldom had been to your house,” I said as we made our way to the lift.

  I looked at her with a casual smile and, after a moment, she smiled back amused.

  “He came to give me a copy of his book. I could give you another list, of all the men who’ve been to my flat, but it would be much longer.”

  When I got back to my room at Cunliffe Close I found the envelope I’d prepared for Mrs Eagleton under a notebook and I realised that I’d never paid Beth the rent. I packed enough clothes for the weekend into a bag and went upstairs with the money. From behind the front door Beth told me to wait a moment. When she opened, she looked relaxed and calm, as if she’d just had a long bath. Her hair was wet, she was barefoot and she was wearing a long dressing gown, tightly wrapped around her. She invited me into the sitting room. I barely recognised it-she’d changed the furniture, the curtains, the rug. The room looked much more intimate and quiet, with a sophistication that seemed inspired by some home decor magazine. Though now completely different, it still looked pleasant and simple. Mainly, I reflected, if she had intended to make Wery last trace of Mrs Eagleton disappear, she had certainly succeeded.

  I told her I was going to London for the weekend and she said that she too was going away the following day, after the funeral, on a short tour with the orchestra to Exeter and Bath. I suddenly heard the sound of splashing water from the bathroom, as if a rather large person were getting out of the bath. Beth looked very uncomfortable, as if I had caught her out. I assumed she was remembering, at the same time as I was, the contempt with which she had spoken of Michael only two days earlier.

  I took the bus to London and spent two days wandering around the city, in pleasantly warm sunshine, a tourist happily lost. On Saturday I bought The Times and found a short announcement about Mrs Eagleton’s funeral, together with a brief summary of events which did not, however, provide any new information. In the Sunday papers there was no mention of the case. In Portobello Road, thinking of Lorna, I chose a rather dusty though well-preserved copy of the memoirs of Lucrezia Borgia, before catching the last train back to Oxford. On Monday morning, still half-asleep, I left for the Institute.

  At the end of Cunliffe Close there was an animal lying in the road. It must have been run over during the night. I had to stop myself from retching as I passed it. I’d never seen such an animal before. It looked like a type of giant rat but with a short tail, around which lay a pool of blood. Its head had been totally crushed, but the black snout remained. Where its belly had once been, the unmistakable bulge of what must have been its offspring protruded as if from a torn sack. I quickened my pace involuntarily, trying to escape what I’d seen and the violent, almost inexplicable horror that it had evoked in me. The entire way to the Institute I struggled to rid myself of the image. I went up the steps of the building as if reaching a refuge. As I pushed the revolving door I saw a piece of paper stuck to the glass with Sellotape. The first thing that caught my eye was the diagram of a fish, placed vertically, drawn in black ink, that looked like two overlapping parentheses. Above it, in letters cut from a newspaper, it said: “The second of the series. Radcliffe Hospital, 2.15 PM.”

  Eleven

  In the secretary’s office I found only Kim, the new assistant. I motioned urgently for her to remove her earphone, s and made her follow me to the entrance. She stared at me in surprise when I asked her about the piece of paper stuck to the door. Yes, she’d seen it when she arrived, but hadn’t given it much thought. She’d supposed it referred to a charity event for the Radcliffe-a series of bridge matches, or a fishing competition. She’d been intend
ing to tell the cleaning lady to move it to the notice board.

  Kurt, the night watchman, emerged from his room under the stairs, ready to go home. He approached us, looking worried that there might be a problem. The paper had been there since the previous day, he’d seen it as he arrived. He hadn’t removed it because he’d assumed somebody had authorised it before he came on duty. I said we ought to call the police and that someone should stay there to make sure nobody touched the glass panes of the revolving door or removed the paper as it might be linked to Mrs Eagleton’s murder.