Jack Pendragon - 02 - Borgia Ring Page 25

  The dogs died at different times during the past week.

  The most recent was the dog found near South Street (designated Dog No.1 according to order of discovery). The earliest (Dog No.2), a collie, was found near a housing estate just inside the search perimeter.

  Time of death determined by stage of development of the larvae of Lucilia sericata, a common blowfly.

  Because of unusually hot weather, the larvae have developed considerably faster than at average outdoor temperatures.

  No eggs found on Dog No.1. This determines time of death to be less than 18 hours before body was found.

  Two dogs (Nos.3 and 4) were found to have ‘1st instar’ larvae (1st stage of development). This places time of death to between 18 and 38 hours before discovery of bodies.

  Remaining two dogs (Nos. 2 and 5) showed presence of both ‘2nd instar’ and ‘3rd instar’ larvae, placing time of death to between 50 and 90 hours before discovery.

  All five dogs were killed in similar ways, using a powerful poison. Preliminary analysis shows extremely high levels of arsenic.

  Hypodermic needle found at Site No.1 shows traces of same poison. Also a partial strand of black, synthetic material found on barrel of hypodermic. Currently under analysis at Lambeth Road lab.

  He placed the report back on the desk and ran his fingers over his forehead. What connection did the dogs have with the murders of Karim, Middleton and Ketteridge? There had to be a link. Three dead men and five dead dogs within a few square miles, and all within a week? The dogs couldn’t have just been ‘practice’, as Inspector Grant had put it. If the murderer had experimented before turning to his first human victim, why continue killing dogs? No, that theory didn’t hold water.

  There was a tap at the door. He looked up to see Janie Martindale. She was small, no more than five feet tall, with cropped black hair, a boyish face and figure. ‘Sir? Sorry, you looked lost in thought,’ she said.

  ‘No problem at all. I was lost in thought, but going nowhere with the exertion.’ He gave her a smile.

  ‘I thought you might be interested in this.’ She held out a sealed plastic bag. Inside lay a piece of red fabric. He took it from her and peered through the plastic.

  ‘It’s velvet, sir. I found it on a gatepost at site number two, a piece of waste ground near the railway bridge off Sycamore Road … the spaniel. It’s hard to tell how long the fabric has been there, but the dog died around seventy-two hours ago. This piece has kept its pigmentation integrity – sorry, its colour. Strongly coloured fabric like this fades in intense sunlight, and we’ve had abnormally bright sun recently. The degradation isn’t noticeable to the naked eye after such a short time, but under a microscope you can tell. I would say the velvet has been on the gatepost no more than a week and quite possibly about as long as dog number two has been dead – three days. I wouldn’t normally stick my neck out and say something like that. But if you put it together with the gold thread and the slipper imprint found at the scene of the Tony Ketteridge murder …’

  Pendragon nodded. ‘Someone dressing up.’

  Janie Martindale shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s a theory.’

  ‘It is, Dr Martindale.’

  She laughed. ‘Not a doctor … yet, Chief Inspector! Only six months away though, hopefully.’

  ‘Okay … well, good work, Ms Martindale.’

  The young forensic scientist had only been gone a few minutes when there came another tap at the door and Superintendent Hughes peered in. ‘You busy?’ she asked.

  ‘I was about to knock on your door actually, ma’am.’ He looked at his watch. ‘My time’s almost up.’

  She perched herself on the edge of the desk. ‘That’s what I wanted to see you about.’

  Pendragon put his hands up. ‘Okay, I’ve done my best. It’s back to you.’

  ‘Jack, I think perhaps I’ve been a little unfair on you. You look shattered. It’s been a hell of a week.’

  He stared at her, surprised.

  ‘I’ve just had a call from the lab. They’ve found a tiny piece of DNA on the synthetic fibre they found on the hypodermic. It could be from someone completely unconnected with the case, but they’ll do their best to find out. They told me you’d put Sergeant Mackleby on to collecting voluntary DNA swabs from everyone even vaguely linked with the case.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good move. If Dr Newman has any chance with that sample on the fibre, it will only be of any use if we have something on file we can match it to.’

  He produced a half-smile. ‘Glad to hear I’ve done something right.’

  Hughes looked at the photos of the dogs and then up at Pendragon. ‘I’ve also had a call from Commander Ferguson.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He was cheerful for once. Though still very much pissed off we haven’t caught the “Mile End Murderer”.’

  ‘Oh, God! Even the bloody Commander is using that ridiculous …’

  ‘Commander Ferguson sees himself as “the people’s copper”,’ Hughes interjected with a faint smile. ‘And that’s strictly off the record!’

  Pendragon sighed. ‘So, he’s pissed off about the murders, but …?’

  ‘But he’s delighted we’ve caught the bastards who’ve been flooding the market with cheap E.’

  Pendragon raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Turnbull’s given a very full confession and has named names. He and Dr Adrian Frampton were actually manufacturing the stuff, but we also have the names of half a dozen dealers. I think we can safely say we’ve shut down distribution for … oh … at least a month. Until, that is, some other clever little sod sets up in business.’

  ‘So, catching Turnbull has bought me a reprieve, has it?’

  ‘A brief one, Jack, a brief one. But you know what? I feel quietly confident we’re closing in on the “Mile End Murderer”.’

  ‘I wish I could share your confidence,’ Pendragon replied.

  Pendragon had just turned off the light and was closing the door to his office when his phone rang. For a second he considered ignoring it, but then thought better of it, flicked the light back on and retraced his steps.

  ‘Pendragon.’

  ‘Chief Inspector? It’s Geoffrey Stokes. I wasn’t sure if you’d still be at the station.’

  ‘How may I help you, Professor?’

  ‘Well, I think I may be able to help you, Chief Inspector. I’ve become rather obsessed with your case, I’m afraid. I’ve slipped way behind schedule and my students have been ignored!’ He produced an odd, whinnying laugh. ‘But I think you’ll consider it worth my while. Could I trouble you to pop over to the lab?’

  Pendragon glanced at his watch. It was 6.32. ‘Well, I …’

  ‘I have some very exciting findings.’

  Pendragon couldn’t help thinking that, in his experience, what academics considered ‘exciting’ was not nearly as titillating or as useful as they thought. But then he recalled how much the professor had already discovered, from so little, and found himself agreeing to come over to Queen Mary right away.

  As Pendragon passed the front desk, a young constable taking the evening shift saw him and nodded. Then he suddenly remembered something. ‘Oh, sir. I was just about to pop down to your office. Just had a call from a …’ he looked at his pad ‘… Mr Jameson. He lives on Sycamore Road. Says he saw something odd the other night.’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘He reckons he saw a woman leaving the waste ground where one of the dogs was found.’

  Pendragon frowned. ‘When?’

  ‘He said Tuesday, about midnight. He said the woman looked odd.’

  ‘That word again, Constable. What does “odd” mean?’

  ‘Apparently, he only caught a brief glimpse, but she was wearing a long flowing dress and she had long black hair. Sounds a bit dodgy, don’t you think, sir? Maybe he’d had one too many.’

  Pendragon nodded. ‘Thanks, Constable,’ he said, and strode towards the main doors. Tuesday night was around
seventy-two hours ago, he mused. Dog No. 2 found on the waste ground near Sycamore Road showed evidence of ‘2nd instar’ larvae. And the words Sue Latimer had used rang inside his head: ‘They’ll probably dress up …’

  ‘Chief Inspector, it’s good to see you again,’ Stokes said warmly as he guided Pendragon through the doors of the lab where they had talked the previous day.

  ‘So, what are these exciting findings you mentioned?’

  ‘There’s so much, I don’t know where to begin.’

  Pendragon looked at the professor and realised with a sudden stab of pity that this man was even more married to his job than he was to his, and he was probably even more lonely. At least, Jack remembered, he had a date tonight. He somehow doubted Professor Stokes had been out with a female since his graduation dance.

  ‘Well,’ Stokes went on, ‘one thing at a time. The bone. Please thank Dr Newman for me. It’s been most revealing.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, I found a tiny, tiny trace of soft tissue on it.’ He walked over to another of his futuristic-looking machines and patted it. ‘And our DNA analyser is second to none. In fact, Thomas, our tech guru, modified this himself. It’s more sophisticated than anything you’ll find at Quantico.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘Our skeleton is that of a young Caucasian male, aged fifteen to twenty-five. He died between 1580 and 1595. And the cause of his death?’ Stokes paused for dramatic effect and held Pendragon’s gaze. ‘Arsenic poisoning.’

  Pendragon raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, that is …’

  ‘It’s exciting, isn’t it? But there’s more, Chief Inspector. The ring. I’ve been studying the main image again. I’ve put it through various filters and enhancers, but it took a fresh eye to spot something I kept missing. Thomas …’

  ‘Your tech guru?’

  ‘Yes, the same. He took one look at the picture of the ring and pointed out the anomaly on the side of the jewel.’

  ‘Anomaly?’

  ‘Yes, take a look.’ Stokes walked to a desk and pulled over a huge enlargement of the ring. ‘There. See that bulge? Here, take this.’ He handed Pendragon a loupe.

  The DCI peered at the image with the loupe at his eye. Straightening, he said, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Good question, Chief Inspector. I’ve given it a great deal of thought and can reach only one possible conclusion. This ring is no ordinary bishop ring. Yes, it was almost certainly owned by the Borgias, which means it wasn’t ordinary to begin with. But there’s even more to it than that. I believe this ring is the famous “poisoner’s” ring once owned by Lucrezia Borgia.’

  ‘Poisoner’s ring?’

  ‘Yes. You know about Lucrezia Borgia?’

  ‘Well, I know she was the daughter of Pope Alexander. She was an infamous nymphomaniac and probably a murderer, depending on which historical account you accept.’

  ‘Oh, make no bones about it, Chief Inspector. Lucrezia Borgia was pure evil. She is known to have murdered at least three people. And this ring … this very ring … was almost certainly the means by which she killed those people without ever being caught. Documents written after her death tell us that Lucrezia possessed a ring which fits the description of this one.’ He tapped the photograph. ‘The jewel pivoted back and a spike levered up from inside. She coated the spike with a particularly potent poison she named Cantarella. The major component of Cantarella was arsenic, but nobody knows the exact composition. According to some accounts, the recipe for the poison was inscribed inside the ring.’

  Pendragon stared at the photograph. ‘That tiny bulge on the side – what you call an anomaly – that’s the mechanism used to open the ring?’

  ‘Correct. When Lucrezia was about to kill, she depressed that tiny lever. The top flipped open, the spike swung up and … well, you can imagine.’

  ‘So, what happened to the ring?’ Pendragon asked.

  ‘That’s the really fascinating thing. It disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Actually, it disappeared twice. Lucrezia died in Ferrara in June 1519, and the ring was not listed among the effects in her estate. We know that several people wanted to get their hands on it, including her third husband, Alfonso d’ Este, who survived her by some fifteen years. But it’s almost certain he never found it.’

  ‘And the second time?’

  ‘There’s a story that the ring was used in an attempt to kill Elizabeth I during the late-sixteenth century.’

  Pendragon looked incredulous.

  ‘You find that hard to believe, Inspector? Well, you shouldn’t. There were many attempts on the life of the Queen. You have to remember, the religious chaos her father, Henry VIII, had initiated troubled Elizabeth’s entire reign, and the wrath of the Catholics was only exacerbated by the humiliation of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Jesuit missionaries were sent to England in an effort to indoctrinate the people against Elizabeth, and some were trained assassins.’

  ‘I had no idea. So, you think the skeleton is that of a Catholic fanatic who tried to kill the Queen of England?’

  ‘Well, I can’t be certain. Almost nothing is known of the assassination attempt using the ring of Lucrezia Borgia. The ring was lost and it seems the whole affair was hushed up. But there is a strongly held view among some academics that the assassin almost succeeded.’

  ‘And that’s why it was hushed up?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But it doesn’t make sense. If the skeleton is that of the mysterious assassin, how did he die from arsenic poisoning?’

  ‘Sadly, Chief Inspector, I think that’s something we may never learn.’

  Stepney, Saturday 11 June, 7.00 p.m.

  The opening notes of Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli ‘Kyrie’ spilled out of the speakers as the man crossed the floor to the cheval glass standing in the corner. The room was lit solely by candles which cast jagged shadows around the walls and the ceiling.

  He contemplated his reflection and smiled with satisfaction. He looked good, he thought, very good. The long, black hair of his wig fell around his white-pancaked neck. A new band of gold roses, designed by a master craftsman he had found in Rome, rested on his head. He had chosen a rich blue silk gown with a gold bodice. His make-up was particularly dramatic tonight, and very fetching, he thought: a red slash of lipstick, the shade of spilled blood, black eyeliner and shiny green eyeshadow, rouged cheeks and a beauty spot just above his upper lip. His eyes sparkled as he considered himself. He smiled, revealing even white teeth.

  Turning, he took two paces over to the bench. Above it was a print of his favourite portrait of Lucrezia. It was the Bartolomeo Veneziano, painted around 1510, in which she is wearing a white robe and a Turkish headdress, a small posy of flowers clasped in her right hand. She looked remarkably innocent, he thought, so wonderfully deceptive. A woman of pure genius.

  He picked up a test tube from the rack and raised it to the candlelight. It contained a green, viscous liquid. He tilted the test tube and watched the substance flow slowly along the glass and back again.

  Next to the rack of test tubes stood the little bracket he had fashioned himself. The ring rested in the bracket, the jewel levered back, the spike protruding. Taking a slender glass wand, he unstoppered the test tube, stuck the rod inside and removed it, coated in green. Very carefully, he smeared the spike in the ring with the green liquid and pushed the jewel back into place. Plucking the ring from the bracket, he pulled it down on to the fifth finger of his left hand.

  He held up his hand and gazed at the ring. His own good fortune in learning of it never ceased to amaze him. It was destiny, of course. And, in his eyes, the ring’s beauty never faded. In the green depths of the jewel he could see infinite space, a trillion universes, all things, for ever. He felt his stomach churn as he remembered again how this object had once been owned by the Goddess Lucrezia herself. Her finger had slipped inside this gold band just as his now filled the space. It was a communion, a deep, d
eep connection between himself and the woman who had been the object of his adoration for so long.

  He turned back to the mirror and rotated his hand, jewel outward, letting the candlelight catch the myriad tiny green worlds inside the emerald. He shifted his fingers, admiring the way the colour set off his eyeshadow so brilliantly.

  He heard a sound and stopped. He turned the music off and concentrated on the silence. The sound came again. What was it? A swish of fabric? Something scraping? He tiptoed to the end of the room. The door was ajar. The living-room was dark, the curtains drawn, the lights off. He flicked the wall switch and the room was flooded with light. He stood motionless, his breathing stilled, eyes surveying the room. But there was nothing to see and the only sound was the traffic from the main road and the faint whirring of the fridge in the kitchen.

  Returning to the small, candlelit room, he crossed back to the counter where he kept his chemicals and laboratory apparatus. There was a distillation set up: a condenser, flasks, rubber tubing. Next to this stood a Bunsen burner, a tripod and a set of crucibles. To the right of these, a mortar and pestle, an asbestos mat and metal tongs.

  He moved to the end of the bench where a small pile of black-and-white photographs lay. He picked them up and walked over to a candle in a holder close to the edge of the bench. The photographs were portraits of familiar faces. He took his time studying some of them, his facial expression constantly shifting: a smile, a frown, another smile, a grimace.

  ‘Who should it be?’ he said aloud. ‘Who should it be?’

  Five pictures in, he stopped. ‘Yes.’ He pulled the photograph closer, his eyes moving around the image, taking in every detail. ‘Yes. Detective Chief Inspector Jack Pendragon, MA (Oxon). Oh, yes, perfect, perfect!’ He chuckled as he selected the picture and went to place it on the bench top. Then he stopped. ‘Oh, but hang on … Oh, my!’ He stared at the next image in the pile, glanced back at the photograph of Pendragon then again at the other image. ‘Now that … that would be pure genius.’ And he let out a roar of laughter. ‘Pure … fucking … genius!’ He plucked the picture from the pile and put it down on the counter. Staring up at him was the face of Sue Latimer.