Beyond the Limit: The Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy, #3

By Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

How far would you go to protect a secret?

 

The lifeless body of a woman wearing an evening dress is discovered in the party room of the wax museum. Everything would suggest suicide, but DCI Eric Shaw, team chief at the Forensic Services of Scotland Yard who's investigating the scene with crime scene investigator Adele Pennington, immediately notices a few similarities with the case of a serial killer nicknamed Plastic Surgeon, closed three years ago with the arrest of Robert Graham.
Perhaps someone is emulating Graham, or he had an accomplice, but there is a third possibility that especially concerns Eric, who, being convinced of Graham's guilt, tampered with the physical evidence to ensure his conviction.
What if he made a mistake and sent the wrong person to jail?
After eleven months, and despite her reluctance, he once again finds himself working with DI Miriam Leroux from the Murder Investigation Teams. Now they have to race against time to follow the trail of the elusive murderer.
This is possibly Shaw's final major case before a promotion to superintendent. The other contender for advancement being DCI George Jankowski, a man who is not afraid to weed out the dirty secrets of others to get what he wants.
And Eric and his pupil hide an unspeakable secret.

 

 

The destiny of DCI Eric Shaw is about to be fulfilled.

This book is written in British English.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anakina
• Release date: May 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215944226

Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is an Italian science fiction and thriller author. She has lived in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) since 1993, earning a degree in biology and working as a writer, scientific and literary translator, and freelance web copywriter. In the past she also worked as researcher, tutor and professor’s assistant in the field of ecology at the University of Cagliari. In 2012-2013 she wrote and published a hard science fiction series set on Mars and titled Deserto rosso. The whole series was also published as omnibus and hit No. 1 on the Italian Kindle Store in 2014. Deserto rosso was published in English, with the title Red Desert, between 2014 and 2015. She also authored three crime thrillers in the Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy (2014-2017), an action thriller titled Kindred Intentions (Affinità d’intenti, 2015), five more science fiction novels – L’isola di Gaia (2014), Per caso (2015), Ophir. Codice vivente (2016), Sirius. In caduta libera (2018), and Nave stellare Aurora (2020) – and a non-fiction book titled Self-publishing lab. Il mestiere dell’autoeditore (2020). Her crime thriller The Mentor was first published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015 and became an international bestseller hitting No. 1 on the Kindle Store in USA, UK, and Australia. A new edition was published in 2022. The other two books in the trilogy, Syndrome and Beyond the Limit, are expected in 2023. She’s also a member of the International Thriller Writers organization. She’s often a guest both in Italy and abroad during book fairs, including Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino and Frankfurter Buchmesse, local publishing events as well as university conferences. She has also taught a class on self-publishing at the University of Insubria since 2016. Her books have been reviewed or recommended by national magazines and newspapers such as Wired Italia, Tom’s Hardware Italia, La Repubblica, Tiscali News, and Global Science (Italian Space Agency). She is known in the Italian online community by her nickname, Anakina, which has become the name of her imprint.

Book preview

Beyond the Limit

Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

Copyright © 2023 Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

All rights reserved.

Table of contents

Beyond the Limit

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

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Final note and acknowledgements

About the author

More books by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

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Copyright and disclaimer

BEYOND THE LIMIT

Copyright © 2023 Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

Original title: Oltre il limite

© 2017 Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

Translation by: Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli (© 2022)

Translation revised by: Amanda Williams and Julia Gibbs

All rights reserved.

Cover: © 2023 Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

A note from the author: although I have included some real information about the organisation of police forces in London, I nevertheless took full artistic licence concerning professional positions of numerous employees, as well as the logistics, some terminologies and procedures utilised by the Forensic Services and Murder Investigation Teams of London’s Metropolitan Police (e.g. some officers carrying weapons) and the court procedures in the United Kingdom, in order to better adapt them to the plot.

Moreover, numerous real places are mentioned within the book, which are used fictitiously, but their descriptions and additional information about them don’t always match reality. In particular, the position of the waxworks inside Madame Tussauds may not reflect the one at the time of the story, the interior of the Curtis Green Building (the current New Scotland Yard) and of the HM Prison Belmarsh are totally invented, and no show was performed at the Savoy Theatre on the date indicated in the book.

This is the final novel in the Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy.

The two previous books are The Mentor and Syndrome.

This book is written in British English.

1

January 2014

The insisting screaming of a buzzer expanded in her mind, snatching her from the sweet embrace of nothingness to return her to a sentence of pain. Megan tried to deny it to herself, but the latter, like a woodworm, kept digging into her brain.

It was anger that led her to open her eyes. A suffused greyness was all they could make out, except a brighter, almost white stripe crossing the ceiling, from which a dark hem of dry paint was hanging, the only familiar item claiming the full return of her memory. She knew she’d stared at it many times, for minutes, perhaps hours. Days? And feared it would fall on her face, into her mouth, together with the cobweb the other inhabitant of that little room had built with zeal again and again during each of those days, every time the constant current of air rocking it succeeded in destroying it. She would swallow them in one gulp, the mould-infested paint, the web trapping a prey, and the spider.

In a fit of disgust, she shocked herself out of her thoughts. She arched her back and threw her head backwards, pushing her vision to the edge of the ceiling, where it met a wall. A little further down, a small rectangular window let a faint light seep inside that narrow room in the basement. Was it sunrise or sunset? A corner of the windowpane was broken. Perhaps that was where the wind insinuated itself, thus nullifying her room-mate’s industriousness. But what was that water splashing and flowing down the short transparent pane? Pouring rain? She couldn’t hear it.

Megan opened her mouth and contracted her chest, expelling all the air contained within it. She could feel her vocal cords vibrate, but not hear their sound. There was only the repetitive, unbearable buzzer.

Then it exploded in all its power. It was a siren, an alarm! Deafening.

She seized the safety rails and tried to sit up, but the room started turning around and an impulse to vomit hit her stomach like a fist. She bent sideways, intending to lean out of the bed. But something was blocking her arms, and the dark liquid coming out from her mouth dotted the edge of her pillow with stains.

She stared at them, as she caught her breath and a humming generated within her head almost covered the howling siren.

She strove for reason. What day was it? When had been the last time she was conscious?

She shifted her gaze to the safety rail, following it until she met a light strap that went from the metal towards the bed and wrapped around her right wrist. She raised her hand slowly, rotating it. Then, overcoming her dizziness, she turned to the opposite side and found the same artistic composition. Only she was the work of art.

‘You have a raging fever. I’ll go get some more antibiotics. In the meantime, I have to restrain you. We don’t want you to get out of bed and hurt yourself, do we?’

She turned her head to the white door, closed, defining the remaining limit of her prison. A dark stain, a sign of wear, surrounded the handle and went down. Two parallel streaks ran across the panel, scraping its surface and revealing the brown shade of wood it was made of.

Nobody was there. He wasn’t there. That voice didn’t belong to the present.

She stirred her arms, opposing the strength with which the padded bracelets held them down. But she couldn’t win that battle.

‘Where are you?’ she shouted, her voice drowning out the humming.

Her ears opened up to the outside sounds again, and the siren replied to her call.

She placed her fingers on the rails again and clutched them. This time, she moved slowly. Sliding on one side, she leant her torso forward until her brow almost brushed the one on her right. She contracted her abdomen muscles to accompany her movement, and at once, an excruciating burning sensation spread from it, followed by a perception of wetness.

A quiver of awareness ran through her whilst she, overcoming her instinct to lie down again, dared to check her body. A red stain was expanding through the sheet at the height of her belly.

Her stitches had ripped, her wound had opened. She was losing blood, a lot of blood. A morbid heat pervaded her, accompanied, but never completely interrupted by shakes of cold, which made her teeth rattle and her grip unsteady.

She would die there soon. No, Megan didn’t want to die. Not down there, alone.

Her head snapped up, her eyes on the hanging paint again. It wasn’t just the wind that moved it. There was someone in the house.

At once, it went quiet. No more siren, no more humming.

Her panting resounded in her ears, together with some blows and a shuffling that seemed to imitate its rhythm. But there was something else: voices?

‘Help! Help me!’

No, she would not die there. She had to shout loud, louder.

‘I’m down here!’

The sound of her voice faded away, taking with it all the other noises. Her eyes half-closed and her head lowered, her torso swayed.

No. She must stay awake, get out of there, save herself.

She forced herself to open her eyelids again. Gathering her residual strength restored her lucidity. She must free her arms, get out of bed, walk through that door, reach the stairs, the trapdoor. She had to.

Ignoring another sharp twinge of pain coming from the wound, she sat up. She looked around. Her breath entered and exited her lungs at a faster pace. There was a trolley on the left with some steel tools sticking out from a bowl, a pair of scissors among them.

She reached out beyond the safety rail, but the strap stopped her arm before she could touch the piece of furniture. She tried to stretch out her fingers. The tip of her middle finger brushed it.

She needed to pull more.

She gritted her teeth and steered all her energies to that simple gesture. Her fingertips were over the surface of the trolley now, close to the bowl. She put her forefinger on top of her middle finger while she kept pulling. The cold metal came between the two phalanxes. Megan tightened the one against the other, locking it, then started drawing back her hand, pushing a third finger into one of the rings. The long scissors followed. They were scraping the edge of the bowl. They ran on it, up to the tip of their bent blades. They were used to cut gauze, but perhaps they would be enough for those worn-out straps.

The scissors bent down, causing a sharp sound as they impacted the upper shelf of the trolley.

She was doing well; she could do it. She wouldn’t die there after all.

She continued to pull them closer, but now her hand was shaking from the exertion. She must lay them down for a better grip. She eased up on them, so that they slipped slowly.

A sudden shiver shook her to her very core. Her arm stirred. The glow coming from the window reflected on the surface of the tool as it bent sideways. Then it disappeared beyond the edge of the trolley, and the echo of the metal bouncing on the floor filled the room for a moment.

‘No …’ she whimpered, but then the footsteps repeated. Her fury rose and took hold of her. ‘No! No!’ she yelled and pulled. The widening stain couldn’t stop Megan who, as her blood flowed out of her body, had the impression of gaining strength.

She pulled again and again. A rip in the seam, and she found herself against the left safety rail. The bracelet was still wrapped around her wrist, but had broken off from the strap.

With her free hand, she threw herself at the left bracelet. Her trembling fingers slid the two straps out of the loops, took out the pins from the holes and hastily loosened the bracelet just enough to let her arm slip out.

Free at last, she pushed herself to the end of the bed, beyond the right rail. And she jumped down.

Her legs gave way, and Megan collapsed, but didn’t give up.

Clenching her jaw, she rose on all fours. Drops of blood reached the floor and were stepped on by her knees.

She fought her way to the door and reached out for the handle. The sudden rising blurred her vision, now invaded by coloured blinking lights.

She was about to pass out. She must not.

She let herself fall down prone. A dazzling light oppressed her, only interrupted by the crack between the concrete and the lower edge of the door.

She strove to take deep breaths, whilst her heartbeat shook the room, like an earthquake.

Endless seconds ticked by until her vision went back to normal. Megan rose with caution, leaning against the panel. She reached out with one arm then the other until she grabbed the handle, and turned it.

The door detached from the jamb.

Outside the room, the corridor was dark, but she must follow the noises. The voices had become closer, louder. Had she shouted now, perhaps they would’ve heard her, only she hadn’t enough breath to do it.

Like a wounded animal, she resumed crawling. She could sense the irregularities of the concrete scraping the back of her feet, her palms. A thousand negligible afflictions, if compared to her life dripping away from her abdomen.

She passed beside the first door, closed.

The second one was half-open, thus lighting up her path. The distinguishable roaring of the storm came from the cell.

On instinct, Megan looked inside. She made out another bed, but it was empty. All of them were empty now.

She plunged into the dark again while passing the second door. Her left forearm hit something solid. A moan escaped her mouth. Her other hand, instead, explored that surface and recognised a stair.

Megan threw back her head. The trapdoor was up there, at the top of the staircase.

She started climbing countless steps. Each of them seemed to suck half of her strength.

She would die on that staircase and it would be her own fault, because she’d been wrong to trust him. She cursed the day she’d let him talk to her, and she’d replied to him. He felt like the right person. How naïve she’d been. She’d messed it all up. She wanted to laugh at her stupidity, but death would take even that last pleasure from her.

A bump on the top of her head stopped her advancing.

Megan laid her side on the steps and joined her hands. She contracted her arms and swung them upwards. A dull thump on the bottom of the trapdoor. She clamped her teeth together and repeated the movement.

‘I’m here,’ she murmured. ‘Here …’

Another thump, one more, and again.

The trapdoor swung open.

‘Mon Dieu …’ A woman’s face appeared in front of hers. Brown hair fell forward, brushing Megan’s skin. Her saviour looked up. ‘Call an ambulance!’ she ordered, addressing someone behind her for a moment. Then she turned her head to the left. ‘Mills, give me a hand.’

A man wearing a police uniform kneeled beside her and stretched out his arms.

Megan felt herself being dragged out. Her back and then her legs rubbed on the edge of the last stair. Eventually, she found herself lying in a light-filled room.

The woman hunkered before her. A tight-lipped smile took shape on her face. ‘We’re the police, don’t worry. You’re safe.’

***

Sunday, 21 May 2017

‘Oh, Kidman!’ Sylvia exclaimed, while dashing towards the figure of her favourite actress. Well, perhaps one of her five favourite actresses. Shoving past two children, she stepped on the platform and stopped to observe it up close.

It was really tall. She knew they were made the same size as the original person, so in real life she would barely reach the actress’s shoulder. The golden dress falling on her perfect figure, and the hair forming a ringlet on the left side of her face, made her simply divine. Only, seen that close, it looked much less like the original, even though she’d never been so close to the real Nicole Kidman. The surface of the wax was shiny and reflected the light landing on it. There was something unnatural about its almost lofty facial expression, but surely, in a photograph, with the right angle and filter, the illusion would be perfect.

She walked around it. The waxwork’s head and look were turned to the right. She had to find a position such as to make it appear that Kidman was looking directly into the lens. She placed herself beside it, standing on tiptoe, so she wouldn’t seem too short, and aligned her mobile phone to take a selfie.

Gary’s laughter drew her attention away from the screen and on him. Her boyfriend was creasing up beside Helen Mirren. ‘She’s super elegant, and you with that shabby jacket look like a beggar.’

‘Oh, stop it!’ she replied, but now she couldn’t keep a straight face and her hand steady.

Another couple was standing close by; they looked at her with impatience. That Sunday morning, Madame Tussauds was bedlam, and she herself had had to wait before approaching the most popular characters.

She aimed her mobile phone again, trying to keep Kidman’s dress out of the frame. Actually, the difference in style between them was grotesque, to say the least. She focused on the faces and tried to mimic the regal demeanour of the waxwork. After taking two photographs, she moved away, satisfied. She would use one as her profile picture on Facebook, hoping they were good enough. They all seemed so on the mobile phone screen, but when she viewed them on a computer or tablet, at least half of them would be out of focus.

‘No picture with Johnny Depp?’ Gary was at her side again and was pointing at the actor’s waxwork, around which a bunch of girls had gathered.

Sylvia wrinkled her nose. ‘Hmm, no.’ She used to like Depp very much once, but she had no desire to wait.

In the meantime, her boyfriend had been attracted by something else and was laughing again. ‘Can’t say which one is more fake between this one and the real one.’ He was talking about Tom Cruise, another heart-throb from the films who, although being well over half a century old, persisted in playing a thirty-something man. On that waxwork, he showed one of his famous exaggerated smiles, made sinister by stillness.

Sylvia pushed her gaze further. She was worried because her phone battery had gone under twenty percent, and there was still much she wanted to see and photograph. She had to pick better targets.

Further ahead were a few tables. A visitor had taken a seat opposite George Clooney, and it looked like he was holding her hand. Another woman took a picture of her, then they swapped places. More people were standing nearby, probably waiting for their turn to do the same.

‘You want one, too?’ Gary nudged her in the arm, causing her to look at him.

Sylvia flashed him a playful grin. ‘Aren’t you jealous?’

‘Of old George?’ He flaunted a perplexed expression for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Uh-uh!’

She was already cracking up. Oh God, this place was a real hoot. Like most paid-for attractions in London, but compared to the others, it really was worth it. It was the icing on the cake for their short holiday in the capital.

‘I’ll take one of you and George, if you take one of me, Julia, and her friend.’ While speaking, Gary had stepped back, so Sylvia found herself spinning around to follow his forefinger, even if it was pointing out the next table.

Roberts’s figure was standing behind a chair, both her hands on the backrest. She was wearing a long black gown and a stole with a yellow band was draped on her forearms, as though it had fallen when she’d leant forward. One shoulder higher than the other, she gave the impression she wasn’t comfortable at all in that position, and her forced smile, almost a facial paralysis, seemed to confirm that. Oh, maybe it was because her feet hurt due to the high heels?

Sylvia resumed laughing.

‘And who’s the blondie? I don’t recognise her,’ she heard Gary’s voice say at a certain distance. The general hubbub of the place covered everything and muffled the sounds around her.

She turned to look at her boyfriend’s object of interest: a beautiful woman, platinum blonde hair, sitting on the chair which Roberts was leaning on. Her legs, bent sideways, stuck out of the blue gown, whose skirt was made of loose draping, like decades-old models. Long sleeves, widened at the wrists, extended from the tight bodice. Her hands were resting on the table in a polite fashion, her fingers entwined. Her torso was leaning against the backrest, a bit tilted on a side, in the opposite direction to that of the actress behind her. The same applied to her head, which seemed to be lying against the other figure’s arm. Together the two of them were arranged to form a composition with a certain symmetry, some kind of work of modern art which, however, completely failed in its attempt to make them look like real people.

Yet there was something authentic about the blonde girl. Perhaps it was her hands, which for once didn’t recall those of a mannequin or a pair of prostheses. She sported a ring with a big blue stone on her middle finger, matching with the dress. Fixed to her hair, coiffed in waves like the fashion of a century ago, was a ribbon of the same colour. Her face didn’t have one of those typical expressions of someone posing. It was relaxed, her blue eyes staring into space and her lips slightly opened, as if she were lost in thought.

Crikey, it was impressive. It looked real. But who was it?

She looked around, searching for a plate with a name on it. In vain, she tried to dig into her memory, but that face was completely unknown to her. She felt a strange sensation, which she couldn’t describe whilst looking at it.

‘Come on, turn around.’ Gary’s words shook her out of that thought. ‘Go to the other side of the table, beside Roberts, I’ll take a picture of you. Then you’ll take one of me.’

‘Okay …’ she murmured, following his instructions, but without being able to take her eyes off the blonde.

‘I can do nothing about the jacket, but at least your jeans won’t be in it.’

In response, Sylvie stuck her tongue out at him, then bent her head towards Julia Roberts’s model and leant it against the waxwork’s shoulder, before stretching out her mouth in a big smile. Out of the corner of her eye, she had the impression she caught sight of a movement, but she stood still, otherwise the photograph would come out blurred.

But Gary would not take it.

‘Come on!’ she urged him through her teeth.

He instead lowered the phone, slowly. His eyes widened, his mouth gaped. He’d turned pale.

‘What’s the matter now?’ Sylvia straightened up and spread her hands.

With an agitated gesture of his free hand, Gary pointed at her. He was backing off.

A woman bumped into him. ‘I’m …’ Her apologies stopped half-way as she turned towards Sylvia. She flinched and placed both hands on her mouth. But she wasn’t looking at her; her eyes were aiming down.

While watching that behaviour, Sylvia was run through by a shiver. Not daring to move any other muscles, she glanced down.

Now the backrest was empty and Roberts’s left hand wasn’t hidden anymore, whilst the unknown blondie was bent forward, her head resting sideways on the table. From her position, Sylvia could only see the hair covering the face. The right hand was on the edge of the piece of furniture. It was moving. No, it was inching its way down.

All at once, it fell, and the arm started dangling.

Sylvia screamed. She backed off, but she hit her back against a handrail. And she screamed again. She couldn’t stop, as she tried to flatten against the wall, unable to make any other movement.

The bag hitting the floor wasn’t enough to make Richard Dawson look away from the woman’s body. He’d dropped the handle too soon while lowering to put it down. The medical examiner straightened up and let out a resigned breath.

‘Natural causes?’ Dr Edward Collins suggested, beside him.

‘Were she a septuagenarian, it would’ve been my first thought.’ Dawson managed to take his eyes off the corpse and turned them around in the now deserted hall, except for the two of them, a uniformed officer who was talking with a security guard from the museum and, of course, the waxworks of several international celebrities. He lingered over the one of Julia Roberts, who kept smiling at a non-existent interlocutor whilst, her hand on the backrest, she was standing behind the chair occupied by the young woman slumped on the table. Hitting their faces, the light caused the same reflection, just as if both of them were mannequins. Intrigued by that effect, he went over and bent forward to get a better look at the blonde. Although her wavy hair hid part of her right cheek and the left one was resting on the tabletop, the rest of her face was well visible. It was covered by a thick layer of make-up, which gave it a smooth and shiny look. ‘No wonder people didn’t realise she was a real person. It’s almost like she’s wearing a mask.’

Collins’s footsteps revealed his arrival. ‘The physician from the ambulance, who pronounced her death, told me that as soon as he touched her checking for vital signs, he realised she was quite cold, so he decided not to attempt to resuscitate her. He only tried to take her pulse with his stethoscope, but didn’t find any.’

‘Did he check her pupils?’ Dawson pulled out a penlight from a pocket and pointed the beam at one of the woman’s eyes. The pupils were fixed and fully dilated. Then he checked his watch. It was just past two in the afternoon.

‘I suppose so.’

‘In the most optimistic scenario, she came in as a visitor, maybe shortly after the opening. She sat here and had a stroke, without anyone noticing.’ He turned off his penlight and put it back in the pocket, then with a gloved hand he gently started palpating her head, looking for any sign of trauma. ‘If you think about it, it’s sad, with all the people walking by in here, to say nothing of the video surveillance.’ He paused as he reached an ear. He could feel the presence of a small, hard object. Brushing a lock of hair aside, he revealed a Bluetooth earphone. Then he went on to her neck and back, without finding anything out of the ordinary. He should’ve put her supine to check her better, but he didn’t feel like moving her yet. Had it really been a natural death, everything would’ve been easier. But in fact, he didn’t have enough information to rule out other causes.

‘On the other hand, if someone assaulted her, that wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.’ Collins observed the work of his boss without interfering.

‘I should hope so.’ First Dawson’s fingers had checked the woman’s left arm, which was bent beside her head, on the table. Now they’d moved to the right one, which was dangling beyond the edge of the piece of furniture. ‘Quite an original choice of clothing,’ he commented while running his fingertips across the silky surface of the blue sleeve. The fabric was thin, and he could clearly feel that the skin was cold, even through his latex glove. The air in that place had to be kept at a quite low constant temperature, so that the waxworks wouldn’t be damaged. He himself didn’t feel the need to take off his jacket at all, although he could hardly say it was cold, but wandering in there wearing that evening gown must have been quite uncomfortable.

‘Maybe she really wanted to pretend she was a waxwork to take pictures or for fun. She could be one of those web stars who does things like that to attract likes and followers.’ Collins pointed his forefinger forward. ‘Do you mind if I check in there for an ID? She must have a mobile phone as well, connected to her earpiece, where she surely filmed what she did before sitting on this chair.’

Half-kneeling, Dawson stopped at her elbow. The woman was carrying a shoulder bag the same colour as her dress. Only now did he notice it. Due to the small size, it was partly concealed by the folds of the skirt. ‘Go ahead.’ Just then, his thumb felt something under the fabric.

Collins had hunkered down, and after opening it slipped a hand into the tiny handbag. ‘How odd …’

With swift movements, Dawson’s fingers were now touching a forearm. As they reached the wrist, they started lifting the sleeve with caution.

‘There’s almost nothing here,’ the other medical examiner continued. He pulled out a piece of printed paper. ‘Only an admission ticket, some cash, and a small mobile phone.’ He put the ticket back in and took out the device. ‘It isn’t even a smartphone.’ He passed it from one hand to the other. ‘So much for my web star theory.’

‘Look.’ Dawson had lifted the sleeve to the elbow, but then stopped, because something wouldn’t let him go on.

He turned the victim’s arm, which moved easily. She’d been dead for a while, but the body showed no signs of rigor yet. In doing so, he revealed the inside of the elbow, where an IV needle was fixed. A thin plastic tube filled with a transparent liquid was mounted on it and, a bit away from the skin, ran upwards along the sleeve. The latter being quite loose, he hadn’t noticed the drip when he’d previously checked the arm.

With the forefingers and thumbs of both his hands, he started following the cannula through the fabric until he reached the victim’s armpit, and it disappeared into the bodice.

‘Hmm,’ Collins muttered, and then put the phone back into the handbag. ‘Something tells me you’ve just found the cause of death.’

That part of the dress was thicker, and Dawson’s sensitivity through the gloves was reduced. Anyway, he managed to follow the tube along her side, down to her waist, where the skirt started. Here, the layers of fabric became wider and overlapped. He kept moving down until he touched the seat of the chair. The dress fell loose beyond its edge, partially covering her legs bent sideways. He ascertained there was nothing hidden there, so moved on to her thigh and back up to her waist. Her torso leaning forward didn’t leave much room between itself and her thighs. The medical examiner slipped his fingers on her belly, a surprisingly flat one for a person in that position, and in doing so, he felt a hard edge brushing the back of his hand. He rotated his wrist to touch it. There was something hidden among the folds of the dress.

He placed his other knee on the floor, so that he was more comfortable and didn’t risk losing balance, and reached out his left hand to define the shape of the strange object. One end of it was pointing towards him, but it felt like another thin tube was sticking out from it on the opposite side. ‘There’s some kind of pocket hidden in the dress containing an object connected to the drip.’

‘A pump?’

Dawson nodded. ‘Logically speaking, I would expect one.’ He contracted his face, while trying to figure out in his mind the shape on which his right forefinger was running. ‘This is a reservoir.’ He could feel a cylinder. He moved his hands closer to himself, placing them on the victim’s thigh and started lifting the layers of fabric one by one, until he found a way in. ‘Here is the pocket opening.’ He reached into it and could finally grab the object. He pulled it out slowly, for fear of tearing something.

‘What the hell is that?’

Collins’s question was a good one. Dawson was trying to give a definition of what he was holding in his right palm. ‘It looks like an artisanal compressed-air infusion pump.’ He turned it over. ‘There’s an activation button.’ He made sure not to touch the latter to avoid altering a possible fingermark. ‘And the reservoir is empty, but there was surely something in it.’

The reservoir was nothing more than the body of a syringe with a large diameter, fitted inside a transparent thin tube that ran along the pocket. The plunger was fully depressed, and connected to a device that must have activated it. A good part of the liquid was still in the circuit, so it hadn’t reached the bloodstream. Apparently, the amount that had gone that far had been enough for the purpose.

Dawson let out a long sigh, then turned to his colleague’s puzzled expression. ‘At this point, I’d rule out natural causes and be leaning towards a suicide theory.’

‘Quite a strange one.’

‘Yeah. First, we must take some pictures.’ He eased the device on the corpse’s lap. ‘And we better call the forensics.’ He raised his right knee to place a foot on the floor and stood up with some difficulty. His back hurt. ‘We must treat this place as a crime scene.’

A soft cry made him turn around.

‘Crime?’ A woman wearing a suit stood a few metres away. She held one hand in the other, wringing her fingers. She was looking at the corpse, pursed her lips and with an evident effort addressed the medical examiner. ‘I thought we should just wait for you to take her away from here, so that we can open the museum again.’

‘Excuse me, who are you?’

‘Daphne Goodwin,’ she said in a solemn tone. ‘The director-in-charge of Madame Tussauds, London.’

‘Ms Goodwin, I’m very much afraid the museum will remain closed for the day.’

Walking into the video surveillance control room at Madame Tussauds, he found more people than he’d expected. Eric closed the door behind him, attracting the gaze of DCI Marvin Bennet, who welcomed him with a nod of greeting and a sardonic smile, perhaps in reply to his involuntary perplexed expression. On the right, standing with his back against the wall and his arms folded, was a security guard. A colleague of the latter was sitting at the console and talking with Martin Stern in a low voice.

The picture on the main screen showed, on the right edge, the presumed victim on the chair of Julia Roberts’s waxwork. It was a high-angle shot and slightly from a side. The camera was pointed towards the flow of visitors quickly moving backwards, whilst the woman was motionless.

A shot from the same angle was repeated on a smaller screen on the left, but this time the woman was slumped over the table, while the top of Adele Pennington’s head stuck out on the opposite side. Crouching, she was probably collecting the fingerprints of the victim. His supposition was confirmed a moment later, when the young forensic investigator rose, leant over the corpse’s torso and started pushing the left hand fingertips one by one onto the surface of the portable reader.

With a smile on his face, he couldn’t help but stop to observe his partner. The concentrated expression she showed while working was the one that more than any other captivated him.

‘I’m surprised to find you already here, Marvin.’ Eric looked away from the screen and approached his colleague from the Murder Investigation Team that had collaborated more often with his forensic team since the previous summer. ‘For now, all evidence would suggest it’s a suicide, although a rather elaborated one.’ He was really surprised by the man’s presence. After all, it was Sunday, and he was sure Bennet had much better things to do.

‘I’m on call, and let’s say I was intrigued by the location. You know, it awakened my Sherlock Holmes instinct.’ The other detective pulled a face. ‘It must be the air in this neighbourhood.’ He was referring to the fact that not so far from Madame Tussauds was the museum dedicated to the famous investigator from Arthur Conan Doyle’s book, in Baker Street, at the address where his imaginary residence was located. ‘But you know that better than me, given that you live nearby.’

‘Ah, you’ve discovered the secret of my success!’

They both laughed.

In all the months they had worked often side by side, Eric had had the opportunity to get to know Bennet better and very much liked teaming up with him. That new friendship was perhaps the only positive consequence of having cut any contacts with Miriam Leroux, a detective from the Murder Investigation Teams whom he loved like a daughter, and who probably actually was his daughter.

After the events of the previous June, which had dredged up the painful memory of Madeleine and Jean-Michel’s death and the suspicion that the latter wasn’t her father at all, she’d completed severed all ties with him. And Eric couldn’t blame her for her behaviour. He should’ve talked to her about that possibility a long time ago. Or better yet, he should’ve cleared it up with Miriam’s mother, although she had persisted in denying it. Instead, he had preferred to leave things the way they were, because he’d been wounded by the rejection from a person he loved and whom he’d considered the woman in his life for a long time, perhaps precisely because she hadn’t wanted to