Author: Simon Beckett
Category: Thriller
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Lundy looked at me for a moment, as though expecting me to go on. When I didn’t he gave a nod. ‘Right, let’s get it in the boat.’
I moved aside as two marine officers clumped along the stepping plates, carrying the stretcher between them. The sergeant followed with a body bag and a folded plastic sheet.
‘How’re we going to do this?’ one of them asked, setting down the stretcher and looking at the face-down body with distaste.
‘Roll it over on to the sheet, then we can lift that into the body bag,’ the sergeant instructed. He turned to Lundy, remembering at the last minute to include me as well. ‘Unless you’ve any other ideas, sir?’
‘Just so long as we get it back in one piece,’ Lundy said equably. ‘That sound OK to you, Dr Hunter?’
It wasn’t as though there were a lot of options. I shrugged, knowing the question was a formality. ‘Yes, fine. Just be careful with it.’
The marine unit sergeant exchanged a look with one of his team, passing silent comment on my advice. The tide was already lapping at the body’s head as the plastic sheet was unfolded and spread out next to it. The officers all wore masks and thick rubber gauntlets as well as chest-high waders similar to mine. Now I’d finished with the camera, I put on a mask and gauntlets of my own, pulling them over the thin blue nitrile ones I’d been wearing.
‘OK, nice and careful. Lift and turn on three. One, two …’
The body shifted sluggishly as it was eased on to the plastic sheet. A waft of foul, damp air was released as it sucked free of the wet sand and flopped on to its back. One of the marine officers turned away, raising an arm to cover his nose.
‘Oh, nice.’
Wrapped in the long coat, the thing lying on the plastic sheet no longer looked human. There was no hint left of age, race or gender. Most of the skin and flesh was gone from the skull, and the eye sockets were empty holes. The vulnerable balls of jelly would have been one of the first targets of scavengers. There were even early signs of adipocere, a dirty white build-up as though a melted candle had been dripped on to the remaining features. It was a caricature of a face, hollow eye sockets clogged with sand, while the nose was a stub of gnawed gristle. That was only to be expected, given how long the body had been in water.
But the lower face was missing completely. Where the mouth should have been was a gaping maw that exposed the cartilaginous tissue at the back of the throat. The jawbone, or mandible, was completely gone and only a few shattered stumps of teeth remained in the upper jaw.
The head had tilted to one side as the body had been rolled on to the sheet. Now it wasn’t covered by the coat collar I could see what looked like an exit wound at the rear of the skull, big enough to put my fist in.
Unperturbed, Lundy studied it, then turned to me. ‘What do you think, Dr Hunter? Shotgun?’
I realized I was frowning. I roused myself. ‘It looks like it,’ I agreed. The damage to the lower face certainly suggested the more explosive violence of a shotgun rather than a rifle or handgun. ‘There’s something embedded at the back of the throat.’
Without touching the body I leaned closer for a better look. An object was buried in the mangled bone and tissue: a small brownish disc, too regular to be natural.
‘It’s the wad from a shotgun shell,’ I said, making no attempt to remove it.
That would confirm the type of weapon. Not that there was any real question, but it was unlikely any of the pellets would have lodged in the body. Shotgun pellets begin to disperse the moment they leave the barrel. The further they travel, the larger their spread, and the bigger the resulting wound. From the relatively small size of this one the pellets had been closely bunched, and remained so as they punched a hole through the back of the skull. That suggested they’d been fired at close range.
Very close.
‘Contact wound, by the look of it,’ I said. A shotgun blast fired from one or two centimetres created a sort of tattooing effect, and that was evident here. ‘There’s blackening on what’s left of the teeth and bone, quite a bit of searing still present on the soft tissue, too. The barrel was either inside the mouth or resting against it when it was fired. At that range I’m surprised the wad from the shell didn’t go through as well.’
Lundy nodded agreement. ‘So it could be self-inflicted.’
‘It could, yes.’
A contact wound would be in keeping with a suicide, especially when a shotgun was used. The length of most shotgun barrels made it awkward to reverse them and still reach the trigger, so contact was usually unavoidable. Of course, that didn’t rule out the possibility that someone else had shot him.
Lundy must have picked up on my tone. His eyes creased in a smile, although I couldn’t see it because of his mask. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not jumping to any conclusions. But it looks like it’s who we thought it would be.’
I couldn’t argue with that. A potentially suicidal man had gone missing along with his shotgun, and now a body with a close-range gunshot wound had been found. There seemed little doubt this was Leo Villiers.
I said nothing.
Lundy beckoned to the waiting police officers. ‘OK, let’s get it on the boat.’
In the few minutes we’d been talking the tide was noticeably higher. The sea was already covering the lower edge of the plastic sheeting. As Lundy called in to report, I took hold of one corner while the marine unit officers took the others. Water streamed from the plastic as we lifted the dead weight and lowered it into the open body bag on the stretcher.
It seemed the least I could do; I hadn’t been able to contribute much else.
After everything had been loaded on to the RHIB, I took the same seat as before as the engine roared to life. The tops of the sandbanks had been above our heads not so long ago: now we were almost on a level as the tide rose. As the RHIB pulled away I looked back to where we’d just been. The waves were already lapping over where the body had lain, smoothing over the sand and erasing any sign that anything had been there.
Lundy nudged my arm as the boat picked up speed. He pointed to a rocky promontory that jutted into the estuary on the seaward side of the Barrows.
‘See over there? That’s Willets Point, where Leo Villiers lived.’ Unlike most of the other places I’d seen around here, the promontory was thickly wooded. Almost hidden by the trees, a large white Victorian villa stood alone on the lonely outcrop of land. Its large bay windows faced out to sea over a small dock, their view only interrupted by the towers of the sea fort that guarded the estuary.
‘Used to be the family’s summer home, but it was mothballed until Villiers decided to move in a few years back,’ Lundy said, raising his voice above the engine. ‘His father splits his time between London and the main house near Cambridge, so he had it to himself. Not a bad bachelor pad, is it?’
It wasn’t, but the family’s wealth hadn’t done Villiers much good in the end. I thought again about the condition of the body. ‘You were saying earlier you weren’t sure exactly when he disappeared,’ I shouted. ‘How come?’
Lundy leaned closer so he could speak without yelling. ‘He wasn’t reported missing until a month ago, but the last actual contact anyone had with him was a fortnight before. He called a vet out to his house to put his old dog down. She said he was pretty cut up over it, and no one saw or spoke to him after that. No phone calls or emails, no social media. Nothing. So whatever happened was sometime during that two-week window. We haven’t narrowed it down beyond that, but the vet’s fee was the last time his credit card was used. So the thinking is that whatever happened was probably closer to six weeks ago than four, but nobody realized until later.’
‘No one missed him for two weeks?’ That might be feasible if this was some lonely pensioner without friends or family, but it seemed a long time for someone like Leo Villiers. ‘What about his father?’
‘They weren’t what you’d call close. Seems to have been a bit of tension there, so it wasn’t unusual for them to go weeks without ta
lking. It was his housekeeper who reported him missing. Villiers didn’t have many staff, just her and a gardener who both came in once a week. She had her own key and it wasn’t unusual to find no one at home, so she didn’t bother at first. But then she turned up one week and the place was a mess. Bottles everywhere, dirty plates in the sink, half-eaten food. He’d thrown benders before, so she just tidied up and left. She noticed the Mowbry’s cabinet was unlocked and empty, which she thought was strange because Villiers rarely took it out. Didn’t like hunting, which is a surprise. But it wasn’t till she went back the following week and found the house exactly as she’d left it that she thought something might be wrong. There was post filling up the mailbox, Villiers’ car hadn’t moved and neither had the dinghy he kept there. So she had a look round, found the note and that’s when she called us.’
‘She didn’t call his father first?’
‘I don’t think Sir Stephen’s the sort who takes phone calls from staff. Besides, I think she felt the news was better coming from us. Shooting the messenger, and all that.’ Lundy looked sheepish as he realized what he’d said. ‘Sorry. Bad choice of words.’
‘What about the shotgun? Wasn’t it at the house?’ I asked. Even if the gun had fallen in the water it should have been found at low tide.
‘No, which made us wonder at first if someone else might be involved. But given the note and everything else, suicide still seemed more likely, so we were working on the theory that he shot himself somewhere else. Probably the Backwaters, which is why it’s taken so long for his body to turn up. Explains why we haven’t found the Mowbry as well.’
He sat back, leaving me to think over what he’d said. Leo Villiers had been missing at least four weeks, but more likely nearer to six. I weighed up the decomposition I’d just seen, and the probable factors that might affect a body drifting in these estuarine waters. There was temperature and scavengers, both aquatic and avian. And then the effect of brackish water and tides that would leave it exposed to wind and weather twice a day.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sun breaking through a gap in the gauzy cloud. It gilded the estuary’s choppy surface with points of light. There was a sudden glare from the shore as the sunlight glinted off something; a bottle or shard of glass. Then the sun was veiled again and it vanished.
4
A RECEPTION COMMITTEE was waiting by the oyster sheds. As we approached I could see several other people standing on the quayside, in addition to the police officers we’d left there. One of them wore heavy-duty blue coveralls, so I guessed he was the pathologist Lundy had mentioned earlier. Next to him was a tall woman in a pale mackintosh, who I supposed must be DCI Clarke, the senior investigating officer.
I didn’t know who the other two men were. They stood apart from the rest, at the far side of the quay. Both wore dark overcoats, and as the RHIB drew closer I saw the peaked cap that marked one of them as a senior police officer.
‘Oh, lord,’ Lundy muttered, when he saw the people on the quayside.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
The DI had spent most of the trip back from the Barrows at the prow of the boat, mindless of the cold spray dousing him each time the RHIB slapped into a wave. The pitching and bouncing didn’t seem to discomfort him at all. He showed every sign of enjoying himself, facing into the wind like a dog with its head out of the car window.
Now he gave a sigh, as though the brief boat journey had been an interlude all too soon over. He took off his glasses and began wiping the spray from them. ‘That’s Dryden, the Deputy Chief Constable. He’s got Sir Stephen Villiers with him.’
I turned back towards the quayside, beginning to feel apprehensive myself. I’d never heard of a DCC attending a straightforward recovery, let alone the victim’s parent. That was a bad idea, an unnecessary stress for both the relative and the police officers forced to work while they watched.
There was silence except for the marine unit sergeant’s terse instructions as we approached the oyster sheds. The engine dropped to a low chunter and the RHIB slowed, settling in the water. Waves slopped against the tubular hull as momentum carried the boat the last few yards to the quay. The water in the estuary had risen enough to allow us to moor alongside rather than use the slipway. The boat bumped next to a flight of concrete steps that disappeared into the water. Clarke and the others watched in silence as one of the marine unit jumped out and secured the RHIB’s line to a metal stanchion.
‘You next, Dr Hunter,’ Lundy said. ‘We’ll get the stretcher off last.’
Conscious of the solemn figures watching from the quayside, I caught hold of the steps and pulled myself from the unsteady boat, cumbersome in my waders and waterproofs. The steps were slippery and the sodden concrete was tinged green from algae. At the top I paused to wipe the slime from my hands, conscious of how muddy I was as the woman in the cream mac and the man in coveralls came over.
‘Dr Hunter? I’m DCI Pam Clarke. This is Professor Frears, the home office pathologist.’
Clarke was tall and thin, with frizzy ginger hair that blew around her pale face despite being tied back in an attempt to tame it. It was hard to put an age on Frears. The wavy hair was silver but the face below it was sleek and unlined, so that he could have been in his forties or a well-preserved sixty. Together with the flushed cheeks of a bon viveur, it gave him the look of a debauched cherub.
‘I won’t shake hands,’ he said cheerfully, holding up his to display his gloves. He looked thoughtful. ‘Hunter, Hunter. Name’s familiar. Have we met before?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, it’ll come to me.’
As he turned his attention to the activity on the boat, I glanced across at the two dark-coated men standing at the other end of the quay. They were out of earshot but it still felt uncomfortable having this discussion with the potential victim’s father nearby. Sir Stephen Villiers looked in his sixties. He wore a charcoal overcoat I thought was probably cashmere over a pale-grey suit. The thinning hair that blew across his scalp was grey as well, making him appear colourless as he watched the progress of the stretcher. There was nothing outwardly imposing about him, yet somehow he seemed to radiate far more authority than the senior policeman he was with. Dryden, the Deputy Chief Constable, was lantern-jawed and had the build of a rugby player, with deep-set eyes beneath the shiny peaked cap. He towered over the man next to him, yet it was the smaller man who commanded attention.
Sir Stephen’s face wore no expression as he stared at the body bag on the stretcher. Perhaps feeling my eyes on him, he suddenly looked straight at me. His gaze was incurious, without interest or acknowledgement. A moment later he resumed his study of the stretcher, leaving me with the sense that I’d been assessed and cursorily dismissed.
Lundy had clambered out of the boat and was hauling himself up the steps, puffing from the exertion. The stretcher was lifted out of the boat and carried up after him.
‘Careful,’ Clarke warned as it was hoisted on to the quay. ‘All right, set it down there.’
Grunting with effort, the marine unit lowered the stretcher. Water trickled from it and pooled on the concrete as they stood back. Frears went to stand by it.
‘Right, what do we have here?’ He gestured to the sergeant. ‘Let’s take a quick look, shall we?’
Although Clarke didn’t quite glance over at where Sir Stephen was standing, it was clear what she was thinking. ‘Shouldn’t we get it back to the mortuary?’
The pathologist gave a thin smile. ‘I don’t like working in front of an audience either, but since I’m here I’m going to do my job.’
His tone was affable but carried enough edge to deter any further interference. Clarke gave a curt nod to the marine unit sergeant.
‘Open it up.’
The sickly odour of decomposition rolled across the quay as the bag was opened. The pallid body inside it looked even worse against the black plastic, like a melted waxwork dummy.
‘I suspect matching
dental records will be a challenge,’ Frears commented, taking in the shattered remains of the mouth and lower jaw. ‘Stature suggests a male, obviously been in the water for some time. Pull the bag open a little more, will you? There’s a good man.’
The sergeant bent down to do as he was told, then stopped. He peered closer. ‘Hang on, there’s something – Jesus!’
He reared back at a sudden movement inside the exposed gullet. Something coiled in what was left of the mouth, then surged out from it like a silver tongue. Sliding free, the eel dropped into the body bag.
‘Looks like we have a passenger,’ Frears said drily, though I noticed he’d pulled back as well.
‘Sorry,’ the sergeant mumbled. Clarke made an impatient gesture, her face colouring.
‘Don’t just stand there, get rid of it.’
The eel must have been hidden further down the gullet when we’d recovered the body. With his expression showing what he thought of the task, the sergeant reached into the bag next to the body. The creature writhed sinuously, twining round his gloved hand and wrist as he brought it out. He stood there uncertainly, holding it at arm’s length.
‘What shall I do with it, sir?’
‘Well, they’re delicious smoked, but I suggest you throw it back,’ Frears drawled. ‘Unless you’ve any use for it, Dr Hunter?’
I hadn’t. This wasn’t like a land recovery, where information might be gleaned from the creatures infesting the remains. In all likelihood the eel had just colonized a convenient food source, feeding on either the decomposing tissue or the smaller creatures that were drawn to it.
With an expression of distaste, the marine unit sergeant shook the eel off his hand and let it splash back into the water. I tried not to look across at Sir Stephen Villiers as Frears resumed his study of the body. The dead man’s father had obviously insisted on being here, and the presence of the senior police officer with him was a clear signal of his influence. But this wasn’t something a family member should have to see.