Author: Simon Beckett
Category: Thriller
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Still, there were too many unknowns to offer anything better than a rough guess. ‘It’s started to come apart and there’s quite a build-up of adipocere. That’s slow to form, so several months at least.’
‘But we’re talking months, not years?’
‘I’d say so.’ Any longer than that and the head would have fallen away. Submerged or not, the creek’s waters were relatively shallow and warm, and constantly moving with the in-and-out of tides.
‘Has anyone else local been reported missing?’
‘Only Emma Derby, and we can rule her out. But just so I’m clear, you think this has been in the water longer than the body from the Barrows?’
Lundy’s face gave nothing away, but I knew what he was thinking. Finding a second body so soon after the first was a potential – and unwelcome – complication, especially if the evidence suggested they’d died around the same time.
I could reassure him about that much, at least. ‘A lot longer for it to be in this condition. It’ll have decomposed more slowly underwater than on the surface, but a lot depends on how long it was drifting before it got caught up.’
‘If it was drifting.’
I looked at him. ‘You don’t think it was?’
He made a see-sawing motion with his head. ‘Not sure yet. Looks a bit too well trussed to me.’
I’d been focusing on the body rather than what it was caught on, assuming it had been deposited here by the tide. Now I paid more attention to the wire coils. Tatters of grass and torn plastic trailed from them like tired party streamers. The barbs were buried as deep as fishhooks, gouging indiscriminately into clothes and flesh. That could have happened as the creek rose and fell, the body’s own weight progressively working the rusty points deeper. But would that have snared it in so many places? Or entangled it quite so much? There were even strands of wire caught on the back of the remains, apparently by chance. That could have been caused by the natural motion of the water in the creek: as well as twice daily tides, storms and tidal surges which would have caused both body and wire to shift around.
Yet now Lundy had planted the doubt, I saw what he meant. Earlier, I’d been angry at whoever had casually dumped barbed wire in the creek.
Perhaps there hadn’t been anything casual about it at all.
Moving the body from the creek proved even harder than anyone had expected. It was too badly decomposed for the barbs to be removed while it was still in the water, so a decision was made to leave them embedded while the wire was snipped with cutters.
Lundy had told me of the plan rather than ask my advice, but I’d agreed that sounded the best approach. Only then did he turn to the CSIs and give them the go ahead to start.
Each time a wire parted, the body would sag and cause the whole mass of coils to flex, vibrating like a strummed guitar. It took more than half an hour, but eventually the last strand parted with a twang. Still sprouting stubs of clipped wire like coarse hairs, the remains were eased on to a stretcher and brought to the side. I moved aside as the body was set down on the bank. Up close there was the familiar reek of putrefaction. A few flies darted around, but this was too far gone even for their rarefied tastes.
This was the first chance I’d had to take a good look at it, and nothing I saw contradicted the instinctive reassurance I’d given Trask that it was male. This had been a big individual, not a giant but well over six feet tall. The jacket was biker-style, made from thick dark leather, with a rusted metal zip. A black shirt, now filthy and torn, hung loosely over black jeans. The right leg was at a strange angle, with something protruding under the denim below the knee, making me think the tibia and fibula of the shin were probably broken as well as the left elbow. I’d expected the feet to have fallen away like the hands, and it had crossed my mind that the right foot I’d found inside the training shoe before might be from these remains rather than Leo Villiers’. Lundy hadn’t said anything else about that, and the idea of the cheap trainers belonging to the wealthy failed politician still bothered me.
When the body emerged from the water, though, I saw it still wore a pair of calf-high leather boots. They would have protected the vulnerable ankle joint, preventing the feet from detaching as they otherwise would. I looked at them and then back to the jacket, on the verge of grasping a half-formed thought.
But whatever it was slipped away. There was more than enough here to consider anyway. The eyes had been picked away by scavengers, and most of the hair had sloughed off the scalp, leaving only a few lank strands of indeterminate colour. A dirty-white coating of adipocere had formed over the whole head and neck, giving it a waxy, mannequin-like appearance. Not even that could disguise the damage that had been inflicted on the face. From the forehead down, it was striped with raw, parallel slashes that had gone through both flesh and bone. The nasal area was all but obliterated, and a series of cuts had taken away most of the teeth and shattered those that were left. They extended across the throat and on to the chest, slicing through the thick leather to expose the underlying ribs before petering out.
I looked at Lundy, to see if he was thinking the same thing as me. This was the second body we’d found in the waters around the estuary that had its identifying facial features destroyed. Not by a shotgun this time, but the damage was every bit as bad.
‘I know,’ Lundy said, answering my unspoken query. ‘Doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’
‘Boat propeller,’ one of the CSIs asserted, a big man red-faced from exertion. ‘I’ve seen that sort of thing before. Body’s floating along just below the surface, boat comes along and bam!’
He slapped his fist into his palm. Lundy gave him a reproving look before turning to me.
‘What do you think, Dr Hunter?’
‘It’s possible,’ I admitted. The wounds could have been caused post-mortem, and at first glance they seemed consistent with the parallel slashes caused by a small boat propeller. Or, at least, what I could see of them under the adipocere. But there was a flaw in that theory.
‘I’m not sure how a propeller could have struck the face,’ I said. ‘Not to that extent. The body would have been floating face down, not on its back.’
‘I know how bodies float,’ the big CSI snapped. ‘The boat could have rolled it over first. It’s got a busted arm and leg, so that’d explain them as well.’
I still didn’t like it, but there was no point in arguing. Until the body could be examined at the mortuary it was all speculation anyway. And it would be someone else doing that, I reminded myself. Lundy had done me a favour by letting me stay for the recovery, but I was under no illusions that Clarke would suddenly change her mind and allow me back on the investigation. She’d been annoyed enough with me even before this.
The DCI still hadn’t appeared, but Lundy got a call from her as the remains were being carefully lowered into a body bag. He moved off down the bank to take it, looking at the body as he spoke. He listened, nodding, then ended the call and headed back.
‘That was the chief. She’s been held up in court so she’s going straight to the mortuary.’
It was a convenient opening for what had been on my mind. ‘You’re going to need a forensic anthropologist for this.’
I’d been thinking it through while he’d been on his phone, realizing this could be the last chance I’d have to press my case. Lundy just nodded.
‘You’re probably right. How are the hands?’
I’d forgotten about the cuts from the barbed wire. I flexed my plaster-covered fingers, only becoming aware of the soreness now he’d mentioned it.
‘They’re OK,’ I said, not really caring just then. ‘Look, since I’m here don’t you think it’s stupid for me not to take a look?’
‘That’s up to the chief.’ He seemed amused. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t call her stupid, though.’
I was letting my frustration get the better of me. ‘I’d still like to talk to her.’
‘Fair enough. You can ask her about it at the mortuary.’
‘At the mortuary …?’ His easy agreement took me by surprise. ‘So Clarke wants me to examine the body?’
‘I don’t know, she’s not said anything about that.’ Lundy grew serious. ‘There’s something else we’d like your opinion on.’
15
THE MORTUARY WAS an unobtrusive building situated not far from the hospital. I signed in and was told which examination room to go to before being pointed to the changing room. Putting my own clothes into a locker, I pulled on a set of clean scrubs, replacing the old wellingtons of Trask’s that Rachel had lent me with a new pair of white surgical ones.
I still didn’t know what I was doing there. Lundy hadn’t told me very much at all, only that Clarke would meet me here. ‘She’ll explain then,’ he’d said. ‘Best you go in with an open mind.’
I always tried to anyway, but I could see I wasn’t going to get anything more from him. The DI hadn’t come with me to the mortuary, saying he wanted to stay while the rest of the barbed wire was recovered from the creek. He arranged for me to be given a lift by a talkative young PC, since my car was still waiting to have its spark plugs fitted at Trask’s house. I didn’t know now when that would happen.
Clarke was waiting for me in the examination room. With her pale colouring, the DCI’s thin face looked bleached out under the harsh lights. Frears was with her and already scrubbed up, although the policewoman had made do with a lab coat. They broke off talking when I went in. The chilled air conditioning wrapped around me like a cold blanket as the door eased shut.
‘Ah, Hunter. Glad you could make it,’ Frears greeted me cheerfully. The cherubic face looked incongruous under the surgical cap. ‘Safely negotiated the water hazards this time?’
‘I wasn’t driving,’ I told him.
He gave a barking laugh. ‘If it’s any consolation, same thing happened to me once. Made a complete mess of the old Jag I used to have.’
I gave an obligatory smile as I took in the room. It was well equipped and modern. There were two stainless-steel examination tables, spaced well apart from each other. A body lay on one, partly obscured behind the pathologist and DCI.
Sitting in a stainless-steel tray on the other was a decomposed foot.
Clarke’s mood didn’t seem to have improved since I’d seen her on the quay of the oyster factory, but perhaps that was her normal manner. ‘Thanks for coming, Dr Hunter.’
‘That’s OK. Although I still don’t know why I’m here.’
But I was starting to have a good idea. Clarke turned to Frears, leaving the explanation to him. He went to where the foot stood on the examination table.
‘Recognize this?’
‘It was in a boot the last time I saw it, but I’m guessing it’s the one from the creek.’
‘Care to tell me what you make of it?’
Puzzled, I pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from a dispenser, easing them over the plasters on my hands as I went across. Despite the cool of the air conditioning, there was a sour smell underlying the more stringent scent of antiseptic. The foot was large, pale and swollen, and wrinkled with the distinctive ‘washerwoman’s skin’ characteristic of immersion. The dirty-white adipocere had been given a faint, almost violet hue where it had absorbed the dye from the garish purple sock. The toes were like puffy albino radishes in which the yellow nails were embedded. They had bent under themselves, in a painful condition known as ‘hammertoe’. The exposed surface of the ankle joint was a gnarled mess of cartilaginous tissue and bone. This was the only part that had been exposed to the elements and scavengers, and what should have been the smooth surface of the talus – the uppermost bone of the ankle that connected to the tibia and fibula of the lower leg – was pitted and scratched.
‘Well?’ Frears prompted.
‘I can’t really tell you anything you won’t already know. Right foot, size ten or eleven by the look of it. Probably an adult male’s, although I can’t rule out a female with large feet. You don’t normally see hammertoes like that on younger people, which suggests it belongs to someone older.’ I paused, trying to think what else there was to say. I shrugged. ‘That’s about it, except that the build-up of adipocere and the fact it’s detached suggest it’s been in the water a considerable time.’
‘How long?’ Clarke asked.
‘Impossible to say just by looking at it.’ The shoe would have protected it, and perhaps accelerated adipocere formation. ‘If I had to guess I’d say a minimum of, oh, four weeks. But it could be much longer.’
‘Go on.’
‘There’s no sign of trauma, and only superficial pitting of the talus that’s consistent with weathering and scavengers. I can’t see any of the cut marks or damage I’d expect if it had been chopped or sawn off. So it looks as though it detached naturally. Can I take a look at the X-rays?’
Frears nodded. ‘Before that, would you mind measuring the ankle joint?’
I turned to him, puzzled. This was all basic stuff. ‘Why? Haven’t you done that already?’
‘Just humour me, will you?’
The pathologist wasn’t smiling now. Neither was Clarke. They both watched as I picked up a pair of sliding calipers from a second steel tray. ‘It’d be better to strip off the soft tissue first. I could—’
‘Just measure the joint as it is, please. There’s enough bone exposed.’
This was beginning to seem bizarre. I opened the calipers wide enough to fit over the talus, then carefully slid them shut until they were just touching the bone at either side.
‘I make the width 4.96 centimetres,’ I said, reading from the instrument’s ruled shaft. Removing the calipers, I opened them wider to measure the bone’s length.
‘You don’t need to bother with that,’ Frears said. He went to stand by the body on the other examination table. ‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to measure the joint of the tibia and fibula. Right leg, obviously.’
Even if I hadn’t already guessed, the shotgun injury to the lower face would have confirmed this as the man’s body from the estuary. The clothing had been removed, and the remains lay naked on the table. Like the foot I’d just examined, they were badly swollen and well into the bloating stage of decomposition, the limbs with a stubby, unfinished appearance without any hands or feet. Exposed to the elements and scavengers, the skull was a bleached mess, and the damage caused by the shotgun blast was all the more evident now the estuary mud had been cleaned off. The chest and torso bore the Y-shaped incision from the post-mortem, although I thought the internal organs would have been too decomposed to offer much information. In deeper, colder water, they could sometimes be preserved by adipocere, but I doubted that would have been the case here. The genitals were still more or less intact, protected from insects and scavengers by the clothing, which at least simplified determination of biological sex. But with the remains in the condition they were, I doubted that the post-mortem would have established very much else.
‘Any time you’re ready,’ Frears said with a thin smile.
Leaving the first set of calipers on the first table, I exchanged my gloves for a fresh pair so as not to transfer any genetic material from the foot to the body. It was unlikely, since I’d only touched the calipers rather than the foot itself, but it was better not to risk cross-contamination.
Especially if this was shaping up the way I thought.
The heads of the tibia and fibula had been cleaned of any remaining shreds of tissue, exposing the ends of both bones. The heavier tibia, or shin bone, would have rested on the upper surface of the talus, with the slimmer fibula extending down the outside. Selecting another pair of calipers from the instrument tray, these designed for internal surfaces, I carefully measured the joint of the tibia and fibula as I had with the talus. Then, just to be sure, I measured them again.
I turned to Frears. ‘4.97 centimetres.’
He turned to Clarke. ‘As I told you. And it’ll stay the same no matter how many times we measure it.’
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��They’re not exactly the same size. The ankle’s slightly smaller,’ the DCI said doggedly.
Frears clamped his mouth shut, folding his arms as though they’d already been through this. He raised his eyebrows at me, all but saying you try.
‘There’s always going to be a slight variation,’ I told her. ‘It’s the same between left and right sides, they’re never going to be identical. If the difference was more than a few millimetres then yes, it’d probably mean it was from a different body. But one millimetre is a very close match.’
‘So in your opinion the foot definitely belongs to this body?’
‘I can’t say “definitely” without more tests. Going by what I’ve seen so far, though, it seems likely.’ Even though the possibility of two different people having ankle joints the same width couldn’t be entirely ruled out, the odds of them both being found dead in the same stretch of water were remote, to say the least. I looked down at the foot. ‘I’m guessing there’s a reason you think this isn’t Leo Villiers’ foot?’
‘We don’t have his actual measurements, but he took a size eight shoe. This one’s nearly twenty-eight centimetres long, which makes it a size ten.’ She made it sound like a personal insult.
‘Shoe sizes vary,’ I said, playing devil’s advocate. There was obviously more going on here than a discrepancy in shoe size.
Clarke didn’t seem inclined to answer, so Frears spoke instead. ‘True, but Leo Villiers broke his right foot playing rugby when he was nineteen. We’ve been allowed to see the original X-rays, which show the second and third metatarsals were badly damaged. They healed crookedly, but on the X-rays we took of this foot they’re perfectly intact. No old breaks, no calluses. Nothing.’