A Species of Revenge (3 page)

The state of it after the heavy rain proved his point. He'd had to park his car as near as he could get, which wasn't near enough. Swearing at the potholes in the surface, and because the half-hundredweight polythene bag of fertilizer he'd picked up at the allotment store – where they bought in bulk for economy – was slippery and awkward, and heavy for a seventy-four-year-old, he made his way clumsily towards the hut. He wasn't as nippy on his pins as he had been, and it was a wonder he didn't trip over the prone form and join it where it lay right across his path.

"Ere,' said Harry. ‘What d'you think you're playing at?'

He wasn't an imaginative man, but it didn't take him long to realize this wasn't just a drunk still sleeping it off after a Saturday-night binge, nor was it a tramp, that the man was lying with his head in one of the rain-filled potholes and certainly wasn't going to stand up and apologize for getting in Harry's way. He looked pretty dead to Harry, and he'd seen a few corpses during his war service, but he put down his fertilizer sack and tentatively took hold of the outflung wrist. Then he picked up the bag again and carefully deposited it in his hut before getting out the despised phone and punching in 999.

The church bell stopped tolling just as the Town Hall clock began to strike eight.

‘Dead for roughly twelve hours, probably less, that's as near as I can tell you at the moment. And
that,
' pronounced the pathologist, pointing to the shallow puddle of clay-coloured water, ‘is almost certainly what killed him.'

The body had already been photographed
in situ,
and the video cameramen and the SOCO team were now busy on the surrounding area. The police surgeon, automatically summoned to what was an unexplained death and having done his duty of pronouncing an obviously dead body officially dead, but seeing grounds for suspicion, had given his opinion that his eminent colleague, the Home Office pathologist, Professor Timpson-Ludgate, who fortunately lived in the area, should be called in. He was now working on the body, speaking into a small tape recorder hung around his neck as he worked, a photographer in attendance to take close-ups at his instructions.

Familiarly known throughout the police as T-L, the pathologist glanced up at the detective inspector from his kneeling position, his bulk obscuring the body. ‘He's been roughed up more than a bit, but I can tell you he died from drowning, unless I'm very much mistaken.'

Abigail Moon nodded. She knew it was perfectly possible to drown in two inches of water. ‘Drunk?'

‘No smell of drink on him, no vomit. Tell you better when I've opened him up.' He lifted the recorder from round his neck. ‘He's all yours, meanwhile, and the best of British. Not a pretty sight, I'm afraid.'

The professor was a big, jovial man of Falstaffian appearance, a bit of a throwback, Abigail thought him, quite aware that under the nod to equality he privately thought feminism had gone too far, still had quaint, old-fashioned notions that women should be at home having babies and looking after their menfolk, rather than doing hard, difficult and often distasteful jobs. He gave her a quizzical glance as he spoke but he should have known her well enough by now to know that she wasn't about to have the vapours at the sight of a dead body. Not even ones much more horrible than this was likely to be. It didn't mean she didn't mind. Only that she'd trained herself to look, without actually
looking.
She'd already seen this one, anyway, when she'd first arrived at the scene.

‘He'd been fighting, you say?'

‘Well, these aren't love bites he's got. There's bruising to the jaw and cheekbone, a cut lip and a black eye, consistent with the sort of injuries you might expect from fighting, though they're superficial, and if he hit back there's no bruising or broken skin on his knuckles to show it.'

The morning was warming up by the minute. Abigail pushed her heavy bronze hair behind her ears and frowned. ‘If he didn't fall down drunk, how did he drown? Running away from a fight, fell, knocked himself unconscious? He must have been unconscious or he'd have rolled away.'

The pathologist peeled off his gloves and levered himself to his feet, not without difficulty. He was carrying more weight than he should and knew it, but like most doctors, he didn't always follow his own advice. ‘But there's this, too, which is what interests me more than anything.' Saving the best for last, he turned the body slightly and indicated a nasty-looking wound on the back of the head. ‘I'll reserve judgement until I can take a closer look at him, but off the record, there's not much doubt it would at least be the cause of him losing consciousness.'

‘So some other person was definitely involved, then?'

‘Since the wound's on the back of the head, yes. Unless, of course, he fell, then rolled over before he lost consciousness. Remote, but possible. And in the absence of anything obvious he could have fallen against...' He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘No point in speculating. The PM will resolve which it was, fall or a blow. In the meantime, it looks as though we're into your department, Inspector. Find me a rock or something similar, that fits the injury, preferably one with blood and hairs on it.'

‘Could the same fall – supposing he did fall – account for his other injuries?'

‘Not a chance. Take it from me, he'd been in some sort of rough-house. I'll do the PM as soon as possible, since I know you're impatient for a result. Not today – maybe tomorrow.' He made it sound like a favour. ‘No one would think it, but we are allowed to have social commitments,' he added, squinting with disfavour down at his ruined, light-coloured trousers.

You and who else? thought Abigail, seeing her own day disappearing, fast, down the drain.

‘I'm snowed under with bodies just now,' the professor saw fit to add, explaining with a lugubrious smile, ‘Why they all seem to come at once, I don't know, you tell me, but they're dying like flies at the moment. Must be something in the water.'

‘I'll take care to stick to the bottled sort,' Abigail said as he finally departed, picking his way back between the puddles to where he'd left his distinctive vintage Rover. Water might be all she'd get the chance of that day. She was officially off duty and had planned a grand slam on the domestic chores, the afternoon working in her garden, and a deliciously relaxed evening with Ben Appleyard, intending to astonish him with the virtuosity of her cooking and a bottle of wine. Alas! As a newspaperman, editor of the local newspaper, he understood and forgave these sort of emergencies better than most men would, but even his apparently inexhaustible patience must have its limits. This wasn't the place to examine what those limits were, however. She gave the SOCOs the nod that it was their turn with the body. Cameras began flashing again and ex-Sergeant Dexter came forward and began his task with his usual thoroughness and practicality. The Scenes-of-Crime department had recently been civilianized, but Dexter had liked his job so much he had quit the Force in order to carry on. She was glad he was the one to be assigned to this case; he was moody, sometimes, could be taciturn if he was that way inclined, but he was knowledgeable, unflappable and meticulous to a degree. If Dave Dexter didn't find evidence, it usually wasn't there.

While he was occupied with searching for anything foreign to the scene, collecting trace evidence – hairs, fibres and dust samples from the victim's clothing in addition to those already taken from the surrounding area – bottling water samples from the puddle, she used the time to talk to the elderly man who'd found the body. He was sitting on an upended bale of peat inside his hut, a tall, thin man, smoking, drinking a mug of tea and looking blankly out over the neat rows of vegetables, the serried ranks of dahlias and chrysanthemums for cutting. If he was shaken, he wasn't showing it. All the same, the sort of discovery he'd made was a facer for anyone and he wasn't young any more. She went carefully with him.

‘We're going to need an official statement from you, Mr Nevitt. I've a car coming to take you down to the station, but to give me something to be going on with, perhaps you could just tell me now how you found him – that is, if you feel up to it?'

He took another drag on his cigarette and assured her he was all right but there wasn't much more he could say, other than that he'd all but fallen over the body when he arrived at the allotment first thing. ‘What I can tell you is, he wasn't there at half past eight last night. That were a heavy old thunderstorm we had around tea-time and I come down here, after, to see whether my chrysanths was still standing. What with one thing and another, I was here best part of an hour.'

‘This road – is it used a lot? By people other than the allotment-holders, I mean?'

‘It's a short cut through from Colley Street to the Leasowes.' He pronounced it ‘Lezzers' in the time-honoured local way. ‘That and the path at the back. We get a fair number of them joggers coming through, and kids on bikes and that, but the road's too bad for folks as don't have to, to risk their car suspensions. We've complained and complained to the council about it – what's the use of having a road if we can't use it? – but you might as well save your puff. They reckon there's no money for it, these days.'

Abigail nodded and looked around at the allotment holdings. It was a roughly triangular site, pointing down towards the river and the Riverside Community Centre on Stockwell Street. Along one side was Colley Street, a busy road that ran up through the town towards Holden Hill; along the other was the shorter street called the Leasowes, a much sought-after council-improved street of small, artisan-type houses. A narrow path ran along the base of the triangle at the back of the allotments, connecting the two streets, while running up from Stockwell Street and roughly bisecting the site was the unnamed, unmade-up road Harry Nevitt was complaining about.

‘Hello, young Peter, thought you might be around somewhere,' the old man greeted DC Deeley, who'd arrived with the announcement that the car to take the old man down to the police station was ready, if Mr Nevitt was. ‘Your mum were telling me you was a detective now.'

‘Her allus did say I were destined for better things than a uniform, Harry,' Deeley answered, with a wink at Abigail, employing his broadest dialect.

‘Oh ar. Dow let it go to your head, then.'

Built like a steamroller, cheerful, unflappable, Pete Deeley grinned and walked with the old man to the car and drove off with him.

‘Right, Inspector. You can have another look at him now if you want, before we get him bagged up and taken away,' Dexter said.

‘Nothing to identify him?'

‘No wallet or credit cards, just his car keys and a handful of loose change in his trouser pocket – though the label on his pants says they were made in Germany, if that's any use to you ... not that it counts for a lot nowadays, last pair I bought was made in Sweden ... and his shirt and underpants are St Michael. I'll tell you where his shoes came from when we've dried them off in the lab and scraped the mud off.'

‘Probably Taiwan,' Abigail said, ducking under the tape. Conscientiously, but without noticeable enthusiasm, she took a better view of the body. He was a youngish man – not yet forty, the pathologist had estimated, slightly built and of middle height, dark-haired and seen to be clean-shaven. Froth ballooned from his nose and mouth. The front of his clothing was still caked with mud, but appeared to have been otherwise respectable.

‘Not your usual yob that gets mixed up in a fight.'

The comment came from Sergeant Kite, who'd just arrived. The scene was now crowded with police, the allotments having been taped off and a uniformed PC detailed to keep away the disgruntled tenants as they arrived.

‘T-L thinks he'd been in some sort of punch-up, Martin, for all that. If he was mugged, they've left him his ring and his watch.' She indicated the plain band on the wedding finger and the flat gold watch with the leather strap.

‘In too much of a hurry, maybe. Just grabbed his wallet and scarpered.'

‘I'm wondering if he had one with him. It was a muggy night, after the rain, too warm for a jacket. You men are at a disadvantage, no handbag, nowhere to put your wallet except your back pocket, but that's still buttoned up. And I can't see anybody stopping to do it up again if they'd just pinched a wallet from it. He'd loose change and car keys in his other pocket.'

Hitching her bag on to her shoulder, she thought about the keys, and the possibility that his car was somewhere near...

‘We shan't get much from the immediate area around, I have to tell you,' Dexter was grumbling. ‘Footprints or vehicle marks – forget it.'

The loose sharp stones, the potholes all over the place, would make this impossible, Abigail could see that. She repeated what the pathologist had said about the wound on the back of the victim's head possibly having been caused by a heavy stone.

‘Keep an eye out for anything likely, Dave. And Martin,' she said to Kite. ‘Get them knocking on doors.'

‘We're not going to be popular.' Starting with Colley Street and the Leasowes, disturbing folks from their weekend lie-in this fine Sunday morning to find out whether anyone had heard a commotion last night. Would anyone have even remarked on it if they had, this end of Colley Street? Commotion was its normal condition, especially Friday and Saturday nights. ‘We shall need more manpower – more uniforms from Reader,' he said.

Abigail pulled down her mouth. The chief inspector in charge of the uniformed branch wasn't exactly a pushover where his scarce resources were concerned. ‘If he's awkward, shunt him over to me and I'll twist his arm. Meantime, all the pubs, not forgetting the Punch Bowl.'

‘As if!'

‘As if you could.' Saturday night without some sort of disturbance needing police intervention at the sleazy dive in