Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) (12 page)

As Marilyn walked back down the corridor clutching the autopsy report, he tried to push from his mind the sad, sagging pile of flesh and bone that was his murder victim. Having your life forcibly taken was bad enough, but being sliced up and microscopically examined by perfect strangers felt to him like the ultimate violation.

He was still smarting over the fact that the cadaver dogs had failed to find the legs. Not that he had been surprised. They would, by now, be indistinguishable by sight from the mess of driftwood and seaweed clogging the shoreline, the faint scent of decomposition remaining so infused with other harbour smells that it would have taken the dog equivalent of Sherlock Holmes to find them. Given the tides, the constant movement of boats, the wildlife – seagulls, foxes, rats, to name a few – that liked to pick at foreign bodies, whatever their origin, the legs could be virtually anywhere on the thirty miles of harbour shoreline. But, mitigating circumstances aside, it felt like failure and however laid-back he appeared to others to be, he hated to fail.

The silver lining to that particular cloud was that he was now a hundred pounds richer. Dr Ghoshal had agreed with him: the propeller of a motor cruiser or large yacht was responsible for hacking the body in two, not an axe or butcher’s cleaver, as the lead CSI, Tony Burrows had surmised. He felt relief that he could at least rule out a sick ghoul keeping trophy legs in his freezer, even if he couldn’t rule out the involvement of a sick ghoul in this murder full stop. He scanned the pages of the autopsy report as he walked, absorbing the pathologist’s conclusions.

Full-grown male. Aged thirty-five to forty from the teeth, which were well looked after. Probably not a UK national – the dental work didn’t look British. So either the victim was a British national who lived abroad, or he was a foreign national. No sign of previous serious trauma to the body, no healed fractures. Cause of death: severe blunt trauma to the back of the head. The body was too badly decomposed to find any trace evidence indicating the material composition of the murder weapon. Death had occurred approximately two months previously. A best guess, but accurate within a couple of weeks either way.

He had been dumped elsewhere in the harbour and floated, face down, for a number of days, meeting a propeller along the way, before the torso beached itself where the unfortunate Ms Bass-Cooper had found it. There was no way of identifying the disposal site. The direction in which a body floated would depend on whether the tide was coming in or going out of the harbour at the time, but wind direction and strength also played a part, as did nautical activity. This long after the body had been dumped, there was no way of determining any of those things.

Marilyn would contact the local boatyards, see if anyone owning a motor cruiser or yacht had reported damage to their propeller, but again the enquiry was unlikely to be fruitful. A large propeller would cut through a corpse like butter, the collision hardly spilling a drop from the cocktails on the sundeck.

Dr Ghoshal hadn’t yet completed microscopic examinations of the tissues or fluids, or toxicology, all of which needed to be sent to a specialist lab. Results would take a few days to come back.

‘I’m afraid that the only way you’re identifying this unfortunate man is through his dental records,’ Dr Ghoshal had told Marilyn, peeling off his gloves, bending over the sink to scrub his hands with Hibiscrub. Marilyn noticed a frown shifting the glasses on the bridge of his nose as he towelled his hands dry.

‘Looks like something’s bothering you, Doctor,’ Marilyn said, raising his eyebrows in query.

Dr Ghoshal tugged off his glasses, slid them into his pocket.

‘Severe blunt trauma to the back of the head is the cause of death,’ he murmured. ‘No doubt about that …’

‘But?’

A frown had entrenched itself in Dr Ghoshal’s brow. ‘But some of the flesh doesn’t look quite right. Not just decomposition and salt-water damage.’

Marilyn glanced at the body, stifling a shudder.
Jesus Christ.
None of the flesh looked right. ‘What do you mean?’

Dr Ghoshal shook his head. ‘I don’t like jumping to conclusions. Let’s wait for the results from the microscopic examinations and toxicology.’ He held out a scrubbed hand. ‘I’ll be in touch as soon as I get the results, Detective Inspector.’

Jessie had spent half an hour picking a suitable television programme for Sami before leaving her cottage this morning, mentally scanning through the films available from Amazon Prime to weed out violence, ghosts, shadows, anything that could likely be construed by a severely disturbed four-year-old as frightening. Tom and Jerry – too violent. Scooby-Doo – too scary. Pingu – creepy. God knows why kids loved a Plasticine penguin that didn’t even speak.

She had finally settled on Dora the Explorer, uploaded five episodes to her iPad. Now, she sat Sami on a chair in Jenny Chappell’s office and switched on the iPad, thanking God for technology and for modern children who were content to be glued to it.

It was a couple of minutes after she returned to her office that she heard heavy steps making their way down the hall. She had switched the overhead light off, put on only her desk lamp and another freestanding sidelight, angling them both so that they reflected off the dark wood-panelled walls and cast a mellow yellow hue. Outside her window, daylight had departed, even though it was barely 4.30 p.m.

‘Thank you for coming, Major Scott.’

She held out her hand. After a moment’s delay, he shook it. He was wearing navy jeans and a blue-and-white checked collared shirt under a navy-blue V-necked jumper. His eyes were hidden behind the same mirrored aviator sunglasses he had been wearing yesterday. All she could see when she looked at him were twin reflections of her own distorted face. His appalling injuries stood out less starkly here at Bradley Court than they had in his own home. Here, he was one of many men who had been grievously injured in battle: some not as severely, many significantly worse.

He stood in the middle of the room, feet splayed, hands resting on his hips, rigid body language that reminded her of Sami. He clearly didn’t want to be here, had fought a battle with his own conscience and lost to it.

‘I don’t have long.’ His tone was pure provocation.

Jessie didn’t rise to it. She stared straight back into his pale, haunted face.

‘This won’t take long. Please, have a seat.’

Closing the door behind him, she indicated the two battered leather chairs set either side of a low coffee table by the window that she used for her sessions, so that she could sit opposite her patients without the physical barrier of her desk between them. Communication between two people was eighty per cent body language and tone of voice. What was actually said – the words spoken – only twenty per cent of the message the listener received. Every posture, every movement, every minute tic, helped her to form an impression of the whole: the way a patient jiggled their feet, the tension in their muscles, whether they crossed their legs, their arms, leant back, sat forward, wouldn’t make eye contact, tried to stare her out. Vital information, before a single word had been exchanged. She needed to see the whole of Scott, particularly as those mirrored sunglasses negated a vital source of information, the eyes. It was disconcerting and she felt as if she was only getting half the story: one page text, the next blank.

‘Would you like a tea or coffee?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘Thank you.’ The last words clearly hard to speak.

Grabbing a file from her desk, not one relevant to the case, but something to hold on her knee, a small barrier between them to give her confidence, she sat across from him. This man unnerved her.

‘Thank you for coming in, Major Scott.’

‘I won’t say it’s a pleasure.’

There was nothing relaxed about him, even when sitting. He perched stiffly on the edge of the chair, feet planted wide apart, knees splayed, expression surly.

‘I don’t think it’s much of a pleasure for Sami either,’ Jessie replied.

‘I still don’t understand why the hell you need to see all of us. Why you can’t—’ He broke off, shaking his head. ‘Forget it. I’m here now. Let’s get started.’

Dipping her gaze to the file, she took a breath.

‘In the sessions I’ve had with Sami he refers to “the girl”. At first, I couldn’t understand who the girl was, but I now get the impression that he’s referring to himself.’

A heavy sigh. ‘Nooria had a child, before I met her. A daughter.’

‘She was married before?’

‘No. A boyfriend. She got pregnant and ended up having the baby. The boyfriend didn’t stick around. He dumped her before the baby was born.’ His tone was confrontational, as if he was challenging her to disapprove. She smiled inwardly. If he knew what she did in a bid to assuage her own demons, he wouldn’t have been so concerned with her moral compass.

‘The baby died, cot death, at three months old. Nooria had given so much to have the child, on her own, with no support, not even from her own mother, who Nooria said was horrified. When the baby died, she was devastated. She’s never fully recovered.’ He steadied himself. ‘She was desperate for Sami to be a girl. Absolutely desperate. She bought girls’ clothes, dolls, painted the room pale yellow …’ He tailed off, shaking his head.

‘You didn’t find out Sami’s sex before he was born?’

‘I was away – in Afghanistan – for most of the pregnancy and I didn’t want her to. I wanted it to be a surprise. Sami came a month early, at thirty-six weeks. I’d only been back a few days, just made it.’

‘How did she react when she saw he was a boy?’

Scott’s gaze dropped. ‘She cried and cried.’ He shrugged. ‘I was delighted. Typical man, I suppose – I wanted a son.’

‘Did she get postnatal depression?’

His brow creased, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

‘She was upset for the first few days. Upset. Tense. Everything made her cry. But that’s down to hormones, isn’t it?’ His voice wavered; he wasn’t on solid ground. He didn’t strike Jessie as the type who would be in tune with female emotions, imagined him as a 1950s father, sitting in the pub cradling his pint, waiting for news of whether his wife had pushed out a boy or girl. ‘She settled down after a few days. And she loves Sami deeply. Once she’d got over the shock of having a boy, she fell in love with him.’

‘So the girl that Sami talks about …?’ Jessie nudged.

Sighing wearily, he looked towards the window. It was dark now, the night closed in. It had stopped snowing, the black sky moonless, empty of stars.

‘I let Nooria treat Sami like a girl. Dress him in the girls’ clothes she’d bought, call him “her”. Even the name – Sami. She’s always called him Sami. It’s Samuel, after my father, but when you shorten it to Sami, it could equally be Samantha.’ Tilting forward, he put his head in his hands. ‘You’re going to think I’m crazy, aren’t you? But I didn’t see the harm, when he was a baby. Who cared if he wore yellow or blue?’ His voice cracked. ‘Who cared?’

‘But it got out of hand?’

‘You’ve seen him. He thinks that he’s a girl, for Christ’s sake. He’s soft. His mum has doted on him and now he’s soft. He’s got all those bloody dolls.’ He laughed, a bitter sound. ‘I lost it with him last week, took the bucket of dolls and tipped the whole lot of them into a bin bag. He became hysterical, and I mean
hysterical
. He was screaming and wailing, throwing himself against the walls, beating his head on the floor. I thought he was going to hurt himself badly.’ He faltered.

‘You gave the dolls back to him?’

He shook his head. ‘I stormed out, went to the fucking pub. Left Wendy to sort out the mess. The dolls were back in their bucket when I got home.’

‘How did you meet Nooria?’ Jessie asked, changing the subject to defuse the tension in the room, so thick she could almost have cleaved it in two with a knife.

‘I was married before. I have two daughters, ten and twelve now. Nooria was a teaching assistant at my daughters’ school, a posh private school, full of stiff upper-class twats. White knickers and good behaviour. Good behaviour until I got there, at least.’ He pulled a face. ‘I met her when my youngest daughter started in Reception. Nooria was new to the school that year, the Reception class teaching assistant. I left my wife, Jacqui, a year later, for her.’

At his words, an image rose, unbidden, in Jessie’s mind: watching from under her fringe – an angry, disenfranchised twelve-year-old – as Jamie, a little boy of only five, strode up the aisle, clutching a pillow bearing the wedding rings, too young to fully understand that he was giving his father away permanently to someone else, to another life. Diane, a beautiful young bride in apricot silk and lace, the picture Jessie still retained of her, even though Diane and her father had been married for seventeen years. No kids at least, a small bonus for her mother, a hold, however negligible, over her ex-husband.

‘How do your daughters get on with Sami?’

‘They’ve never met him. I don’t see much of them. Their mother hates me, not surprisingly.’

He fell silent. Jessie waited, sensing that he would continue.

‘The first time I met Nooria, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was so beautiful.’ He laughed acerbically. ‘I’m the ultimate fucking stereotype, aren’t I? It doesn’t get much more tacky than that. The husband who couldn’t keep it in his pants. I made a complete fool of Jacqui in public, in front of all the other officers’ wives and the middle-class social climbers who send their kids to that kind of school. She didn’t deserve it.’

‘The wife rarely does deserve it. But you didn’t do it to hurt her, did you?’

Jessie’s mind calculated. Scott must be in his early forties, Nooria fifteen years younger. So she had been early twenties when they met. That would have made her a teenager when she’d had her first baby, the little girl who died. A teenager dealing with all that alone. She would have had to build a carapace around herself to cope. No wonder she was evasive, hard to pin down.

‘It’s my fault.’ The unburnt side of his face sagged, as if the strings holding his features in place had snapped. ‘This whole fucking thing … Sami … I shouldn’t have left them for so long. I should have been there to support Nooria, to look after her … to look after them both.’

‘It’s your job. You had no choice.’

His reply was bitter. ‘Perhaps I should have made a better choice of profession. I wouldn’t have fucking ended up looking like this, if I had done.’ Raising his hands, he tugged his sunglasses off, dropped them on to his knee. The wet burgundy cavity of his missing eye glistened in the lamplight. Darts of steely light glinted in his good eye; Jessie kept her gaze focused on it. ‘And now I don’t have any choices, because the Army doesn’t want me. I can’t do the job any more, so I’m out.’

‘You have transferable skills.’ She tried to force conviction into her voice, heard it waver. ‘A lot of companies … civilian companies will appreciate your skills.’

A naked expression of torment crossed his face. ‘I’ve fucked everything up. My life, Nooria’s life, Sami’s.’

Jessie was about to say – ‘It’ll all work out’ – but she stopped herself. She was sick of platitudes. Sick of hearing them and even sicker of saying them. She would do her best for Sami, for all of them. Though she doubted that, in this case, her best was going to be good enough. Scott was living the nightmare.

‘I’ve just got one more question. Who is the Shadowman?’

‘The Shadowman?’ he murmured, his brow furrowing. He glanced towards the window. It was snowing again, the flakes fluttering close to the glass glowing in the light from Jessie’s window; total darkness beyond.

‘The Shadowman? Surely the Shadowman is me?’