Murder of a Dead Man (4 page)

‘Because we wanted different things from life.’

‘If you were that different why did you marry her?’

‘Too much moonlight, too much booze. Why does anyone marry? For her, I think it was the nesting instinct. She wanted a home and with my salary taken into consideration she qualified for a larger mortgage and a better house.’

‘That’s a foul thing to say about someone you lived with.’

‘Foul maybe, but true.’ He looked at the clean, simple lines of the blue and white kitchen. Her taste was – is – horrendous,’ he corrected himself. He’d become so used to relegating his ex-wife to the past he occasionally had trouble remembering she was alive. ‘Fitted carpets with patterns that knock you in the eye. Fence to fence garden gnomes. Collections of knick-knacks that covered every inch of the house, even the kitchen worktops, and all inscribed with
A Present From Brighton
in gold ink.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘I’m not. Less than a year after taking my trip down the aisle I began drinking in the White Hart. I had to find another home. I simply couldn’t face all those gnomes every time I got pissed…’

‘Peter!’

‘In the end she found someone who understood her and the gnomes, so we split.’

‘Trevor told me you gave her the house.’

‘I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d made the gnomes homeless. Not even a jumble sale would have taken them.’ He folded the fresh bag he was holding into the bin. ‘It’s a sad story,’ he said with a gravity he intended to be mocking, but didn’t quite pull off. ‘And in the force a common one. The super’s wife left him.’

‘I heard. And Dan Evans is a widower.’

‘He joined as a widower,’ he said.

‘And Trevor lived with a girl for six years.’

He leaned back against the cupboards. So this was what she’d been building up to. He had no intention of telling her anything Trevor hadn’t. Lyn was Trevor’s business, not his. Just as Trevor’s past was his own, and no one else’s, unless Trevor chose to share it with them.

‘He told me about her,’ she sensed that Peter disapproved of her prying into Trevor’s past. ‘Her name was Mags and after she left him he couldn’t even live in the flat they’d bought together.’

‘He bought,’ Peter corrected. ‘Mags never contributed a penny. But then Trevor has always been a soft touch. Makes a point of paying all his ladies’ bills.’

A deep blush spread over Lyn’s face.

‘Oh hell!’ He opened a can of warm beer that was standing on the work surface and drank it. ‘I didn’t mean that in relation to you.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘It’s not money.’ She stared at her reflection mirrored in the blackened glass of the window. ‘I would love to hand over my share of the mortgage every month. It would give our relationship some permanency. As it is, I never see Trevor. I feel as though I’m in the way. As if I’m nothing more than an encumbrance.’

‘You are important to him, Lyn. Probably the only thing that means anything in his life.’ Peter wanted to but didn’t dare dry the tears that were falling from her eyes. ‘And, I guarantee that while Trevor is living with you he’ll never look at another woman.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ She wondered if he suspected the scenarios of “the other woman” she imagined every time Trevor stayed out all night.

‘You came after four years of celibacy. You might not have realised it, being so much younger than him, but ardour isn’t normal for a man of his advanced years, it’s the result of living like a monk.’

‘You’re incorrigible.’ Despite the derisive tone in her voice, her tears turned to smiles as she picked up the dishcloth and wiped down the work surfaces.

‘He used to worship women from afar from time to time, but after Mags that’s all it was.

Admiration from a distance. He may have even spoken to one or two, but if he did, I swear it was only in the line of duty.’

‘You’re not as bad as I thought you were.’

‘Tell me where the Hoover is and I’ll clean up the living room and redeem myself even more.’

‘It’s three in the morning.’

‘The wall between you and next door is solid, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘I hate to see a mess, woman.’ He opened the broom cupboard in the hall. ‘I’ve found it.’

Ten minutes later Lyn and Peter’s combined efforts had returned the house to pristine condition, and Peter was walking down the beach road to his flat. He’d unbent enough to peck Lyn on the cheek when he’d said goodbye, but only when the door was open, and they were public enough to remove his temptation to grab her, and give her what Trevor should have – if he’d had any sense.

After Peter left, Lyn walked around the house switching off lights, checking doors, moving objects already set in their allotted places. Eventually she could find no more excuse to linger. Climbing the stairs she went into the master bedroom. The present she’d intended to give Trevor at bedtime was lying on his pillow, where she’d put it before laying out the buffet. She picked up the small box, plumped out the blue velvet ribbon that held the silver wrapping paper in place, and laid it on his bedside table. In the bathroom she stripped off the short black dress that left little to the imagination and stood under a hot shower for half an hour. She wouldn’t have admitted it to Trevor, but she was spinning out time, hoping she’d still be awake when he returned.

When she finally slid beneath the duvet on the king size bed, she picked up a book from Trevor’s side of the bed. It was a guide to the West Country.

She realised that he must have bought it with the trip to his mother’s farm in mind. Perhaps he was aware of the way she felt after all.

She tried to read but in the end sleep overtook her, and when the alarm went off at six-thirty, the first thing she saw on opening her eyes was the silver and blue package. She had spent yet another night alone.

‘Is that the last one?’ Trevor asked Tom Morris, the social worker seconded from the council to the voluntary organisation that ran the hostel. He had been impressed by Tom’s gentle handling of the inmates and the respect he commanded from even the most difficult of them, despite his youth. No more than twenty-five or so, Tom was good looking and personable. Fond references to a wife had made Trevor wonder how well Mrs Morris coped with a husband, who, on his own admission, slept out six nights of every week. Judging by the smile on Morris’s face, better than Lyn.

He watched Morris run his finger down the list of names in a grease-stained ledger. ‘Twenty-seven.’

Trevor shuffled through the papers in front of him. ‘Twenty-seven,’ he reiterated.

‘Then that’s it.’

No one had expected to get anything from the inmates of the shelters other than their identities, but Dan had insisted that they take a hostel each and check everyone who’d slept the night in Jubilee Street, if only for elimination purposes, because Sam Mayberry had seen the fire before any of inmates had left their beds.

‘Glad to see Serious Crimes being thorough.

Once these places open in the morning there’s no telling where the guests go.’ Superintendent Bill Mulcahy stood in the doorway of the dilapidated hall, a miserable expression souring his face that had its origins in more than the dismal surroundings.

‘Patrick’s waiting for us in the mortuary.’

‘I’ve finished, sir.’ Trevor looked at his watch.

Seven-thirty. He would have liked to have gone home, seen Lyn, showered and changed, but he knew better than to ask Bill for the privilege.

‘Afterwards we’ll set up a case conference in the station.’

‘Sir.’ Trevor went to the door. He had a sudden craving for the brandy he’d left at home. He wondered if it was a sign of alcoholism. He’d never wanted a drink in the morning before. He knew it was morning because he followed Bill out of the lamp-lit hall into drizzle-filled grey light, but his body clock was still set to night. Deep velvet night; time to go to bed and cuddle Lyn.

‘I want everything in Zone A tagged and in the laboratory within the hour.’ Bill’s voice echoed across the taped area where white-suited, rubber-gloved and booted figures had switched off their torches to comb the ground in the dawn light.

Trevor recognised Andrew Murphy and Chris Brooke among the searchers. Judging by the pained expressions on their faces they’d stayed at the party long enough to get hangovers.

‘Found this in Zone A, sir.’ Andrew held up a plastic bag that held a whisky bottle.

‘That’s an expensive brand to find down here,’

Trevor observed.

‘Probably thieved from one of the bottle banks for the smell.’ Bill walked away.

‘Zone A is within ten feet of the body?’ Trevor asked Andrew.

‘Yes, but we’ve been ordered to comb the ground as far as the waterfront.’

Trevor took a last look at the damp, chilled searchers as he climbed into the back of the car.

Rank did hold some privileges. At least it was dry in the mortuary.

‘Don’t touch those,’ Patrick warned. ‘They’re waiting to go to forensics.’

‘What are they?’ Anna squinted at a blackened mess that looked like a clump of burned roots.

‘Hands. It’s a slim hope, but they might be able to lift prints from them.’

‘Off those?’ Bill studied the twig-like structures.

‘The skin is still attached in one or two places.

You never know your luck. There may be an identifiable partial print.’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ Bill turned from the specimens destined for the Forensic Laboratory to the slab where Patrick had laid out the remains of the incinerated corpse.

‘It’s laid toe to head, or as near as we could set it up, given what we have. The foot was intact in the boot. It’s bagged on the slab behind you,’ Patrick said to Dan. ‘The other foot was reduced to a few spoonfuls of ash. Pick it up,’ he encouraged Dan who was peering through the plastic. ‘It’s distinctive. I doubt many men wear red baseball boots with blue laces, even in Jubilee Street.’

‘Men?’ Bill questioned.

‘That’s not a woman’s foot.’ Patrick pointed to the long, thin, splay-toed foot at the bottom of the slab. Thickly covered in black hairs, its top was seared by a brown scab. ‘His sock is in the bag next to the boot.’

Trevor studied the foot and felt as though he was looking at an exhibit in an art gallery.

‘Is this the sock?’ Dan held up a bag containing a luminous green sock topped by a crust of blackened, blobbed rib.

‘Melted nylon,’ Patrick explained. ‘One or two bits are attached to the ankle bone; also some rubber from the shoe has stuck to the sole of the foot.’

Anna looked from the slab to the tiled wall.

She’d never liked post-mortems. As soon as news had got out about her transfer from Vice to Serious Crimes, Peter and Andrew had delighted in spinning her yarns of Patrick’s idiosyncratic post-mortem habits. At the time she’d assumed they’d been exaggerating. Now she wasn’t too sure.

‘Did you remove the foot or was it severed?’

Trevor asked.

‘Severed by burning. We had fun trying to assemble him. After intense fire it’s never easy trying to work out which bit is what, particularly if the body’s found in a crouched position as this was.

Leg bones badly charred, virtually no flesh or muscle left, pelvic bones burned, but enough left to determine a male even without the foot. Torso…’

Bill interrupted Patrick. ‘It looks like a rack of ribs my wife once cremated over a barbecue.’

‘Head, now that is interesting. The left-hand side has burned away, but not the right. The petrol was probably thrown in a haphazard fashion. Fire can be fickle. Petrol burns itself and whatever it comes into contact with, but it goes for the soaked bits first, and when the body was doused by the firemen the flames hadn’t reached one or two places. The foot, for instance.’ Patrick picked it up.

‘You said the body was crouched?’ Dan prompted.

‘One knee drawn to the chin, hands over the head which was face down, on the thighs.’

‘Sam said something about him moving his hands up to his head.’ Until that point Trevor had gazed at the remains with equanimity. But it suddenly struck him that a few short hours ago this had been a living, breathing man and anyone, himself included, was only a match and a can of petrol away from becoming just one more item in Patrick’s overcrowded work schedule.

The pathologist indicated another bag on the slab next to those that held the hands and boot.

‘Cloth – thick enough to be the remains of a coat.

Wool and synthetic mix, black, can’t tell you any more, but the forensic boys might be able to.’

‘Thanks,’ Dan said caustically. ‘Just about every vagrant in Jubilee Street wears a black overcoat. It seems to be the stock item of the charity shop.’

‘This is what I showed you on site.’ Patrick picked up a bag that lay next to the brittle remnants of the skull.

‘That the bit you said had knife marks?’ Dan rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a bag of peppermints and offered them round. Patrick and Bill were the only ones to take any.

‘Which makes me think our victim didn’t kill himself. We’ve had suicides who’ve torched themselves. There was a spate of them in the seventies and early eighties. We’ve even had a few who’ve mutilated themselves facially, but we’ve never had one who’s done both.’

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Bill spoke with the air of a man who’d seen all life had to offer.

‘If he did it to himself, where’s the knife?’

Patrick asked. ‘Even if the handle burned we should have found the blade. The marks are here, here and here.’

Trevor, Bill, and Dan peered at the diagonal, gaping sloughs in the bone. Anna glanced at them from a distance. ‘There’s not much flesh adhering to this section, although it hasn’t been as badly burned as the rest. It’s my guess, that the flesh was scraped away before the fire started. I’ve X-rayed the cuts and I’d say they were probably made by a keen, honed, not serrated, hooked blade. Possibly a hunting knife.’

Dan gazed at the fragment and put it into the context of a face. It took him a few moments to make out the beginnings of an eye socket at the top edge of the cheekbone. ‘Sam said the victim was screaming when he ran out into the street. Can you slice that much off a man’s face without killing him?’