Surrender (7 page)

It was a cool night and most people had their curtains pulled tightly shut so there wasn’t much to see in the way of happy families. Wolf was cheerfully occupied trotting from fencepost to lamp post inhaling urine odours, but tonight all those lights behind curtains, those voices and thuddings on floorboards made me feel excluded. Here I was at twenty-eight, walking the streets on my own, envying other people’s lives, with only an empty fridge and even emptier bed to go home to.

Wolf’s ears pricked up and his body tensed some moments before I saw the cat on the letter box, eyes glassily reflective, its long, albino fur translucent in the streetlight. Wolf’s training kicked in and he immediately came to heel and sat, leaning his right shoulder into my calf. Tension quivered through his body as he restrained the impulse to rush at it.

I knew that in his own canine way he saw that cat running ahead of him, felt the hot-breath exhilaration of the chase, the final lunge and satisfaction of that warm, silken body in his jaws, the glorious, killing shake and then the heavy body, limp and acquiescent, the taste of blood. Instead, he waited for my command, straining against the invisible lead of his training. Every fibre of his being wanted to chase that cat and kill it, but he’d been conditioned not to. No physical restraint, just imposed control.

It was both remarkable and strangely tragic to witness. He was no different from us humans, really. I cupped the bump on the top of his head.

‘Good dog,’ I told him. ‘You’re a good dog.’ And though his tail gave one swift whack in response, his body still quivered with the effort to restrain his natural yearning.

Usually I discourage him, but I let Wolf climb onto the bed with me. I was woken some hours later by rhythmic jolts as Wolf lightly yelped and growled. He was after that cat in a dream-chase, his paws twitching, his good eye glittering beneath the half-closed lid. I lay back, careful not to wake him.

I really hoped he caught that blonde bitch of a cat.

I
spent the morning doing domestics and clearing emails, quite a few of which were a complex cross-referencing, cc-ing and no doubt bcc-ing, clutter of communications from various levels of police hierarchy, arranging my re-admittance into HQ. They promised me desk space on the third floor with a computer giving me access to missing persons’ files going back to the 1980s. If I needed earlier information I’d have to go down into the dungeons and hunt through the archived files not yet entered in the database. All of this I knew, of course; I’d been doing it for years. This was McFay’s way of reminding me I was back on trial only, and that if I strayed outside the parameters of this particular case and tried to go hunting for information about Snow’s killing, he’d know about it. McFay’s name featured in shouting capitals in all the emails.

McFay hadn’t mentioned clearing me for access to Central. I guessed that would happen if I passed this first little test. At least at HQ I wouldn’t be banging into Sean or his pregnant girlfriend every five minutes. HQ wasn’t even within spitting distance
of Central, though depending on my frame of mind I might be tempted to give it a go.

Smithy was performing the autopsy on my John Doe at ten and, given the state of the body, I didn’t think it would take him more than an hour. My plan was to call in to the hospital around midday and see what I could get out of him. The written report to the coroner could take weeks and I wanted a couple of preliminary answers before that.

In the meantime, while Wolf settled himself on the sofa, I sipped coffee and started a file on the Joe Doe. I didn’t get far before my first question mark.
John
Doe? I don’t know much about the human body. I vaguely know where my pancreas and liver are, but if I was served them both on a plate — an unlikely scenario, I admit — I probably wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

But I know two differences between male and female skeletons. The male pelvis is pretty much straight and parallel; females’ flared hips create a chalice-shaped cavity, and in mature adult skeletons, this difference is obvious. Less obvious, the elbows on females twist outward to accommodate this purpose-built design difference, whereas men’s elbows have no twist. Esoteric stuff but useful for the work I do. I’d get confirmation from Smithy later in the morning, but from my eyeball of the skeleton, I’d go with my amateur-pathologist assumption this was a John and not a Jane Doe.

I slid the John Doe photos from the envelope Lou had given me, and held them under my desk lamp. The photocopies weren’t as lurid as the originals but they were sharp and had been enlarged for detail. The body
in situ
looked more tragic than it had propped in the wheelbarrow. The right arm was thrown up and over where the head should be, as if warding off a blow; the body was on its side and curled into itself. It looked like it had been placed in the recovery position, which, I realised, was almost identical to the
foetal position. It’s also the way we lie when we’re in pain.

I spent the next twenty minutes writing up the very few details I already knew and the little I could glean from studying the photos. The written statement from the ranger who had found the body was one double-spaced page of typed text. It told little more than I already knew: he’d been laying possum traps in a densely bushed area in the Orongorongas when he came across the body. The traps were set every 250 metres or so near a newly formed stream, watercourses being the best trap-laying points since possums come there to drink.

The next two paragraphs waxed lyrical on the pros and cons of bait versus gin traps, with the ranger, a Scott Wilborough — I checked the signature at the bottom — firmly of the opinion that the latter were brutal and inhumane. He really went to town on this point, expressing himself with fluency and passion, and then returned to the matter in hand, i.e. the human body he’d found, reverting to a flat, pragmatic prose.

He described tersely how he’d taken photos of the body before lifting and transporting it in the wheelbarrow. He’d walked out of the forest on what he referred to as ‘the shortcut’, wheeling the body down the wide, stony, dry bed of the Orongorongo River to the coast. I’d once done the reverse tramp from the coast road into the forest along that rocky riverbed as far as the campers’ picnic spot, and it had been neither easy nor short. Presumably Scott had been some way further in than the picnic area if he was laying poison traps. It would be quite a feat pushing a laden wheelbarrow over stones for that distance, and I was starting to look forward to meeting this guy.

I slid out the only other document, a one-page police report giving details of the body’s arrival at Wainuiomata Police Station. Robbie had made a note that he’d given the ranger a receipt for the
wheelbarrow and a promise to return it once the body had been ‘relocated’. Robbie’s delicately looped signature at the bottom of the page reminded me I’d agreed to the date with him and his mate. Sometime soon I’d have to think about which single girlfriend I could ask to be the double part of the date. Robbie’s mate was, without doubt, a cop, because cops don’t have any other friends. That goes with the job.

I scribbled a note for Damian my dog-walker, letting him know I hadn’t taken Wolf out this morning. I suggested a good long lope would do him good. Wolf, that is. Damian lives a couple of doors down and the deal is he walks Wolf every day whether I’ve already taken him or not, but he appreciates a heads-up as to whether Wolf’s priority is exercise or company on any given day. Wolf whined and drooped his ears but it was a half-hearted performance, and since I knew Damian would be taking him out with a bunch of other dogs within the hour I didn’t take the tragedy of my leaving too much to heart.

I found Smithy in his little office next to the autopsy room. He was bent over his keyboard, head angled at the lopsided screen of his faded cream 1980s computer monitor. I could have sworn it was made out of Bakelite. I knew he was a bit deaf so I knocked on the open door. Smithy reared up, knocking over his empty plastic water cup.

‘Sorry Smithy, I didn’t mean to scare you.’

‘No, no, come in, come in.’ He patted his pockets nervously. He’d given up smoking thirty years ago but his hands still remembered where the packet should be. ‘You’re looking grand,’ he added, though I was pretty sure he hadn’t glanced at me yet.

Actually, it was Smithy who was looking grand. He’d dropped about ten kilos since I’d last seen him, had had his hair cut by a professional instead of his usual own-goal attempts with a scalpel,
and had replaced his hand-knitted cable-stitch jersey with a plain black sweater. He’d even hedge-clipped his eyebrows and wrenched out the tufts that usually protruded from his nostrils like boar tusks. The thought made my eyes water in sympathy.

There was no doubt about it. Smithy had gone and got himself a girlfriend. Smithy’s wife had died on her fortieth birthday and though I knew that in the subsequent two decades he’d seen a number of lady friends, as he quaintly called them, none had meant enough for him to have gone under the nasal tweezers. I took the office chair he was thrusting at me and placed it so we were both facing the computer screen.

‘I’ve just started to write up the John Doe now but I suppose you want a preliminary chat,’ he offered.

In green text on a black screen was the beginning of the autopsy report. The cursor, a little black square, was blinking in mid sentence.

‘Smithy, this machine is truly ancient. Why don’t you order yourself an upgrade?’

Smithy leaned forward and wrestled with the monitor. ‘I don’t need a new one. This is just fine.’ He released the monitor which rocked back into its lean. He glanced shyly at me. ‘It’s good to have you back, Diane. I thought you might have given up on our lost-and-found friends.’

‘Nah, it was just me I lost there for a while, Smithy,’ I admitted. ‘But I think McFay’s got me on trial, so I’d better deliver on this one.’

‘Yes, right,’ he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose where glasses used to be. He blinked rapidly, a new addition to his usual tics and mannerisms. I suspected it was to moisten his new contacts. ‘Well, it’s not the easiest case to get back on the proverbial horse with. It’s a John Doe.’ He threw me a complicit smirk. ‘Obviously.’

‘Obviously.’ I took out my notepad and started making notes as Smithy talked.

‘Probably about six foot two in the old measurements, but without the skull that’s only an estimate. Long-limbed. Slimmish build. Had the odd fracture when he was a child, I’d say. Nothing unusual there.’

‘Any idea how old he was when he died?’

‘Early twenties.’ He watched me make a note. ‘That’s my informed guess, at this stage, nothing more.’

‘Sure.’

Smithy scrolled through the text on the screen. ‘To be safe, I’d say between twenty and twenty-five. Fit and healthy too, as far as I can tell.’

‘Apart from having no head,’ I contributed.

‘Yes, well, there is that.’ Smithy looked depressed at the thought. ‘Oh, there is evidence of a fracture in the left talus.’

I blinked. ‘Isn’t that what Doctor Who travels in?’

Ever the gentleman, Smithy responded without a hint of sarcasm. ‘I think you’ll find that’s the Tardis, Diane. The talus on the other hand occupies the middle and upper part of the tarsus, supporting the tibia above, articulating on either side with the malleoli, and in front with the navicular, and resting upon the calcaneus below.’

‘Oh,’ I said, buying for time. Then I got it. ‘You’re telling me he broke his ankle?’

‘Yes, well, it’s hard to tell if the fracture occurred pre- or post-mortem, but my guess is before, because, unless I’m mistaken, there is an indication, a very, very faint indication, of the beginnings of a heal.’

I must have given him my ‘Duh?’ look because his hand flew to his mouth as he suppressed a giggle.

‘Heal on an ankle, that’s a little pun, isn’t it? I must make a note
of that.’ He sobered, no doubt giving himself a silent reprimand. ‘I meant
heal
as in healing. My guess is that the fracture to the talus happened about a week to ten days before our John Doe died. I’ll get Brian to have a look, too; he’s got a new-fangled camera that will help us get a bit closer.’

‘So you’re thinking maybe it was an accident? He fell over, broke his ankle, tried to crawl to a hut or for help …?’

He shrugged. ‘Of course, just as likely a scenario, since we don’t have a skull, is that something or someone smashed his head in.’

‘Or put a bullet through it,’ I suggested helpfully.

‘Indeed.’

I sucked the end of the ballpoint and stared at the blinking cursor for a full minute before asking the next question.

‘Why do
you
think the head is missing?’

Smithy squeezed his hands together between his thighs. ‘Good question, Diane. And as with all good questions, the answer is elusive.’ He pushed those invisible glasses back again. ‘It looks like there was a snap break to the neck which could of course mean he hanged himself — the break in the neck would make it more likely for the head to become separated from the spine when the flesh rotted away.’ He waggled his head as if in sympathy with the missing skull as he went through the possible scenarios. ‘Then again, the neck could have been broken post-mortem if the body was thrown around or dragged downstream, for example.’

I made some notes, aware Smithy was reading everything I wrote. Obviously I wasn’t the only one able to read text upside down.

‘I couldn’t see any signs of decapitation. Normally you’d see slice marks from the blade on the vertebrae if that had been the case. I can’t entirely rule it out but I don’t think so.’

‘Not a Triad execution, then? Great, well, that really narrows it down.’

We grinned at each other, and then lapsed into thought, me sucking the pen, Smithy blinking rapidly. There’s a special kind of intimacy that develops when two people think together. I took the opportunity to praise him on his weight loss. He blushed as if I’d referred to the size of his genitals rather than his waistline.

‘Yes, well, health and all that,’ he mumbled, self-consciously patting a little stiff curl cantilevered over his forehead. The touch to his head acted as a reminder.

‘It’s possible of course that our John Doe was shot in the head, but without a skull, and in the absence of organs, it’s impossible to say yay or nay on that one.’ He tapped me on the knee with his index finger. ‘Find me the skull with a bullet hole in it and Bob’s your uncle.’ With that he stood and rubbed his stomach which grumbled in complaint.

‘I’ll do my best, but finding his head after all this time is going to be tricky.’

Smithy yanked open the door of a small fridge tucked under a corner desk, and stared despondently at the contents.

‘Pigs are the most likely culprits to have made off with it,’ he said, taking out a pottle. It had a sticking plaster on the lid with ‘lunch’ written in red felt pen.

‘Any idea how long ago he died?’

‘Well, that’s going to be difficult.’ He removed the lid and sniffed at the contents. ‘I’ve sent samples of bone and tissue to the lab so we’ll see what they come up with, but it’s going to be hard to date without more specific information.’ He dipped his index finger and licked it. His expression was of resigned disappointment.

‘What kind of information do you need?’ I asked.

‘Well, if we knew whether the body was out in the open all the time, or sheltered for some of it, that would help to calculate the dates. As I say, I’ll have ESR run some tests, but in reality it’s pretty
much impossible to pinpoint exactly how long he’s been out there.’

He put the lid on the pottle and placed it back in the fridge, keeping the door open with his knee.

‘All we can really do is narrow it down.’

I joined him in his lonely perusal of the fridge contents.

‘So all I’ve got to go on, really,’ I said, ‘is that he was a guy in his early twenties, with a broken ankle and maybe or maybe not a bullet in his head, or who had or had not hanged himself, who went missing some time in the last hundred and fifty years.’