The Fell Walker (14 page)

Chapter 21

On his return from Glenridding, having spent the entire journey trying to find a hidden message in the dying professor’s ‘summer sniffs’, without success, Ben headed straight for his computer. He had been neglecting his Tribune work, and needed to catch up.

His first routine was to check for incoming e-mail. Usually, there were one or two leads from editor Sue Burrows. He typed in his password - FREEDOM. After all this time it still felt good. It was a regular reminder that he had escaped from the bad old days, when he had worked for soul devouring companies. Then, he had used the password PRISONER.

There were two items waiting for him. One, from Sue, gave him the location and date of a forthcoming hound-trailing event, suggesting that he cover it. He downloaded this immediately.

The second item waiting was from a sender address he didn’t recognise, and it looked like it was going to be long. He clicked and sat back.

For a moment he wasn’t sure what he was looking at as the screen filled with an official looking document, but then, among a column of data giving name, sex, age, height, weight, colour of eyes, hair, he saw ‘Post-Mortem No. 97A-187’ followed by an ID No, a PM date, and a Death D/T.

He didn’t recognise the persons name, but as he read on, he realised that he was looking at the official post mortem report on a man who had been recovered from the foot of Blencathra’s Sharp Edge 13-months ago.

It started: ‘The body is that of a muscular, well-developed and well nourished adult Caucasian male measuring 71 inches and weighing approximately 160 pounds. There is beginning rigor mortis, and early algo mortis. The hair is brown and abundant, the eyes are brown, both pupils measuring 6 mm. in diameter. There is clotted blood on the external ears but otherwise the ears, mouth and nares are essentially unremarkable. The teeth are in excellent repair and there is some pallor of the oral mucous membrane.’

Over the next three pages, the report covered the external appearance of the body and it’s wounds, the condition of the internal organs and abdominal cavity, and the thoracic cavity and skeletal system. Photographs had not been taken in this case, but the next two pages contained anatomical drawings and diagrams relating to the man’s injuries. A summary page containing the ‘Pathological Diagnosis’ found that the man had died of

‘multiple injuries associated with cranio-cerebral trauma.’

As Ben stopped reading, he could see that there was a lot more to come. It looked as though Sophie Lund’s boast had not been idle after all. Her ‘boys’
were
able to produce the goods.

The thought had him excited and worried in equal measure. Excited at the prospect of delving into masses of information to tease out a morsel that would confirm his theory. Worried, because he knew he was breaking the law by gaining access to the information, and because it meant he was still tied in with Sophie Lund.

For the moment, he put these thoughts to one side as he loaded the printer with paper and started to download. An hour later, a deep pile of documents lay on his desk. As they came through, he could see they were all post-mortem reports, from Scotland as well as from Cumbria, some with photographs, some with drawings. His pulse quickened when he saw the names John William Fraser, and Tessa Marie Coleman. He extracted their reports before they became part of the pile. As the printer stopped, a message came up on his monitor: MORE TO COME LATER - SL.

The full implication of what was happening slowly took root. This was getting serious. He didn’t like that. He thought he had left serious behind when he left work. He was now backed into a corner. Somehow, events had conspired to put him there.

It looked as though he was going to get all the information he wanted, but he wouldn’t be able to discuss any of it with the people he most wanted to - Bill Unwin and, to a lesser extent, Helen. For different reasons, neither must know that he was in possession of the pile of papers that lay, tantalisingly, on his desk. He was going to have to go it alone.

*

He read Jack Fraser’s post-mortem report first. It extended to five pages compared to Tessa’s three. Were ministers, he wondered, considered worthy of more thoroughness?

‘Cranio-cerebral Injuries’ seemed to take up the majority of the report. He read of ‘Linear, comminuted fracture of right side of skull. Linear pattern of contusions of right cerebral hemisphere. Abrasion of right cheek. Sub-arachnoid and sub-dural haemorrhage. A lacerated wound measuring 14 x 5 mm. above the external occipital protuberance. This wound exhibited small fragments of stone and other detritus, which have gone for microscopic examination and will be the subject of a supplementary report

Later, the paragraph ended: ‘The complexity of these fractures tax satisfactory verbal description and are better appreciated in photographs which are prepared. Ben glanced at the photographs. They confirmed that Jack Fraser had suffered severe damage to his skull.

‘Poor sod,’ Ben thought, as he read on, looking for the eyes.

They were both there. ‘The eyes are blue, the right pupil measuring 7 mm. in diameter, the left 6 mm. There is oedema and ecchymosis of the inner canthus region of both eyelids measuring approximately 1.4 cm. in greatest diameter.’ A quick check in his dictionary told Ben that they were nothing more than swollen, black, eyes.

He concluded from this that Jack Fraser’s body had been recovered before the birds had attacked or he had been found lying face down. Only the mountain rescue team’s photographs would show that. He wondered whether he could look forward to seeing them in the near future, courtesy of Sophie Lund’s ‘boys’.

Ploughing through two more pages giving the findings of the dissection of the internal organs, Ben reached the ‘Summary’. It read: ‘Based on the above observations it is my opinion that the deceased died as a result of blunt trauma consistent with a fall from a mountain.’

On the final ‘Report’ page he found: ‘Pathological Diagnosis: Cause of death of this 57-yer-old male is multiple injuries to vital organs.’

Ben let the report slide from his hand on to the desk. He was disappointed. There was nothing remotely suspicious contained in it. It began to look as though Sophie Lund’s conspiracy theory and his own serial killer theory were both implausible.

He picked up Tessa’s post-mortem report without enthusiasm, and with some trepidation. He didn’t want to picture her as pieces of meat scattered all over an autopsy suite, in various stages of dissection. He wanted to remember her sweet, characterful, face, her bubbly personality.

With the aid of his dictionary and an old medical book called ‘Everybody’s Family Doctor’, which had been on their bookshelves for years, neither he nor Helen knowing how it got there, he worked his way through the report, ‘translating’ medical terms into plain English.

Tessa had suffered fractures to the back of the skull, the base of the skull, the brain stem, the spinal column, and numerous bones in her arms and legs. Rigor mortis was, of course, advanced.

The right eye orbit was ‘empty of all vitreous and aqueous tissue, consistent with removal by birds after death.’ The left eye had suffered fractures to all the bones surrounding the orbit. The orbit was mostly empty, containing only particles of eye tissue as well as particles of stone, and other detritus. This was consistent with the soft tissue of the eye being disintegrated by impact before being removed by birds after death. The left ear was badly lacerated, mostly detached from the skull, the wounds containing particles of stone and other detritus.

An examination of the vaginal mucosa confirmed there had been no recent sexual activity.

The ‘Summary’ and ‘Pathological Diagnosis’ were almost identical to that of Jack Fraser, namely - death was consistent with a fall from a mountain, and was due to multiple injuries to vital organs.

This time, Ben was even more dejected. The post-mortem had confirmed that the left eye had been damaged
before
being taken by the birds, but it had also pointed out that particles of stone were present in the empty socket, suggesting that Tessa’s head had struck a crag on the way down. Clearly, that is what the pathologist had concluded, as he had raised no questions about it. At least Ben had been right about that - the pathologist had made assumptions.

Ben dropped the papers on to the desk and trudged to the window. Though he could see the beauty outside, it didn’t register. His mind was still preoccupied. He was convinced that Tessa could not have hit a crag on her way down - the fall was sheer and clean. And there was nothing sharp on the ledge that could have caused that injury to her left eye.

Then he remembered what Helen had said, when she had theorised about Tessa being attacked for sexual reasons. She had said that Tessa may have fought back and that the attacker had panicked and hit her with a rock. Maybe he had hit her in the left eye. Maybe she was right; maybe the killer was clever enough to know that a blow caused by a man-made tool like a hammer or a steel bar would leave a different wound; one that would raise questions at post-mortems. He would have to hang on to that remaining possibility. It was all he had left.

A harsh squawk from a male pheasant on the lawn below momentarily distracted him, but he was soon back inside his head. Suppose Helen was right, he thought. Suppose a killer struck Tessa with a rock before throwing her off the top. There would be a blood-stained rock somewhere, and possibly some blood-stains on the summit of Dale Head. But how could he find them? The odds on the killer leaving the rock on the summit were astronomical, and he didn’t know how to recognise an old blood-stain, and he couldn’t call in the police to do it without exposing the source of his information. He was quite prepared to do that, and take the consequences, when he had collected sufficient evidence to motivate them, but, right now, that potentiality seemed a distant fantasy.

He returned from the window and flopped in his chair. Stubbornly, yet resignedly, he wrote on his desk pad: ‘Visit Dale Head summit – blood stains?’ He had, at least, to go through the motions or his mind wouldn’t give him peace.

As he stared at the blank computer monitor in front of him, his focus shifted. If she had been struck with a rock at the summit, she might have been dead before the fall, before she hit the ledge. Would that not show up at the post-mortem?

The question came from deep in his brain’s database. Like millions of others, it had been filled with a morass of, up till now, useless information resulting from too many hours watching television police series. He was almost certain that the timing of injuries could be accurately calculated by pathologists. There were no timing discrepancies mentioned in Tessa’s post mortem-report. Could the pathologist have skipped through his routines because he was certain he knew what he was looking at - a fall victim? Had he not made an incorrect assumption about the cause of the eye wound? It wouldn’t go away. Ben would have to double check.

Five minutes later, he was putting the question, suitably disguised, to local GP Dr Philip Grearson, on the telephone. He had consulted him on a couple of occasions, and met him socially at the golf club. He was one of the new breed of approachable young doctors.

His answer was: ‘If an injury occurs causing death, i.e. the heart has stopped pumping blood, and then the body suffers further injuries shortly afterwards, the pathologist will recognise this by different contusion patterns and colours, and thus he will be able to say which injuries occurred first and which injuries caused the death. However, if an injury just renders a person unconscious, i.e. the heart is still working, and all the injuries occur within a short time frame, then the pathologist will not be able to distinguish between the timing of the injuries.’

Ben thanked the doctor and returned to his ruminations. The method of distinguishing between injury times sounded relatively simple and obvious. It was very unlikely that the pathologist in Tessa’s case would not have spotted the difference in contusions had she died at the summit, before the fall injuries occurred. Therefore, if she had been attacked at the summit, she was still alive, but possibly unconscious, before the fall.

Ben had to admit that all the post-mortem evidence pointed to an accidental fall, and he could see why the pathologist had not raised any questions. His own murder theory was quickly becoming one of diminishing possibility. Now, for it to be true, the killer would have had to use a rock, a clumsy tool compared to a hammer, smash it into Tessa’s eye with enough force to shatter bones and splatter the eye, yet judge it so that she remained alive, though possibly unconscious, until he threw her down.