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Authors: Angela Dracup

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BOOK: The Killing Club
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Morrison beamed.

‘How come the council workers didn’t find the body?’ Swift mused.

‘Number one, it was well hidden from the path. Number two, they were cutting trees quite a few hundred yards from where the body was lying. Number three, they don’t take dogs to work.’ Morrison beamed again, getting well into his stride now.

‘I take your point,’ Swift said, thinking it almost laughingly ironic that council workers should have been crawling around the crag and not discovered a body lying yards away from them.

He made a mental note to contact the SOCO team without delay and ask for a further examination on the crag, focusing on the possible point from which the body fell, and the rocks below. He’d advise them they might need climbing gear.

As they walked on, Swift was aware of a little throb of excitement of his own, a sense that this was a case which merited investigation. It was a few months since he had experienced the rush of purpose and curiosity which came at the start of a murder enquiry. And he realized how much he had missed it.

 

The town mortuary was an unobtrusive single-storey building situated close to the local hospital. Rectangular and built out of red brick, it had one single door situated in the middle of one of the longer walls. It was six months since Swift had paid it a visit and he hesitated for a moment before pressing the entry buzzer set to the side of the door. It made a fierce fizzing noise. After a few seconds there was a crackle from the intercom. ‘Yes?’

He leaned forward to speak into the grille. ‘DCI Swift.’

The door fell open, releasing a blast of chill air and an overpowering scent of lemon. The entrance was narrow and dimly lit. Swift put a finger over his nostrils and took in a few deep breaths before going downstairs to the basement where the main grisly business of the mortuary took place. Ahead of him were swing doors made from thick plastic sheeting. A yellow light showed behind them showing up the grains and scratches on the plastic. There was the low hum of a radio playing classical music. He placed a hand against each door and pushed them apart. The smell hit his nose like a vicious slap – the stench of rotting meat and the ghastly after-burn of alcohol.

The pathologist, Tanya Blake, was waiting for him. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked noticing Swift’s pallor. She was small and slender, dressed in green scrubs with a face mask hanging from one ear.

‘Give me a moment,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘We’ll need to go into the storage room,’ she said. ‘Are you OK with that?’

Not really, he thought. ‘Yes … lead on.’

‘Sure?’ she said.

At his nod, Blake used all her slight weight to heave the door open. A rush of frosty, alcohol-scented air shot out into the corridor. Brutal white lights flickered to life in the room beyond which was basically a giant fridge. ‘Sorry, but I haven’t had time to tidy him up much,’ she said. ‘We’re even busier than usual, mainly because my new assistant took himself off mountain-biking last weekend and succeeded in breaking a wrist and an ankle bone.’

‘I can see that might be rather a hindrance for someone in your line of work,’ Swift said. Carrying out post-mortems involved a degree of stamina together with a dash of athleticism.

Swift watched as she slid a steel drawer open, noting the humps and valleys under the white sheet. There was a body under there, brutally damaged, forever stilled. He breathed in and the chilled air bit into the flesh of his throat.

Blake glanced at him, then pulled the sheet back.

The man was young, in his mid thirties, Swift guessed. His face was criss-crossed with lines of dried blood, but was otherwise unmarked. Strands of his thick brown hair lay across his forehead, slightly stained with blood.

‘At the moment, I’ve concluded that death was caused by severe blows to the back of the head, consistent with a fall from a high place on to rock surfaces. I haven’t been to the crime scene so far but I know the area anyway, and SOCO’s sent me some photographs. It’s not possible to be precise about which separate contact incident with sheer rock killed him, as the severity of each blow as he gathered speed probably made each subsequent impact more severe, but any one could have killed him outright. No major injuries to any of the internal organs, but there is significant bruising to both the trunk and limbs, as you would expect from a long descent down the side of a tall crag.’

‘That seems to fit with what I’ve seen of the crime scene,’ Swift said. ‘Was he in good health; was there any alcohol in his blood, any trace of drugs?’

‘Yes, in pretty good shape. No drugs or alcohol. He was carrying a little more fat than might have been good for him, but that’s hardly unusual for a guy his age.’

They both looked at the body in solemn silence. Swift noticed amongst the bruising and burn scarring on the dead man’s left upper arm was a faint BCG vaccination scar, a precaution from years before, which somehow made the body seem more vulnerable and pitiful than all the damage it had sustained just before death.

Blake stroked the dead man’s cheek; Swift had noted before how tenderly she touched bodies once her necessarily brutal examinations had been completed. ‘He was having an early morning walk,’ she said softly. ‘I wonder what he was thinking. Those last thoughts just seconds before the final heartbeat.’

Swift had a sudden thought of his late wife. What had she been thinking just before the train she was travelling in lurched off the rails? Before her heart gave its last beat? ‘You treat your bodies with more consideration than some people give the living,’ he told Blake, dryly.

She smiled an acknowledgement. ‘I’m going to pull the sheet down further so you can see the main site of the burns,’ she said. Slowly and gently she moved her hands. ‘We’ve removed all the remnants of clothing and tested for traces of accelerant, blood samples have gone off for analysis and the body has been X-rayed for signs of gunshot wounds.’

‘And?’

‘As I said, there were no significant internal injuries. And all the other tests were negative, apart from the presence of an accelerant, which was brandy.’

Swift looked at the baked, cracked skin of the dead man’s body and thighs.

‘It seems likely that his sweatshirt and jeans were soaked in brandy and then set alight. The worst area of burning was on the chest, which is why the skin looks charred. The human body keeps on burning for some time after the fire goes out because of its subcutaneous fat.’ She glanced across to him. ‘Sorry, I’m probably telling you things you don’t need or want to know.’

Swift had to admit to himself that he was now feeling queasy.

‘However,’ Blake continued, ‘as you can see, the head and lower arms and legs have been less exposed to heat and that’s why the skin is still pink.’

Swift forced himself to look carefully. Yes, the skin was pink, but disfigured with horrific mottling and blisters. He thought that he had seen enough. Moreover, in the midst of this observation and discussion of heat and fire, he was beginning to be affected by the coldness of the room. ‘Can we talk some more in your office?’ he asked Blake.

Back in the warmth of her office, safe from crushed, blackened cadavers, Swift was able to take a little pleasure in the hot, black coffee she prepared for him.

She made a steeple of her fingers and tapped it against her lips. ‘If he had come in without the burns, I suppose the question would have been, did he fall or was he pushed?’

‘Would you be prepared to make any comments at this stage?’ Swift asked.

‘It’s hard to say when I haven’t been to the spot from which he fell. But we might be able to tell you more when the forensic team have examined his clothes. There are certainly no identifiable traces on the body which we could test for DNA regarding a second person having touched him. But the burning and the smoke have complicated the issue. On the other hand, the cause of death was the direct result of the fall. If he had simply been set alight with the contents of a flask of brandy he would probably have survived with ready and appropriate care.’

Swift heard the doubt in her voice. ‘I have been to the spot,’ he said, ‘and my current thinking is that he was most likely to have been pushed.’ He gave her a brief run-down of his visit to the crag with Bernard Morrison.

‘But the report from our SOCO team states that there was no useful evidence found at the site,’ he continued. ‘The place from which he fell is a narrow footpath which skirts around the highest reaches of the crag. It’s a well-trodden earth path, which was dry on the morning of the incident, so that it would be unlikely to show up any useful impressions of footprints. Also, on public paths, footprints and any signs of a scuffle are easily destroyed by the walkers who come next.’

Blake nodded agreement.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

‘And we still have no ID,’ Swift said.

‘We might just have something to help you with the ID when the report on the clothes comes back from forensics,’ she said to him. ‘And we could check dental records, take impressions and send them round to local dentists.’

‘Have you a head-shot of our mystery man I could have for the file?’ he asked.

She went to her filing cabinet, unlocked it and pulled a drawer out. ‘There,’ she said, handing him a white A4 envelope. ‘Hope that might give you a lead.’

Swift smiled at her words of encouragement. ‘One last thing,’ he said as he got to his feet. ‘Time of death? You mentioned earlier that our man was out for an early morning walk.’

‘Indeed I did.’ She consulted her draft report. ‘Yes, time of death estimated somewhere between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. on the day he was found. Sorry I can’t be more precise than that. Owing to the burning, I was restricted in the areas of the body I could use to make an estimate of body temperature at the time of death.’

‘That’ll do fine,’ Swift said, interested to note that her calculation and Bertrand Morrison’s whilst not entirely consistent, did show some points of agreement. He thought Morrison had done rather well, given that his guess had been made solely on the basis of reasoning and common sense, with no help from measuring instruments and science. ‘Thanks for all this, Tanya.’

‘A pleasure,’ she said, grinning.

‘It’s good to know that some people get true job satisfaction’ he commented dryly.

‘Oh, yeah, I do love my job,’ Blake agreed. ‘After all, not many professionals get to work with such docile clients.’

Swift gave a small grimace and left without delay.

On returning to his monastic cell of an office, he switched on his computer and keyed in notes on his interviews with Bertrand Morrison and Tanya Blake.

When that was done he sat for a time in front of the screen, running through the text, picking out the salient points.

Dead man found in woodland area at base of a crag – area well used by walkers, bikers etc

No ID. Nothing in pockets except cash
Likely that death caused by fall from high point of crag
Clothes set alight after death – burns mainly to torso area
? one perpetrator or two

He considered his next course of action. The primary consideration was the dead man’s ID, but he would probably have to await the report from the forensic team before he could move on with that one.

He looked once again at the photograph of the dead man’s face. If he could only put a name to it then he and Cat could get cracking on Monday morning.

Frustration bit into him. He’d planned to spend the weekend painting his sitting room and repairing to the local pub for refreshment in the evening. And he could still do that, but he knew the issue about the dead man’s identity would needle him. He’d checked the missing person lists but there were no matches there.

He tapped his fingers lightly against the black and white photograph for a few moments. He glanced at his watch. It was 4.30, a time when many workers would be tidying their tools and clearing their desks ready for the weekend ahead. But he knew someone who would most likely still be at their desk. Someone who searched and dug for information as eagerly as a squirrel seeks nuts.

He slipped on his jacket and picked up his car keys.

 

Craig sat across the table from his allocated probation officer. The room in which they were meeting was small and rather dark, having only one narrow window. The walls were beige and had only one picture on them, that of a line of trees in a wood. Craig decided that when he had a place of his own he would paint the walls in a bright colour, maybe yellow. Yes, yellow would be good. Like the yolk of an egg – he liked eggs. And he’d put up pictures of people doing things; making stuff, cooking stew and baking pies.

The probationer was called Brian Norwood. He was something of a disappointment to Craig, being a man in his fifties with a weary manner, as though he was really too tired to think up anything that would take the edge off Craig’s terrified sense of being swamped by confusion and fear as regards the outside world.

They talked about Craig’s being temporarily booked into a nearby bedsit. They talked of Craig’s chances of getting a job. Or rather Brian Norwood talked and Craig listened. Norwood consulted the thin pile of typed pages on his desk. There was a job going at an abattoir, something at a meat packing plant.

‘Not very good wages,’ Brian Norwood said. ‘But it’s a start.’

Craig could think of nothing worse for a released murderer than working with dead bodies. He looked at Norwood and said, ‘All right then.’ He was fagged out: he had no fight in him. The walk from his bedsit to the office had been so scary he had taken to counting his footsteps to try to steady himself down. The amount of open space between the cars and the buses, the sky and the ground, were frighteningly big. Everything was so far away he felt dizzy, as if there was nothing to cling to. He’d been in prison for eight years. Eight years when he had never been more than twenty feet away from a wall. The exercise yard had been just a narrow strip, and the high walls had protected him from the wind. Out here on the pavement it swirled around his face, jabbing and sharp, whipping his hair into his eyes. When a bus passed by he felt it might suddenly veer towards him, crushing him under its massive wheels. And who would be sorry to see him go. Him … a murdering bastard.

BOOK: The Killing Club
13.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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