River Deep (3 page)

“Don’t know, Martha. I really … don’t … know. Probably a homicide.”

“Have you picked up any superficial injuries?”

“A bit of bruising on the hands and face which could be ante, peri or postmortem.”

“I see.”

He gave one of his sudden warm, soft chuckles. “You know me, Martha, I like to wait until after the PM. Keep my cards close to my chest. I’ve watched far too many pathologists make monkeys of themselves playing the guessing game.” There was something infectious about his chuckle. She laughed too.

“Martha – I was wondering if …”

“I would come and view the body in situ? Yes – it seems a good idea. Give me half an hour.”

“Good.” He sounded relieved. “And wear galoshes.”

There were always a multitude of domestic arrangements to tend to before she was free. Having cajoled Agnetha into leaving her bedroom door ajar and turning her CD player down, put a pizza and oven chips into the oven, thrown salad into a bowl and drenched it in bottled
French dressing she bribed the twins into loading the dishwasher after tea and doing all their homework before changing into some trousers and a mac. She tried to ignore the fact that the twins were whispering again as she came downstairs. Twenty minutes later she was back in her car, wellies loaded into the boot and heading back down the drive, towards the town.

The roads were wet and shiny black, lit by orange lampposts and eerily quiet. Folk were staying at home, intimidated by the river, guarding their property and impotently watching. She parked on some elevated ground near the Abbey and squleched her way over the duckboards to cross the English Bridge.

No one could doubt that something was going on here tonight. The scene was lit with swiping blue strobes; floodlights beamed on Marine Terrace.

Two policemen stepped forward, recognised her and waved her through. The sky was thunderous with sudden flashes of forked lightning. The entire scene looked as threatening as a Boris Karloff movie. She dropped down the steps towards the river and walked along the path, feeling the water licking at her wellies as it dribbled again towards the properties. She was glad to reach number seven.

The front door was wide open, the scene well illuminated. A sodden room which stunk of the river-bed, three people inside. The fourth no more than a pile of soaking clothes. Randall was the first to spot her. He gave her a wide grin which she knew was relief. Once she had viewed the body it could be removed to the mortuary. Concealed from prying eyes and the first step taken in the investigation.

Mark Sullivan was standing in the corner, his back to her, the body at his feet. The atmosphere was dank and
dirty and smelt like the grave. It was the river water combining with early putrefaction, mixed in with the contents of flooded sewers. She looked around her. It probably had been a comfortable – if small – home. Light wallpaper, stained furniture which had bumped against the walls. Her wellies stuck to the carpet and her steps squelched each time she lifted her foot.

“We found him here.” Sullivan indicated a door, swinging slightly. “It leads to a cellar.”

She peered round. Alex flashed his torch down the stairs. River-water lay halfway up the cellar walls. Lime washed. It looked empty. No racks of wine here. She moved back to study the door. There was a stout bolt at the top. Shot back. She knew both the policeman and the pathologist would have noted all these details. She turned her attention to the body, rivulets of water still streaming from his clothes. Short brown hair, a half-open fish mouth. Pale skin which she knew would be cold to touch. Randall was right. It would be impossible to examine him properly here. She smiled at one, small detail. Randall had already bagged off the hands. She spoke to both of them. “Look – I don’t see what we can achieve here. Let’s get him down to the mortuary. And we’ll hold the PM tomorrow? In the morning.”

She walked slowly across the bridge, glancing back at the melodrama. Underneath the river was roaring like an unleashed animal. She was glad to leave it behind and reach her car.

The following morning brought no relief from the town’s problems. The ring road was jammed with traffic denied access to the town. BBC Radio Shropshire announced every hour that both the Welsh and English bridges were still closed and likely to remain so. The announcer further informed its listeners that the river Severn was expected to peak sometime on Thursday.

Martha fingered her steering wheel knowing that the inhabitants of Shrewsbury would be justifiably apprehensive. They were all affected whether or not they lived in the potential wash of the river, and the truth was bleak. The TV might be flashing out pictures reminiscent of the Blitz, portraying great camaraderie, togetherness and team spirit, dinghies, canoes, going to work in fisherman’s waders and so on but the reality was sick, gnawing worry. A fear that the insurance would not cover the real cost of the damage. Loss of business. Burglary of empty property, relatives suddenly foisted on families with no notion when they would leave. All this added to the stress of being invaded by contaminated river water. And now – on top of all those problems in the town – an unidentified body had turned up. For the already overstretched police force it must have seemed like the last straw – a crime scene difficult to investigate and seal off, possibly even a murder investigation. Martha smiled and channel-hopped between the local radio station and Classic FM. She wouldn’t swap places with a police officer planning an imminent holiday! She inched her way forward in the traffic queue and finally arrived at the mortuary at ten minutes to nine, parking next to the Panda car.

They were waiting for her, Alex Randall, Mark Sullivan,
four other officers – one of whom was introduced as PC Gary Coleman, finder of the body – the mortuary assistant, a pathology student from Stoke and the inevitable SOCOs with their array of specimen bags. They were all gowned up, gloves on. The body lay in the centre, still dressed, on the post mortem table. The lights were
white-bright
and tilted full on him. There would be no more secrets and no privacy.

Their greetings were cursory and formal. They had a job to do. Alex Randall touched her arm and started speaking from behind her. “We may have an ID,” he said quietly.

“Oh?” She turned around.

As a woman it was hard not to respond to Alex Randall. He epitomised the traditional police officer. Tall,
dark-haired,
with serious hazel eyes, craggy, irregular, almost ugly features and a deeply buried sense of humour which he hid effectively behind formality. She had known him for a couple of years without ever seeing his face crack into a smile.

Then one day he had been explaining a case to her where a woman had fallen, drunk, with her face down a lavatory. Her friends had subsequently pulled her out, cleaned her up and dumped her on the steps of Monkmoor police station. And quite suddenly, as he had described the state of the woman’s clothes, her hair and her mortification, his face had cracked and, instead of the ugliness, she had glimpsed a man full of life and humour – away from the job. Sometimes she idly wondered about him and waited, as for the sun to explode from behind a cloud, for that smile that wrought such a transformation. But it was rare. As rare and welcome as sunshine in an English summer. Of his personal life she still knew nothing. It was a closed book. And she had picked up no gossip about him. Even from Jericho. Which made her curious because Jericho
gossiped about everyone.

Randall carried on talking softly into her ear. She caught a waft of his sharp, strange after-shave overlying the pervading stink of mortuary-formalin which always reminded her of long ago pathology lectures in the medical school.

“The house this guy was washed out of was rented to a James Humphreys, a businessman from Slough, who moved up here a couple of months ago when he got a job managing the Jaguar garage. He fits the description. Right build, right age and we’ve picked up a Jaguar in a pub car park which belongs to him. He used to leave it there overnight. According to the estate agent who rented him the property, Humphreys was waiting to see how the job panned out before bringing his wife over to Shrewsbury – which is why he’d rented Marine Terrace. He was last at work on Sunday, left round about four in the afternoon. Since then there’s been no word from him.”

She put her hand out as though to pause the proceedings. “Have you made contact with his wife?”

“There’s been a bit of a problem. She isn’t at home. The local force are doing all they can but I thought in view of the circumstances you’d want Mark to proceed with the initial examination?”

She nodded. Peter, the mortician, was well able to tidy corpses up to completely conceal the signs of a post mortem.

So one of the policemen tied her into a cotton gown. She slipped her feet into a pair of theatre clogs, pulled a paper hat over her hair so a stray strand could not contaminate trace evidence and they were ready to start. She didn’t need gloves. She was here as an observer only. She knew better than to touch anything.

The police photographer took some flash pictures and Martha watched the river-water trickling slowly into the
grooves on the post mortem table and pooling in the sink. One of the SOCOs filled a small specimen bottle with it. They would analyse it for diatoms and make sure it really was river-water which dripped from the dead man’s clothes.

They moved in closer. A ring of curious spectators.

In one way all corpses share a common appearance. Young or old, male or female, black or white. They do not look alive. In fact it is hard to imagine them ever having been alive. This makes the pathologist’s job easier. It detaches him from thinking too hard about the living, breathing person and from the circumstances which led to this.

Mark Sullivan broke the silence. “Better get on with it, I suppose.” His voice, echoing around the room, bouncing off the white tiles and clinical floor, was directed at the mortician.

Two of the police officers cut the suit very carefully into halves, slicing along the seams under the arms and at the side. They did the same with the shirt, the tie, the socks, the underpants. All were placed on a table nearby ready for examination. Now the body lay naked and exposed.

Mark Sullivan’s description earlier had been accurate. Humphreys was well-nourished and muscular, dark-haired and about forty. In good shape. It wasn’t hard to surmise that he had probably been physically attractive – alive. Adding to the fact that the suit had looked expensive, Martha’s mind wandered. She was surprised he had not kept more regular contact with his wife. They were assuming he had died sometime Sunday night or in the early hours of Monday morning. Yet his wife was “missing”, “uncontactable”. She wondered whether Mrs Humphreys was, perhaps, away on holiday. It was a nice time to go. But in these days of ready communication she was curious to
know where Mrs Humphreys was.

This was something else that intrigued her. No ID in his pockets? No mobile phone? She leaned across to speak to Randall. “Did you find his wallet?”

He shook his head.

“A mobile phone?”

Again he shook his head. She met his eyes and read his concern there too. “He could have been robbed,” he said, but without conviction.

She turned her attention back to the post mortem. Mark Sullivan’s eyes had fixed on a small elliptical wound a little below the dead man’s left nipple. Right over the heart. And from the set of the pathologist’s face she knew he was already querying this as the cause of death. But it looked such a small, almost insignificant injury to fell this man. Sullivan would have to delve deeper to find out the truth, expose skin, bone, finally the very chambers of the heart. However he actually said nothing, but stood motionless, his hands clasped together, as the mortuary assistant performed the preliminaries, measuring the height from crown to heels, and checking the weight.

She knew that Mark Sullivan was waiting for her to make some comment. She contrasted him to the policeman. Shorter, early forties, cropped brown hair and tired but shrewd blue eyes. He invariably looked as though he’d passed a rough night. He gave her a tentative grin.

Before even making the first cut he was busily making his observations into the tape recorder. While Martha looked on. She was not meant to be an active participator but an impartial observer – the conductor of the orchestra whose role was to make sense from the various discordances between the law and medicine. So as Sullivan penetrated the skull and brain of the dead man she observed that James Humpreys, presumptive, had been in good
health and shape – right up to the moment of his death.

At first there was little to see. Some marks on the shoulders and torso which they all knew could have been caused by a fall down the steps or being bumped around in the cellar by the rising tide of flood water. As Sullivan worked on the head she turned her attention to the chest. There was inevitable discoloration of the skin, a pale, dead fish appearance and to the right of it a puzzling mark. Small, perfectly round, pinkish bruising. She wondered what he would make of this. Sullivan worked steadily, his hands seeming to grow steadier and more confident the longer he worked. His face gradually looked less lined, less tired, more relaxed as he became increasingly absorbed. Martha watched him work, seeing the man he should be and wondering why he invariably did look so strained. As he finished with the head and turned his attention back to the chest area she was even more aware of his competence. He stood back and looked first, his latexed fingers touching the small, round contusion in the centre of the chest that she had noticed. “I wonder what caused this,” he mused.

Randall leaned forward. “I don’t know. We couldn’t see anything in the house that would have caused it.”

“Well – whatever it was – there’s very little bruising. It was inflicted within a very short time of his death.”

“Is there nothing in the cellar that could have caused this wound?” Martha looked at them both.

Randall answered. “Not that I’ve seen.”

“I’ll need to study the underlying tissues. It looks superficial but inflicted with some force. Now – let’s look at this.”

Sullivan’s index finger stroked the injury in the chest now, which gaped and smiled like a baby’s mouth. Gently he brought the edges back together. Peter handed him a ruler and he measured the wound very carefully.
Two
cen
timetres
.
They all marked the number and knew its significance.
The width of the blade of the causative instrument cannot be larger than the size of the wound. But because a man may move either to defend himself or to try and escape when he feels the first prick of the knife a small knife may make a big wound.

Sullivan frowned and pointed out more detail. The wound was asymmetric, tapering thinly at one end, blunt at the other. “Fish-tailing,” he murmured then smiled at the policeman and Martha knew he relished this Sherlock Holmes touch.

“So, Alex,” Sullivan said. “You’re looking for a
single-edged
instrument, with a blade narrower than two centimetres.”

“Well we haven’t found it yet,” Alex answered grumpily, as though he imagined the pathologist thought he was handing him a solution on a plate. “But we’ll get a team to search the area – as well as we can,” he said. “The cellar’s still half underwater.” His eyes clouded. They all fell silent and Martha knew what they were thinking. The Severn, snaking round the town, no more than four steps from the front door of Marine Terrace. Expected to peak some time on Thursday and they would all have to wait.

“We may never find it,” the policeman finished.
It could be washing along the bottom of the river. Embedding in the mud or shifting with the ebb and flow of the water.

But at least they had a description of a knife and the width of a blade. Which led to the next question: how long was that blade? Knife wounds could be surprisingly deceptive. On the surface there might be little to see. But even a wound of two centimetres wide could be lethal. If it had penetrated a vital part of a vital organ. Such as one of the two ventricles of the heart.

Now they were all curious to know what else Sullivan
would discover. But he was acting cautious and slow, still studying the skin. Once he had investigated the wound he would have destroyed this untouched witness. Again the police photographer flashed some close-ups.

“There’s no damage on the skin,” he mused. “No marks of a hilt – which makes me think it didn’t go all the way in. Although the clothes would have protected it to some extent.”

Already Martha was hearing a defence.
Accident. Fell
against the knife. No clear intent.
From her point of view this was still not a clear case of homicide. It was
possible
that Humphreys had
fallen
down the cellar steps, a knife in his hand. Nothing but an unfortunate and terrible accident. The lights had been off because of the flooding. There had been intermittent interruption of the supply for some of Sunday and most of Monday before it had been completely switched off on Tuesday as the water level had risen. Humphreys was in a strange house – not his own. He may well have been drinking. Sullivan would certainly be sending serum samples for blood alcohol as well as other mind-altering substances. If such a knife was found in the cellar accidental death was still a possible verdict.

Sullivan gently threaded a blunt-ended probe into the wound and when it met resistance he read the mark. “And the blade was round about fourteen centimetres long.” His eyes found those of Randall. He knew how important all these details were to the policeman. “Give or take,” he said. “I’d be inclined to look for a slightly longer blade. Two or three centimetres longer.” A pause. “I’d like to look at his clothes again.”

He crossed the mortuary floor and stood, staring at the suit, then at the shirt, his gloved fingers quickly finding the slash wound in the jacket which corresponded to Humphreys’ injury. When he studied the shirt they could
all see a small amount of bloodstaining.

“I thought there would have been more blood.” Martha spoke for all of them.