Skeleton Plot (3 page)

‘Oh, I can’t possibly give you anything definite standing here on the edge of this field. I’m a scientist. I need my laboratory and my instruments around me to provide you with scientific findings. You shall have them, in due course. But in the meantime—’

‘In the meantime we need to speculate!’ said John Lambert abruptly. ‘I shouldn’t need to remind you that you’re employed here as a forensic pathologist: speculation is part of the deal. Until we know otherwise, this is a suspicious death. There may be a serious crime involved, perhaps the most serious of all. You’re not in a court of law here. No one is going to hold you to account if you have to revise your opinions after a full laboratory investigation. We need your thoughts right now.’

The pathologist was around forty, bearded, bespectacled and entirely unused to being spoken to in this manner. He looked for a moment as if he would protest, but then tightened his lips and looked at the accumulating bones on the sheet. Perhaps it was the fact that he was being taken to task by an older man which made him cooperate, or perhaps it was his awareness of the local and national stature of the detective who was pressing him.

‘There is an almost complete absence of soft tissue. That is a limiting factor in establishing the date of death.’

‘I understand that. We need your thoughts at this moment.’ Whilst remaining coolly polite, Lambert managed to convey the fact that his patience was growing thin.

‘There is no hair adhering to this skull. That suggests to me that chummy has been in the ground for at least twenty years, though different soils have different effects.’ He moved carefully across the designated scene of the crime path to stand beside the skull, which was dominating the scene as if at the centre of some ancient pagan ritual. He looked down at it and said almost reluctantly, ‘There are some teeth left. That suggests to me a date within the last century, probably within the last fifty years. For teeth formed after 1965, carbon dating of tooth enamel can enable us to predict a year of birth which should be accurate to between one and five years. One of my first laboratory tasks will be to establish how much if any enamel is left on these teeth.’

Lambert resisted the temptation to point out sarcastically that this revelation hadn’t caused any great pain, even to an anally retentive pathologist. ‘What else? You will understand that it is important to us to have even an approximate date for this death as soon as possible.’

The pathologist nodded his pedantic head and glanced again towards the plastic sheet and the work going on beside it to unearth this forensic treasure trove. ‘We haven’t found any nails yet. We may still do so: they survive quite well in most soils. Radio carbon dating based on nails is accurate to within three years.’ He looked at the two detectives, then decided upon what he regarded as a confession of weakness. ‘It may surprise you to know that this is new territory to me as well as to you. I’ve investigated bones before, but they’ve been centuries old, without the urgency of serious crime surrounding them. I will genuinely be able to speak with more authority in a few days. Apart from laboratory testing, there are experts I would like to consult on this.’

Lambert recognized the concession, the unspoken acknowledgement that they were working together here, rather than pursuing their own interests. ‘Thank you, Dr Patterson. You would say then that death was relatively recent but not very recent.’

‘I’d say between eighteen and twenty-five years ago. I reserve the right to revise that after more scientific analysis in my laboratory.’

‘Thank you. That is a starting point for us. DS Hook and I will go back to Oldford and set detective wheels in motion.’

They walked slowly across the paddock towards the back door of the bright modern bungalow and the couple who were more shaken than anyone by what had lain undiscovered on the edge of their land.

They were almost at the door when Patterson appeared breathlessly at their heels. ‘By the way, there’s one thing I didn’t mention but which I’m now quite sure about. These remains are female.’

‘
O
ldford CID section here, sir. We need to speak to you. It’s in connection with your development at Brenton Park.’

Jason Fowler was immediately defensive. ‘It’s around twenty years since we began the development there. The guarantee extends for ten years only and it excludes—’

‘No one is threatening to sue you. At least no one that we know about. We need to speak to you about a much more serious matter.’

‘And what is that?’ Jason was playing for time now. You couldn’t deny the police. You had to speak to them when they demanded it. But if he could get some notice of what they wanted from him, he might at least be able to cover his tracks.

‘I’m not at liberty to disclose that. You will find out soon enough. Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook need to speak with you urgently. You will find out what this is about from them.’

The woman rolled the ranks out as if she was assembling the heavy artillery, he thought. What could this possibly be about? That latest consignment of bricks had come suspiciously cheap, but he was pretty sure they’d been genuinely bankrupt stock. The bank had been selling as receivers, on behalf of a twat who’d overreached himself hopelessly in Birmingham and been downed by the Inland Revenue. And they surely didn’t set Chief Superintendents chasing dodgy deals on bricks, did they? He said roughly, ‘This is Sunday. Day of rest they used to call it, when I was at school. You work hard all week and now you can’t even rest on the sabbath. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’

‘I’m afraid it can’t, sir. Crime doesn’t recognize weekends. Our officers are losing their Sundays too. They are quite prepared to come to your home to speak to you, so as to minimize the inconvenience.’

‘No. There’s no need for them to do that. I wanted to go down to the Wye View site this morning anyway.’ It was contradicting what he’d said about looking forward to his Sunday rest, but he didn’t want the police coming here. Things were dodgy enough with Jane as it was. If the neighbours saw senior cops coming into his house on Sunday morning they’d ask questions, and Jane wouldn’t like that. She’d give him hell, stroppy cow, and his conjugals would be contested again. ‘Tell them I’ll see them in the office at the Wye Vale site at ten o’clock. They’ll know where it is?’

‘Oh, they’ll know where it is, sir. Thank you. You can expect them at ten o’clock.’ She spoke briskly and managed to make it sound like a threat.

Ten miles away, John Lambert was having his own marital difficulties. Christine saw him in his working suit and anticipated the worst. ‘We’re going across to Caroline’s for tea this afternoon. It’s your grandson’s birthday.’

‘I know that. Murder doesn’t choose its moments.’

‘And I know that too. I’ve had thirty years to learn to live with it. This is murder?’

He smiled grimly. He’d flung the big word which was the best excuse at her, hoping she wouldn’t query it: everything and everyone deferred to murder. ‘We don’t know yet. But it’s very possible. We should know within a couple of days.’

‘A skull, you said last night.’

‘Yes. Found where you’d least expect it, on the edge of—’

‘It’s an old death then, this. Twenty years or more.’

‘Very probably, yes.’ He knew what was coming next.

‘Not urgent, then. It can await the attention of the Great Detective for a few more hours. Super-sleuth can afford to have tea with his wife and his daughter and his grandchildren.’

She was throwing in the newspaper phrases that she knew he hated. She must be really irritated with him. Christine was amazingly tolerant of his work really, until it affected family. Then she was like the mother tiger with her children – not that John Lambert knew whether tigers were more or less maternal than other animals. He said, ‘This is a suspicious death: a new murder, as far as we and everyone else are concerned. There will be a press release this morning. As soon as the guilty people know that a body has been discovered, they’ll start covering their tracks.’

‘They’ve had around twenty years to do that. There won’t be any tracks left for you to follow.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But whoever is responsible will be surprised by this. They probably thought they were safe for life. They might reveal things by their reactions to this discovery.’ He wondered if he was deceiving himself. Was he seeking arguments to justify his presence at the heart of the investigation, which was at this moment stirring into life like an animal crawling out of hibernation? ‘This is a new situation for almost all of us at Oldford, Christine. And everyone remembers Fred and Rose West. Every copper round here has nightmares about that. I’m sure this had no connection with those crimes, but I don’t want any melodramatic conjecture; you know how the media would seize on that.’

His wife knew now that she was going to lose the battle, as she always did. Work would come first, as ever. That had almost destroyed their marriage once, when she was at home with two young children and he was chasing villains at what had seemed like every hour of the day. At least he told her a little about what he was up to now, whereas he had shut her out completely in those days. She sighed. ‘I suppose Caroline will make allowances for you. She’s grown up with it and known nothing else. You can’t expect a grandson of eight to understand. George is bound to be disappointed.’

‘He’ll have his presents and his Nana Christine to amuse him. He won’t miss the old man who tries to play football with him.’

‘You know that that is exactly what he will miss. He loves telling the rest of us how many goals he’s put past you.’

‘I’ll do my best. I’ll be there for the meal if I possibly can.’

‘You’d better mean that, John Lambert.’ She reached up, threw her arms round his neck and gave the troubled face a kiss which surprised both of them.

What Jason Fowler had called an office was little more than a shed with a table and a computer in it. It was normally occupied by a secretary who doubled as a guide to the site for those putative purchasers who were anxious to get in early and secure the best plots in this extensive development.

There were three rather uncomfortable upright chairs in the shed. Fowler took the one behind the desk and seated his unwelcome visitors upon the other two. He appeared to Bert Hook to be a successful builder trying hard to look the part of the industrial entrepreneur he had now chosen to become. His hair was so determinedly black that it had certainly received help from a bottle. His heels were substantial, designed to add the height he desired to his stature. His grey-blue eyes were narrow and watchful. They said that he did not trust the police and did not expect to be trusted himself. The thin moustache gave him the air of a wartime spiv rather than the sophisticated executive he was aiming at. Bert Hook wasn’t sure whether or not he built good houses. He didn’t think you would get many bargains from this man, and he would want to check any which were offered very carefully indeed.

Fowler leaned back behind his desk and said, ‘I trust this won’t take very long.’

‘As long as it needs to,’ said Lambert briskly. ‘Your full cooperation is the factor most likely to speed the process.’

‘You have that, of course. You will find everything is perfectly in order here. If you want the paper work to prove that, you will need to come back when—’

‘It isn’t this site we are concerned with. I’m sure Mr Caffrey will be pleased to know that,’ said Lambert.

Fowler glanced at him sharply. Caffrey was the local councillor who had been forced to resign amidst accusations of corruption and back-handers from Fowler to secure planning consent for the extent of the building on this site, where over one hundred residences were planned in four phases of building. ‘Nothing was ever proved over that. There has been no court case and there will never be one.’

‘No. You and I know the truth of the matter, Mr Fowler, but there will be no court case, because of the lack of sufficient evidence. I am sure that Mr Caffrey feels well compensated for his loss of office.’

‘I shall offer you no further comment. I have nothing at all to feel guilty about in that business.’

‘Really? Well, let us hope that the same is true of the issue which DS Hook and I need to discuss with you today.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘You heard the announcement on radio and television this morning?’

‘No. I was otherwise engaged.’ He leered his suggestion of the connubial bliss which had in fact been emphatically denied to him.

Lambert didn’t believe for a moment that Fowler had heard nothing of the dramatic find at Brenton Park. Even if he hadn’t listened to the bulletins, someone would have rung him by now. He wondered what texts had been recorded on the mobile phone which Fowler had been fingering when they arrived here. He’d terminated a call very abruptly when he’d seen them approaching. ‘A body was found yesterday at one of your former building sites. Brenton Park.’

‘It’s twenty years since we began work there. Just over that, probably.’

‘That’s interesting. The remains we found appear to be just about twenty years old.’ That was pushing it a little: the pathologist had said he’d be able to be more precise in a day or two. But he didn’t mind stretching things, if it would discomfort this irritating man. It wasn’t personal prejudice, he told himself. The man could well be a suspect. That did rather bypass the thought that almost anyone who’d been near the Brenton Park development at that time could be a suspect. Still, a man who bribed councillors to secure planning permissions might well be capable of darker crimes as well.

‘I know nothing about any bodies.’

‘Of course you don’t. But you will understand that a lot of people will need to convince us of just that, in the next few days. We’re starting with you.’

‘Right. I’m telling you formally that I know nothing about any bodies you’ve found up there and that I have no connection with how they came to be there. Any suggestion that I have might harm my reputation as an honest businessman, which I have worked assiduously to acquire.’ He struggled a little over the adverb, as if it were a word in a foreign tongue.

‘You were in the early years of your career when you were building at Brenton Park.’

Fowler nodded. ‘It was the first major development I undertook as an independent contractor. It helped to establish the reputation for sound work and excellent value which has stood me in good stead in the years since then.’

‘Yes. I seem to recall some of those phrases in your publicity literature.’ Lambert glanced down at the glossy pamphlet advertising the latest Fowler development, with its artist’s impressions of the properties at present under construction at Wye Vale. ‘I also recall that in your early days, including the ones at Brenton Park, you employed some dodgy characters.’

Jason Fowler swallowed hard. He didn’t want any detailed investigation of the practices he had favoured in his early days. ‘I did my bit for the community, if that’s what you mean. I gave people who’d been in prison a second chance – helped them back into society.’

Bert Hook smiled grimly. ‘Very public-spirited you were in those days. You employed them to carry hods and paid them less than the minimum wage, if I remember rightly. I was a fresh-faced young copper in uniform at the time and I remember being sent to check on your activities.’

‘That’s the thanks you get for trying to be the good citizen and help unfortunates back into the community,’ said Fowler sententiously.

‘You employed labour on the “lump”. Almost ended up in court over it, if I remember rightly,’ said Hook evenly.

The ‘lump’ was a method unscrupulous employers in the building trade used to avoid tax and National Insurance contributions for workers whom they classed as self-employed. Jason Fowler said defensively, ‘Everyone did it then. You had to cut costs wherever you could.’

Lambert ignored this defence and said thoughtfully, ‘I suppose that will make it difficult to trace some of the people you employed for short periods. Some of the people who might have been among your more violent employees. Some of the people who might have killed a woman and buried the body at the edge of the Brenton Park site.’

They weren’t interested in chasing him for these far-off offences, and probably all three of the men in the hut on this Sunday morning knew that. This was part of the softening-up process, the kind of reminder which would make Fowler more amenable and more ready to reveal whatever he knew about any ancillary events which had accompanied his construction work at Brenton Park. Lambert said, ‘We’ll need the details of whoever was working for you then. We won’t be interested in your sins of omission, as long as you cooperate fully with us in the investigation of a major crime.’

Lambert noticed that he was already assuming there was murder or manslaughter here, even though that was still to be established. Perhaps it was just that men like Jason Fowler brought out the aggressor in him and made him wish to give them as uncomfortable a passage as possible. He didn’t think it was just that. From the moment he had seen that skull grinning helplessly at him, he had suspected foul play. And the pathologist’s parting information that the remains were those of a woman had only reinforced that feeling. Women and children were more natural victims than men. The weak usually suffered, in the world of violent crime in which he spent so many of his days.

Fowler said nervously, ‘I didn’t have much capital in those days. The Brenton Park site was developed in stages. I used the money from the sales of the first houses to finance the next stage of development. There was a rambling old house and a plant nursery on the site when we purchased it. I had to clear all that away before we could start building.’

Lambert made a mental note to contact the owners of the plant nursery, if they were still alive. Perhaps this body had been buried in the field beside the plant nursery before Fowler and his dubious employment practices and the dubious employees that came with them had ever appeared on the scene. But would the owner of the plant nursery or anyone else who lived in his house have considered burying a corpse so near to their home, particularly if they knew it was about to be sold as building land? He wondered how precise a date of death and interment they would ever establish for that jigsaw of bones he had seen accumulating on the plastic sheet beside the vegetable plot.