Missing pieces, p.5
Missing Pieces, page 5
‘Robin? Do we have fixings or a lock?’
For almost the first time, they heard the assistant’s voice.
‘Fixings. Five on each side, recessed and cross-headed.’
The professor said, ‘Ten is on the thorough side. If it’s a lock, we sometimes have to break them open – not something we enjoy. If the fixings were good, we just undo them.’ She turned to the grave again and asked the question.
Robin answered, after a close inspection with a small torch, ‘High-chromium steel, I think. Stainless cross-heads, anyway.’
Alice said to the policemen, ‘Someone’s on our side at the moment. Robin, check the lid for any marks that shouldn’t be there, get some pictures,’ and then to Greene, ‘Just to be safe. I don’t think anyone has been in there since the day she was buried.’
When Waters looked at his watch, he was surprised to see it was almost ten-thirty. Four hours had passed in what seemed like thirty minutes. Tom Greene had left twice to speak to the office back at Lake Central, and other members of the party had retreated to their cars at various times, but Waters had watched the entire process, completely losing sense of the time. Just removing the subsoil from around the coffin had taken almost an hour because the two archaeologists had used their hand trowels – the professor had explained that if they left the soil in place, the pressure from the sides could cause the coffin to collapse when the lid was removed. Now she was examining the fixings for herself with a magnifier, and Robin was kneeling by the opened grave with an electric screwdriver in their hands.
Alice Lindsay looked up at the policemen and said, ‘If these ever have been removed, it was a long time ago. That’s all I can say. I think it’s time to see if anyone is at home.’
As he watched the screws being taken out and carefully bagged, Waters thought there could not be many professions that required such a combination of intellect and manual dexterity – this was the woman you needed when the flatpack furniture arrived. Surgeons presumably had similar skill-sets, and maybe dentists. All the attendees had realised a critical moment had arrived and they were back, standing at various distances from the grave; even Duane and his mate were waiting by the digger in respectful silence. The Reverend Gray had left the path and was watching from the head end of the coffin – and his expression hadn’t altered in all the time this had taken.
The lid had come loose but it was heavy. Waters and Greene had made a move to help but between them, the professor and her assistant were able to raise it high enough to slide it onto the grass at the side where no soil had been placed. Then the forensic archaeologist was leaning forward, hands on her knees, looking at the shape of a skeleton beneath the once-white shroud. She said something quietly, almost intimately, to the remains but Waters caught the words – ‘Now then, my dear. Don’t be alarmed. I’ll make this as quick as I possibly can.’
Then she straightened up and said to the living, ‘As obtaining DNA is the primary purpose of this, I’m taking the first set of samples in situ. That reduces the risk of contamination. Robin will film this part of the process; if you don’t want to star in it, you’ll need to keep out of the way. Here we go.’
With her gloved fingers, the scientist took hold of the edge of the shroud close to where the head would be and began to lift it away. It was like an ancient cobweb, stretching a little but not breaking, and slowly the pale yellow bones of the skull and the hollows that had once been a face were revealed. It was all smaller than Waters expected it to be, and rather sad.
The fate of the remains after the exhumation had been the subject of much discussion. Sometimes they can be simply returned to the ground from whence they came but this was now an active murder investigation once more. Forensic archaeology has made extraordinary strides in two decades but the incredibly detailed work required cannot be done in a day in a cemetery. Another matter brought up by Freeman herself in the discussions was the fact that if the team were now successful in identifying the victim, they would eventually find relatives. In that case, those relatives might want to inter the remains elsewhere – wouldn’t it make sense to avoid the risk of the young woman’s body being exhumed twice? The upshot of all this was that once the collection of data and samples was completed, the coffin and its contents would be held in storage at a police mortuary until the investigations were at an end.
Waters had wondered how they would manage to get the coffin out of the opened grave. It was simply but cleverly done. Two strong metal arches were screwed together and placed over the space, and two thin flexible rods were pushed through the ground beneath the coffin; onto the ends of these, plastic-covered cables were attached and then threaded through a small hand-winch at each end. Turning the winches began to lift the coffin. The professor told them that sometimes it all begins to fall to pieces at this point, but once again the gods of forensic science and good carpentry seemed to be on their side. Duane and his labourer were asked to assist, given some gloves and helped to lift the coffin onto the collapsible trolley which had appeared out of the back of the funeral directors’ vehicle. Robin supervised the moving of the remains to their van; Duane and his fellow gravedigger went with them in case more assistance was required, and the Reverend Gray followed them in ceremonial step, staying with the woman in the woods as long as she remained on consecrated ground.
A shared experience like this one brings people closer together, of course. The detectives stood for a few moments with Professor Lindsay, as if it would be indecent to hurry away without some parting words. Making conversation, Greene asked whether she had entered her profession by accident or by design. She said, ‘Oh, I had a morbid streak as a child… I grew up in the countryside, on Dartmoor. I remember my brother showed me how to put little corpses of birds and voles and things onto an anthill so you could get the skeleton. I amassed quite a collection. I read biochemistry but I think I was always destined to end up here. What about you? Always going to be a policeman?’
She was talking to Tom Greene rather than both of them. Waters had already formed the impression that the professor had rather taken to the detective inspector. The question, however, took his boss by surprise.
‘Me? No. I… I was pretty well advanced in the selection process for the Royal Air Force, to train as a pilot. Then they discovered I had some unusual sort of colour blindness, and that was that. They offered me alternatives but it was too much of a blow…’
Waters stared and thought he could never have guessed such a thing – Detective Inspector Greene at the controls of a Harrier, flying combat missions in The Falklands? Then he thought of DC, operating alone and undercover against the IRA, and DC’s own alphabet of policing. The first letter is A, and that stands for “Assume nothing” – that goes as much for one’s colleagues as it does for the villains you’re after.
Alice Lindsay was still making full eye contact with Greene, waiting for more. He said, ‘So I looked around for some other uniform and the police were the first people to offer me a job. Not a very exciting story, I’m afraid!’
She said, ‘Hmm. Serendipity plays its part. But I think I was always much possessed by death. I used to imagine seeing the skull beneath the skin.’
She narrowed her eyes and said to Greene, ‘And yours is actually quite interesting. The angle of the frontal lobe is quite steep and the inter-zygomatic distance is rather narrow.’
This might have been a regular chat-up line amongst forensic archaeologists, but Greene for once seemed a little disconcerted by it. Avoiding Waters altogether, he said to her, ‘You mean I have a thin face, I suppose.’
‘Well, yes, you do. But the bones of the skull…’
Waters had heard the engine of the digger start up. The grave was to be made safe with a covering of boards and soil, and the Reverend Gray was approaching from the church. The workmen had noticed him too, and they waited until he reached the burial plot they had opened. The vicar stared at it for what seemed long moments, as if he had lost one of his parishioners, and Waters thought that might be it – the vicar considered them all his flock, the quick and the dead. When the nod finally came, Duane began to cover the boards, respectfully, a little at a time.
Eventually the Reverend turned away and caught Waters’ eye. It seemed possible he would come and have a final word, but no – the man turned on his heel and took the path back towards the church. More prayers, no doubt.
Greene and Professor Lindsay were still in conversation, making their own way towards the vehicles and the next stage of this strange investigation. Waters noted that the DI was carrying some of her equipment – something to amuse Miriam with tonight. Then he stood for a moment alone in the cemetery, in the shade beneath the tall elms that here had somehow survived the ravages of that disease, and the only sound was the cawing of the young rooks in the branches far above his head.
Chapter Six
At least a week before we can tell you anything at all – that’s what the professor had said to Detective Inspector Greene before they parted on Thursday the 28th of May – and so it was something of a surprise when Priti announced that she had this person holding on the phone just before lunch the following day. Tom Greene asked whether Freeman would like to take it herself but she declined, explaining that DS Waters had told her about the close working relationship her second-in-command had developed with the expert in forensic archaeology. This was delivered with a straight face; it was often impossible to say whether their DCI was socially a little obtuse at times or highly skilled at dropping you in it when you least expected it. Waters had made the comment privately to Freeman, and now it had been broadcast to the entire team.
Greene took the call at his desk – everyone’s eyes were watching and everyone’s ears were listening in to his end of the conversation. It wasn’t long before he asked Alice Lindsay to hold the line again. He said to Freeman, ‘They’ve had an initial look this morning. She confirms that they have the skeleton of a young woman and that the remains are in a condition suitable for our purposes. She says do you want the full suite of DNA work as originally discussed, ma’am? If so, she needs email confirmation.’
Freeman said, ‘Yes, we do. We haven’t gone to all this trouble to run the budget version. Write an email, forward it to me and I’ll send it on from my address. What else?’
Watching, Waters thought how does she know there is something else? There was, of course. Greene said, ‘The skull would be suitable for a CG reconstruction of the face. They can do that at the university but it would involve an additional cost.’
With a look in Waters’ direction, Freeman said, ‘I hear she’s quite into skulls… Yes, if we’re talking hundreds, not thousands. The results of those can be pretty bland but it would give people something else to look at when Chief Superintendent Allen makes his appeal. What about isotopes?’
Greene asked his caller the question and was told that they had teeth and hair samples, and the material was likely to be suitable – Waters thought about the maple coffin again – but there would be further costs and Professor Lindsay would have to send some of those samples away to a lab in another university. Probably Oxford, thought Waters – they don’t like to mention the opposition by name. He’d even heard Jo Evison talk about “the other place”. In the team’s early discussions about this particular cold case, it had been the possibility of isotopic signature analysis which had been of most interest to the senior investigating officer – she had made no secret of that. Twenty years ago, when the body was first examined, the science had barely been in its infancy but it had developed quickly since. Chris Waters had done a little reading; the comparative abundance of common atoms against known geographical values had led to terrorist convictions a year ago when the source of an explosive had been linked to the locations of the individuals concerned. Human hair samples were beginning to reveal in extraordinary detail the origins, diets and travels of individuals. Most of this would be irrelevant in most investigations but, as Smith used to say, criminals have to be lucky all the time – we only have to get lucky once. Waters could not recall Cara Freeman ever using the word “lucky” but like Smith she backed her own hunches as often as she followed investigative protocols.
She said now to Greene, ‘That’s another yes. Just ask Professor Lindsay to make sure she uses the first-class post.’
When the call was over, Freeman said to them, ‘We’d better get a result on this one. I think I’ve blown the entire cold case budget this week. Thoughts?’
John Murray raised a hand as he said, ‘Ma’am, I’ve got a weekend duty. Is there anything I can look at in the office to move things forward?’
Freeman said, ‘Thanks, John. Yes – Tom has a reading plan for us. He can let you have the stuff that isn’t supposed to go home. If you make a start on it this afternoon with Chris, you can keep going when you’re in here. Everyone else, this isn’t a pressure job, and I’m not expecting you to spend the weekend thinking about it. I’ve got some commitments myself. But Tom will begin allocating files, and I want reports back, even if you find nothing of interest. Some of the material is digital but there’s a lot of paper as well. Personally, I’d rather go through a folder the old-fashioned way, so it doesn’t bother me. Let’s get this re-reading out of the way by the middle of next week just in case the university comes up with the name and address of the perpetrator which was hidden in the DNA all along. Tom? I’ll take a batch myself. Witness statements. They’re always good for a laugh…’
And that, thought Waters, is just one of the ways you earn a team’s respect. No one worked harder than the senior investigating officer of the murder squad, and he had never known her unwilling to dirty her hands with a menial task. He wondered about those weekend commitments, though – the detective chief inspector’s private life remained a mystery, even to Detective Constable Serena Butler.
There’s a lot of paper as well… The general public has no comprehension of what that means. A major investigation might employ scores of detectives for months, and every hour of every officer’s work will leave some sort of record. By the time the search for the Yorkshire Ripper was near its end, the floors of the building where the records were held had to be reinforced with steel girders. In addition to the files, there are other kinds of evidence in boxes and bags and sealed containers in Property Rooms all over the country – and even the word “room” is misleading because in many cases the building concerned is a warehouse. There is no expiry date on investigations into serious crimes, and defendants have been known to launch appeals thirty years after their convictions.
Given a choice, Waters would have read the reports of the SIOs – there would have been more than one officer in that role in a case as old and as puzzling as this one – but Freeman would have first call on those, for obvious reasons. The material Murray had been given, though, was almost as interesting. There was a folder of photographs of the crime scene, that peaceful glade in Spring Covert where he himself had stood only last week, and he was surprised at how little change in it there had been. Another folder contained images of the woman’s body as it was found at the scene and then afterwards in the mortuary. There were close-up pictures of her injuries, and Waters was suddenly aware of how objective he had become, as if a callus had formed over the normal emotions we should feel at seeing such stark reminders of our own mortality. He remembered how Smith had made sure he saw his first corpse only on a video screen, and how even that had bothered him at the time. Now? He looked over at Tom Greene and wondered how someone older and even more experienced felt. Could you see too many bodies? He had no idea. But then, he’d had no idea his manager had wanted to be a fighter pilot, either.
The cause of death had been the thin, strong cord which had been pulled tight around her neck. The same sort of cord had been used to tie her wrists together but the knots were different – a simple reef knot to hold her wrists and a form of running knot or noose around her neck. The neck cord was partially tangled, possibly jamming the running knot or at least preventing it from working properly. Leaving aside for a moment how the cord had come to be around the girl’s neck, Waters followed up the notes relating to the cord itself. Investigations had identified it as a blend of waxed cotton and jute – unusual, and not something you can purchase in your local hardware store. He read that detectives at the time had pursued the matter properly and established that a material like this was often used in traditional sash windows, but beyond that no connection had been made to a property, or to a person who might have had cause to use such material.
Waters returned to the pictures of the cord and the close-ups of the knots after it had been removed from the body. It was partially blood-stained but he put that aside for a moment, as a matter that needed separate consideration. They had tested it for DNA and found only matches to the young woman, but that was twenty years ago – a virtual lifetime in the rapidly-evolving science of genetic research. The cord ought to be tested again but Freeman had only been partially joking when she commented on the cost of all this – she had been sending them a warning that the resources were not unlimited.
From the pictures of the cord, he went back to the pictures of it around the neck. It had been pulled tightly enough to leave a deep weal in the flesh; whoever had hold of it must surely have intended to kill her, and that made it murder. From the investigation into the death of Michelle Simms, Waters knew the grisly facts: loss of consciousness through critical hypoxia, when arterial oxygen saturation falls below sixty percent, can occur in less than a minute, but that is not death. To kill by strangulation requires the perpetrator to hold on in a grim and determined fashion for another two to four minutes, depending on the size and fitness of the victim. It requires, too, a degree of physical strength. This matter had arisen once in Smith’s time, and the demonstration had involved the arm of the big man sitting at the same table as Waters right now. Smith said, ‘Strangle John’s arm, he won’t mind. Get hold of it and squeeze as hard as you can for three minutes.’
