by LJ Ross
No pun intended.
“Morning, Jeff,” Ryan said, after he’d scrawled their names into the logbook. “Thanks for coming in on your day off.”
“It’s alright, I had nothing better to do,” he grumbled. “It’s been a slow week, as it happens.”
“You’ve got a face like a slapped arse this mornin’, Jeff,” Phillips declared. “What ails you? Here, how’s things with that lass—what was her name again?”
“Joanne,” Pinter said, wistfully. “And, if you must know, she’s away this weekend. She’s taken Archie to Center Parcs for some mother-son time before he starts back at school.”
Though he was a decent, hardworking man, until recent times Jeff Pinter’s love life would not have been the stuff of romance novels or—better yet—the stuff of erotic novels. However, their crusty friend had been fortunate to have found what might prove to be the only woman in the world to find forensic pathology sexy, owing largely to the fact she was of the same profession herself. The luminous Joanne was a forty-two-year-old divorcee with a young son by the name of Archie, and Pinter was still finding his feet in the unexpected role of stepfather, amongst other things.
“Cheer up, Casanova,” Ryan said. “She’ll be back soon enough.”
Pinter heaved a lovesick sigh, which was plainly ridiculous for a man of his age and hair loss, and then turned to the matters in hand.
“Right, let me take you to see the lady who came in yesterday,” he said, leading them through the main mortuary space towards a corridor at the end leading to a number of private examination rooms that were reserved for special cases, such as these.
Pinter buzzed through the smaller security door, then led them along a whitewashed corridor to Examination Room C. There was a stronger scent of chemicals towards that end of the corridor, mingled with the sickly sweet, over-ripe scent of death that was unique in nature.
“She’s in here,” he told them, then paused with his hand on the door knob and gave them a serious look. “We’ve seen a lot of things in our time, and some of it’s been very bad. I think I should tell you, this is one of those times.”
It was never at the top of anybody’s wish list to take a trip to the mortuary, but it was a necessary part of getting to know the victim and the crime. It was often hard and unpleasant, but they kept coming back because they remembered one thing: the victim could not speak, but their body was perhaps the greatest clue to finding their killer or, in this case, to understanding how they’d come to find themselves in such a vulnerable position.
“We’re ready,” Ryan said, and Phillips ordered his stomach to retain the contents of his last meal as the door swung open.
An examination table stood in the centre of the room, which was purposefully chilled since the body had been taken out of its freezer compartment. Overhead, strip lighting shone an eerie, greyish-white glow thanks to a bulk order of energy-saving bulbs from the hospital store. A shrouded figure lay on the table, covered in a long paper sheet that didn’t quite reach her toes.
Though she had since been washed and cleaned, Ryan noticed that the undersides of both of her feet were severely bruised and covered in lacerations.
“Did she come in with any shoes?” he asked, before Pinter could reach for the paper covering.
“No, as a matter of fact, she didn’t. Sometimes, people come in without footwear if the paramedics have removed them, or they’ve been lost sometime during the recovery process. However, looking at the condition of this lady’s feet, I’d say it’s more likely she hadn’t been wearing any for some time prior to the incident.”
“Must’ve hurt like hell,” Phillips said, gruffly.
“Are you both ready?” Pinter asked, and, at their nod, he removed the paper shroud.
There was absolute silence in the small room as each man accustomed himself to what lay before him. The remains of what had once been a blonde-haired woman, around five feet six inches tall, rested on the examination table. Her face was torn beyond recognition, and what remained bore the ugly mark of a surgeon’s dark thread.
“I removed the bullet,” Pinter said quietly. “Ballistics say they’ll get back to us this morning with an update, since you asked for a rush on it.”
Ryan nodded. The resources weren’t always available for an express service from the specialist forensic units attached to CID but, in this case, the Ministry of Defence had approved a supplementary budget to enable the swift and smooth handling of one of their own.
He only wished every unfortunate soul who found themselves laid bare on Pinter’s operating table was afforded the same fast service; if not for their own sake, for the sake of those who were left behind to mourn them.
“What can you tell us about the body?”
Ryan ventured closer to the cadaver and peered through the bulging plastic bags covering the woman’s hands to see if they could tell him something—anything—about the person she had once been.
“Well, for starters, I can tell you she must have clambered over rocks and all kinds,” Pinter said. “Her fingertips were shredded, and several nails were torn. I’ve sampled them, as usual, and I’ll let you know if anything interesting comes of it.”
Ryan nodded.
“She was also sexually active,” Pinter said, flushing a bit as he always did when the topic arose. “There was evidence of fairly recent sexual activity, in fact—I’d say sometime during the past forty-eight hours. I’ve taken samples from the vaginal wall, but there’s unlikely to be anything of particular use owing to the time lag.”
“Cause of death is simply catastrophic head injury caused by the gunshot,” Pinter said, for good form. He paused. “That said, I did find a small anomaly.”
CHAPTER 15
A full company of soldiers from the 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers, consisting of three platoons totalling ninety men and women—not counting standing officers based at Otterburn Camp—approached the task of searching for one of their number with the same level of military precision they would have employed during any major skirmish around the world. On Ryan’s orders, local police forces took up the responsibility of searching the towns and villages in the vicinity, as well as any bus services that had been running through the early hours of the morning, so the army could focus its attention on the more difficult terrain of the Northumberland National Park. They reasoned that, since her roommates had first noticed her absence at around three o’clock, Private Jess Stephenson had had up to seven hours in which to walk, hitchhike or otherwise procure a vehicle. Given the general consensus about her state of mind following the incident the day before, both army and police agreed that she was unlikely to have absconded for nefarious reasons and was more likely to have gone missing in order to inflict self-harm, or to return to the scene of yesterday’s incident. Unfortunately, it was too soon to receive any communications data from Stephenson’s mobile phone provider to help to narrow down her location, and so they relied upon more old-fashioned methods of search and rescue.
1st and 2nd Platoons were deployed to the west and northern sectors of the Controlled Area, whilst 3rd Platoon—Stephenson’s own—focused their search on the south-eastern sector, which included the incident site near Witch Crags and Linshiels Lake. In all, their search aimed to cover ninety square miles of territory, and might have taken several days.
In the event, the search party found Private Jess Stephenson within twenty minutes of leaving the military base, hanging from one of the scented pine trees in a small patch of woodland, less than half a mile away from Witch Crags.
* * *
“You said there was an anomaly?”
Phillips had no intention of hanging around the mortuary for any longer than necessary, so he chivvied things along.
“Ah, yes,” Pinter said. “Well, I was going to say that, in previous military cases I’ve dealt with, the bullets have always been the standard army calibre, which is 5.56mm.”
Ryan looked up from his inspection of the woman’s injuries, and
felt a funny, prescient feeling of dread.
“And in this case?” he asked.
“Well, that was the strange thing about it,” Pinter said. “This bullet was a different calibre—most likely from a hunting rifle. A .308 Winchester, I’d say, although ballistics will confirm.”
Phillips looked sharply at his friend.
“All the firers were using the same standard-issue army rifle,” he said. “The SA80. None of them was carrying a hunting rifle.”
Pinter looked between the pair of them and understood the gravity of the information he’d given them.
“You’re saying—?”
“There was another shooter on the moors on the night this woman died,” Ryan said, and his eyes turned flat and hard. “Yes, exactly.”
“I hope to God that lass hasn’t done anything,” Phillips muttered. “If she went off, thinking she was responsible, when she wasn’t—”
Just then, Ryan’s phone began to ring, echoing loudly around the confined space. The other two listened tensely as he conducted a short conversation with the person at the other end of the line, Phillips’ heart sinking as he watched his friend’s face take on a distant, shuttered expression he recognised only too well as being an omen of bad news.
Sure enough, he was right.
Ryan ended the call, and looked at the other two men in the room with blazing eyes the colour of the North Sea, and just as cold.
“They found Private Stephenson,” he said flatly. “She’s dead.”
* * *
As Ryan and Phillips drove back to Otterburn with all speed, Lowerson and Yates made their way to the picturesque city of Durham, thirteen miles further south of Newcastle. It was an ancient, World Heritage Site, with a towering Norman cathedral not dissimilar to the one at Notre Dame, and a smaller but equally impressive castle built sometime during the eleventh century. The city had been built on high ground with the River Wear running at its feet, its babbling waters having provided the backdrop for many a romantic stroll for Ryan and Anna, and countless others who had walked its scenic riverbanks.
“We should go for a wander along the river, if we have time,” Yates suggested, as she tucked her car into a tight parking spot with practised ease.
It was on the tip of his tongue to remind her of their hectic work schedule, but recent events had taught him several valuable lessons about what was truly important in life, and about which commodities could never be bought.
Time was one of them.
He’d never be able to relive the moment again, so he should grab it with both hands, while he could.
“I’d love to go for a walk with you, Mel. We should have finished our meeting with Anna by lunchtime—we can grab a sandwich and take it along to one of the benches opposite the cathedral, if you like.”
She beamed at him, and then leaned over to give him a smacking kiss.
“Let’s go and see if Anna’s office has a coffee machine.”
“Excellent plan.”
Doctor Anna Taylor-Ryan was an eminent local historian with several publications to her name, and she held a senior teaching post in the history faculty at the University of Durham, where she taught three days a week. The other two days were spent researching and writing her next book.
Lowerson and Yates were sometimes guilty of forgetting this aspect of Anna’s character, not only because she also happened to be Ryan’s wife, but because she was frequently too modest to discuss her exploits in that area. But, as they climbed the steep cobbled streets of the city centre and wound their way up towards College Green, which was the main square beside the cathedral and the castle, they were forcibly reminded that this was a highly academic centre of learning—and their friend was a key part of that.
They found Anna in her office at the History Faculty, which was a pretty old building one street over from College Green. Being a lover of all things quaint and charming, it was fitting that her office was located up a small, spiral staircase with spectacular views of the cathedral through its mullioned windows.
Lowerson tapped the brass plaque on the wall outside, wriggled his eyebrows at Melanie, and then raised his knuckles to rap against the heavy old door.
Anna opened it herself, and grinned at the pair of them.
“You found me, then? Come on in,” she said. “Do you fancy a coffee, or is that a daft question?”
Once they were fortified with steaming hot mugs of the good stuff, Lowerson and Yates sank into a small leather sofa that was tucked against one of the walls and which Anna used when conducting smaller tutorial groups with her students.
“How the heck did they get this sofa up here? Or any of this furniture, for that matter?” Yates wondered, looking at the chunky antique desk and captain’s chair.
“Beats me,” Anna said, tucking her feet up into a cross-legged position. The mannerism bore no resemblance to their preconceived notions of what an academic historian should look like, or how they should behave, and there was not a scrap of tartan or tweed in sight. “All this furniture was here when I arrived. I just added a few of my own bits and bobs.”
One such ‘bob’ was a large, silver-framed portrait photograph of herself and Ryan, taken on their wedding day on the beach at Bamburgh. In days gone by, Melanie might have looked at that photograph with a generous dollop of envy; but now, she smiled and looked across to the man who was fast becoming her own special partner in life.
If he played his cards right, of course.
“So, how can I help?” Anna asked. “You said something about an old symbol being used as a sort of calling card in a spate of hate crimes?”
Jack nodded, and set his cup down to retrieve the small brown folder he’d brought with him. He proceeded to lay out a series of close-up images on Anna’s desk, taken from the synagogue and the mosque, showing the same symbol with three interlocking triangles.
Anna leaned forward to study the images.
“The valknut,” she said, immediately.
“Do you know what it means?” Melanie asked. “I wondered whether it was a Neo-Nazi symbol, but Jack thinks it could be old Nordic.”
“Actually, you’re both right,” Anna said, and walked over to the bookshelf that took up an entire wall of her study. She peered at the titles for a moment, and then tugged one of them from an upper shelf. She flicked through the pages until she came to one with a series of old archaeological photographs, each showing the same carved, interlocking triangles.
“The valknut is associated with the Norse god, Odin,” she said. “In old Norse mythology, Odin was not only the ruler of all the Norse gods, he was also the god of war and death.”
“That sounds ominous,” Melanie muttered, and looked at the book Anna showed her.
“In Norse mythology, warriors who lost their lives in battle earned themselves a place in Valhalla, which means ‘the hall of the slain’. This grand hall was ruled by Odin, so any warrior who entered would become one of his adopted sons, so the story goes. The valknut is an extension of this, meaning ‘knot of the slain’.”
“Where does the white supremacy bit come in?” Lowerson asked.
“Well, you have to be careful to look at the broader context,” Anna cautioned. “Some non-racist, peaceful neo-Paganists use the symbol and call themselves ‘Odinists’ without any negative connotation. However, there’s a supremacist group of Odinists who have appropriated the symbol. That seems to be the case here, in the pictures taken from the synagogue and the mosque.”
The other two nodded.
“We need to nip this in the bud, and quickly,” Yates said. “With all the stuff going on in the world at the moment, people feel unsettled; and, when they’re unsettled, tempers run high. We’ve worked for a long time to foster a peaceful relationship between the different cultural and religious groups, especially in the west end of Newcastle. The last thing we want is for that balance to be destroyed.”
Anna tucked the book back onto the shelf.
“I need to make s
omething clear,” she said. “Of all the different symbols that have been used at one time or another to signify racist white or Christian supremacy, the valknut is one of the most dangerous. It’s generally understood by extremists to mean that they’re willing to die on the battlefield, for a cause they believe in. These aren’t your garden variety fruitcakes.”
The other two nodded.
“Extremist Odinism is spreading,” Anna said. “Particularly in America and here in the UK. There’s an offshoot of the religion called ‘Asatru’, which is an Icelandic word meaning ‘belief in the gods’. It emphasises the magical elements of early polytheistic religions, such as Odinism. Unfortunately, plenty of white supremacist groups have appropriated Asatru and follow a racist interpretation.”
“This is ringing a few bells,” Yates said, in worried tones. “Wasn’t Anders Breivik an Odinist?”
She referred to the infamous terrorist, who shot dead seventy-seven people in Norway, back in 2011.
“Yeah—Brenton Tarrant, too,” Lowerson said. “He killed fifty-one people in Odin’s name, in New Zealand, earlier this year.”
“There was an internal memo sent around to all academic staff less than a month ago, warning us to be on the lookout for men or women defacing sites of historic, religious or cultural importance,” Anna put in. “It followed the defacing of several sites of historic importance all around the country, including the Avebury Stone Circle, down in Salisbury.”
“Did they mark the stones with this symbol?” Lowerson asked, tapping a finger on one of the photographs.
“I’m not sure,” she said, honestly. “But the leader of the group was telling his followers to be prepared to die in battle, in the name of Odin.”
“Jack, I take back what I said earlier,” Melanie said, after a lengthy pause. “Religion has a lot to answer for, after all.”
CHAPTER 16
The skies over Northumberland were beginning to turn overcast as a blanket of steel-grey clouds moved in from the sea. There was a chill to the air that heralded the coming autumn, and Ryan flicked on the heater inside his car as he and Phillips made their way back along the long ‘military road’ towards Otterburn.