by D. S. Butler
Both paramedics sprang into action, and Sanderson pulled his hand away. He got to his feet and took a step back, giving them room to work. It wasn’t long before they had an oxygen mask over the old man’s face, and a few moments later, they wheeled him out of the house on a trolley.
PC Montgomery widened his eyes and blew out a breath, puffing out his cheeks. ‘Well, he wasn’t exactly pleased to see us.’
Sanderson shrugged. ‘He was probably delirious from lying here for so long.’
He was trying to convince himself, but he had to admit there was something about the old man’s reaction that set off alarm bells.
Montgomery grinned at him. ‘So what do we do now?’
Distracted, Sanderson frowned. ‘What do you mean? We secure the premises and then talk to Mrs Kennedy before writing up our report.’
‘Yes, of course, but before we do that we’re going to look upstairs, right?’
Sanderson’s gaze was drawn to the steep staircase. There was no reason for them to go up there. It was a domestic accident. They needed to secure the broken window, write their report and head back to the station.
‘Come on,’ PC Montgomery said. ‘It won’t take long. It’s worth a look. That old bloke really didn’t want us to go upstairs.’
He started to climb the stairs, his big heavy boots crushing the paisley carpet beneath his feet.
Sanderson objected. ‘This is someone’s home. You can’t just trample all over it without good reason.’
‘You stay there, then,’ Montgomery called over his shoulder. ‘I’m going upstairs to find what he didn’t want us to see.’
Sanderson hesitated at the foot of the stairs for a moment or two before huffing under his breath and following. The steps creaked beneath his feet as he walked past the peeling wallpaper, and he noticed that the handrail was a little loose.
He tugged on it but decided that couldn’t have been the cause of the accident. Poor old Bert must’ve just slipped. It was easy enough to do on these narrow steps, and at his age, the old man’s reactions weren’t quick enough to break his fall or save himself.
When he reached the hallway at the top of the stairs, he saw PC Montgomery staring at a padlocked door. He pointed at the lock. ‘Now tell me that old man isn’t hiding something.’
Sanderson shuffled around to get a better look at the door. It appeared to be the kind of padlock you’d see outside, on a garden shed. It was not the type of lock anyone would usually attach to an internal door.
He shrugged. ‘That’s it, then. I guess we’ll never know what he’s hiding.’
‘What do you mean, that’s it? We can’t go now, not without finding out what’s behind this door.’
‘It’s padlocked. We are not going to force the lock. We’ll include it in our report, and if the inspector thinks we need to find out what’s inside, then we’ll come back.’
PC Montgomery looked at him incredulously. He moved closer to the door, bending down to inspect the padlock. Then he laughed. ‘The silly old coot left the key in the bottom.’
He grinned broadly as he turned the key, removed the padlock and pushed open the door before Sanderson could object.
Although the curtains were drawn, the bedroom was surprisingly bright. The sun shone through the thin yellow curtains. Like the rest of the house, every surface was covered in a layer of dust. Sanderson stepped into the room. A neatly made single bed was pushed back against the wall, and a picture of a Spitfire was hung on the wall above the nightstand. He thought it looked like a normal spare bedroom and couldn’t understand why Bert had gone to the trouble of putting a padlock on the door.
The only odd thing in the room was a large, navy-blue suitcase sitting in the middle of the peach carpet. It was covered with dust and old cobwebs and looked as though it had recently been brought down from the loft. The rest of the room was dusty, but not as bad as the case.
PC Montgomery made a beeline for the case. ‘What have we got here, then?’ he muttered, grabbing the handle and attempting to pick it up. ‘Good grief! It weighs a ton.’
His eyes glinted with excitement as he unfastened the leather strap and reached for the zip.
‘You can’t open it,’ Sanderson said, well aware that PC Montgomery was paying him no attention.
‘Of course we have to open it! It’s our duty. There could be stolen goods inside, or weapons or . . . Jesus Christ!’
Montgomery squealed and dropped the suitcase on the floor, scurrying away from it.
‘What is it?’ Sanderson asked, starting to suspect he was the victim of a prank. Montgomery was well known as a practical joker at the station.
But if this was a joke, he was putting on a good act. His face was pale, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the suitcase.
‘There’s a body in that case.’
At that moment, the cat Montgomery had seen earlier walked up to him, rubbing against his leg and meowing loudly. Startled, Montgomery jumped.
Wide-eyed and looking a little green, he turned to Sanderson and said, ‘I’m calling the inspector.’
Sanderson watched him rush out of the room. If he hadn’t worked with Montgomery before, he probably would have fallen for the windup. He leaned down to stroke the cat. Poor thing was probably hungry. He made a mental note to check in the kitchen for cat food after he’d dealt with the current situation.
He turned back to the case. Montgomery had to be pulling his leg. He’d been called out to enter properties containing dead bodies on two previous occasions, and both times the whole property had been permeated by the most awful smell. The smell of death wasn’t something you forgot in a hurry.
The room smelled musty, but it didn’t smell of death. The thought gave Sanderson confidence. He straightened up and approached the case. The zip was open, but the lid of the case had fallen shut when Montgomery dropped it.
The cat meowed again.
‘All right, I’ll get you some food in a minute.’ He hesitated, then gritted his teeth. This was ridiculous. Montgomery had to be winding him up.
He glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see Montgomery smirking in the doorway, but there was no sign of him.
He looked at the cat. ‘It’s no big deal. I just have to check the case.’
The cat watched him with curious green eyes.
Sanderson took a deep breath and flung back the lid of the case.
Blood rushed in his ears, and his stomach churned as he stared down in disbelief at the contents of the case. Montgomery had been right. Curled up in the foetal position, decayed to just leathery skin and bones, was a human corpse.
CHAPTER TWO
DI Scott Morgan hung up the phone and stared down at his hastily written notes. A skeleton in a suitcase was certainly a first for him. He ripped the top sheet of paper from the pad and carried it out into the open-plan office area. His team looked up as he approached.
‘We’ve got a new case,’ he said, handing the notes he’d made to DC Rick Cooper. ‘It’s an interesting one. A body has been found inside a suitcase at a house in Skellingthorpe.’
He looked at Rick, who was quickly scanning the notes. ‘Can you and Sophie collect background information while Karen and I go to the scene? We’ll need to find out everything we can about the house and its owner. The officers who found the body say it’s very old, practically a skeleton. The house belongs to Albert Johnson, an elderly man who suffered a fall. Police and paramedics were called to the scene, and it was while the officers were securing his house that they found the body.’
DS Karen Hart stood up, grabbing her jacket from the back of her chair. ‘I bet that gave them a shock.’
‘I imagine so. Both officers are going to stay at the house so we can have a chat with them when we get there. The crime scene unit are already on their way, and so is the pathologist.’
Rick looked up and passed the notes to DC Sophie Jones. ‘We’ll look into his background, sir. Do we know if anyone else shares the house with him?’<
br />
DI Morgan shook his head. ‘No, we don’t know much about him at all, so that’s one of the first things you’ll need to determine.’ He turned to look at Karen. ‘Ready?’
‘Lead the way.’
They reached the detached property in Skellingthorpe just after eleven a.m. The spring sunshine was finally burning off the persistent mist, but it lingered in the open fields around the property, giving the area a strange, otherworldly appearance.
It was March, but the weather this morning felt more like autumn, Karen thought as she pulled on the handbrake. The remnants of the mist made her feel gloomy and cold.
‘It’s pretty isolated around here,’ DI Morgan said as he unfastened his seatbelt.
Karen nodded. There was a small house on the other side of the road, but apart from that, the next nearest house had to be over a mile away.
‘The perfect place for a murder to be carried out without anyone noticing or hearing anything,’ Karen said.
‘That’s a morbid thought.’
They both got out of the car and walked towards the uniformed officer standing beside the crumbling stone wall at the front of the property.
‘Morning, ma’am, sir,’ the officer said as he held out the logbook for them to sign.
‘Where are the officers who found the body?’ DI Morgan asked.
The uniformed officer pointed in the direction of a squad car. ‘They’re sitting in the back of that car, sir. They were pretty shaken up.’
Karen felt her stomach tighten. She hated attending crime scenes, but it was a necessary part of the job. It was hard to investigate a case without seeing where the crime had been committed. The scene usually held many clues. Maybe the one in this case would be less disturbing than others she’d attended. If the body was very old, she hoped that meant the smell wouldn’t be too bad this time.
‘Good, the pathologist is here already,’ Karen said, scanning the logbook before signing it.
‘Yes, he arrived about ten minutes ago, ma’am.’ The officer lifted the crime scene tape.
Karen ducked beneath the tape, and DI Morgan followed.
She carefully picked her way along the garden path. It was only the beginning of spring, but green weeds were already poking through cracks between the paving slabs. The front garden, although small, was mature and full of a mixture of evergreen plants and stick-like perennials that hadn’t yet been cut back.
Mr Johnson, or whoever else had lived here with him, was certainly green-fingered, but it seemed like the garden was getting too much for him. The narrow path led around the side of the house, and markers had been laid out to indicate the route they should take so that the scene would be disturbed as little as possible. At the back door, Karen saw a pane of glass had been broken and guessed that was how the officers had gained entry to the house.
A box full of protective shoe coverings sat at the side of the back door. Karen selected a pair and slid them over her shoes. DI Morgan did the same, then they put on protective gloves and entered the house.
Karen nodded a greeting to one of the crime scene photographers who was taking photographs of the kitchen.
‘Raj is upstairs. First bedroom on the right,’ the photographer said, then turned back to her work.
Karen thanked her and walked ahead towards the stairs.
‘This is where Albert Johnson was found,’ DI Morgan said as they reached the base of the steps.
Karen felt a pang of sympathy for the old man, who’d been hurt and stranded at the bottom of the stairs, but quickly pushed the feeling away. The old man could be a murderer. In fact, it was extremely likely that he was. She supposed murderers got old and frail just like everyone else.
They climbed the stairs and made their way to the first bedroom. Inside, the pathologist was already hard at work peering into the suitcase.
Karen had never seen a body like it. It wasn’t completely skeletonised. There was some shrivelled brown skin hanging on to the brown and yellow limb bones. It looked like a shrunken shell of a person.
She stepped forward and said hello to Raj, but her eyes didn’t leave the collection of leathery skin and bones inside the suitcase.
‘Good morning,’ Raj said, straightening up. ‘I can’t examine the body properly here, so I’m going to move the whole lot back to the lab.’
Karen tore her gaze away from the body to look at Raj.
Rajinder Kumar reminded her of an Indian Poirot. He was short, overweight and had a fine moustache. Considering his line of work, Karen had found him consistently cheerful and always helpful. She liked working with him.
‘Can you give us some idea of how long ago she or he died?’ DI Morgan said as he stared at the body with the same intensity Karen had a few moments earlier.
Raj pursed his lips and then said, ‘I can’t give you an accurate answer, but I’d say at least twenty years, probably no more than forty.’
He pointed out some fabric draped over what Karen assumed was a leg bone. ‘Our victim was wearing some manmade fabric, which might help us with identification. I’d guess from the size of the bones and the width of the pelvis that our victim is a man, but don’t hold me to it.’
Karen leaned forward, intrigued by the fabric. It was vivid blue, stained with splotches of yellow and brown. No doubt the colour had been dulled by the passage of time and by decomposing fluids seeping into it, which would mean it had been an even brighter blue when the fabric was new. ‘It looks a bit like one of those tracksuit tops. You know, they were all the rage in the eighties.’
‘Like a shell suit?’ DI Morgan asked, standing further back from the body than Karen, but still studying it intently.
‘Yes, and they were all manmade fibres, weren’t they? That would explain why it lasted all this time, and the bright colour.’ Karen looked at the pathologist.
Raj nodded. ‘Quite likely. The cotton and other natural fibres seem to have degraded. I might be able to recover something once we get the body back to the lab.’
DI Morgan slowly circled the case. ‘It’s strange,’ he said finally.
That was the understatement of the century. A body in a suitcase was more than strange in Karen’s book.
‘The suitcase is very dusty,’ DI Morgan continued. ‘It’s covered with cobwebs all around the base, but the rest of the room isn’t too bad.’ He looked around. ‘It is dusty in here, but I can’t see any cobwebs.’
They both looked up at the same time and saw the hatch to access the roof above them. ‘Do you think the old man brought the suitcase down from the loft?’ Karen suggested. ‘The exertion may have brought on a dizzy spell or made him feel light-headed, which led to his fall.’
‘It’s a good theory,’ DI Morgan said, looking up at the hatch above them. ‘Shall we take a look?’
At that moment Darren Webb, the crime scene manager, appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry, DI Morgan. I’ll have to ask you to wait until the team have photographed the loft before you go up there.’
DI Morgan held up his hands. ‘Of course, sorry. I wasn’t thinking. How are you getting on with the rest of the house? Anything interesting?’
Darren motioned towards the stairs. ‘Yes, we’ve found something in the kitchen that I think you’ll both be very interested in.’
DI Morgan followed him out of the room, and Karen turned to say goodbye to Raj.
‘Thanks, Raj. When do you think you’ll have more answers for us?’
Raj pulled a face. ‘It’s not going to be an easy one, Karen. I’m going to need to take my time and make sure I don’t ruin any evidence. The body has been curled up in this position for a long time. I’m not even sure I’m going to be able to give you a cause of death. But, luckily for you, my caseload is light at the moment.’
Karen smiled. ‘If you find anything, don’t wait to file the full report. Just give me a call, okay?’
Raj nodded, and then his gaze flickered back to the body.
Downstairs, Karen joined DI Morgan and Dar
ren Webb in the kitchen. They both wore serious expressions and were studying something on the kitchen counter.
Karen stepped forward, peering around DI Morgan. It was a note printed in a large font on a plain sheet of A4 printer paper. The paper was creased in three places where it had been previously folded. That was innocuous enough, but the message made Karen catch her breath.
It read:
It’s time to pay for your crime.
CHAPTER THREE
It was midday by the time Karen and DI Morgan left Albert Johnson’s house and crossed the road to speak to his nearest neighbours. They had attempted to talk to the officers who had found the body, but the two men had already returned to the station. Apparently, they were still very shaken up. DI Morgan looked displeased with the news, and the poor uniformed officer beside the crime scene tape had been very apologetic, even though it wasn’t his fault. He told them PC Montgomery had already been sick twice, and, finally, DI Morgan softened a little and agreed to find them at Nettleham headquarters later.
The mist had finally disappeared, and it was starting to feel like spring. Blackbirds and wrens sounded alarm calls as they darted in and out of the hedgerows. No other buildings could be seen around the two properties. There was nothing but fields, and an occasional ash tree dotting the landscape.
‘I’m surprised it’s so isolated,’ DI Morgan commented. ‘We’re not that far from the centre of Skellingthorpe.’
Karen nodded, but she was deep in thought. The note found in Albert Johnson’s kitchen had set her nerves on edge. She’d come to the scene working on the assumption that this was an old case, possibly an accidental death or a murder that had been covered up for decades.
The most likely perpetrator, Albert Johnson, was an old man who was now in Lincoln County Hospital, no threat to anyone, but what they’d discovered suggested a different perspective.
The note hadn’t looked old. The paper was pristine and white, with no signs of yellowing with age. She wondered if this case was really as cold as she’d thought. Had Albert fallen, or had he been pushed?