Carrion Comfort

by Aline Templeton

  Of course, it was possible there had just been a mix-up over holidays, but it still wouldn’t explain why he wasn’t answering his phone. Bruce Michie’s facetious remark about the lifeless body and the cat had somehow stuck in her mind. She’d no reason to suppose Niall even had a cat, but the uneasy feeling she’d been trying to dismiss returned.

  Gabrielle slept late. The sleeping pills left her feeling groggy and she staggered into the bathroom for a long shower with her eyes half-shut. That helped, though she was still feeling faintly nauseous as she dressed and went downstairs to breakfast.

  David heard her and emerged from the study; after being offshore he’d be able to work from home for a couple of days. She’d be glad of his company to fill the empty hours, even though his nannying sometimes got a bit oppressive.

  He was doing it now, his pleasant, open face creased into lines of worry as he looked at her. ‘All right?’ he said.

  She stiffened. ‘Is there some reason why I shouldn’t be? Did I disturb you last night when I wasn’t sleeping?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said hastily. ‘Coffee? There’s some in the pot.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, sitting down at the table where he’d laid out her breakfast for her as usual. She didn’t believe him. He was running his hand through his fair hair now and after he’d given her coffee he made to go back to his study but was hovering. Yes, he was definitely anxious about something.

  ‘David, is there something wrong?’

  ‘No, of course not. I was just wondering if you had plans for the day?’

  ‘Not really – a walk, perhaps. If you’re not busy, maybe we could go somewhere for lunch.’

  He seized on that. ‘What a good idea. You finish your breakfast and then you’re to have a rest. No housework for you today, my girl; you get so tired when you’ve had a bad night. You go out and sit in the sunshine They’re saying the weather’s meant to break soon so we have to make the most of it. Give me an hour just to do a couple of things and then I’ll be ready.’

  ‘You spoil me, darling,’ she said, and he dropped a kiss on the top of her head and went back to the study.

  Despite the sun pouring in through the kitchen window, she felt a chill of dismay. He worried about her so much, she tried so hard to keep signs of her deterioration from him – only yesterday she’d retrieved her purse from the freezer just before he went to get ice for their drinks. But now there was definitely something. Something she’d done to worry him that she couldn’t remember? And if she had, did she even want to know?

  With a sort of dreary hopelessness, Gabrielle took a mouthful of the cereal, but it felt dusty in her mouth and she scooped what was left into the food compost bin. She picked up her coffee and dutifully went out onto the terrace at the back to do as she was told. The decking was rotting in places and it wasn’t much of a garden either, just a badly kept lawn with a few straggling bushes beside the fence that marked the boundary with the rough ground beyond. The stillness was broken only by the insistent low hum of a million insects and the unnatural heat and the heavy, damp smell of stagnant water from the surrounding bogland was oppressive; she could feel a headache developing. Often at this time of day she would still feel doped and drop off again, though she hated doing it, feeling confused when she woke up. But today she was restless. She’d be better off inside, doing something to occupy herself, whatever David said.

  She stood looking round the immaculate kitchen. A moment later, she heard David come out of his study and then the sound of the washing machine starting up. She frowned. What on earth was needing to be washed? In her enforced idleness she seized on things to do and dirty clothes barely hit the clothes basket before she whipped them away for laundering. As she went towards the tiny utility room, David came out.

  He jumped when he saw her. ‘Oh – I thought you were in the garden?’

  ‘Came in. It’s a bit sticky out there. What are you washing?’

  ‘Er – just thought I’d wash the sheets.’

  She looked at him blankly. ‘But I changed them yesterday!’

  ‘Oh well, I didn’t know that, did I? Won’t do any harm.’

  Her anxiety was making her angry. ‘David, you know you never change the sheets. What was wrong with them?’

  David tried to say, ‘Nothing,’ then faltered under her fierce gaze. ‘I-I didn’t want to tell you.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Look, promise me you’re not going to worry about this,’ he said, taking her hand and leading her back to the kitchen table to sit down. ‘It was just that I woke up last night, well, early morning, really, and you weren’t there – you must have disturbed me when you got up. I could see you weren’t in the bathroom and when I went downstairs the front door was open and you were walking away, across the road and out into the bog. I called but you didn’t pay any attention. When I caught up with you, your eyes were wide open, but you didn’t seem to see me. So, I realised you must be sleepwalking – you didn’t even jump when I took your elbow.

  ‘I just guided you back up to bed and you seemed quite ready to lie down and go back to sleep. But the sheets were muddy – I thought if I washed them while you were outside you wouldn’t have to know – unless you noticed your feet were dirty?’

  Gabrielle shook her head. ‘Just went straight into the shower.’ She began to shake, and then the tears came. ‘Oh God, what am I doing to you? Why don’t you just put me away and have done with it? Resting isn’t doing any good – I’m getting worse. What am I going to do next?’ She smudged the tears away with her fingers, but they kept trickling down.

  David picked up a box of tissues, then sat down beside her and pushed them forward. ‘Come on, mop up. Worse things happen at sea, as my mother always used to say. Irritated the hell out of me, actually.’ He tried to catch her eye, but her head was bent over the table and he put his hand below her chin and tilted it up. ‘Hey! You’re supposed to laugh at your husband’s jokes – it’s a wife’s duty. Particularly if they’re not very funny.’

  She managed a watery smile but even though he was smiling too it didn’t hide the concern in his blue eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, wiping her eyes with a tissue.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You only need to apologise for something you did deliberately. I understand what a strain you’re under, darling. Now listen – sleepwalking isn’t a big deal. It’s not a sign of anything else, it’s just a common manifestation of stress. Look at what you’ve had to cope with! And you take those sleeping pills, don’t you? That could be a factor. And sometimes something as simple as being uncomfortable can put you into that sort of disturbed state – like being too hot, you know?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said, blowing her nose and then it struck her. ‘David, you seem to know a lot about it. Have I done this before?’

  He was taken aback. ‘Er, no … er, I just looked it up on my laptop this morning.’ He opened his blue eyes wide, the picture of innocence.

  ‘You always were a rotten liar. I have, haven’t I?’

  David sighed. ‘OK, OK. Only once, that I know of. Last week. You’d gone downstairs and were standing looking out of the window in the sitting room. Not a problem. I guess we just lock the outside doors, so you don’t go out and come to any harm.’

  Gabrielle’s lip trembled. ‘But we never lock the doors here! It would be like being in a prison!’

  He ran his hand through his hair again, looking helpless. ‘Maybe you should talk to Malcolm about it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, though she had no intention of doing it. She’d consulted her stepfather professionally when she first came back and after five minutes he had dashed off a prescription for antidepressants. They had lain in the bathroom cabinet, untouched – she took enough drugs already just to get a few hours’ sleep.

  ‘It’s up to you, sweetheart. You know I love you and I’m behind you whatever you decide to do.’ He leant forward to kiss her, then stood up. ‘Just a couple more things to finish up. I’ll be rea
dy to go in five minutes.’

  Gabrielle watched him go. Sometimes she’d felt he was too inclined to let her make all their decisions. She certainly had the stronger character, but he would do anything for her and what she had seen as weakness was the flip side of gentleness and kindness. Even if she lost it completely he would tend to her with care and compassion.

  She’d kill herself first.

  The pathologist who met DI Kelso Strang in reception at the Scientific Services lab in Aberdeen was a young Asian woman. She was small and slight in her white coat, but the glasses she wore had heavy tortoiseshell frames.

  Were they, Strang wondered, specially chosen to counteract any impression of youthful inexperience? She certainly exuded an air of fierce competence, as if mutely responding to some argument it hadn’t yet occurred to him to offer.

  She introduced herself as Dr Kashani and led him through to a small office where there was no central desk, only a wide shelf down one side with an impressive array of equipment: he recognised the computer terminals, a microscope and, he thought, a centrifuge but the rest meant nothing to him. It was clinically tidy.

  She swung round a couple of office chairs and waved him towards one as she reached into a filing cabinet and unhesitatingly pulled out a file.

  ‘I can give you a brief summary of my findings. DI Hay has officially viewed the cadaver already, but you may want me to take you along to the mortuary to inspect it, just to put this in context …?’

  In the course of his service, in the army and the police force, he’d seen bodies in various states of dismemberment and decay, but it had not left him with any enthusiasm for viewing one unless in the strict line of duty, and from the report this one would be peculiarly unpleasant.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said, ignoring Dr Kashani’s look of disappointment – or was it contempt? ‘I’d be grateful if you could talk me through it, as far as you can tell. In layman’s language, if you would – I’m afraid I’m not a scientist.’

  He had ventured a smile, but she only said, ‘I see.’ Now he was sure that it was contempt.

  She consulted her notes. ‘It was assumed by the police doctor at the scene that the cadaver was that of a male who had been sleeping rough so cause of death was likely to be either overdose or natural causes. It was transferred to Wick Hospital where the pathologist carried out a formal assessment. His initial findings were of blunt force trauma to the back of the head and there were signs that death had been caused by respiratory impairment from being in or under a liquid.’

  ‘Do you mean he drowned?’

  ‘If you like,’ she said stiffly. ‘There was also evidence that the body had been moved post-mortem.’

  She was beginning to irritate him. ‘Evidence beyond the fact that he had been discovered in a place that was, as I understand it, perfectly dry?’

  ‘I couldn’t comment on that. The evidence I am talking about related to subcutaneous hypostasis – in layman’s language, that’s—’

  ‘Where blood gathers after death. Yes, I know about lividity.’

  For the first time Dr Kashani gave a nod of approval. ‘Good. So, I was able to establish that when death occurred he was lying prone, but on his side when found.’

  ‘I suppose if I ask you for an estimated time of death you will give me the standard “between the time when he was last seen and the time the body was discovered”?’

  She permitted herself a small smile. ‘I can do a little better than that, DCI Strang. He had been dead for at least two or three days, very possibly more, by the time the body was examined. And further, since the only sign of lividity was consonant with the prone position I can state that after death the body wasn’t moved for some time, very approximately six to ten hours—no,’ as he made to speak, ‘I can’t be more precise on how much longer than that it might have been left.’

  Strang thought of crime scene pictures he had seen of other bodies after a few days. ‘But if it was any length of time, moving it would be an extremely distasteful business?’

  ‘Of course, but not to quite the extent you would imagine. A preservative process had begun, the result of the very low pH value of the drowning element, I would imagine, though we will have to wait for the test results to come in to get confirmation.’

  ‘Low pH? Acidic? Do you mean the body was – was pickled?’

  She gave a little grimace. ‘No. But I suppose you might say that this was the very preliminary stage of a tanning process. It would decay quite rapidly once it was moved, especially in this heat.’

  Strang thought about that for a moment. Flow Country – bogs – there was something about ancient bog bodies, wasn’t there? ‘Does that mean it is likely to have been in a peat bog?’

  She recoiled. ‘I couldn’t possibly say that. Samples are being processed and I’m sure when you get the results—’

  ‘Dr Kashani, I appreciate that you need to be cautious, but perhaps you can appreciate that in a murder inquiry I can’t just say airily, “Oh, we can’t do anything until the test results come through.” I’ll be going on up to Caithness today to set one in place. Would the peat bogs in the area be a useful preliminary focus?’

  She pursed her lips and something in him snapped. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! A man has been killed. It’s not a “cadaver”, it’s his dead body. It’s my job to get justice for him to the best of my ability and time is the enemy. Witnesses forget, evidence gets destroyed. I’m not going to report you to the pathologists’ union for making an intelligent guess!’

  Kashani flushed. ‘You’re implying that I’m insensitive. I’m not. I’m professional. And part of my professional training is that we proceed only on the basis of scientific evidence. I’m in the justice business just as much as you are, and wild guesses won’t get you a conviction in court.’

  ‘No. I know that.’ She’d wrong-footed him and now he felt annoyed with himself for his outburst. ‘Let me try again. Do you have any real, “scientific” evidence’ – he couldn’t resist a tiny emphasis on the word – ‘that might back up my wild guess that peat bogs might be a reasonable place to start?’

  She got up and went over to one of the flush panel cupboards that ran right along the wall and took out a polythene bundle of clothes. It was sealed and labelled with the date and a number. She pointed to it. ‘The dead man’s number,’ she said. ‘Matching the tag attached to his big toe.’

  Not ‘the cadaver’s’, he noted, raising an eyebrow with a slight smile. Kashani didn’t look at him, but the corners of her mouth did twitch as she cut off the label and opened the bag.

  The stench was indescribable: corrupt flesh, dried blood, faeces, stale urine. He gagged, but under her cool, impassive gaze forced himself to swallow hard. And then he caught the underlying smell, the faint but unmistakable smokiness of peat.

  ‘Is a smell scientific evidence?’ he asked.

  ‘We can’t perform olfactory analysis yet, though there is an electronic “nose” that’s showing promise, but it’s a legitimate observation. Had enough?’

  Strang nodded and she tied up the bag again. He suspected she had relished his discomfort and that she might now be more inclined to be helpful.

  Strang said carefully, ‘So, Doctor, are there any other observations that you would feel qualified to make?’

  She seemed pleased by the form of words. ‘He had expensive clothes. The shirt and jeans are both Burberry.’

  ‘So, not a down-and-out, then.’

  ‘I didn’t say that!’ She looked alarmed.

  ‘Of course not. He could be a down-and-out who struck lucky begging at a house whose wealthy and eccentric owners regularly purged their wardrobe. On the other hand, it could be a useful hypothesis that the clothes he was wearing belonged to him. Fingernails?’

  He didn’t have to explain. ‘Well-cared-for, with no evidence of manual labour on his hands,’ she said. ‘And there were no signs of substance abuse or disease.’

  ‘Healthy apart from
being dead, you mean.’

  She was ambushed into a surprisingly hearty laugh. ‘Yes, Inspector, I suppose you could say that.’

  Strang chanced his arm. ‘There, that didn’t hurt, did it?’

  Kashani gave him a sidelong look but otherwise ignored it. ‘I’m sure you have a lot more questions, but I have a very heavy schedule today.’ She took a sheet of paper from the top of her notes. ‘The full report is online, but this is a brief digest of the most significant of my findings.’

  ‘Ah, the Janet-and-John bit,’ he said provocatively.

  The pathologist sighed. ‘DCI Strang, I’m happy to be frivolous when I’m not working. When I am, I’m serious.’

  That threw him slightly, though not for the reason she perhaps imagined it would. Yes, perhaps he had become more ‘frivolous’ lately. After Alexa’s death he had been serious for a very long time, but Finella had said something recently about him being more like his old self. Recovery implied a lessening of the pain of loss and that in itself was painful.

  ‘Sorry, Dr Kashani. I can appreciate that.’ He speed-read the sheet. ‘That’s very clear. Thank you.’ He got up and held out his hand.

  She had small hands but a surprisingly powerful grip. ‘Good luck. It’s a very unusual case.’

  She was certainly right there.

  At one o’clock Ailie fetched her bag from her desk and left the office. No need to bother with a jacket: it was what Aberdonians call ‘an awfie grand day’. The jet stream, allegedly, had got itself stuck in some particularly favourable position for the north of Scotland and they’d had clear, brilliant blue skies for more than a week now. Fine, settled weather being rare made you appreciate it more and there was a definite holiday feeling in the grey streets today with people sitting at tables outside cafes in short sleeves – even the odd Hawaiian shirt for the seriously venturesome. The flecks of mica in the pale granite sparkled and even the wind off the sea was no more than a pleasant breeze.