by Vanda Symon
There had been no sign of tattooing on the body at the morgue. Assault? Yes. Tattooing? No.
The third man coughed up by NLA, the police computer system, was more than ten centimetres shorter than our man, which, taking into account any margin of error, effectively ruled him out.
The fourth missing person on the list, Jack White, was the only one who had characteristics in common with our victim – he was the same approximate height and build. His dental records would be compared with what was left of the victim’s mouth later today. He’d been reported missing three weeks ago and was last seen leaving his former partner’s home in South Dunedin in his car, which hadn’t been found either. He’d had an altercation with her new boyfriend, which had come to blows, but both the woman and her boyfriend declared he was alive when he drove away – a prerequisite for driving I would have thought – but was also angry and threatening to come back. She had then gone to the trouble of getting a protection order taken out against him.
Perhaps her boyfriend or her family had taken matters into their own hands? It had happened before and was certain to happen again. But that was idle speculation. We were now just waiting: waiting for the dental comparison between Jack White and our victim, which wouldn’t take long; waiting for ESR to work their grisly magic and come up with a fingerprint, which would take a bit longer; and then the hopeful wait for a comparison in the Automated Fingerprint Identification System database, or AFIS as we lovingly referred to it. In the real world pretty computer displays didn’t miraculously come up with a match within 3.1 seconds, complete with handy photo, address, last known whereabouts and favourite takeaway restaurant, like they did on television.
The result I was really curious to hear about was from Tamsin, the doctoral student – her evaluation on how long the body had been in the water. Alistair had been very quick to point out that his time-of-death estimate hinged on gauging the body’s decomposition – a notoriously inexact science. He’d given a preliminary assessment of between one week and a month, which gave a little too much leeway for our liking and would have seriously disappointed anyone who was a CSI junkie and expecting a plus or minus three seconds estimate. When I’d phoned Tamsin, she’d been preparing the bacterial samples for DNA identification. But again, these things took time – she estimated a week for a snapshot, and two or three weeks for a full analysis. No instant result, no flashing screens, no fantasyland.
21
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ Smithy asked as I walked back into the squad room after my lunch break. My hormones had told me that the healthy ham and salad sandwich I’d brought from home wasn’t going to cut it today and I’d have to supplement it with a big, fat custard square from the bakery and a double-shot takeaway flat white from The Fix. Who was I to argue with my hormones?
‘Get the bad news out of the way first.’
‘The dental comparison came back and the victim is definitely not Jack White.’
‘Bum. Would have been neat and tidy if it was.’ At least with a definitive identification we could have had a lot more to work on than a worse-for-wear body and some scuba gear. It would also have solved the mystery of what had become of Jack White. I was sure his family would prefer to know what had happened to their son and brother, even if the news was the worst. It had to be better than spending the rest of their lives waiting for him to walk in the back door and plonk down at the dining-room table waiting for dinner like nothing had happened. In a way it was a good thing for his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend, as it meant there wasn’t going to be the might of a murder investigation knocking on their front door anytime soon. Well, not yet, anyway.
‘What’s the good news, then,’ I asked.
‘The boffins at ESR just called. They managed to get a good-quality print off that piece of skin. They’ll pop it through AFIS as soon as they can and call us back if there are any hits.’
‘You’re kidding? God, they’re amazing. Throw them some chocolates, will you? And some beer. And give a beer to the police diver who managed to bag the skin, too, because I saw what was left of those hands, and believe me, there wasn’t anything much to fingerprint – you need fingers for that. Urrgggh.’ I couldn’t help but shudder.
‘Too much information,’ Smithy said.
‘Sorry, didn’t think you were the squeamish type. So, we’ve got a print, all we need to do now is hope the victim had been in a spot of trouble at some stage and is in our system.’ Fingerprints were all well and good, but you had to have something to compare them with, otherwise they were nothing more than miniature Te Papa logos – without the grandeur of being plastered all over the side of the National Museum.
‘Fingers crossed,’ Smithy said. I winced at his choice of words.
It still amazed me they could get a fingerprint from slipped skin. Even the word slipped was kind of creepy in that context. But the technique wasn’t new, and it had helped immensely with the identification of victims after the Boxing Day tsunami back in 2004. That must have been one hell of a huge and horrible task. This fingerprint was quick work on ESR’s part. Maybe the novelty factor bumped it up the to-do queue.
‘What else did they have to say?’ I asked him.
‘The wetsuit was a mass-produced brand, available from basically any dive, surf or sports shop, and it was a model from six years ago. Likewise, the cylinder, regulator and BCD were of a common type.’
‘BCD?’ You could tell I’d never been scuba diving.
‘Buoyancy Control Device, a bit more high-tech than the old weight belt. The cylinder was empty – surprise.’
‘Guess you don’t need oxygen if you’re already dead.’
‘Not usually, no. The gear looked reasonably worn, as I said; wasn’t new and there was grime around the regulator that suggests it hadn’t been used for a while. They did find some fibres caught in the zipper so have their experts looking at those.’
I thought about the paraphernalia associated with diving.
‘How much would it cost to kit yourself out in scuba gear, by the time you get the tank, regulator, wetsuit, BCD, accessories, etcetera?’
‘It’s been a long time since I dived,’ Smithy said. A long time since he’d squeezed his bulk into a wetsuit too, I imagined. ‘And it wasn’t cheap then. But I’d guess, with inflation, I dunno, around four or five grand new. We could make a phone call and find out easily enough. Why do you ask?’
‘That’s quite a lot of money to toss into the sea to cover up a murder,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but what’s a bit of gear when you’ve got a lot to lose?’
‘True. I still don’t get why they’d bother though. Surely they’d have been better off tossing him in clothed, or even naked. The sea and the fish would have taken care of the evidence quicker.’
‘The body was quite a way offshore. Someone found fully clothed would look a mite suspicious out there, and someone found butt naked would set alarm bells off everywhere. Maybe they were trying to be clever.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe they panicked and thought, shit, how do we make this look like an accident, and the whole wetsuit thing seemed like a good idea at the time. It was an error of judgement on their part because not only did it slow down the decay, but it must also have involved the use of a vehicle and a boat to transport him out to sea, so there are more things we can look for. Did you say ESR found fibres? They could be from the perpetrator or they could be from the boot of a car or the cabin of a boat. All grist for the investigative mill.’
‘Last time I looked there were a shitload of boats moored around the inner harbour and at Port Chalmers, let alone all the ones parked on trailers in backyards everywhere from Brighton to Warrington.’
‘It was just a thought,’ I said, smiling at the look on his face. ‘I’m not suggesting you personally go out and check each one – we’ve got the uniform branch for that.’
Smithy inhaled audibly. ‘Don’t ever let them hear you say that, young lady. They have clever w
ays of bringing young, upstart trainee detectives back down to earth.’ I knew there were a number of them who’d love to see me come to grief. Thanks to some unknown benefactor, I’d been fast-tracked into the detective training programme ahead of a number who’d been applying for years. Memories could be long around here.
‘You don’t need to remind me, I get it from above and below, remember?’ Between DI Johns and the eternally miffed, I felt I walked a tightrope. ‘Anyway, I do think that whoever did this had access to scuba gear to throw away. Most scuba divers need a boat at some point, whether it’s their own, or a mate’s. Someone involved is a scuba diver, whether they’re the murderer or helped dispose of the evidence.’
‘Not necessarily. I’ll check if there have been any reports of stolen gear, or boats recently. If they’re capable of murder, they’re quite capable of theft.’
At least that gave us something useful to do until the result of the fingerprint analysis came in.
22
My cellphone rang while I was doing half a dozen things at once, so I didn’t pause to check who it was before I picked up.
‘Gidday.’
Bugger, that lapse backfired. It was Paul. It was too late to pretend I was otherwise occupied.
‘Gidday, yourself,’ I said. The now-familiar knot formed in the pit of my stomach. I hoped this would be short because the room was full of colleagues and I didn’t feel like having them listening in on my domestic crisis.
‘How’s the head?’
‘It’s getting there. It would be great if I could shake off the lingering headache though.’ Was there a point to this call, other than chit-chat? ‘You don’t normally call me at work. You must be bored.’
‘Pretty much. Gore’s not what you’d call riveting.’
‘Hey, I’m a bit busy right now…’
‘Yeah, I heard, a murder case, and that you’d finagled your way into being officer in charge of the body.’
‘News travels fast, and it wasn’t exactly planning on my part.’
‘So it wasn’t you sucking up to your favourite boss?’
I laughed at that comment. Paul knew my workplace woes only too well.
‘So are you okay? I hear you had to be at the post-mortem.’ His voice was full of concern, and I realised with a lurch that he was the kind of guy who would have realised being OCB was a big thing, that a person’s first post-mortem could be bloody hard and traumatic, and that there would be tasks ahead that would be just as difficult. He was the kind of guy who would pick up the phone, despite the tension and uncertainty of our relationship, to make sure I was coping.
I felt a constriction in my throat and the photograph in front of me started to swim. ‘I’m doing fine, thanks,’ I said as I turned aside, hoping my colleagues wouldn’t catch the slight crackle in my voice. ‘But I’m really busy right now. So we’ll talk at the weekend, okay?’
23
‘Go buy a Lotto ticket, it’s our lucky day. We’ve got a result from that print!’ Smithy had just got off the phone from what, by his standards, had been a very animated conversation. Even more disconcerting, he came over and gave me a fist bump.
‘Bloody brilliant,’ I said, giving my knuckles a rub. ‘What are the odds of that?’ A print from a sloughed-off, scungy-looking bit of skin pulled up from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. I always had great respect for the people at ESR, but this was tipping that respect towards hero worship. ‘So who and how?’ I asked.
‘The print was a match for the right index finger of a Richard James Stewart, also known as Clifford, aged twenty-two. And no, no idea why,’ Smithy said in response to my raised eyebrows at the god-awful name Clifford. ‘Last known residence, Castle Street, Dunedin.’ That was smack in the middle of the University of Otago student area. ‘He had a previous conviction for possession of marijuana for supply, and for the sale of stolen goods, and according to his driver’s licence is an organ donor, but I don’t think anyone is going to be wanting them in a hurry.’ I could vouch for the last comment.
‘And this has been confirmed with dental records?’
‘Chasing them down as we speak.’
‘So has he been reported missing?’
‘No, doesn’t look like it.’
‘But he could have been dead for weeks. God, that’s a bit sad if nobody noticed. Did he have flatmates? And what about family? Surely someone would realise he hadn’t been around?’
‘You’d think. Best we go pay a visit to his last known address.’
*
From the outside, the Castle Street flat was a tip. It looked like somewhere the media would offer as an example of a typical Dunedin student hovel. The kind of housing that made parents all over the country apoplectic, and reputable landlords cringe. There was a decrepit grunge-brown couch sitting on the porch, springs shoving up through the ancient horse-hair stuffing. A number of beer crates looked like they served as portable seating and drinks tables. There were enough empty stubbies and cigarette butts around to show it was a well-used facility. It also had tiered seating – someone had put an equally well-maintained armchair on the veranda above the porch. There wasn’t so much a lawn as a dirt pit. I didn’t think they’d have to worry about mud inside though, because you could use the stepping-stone path of discarded junk mail to keep your shoes clean. The curtains in the villa’s bay windows were pulled closed, although one looked like it was clinging to the rail by two fingernails. The exterior had a modernist transport theme, with a line-up of supermarket trolleys straddling the ridgeline of the roof.
‘Well, this is cosy,’ Smithy said, surveying the front of the property.
‘Just think, Smithy. One day your kids could be living in splendid student squalor like this.’
He snorted his derision. ‘Not bloody likely. The five-year-old manages to keep his stuff tidier than this. Pigs.’
Smithy didn’t go in for academic types, and he had an allergy to student shenanigans. It was probably just as well for the more energetic of the student population that the CIB, and in particular, Smithy, didn’t get their hands on them unless they were in serious trouble. Normally it was the uniform branch who got to deal with the drunks, out-of-control parties, occasional couch-burnings and ill-conceived supposedly fun social events. We all still held our breath around the annual Hyde Street Party. Many of us had memories of the unruly mess that was the Undy 500 – an invasion of University of Canterbury engineering students in barely roadworthy vehicles containing large quantities of alcohol for ballast. The resultant booze-fuelled riots had led to considerable damage to property as well as the University’s reputation, and the event had been banned. But the odd naive Canterbury student still tried for an underground version. We can keep it under control, sir. It’s the fault of the Dunedin students, or people who aren’t even students, sir. It will be better this time. Yeah, right. Dunedin as a whole embraced the fact it was a university city. It added vibrancy and diversity to the conservative Scottish Presbyterian settler base. If it didn’t have the students Dunedin would probably be seen as Grand Boredom Central by the rest of the country, so love them or hate them, we needed the students. There were only the occasional idiots who made us all rue the fact.
‘Ladies first,’ Smithy said, and indicated it was going to be my pleasure to do the honours here.
He called the shots and I wasn’t about to argue. I felt a little twist in my stomach. I hated being the bearer of bad news. ‘Gee, thanks,’ I said, and stepped around the bottles to knock on the front door.
Nothing.
I waited a few more moments and then knocked again, louder. I heard a thump, and then footsteps moving slowly towards the door. An apparition opened it. I’d have guessed he was in his early twenties, squinty-eyed at the sudden influx of light. He was wearing a grubby white T-shirt with the word ‘Vague’ across the chest in Vogue-style lettering, and striped pyjama pants that hung off his bony hips, big rips in the knees. I believe it was the first time I’d ever seen someone wi
th a blonde dreadlocked-mullet hairdo.
‘What?’ he said, like it was an immense effort to get the word out of his mouth.
‘Good morning.’ It was morning, just. It was 11.45 a.m., and he’d clearly missed the best of it. ‘I’m Detective Constable Shephard, this is Detective Smith. We were wanting to know if this was the residence of Richard Stewart, or Clifford, as I believe he was known?’ Shit, I said ‘was’, not ‘is’, and twice, but Mr Vague here didn’t pick up on it.
‘Yeah, but he’s not here at the moment.’
‘When was he here last?’
The young man looked like this was way too hard for his brain to compute. I wondered what interesting substance was still lurking in his system from the night before. One of his eyelids had a distinct droop.
‘Ah, a week ago, maybe two.’
‘Did he say he was going anywhere?’
‘He’d talked about going home for a bit, to his parents’, so he must be there.’
In other words, he had no idea where he was, and he clearly had no idea his flatmate was dead. Mates were supposed to look out for mates – some sort of friend this one turned out to be. But not every flatting situation was ideal, I had to remind myself. Maggie and I were the exception rather than the rule.
‘But he normally does live here?’
‘Yeah.’ A suspicious edge crept into his voice. ‘Why, what’s he done?’