Condemned

by R. C. Bridgestock

  Careful scrutiny of what was visible of the skeleton showed them that, from where they were standing, the body appeared complete. There was no flesh on the bones which bore a yellow tinge, and what looked like coins were placed in the eye sockets. From Charley’s experience, she knew that these bones had been in situ for some considerable time. Just how old the skeleton was she had no idea, but one thing she did know was that this corpse had been here far longer than the one behind the fireplace.

  She scrutinised the remains with expert eyes for a moment longer, and could see what looked like the remnants of cloth. She wondered if they might be the remains of a shroud.

  ‘Crownest is certainly living up to the reputation it has long held locally,’ she whispered through dry lips.

  ‘“Munster Mansion”, by any chance?’ said Annie.

  ‘Close… “Murder House”,’ said Charley straining to see Joe’s face. ‘I’m open-minded, but neither gossip, hearsay, rumour, nor folklore will stand up in court. I read that since the day the soil was first broken, it has been documented that countless people involved with the building of Crownest, on the site of the old farm, have experienced strange activity, that paranormal investigators have gone on to describe as demonic. We know that even recently, unexplained fires have, it appears, spontaneously manifested, and we also know that there have been a number of deaths, both recorded, and as suggested now, non-recorded, which have occurred within its walls.’

  ‘I think I heard all them stories when I was about to undertake its demolition,’ said Joe.

  ‘You did,’ said Annie, ‘and you didn’t run a mile? I would’ve.’

  ‘A building foreman apparently drowned himself, so affected was he by the shadowy figures devoid of human features he was said to have encountered. I don’t know who spread that particular rumour. Probably my opposition for the contract, to see it dropped to the ground.’ Joe chuckled.

  ‘You’re not superstitious?’ said Annie.

  ‘I’m not superstitious at all,’ he replied.

  ‘Good job,’ said Charley.

  ‘Well, theories might be varied, but one thing that I do agree with, is that there are some seriously bad vibes here. And come on, why else would you conceal a body unless something sinister had gone on?’ asked Annie.

  Joe raised his brows. ‘Exactly!’

  Charley pursed her lips. ‘Well, that’s our job to find out,’ she said. ‘Could you, and a couple of your fellas make yourselves available to help us a hand if required?’ Her request felt more like an order to Joe. Without waiting for a reply from Nevermore’s owner, she turned back to Annie.

  ‘We need Forensics at the scene as soon as possible. Call Senior Crime Scene Investigator Neal Rylatt will you? I think his expertise is required. As quickly as he can, before we lose the light. The recovery is going to take days, rather than hours.’ The words tumbled from her lips, expecting disappointment.

  Joe’s reply was far from expected, ‘I don’t have a problem with that.’

  Did Charley detect lightheartedness in Joe’s voice? ‘You don’t? What about the contract with Thomas?’

  ‘I don’t have any time restraints for completion. I made damn sure of that before I signed anything. If he didn’t read the amendment, that’s his problem. I’m too long in the tooth to take chances with the unpredictable Yorkshire weather.’ There was a hint of one-upmanship in his tone. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘he can hardly refuse to pay us, or try to wriggle out of a contract with a police investigation to be solved, can he?’ He paused for a moment. ‘Do you think we’re likely to discover more bodies?’ Joe sounded intrigued, and even excited to be party to the enquiry.

  ‘Hopefully not, two human skeletons are enough, don’t you agree?’

  Chapter 6

  Joe threw log after log, followed by branch after branch on the fire, but the garden waste didn’t appear to be receding. However, this didn’t appear to have dampened his spirits. His ultimatum to the workforce was, work in the garden or go home without pay. The fire seemed to burn more brightly as the cloak of darkness fell at four o’clock on the winter’s night. The others had left. In a low and hushed voice he was singing a tune.

  ‘It’s a marshmallow world in the winter

  When the snow comes to cover the ground

  It’s time for play, it’s a whipped cream day

  I wait for it the whole year ’round.’

  Joe caught Charley and Annie staring at him. ‘I don’t know where that come from,’ he grinned. His face was red, and glowing from the fire.

  The fire created some warmth for their chilled bodies as they waited with anticipation for the arrival of the on-call pathologist, Davis Chevelle. The air around the fire was hot, but the wind was building, and it swept the red-hot embers away, thankfully in the opposite direction.

  ‘My mother would’ve rejoiced to see the back of this place. She’d often warn us off when we were kids. “Don’t run to me when you’ve scared yourself witless,” she’d say.’ Joe made a pretty good attempt at mimicking a woman’s voice. It made Annie chuckle. ‘She was a believer in the paranormal, my mother.’ Laughter lines crinkled at the side of his tired eyes. ‘Worst thing she could have done though. It was like throwing down a gauntlet to a group of bored kids!’

  Charley smiled. ‘Maybe it was an era thing, the folklore passing through their generation. My granny told me tales passed down from our ancestors, which I guess was all they could do, since many wouldn’t be able to read or write. My late grandpa was a farmer who regularly spoke of the dire consequences we would face, should we upset or offend the mischievous, hairy little man he called the Hob that apparently came with the farm.’

  ‘Believers, I guess, would also say that this is evidence that ghosts are real?’ said Joe.

  ‘Sceptics see it as the continuation of belief, each ghost the echo of its antecedents,’ replied Charley.

  Annie’s eyes, sore from the smoke looked mesmerised by the content of the conversation she was party to. ‘Whatever, she’s has got me putting a jug of milk out for the Hob every night, rather than witness his wrath!’ she told Joe.

  Charley looked back at the house and sighed, ‘I must admit that as I’ve grown older I’ve become more interested in the paranormal, but I think it’s the detective in me. Always trying to get to the crux of the matter.’

  ‘Apparently, the idea of ghosts are hard to shift from our psyche; it’s too deeply rooted,’ said Annie.

  ‘I guess you could call them the equivalent of Japanese Knotweed then!’ said Joe wrapping his hand around a wayward bunch of greenery, pulling it out of the ground and tossing it onto the fire.

  ‘I read somewhere only recently that, due to modern-day technological advances there are those who want to consign ghosts to the scrapheap of redundant beliefs, but yet more people are said to believe in ghosts than they do God these days,’ said Annie.

  ‘I bet that’s true, and I bet there are probably still more people who don’t believe in ghosts but won’t spend a night in a haunted house, because deep down they do believe in ghosts, at least just enough to get scared,’ said Joe.

  ‘Who’s to know what’s true, and what’s not true?’ said Charley.

  ‘We all know how Chinese whispers can get twisted, don’t we?’ Annie said. ‘The rumours are enough for me though. I wouldn’t want to spend a night inside there.’

  ‘Well hopefully, if the pathologist gets a shifty on, you won’t have to!’

  Annie pulled a face. ‘On a positive note, there’s one thing we aren’t waiting for, and that’s a paramedic to pronounce that they’re dead.’

  Annie’s mobile rang. Ear to the phone, she relayed the message to Charley. ‘Mike Blake and Ricky-Lee are on their way,’ she said.

  ‘Good, we need a separate exhibits officer for each body.’

  ‘Why?’ said Annie.

  ‘We need to treat them as separate crime scenes, so that there is no confusion, or contamination.’

 
; They looked up as Senior CSI Neal Rylatt made his way through the garden to join them near the fire. ‘Well, I guess you’ll be pleased to hear that Professor Davis Chevelle’s ETA is ten minutes,’ he said.

  Chapter 7

  Davis Chevelle was clever, and had a reputation for having a loud mouth, but that wasn’t the first thing that people noticed about him. Presently he was insisting that he did not have a Napoleon complex, when he came into Charley’s earshot, accompanied by Mike Blake.

  ‘That bastard was five-foot six, what did he ’ave to complain about?’ bellowed Davis. ‘I was born yelling, and I guarantee it’ll be the thing people will remember about me.’ He laughed, showing an overly large set of pearly white teeth, in an exceedingly wide smile. ‘I have to do something to make sure I’m not swept underfoot,’ he said, stepping forward and offering Charley an extended hand. His demeanour changed immediately as he spoke to the SIO and he became serious-looking. ‘Well, hello, I’m Davis Chevelle,’ he said, in an unexpected deep, rich, velvet voice. ‘I do believe you have been waiting for me?’

  At four-foot one, Davis stood out in a crowd. He was stocky, muscular, and generally misunderstood, or so he said. He had a mass of wispy brown hair, goatee beard, small, dark, round spectacles, and with his colourful mismatched clothes, he could have been mistaken for a court jester. Standing between the lean, smart, clean-shaven DS Mike Blake, and the ever-suntanned DC Ricky-Lee, he looked like a French bulldog in drag.

  Davis’s unique way of working, and his inordinately loud mouth preceded him, but no matter, as Charley needed him, as she desperately required his expertise on the two separate scenes, with the two skeletons at differing stages of decomposition.

  Davis carried a pair of lightweight, brightly coloured, plastic folding ladders with him as Charley led the way back into the house and down into the cellar. She saw the look on Mike Blake’s face, and his mischievous eye caught hers. ‘Don’t you dare!’ they said, as she felt the corners of her mouth twitch, and a chuckle catch in her throat.

  With protective suits on to protect both the scene and their clothing, the group stood quietly, allowing each other to visualise the skeleton that lay before them behind the wall, amongst the dusty debris in the cellar. The additional lighting that had been brought in flooded the area, making it much easier to see the burial site in more detail. Towards the outside wall which was next to where the skeleton lay, tree roots clung together to form one giant mass, reaching out eerily towards the bones.

  Davis secured his size four shoes on the third step of his ladder. He pulled two rubber gloves from a box that Ricky-Lee offered him, and blew them up like a balloon to enable him to put them on more easily.

  ‘Fascinating Inspector, absolutely fascinating,’ he muttered, his eyes remaining focused on the scene as he adjusted the volume of his recording device.

  That may be, thought Charley to herself, but as I have the remains of two bodies in this house, just tell me how they died, and better still, who killed them.

  The professor appeared to be in his element. Humming away, he picked a few white stones from several that lay scattered on top of the skeleton. ‘Pure quartz,’ he said, with glee.

  ‘Believed to ease the passage to the afterlife,’ said Charley.

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ said Davis with a hint of admiration in his tone. ‘You are well read,’ he declared. His eyes remained on the quartz that he was placing in an evidence bag.

  ‘My granny’s family were Irish, apparently they were used by her forefathers for burials.’ Charley paused, her expression turning thoughtful. ‘Funny how the brain retains little nuggets of information to recall years later.’

  With featherlight strokes Davis carefully brushed the skull back and forth, until the soft bristles snagged. Charley found herself holding her breath, closely watching the goings-on in the illuminated search area.

  ‘This skeleton has age to it,’ Davis said, as he tentatively fiddled in the debris to shift the obstruction.

  DS Mike Blake flicked his eyelids at Charley. She knew what he was thinking. Don’t all skeletons have some age to them?

  ‘Seems to be some evidence of cloth, possibly remnants of a shroud?’ Davis said, confirming Charley’s earlier suspicions. Gently, he eased a stone from between the skeleton’s jaw. Ricky-Lee held open an exhibits bag for him to place the stone in, sealed it tight and commenced to write upon a label. ‘In the past they believed that putting something in between the jaws would stop the dead from chewing through the shroud,’ he said. Annie looked intrigued.

  Davis made a show of checking for vampire fangs, in a light-hearted way. He drew back and mopped his brow with his forearm. ‘There is still potential for it to rise at some point.’

  Charley’s impatience to get on with the investigation was now also felt by Annie. ‘The only time it will rise is when you’ve finished and we lift it out of there,’ she whispered. Annie’s voice grew louder and she emitted a gasp. ‘You actually think it could be a vampire, Professor?’

  ‘I think, whoever buried her – it’s a woman by the way, I can tell that from the size of her pelvic bone – thought she needed to be pinned down to stop her from rising again.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ said Charley.

  Davis measured the length of the skeleton, and he asked for further photographs to be taken by Neal in his role as CSI before he continued, ‘See this iron rod through her shoulder blade?’ Annie nodded eagerly. ‘That shows me that whoever buried her believed she had the capabilities to leave her grave, and terrorise the living. This pagan custom spread throughout European countries, and the practice was continued as far as the early 1900s.’ Davis paused. ‘They must have thought this person was a terrible threat as she also has spikes through her ankles,’ he said, pointing to her feet. ‘A bit over the top even for a pagan burial I admit, but they believed they could prevent the deceased from rising up and attacking the locals.’

  ‘Or, maybe the person who killed her?’ mumbled Annie. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe… I’ve read plenty about this type of burial, but I believe there have been only a few found in the UK.’

  ‘You said, “over the top”,’ said Charley. ‘Is there something else?’

  Davis pointed to the rib cage. ‘See this?’ The professor lifted a disc shaped, pendant carefully in his gloved hand from the corpse. ‘It’s a pagan pentacle necklace.’ He brushed the necklace carefully, as he spoke. His eyes were quickly averted. ‘Now,’ he said, peering further into the cavity. He pointed a straight finger, as he raised an eyebrow at Charley. ‘That is very interesting. Do you see what I see? A bone-handled dagger, which suggests to me it was a ritual killing.’

  ‘Makes a difference from it being from a knife taken from the kitchen block, the cause of many a domestic murder these days,’ Mike Blake commented.

  ‘She has two broken ribs, clearly visible, perhaps they were caused by the force used when she was stabbed. Closer inspection at the lab will confirm.’

  ‘How old do you think the skeleton is?’ asked Charley.

  ‘If you pressed me, I’d make a guess at around seventy to a hundred years, but we’ll do some carbon dating, and that’ll tell me how accurate I am.’

  Annie whistled through her teeth.

  ‘Remember that skeletons are not only the remnant of a life once lived, they are also a lasting blueprint of that life. She has wisdom teeth, so we can confirm that she was over eighteen years of age. Looking at her skull and bone development, I’d make a guess that she was not much older when she died. What I’m seeing suggests to me that there was third-party involvement in her death.’

  ‘Murder?’ said Annie.

  ‘Murder,’ echoed Davis.

  The professor looked above and around him. ‘Once we have removed the skeleton from where she’s been entombed, then we can examine the surrounding area. My first thoughts are that for whatever reason she was killed, she was then placed here by someone who cared deeply about her and wha
t had happened to her, and then the wall was bricked up, maybe at the time, maybe sometime later, who knows?’

  ‘A tomb?’ whispered Annie.

  ‘A tomb, yes.’ Davis gave a little moan as he stood upright and stretched his spine. ‘Time for a break and to discuss whether we arrange the movement of this skeleton before examining the next.’

  ‘Makes sense. It would save changing our protective clothing, which we will need to do before moving on to the next body,’ said Charley. ‘Last thing we want to do is contaminate that scene.’

  Pre-packed food bags and hot drinks had been delivered to the site at Annie’s request, and not only was Charley grateful for the food and drink, but she was impressed by the younger detective’s foresight. Fifteen minutes later, guided by the professor’s experience, the skeleton was removed, almost intact. The dagger was easily accessible, and was removed with little effort, photographed, and placed in an evidence tube. Once the scene was free of the bones, the wider search of the area began.

  The concrete tomb was relatively clean, surprisingly. Sifting through the rubble, dirt, and other debris, no doubt caused by the current demolition work, was their main hurdle. Nevertheless their patience gave them rewards, as a mirror, a tube, and coins were found. Possible reasons for the mirror and tube being in the tomb was explained away by the professor as safety devices, as they allowed others to look into the tomb for signs of life; pennies were used to seal the eyes shut, or if you believed a practice associated with the north of England regarding the latter in the 17th Century, to ‘give to St Steve’.

  ‘But why?’ asked Annie. ‘Whoever killed her obviously wanted her dead, and a pagan burial suggests that she didn’t believe in God.’

  Amongst the debris they also found a small ring. ‘Did it come off her finger?’

  With no more to do at the present on scene one, they took a brief break to discuss the body and their findings.

  ‘I think it’s time we called it a day,’ said Charley. ‘After all, the body behind the fireplace isn’t going anywhere, and we can start refreshed tomorrow with new coveralls for the second crime scene.’