by Gregson, J M
Watermarked
J. M. Gregson
© J. M. Gregson 1994
J. M. Gregson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1994 by Collins Crime.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter One
The Severn is the longest river in England and Wales.
It winds for two hundred and ten miles through the historic shires of middle England. Old Father Thames may be more famous because of his metropolitan connections, but the silver Severn has some powerful admirers. Shakespeare wrote of how the river ‘hid his crisp head in hollow bank’ while mighty battles in the Wars of the Roses shook the ground around it and shaped the course of English history.
In its final, tidal stages, it has the phenomenon of the Severn bore, that six-foot-high wave which sweeps dramatically inward with the rise of the tide. But in the stage before this last one, the river traces a lazy, serpentine route between the ancient cathedrals of Worcester and Gloucester, sneaking a look at the great abbey of Tewkesbury on its way.
There are tracts here where the river moves very slowly, passing between rich water meadows, which are all the greener from the floods the great river visits frequently upon them. Here the water seems on warm summer days to be scarcely moving at all, and any floating matter moves very gradually upon the sluggish waters. Sometimes such debris is held for a time on the soft ground at the edge of one of the huge bends, where willows reach their low boughs far out over the water, trapping matter for a while among their exposed roots at the edge of the river.
That is what had happened to the body.
It had been in the summer water for some days. Even the farmer who found it was in no doubt of that. The torso was swollen beneath the clothes, and the pallid skin was stretched like the rubber of an obscene balloon over what was left of the features. Some furtive creature with small, fierce teeth had attacked both the face and the area of the forearm which protruded beyond the sodden dark wool of the sleeve.
The day was still and warm; even the narrow leaves of the willow, so sensitive to the slightest breeze, scarcely rustled above the water. In the dense patch of shade beneath the arching willow, it was still and dark, but beyond it where the sun blazed, the broad, still waters of the Severn made a mirror for the trees on the opposite bank, concealing the slow tug of the current beneath that smooth surface.
The farmer was a man of experience. He had seen death among his cattle, often, and he was hardened to the squeals of the abattoir. But he was not prepared for this human death, which came upon him before he had time to prepare himself for it. He had the presence of mind to turn sharply away from the corpse before he vomited.
*
Apart from a little movement of the sun towards the west, the essentials of the scene did not change at all from the moment the farmer’s dog left the cows and drew him with his barking to the corpse at the water’s edge until the time two hours later when the Scene of Crime team had marked off the surrounding area with white tapes.
The body lay with its head nearest to the shore, amid the deep scorings made in the soft red earth by the hooves of the cattle as they came to drink in the shade. One eye had gone — pecked away, no doubt, by the carrion crows that screeched raucously from the highest oak two fields away from the river. Long strands of wet hair were draped decently across the other side of the face, concealing whatever ravages might have been wrought there. There were no wrinkles because of the swelling: indeed, the white skin with its tinge of green looked scarcely human at all.
The bloated legs lay half submerged in the water; the single toe which showed above the surface had a film of what might be nylon around it. The calves were beneath the muddy water, but there was what looked like the hem of a skirt on the surface. It looked as if this thing might once have been a woman. A lady, perhaps: no harm now in allowing that.
Sergeant Johnson had seen many worse corpses than this one. He could tell at a glance that it had been dead for several days at least, but he did not waste time on speculations. He directed his Scene of Crime team calmly and efficiently as they began their assiduous search of the area. The officers knew the routine: they must miss no small clue as to the identity of this body and more importantly, how it came to be in this particular spot.
It was in some respects a formality, for Johnson was already sure in his own mind that this death had not occurred in this quiet spot. His men found nothing of particular significance, and it was not long before he gave permission for the remains to be eased into the body bag. The ambulance lurched carefully away across the field’s undulations, which were baked hard by the long hours of late spring sun.
Sergeant Johnson took a last look round the scene before he left. The tapes could stay here for the moment; let some higher rank take the decisions he was paid for. But he had seen no need to leave a PC on guard over the site through the night. He trudged across the field to the lane where he had left his car. This death, despite its muted discovery, was not without interest. Drownings did not usually excite his professional attention. Of those which were not accidental, the majority were suicides.
But any injuries upon a body were always of interest until the cause of death had been established. The most nauseating marks upon this one had probably occurred during its prolonged immersion in the Severn. There was one laceration, though, upon which Johnson’s keen eye had dwelt at length, even though it was whitened by the water.
It was a livid scar across the throat of the corpse.
Chapter Two
Dr Cyril Burgess was indulging in one of his favourite hobbies — the baiting of Superintendent John Lambert.
The starting point for what he saw as his harmless fun was the delicacy of the superintendent’s stomach where the physical details of post-mortems were concerned. It allowed the pathologist an infinite variety of small threats, as he pretended with each new piece of information to reveal the item which had prompted his conclusions and speculations.
Burgess had kept his rubber ankle-length boots on; they carried a suggestion that he might at any moment take up the knives he had recently laid down and resume his charnel house activities. The tap beneath the dissecting table, which was used to wash away excess blood and offal, had been left running gently; Burgess noted with satisfaction how Lambert’s eyes were drawn back to it at intervals, as if he expected to see new gouts of blood reddening the water as it spread silently over the stainless steel and ran to the drain.
There had, in fact, been very little blood flowing from this sadly deteriorated corpse, but Burgess saw no reason to apprise John Lambert of that fact.
‘I’ve followed the routine procedures for violent death, in case we have to account for ourselves with some legal eagle in due course, but of course, many of them are almost meaningless with a corpse of this age.’ He wrinkled his lips with distaste, making the thought sound like a rebuke to the superintendent f
or presenting him with such imperfect materials for his macabre work.
Lambert saw an opening and went for it, but he was not quite quick enough. ‘Yes, how long would you say it is since —’
‘I’ve weighed the heart, brain, spleen, lungs and the other organs as usual.’ He gestured towards the empty stainless steel bench next to the one where the husk of the body lay beneath its sheet. A series of dishes were laid out here. Each was at present covered with a cloth, but Burgess gave the impression that he might at any moment spring to reveal their contents, like a demented waiter demonstrating his menu to an unsuspecting customer. ‘But of course, the deterioration is such that reliable deductions are scarcely possible.’
Burgess plucked at the cuffs of his pristine white coat and looked at the squares of cloth with sudden distaste, as if he thought it deceitful of him not to reveal the full paucity of the decaying organs beneath them. The scent of that decay was beginning to outweigh the liberal applications of formaldehyde which were supposed to disguise it.
Lambert said desperately, ‘We’ve no idea as yet who it is. We’re going to need all the help you can give us.’
He could have said nothing better to divert Burgess from his slaughterhouse humour. The pathologist, though most of his ideas of detection were derived from the crime fiction of an earlier age, was always anxious to be involved in the business of an investigation. When he was not being impish — and sometimes even when he was — he could be both shrewd and informative. He liked to be involved as part of the team in an investigation, and Lambert found it useful to humour that small vanity whenever he could. The two men, who both felt themselves increasingly the representatives of an earlier and simpler age, liked and respected each other’s skills.
Burgess said with a businesslike air, ‘She’s female. Her death wasn’t an accident. Nor was it suicide. And she didn’t drown. She was dumped in the water after death.’
‘How long after death?’
‘That’s impossible to say with any certainty, I’m afraid. The body has been in the river for at least a week, and certain evidence has disappeared. Now, with a body which had been in a warm house in this weather, the development of maggots in the decaying organs would have enabled us to be fairly precise about the time of death…’ His eyes brightened wistfully at the picture the thought brought to his vivid mind.
‘What else can you tell me about her?’ Lambert insisted on thinking of that collection of deteriorating flesh and gristle which Burgess had spread over two tables as a human being. That would be the person he had to present to grieving relatives, when they were eventually located. That would be the person he had to discover for himself; a murder hunt always moved out from the victim. When you knew all that was possible to know about the victim and her way of life, you could begin to determine your suspects.
Burgess pursed his lips and began to organize his thoughts for delivery. He was a scientist, even before the medical man he had once been. The attraction of this job was that it afforded him the scientific certainties which living bodies never permitted to the physician. He could dismember the dead and investigate their components until he arrived at the certainties which were never possible for the living. The dead had no pride, no modesty, no pain to be considered. And they were never in a hurry.
He said, ‘She was between forty and fifty. She had had children, probably more than one. It seems that she was married: she had worn a wedding ring on what is left of the third finger of her left hand.’ He moved as if to lift the sheet from the table next to him, but Lambert’s hastily raised arm signified that he did not need the visual demonstration.
The superintendent said, ‘You say “had worn”. Does that imply theft?’ So straightforward a motive for murder would be something of a relief.
‘Hardly. There was what looks like an expensive brooch left untouched on the woman’s blouse. The ring is probably somewhere at the bottom of the Severn; something has eaten most of the finger. I can show you if you —’
‘There’s no need! I’ll take your word.’ Lambert chose not to notice the pathologist’s disappointment.
A wedding ring meant that there were probably a husband and children somewhere, who did not know of this. The missing persons’ register had not yet thrown up anyone who fitted the details of the corpse taken from the river. To be more accurate, no one in the family had reported the disappearance of a wife and a mother. That might be the most significant fact so far — the family were involved in some way in four-fifths of murders.
Lambert said, ‘You say she did not die from drowning?’ It was an oblique way of arriving at the question he wanted to ask about the real cause of death. Perhaps he feared that if he asked that question more directly the sheet might be flung back with a stage magician’s triumphant flourish to reveal the handiwork beneath it.
Burgess considered whether to do just that. But he knew that the combined effects of the water, the Severn’s small creatures and his own dissection were particularly horrific. Moreover, the ravages which had gone on before he began his cutting made for an untidy impression, and he abhorred untidiness in his laboratory.
Besides, it was more amusing to him to tease the superintendent than actually to shock and revolt him. He said, ‘She was strangled. Some sort of ligature around the neck. She was certainly quite dead when she went into the water. My guess is that she had been dead for some hours, but probably not more than a day. When you get my written report, you will see that is an opinion based on my findings, not a fact.’
Lambert understood the distinction he was making. In court, even strongly held expert opinion would be easily discounted by a jury worked on by an expert counsel, whereas what was stated as a medical fact was usually simply accepted. He said, ‘There is no possibility that she hanged herself, that someone was merely covering up a suicide?’
He was thinking of a CID division in the north of England which had spent months on a murder investigation that never was, because a churchman who still saw suicide as shameful and sinful had chosen to dump a relative who had hanged himself and simulate a murder.
‘No possibility whatsoever, John.’ Burgess’s satisfaction was manifest. ‘Death was swift in this case, and the nature of the wound does not indicate that the woman hung from a beam. There is no sign of cerebral anaemia. I should be pretty certain myself that someone took her by surprise from behind and killed her within a few seconds.’
‘What kind of ligature. Rope? Piano wire?’
Burgess shook his head. ‘That’s where a week in the Severn has done its work, I’m afraid. Forensic have got tissue samples of the throat skin from around the wound, but I shall be very surprised if they can give you anything from them. Any fibres of rope or string have long since been washed away. The scar, or what’s left of it, looks a little too wide to have been anything as thin or sharp as piano wire, but that’s as far as I’d care to go.’ Burgess dropped his voice into an appalling parody of a B-movie Hollywood policeman. ‘It looks like you’ve gotten yourself a tough case to crack, Officer.’
Lambert, refusing to react, said stiffly, ‘She doesn’t seem to you like a derelict, does she?’
‘Not from what’s left of her, no. Her teeth are in good condition and have had regular attention. I’d say she was well-nourished and healthy, and probably pretty fit for her age.’
Lambert nodded. ‘That tallies with the obvious things about her clothing. The underwear was the ubiquitous Marks and Spencers, but the labels in the sweater and skirt indicate good quality items, one of them from a rather exclusive shop in Worcester. We’ll get the full forensic report in due course, but I expect the water will have removed everything which might have been useful.’
‘I’m sure it will.’ Burgess beamed his satisfaction: this looked like an intriguing mystery, just when heart attacks and road accidents had been providing pretty dull fare for an imaginative mortician. ‘But there are still one or two marks on the body which provide food for thought.’
&
nbsp; Lambert recognized that as usual Burgess had left his most interesting information until last. He said eagerly, ‘And what would those be?’
His eagerness was his undoing. It allowed Burgess to feel that a demonstration was called for, and he snatched the sheet back dramatically from the lower limbs of the corpse. Lambert saw a milk-white foot, goose-fleshed from prolonged immersion, with one of the swollen toes missing and the flesh at the heel nibbled down to the bone.
Burgess said calmly, ‘That’s just minor damage caused by the creatures of the Severn. I suspect a pike might have had a nibble or two, but my piscatorial knowledge is very limited. But what will interest you, John, are these marks here.’ He pointed at a blackened area of flesh above the ankle with his ball pen, then moved the sheet a little to show a similar mark on the other leg, just below the calf.
Lambert forced himself to look at these significant areas, striving hard for the tunnel vision that would shut out the rest of those incomplete feet. ‘These couldn’t have occurred while the body was in the river?’
‘Hardly. They’re too regular, for one thing. And the nature of the bruising indicates that the damage was done soon after death.’
‘Not before?’ Lambert had sudden visions, of kidnapping and torture, of sadistic maniacs who did not need a motive to kill.
‘It’s difficult to be certain with a body in this state, but I don’t think so. For one thing, the bruising would probably be more severe if it had occurred in life. For another, there is no evidence that the woman struggled, as she would surely have done had she been alive — unless her hands had been tied also, which they plainly weren’t.’
‘So how do you interpret this?’
‘Oh, that’s for detectives, not struggling pathologists.’ Burgess was at his most irritating when being both urbane and modest.
Lambert knew his man well enough to produce the sentiments required of him. ‘Come on, Cyril, speculate a little for me. No one will ask you to stand by it in court.’