Fighting for the Dead hc-18

by Nick Oldham

  A double-masted yacht was in the lock and the water level was falling. Flynn watched the pleasant sight wistfully for a moment, then bore diagonally across the road to a row of buildings behind which was the River Lune. The tide was high, but Flynn could see it had begun to ebb. At one end of the row was a pub called the Victoria and at the opposite end was what used to be a pub — the Caribou — but was now converted into apartments. Between the two was a terrace consisting of houses and Flynn’s destination: the chandlery.

  He entered the shop, inside much more spacious than the exterior suggested, and what was an Aladdin’s cave of all things relating to small boats and yachts.

  Flynn had entered a little corner of heaven. Boats — in particular sport-fishing boats — were his world.

  In Gran Canaria he was employed as the skipper of a sport-fisher called Faye2 and he had left her behind with reluctance to return to the UK, only because of the serious illness of his friend who owned this shop.

  He approached the lady behind the counter, who was head down, frowning at some paperwork.

  ‘I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,’ Flynn said.

  She looked up, her face instantly breaking into a smile, brightening up all at once. She came out from behind the counter and hugged Flynn, who patted her shoulder blades, and they parted with pecks on the cheeks.

  ‘Did you sleep all right?’

  ‘Pretty good… woke a bit chilly, though.’

  ‘I know… sorry about that. Later I’ll show you how the heating system works, and where everything else is.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘Steve, I know I said it last night on the way back from the airport, but we are really grateful to you. Colin could only think of you and you dropped everything to help out.’

  ‘He’s an old mate and you’re a friend too, Diane. Least I could do.’

  ‘How did you square it with your boss?’

  ‘He likes me… but I’ve got ten days, max, then I have to get back. There’s a few repeat parties booked in on the strength of my ace personality,’ he said humbly. He gave Diane a wink. ‘So how is he?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him today, so far, but he goes into pre-op this morning, then down to surgery, which will last two to three hours minimum… but he’s keeping bright.’ She gave a helpless shrug, then her face seemed to implode and she burst into tears.

  Flynn took her tenderly in his arms and held her just tight enough so she had room to sob and get it out of her system, before drawing back and wiping her eyes with the balls of her hands. She wasn’t wearing make-up, so there was nothing to smudge.

  ‘Sorry,’ she apologized.

  ‘Hey, no problem.’

  She regarded Flynn critically. ‘Steve, you really are a good man, aren’t you?’

  ‘Some say otherwise.’

  ‘No — you really are.’

  ‘Aw shucks,’ Flynn said, breaking the moment. He gestured with his hands at the shop. ‘My task… the one I’ve accepted… is to look after the shop whilst you’re otherwise engaged… where do I start?’

  Diane checked her watch. ‘You start today… but I haven’t got time to show you any of the ropes just now, if you’ll pardon the expression. I want to be with Colin before he goes into pre-op… hand-holding and such like… then stay for the operation itself.’ Her face creased a little at the prospect but she held it. ‘Which means I’ll be back here around three, probably. Then I’ll show you how it all works. In the meantime, the shop will be closed, but I’ll leave you the key and you can mooch around the stock, see what we have. Just kill some time however you like until I get back.’

  Henry had recognized the pathologist in the mortuary as Professor Baines, the Home Office pathologist he had known for many years now. They had often met each other over the dead, then continued to discuss the dead over a pint or two.

  Baines was at the mortuary to keep his hand in on more mundane matters than his usual murder victims. He was performing a post-mortem on a run-of-the-mill sudden death, an old man who hadn’t been seen for a few days and whose neighbours had alerted the police because of the terrible odour creeping out from his flat. This was the body that Henry had seen sliced open on the slab.

  Baines had been so engrossed in his task — and impressing his lady assistant — that he hadn’t even noticed Henry, but Henry had recognized Baines and asked him for some advice about the dead girl. Whilst waiting for Baines to finish, Henry had got the slightly creepy mortuary technician to put the dead girl back into the chiller then bought a coffee and killed time.

  The two men were now standing either side of the tray jutting out from the fridge while Baines carefully eased open the dead girl’s mouth and inspected the inside with the help of a mini Maglite torch.

  Baines was an acknowledged expert on dental pathology, having single-handedly amassed a database about teeth over a long period of time. It was a little obsession that had begun when he’d spent time in Bosnia with NATO, investigating and trying to ID some of the thousands of people who had been murdered and dumped into mass graves. One of the main means was via dental records, which were mostly woefully inadequate. This frustration had been the starting point for Baines’s database of dentists, dental practices and methods for use in pathology. His work had resulted in him being awarding an OBE for his services to dental forensics.

  Henry, who had never yet had to plumb this knowledge, knew that one day all this would come in useful as Baines peered knowledgeably into the dead girl’s mouth cavity, then looked up at Henry, then at the mortuary technician.

  ‘Sort her out and slide her back in,’ Baines told the technician. Then, to Henry, he said as he removed one of his gloves, ‘Time for another brew? I’ll just get washed up and be ready in five. Fancy a stroll into town?’

  ‘Alison, that’s the name of this one, isn’t it?’ Professor Baines said to Henry, who nodded. ‘Any others on the go?’ Baines asked hopefully.

  Henry shook his head and Baines seemed crestfallen. He had always been intrigued by the twists and turns of Henry’s love life and been devastated when Henry had remarried his long-suffering on-off-on wife/not-wife/wife, but only because it brought Henry’s tasty romantic shenanigans to a crunching halt. He had been pleased for Henry, of course, but he did enjoy a certain vicarious pleasure in Henry’s romps. When Kate had died, although genuinely upset for Henry, Baines held out a hopeful return for the old ways. Unfortunately, when Henry started a new relationship that seemed serious and stable, Baines was gutted.

  Henry grinned. ‘She’s fantastic,’ he told Baines.

  ‘And a landlady! I knew there was a silver lining.’

  Henry chuckled and thought pleasant things about Alison Marsh, who he’d met a while back in Kendleton, a quiet village in north Lancashire, where she ran a country pub called the Tawny Owl.

  ‘Is it serious?’ Baines probed.

  ‘I hope so,’ Henry admitted. ‘We’ll see.’

  The two men had walked the quarter of a mile or so into Lancaster and found a nice cafe on Thurnham Street close to the police station. They served up a Kenyan filter coffee that really hit the spot.

  ‘The gold filling is what interests you?’ Baines said, bringing the conversation back to a more professional level.

  Henry was puzzled for a moment, then said, ‘Now you’re talking about a dead girl.’

  ‘She’s still unidentified, I believe.’

  Henry nodded.

  Baines pondered. ‘There is a possibility I could help… there is other dental work in there, too. Older, concrete fillings, but not much left of them. Wasn’t a dental analysis done anyway?’ he asked, referring to the already completed PM.

  ‘I’m not certain. I know it should have been, but I’m not taking it for granted.’

  ‘I would’ve thought Professor Broad would have done it… but you never know.’

  ‘Professor Broad?’

  ‘Yes, the pathologist who performed the PM on the poor girl.’
<
br />   ‘How did you know he did it?’

  ‘The stitching… we all do it our own way. Our little signatures, if you like.’

  Henry pulled a face. ‘Fancy.’

  ‘So this is your case, is it?’

  ‘It wasn’t, but it is now.’

  Flynn spent an hour familiarizing himself with the chandlery stock, enjoying every moment of it. For the past five years he had been on a boat virtually every working day, and being on the water was an integral part of his life. Although he skippered a sleek sport-fishing boat, he appreciated all forms of water craft — from the canal boat he’d spent the night on, up to the most luxurious yachts and everything in between. As a consequence he also loved all the bits that held them together and made them work, hence his appreciation of Colin and Diane’s chandlery.

  Colin and Diane were retired cops in their fifties and Flynn had met them while he was still in the job. Colin had been a traffic cop and Diane had been involved in child protection. They had become good friends with Flynn and his then wife, Faye, and occasionally went out as couples, with the men talking boats all the time. Back then Colin had restored two canal barges and owned a small power boat, whilst Flynn was merely an enthusiast who helped out when he could.

  Colin and Diane retired about the same time and opened the small chandlery in Glasson Dock. Colin continued to refurbish and sell canal boats, one of which was the one Flynn had spent the night aboard. It was due to go up for sale shortly but would be Flynn’s accommodation whilst he stayed in the UK.

  Although he could only commit a short time to staying, Flynn hoped it would be enough to help the couple through a tough patch and assess the success or otherwise of Colin’s operation.

  If the prognosis was good, Flynn knew the business would continue. If not, it would close without having really got going.

  By 11.30 that morning Flynn could probably name every item of stock on the shop floor. What he did not know was how to run the shop or even how to use a till, which is what he needed to learn from Diane before welcoming in customers.

  Flynn thought he had plenty of time before Diane came back from the hospital in Lancaster, less than five miles up the road.

  Peering out through the front door of the shop he saw that the weather had brightened a touch. The smell of food being cooked at the static caravan wafted across to him, making him suddenly hungry again. A bacon sandwich called. He locked up and walked across, bought the said sandwich and a mug of tea, devouring both on one of the picnic tables in front of the caravan. Then, fortified, he set off for a walk.

  His plan was to do maybe twenty minutes along the old railway track, now a public footpath and bridleway that ran parallel to the banks of the Lune all the way up to Lancaster.

  Flynn enjoyed the quite desolate views north up the river, still one of the country’s finest salmon and trout rivers.

  The tide had ebbed further, exposing treacherous sand, mud and grass banks and water channels as the water level receded.

  He walked away from Glasson, bearing left along the footpath, seeing not another soul. He reached the old single track rail bridge at Conder Green, under which the tiny River Conder emptied into the Lune estuary. He paused here, looking inland towards the Stork, a pub by the A588, which he planned to visit at some stage during his stay. Then he turned outwards, looking west across the river.

  It was a very wild, untamed location and he liked it very much.

  His eyes drew back until he was looking straight down into the muddy water, flowing quite quickly away underneath his feet, like a plug had been yanked from a drain.

  Which is when he spotted the body.

  TWO

  The body floated underneath the bridge, dragged by the fast-retreating tide, along the main channel of the River Conder. Flynn watched it, slightly mesmerized initially, as it rolled gently in the water, limbs moving as though doing some kind of lazy swimming stroke.

  At first the body was face down, head under water, but as it emerged fully from below the bridge and the tug of the tide altered, it swished around onto its back. From less than twenty feet above, Flynn saw it was a female, maybe mid-thirties, dressed in a short jacket and black jeans with a cut-off Wellington boot on the left foot, the right foot bare. The skin of the face was tight, white-blue, the features distorted by its time in the water, maybe even starting to rot away now. But the eyes were still there. Open.

  With a gush and a slurp of the tide, the body increased speed. The legs seemed to kick, the whole body spun around so it was now heading feet first towards the Lune estuary.

  Flynn cursed.

  He looked at the geography between himself and the main channel of the Lune. There was every chance the body might lodge in one of the many muddy channels. Also a chance that the tide would suck it out into the Irish Sea, never to be seen again. Or drag it back up on the next tide to be deposited somewhere completely different.

  It could go any of those ways.

  Flynn ran to the end of the bridge and scuttled down a short set of rusting iron steps onto the harsh grass exposed by the tide fall. It was wet and soft — but not as wet and soft as the sandbanks.

  He leapt across two tight channels, by which time the body was even further away. He took two more with the agility of a mountain goat and found himself on a clump of grass next to the main channel of the Conder, about three metres away from the body, just out of reach even stretching. He knew he would have to enter the water if he was going to grab it.

  He knew something else, too: This would not be like stepping into the warm Atlantic waters at Amadores beach, Gran Canaria.

  He was right.

  As he carefully eased his trainer-clad right foot into the water, holding his balance whilst feeling it sink into the slurpy mud, the sheer coldness of it hit him and seemed to swarm up the veins in his leg, like a jolt of freezing electricity.

  The body wafted further away.

  He knew he could not hesitate, otherwise it would be gone. He trudged forwards, both feet now in the water, so incredibly cold. In a moment he was calf-deep, then knee-deep, and with his feet in the mud, it was a huge effort to actually take a step. It was like walking through molasses.

  Ahead of him, the body did a quick spin.

  Flynn then felt the power of the tide at the back of his legs, pushing his knees — but he forced himself on, keeping upright and walking like a toy robot as he dragged his feet.

  Then the body twisted into an ugly angle and ran against a muddy bank, pausing as if to take breath. The head seemed to pop up at a loose angle and look at Flynn.

  He saw his chance. He pushed himself on, trying to run before the body moved again out of reach. He lunged to grab hold of a sleeve, missed, lunged again and this time grabbed the dead woman’s left hand, which felt terrible, cold, delicate and awful.

  Flynn’s face creased in horror, but he held on, conquered the urge to recoil, and pulled the body towards him and took hold of the neck of the jacket.

  He waded back against the flow of the tide, but felt like he was losing hold, so, as unpleasant as it was, he scooped her up into his arms as though she was a corpse bride, then stumbled across the channel and up the nearest bank to lay her as delicately as possible on a grassy mound and sank down on his sodden knees alongside her.

  Having gone as far as he had, Flynn thought it only right and proper to finish the job and carry the body up onto dry land, to a point where the emergency services could easily get to her. Not that she needed an ambulance now, but paramedics usually turned out to such incidents and did the job of transporting the corpse to the mortuary. The cops would definitely come, too.

  She was quite light and for a moment Flynn had the horrible thought that her lolling head might drop off as he made his way from grass bank to grass bank, leaping over the narrow channels, so he cradled it in the crook of his arm to stop it flopping about.

  His eyes were drawn to her face, the skin wrinkled from immersion in water. He noticed the remnants
of fine white foam and mucus under her nostrils and at the corners of her mouth — one of the few external indications of drowning, though he was no expert in such matters.

  Not so long ago, he guessed, she would have been very good-looking and her long black hair would have been quite spectacular. Now clods of it had fallen out and she had some ugly bald patches on her head.

  ‘What a shame,’ he breathed.

  She was wearing a variety of rings on her fingers that looked expensive, he also noted. Including a wedding band.

  He stumbled up to the side of the road that led to the picnic area he had been planning to walk through, and placed her gently on the grass and exhaled.

  Not that he was out of breath. Five years of playing and landing big game fish, some marlin in the region of 1,000lb, and most heavier than this woman, had made him into a fit, strong guy.

  He shuffled out his mobile phone and tapped out treble-nine, standing by the body as the line connected.

  Her eyes were still wide open, but now they seemed to be staring imploringly at him.

  Henry had mentally switched off.

  Professor Baines, foolishly prompted by Henry, was now on a roll, explaining energetically to the detective about his lifelong obsession with the teeth of dead people.

  ‘Problem was, you see, there was, is, no internationally accepted standard for ante-mortem dental records and there are several hundred types of dental charts used around the world… no consistency

  … which is where I came in and then got my gong, as it were,’ he spouted proudly.

  A blank-faced detective superintendent sipped his coffee.

  ‘Symbols and designations were — are — by no means standard, and, of course, the general record-keeping of overworked dentists is pretty appalling too. And some use their own systems anyway… so I devised an ID database that cross-checks between all known ways of cataloguing records.’

  Baines went on to triumphantly explain the intricacies of the system he had been researching and devising for over twenty years.