Missing: Presumed Dead ib-1

by James Hawkins

  Detective Inspector Bliss and Sergeant Patterson strode through the group with a bravado of experience and took ringside seats; they already knew what to expect; they knew the horrors lurking beneath the sheet.

  Seating himself, Bliss scented the air with a degree of trepidation and was pleasantly surprised. It was more disinfectant than decomposition, though nothing could mask the unmistakeable ambience of death. Over the years, thousands of tortured souls had each shed a layer of agony in this room as they passed on their final journey, and he shuddered at the chilling concentration of disembodied spirits. He had been here before, many times — not this particular mortuary, but a dozen similar ones — and found himself mentally readying for the attendant’s scalpel to unzip the bloated bag of flesh. With the realisation that he was steeling himself against the gagging reek of methane gas and butyric acids, he relaxed. He had already viewed the Major’s body — this one would be different.

  That reminds me, thought Bliss, I still haven’t discovered how Patterson tracked me down at The Limes on Wednesday evening.

  “Serg,” he started, but the students were beginning to drift into surrounding seats. “Never mind — I’ll talk to you later,” he added, but the powerful memory of the fearful seconds, when he had fully expected the bellboy’s head to be blown to pieces, had re-run in his mind repeatedly over the intervening thirty-six hours and did so again. He closed his eyes for a moment thinking, What if? What if? — How would you have lived with yourself after that? But it hadn’t happened. The boy had returned safely.

  The muted buzz of dreadful anticipation amongst the students was quelled by a sudden flurry of activity in the doorway.

  “Sit,” said the pathologist galloping into the room, the tails of his whitish coat flying, his footfalls still echoing along the corridor. “Good morning students and guests,” he started, then snapped the sheet off the body and bowed respectfully, “and good morning to you, Sir.”

  Here was a man with purpose, thought Bliss, studying the boisterously dishevelled doctor — cramming life into every moment of existence; understanding better than most that tomorrow is not necessarily another day — and, anticipating that fact, he had apparently postponed shaving, combing, ironing, and shoe-shining. Watching the ebullient man, Bliss found himself wondering whatever had became of the generation of genetically engineered pathologists who had terrorised the mortuaries early in his career: beaky, balding, po-faced men, with serious glasses and superior attitudes, who frequently looked more pallid than the cadaver; men capable of verbally lashing burly policemen to the brink of tears for slip-shod investigative practices — real or imagined; perpetually angry men — angry at the carnage, angry at the waste, and, in some cases, angry that of all possible careers, they’d ended up carving dead bodies for a living.

  “So, to our first case,” said the pathologist racing ahead. “A white adult male we believe but, as you can see, the body now consists only of the skeleton with fragments of skin and a few strands of hair.” Selecting the ulna from the body’s left arm, the only arm, he held it up for inspection. “Notice that the bones have mellowed to a rather attractive butterscotch-yellow,” he said, then, poker-faced, used it as a pointer to run down a list on a flip chart. “Our task this morning is to carry out an examination to assist the coroner in determining: Who this deceased was … And, How, When and Where he met his death.”

  Bliss shifted his gaze away from the pathologist and found himself staring at the unveiled skeleton, thinking it looked entirely different from when he had first seen it, two days earlier, in the cramped and claustrophobic attic of the Dauntsey house. It had taken on an inanimate aspect, sterile and benign, almost as if it were a plastic copy. In the attic — throwing a ghoulish shadow in the dim light of the hastily strung inspection lamp — it clung to some essence of humanity. Slumped in a chair, encased in full uniform, seemingly at peace, the torso had shrunk, the chest caved in, but, although headless still had the shape of a human being — not just a deflated anatomical framework.

  Looking at the skeleton under the mortuary’s bright lights he couldn’t help thinking that, in a way, it was the wrong corpse to examine. Most of the Major’s mortal remains were still in the room where, in its stuffy warmth, his flesh had transmuted into the bodies of a billion flies, moths and ants. Major Dauntsey had nourished generations of insect civilisations for a while, but, as the nutrients gave out, the insects had turned to cannibalism in a downward spiral of self destruction, leaving an inch-deep layer of dust of desiccated bodies on the battleground.

  The Major’s skull was now before them, larger than life, as an overhead projector threw a giant x-ray onto an expanse of spotless wall. “This is what was left of the cranium,” explained the pathologist, “and I would ask you to note carefully the spread of pure white speckles not commonly found in bone.” Then he balanced the actual skull in his hand and spoke to it. “So then … Yorick … What can you tell us about yourself, eh?” He paused and looked to the audience for one of them to respond on the skull’s behalf. “Anybody?” he asked, nodding questioningly to each of the students in turn.

  “Was he shot, Sir?” suggested one of the students.

  “Yes — well done. It would appear at this time that a single bullet penetrated the cranium through the parietal just above the lambdoidal suture.”

  Sergeant Patterson, taking notes, coughed and caught the speaker’s eye.

  “Here,” added the pathologist helpfully, holding up the skull and poking his finger into a hole in the back.

  “The white peppered effect we see on the x-ray is almost certainly a spray of lead fragments that shredded off the bullet as it tore through the bone.”

  He paused and looked around. “Any questions? … No … Alright. From initial observations then, before we explore further, how can we be reasonably certain that this death was not the result of a self-inflicted injury. In short — how do we know it wasn’t suicide?”

  A serious silence ensued, then a thoughtful young man, fingering his ginger goatee, tried, “The bullet entered the back of the skull.”

  “Therefore?” prompted the pathologist.

  “It’s a physical impossibility to shoot yourself in the back of the head.”

  “No, no, no. It’s been done before,” he said shaking his head. “Difficult, I grant you, but not impossible,” he continued, and demonstrated on himself with a pistol shaped surgical instrument. “Like this,” he added, pirouetting for all to see. “Any other bright ideas?”

  A puritanical-faced young woman with her hair scraped brutally back in a rat’s tail made a few notes then demanded in a gravelly voice. “Can I ask why it’s been done before. I mean … It seems so terribly awkward. Why would someone shoot themselves in the back of the head?”

  “Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise,” joked the bearded one.

  She froze him with a cold stare but everyone around her collapsed in laughter. Restoring order took a few minutes and when the laughter had died down the pathologist explained. “There have been a number of cases to my knowledge where the deceased wanted someone else to take the rap. Just as murderers will often attempt to pass off their handiwork as suicide, so suicides will sometimes attempt to frame the person they believe responsible for their misfortune.”

  “Perhaps you would explain how you know this wasn’t a suicide then?” demanded the woman, making it clear that she was not the game-playing type.

  “Because, Ladies and Gentlemen, if this was a common or garden suicide, we wouldn’t be graced with the presence of half the brass of Hampshire C.I.D.” He bowed in Bliss’s direction. “No offence, Chief Inspector — I just want this lot to realise that’s there is more to determining a cause of death than a simple examination of the body.”

  “You’ve been promoted again,” whispered Patterson with a malicious twist.

  Bliss acknowledged the pathologist with a nod but his mind was still in the Dauntseys’ attic, on the skull. He had stood looking at the b
ody in the eerily lit space for several seconds before realising that the Major’s head was still with the body. It had flopped forward under its own weight and after weeks, months or even years, the army of bugs had severed the spinal column allowing it to tumble into his lap and bury itself face down into his groin. There was only room for a few men at a time in the cramped attic and, once the photographer had finished and slipped gratefully down the ladder, Bliss, alone, had donned surgical gloves and gingerly lifted the skull to examine the remains of the face.

  “Dear God,” he breathed, stunned to prayer by the sheer torment still evident on the face, a face mutilated, deformed and disfigured by war. The expression “happy release” sprang to mind as he gagged repeatedly at the sight of the gruesome artefact. But, he knew, it was the agony of life not the spasm of death that had contorted the jaws into the lopsided fleshless grimace. With the bile rising uncontrollably in his throat, he dropped the head back into the Major’s lap, shot down the ladder and, later, was thankful he had been called away from the restaurant before eating dinner.

  “Before commencing the physical examination of the body,” the pathologist was saying, tearing Bliss away from the nightmarish memory, “I shall ask Chief Inspector Bliss to relate the circumstances surrounding the death — as I would in any case of this nature … Chief Inspector?”

  Patterson dug him in the ribs. “Oh sorry … yes … Well, it’s still a bit of a mystery to be honest, Doctor. We know that he came back from the war in a bad way: multiple injuries; badly shot-up; bits missing, including one arm; smashed face …” he paused with the feeling he had missed something. Questioning looks from the students made him re-run the statement in his mind — he had failed to specify which war. The students were all in their early twenties. What did they know of the Second World War, or even Korea, Vietnam or the Falklands?

  “He was wounded in battle outside Paris after D-Day, 1944,” he explained.

  “So,” added the pathologist, “in the parlance of today’s medical students, we might say he came back a bit of a fuckin’ mess.”

  A student with a cascading mane of bleach blond hair choked and had to be given a glass of water, which she eyed suspiciously before sipping carefully.

  “The body was discovered in a sealed attic above a sort of turret,” continued Bliss, “and we believe he may have been dead for as long as forty years. The floor of the attic was covered in the skeletons of dead flies and other insects and we found a service revolver on the floor to his left side.”

  “I guess it was his own gun,” the scenes of crime officer had said as he carefully slipped it into an evidence bag.

  “It may have been army issue,” mused Bliss, thinking that either way it might be difficult to trace. “I bet it’s not registered, but let me have the serial number as soon as you can. I’ll get someone to make some enquiries with his regiment.”

  Patterson, ex-army himself, standing in the room below, overheard. “I can just imagine some quartermaster-sergeant somewhere still fuming about it,” he laughed and imitated a crotchety NCO. “I see Major Dauntsey still hasn’t turned in his weapon — fifty years overdue — bloody officers think they can get away with murder.”

  “Is there any reason to suppose he was killed somewhere else and his body placed in the attic?” prompted the pathologist, but he already knew the answer, he’d studied the initial police report.

  “Yes, that’s a possibility,” replied Bliss. “The Major’s disabilities would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to have climbed a ladder into the attic.”

  “And do you have other reasons to suppose this wasn’t suicide?”

  “Yes … Even if he had climbed into the attic and shot himself, he couldn’t possibly have sealed the trapdoor and plastered over the ceiling behind him.”

  “Good point, Chief Inspector. Now,” he turned to the students, “do you have any questions before we examine the rest of the body?”

  The straight-laced woman was scribbling again. “Were there any personal artefacts found with the body and did he leave …?” she began.

  “One question at a time, Miss,” the pathologist cut in. “Chief Inspector?”

  Where to begin, wondered Bliss, the barrel-lidded wooden trunk bearing the Major’s illuminated monogram or the little regiment of toy soldiers marching through the dust at his feet.

  “Just look at that,” the photographer had said, marvelling at the ranks of miniature soldiers. “Reminds me of that place in China where the Emperor had all those soldiers buried with him.”

  “Xian,” said Bliss. “The terracotta army … but these are lead.” Choosing one at random he turned it over. “Britains,” he said with the air of an expert.

  “Do you know about these then, Guv?” asked the photographer seemingly impressed.

  “Just a little …” he paused, something catching his attention. At the head of the assorted foot soldiers was a horse drawn gun carriage with four outriders, just as the dealer had described. “That’s interesting,” he said manoeuvring carefully around the tableau to examine the figures. “Royal Horse Artillery,” he continued, almost soundlessly, “with steel helmets.” What had the dealer said? 1940–1941?

  “Can you get some pictures of these?” he said to the photographer.

  “Sure, Guv. No problem. Do you think they have some bearing on the case?”

  “Put it this way — I think I know where their leader is.”

  “The hand-crafted wooden trunk had survived the war but had lost the battle against woodworm,” Bliss explained to the students in the mortuary. “The lid disintegrated as I opened it but, lying on the top of all his clothes, was a medal, the Distinguished Service Order, and it was still shiny after all those years.” He paused, thinking how proud the Major must have been of the enamelled medal with its crown and laurel leaf.

  “In addition to his uniform, we found his dog-tags and, interestingly, the dog-tags of another soldier, a Captain David Tippin.”

  The plain-faced girl seized on the information and shook it, like a bulldog. “Maybe the Captain murdered him — tracked him down after the war — the Major seized the dog-tags … Wait — Perhaps this Captain Tippin was the one who wounded him on the battleground — disgruntled junior officer type, lashed out at his superior …”

  “Hold on,” said Bliss smiling at the woman’s fervour. “Anything is possible. However, at the moment we’re keeping an open mind, but the simplest explanations are usually the most accurate. Initial enquiries reveal that a captain of that name was killed around the time that Major Dauntsey was wounded. I suspect that the Major intended presenting the other man’s tags to his family but never got around to it.”

  With the final question answered, “No — there was no suicide note,” the pathologist began a thorough examination of the skeleton, picking over every piece of bone, explaining the anatomy as he went. Bliss let his mind drift. The cause of death was already clear — a single bullet in the back of the head, execution style. Wasn’t the indignity of death enough without all this, he thought, recalling Mandy Richards with her breast blown off and her skirt halfway up her backside.

  He had not attended Mandy’s post-mortem and had not wanted to, but, because of his involvement in her death, his inspector had thought it prudent to warn him off in any case. “Not a good idea, lad,” he’d said, turning an order into a piece of friendly advice. He had moped around the office that morning, picturing the grisly scene in his mind, wondering why it was necessary to dissect her scrawny body when it should be obvious to a five-year-old why she had died. What possible benefit could there be from knowing what she’d eaten for lunch? It just made everyone feel worse for the sake of accuracy.

  It was her pregnancy that had caused the most grief. “A first trimester foetus was present in the womb,” the coroner’s clerk had said, reading the pathologist’s report at the inquest. “I estimate the deceased to have been approximately eight weeks pregnant. The foetus appeared to have been de
veloping normally.”

  A sudden hush had fallen around the courtroom then Mandy’s mother exploded in grief. Not only had she lost a daughter but she’d also lost a grandchild. Mandy’s fiance threw his arms around her, comforting the woman who would never be his mother-in-law, but it was as much to comfort himself. He had never slept with Mandy. “We’ll wait,” they had agreed, throughout their two year romance. Now he had more pain to endure, as did Constable Bliss — he was responsible for two deaths now, not one. And one of them would never even see the light of day.

  Superintendent Donaldson was eagerly awaiting their return from the mortuary and had taken out his frustration on another packet of biscuits. “The press are demanding some sort of statement. Someone must have tipped them off that he’s been dead for ever. Where the hell does that leave us? It’s the sort of thing the nationals will jump all over.”

  Bliss and Patterson pulled up chairs to the superintendent’s desk, uninvited. “We’re no further forward, Sir,” started Patterson. “He took a bullet in the back of the head, but we knew that the minute we found the skull. The question is who put it there.”

  “What did Jonathon have to say?” asked the superintendent offering Bliss a digestive.

  “Thanks … He gave us a long-winded no comment then stuck his nose in the air and said, “I warned you not to dig up old skeletons, Inspector.” I’m pretty sure he knew the body was there but, subject to the results from the pathology lab, he couldn’t possibly have done it. He couldn’t have been more than ten when it happened.”

  “He could have done it,” suggested Patterson tersely. “Ten-year-olds have shot people before.”

  “Then manhandled the body into the loft and plastered it up — I doubt it,” sneered Bliss. “Anyway, don’t you think Mrs. Dauntsey may have been a tad suspicious when her disabled husband suddenly disappears out of his wheelchair?”

  “What about her?” asked Donaldson. “Could she have done it?”

  “That’s my bet,” replied Bliss. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she got fed up taking care of the poor specimen — it couldn’t have been much for either of them. So she put him out of his misery — lightened her load. She has to be the prime suspect. There were only three of them living in the house as far as we know and one of them was a young schoolboy. That leaves Ma and Pa. Pa gets a slug in the back of the head — that only leaves Ma, and who could blame her. Ten years with a one-armed bloke in a wheelchair who can’t even raise himself up for a satisfying fart without assistance. He couldn’t speak and couldn’t even give her a once over. He would have been less fun than a goldfish.”