What every body is saying: DI Tregunna Cornish Crime novel

by Carla Vermaat

  ‘Sure, inspector. Happy to help if I can.’ A giggle. A low voice. She’s having a lay in. I remember the details vaguely: divorced, her only daughter, Carensa, is with her father every other weekend. She must have a new man in her life, one who is making her happy and giggly.

  A lump sticks in my throat. Regret. Envy.

  ‘Mrs Pencreek, on the day that Leanne Lobb appeared to be missing, you received a phone call from her parents.’

  ‘I did.’ A rustle of bed-clothing. A grunt. ‘Elsie called me several times. I think she didn’t believe me. She seemed certain that the girls were staying over with Carensa.’

  ‘Were you called by anyone else?’

  A pause. ‘Yes.’ She sounds surprised. ‘By Mr Carter. Siobhan’s father.’ She pauses. Thoughtful. No giggles this time. ‘He called a tad later, so I already knew more or less what was going on. I’d given Carensa a bollocking about it. How dare those girls tell lies like that!’

  I don’t see the point in reminding her she’d probably done the same at that age.

  ‘And you told Carter the same as you told Elsie Lobb? That there was never a sleepover party arranged?’

  ‘I did.’

  I thank her, wondering why, even several days later, Carter is still lying.

  He lives behind walls with barbed wire on top, he has cameras installed and presumably a sophisticated system to scan, scrutinise and identify every visitor. In case that system fails to identify the visitor, a different system will automatically come into play and one of his body guards will make sure anyone will be dealt with according to Carter’s private security rules.

  Leanne and Siobhan went to Newquay together. The next day, Janice Lobb noticed that her sister wasn’t at school. She phoned her mother. At some point, Patrick or Elsie Lobb called Carter. Or his wife. They were ignored. Yet, at that point, Carter must have realised that something was wrong.

  Two girls were missing. Only one pair of parents called the police. Astonishingly, Carter didn’t. He didn’t even speak to Lobb, however despicable such contact would have been in his eyes. Wouldn’t a loving father have overcome his prejudiced opinion if his daughter was missing?

  The case is closed. The girls are safe at home, yet something is still nagging at me.

  So I call the manager of BarZz, where pop star Sammii had his gig. I’ve seen his picture and YouTube films, heard his music. It made me feel old. Pale and dangerously skinny with badly hidden acne and droopy eyes, his music is monotone, loud and aggressive and there is nothing that makes me remotely understand why girls like Leanne and Siobhan are so smitten with this boy who thinks he’s the new idol the modern world has been waiting for since the Beatles and the Stones stormed onto the scene.

  BarZz’s manager answers with ‘Jack’ and sounds as if he’s just gone to bed. He gives the shortest possible answers but after three questions, he has enough. My request to see his camera images falls on stony ground. I can’t. End of. Police? In that case, I’ll have to show him an official request. I try to sound officious and argue that it is only a matter of elimination but he cuts me off with a brusque, ‘Okay. I’ll see you with the right paperwork.’

  There is no way I can get it. Jack knows his rights. To carry out a search on the premises, I must have reasonable grounds for suspecting that there is evidence relating to an offence. I don’t even know if there is an offence, I have only suspicions based on instinct and vague assumptions.

  I open Google Maps, find the centre of Plymouth and turn to Street view, searching the street of BarZz’s location and the surrounding buildings. As usual Google’s street images are in sunshine. Cars and bike riders, pedestrians on the pavement are pictured at intervals as I move forward and back again. They disappear and emerge with each camera movement. The images are dated several years ago. Double-checking the address, I stare at the fronts of a hardware shop, a grocers and a window boarded up with plywood and covered in graffiti. Since then, someone has bought the three premises and reshaped the lot into the well-known BarZz, with several bars and dance floors.

  Perhaps not so surprisingly, the news agency across the street is still there.

  A man with a foreign accent answers my call while helping his customers at the till. I hear the ping of his cash machine and the clatter of coins in the drawer. He is unable to send me his CCTV images over the email, but I am welcome to come and see them. His system is rather old but it does the job for him and he sees no point in spending money on a modern, sophisticated version.

  I understand what he means when Mirek Schmidt lets me into a small room behind his shop two hours later. In his early fifties, he is originally from the former East Germany. He has a wide face with pale skin and warm brown eyes. Lost his twin brother in a car accident. Married a Scottish girl. Divorced. Went back for a family visit to his home town and returned to Plymouth with his primary school lover. She couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt to his new life and left him. Divorced again. He has two sets of identical twins in Scotland and half a dozen grandchildren, also two sets of twins and three grandchildren in Germany. He is in contact with none of them. A life in a nutshell.

  The room is cluttered with opened half-empty boxes and discarded display material. A kettle is perched on a table in the corner. No tap or sink. He has water in a plastic container like those people use on campsites. A washing up bowl has half a dozen dirty mugs in it. He offers to make me a Nescafé and I accept more out of politeness, trying not to think about his cleaning habits. He fills two clean mugs, moves a dozen boxes to one side and finds a plastic chair stained with smudges of blue and white paint – the colours of the walls in his shop – and I sit with what looks like a 20-year-old portable TV set and a video player.

  He has a collection of videotapes lined up on a shelf under the deeper shelf that holds the TV and video player. Tattered cases with old films, cartoons, soft porn. Action movies. He explains that he can’t buy new tapes any more. Instead he goes to charity shops and buys three films for a pound, hoping that no one has broken the seal to prevent the movie accidentally being taped over. Explaining with a lopsided grin that I am lucky as he refreshes the tapes every week on Monday evening, he picks up a relatively looking new version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and slides it in the machine. The camera offers a view of the till and the shop entrance. Straight across the street is the entrance of BarZz.

  However old and tatty, his surveillance system is accurate. He winds the tape forward and presses ‘Play’, leaving me with images of a queue of mostly teenaged girls waiting at the entrance of BarZz for the doors to open. Leanne and Siobhan were certainly not the only ones to have fallen in love with young Sammii.

  I recognise them almost instantly. They are almost at the front of the queue, laughing happily and giggling behind their hands. Four other girls in front of them. Two young men behind them, but they all seem so friendly to one another that I am unable to work out if the two girls were alone or with the two young men. Unfortunately the streetlights are dimmed and the shop windows next to BarZz are dark and I can’t see clearly enough to be certain that I see the girls leave.

  I freeze some of the images on the screen and photograph them with my mobile and thank Mirek after more mugs of Nescafé and a shared tuna sandwich and bag of crisps. When I drive back to Newquay, I wonder if the trip has been worth the effort. All I have achieved is that I have proof that Siobhan was with Leanne, but I doubt that Carter will admit it, even when he sees the pictures on my phone.

  Yet my mood has lifted and with the prospect that I can go straight to bed and sleep into the new week, I drive towards the setting sun.

  21

  At her request, I accompany Penrose to Truro, where the post mortem is held of the latest part of the corpse, the head. She has already attended the examination of the torso and tells me truthfully that she’ll need some support for the examination of head.

  The odd mixture of the smell of death and antiseptics seems to have penetrated through the wall of glass t
hat separates the viewing area from the post mortem room. Sunlight filters through plastic blinds in front of frosted glass windows and the bright tube lights on the ceiling are reflected in the tiled floor and stainless steel tables.

  Penrose is beside me with her eyes downcast, shifting restlessly and uncomfortably, staring at the tips of her shoes, dull and grey, as if she can’t wait to give them a good polish. Clearly, not one of her most favourite things, and all the less desirable now that we are here. I understand exactly how she feels when David Jamieson, the pathologist, stretches his fingers in his latex gloves and uncovers the head on the stainless steel slab. Jamieson is more of a showman than Ray Campbell. Whereas Ray sticks to the facts, interpreting them carefully, Jamieson enjoys having an audience and tends to build everything up like a scene in a suspense movie. I suppose he feels he doesn’t have enough victims of suspected crimes to work on.

  Once more stretching his fingers, he points at the body part in front of him. It is neither a head nor a skull. It is both, with some parts where the tissue is almost intact, and other parts torn off by something I’d rather not think about. Penrose takes a sharp intake of breath, then remembers to breathe in and out slowly in order not to faint. Or hyperventilate.

  With a neutral, professional tone, Jamieson sums up the facts and details, his voice as cool as his work environment, both in room temperature and compassion. ‘It is now officially confirmed that the foot, the hand, the torso and the head belong to the same person.’

  ‘Surprise,’ Penrose mutters, only audible by me.

  ‘A man between 25 and 40 years old,’ the pathologist continues. ‘We don’t have his dental or medical records to confirm his identity as yet.’ He sounds like he is building up to the climax.

  ‘One of the forensic experts has been assigned to create a facial reconstruction.’

  I nod, reminding me briefly of my visit to Mr Grose’s house, his kitchen now cleared of any evidence of his wife’s existence.

  ‘… which will be released to the press soon. As far as we can, we have checked but this man doesn’t seem to appear on the national list of missing persons, so we are hopeful that he will be recognised by someone.’

  ‘I really don’t understand what we’re here for.’ Penrose’s gaze remains fixed on something on the floor, her face one or two shades paler than usual.

  ‘We can however, now establish the cause of death,’ Jamieson continues, apparently unaware of Penrose’s contempt. ‘We’ve already ruled out possibilities like suffocation or a heart attack.’ He glances in our direction, amusement as well as understanding in his eyes when he lingers briefly on Penrose’s face. ‘To cut a long story short, and in layman’s terms, this man has been hit on the head with a blunt object. The blow caused a brain haemorrhage which eventually led to his death.’

  ‘Can it have been an accident?’ I ask, knowing how unlikely it is.

  ‘Hardly.’ He is almost pleased with my question that gives him the opportunity for an explanation suitable for the likes of Columbo. ‘It wasn’t so obvious when we examined the hand and the foot earlier this week, but I have already mentioned in my report the number of haematomas on his torso. There are some on his face as well. It wasn’t just one blow which, in theory, could have been caused by an accidental act. This man received more than one blow. He was lying on his side, possibly in a foetal position, when he died. We also found marks on his torso to indicate that he has been subject to beating and kicking prior to his death. Presumably after the blow on his head that killed him, he also received some kicks to his head. Not with the same object that caused the fatal blow, but more likely from shoes. None on his face though, which confirms the foetal position he was in. Clearly, he was trying to defend himself, but we found no usable fibres under the fingernails of his hand. Any traces had been washed away after being exposed to the water.’

  He points at the head, but I stare over it in a failed attempt to banish the image of it from my mind. It isn’t a pretty sight.

  ‘The most sad, but also the most interesting bit from your point of view, is that it wasn’t the first time.’

  Penrose wakes from semi-hibernation with a start. ‘First time for what?’

  Jamieson nods, pleased that he managed to increase her interest in his performance. ‘He’s been beaten and kicked before this. We found multiple old haematomas on his torso, broken ribs, and now also on his head. At one point in the past, his left bottom jaw has been broken.’

  ‘So what does that mean for us?’ Penrose asks sceptically. ‘That he was a fighter?’

  ‘More likely a loser,’ he replies flippantly.

  ‘Is that all you can tell us?’ she asks, grimly ignoring his wink.

  ‘Well, then we have of course our ideas and assumptions about what happened to him afterwards,’ Jamieson says stoically. ‘For instance, I doubt that there was a mess at the actual crime scene. If he was bleeding, it can’t have been a lot. Unfortunately, we can’t establish the time of death more precisely than that it has to have been between the last confirmed sighting of him and the finding of the hand.’

  ‘Very helpful,’ Penrose whispers under her breath.

  ‘You may not like coming here, Jennette,’ he continues seriously, ‘like most of your colleagues, but this can be quite an interesting part of my job. Dead bodies speak to me, you see. No, I’m not a weirdo or a lunatic. I rely on facts. Even these individual body parts can reveal a lot more about the poor man’s life and habits than appears on the surface. We can see, for instance, that he must have had a tattoo. It is not on his torso, so most likely it was on one of his arms.’

  ‘It would be very helpful if you could tell us the name of his wife or girlfriend or children tattooed on his arm.’

  He chuckles in good humour. ‘Very funny. No, but I can tell you that the tattoo was in black ink.’

  ‘So you’re saying that even these parts tell us a lot about his life.’

  ‘Whether that’s useful for your enquiry or not.’ He nods. ‘The evidence we have here doesn’t lie. Bodies, or body parts, don’t lie. Both his hand and foot tell us about the way he looked after himself, for instance. Mind you, these are reasonable assumptions that can be helpful for you.'

  He’s on a roll.

  ‘His fingernails were neatly cut and maintained, but he didn’t bother so much about his toe nails. Some were long, some were broken.’

  ‘Which tells us?’ Penrose interrupts sceptically.

  'That he made sure he looked good for the rest of the world, but not in his private life.’

  ‘He lived alone?’

  ‘I can’t answer that question, Andy. But if he had a girlfriend or wife, or a partner, she didn’t suck his toes.’

  He offers a wide grin, more so at Penrose’s disgust and discomfort than his own private joke.

  ‘Anyway, back to the facts,’ he resumes with a look at the clock on the wall. ‘Someone used a chainsaw to cut up his corpse in into bits. My assumption is that you may find his other hand and foot. However, it’s less likely that you’ll find his arms and legs. Physically, they won’t be so easily recognisable as human body parts. Who can tell the difference between a piece of a man’s leg and that of a pig? Like a piece with marrowbone you can buy at the butcher’s to make stock for your soup?’

  ‘I’m glad you came with me,’ says Penrose, when we climb in the car. She’s holding the prints of the pathologist’s reports against her chest as if she’s creating a hidden barrier between her and the rest of the world. Her eyes are drawn and she looks like she’s going to cry.

  ‘Are you all right, Jennette?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Jamieson can be very straightforward sometimes, honest and cynical, but I believe it is his own way of dealing with the horrors of his job.’

  ‘You’re saying I’m not the only one he treats with such …’

  She stops abruptly bending over to put the key in the ignition, hiding her face.

  ‘Contempt?’ I fi
nish her sentence . ‘He’s not that kind of person, Jennette. He does that to me, occasionally. Depends on the victim on his table, I guess. Or his mood.’

  ‘I suppose.’ She shrugs, unconvinced. ‘You are always so … understanding.’

  It sounds like she’s accusing me of bad habits. ‘You listen to people. It’s like what Jamieson said about those bodies talking to him. You do the same. You don’t listen to what people say, you read their body language.’

  ‘I do listen, Jennette.’

  ‘Of course. That’s not what I meant.’ She blushes guiltily. ‘I’m not suggesting …’

  ‘I know, Jennette, ehm …’ I point at a car; the driver is drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for us to pull out. ‘Shall we let him have our space?’

  She puts the car in gear with so much vigour that for a moment I fear for the gear mechanism. We jerk forward and she pulls out of the car park, her face flushed and her eyes enraged.

  ‘Those body parts … that head… it unnerves me, I guess,’ she admits several minutes later, as we merge with the traffic that’s held up by traffic lights. A small tractor is moving alongside the road, digging a trench for cables, the driver concentrating on the job. His two colleagues are watching.

  ‘I find it incredible that we are dealing with … a person … who can actually cut someone’s corpse into pieces and chuck them away somewhere.’

  ‘Some people don’t function like most other people do.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it right,’ she snaps, almost driving into the back of the car in front of us.

  ‘No.’

  She’s silent for a few minutes, frowning, analysing the conversation. ‘That is exactly what makes you and me so different,’ she says finally, a tiny bit more relaxed. ‘You just sit there and accept that those mad people exist.’

  ‘What else can I do? They do exist, Jennette, although fortunately there aren’t as many as you seem to think there are. It’s better to accept that they are amongst us, so that we can be on the lookout and try to prevent some of the damage they cause. Rather that than blinding yourself from the reality. Learning to understand them, will give us the best chance to catch them and put them somewhere safe.’