The Body Under the Bridge

by Paul McCuster

  Braddock continued, “Then, I will send samples of the victim’s tissues to various geneticists and blood-typing specialists. I have yet to do proper X-rays, CT scans, and DNA sampling. We may ask a medical artist to create a representation of the face.”

  “Can you guess when the murder took place?” Benson asked.

  “Specific to date, hour, or time? Not yet. But we’ll get fairly close.”

  “What about the medallion?” Haysham asked.

  “I’m bringing in an expert on antique jewels and artefacts,” Grant said. “Mary Aston. She’s good, if somewhat unorthodox.”

  “I believe I met her at an event in London,” Haysham said. “An auction or something of the sort. Attractive.” The last sentence was said in a way that suggested he thought of her as more than merely attractive.

  “There is little doubt that the medallion was stolen from the site by Colin Doyle,” DI Wilton said. He let his gaze fall on Father Gilbert. “How it got from there to Father Gilbert remains a mystery.”

  “Are there any clues as to why Doyle took the medallion?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “Part of his DNA, probably,” DI Wilton said.

  “You know for a fact that Colin Doyle is a member of Jack Doyle’s family?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “Colin Doyle was the oldest son of Jack and Colleen Doyle,” said DI Wilton.

  “DI Wilton is leading the investigation now,” Macaulay stated, answering the unspoken question about this new member of the team.

  “What about DS Sanders?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “Reassigned,” Macaulay said quickly. He gestured to DI Wilton. “Go on, Alex.”

  Wilton flipped a couple of pages in his notepad. “According to the security system, Doyle scanned his badge at the site at 5:57 a.m. He was always on the job by six. One of the workers was there when Doyle found the foot and chain in the mud.”

  “What time was that?” asked Father Gilbert.

  “Around half-six. Doyle had been checking the pumps around the old bridge. He found the chain first, then followed it to the foot.”

  “Did he call out immediately?” asked Father Gilbert.

  DI Wilton looked perturbed by the interruptions. “No. His coworker came on the scene first.”

  “That would be unusual, right?” Benson asked.

  “Yes,” Haysham said. “Anything out of the ordinary is supposed to be reported right away.”

  DI Wilton went on: “According to Doyle’s co-worker, part of the upper torso of the corpse was exposed. Perhaps the peat had shifted because of the drainage. Anyway, it was hard to tell what he was looking at, but he remembers seeing something shiny there.”

  “Likely the medallion was worn around the victim’s neck,” Braddock said.

  “The co-worker left Doyle alone with the body while he ran to get the site foreman,” DI Wilton said.

  “Don’t they have walkie-talkies?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “Neither man did then. They had forgotten them, or they were being recharged in the office – I’m unclear about that.” DI Wilton tapped the notepad with his pencil. “We assume the medallion looked valuable to Doyle, so he took it. Maybe he assumed he could make some money from it.”

  Father Gilbert bristled at the easy conclusion. “Is that a wise assumption? Greed may not have been his motivation.”

  DI Wilton folded his arms. “Is it wise to assume he was motivated by anything else?”

  “I wouldn’t exclude greed, nor other possibilities,” Father Gilbert said.

  “Father, you may rest assured that we know our jobs and will consider all possibilities,” Macaulay said. “Go on, Wilton.”

  “The security system logs Doyle as departing the site at 6:48. We know from Doyle’s mobile phone that he placed several phone calls from 6:59 to 7:12 – all of them to the same number.”

  “Who did he call?” Haysham asked.

  “His father,” Wilton replied. “Which, we now know, was unusual.”

  “Why?” asked Father Gilbert.

  “According to Colin’s wife, he’d had a falling out with his father a year ago and walked away from the family.”

  “And their fortune,” Macaulay added. “Which may explain why he was working as a builder for another company – and why he nabbed the medallion.”

  “What did his father say about the calls?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “Allegedly Jack Doyle is so distraught by his son’s suicide that he’s unable to speak to us,” DI Wilton said.

  “Allegedly?” Benson asked, indignant. “His son is dead.”

  Wilton ignored Benson and looked down at his pad again. “The first five calls were unsuccessful attempts to reach his father. The sixth attempt got through at 7:12 for six minutes.”

  “So they did talk,” Carol Grant said.

  “Or he left a long message on his father’s voicemail. We don’t know yet,” Wilton said. “We don’t know yet where Doyle was between 7:20 and 8:30. Though the drive back to his house would have taken at least twenty minutes, depending on traffic.”

  Enough time to take the medallion to St Mark’s, Father Gilbert thought.

  DI Wilton nodded to Carol Grant.

  She took a step forward for no specific reason. “We believe he died sometime between 8:30 and 9:00,” she said. “Cause of death: a broken neck and asphyxiation by hanging.”

  “He hanged himself in his detached garage, using a rope tied to the rafters,” Wilton added. “He used a stepladder to climb up, then kicked it away.”

  Father Gilbert and Benson exchanged glances. This let Father Gilbert off the hook as a suspect, since he had solid alibis for his whereabouts from 7:00 until 9:00.

  Wilton said, “Doyle’s wife Amanda arrived home around 9:00 from a morning meeting at their kids’ school. She was surprised to see Colin’s car in the driveway. She thought he’d forgotten something. She checked the house. When she didn’t find him there, she went to the garage. The suicide note was taped to a pane of glass on the inside of the door, which was closed but not locked. She entered the garage and saw him hanging. From all appearances, he was dead. She panicked. At first, she tried to lift him by his legs, thinking to relieve the tension of the rope in case he was alive. She didn’t have the strength for it. So she searched for something sharp enough to cut through the rope. Nothing was immediately to hand.”

  Father Gilbert winced as he imagined the poor woman coping with the initial shock of seeing her husband and then desperately trying to save him.

  “She phoned for the ambulance at 9:06,” DI Wilton continued. “They arrived at 9:17. Doyle exhibited no vital signs nor was there any change, in spite of their best efforts. Doyle was officially pronounced dead at Southaven Hospital at 9:58. Apart from the note, which had been written in pencil on a yellow pad Doyle kept on his workbench, there was nothing unusual in the garage or house. No sign of a struggle. Amanda Doyle confirmed that the handwriting on the note was Colin’s, including one word that he typically misspelled.”

  “Which word?” Father Gilbert asked.

  “Medallion,” DI Wilton answered. “Amanda said he often got the spelling of words confused if they had double Ls. He left one of the Ls out.”

  Father Gilbert nodded, appreciating that whoever had interviewed Amanda Doyle had had the presence of mind to be that detailed.

  “What else do you know about Doyle?” Haysham asked.

  DI Wilton gave a slight shrug. “He was a quiet man, a hard worker. Married for seventeen years to Amanda. They were sweethearts from school. They have a twelve-year-old son and a ten-year-old daughter. No police record, apart from a parking ticket ten months ago.”

  “Is there anything to explain why he killed himself?” Father Gilbert asked.

  DI Wilton shook his head. “No history of drugs, mental illness, or depression. His wife is devastated, as you’d expect, and she’s mystified. He seemed all right when he left the house earlier this morning.” He closed his notepad.

&nbs
p; “Good work,” Macaulay said.

  Father Gilbert thought through the timetable of Colin Doyle’s activities. There was plenty of opportunity for Doyle to have driven to St Mark’s and left the medallion – even going up to the top of the tower and down again. He could have done it during the 7 a.m. service. That had started on time and finished at 7:45, including the usual post-service socializing with the handful that had shown up. Mr Urquhart would have unlocked the tower door to retrieve the small prayer books they used for the shorter service. If it had been left unlocked, then there was no mystery about how Doyle got in. The why was the perplexing part.

  Father Gilbert also remembered that his encounter with Doyle had happened around 8:45. That fitted the time if he had hanged himself between 8:30 and 9:00. Though the notion that such a bizarre encounter could actually fit with the harsh reality of a suicide struck Father Gilbert as nothing less than astonishing. How had he come to a place in his life where he accepted it so readily? What if he had been dreaming or was simply delusional? Without the existence of the medallion, it would be easy to think so.

  Father Gilbert’s eyes went back to the bog body beyond the viewing window. The glass reflected the room behind him. A blurred image of Professor Braddock gesturing to the photographs pinned to the bulletin board faded from view. Instead, he saw two men on the old stone bridge.

  It is night. Moonlight illuminates the edges of the thick clouds above and offers cold light to the bridge and the ribbon of river underneath. One man wears a long overcoat and carries a staff he uses for walks along the country lanes. The other man wears a cape – typical of the time – which he wraps around himself as if he’s cold. These two men know each other well. They argue like familiar enemies. Eventually the man with the staff gives a sharp gesture to the other as a punctuation mark. They are finished. He turns to walk away. And then the second man throws his cape aside. He unsheathes a sword. It comes up, catching a flash of moonlight. The first man begins to turn as the sword comes down swiftly. He flinches, his eyes closed as the edge of the sword slices into his skull. His legs buckle. He falls to the ground.

  The man in the cape nudges the victim with the toe of his boot. Then, with great difficulty, he grabs the man under the arms and drags him to the end of the bridge. There is a horse and cart there. Clumsily he hoists his victim onto the back of the cart – the upper torso first, then the legs. The man in the cape climbs onto the back of the cart and goes to a heavy crate in the front corner. He is not a strong man, not used to this kind of labour, but he manages to push the crate back to the victim. He wipes his brow; his hair has come loose from its ponytail, hanging long around his face. Something catches his attention. He looks around quickly, then goes to the front of the cart and produces a short chain from beneath a horse-blanket. He kneels next to his victim and removes a boot. He shackles the chain tightly to the fallen man’s ankle. Holding up the boot for a moment, he is unsure of what to do with it. He hastily shoves it under the victim’s coat.

  He tugs at the chain until he’s satisfied with the security of the shackle on the victim’s leg. He attaches the other end of the chain to an iron ring on the side of the crate. Then he climbs into the driver’s seat and drives the horse and cart to the centre of the bridge. He pulls at the reins to coax the horse to back up, angling the rear of the cart against the stone wall of the bridge.

  Climbing back into the cart, he pushes the crate to the edge. He checks its position – looking at the crate, then over the side of the bridge, then the crate again. He positions his victim next to the crate. Again, he checks and double-checks the trajectory. He pauses. His head tilts as if to listen. He looks around and stops – he stares at Father Gilbert as if he knows he’s there. Then he kneels down next to the crate and pushes. The crate teeters and finally tips off the back of the cart, narrowly missing the top of the stone wall, and plummets towards the river. Even before the crate has fallen past the top of the wall, the connecting chain jerks the dead man – if he is dead – off the cart. The body is grotesquely limp as it follows the crate. The shackled leg is pulled straight, while the other leg briefly catches on the edge of the cart, stretching it at an unnatural angle, probably dislocating the hip. The weight of the crate yanks the leg free and the torso slides off. The back of the head glances against the wall as the body follows the crate into the dark water.

  The moon runs from this terrible scene, rushing behind fat clouds that now cry large tears of rain on the man in the cape. He stares down at the river for a few moments. After a while, he returns to the driver’s seat and slaps the reins. As if it knows what has just happened, the horse moves across the bridge slowly, its head down as if it is pulling a funeral carriage. The scene fades from Father Gilbert’s view as the sky unleashes a dark-grey curtain of rain that falls upon the stage.

  A hand fell on Father Gilbert’s shoulder. “Father?” It was Benson.

  Father Gilbert turned. All eyes were on him, amused expressions playing on their faces.

  “Daydreaming, Father Gilbert?” Haysham smiled.

  “The hip is probably dislocated,” said Father Gilbert.

  “What?” Braddock asked.

  “And the missing boot,” Father Gilbert said. “Has the victim’s second boot been found?”

  Professor Braddock’s eyes lit up. “Funny about that. We found it under the victim’s coat.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Going back to Haysham Manor for drinks wasn’t high on the list of things Father Gilbert wanted to do that day. But Haysham invited them as they left the coroner’s office and Father Gilbert saw from Benson’s eager expression that he should accept.

  Benson was excited as he drove them back towards Stonebridge. He squirmed in his seat, drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and then finally asked, “Are you going to tell me what’s really going on?”

  Father Gilbert gazed at the young priest. “Really going on?”

  “The encounter on the tower was one thing. And your expression when you were looking at that tree on Haysham’s land was another. And then you mentally left the room back at the coroner’s. What are you seeing?”

  Father Gilbert took a deep breath. “I’ll let you know when I have something sensible to say.”

  The finger-drumming stopped. “You must be relieved, though. The timing of Colin Doyle’s death puts you in the clear. And it corresponds with your vision on the tower.”

  “It would seem so.”

  The finger-drumming started again for a moment, then stopped. “I assume you’ve heard of astral projection.”

  Father Gilbert nodded. Astral projection was the idea that a spirit could leave a body and travel to other places, even appearing to people in the physical realm. It was often associated with near-death experiences. Father Gilbert knew about it from personal experience.

  “Do you believe in it?” Benson asked.

  “To some degree.” Father Gilbert didn’t want to explain to what degree. To do so would raise more questions than he could answer, and require him to talk about the death of his mother and the events that had ultimately led to his sabbatical. “Christian mystics reported out-of-body experiences that transported them to other people and places. But the church frowns upon astral projection if a person attempts it to meet with other spirits.”

  “Allowing that it happens, then Colin Doyle could have put the medallion up in the tower and then ‘returned’ when he died,” Benson said, then laughed nervously and shook his head. “Just saying it out loud sounds mad.”

  Father Gilbert was beyond worrying about how it sounded. “Why return in spirit? Why not give it to me in person?”

  “You weren’t available,” Benson said. “Or he was determined to kill himself and thought you might interfere. Maybe he intended to throw himself from the tower and changed his mind. Or… or…” He groaned.

  Father Gilbert looked off to a green field. They were trying to apply rational human thinking to a situation that went beyond rational human thinkin
g.

  Benson turned onto the driveway leading up to Haysham Manor. The tyres pushed over the mix of gravel and stone, sounding like one very long throat-clearing. He brought the car to a sliding halt behind an official-looking black saloon. Probably Macaulay’s.

  Stepping under the arched entrance, Father Gilbert crossed the small enclosed porch to the large wooden door and pushed the doorbell.

  “It’s less impressive than it looks from the road,” Benson said.

  Seen close up, the manor was certainly showing its age and need of repair. The paint on the door was chipped and the wood along the bottom was warped and scuffed. Untended ivy crawled over the archway, giving a home to all manner of insects that buzzed around their heads. A massive spider’s web stretched from the inside corner of the archway to an iron chandelier above them. Dead moths and an assortment of bugs dangled like old clothes on a line.

  “Should we knock?” Benson asked as he swung a hand at something small with wings.

  “Let’s wait a moment.”

  An unlocking sounded from somewhere inside. The door opened to reveal an attractive woman with long blonde hair that she’d tied back to highlight her bright, friendly eyes. She wore a bulky beige sweater over black leggings and, for a moment, she looked young enough to be Lord Haysham’s daughter; she was, in fact, his wife.

  “Hello, Father,” she said with a practised smile. A small dimple to the right of her mouth appeared in the perfectly smooth complexion of her face.

  “Hello, Lady Haysham,” Father Gilbert answered warmly.

  “Stop that. If you don’t call me Rosalyn, you’re no longer welcome here.”

  Father Gilbert introduced Hugh Benson. She shook his hand and then waved for them to enter.

  “They’re in the study,” she said. “Come in.”

  The front hall was spacious with a sizeable decorative table in the centre. The table was cluttered with folded newspapers, mail, keys on rings, and an enormous vase with faded silk flowers. A wide staircase faced them with books and shoes sitting on the bottom steps, as if they’d tried to make the climb but simply couldn’t do it. To the left was a room with ornate furniture and paintings, all very French-looking and strategically placed as if for a magazine photo-op. Father Gilbert remembered being told at a Christmas party there that the room was only used for tours and special occasions.