A Long Time Dead

by Andrew Barrett

  “No need. The photos are good enough.” Chris put a fresh 3M mask over his face, pulled up his hood and opened the lid of his fingerprinting kit. “Anyway, it isn’t going anywhere; if we change our minds later, he can come out and see it in the flesh.” He wore new latex gloves and began brushing black powder over all the surfaces he deemed suitable for this technique: doors, doorframes, windows and sills, and even the unpreserved banister rail. Not surprisingly, few marks developed. She was obviously a clean girl, and probably had visitors infrequently.

  * * *

  Black powder, like soot from a freshly swept chimney, still floated around the room when Chris took out his clipboard and began drawing a plan of where each mark was located.

  “Chris?” Paul was signing over the seals of a brown paper sack with police evidence plastered across it. “I thought you were going to let me do that?”

  Chris stopped sketching. “You’re right; I did say you could do this, didn’t I? Bloody hell.” He stroked an arm over his glistening forehead, and left a black smear. “Look, Paul, for the sake of speed, I’ll do the upstairs part of the fingerprint photography while you start powdering downstairs – which, I might add, could prove to be equally important, and then you can do the fingerprint photography down there?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Paul mumbled as he plodded across the aluminium stepping plates, heading dejectedly for the stairs.

  “Stop. You’re right, come back here.” He held out a sheet of labels and smiled. “Fuck the time, Paul, write out some blue labels; you can do it.”

  Like a small child given the sweets recently denied him, a grin burst back onto his face. “Seriously?”

  “Don’t look so bloody happy,” Chris said, “it’s tedious work.”

  “It doesn’t bother me.”

  “Good, ‘cause it would bore me stupid.”

  “Where shall I stick ‘em?”

  Chris raised an eyebrow, then showed him where the marks were and handed him the fingerprint camera. “You okay with it? Want me to watch over you?”

  “Might be an idea, just for the first few, at least.”

  “Go on, then, get on with it.”

  The flash popped, and as he wound the film on, Paul asked, “I wonder how your horse did.”

  “What?”

  “Your horse. The one we stopped at the bookies for on the way here.”

  “Keep your damned voice down!” Chris growled and then jumped as Shelby peeked his head around the door.

  “Progress report, if you please, Chris.”

  “Start downstairs now, Paul.”

  Paul tutted loudly enough for them to hear, set the camera down and without glancing up, he pushed past Shelby and thudded down to the lounge.

  Chris watched him go, shook his head. “A few marks in here that we’ve just photo’d, a couple on the landing; er, the girl’s clothing and photos of the scene. That’s really about all, I’m afraid.”

  “Can’t say I’m not disappointed. I expected far more evidence than this.” Shelby strode into the centre of the room, perched on a stepping plate, his mood heavy. “Did I tell you that we pulled Richard Andrews in?”

  “Who’s Richard Andrews?”

  “Sally Delaney’s pimp.”

  Chris became attentive. “No, you didn’t. Has he coughed to it? Have you found the weapon?”

  “No, and no. He didn’t do it. His alibi checks out.”

  “What alibi?”

  “He was in the cells at Wood Street. Drunk and disorderly.”

  “Can’t get a better alibi than that, can you. Any other leads?”

  “We’ve interviewed a dozen or so of Sally’s known associates, had two other pimps in for a chat. Zilch. I got a Prison Intelligence Liaison Officer trawling through Wakefield and Armley’s files just in case some known associate pops his acne-riddled face above the parapet, and I’ve got three Informant Handlers scouring her locale. Bugger all so far. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed on the cash.”

  “What cash?”

  “For a hard-up prostitute, she had a large amount of cash in the lounge—”

  “But we searched the lounge.”

  “Not well enough, Chris. Anyway, it’s gone away for chemical fingerprinting now, so we’ll soon see.”

  “Well, you won’t find anything as lucky here, I’m afraid. All very straightforward.”

  “You call this straightforward? It’s not straightforward from where I’m standing. I have nothing to go on, Chris. I’ve got a dead girl and bugger all else.” Shelby strode to the window, looked through the rain and out on the fields.

  “Nothing from house-to-house?” Chris asked.

  “Nope.” Shelby sighed. “I had a full OSU team on it. But Chamberlain bawled me out, said it was misuse of resources, that I should use divisional coppers.” He folded his arms and added, “Tosser.”

  Chris stared at Shelby’s back.

  “I need a leak,” Shelby made for the bathroom, already pulling at the zip on his scene suit.

  “Whoa, no you don’t, Graham.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You don’t use the facilities in a crime scene. Rules.”

  “Whose rules?”

  “Mine. Oh, and ACPO’s too. You’ll have to use a neighbour’s house.” There was no room for negotiation in Chris’s voice.

  “Thanks.” Shelby went back to the window. “Do you think the attacker was forensically aware?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I mean, the marks we’ve developed may belong to the offender and so we might already have him in the bag.” He pulled his hood back and lifted the mask up. Sweat clumped his grey hair. “Then again, they may all belong to her or even Micky, in which case—”

  “We’re shagged,” he shouted. His voice boomed in the silence, and then his volume shrank back to a whisper, “Correction, I’m shagged.” There were no familiar crows-feet visible on Shelby’s friendly face now. He looked only a day away from haggard. “You know, they say ‘find out how they lived and you’ll find out how they died’, and until now I thought there was some validity in that. I think there was with Sally Delaney’s case, even though we’re no further forward with it yet. But this... Nicky Bridgestock just blew that theory right out the fucking water.” Shelby pulled his mask off too and wiped a plastic sleeve across his face. “You know what I find the hardest thing?”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t got a hypothesis for this. It’s motiveless as far as I can see. And they’re the worst bloody ones to solve.”

  Chris relaxed again. “Are you going to send her clothing away? Maybe that could give us an idea.”

  “Oh, I’ve already got some ideas,” he huffed. “I’ve got hold of the CCTV footage from Wakefield town centre.”

  Chris paused, “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Half of the bloody cameras around town are out of order, some of the loop tape in the others is only fit for cross-stitch, and some of the bloody things are dummies! Which I did not know about, and...”

  “And,” Chris prompted.

  “And the rest, which are in fine working order, are pointing in exactly the wrong fucking direction. We know she came out of Biggles’ at about one-thirty-ish and one witness – who was totally paralytic at the time – said she was talking to someone in a dark car. A dark car! I ask you, a dark car?”

  Chris felt almost sorry for him.

  “Well that narrows it down a bit,” Shelby said.

  “Neighbours not heard anything, then?”

  “There’s still three or four to contact yet, travelling salesmen, long-distance truckers and the like, oh and next door-but-one set off for Wales in the early hours of this morning. Still out on that one.” Shelby rubbed his lips with latex-clad fingers and then inspiration struck him. “Couldn’t we use the Fingerprint Development Laboratory here? I mean is it the right kind of wallpaper, the type that works with their chemicals?”

  But Chris seemed to have drifted off at this point, mind
on other troubles.

  “Snap out of it, Chris. I’m on a tight enough noose already without you pulling on the other fucking end.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I asked if FDL would be any good here.” Impatience rattled Shelby and he closed in on Chris, ensuring his full attention.

  “By all means get them out, you never know, we may find the mark that cuts you down.”

  Shelby rubbed his plump throat and looked not at all amused as he thudded past Chris. “I’ll get them involved,” he growled. And then he stopped before even reaching Nicky’s bedroom door. Without turning, he asked, “Not found any keys, have you, Chris?”

  “Keys?”

  “Funny shaped bits of metal that make you feel secure at night, or that can lead to you getting stabbed in the throat if you turn them for the wrong person. Yes, keys!”

  “No, no keys.”

  Shelby seemed to contemplate Chris’s words as though they were a riddle unlocking the secret of life. Or the secret to this investigation.

  “You think she let someone in after she got home then?”

  “Just another option,” was all he said.

  He walked from the room and before long, Chris heard Shelby and Paul talking in the lounge, heard Paul quoting a magazine article to Shelby, about every fourth person being a weirdo.

  With the room now clear again, he continued his work, applying lifting tape to all the black finger marks that Paul had previously photographed. When he finished it was past 6pm.

  He lifted each mark and laid it on to an acetate sheet, labelled it with a consecutive number, matching those on Paul’s blue labels, and asked Paul to complete the other details. From the fingerprint camera, he wound off the exposed film and sealed it with the adhesive strip. All this went into his clear plastic folder to be processed back at the office when the pressure was slightly less intense.

  — Four —

  It was ridiculous, and he felt embarrassed. But he’d been kicked out, and it was only polite—

  Yvonne answered the back door.

  Her hair still hung across her eyes, unintentionally eighties style. Quite provocative, attractive; and she had made her face up, made her eyes more pronounced, more...

  She didn’t look so angry any more, and though she was obviously in pain – still unable to stand fully erect, always bent slightly at the knees as though stuck in some bizarre curtsy – she appeared a whole lot calmer.

  Roger fumbled, trying to get his sprouting of hair to lie flat, but it and the wind had other ideas. He contented himself with letting his eyes float over Yvonne, and rubbed the small scars on his itching fingertips. “I hope you don’t mind, but I wondered if you’d allow me to have a shower. I mean, I could use the ones at the nick if you’d rather.”

  “Another one?” she raised her eyebrows. “You’d better come in, Roger. Close the door behind you.”

  Although he only left home this morning, he felt like a stranger already, as though an old memory had grown a layer of dust that hid all the details but kept the rough outline so it wasn’t completely foreign. He half expected to see the lounge a different colour, or the furniture moved around or, or even a new man installed in his comfy chair. No, he thought, nothing is the same.

  “If you want a drink,” Yvonne said, “you’ll have to fix it yourself.”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks. Unless you want one,” he blurted. “I’ll make you one if you want one. Do you want one?”

  Yvonne flicked a finger at the stray hair that partly covered one eye. And she smiled at him. A friendly smile. “I rang you at work. They said you’d left already.”

  He returned the smile, tentatively. Was it the first stages of mockery? He didn’t think so. “Yvonne, I—”

  “I think I understand your motives. I can’t forget what you’ve done to me. But given time, enough time, maybe I can forgive you.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve stood by me and although I don’t want you to think I’ve been keeping score or anything, you’ve accrued some kind of good will.” She frowned. “No, shit, that’s not the right way to say it.” She paused and thought deeply, offering only, “I owe you a lot. And I understand why you... why you did it; it can’t be easy living with a cripple.”

  Roger’s eyes grew damp.

  “I know we haven’t been happy for some time, but I was hoping, after you lied to me and patronised me this morning, that we would be able to pull our marriage back out of the grave. A new start. I’ll try not to be so demanding, I’ll try not to hate the way you fuss over me, if you promise not to hurt me again like you hurt me last night.”

  “Yvonne, I—”

  “I need to trust you again; you know that, don’t you? It’s not like just turning a corner and forgetting all that’s gone before, there’s always an element of doubt there...”

  He nodded slowly, “I’ll do—”

  “We’re not finished yet, Roger. There’s something else I want from you.”

  He looked at her again, a dread behind the tears.

  “I want you to love me again instead of simply caring for me.”

  Roger cried then.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Drizzle, thrashing windscreen wipers and a haunting blaze of red taillights in the darkness. Tyres on wet tarmac and loud traffic noise roared into the van as Chris lowered the window and dumped a handful of empty chocolate wrappers out. “You should carry your own emergency supply of these. You never know when you’re gonna need ‘em.” He offered Paul a chocolate bar. “You sure you don’t want one? Could be a while before your next meal.”

  “No. Ta.”

  “Could be a while before your next breath of fresh air, come to think of it.”

  Within minutes they were bouncing up the rutted mud track leading to the mortuary building. He parked the van, switched off the engine and watched rainwater running down the broken drainpipes.

  “Shouldn’t someone else be doing the PM?” Paul asked.

  “Why?” Chris got out of the van in a hurry, still shaking his head, only now it was because the kid was starting to annoy him.

  Paul stuttered, looking for a good reason not to be here. “Contamination?”

  Chris closed the van door, “Bring the camera gear and hurry up about it.”

  Chris held open the exterior door for Paul who slovenly ambled in, head down, huffing. He walked past the wall of twelve refrigerators and three freezers.

  The door swung shut and quietened the hum of the refrigerant machines outside.

  It was nearly 8.30; Bellington Wainwright’s timing for the PM was hopelessly optimistic. When the entourage arrived at Pinderfields mortuary, Ann Halfpenny was still tying off the beautifully neat stitching on the chest of a heroin victim. She didn’t look up and she didn’t stop her happy humming.

  The large, well-lit room was clean, smelled of pine disinfectant, and was cool and echoey. A ceiling-mounted fan blew a breeze in Chris’s face and if he closed his eyes, he thought, he could be in a Norwegian forest... “I wish,” he whispered.

  A stainless steel workbench complete with sinks and sluices filled one wall. Fluorescent lights peered into the deep scratches of polythylene chopping boards set beside digital scales. These scales were used for weighing the organs as they emerged from each cadaver. Over the chopping boards were clear Perspex sheets designed to prevent blood from spraying into the pathologist’s face as he cut the organs to inspect their interior surfaces.

  At the other side of the room, a similar workbench was partly hidden by a congregation of police officers, all suited up in green disposable aprons and white rubber gloves. As with Sally’s PM, some were there in an observational capacity, gathering information about the girl firsthand to pass onto the briefing and the SIO the next day. Others were there performing the role of Exhibits Officer, collecting items from the pathologist, samples of all body hair, nail scrapings, blood samples for toxicology and DNA use, urine samples and anything else that may lead the investigatio
n in an appropriate direction.

  Chris watched the Coroner’s Officer, Jacob Cooper, standing silently, seemingly unable to penetrate the cliquey circle of detectives.

  At 8.50, Ann laid Nicky’s body on one of the three stainless steel tables. At one end a drain hole, similar to that found in a bathtub, caught her slim trickle of redness, and over it was a dripping showerhead.

  Paul rigged up the tripod, affixed the Mamiya medium format camera to its head, while Chris busied himself loading film into the spare camera backs in readiness for a quick changeover. Some PMs were performed at a startling rate, and some pathologists became irate if their proceedings were affected by ill-prepared SOCOs having to wind-off and reload film. Then Chris flicked both Metz flashguns into life, listened to their high-pitched whine and watched their LEDs flash.

  Between them, they photographed the body from both sides; general shots, not concentrating at this stage on any detail, before having Ann turn Nicky’s body onto its side so they could photograph her front and back.

  All the while, the detectives spoke quietly amongst themselves and did so in a suppressed and respectful way as they would, for example, in a library. Their banter was hushed not out of respect for the dead, but because while they stood temporarily idle, others were performing their own work and it would be impolite to disturb them.

  What a change from Delaney’s PM, Chris thought. Haynes seemed subdued.

  Bellington Wainwright entered the room dressed in a green cotton smock, heavy-duty rubber gloves, and white Wellington boots that squeaked on the tiled floor. In one hand, he carried a facemask with a clear visor – rather like a welders mask – and in the other, a clipboard. “Right...” he said.

  The echoes in the room hushed further.

  Chris had worked with Wainwright only once before, and wasn’t too impressed by the thoroughness or the methodology he employed. He was on the Home Office books though, and so should be up to the standard, but Chris thought he could certainly tighten up his routine, and not miss so much bloody evidence!

  He was a quiet worker who would timidly ask for a photograph here or a swab there, rather than yelling orders like a Sergeant Major, as would some pathologists.