Silent as the Grave

by Paul Gitsham

  The main finding was in the blood analysis, which revealed a carboxyhaemoglobin concentration of 64%—well over the 50% plus required for victims to pass out and die.

  Carbon monoxide poisoning. The autopsy confirmed what Warren had known for all those years. The report was signed by a Dr Beno Richter, a barely legible scrawl with the full name typewritten below and appended by a number of post-nominal acronyms that attested to his training and certifications.

  Warren pushed the form away. What had he expected? A piece of paper stating, “Whoops, we got it wrong. Your old man didn’t kill himself after all.”

  Sutton pulled the report across and reread it himself.

  “You OK, Boss?”

  Warren nodded tightly. “Why did he give me this? What’s the point? It just tells us what we already know.”

  Sutton let out a huff of air, now more exasperated than angry. “You’re right. But he must have had a reason. Gavin’s a lot of things but he isn’t the sort of man just to fuck with your mind for no reason.”

  Warren stared at the sheet of paper. “What are you not telling me?” he murmured. Something wasn’t right. He was sure of it but he didn’t have the training or expertise to spot it. He pushed the sheets back into the folder. He didn’t have the expertise, but he knew someone who did.

  Chapter 26

  It was the first time Warren had set foot inside Professor Jordan’s office. The Home Office certified pathologist usually corresponded by telephone or email and occasionally liked to “stretch his legs” as he put it and visit Warren in Middlesbury. For his part, Warren rarely attended autopsies. Was that because of his father? Finding his body all those years ago had left an impression. That much was clear. Had it also left this subconscious aversion to death? Or was he reading too much into it? He’d hardly have chosen his present career if he had a phobia of death, would he?

  Shaking himself out of his reverie, he looked around the office. It was pretty much what he’d expected of the man—a visiting professor at Cambridge University. The left wall was lined with bookcases filled with medical and legal texts. A few of them had his name on the spine.

  The opposite wall had two full-size filing cabinets with sturdy-looking locks. In the space between the cabinets and the door was what Warren had once heard referred to as “a glory wall”, a collection of certificates and photographs charting the occupant’s distinguished career.

  An impressive collection by any standard, they started with a bachelor of science from the University of California, Berkley, moved onto an MD from Johns Hopkins University (so the letter ‘s’ after Johns isn’t a typo, Warren noted), followed by a PhD from the same institution. Next to that were certificates charting his membership of numerous professional organisations, both in the US and the UK.

  Interspersed throughout were photographs of Ryan Jordan at a variety of ages, ranging from his university days (triumphantly grinning around a gumshield, forehead covered in lank, sweaty hair, his arms around two others still wearing their football helmets), to a more formal pose probably taken in his mid thirties (white coat, serious expression, stethoscope carefully arranged around his neck) and finally a recent picture of him in front of one of the Cambridge colleges (formal gown and mortar board).

  “I’m told it makes it easier for the bereaved to accept what I’m telling them.” Jordan shrugged apologetically. “Not everyone who comes in here hears what they want to. Having those up there at least tells them I didn’t fall off the back of a turnip truck.”

  Jordan was a tall man in his early fifties. Although he’d lost the brawn of his early, football-playing days he was still a trim figure, his hair still more black than grey.

  “Is that your wife?” Warren asked, pointing at a picture of a handsome, blonde-haired woman of a similar age.

  “Yes, that’s Sarah. The reason I quit a cushy pathology residency in Baltimore and decided to join the NHS.” He smiled. “I had a visiting fellowship at Cambridge. I’d been here eleven months. I was due to fly back to Maryland in three weeks, when Sarah walked into the bar where I was celebrating my mate’s stag do.” The American’s use of the words “mate” and “stag do” sounded more natural than Warren would have expected.

  “My first monthly phone bill when I got back was over three hundred bucks—no Skype back then. The next month it was more than half what I paid in rent. The following month I persuaded the dean of the medical school to grant me two weeks’ unpaid personal leave. He wasn’t happy, but I guess he just hoped that I would get it out of my system. I know my parents did.

  “Anyhow, to cut a long story short, it was only my visa expiring that made me return to the States. By that time I’d already made enquiries about what I would need to do to retrain in the UK and I handed my notice in the day I got back.

  “My father went nuts. He’s a paediatric surgeon and he’d done his own residency in Baltimore. But by the end of the year, I was learning the ropes as a junior doctor in Addenbrooke’s.”

  Warren whistled. “Quite a change.”

  “Yeah, although it was only temporary, more a sort of crash course to make sure that the US medical system isn’t as bad as you Brits think it is. I was up to speed and qualified inside twelve months, a married man in another six. Eighteen years this November.”

  It was clearly a tale that Jordan enjoyed telling. Now he’d finished though. He leant back, the leather in his chair creaking. “So why are you here, DCI Jones? You didn’t come down here to listen to me wax lyrical about my love-struck past.”

  “Warren please, Professor.”

  The man’s mouth twitched. “Ryan then,” he insisted.

  “I need you to do a favour for me,” Warren started.

  “You said as much on the phone.” The pathologist’s tone was light, but a slight wariness had entered his eyes.

  “Nothing dodgy,” Warren quickly reassured him. “I need someone to take a look at an autopsy report, to see if there’s anything…unusual.”

  He passed the folder across the desk.

  Jordan opened it, an eyebrow immediately rising.

  “Nineteen eighty-eight. A bit before my time. I would have been in school—sorry university—hadn’t even started my MD. Hell, I still wanted to be a paediatrician like the old man. And the system in the US is completely different. I didn’t start writing these things in the UK myself for another ten years.”

  Warren felt the hope seep out of him. It was precisely because Jordan hadn’t been around in the late 1980s that he had thought to go to him. Something was rotten and he was starting to wonder just who it was safe to turn to.

  Jordan obviously saw the disappointment in his eyes. “Hey don’t worry, Warren. I didn’t say I wouldn’t look at it. I just want to be straight with you.”

  “Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate it.”

  Jordan looked at his watch. “I have a meeting in ten minutes with two parents whose son wrapped his car around a lamppost at sixty miles per hour, killing him and his younger sister.” His mouth twitched into a grimace. “I have to tell them he was twice the alcohol limit and both were high on cocaine. They’re in denial. That’s why they’re coming in here. Leave the report with me and I’ll look at it this evening and call you as soon as I’ve read it.”

  Taking his cue, Warren stood up and stuck his hand out. Jordan met him, shaking firmly.

  “I’d appreciate it if you keep this between us for the time being, Ryan.”

  Jordan nodded once, curtly. “I had a feeling that would be the case.”

  Warren turned towards the door, but Jordan called after him, “I don’t know what this is about, Warren—no need to tell me yet—but take a bit of advice from a doctor. Go to bed. You look exhausted.”

  * * *

  Despite himself, Warren followed Jordan’s advice. He’d lost track of how long he’d been awake and a near miss on the A1 confirmed that he needed sleep before anything else.

  The house was quiet when he got home. Susan had spoken about vi
siting a friend and so he took himself straight upstairs.

  It was dark when he awoke and Warren felt a rush of disoriented panic. He looked at the bedside clock: nine-fifteen. He checked his phone. No messages or missed calls. He accessed his work email as he walked down stairs. A couple of dozen, none of them urgent judging from the subject headers.

  His throat was dry and he stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water, before joining his wife in the living room.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Well good evening to you too, my darling husband.” Despite the lightness in her tone, Warren caught the rebuke.

  “Sorry, I’m still a bit tired.”

  Susan pushed her laptop to one side and stood up, stretching on tiptoes to kiss him lightly on the forehead.

  “How often do you take an afternoon nap? You must have been exhausted. You’ve been coming to bed after me and getting up before me for over a week and we both know you aren’t sleeping properly even when you do make it to bed.”

  Warren grimaced an apology. “Sorry, sweetheart, you know how busy it is at work right now.” An understatement if there ever was one.

  Susan looked as though she wanted to say something, but thought better of it. She knew him so well, he thought.

  “Anyway, you look so cute when you’re sleeping that I couldn’t bear to wake you.” And just like that his clever wife cut through the tension. Warren returned her kiss.

  “I got some sound medical advice today; I was told to go to bed. The doctor didn’t say what I had to do when I was there.”

  Susan hugged him tightly. Things had been so busy, most recently with Warren and before that at school, that she’d missed her husband. It felt as though the two of them had been little more than flatmates, passing each other on the stairs, grabbing the occasional meal together. They had even spent much of the time in separate beds, following their rule that if one of them was working very late and the other had to get up they’d use the guest room to avoid disturbing each other. It was a sensible and pragmatic idea, but how she missed her husband.

  Warren needed Susan. His emotions were worn thin, his nerves frazzled. He’d needed the sleep; he’d need even more before he started again the next day, but he needed his wife more. Nothing else mattered when he was with Susan. The world and all its stresses and strife melted away when they were together and he craved the respite, however temporary.

  Taking her hand, he led her out of the living room, up the stairs. Already she’d kicked off her shoes and slung her thin cardigan over the banister. This was something that Susan loved to do, a guilty fantasy that stemmed from a brief teenage obsession with racy romance novels. She’d long since stopped reading them, but the image of a staircase leading to the bedroom strewn with clothes had lingered.

  Warren didn’t mind. It meant less time wasted.

  His phone rang.

  Ignoring it was an option.

  It rang again.

  He looked at his wife, at her now unbuttoned blouse, the bedroom less than half a dozen paces away. That’s what voicemail’s for, he told himself firmly.

  A third ring.

  He glanced at the Caller ID.

  Ignoring it wasn’t an option.

  Thursday 5 April

  Chapter 27

  Eight a.m. in Jordan’s office. Warren’s eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep. Susan had been understanding as always, and he’d tried his best, but he’d been going through the motions; the call from Ryan Jordan had hung over Warren like a grey blanket and within thirty minutes they were back in the kitchen, Warren eating reheated spaghetti whilst Susan planned lessons for the upcoming term.

  They’d gone to bed shortly before midnight, but Warren couldn’t sleep. His head was filled with questions. Jordan’s voice had been edgy, his tone urgent, and now Warren felt like a teenager on exam results day. Desperate to know how he’d done, but scared of what the answer might be.

  “You were right. This report is…unusual.”

  Warren’s pulse quickened.

  Jordan had taken a photocopy of the document so he could mark it with red pen. He pointed to an underlined section on the first page.

  “There are a few discrepancies, notably with the timings. First, the report states here that ‘a core body temperature of 35.1°C (95.2°F), and degree of rigor mortis suggest a time of death within one hour of his body being discovered.’ It’s questionable whether rigor mortis would have set in within an hour of death, especially given that carbon monoxide poisoning tends to delay its onset. It could have been sloppy wording, I suppose. You could argue that the ‘degree of rigor mortis’ could equally mean ‘lack of rigor mortis’, but why not say that? The man was an experienced pathologist.”

  “What about the core temperature? Doesn’t that sound about right?”

  Jordan shrugged. “Core temperature was and still is a standard measure, but it isn’t completely accurate, especially over the first few hours post-mortem. The temperature of a body actually remains constant for the first few hours—they call it the temperature plateau and it can be hard to predict how long it lasts. The temperature stated is about what you’d expect from somebody applying Camp’s law rather than Henssge’s nonogram, but it’s of questionable accuracy.”

  Despite his fatigue, Warren noted the unusual phrasing of Jordan’s answer. He’d implied that the temperature stated had been calculated from the time of death, rather than the other way around. Had he simply misspoken?

  Jordan continued, “I’m also concerned that the temperature was taken at ten forty-six p.m.; it says here that the body was discovered at approximately eight-thirty p.m. That means the time taken between death and the temperature being taken is two and a quarter hours, plus that one hour. It doesn’t seem to add up.

  “On top of that he mentions livor mortis, staining of the skin due to pooled blood. It’s consistent with the deceased being found in a seated position. First there are questions about whether the lividity would have become fixed in the short period of time between death and the deceased being found—I have my doubts but the science is not conclusive. However, the lab results show that the deceased died of carbon monoxide poisoning, resulting in that characteristic pink flushing of the skin from carboxyhaemoglobin. Even if livor mortis had started, it would have been fairly pale at that stage and I’m not certain that it would have been distinguishable against the flushing from the carbon monoxide poisoning.

  “Warren, either the person who conducted this autopsy is of questionable competency or the report has been altered or faked. I think that the deceased was dead for some time but the report was altered to make it seem as if he’d only been dead for an hour.”

  * * *

  Warren was struggling to process what Jordan was saying. It was coming so thick and fast. Why? Why would anyone fake the time of his father’s death? Did this mean Sheehy was right about his father’s death not being a suicide?

  For his part, Jordan was still talking. “The report is also interesting in terms of what it doesn’t say, as well as what it does say. The cause of death is given as carbon monoxide poisoning from inhaling car fumes. To rule out strangulation or choking from inhaled vomit, Dr Richter looked inside the lungs. However, he makes no mention of particulate matter from the exhaust smoke. It’s dirty stuff, car exhaust, and you’d expect to see at least some residue in the lungs.”

  Jordan continued, “And I’m not happy with this toxicology report.”

  He pushed the photocopy of the dot matrix printout towards Warren. Again, he’d used red pen to highlight his areas of concern.

  “The report is what we’d expect from a person who gets drunk and gases himself. Plenty of people used to do it back then. You guys didn’t make catalytic converters compulsory until the 1990s, so death from exhaust fumes, accidental or deliberate, was a lot more common. But here’s the thing. According to the report the deceased drove a petrol 1985 Audi 90; on a whim I had a look on the internet and apparently some models of
that car came with a catalyst. Unfortunately there’s no information on whether that model was the one used here.”

  Warren remembered the car—how could he not? It had been his father’s pride and joy, bought in part with over-time pay from policing the miners’ strike the year before. Top of the range, with a two point two litre engine, it could very well have had an expensive optional extra like a catalytic converter.

  Warren was shaken out of his reverie by a direct address from Jordan.

  “Take a look at the name and the date.”

  He passed over a magnifying glass.

  The date was in the top left-hand corner of the sheet, the name on the right. Warren saw it immediately. “It’s not the same typeface.”

  “Correct. The toxicology reports were printed off on a dot matrix printer. Probably one that came bundled with the computer in the lab that they used to process the results. Somebody’s gone to the trouble of finding another dot matrix printer, blanking out the date and the name then overwriting it with a new one. But they couldn’t find the exact same type of printer and so the font is slightly different to the rest of the printout.

  “And whilst we’re on the subject of typing, look at the main proforma.” He pushed it back across the table. “It’s far from conclusive, but these things were almost always typed up by secretaries. Getting a typewriter to line up perfectly with those little boxes is damned fiddly—I know I’ve tried. If I had to make a guess, I’d say that this was typed up by somebody who didn’t spend hours each day using a typewriter. The text is just slightly off-centre and isn’t perfectly straight. The text in these two boxes actually overlaps the edge of the box, even though there is more than enough space. I think the good doctor typed this himself.”

  Jordan’s words were starting to blur together in Warren’s mind; something wasn’t right. Something was nagging at the edge of his consciousness, demanding his attention.

  “But why? Why go to all that trouble? What were they trying to conceal?”