by Derek Fee
‘I won’t dignify that remark with an answer. What do you want me to do? I’m not supposed to create my own work, officially there’s no case.’
‘I’m going to do an autopsy this morning. Depending on what I find, I’ll decide what opinion to present to the coroner at the inquest. I’d like to think that I’ll do right by Mr Grant. Given that the poor man was a politician, the Press will have their claws into him before the day is out. He’ll be dragged through the mud, and maybe he doesn’t deserve it. Spare one hour this morning for the autopsy. Take a look at the photos and visit the house. If you tell me I have my head up my bum, I’ll go with death by misadventure and we can consign David Grant to the dustbin of history.’
Wilson stayed silent for a few moments. If it were anyone else except Stephanie Reid, he might have considered that they were over-reacting. She was right about the newspapers. There was nothing juicier than a politician involved in some kinky sex practice. Chief Superintendent Spence would have a fit, but he could always claim that he was helping the coroner out. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What time does the autopsy start?’
‘Ten o’clock. You’ll take a look then?’
‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘Just for a look-see.’ He pressed the red button cutting the communication.
‘Who was that?’ Helen McCann asked.
‘The pathologist,’ Wilson said simply.
‘It must be important if the pathologist called you at home.’
‘A Belfast City Councillor called David Grant died last night while trying to get off on erotic asphyxiation. It appears it didn’t go right, and he strangled himself.’ Wilson may have been mistaken, but he thought he saw some recognition in Helen’s eyes when he said the name of the deceased. ‘You knew him?’
‘We met once, I think. Some legal do or other. He seemed like a very nice young man, and I heard that he was a hell of a lawyer. I understood that he was very committed to rooting out corruption in the Public Service. I was told it bordered on the obsessive. On a single meeting, I wouldn’t have believed he was the sort who went in for unusual sexual practices.’
‘It’s not normally stamped on the forehead.’
‘What’s the pathologist’s problem?’ she asked.
Wilson moved off towards the kitchen. If he was going to face one of Reid’s autopsies he needed another coffee. ‘Something has spooked her. She wants me to attend the autopsy and look at some of the photos she took at the scene. She wants to make sure that if she declares death by misadventure that that’s what it really was.’
‘How very professional.’
Wilson tried a smile. He switched on the coffee machine. ‘Can I make you one?’
‘No, thank you,’ she smiled. ‘If I drink two coffees, I’m hyper all day. How terrible that you have to attend to see people being cut up.’
Wilson picked up his cup of coffee. ‘Just another day in paradise, as we say in the PSNI.’
CHAPTER 6
It was long past the days when Belfast was considered the murder capital of the United Kingdom. Despite that there were enough evil people out there that Wilson didn’t fear for his job. That being said, he had to admit that things had been quiet since they had stopped Maggie Cummerford killing old ladies. The past few months had been taken up with preparing evidence for her trial. He enjoyed the short drive from the apartment to the Grosvenor Road entrance to the Royal Victoria Hospital. The Belfast Trust Mortuary was a two-storey modern, yellow brick building at the rear of the hospital site and was adjacent to the Northern Ireland Office State Pathology Laboratory. All bodies were transported to the hospital by contracted undertakers and were subsequently released from there. Wilson parked his car in the area reserved for staff and placed his ‘Police on Duty’ card on the dashboard. He flashed his warrant card at the attendant in reception and made his way through the labyrinth of corridors. He spotted Reid’s assistant entering the autopsy room and caught the door before it closed.
Professor Stephanie Reid was in the act of gowning when Wilson walked into the room. She turned at the sound and unleashed her most radiant smile. ‘Welcome stranger,’ she said before tossing a green gown in his direction.
‘Long time no see,’ Wilson caught the gown and basked in her smile. The sight of Stephanie Reid had the ability to take your breath away, but add that smile and you believed that you had landed in heaven. The bulky surgical gown hid her slim figure, and her blonde hair was tied back in a bow. Her high cheekbones and piercing blue eyes could probably be attributed to the visit of the Vikings to the shores of Northern Ireland many centuries before. He covered up his admiring look by busying himself putting on his gown.
‘How’s life treating you?’ she asked. She didn’t need to ask the question. She could see the lines of tiredness on his face.
She moved close to him and he could smell her perfume.
He removed his jacket to permit the gown to cover his torso. The gowns were not made for six-foot-three, one-hundred-and-twenty-kilo former international rugby players. ‘As well as I expected it to.’
‘How’s Kate?’
Wilson was surprised. Reid had come on to him more than once. However, she had never mentioned Kate by name. ‘Fine,’ he said, the catch in his voice belying the truth.
‘It takes time,’ she said. There was a softness in her voice. ‘Losing a child at twenty weeks is pretty traumatic. I hope that she’s seeing someone. I know how difficult it can be to recover fully. How long has it been? Two months?’ She also knew the statistics. A couple that lose a child stand a forty per cent chance of breaking up between three months and two years later. While the evidence was scant on miscarriage, what there was indicated that there was around a twenty per cent chance of a break-up.
‘About that, but I’d rather not talk about it.’
‘No problem.’ She continued to tie up her gown. ‘Before we begin I want to set the scene for you.’ She moved to the computer in the corner of the room. She held up a USB. ‘I shot these photos on my mobile phone. There’s no way that they’re up to the standard of those taken by your forensics people but it was the best I could do under the circumstances.’ She plugged in the USB and brought up the series of photos she had taken in David Grant’s house.
Wilson moved in front of the screen and examined the first of the photos. It was taken from the doorway and showed the body hanging at the other end of the hallway. Wilson increased the size of the photo to the maximum. David Grant’s face was contorted in the rictus of death. It was apparent that he had died in excruciating pain. Wilson noted the exposed penis hanging out of the female panties. A chair lay on the ground beneath the suspended body. Wilson flicked through the series of images, expanding each to the maximum and zooming in on David Grant’s face in the final image. ‘For an amateur you did a pretty good job,’ he said staring at the protruding tongue in the last photo.
Reid put her face alongside his and looked at the screen. He was aware of her cheek almost touching his. She moved her body against him. He moved away and she followed him.
‘This is why I send DS McElvaney on autopsy duty,’ he said standing up and moving away from the computer.
‘I try not to think of the Rottweiler,’ Reid smiled.
‘You’re incorrigible.’
‘Let’s get professional and see how David Grant died.’ She moved to a metal table where a corpse was covered with a sheet. She grabbed one end of the sheet and whipped it from the table with the theatrical flourish of a magician.
Wilson thought that he had seen most oddities, but he almost gulped as the body of David Grant still clad in women’s undergarments was exposed. He saw that Reid was watching him intently.
‘Ever see a “gasper” before?’ she asked.
‘No.’ He had often heard of erotic asphyxiation, but he had never dealt with a case. ‘How does it work, medically I mean?’
‘The carotid arteries on either side of the neck carry oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the brain. When
these are compressed, as in strangulation or hanging, the sudden loss of oxygen to the brain and the accumulation of carbon dioxide can increase feelings of giddiness, light-headedness, and pleasure, all of which will heighten masturbatory sensations.’
‘Don’t people realise the dangers?’
‘Apparently there are quite a few who are willing to run the risk. Most of the practitioners rig some kind of escape mechanism but there was none in this case. In some fatal cases, the body of the asphyxiophilic individual is discovered naked or with genitalia in hand. Sometimes there is pornographic material or sex toys present as well as evidence of having orgasmed prior to death. Bodies found at the scene of an accidental death often show evidence of other paraphilic activities, such as fetishistic cross-dressing and masochism as in this case.’
Wilson looked at her with furrowed brow. ‘Paraphilic?’
‘You obviously didn’t take Greek at school.’
Wilson raised his eyebrows. ‘My teachers were more interested in my performances on the rugby field than in the classroom. I bet you were the class swot.’
‘Not true but you’re close,” she smiled. ‘Para meaning beside and phila meaning friendship, paraphilia. It describes the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects. Most of the victims are male but there have been the odd cases of female victims. When I was an intern, I attended a special workshop given by a visiting US academic who covered the subject in detail. One of the points he made was that initial cases were considered to be the result of a murder, but as the practice became known, doctors were encouraged to look at accidental death. Maybe the pendulum has swung a little too much in favour of the accidental death theory. I’m a contrarian because I’m thinking that David Grant could possibly have been murdered.’
‘But it could have been accidental?’
‘It could have been. Why don’t we try to find out? We’ve done you the favour of washing the body,’ Reid said. ‘As you might imagine when I examined the body initially those silk panties contained a load of faeces. However, I wanted you to see him as I did.’ She nodded at her assistant who started removing the undergarments from Grant’s body.
Reid pulled down the microphone to her level and waited while the assistant prepared the body. ‘The body is that of a male of approximately thirty years of age,’ she began. She moved around the body, recounting the engorged face turned blue through lack of oxygen. She then moved on to the little marks on the face and in the eyes from the burst blood capillaries. Then, she noted the protruding tongue. She moved along the body noting the bruising and ligature marks on the neck. Then she examined the bruise on the side of Grant’s head. She reached up and switched the microphone off.
She turned and looked at Wilson. ‘Up to now it’s all pretty much classic strangulation. At this point, it would be impossible to say whether the death had been caused or was accidental. Except for that.’ She pointed at the bruise on Grant’s temple. ‘That was made pre-mortem. It could have happened accidentally sometime before death, but the position is such that it would have probably concussed him. At any rate, he received a blow to the head sometime prior to death.’ She picked up her scalpel. ‘Now for the messy part.’
Wilson was always impressed when he saw Reid work. Her predecessor had fancied joking while he dissected a body, but Stephanie Reid was all business.
She reached up and turned the microphone on again. She worked deftly with the scalpel explaining the incisions and what she found as she went. She worked for a half hour without pause then switched off the microphone and looked at Wilson.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Maybe I was right,’ she said.
‘Don’t sound so surprised. Can you explain what you just found in plain English?’
‘Grant was standing on a chair. It’s a less than ideal long drop. If the drop is too short, or if the noose knot isn’t in the correct position, it’s not a hanging but a strangulation that can take several minutes, and is a far more excruciating experience. These are the carotid arteries.’ She pulled back the skin and revealed what looked like tubes. ‘You can see that they’ve been compressed, when that happens, the brain swells so much it ends up plugging the top of the spinal column. The Vagal nerve is pinched, leading to something called the Vagal reflex, which stops the heart. The lack of oxygen getting to the lungs due to compression of the trachea eventually causes loss of consciousness due to suffocation. Death then follows in the same pattern as it does when the neck breaks, with the entire process ending in anywhere from five to twenty minutes. But this is the real beauty.’ She pointed at a small bone in the neck. ‘This little fellow is called the hyoid bone. You can see here that it’s been snapped.’
Wilson saw that the small bone was indeed shattered. ‘And that means?’ he asked.
‘That means that our friend on the table was most likely murdered.’
CHAPTER 7
Deputy Chief Constable Royson Jennings sipped his tea as he sat to the right of the fireplace in the study of Coleville House just outside the town of Ballymoney in County Antrim. He looked up at the two men facing him. Sir Phillip Lattimer was the owner of Coleville House. The Lattimers were gifted the lands around Ballymoney in the aftermath of the battle of the Boyne by King William in gratitude for their support against the Jacobites. In the intervening centuries, profits from the slave trade allowed the Lattimers to increase their holdings and construct a magnificent Palladian mansion overlooking the Glens of Antrim. The current scion of the Lattimer family was a man of substance in more ways than one. He flowed over rather than sat in the button-back leather chair. His face was rotund, and florid, and a series of chins ran down his neck. Wispy grey hair covered his bowling ball-sized head. Sir Phillip collected directorships the same way some men collected stamps. There was no sector of the Province’s economy where he could not connect with a ‘friend’. The second man facing Jennings was in total contrast to Sir Phillip although they shared one thing in common – they were both enormously powerful. Jackie Carlisle was no longer involved in politics, but his hand could be found in every aspect of life in Ulster. Now in his seventy-first year, his pale face was thin and angular, with his nose a giant prow, accentuated by the emaciation surrounding it. In contrast to Sir Phillip, the wing-backed chair consumed him. His knees and elbows stuck out of his expensive blue suit. Carlisle liked to think that a flea couldn’t fart in the Province of Ulster without his permission. Certainly, no piece of legislation moved through the Northern Ireland Assembly that he didn’t cast an eye on first.
‘Cheers,’ Sir Phillip raised his glass of brandy and toasted the other two men. He took a deep slug.
‘Your liking for the devil’s buttermilk will kill you one day,’ Carlisle said raising his teacup.
‘You only live once,’ Sir Phillip laughed.
‘What time will the others arrive?’ Carlisle asked.
‘We start at twelve thirty and finish our meeting with lunch,’ Lattimer replied. ‘Most of them want to be back in Belfast in the early afternoon.’
‘The agenda is fairly short,’ Carlisle said. ‘As Chairman I intend to keep discussion to the minimum.’
Jennings sipped nervously at his tea. Since he had received the invitation from Carlisle, he had been wondering why he had been summoned for the pre-meeting chat. Carlisle and Lattimer were the heavyweights of their group and an invitation from them was a serious affair. Roy Jennings had spent his life climbing the greasy pole in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. As a young man, he had read a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince, and he had lived by its rules. He had bag-carried and brown-nosed his way to the second top position in the Force, and he knew that he would never make it to the top unless he had the support of Carlisle and Lattimer and men like them. He already accepted his position as being beholden to others in furtherance of his career.
‘Roy we need to know that you are completely onside with our little clean-up operation in Belfast,’ Carlisle’s steely grey eyes bo
red into Jennings.
‘So far it appears to have gone well,’ Jennings said trying to hold Carlisle’s gaze.
‘The whole business was a total cluster fuck,’ Lattimer said.
‘Phillip, please,’ Carlisle said. ‘No profanity and none of that American crap.’
‘Don’t give me that Bible thumping shit,’ Lattimer said. ‘A cluster fuck it certainly was.’
‘Our confederate, Mr Rice, is not the most intelligent or subtle of men,’ Carlisle said. ‘It was inevitable at some point that a trace would be left on some project involving him, and that it would have to be cleaned up. I’m assuming that Rice is at the very least competent in removing the threat.’
‘Maybe we should have thrown Rice to the wolves.’ Lattimer sucked the dregs from his glass.
‘Rice has been an integral part of our operation for a considerable period of time.’ Carlisle placed his teacup on a small table beside his chair. ‘Throwing him to the wolves was never an option.’ He turned and looked at Jennings. ‘I assume there’s no issue on the side of the PSNI.’
‘Malone is not even on the radar,’ Jennings said. ‘David Grant is another matter. He’s in the public eye and Rice’s friends were very inventive in their method of killing him. It’s not every day that a Belfast City Councillor hangs himself in a kinky sex act. We can assume that this one will run in the newspapers for some time. We won’t be completely safe until it runs its course.’
‘But you can stifle any investigation,’ Lattimer said leaning forward.
‘If that becomes necessary,’ Jennings said.
Carlisle rubbed his bony chin. ‘There is no need for an investigation. David Grant died while performing a despicable sexual act. Our friends in the Press will rightly vilify him. There will inevitably be an inquest, but we should be able to control the result.’