William ‘Billy’ Button, who had always seemed to Vicary to be permanently whimpering, nervously handed Shaftoe a yellow metallic retractable tape measure.
‘Thank you, Billy.’ Shaftoe took the tape measure, extended it and measured the length of the skeleton. ‘She was a short woman, as I said, five feet in total, and we can add an extra inch on to that to allow for the flesh on the soles of her feet and also the shrinking of the cartilages, so in life she was probably five feet and one inch tall in old speak and approximately one hundred and fifty-five centimetres in Euro speak. So short, but not a child, thank goodness.’
‘Indeed,’ Vicary stood at the edge of the room and was dressed head to toe in disposable green coveralls, ‘that is a great relief. I confess that when I first saw the skeleton I did fear that we had a murdered teenager on our hands, and a young teenager at that. Child murders are so far and away the worst to deal with.’
‘I also feared the same,’ Shaftoe spoke softly, ‘but as you say, relief is what we feel … Murdered children … robbed of their life, the distraught parents … little could be worse. But we still have a robbed-of-life situation here. She was out of childhood but by not very many years. The initial impression is that all the teeth are present and appear to be in good condition, which is another indication of youth.’ Shaftoe paused. ‘Racial clarification … she appears to be quite finely made, she has a small mandible so she is Asian or North European. She is definitely not Afro-Caribbean or Oriental. She was small but perfectly formed; everything is in proportion.’ Shaftoe turned to the pathology laboratory assistant. ‘Can you pass me the camera, please, Billy?’
Billy Button made a clumsy lunge for a thirty-five millimetre digital camera with a flash attachment which stood on the surface of the bench which ran the length of the wall of the laboratory, opposite the wall against which Harry Vicary stood. Once again, Vicary was impressed by the patience which Shaftoe was able to muster when dealing with Button, believing that he could not extend such latitude to the man, who was clearly so unsuited to working with corpses. It was a constant source of wonder to Vicary that the tremulous Button had applied for such a job in the first place, and an even greater source of wonder that he had been appointed to the position.
John Shaftoe adjusted the camera settings and then proceeded to take a series of flash-assisted photographs of the skull of the deceased, which lay face-up on the stainless-steel dissecting table. He turned to Vicary. ‘We’ll feed the images into a computer and it will produce a likeness of our friend as she was in life. It used to take weeks to build up the skull using plasticine – now it takes a matter of seconds. We still have to guess the eye colour, shape of the nose, hair colour, hairstyle … but with all the wonders of modern technology we can very rapidly obtain a close, recognizable resemblance of her as she probably was when alive.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ Vicary replied with forced enthusiasm. He was well aware of the technique to which Shaftoe referred.
‘I have photographed her because I want to get into the skull. I want to get into the brain – what remains of it,’ Shaftoe explained, ‘because there I’ll find the bullets which may have killed her.’ He handed the camera back to Billy Button and said, ‘Saw, please, Billy.’
Button took the camera, placed it back on the counter and picked up a small, circular saw. He switched it on and Vicary saw Button wince at the high-pitched whirring sound which the compact machine made.
‘Don’t worry, Billy,’ Shaftoe grinned, ‘she won’t feel a thing. I promise you. Not a thing.’ He then applied the saw to the side of the skull, at which point Vicary found himself sharing a moment of sympathy with Billy Button as the sound of the saw cutting into the bone echoed in the laboratory, causing a chill to strike through him. He was pleased that he managed to remain composed.
John Shaftoe slowly but purposefully cut round the perimeter of the skull following an imaginary line above where the ears would have been. That completed, he took off the top of the skull, which separated without a sound. ‘There is not much left of her brain,’ he commented. ‘Frankly, I didn’t think there would be.’ He held up an X-ray image of the skull of the deceased’s brain and consulted it. ‘I had the skeleton X-rayed when she arrived yesterday. I could do that without Dykk holding me up. There appears to be two bullets in the skull and a third in her chest cavity, so I know where to look. Can you pass me the scalpel, please, Billy? Thank you.’ John Shaftoe began to probe the decayed remnants of the brain and then grunted with satisfaction. ‘Here it is … here’s one. Tweezers, please, Billy.’
Billy Button handed Shaftoe a set of surgical tweezers. Using the scalpel as a guide, Shaftoe inserted the tweezers and gripped the small metal object that had shown up on the X-ray. ‘One bullet … very small calibre … appears to be in reasonable condition. You might be able to match it to a specific weapon.’ He dropped the bullet into a small, self-sealing cellophane sachet and then returned his attention to the interior of the skull. Moments later he held up, with a triumphant look, a second bullet, which he dropped into a similar sachet. Shaftoe then took the circular saw and sawed down the centre of the ribcage, handed the saw to Button and then forced open the ribs, causing the bones to crack loudly. He consulted a second X-ray then began to poke around in the chest cavity. With a second triumphal expression and the words, ‘Got it,’ he produced the third bullet, which he held tightly with the surgical tweezers. ‘This bullet appears to be in particularly good condition. I’ll send all three to the firearms unit.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Vicary replied.
‘I’ll notify them that you are the interested police officer,’ Shaftoe added.
‘Thank you again, sir.’
‘They could have killed her,’ Shaftoe remarked. ‘Any one of the three: two to the skull, one to the heart. Somebody was making sure. That is to say any one could have killed her if she had been alive … she might have been shot to disguise some other form of murder, as I’ve said before … drowning, asphyxiation. If she drowned there will be diatoms in the marrow of her long bones.’
‘Diatoms, sir?’ Vicary queried.
‘Microscopic beasties,’ Shaftoe explained. ‘They exist in all forms of water. They are carried into the lungs of drowned persons and from the lungs they migrate to the bone marrow, and there they remain. It is by detecting them that we can show that a skeleton was a victim of drowning.’
‘They remain for that length of time?’ Vicary was astounded.
‘Yes, they do,’ Shaftoe replied, ‘and so I’ll take a sample of her bone marrow and examine it, but if she was suffocated there will not be any trace of that, not after this length of time, and no trace of her being strangled either. So the gunshots killed her, or ensured that she was deceased. As I said, someone was making sure.’
‘But she was murdered,’ Vicary pressed, ‘you believe?’
‘Oh … yes, I would think so.’ Shaftoe grinned broadly. ‘Suicides don’t need three bullets to kill themselves, and you don’t cover up accidental deaths by shooting the person concerned. I’ll run a trace for heavy poisonings, just for form’s sake, but arsenic and cyanide poisoning went out with the Victorians.’ Shaftoe paused and then prised the jaws apart, causing them to give with a loud cracking sound – a noise which made Billy Button jump and put his hand to his mouth in a manner which Vicary thought to be very effeminate. ‘Love gobs.’ Shaftoe grinned once again. ‘I just love a good gob … it’s all in the gob … which I dare say you know is Yorkshire for mouth.’
‘Yes … I did know that, sir.’ Vicary also grinned. ‘In fact, it was your good self who told me in this very room.’
‘Ah, well … good. So long as you know to what I am referring. So many folk south of Watford Gap don’t know, but it’s all in your old “north and south”, as a Londoner would say. The teeth are in excellent condition … no extractions … some fillings, which means that there will be dental records unless she was murdered more than eleven years ago, after which time den
tists are not obliged to keep the patient’s records.’
‘We think we are still within that timeframe,’ Vicary replied, ‘just … but within it all the same.’
‘Good … and I note British dentistry, which should help you, and dental records will confirm her identity. They are as unique as fingerprints, although I dare say you know that as well.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Vicary nodded briefly. ‘That is something else I picked up along the way.’
‘Yes, well, I’ll extract a tooth; that won’t prevent her identity being determined,’ Shaftoe continued. ‘With one tooth I can determine her age at death to within plus or minus one year, but with these teeth I’d say she was in her mid- to late-twenties when she met her end. Still young enough. She had more ahead of her than she had behind her in terms of her life expectancy. Tragic, really.’
‘Indeed,’ Vicary concurred. ‘A tragedy.’
‘I mean, every corpse which is laid on one of these tables to be chopped into little pieces is here before their time,’ John Shaftoe pondered, ‘but it is the case that some are here long, long before their time, and our friend here is one of those. I’ll fax my findings to you asap, but it will almost certainly be murder – death by gunshot wounds and three bullets. The two holes in her skull are very close together, which means the gun was held up to her head, fired once then held in more or less the same place and fired a second time. Asian or Northern European female, mid- to late-twenties.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Vicary smiled. ‘It will be appreciated.’
Harry Vicary strode away from the pathology laboratory, peeling off his green disposable paper hat and coveralls as he did so, feeling pleased to be able to leave the pathos of Billy Button behind him and continuing to wonder at John Shaftoe’s charitable disposition towards the man.
Frankie Brunnie settled back in the chair and looked across the table at Andrew Cragg. He thought how dejected the man looked, how sorrowful, how awkward. The man’s immense size seemed somehow, to Brunnie, to contribute to his overall look of despair.
‘A copper.’ Cragg sighed. ‘A copper … a cozzer … I was talking to the Old Bill?’
‘Yes.’ Brunnie shrugged. ‘Sorry, mate, but yes, you were.’ He spoke in a soft, gentle tone of voice.
‘But he didn’t look like a cozzer; he didn’t look like any cozzer I ever knew … he needed a shave, he smelled like he needed a bath and he was drinking beer. What cozzer drinks on duty? I didn’t think they were allowed to do that.’
‘We are not,’ Brunnie replied. ‘He was off duty, on his way home. He was working undercover – that job was finished and he fancied a beer as a way of letting the rush hour die down a little before he continued to his home. He wasn’t supposed to look like the Old Bill, so you need not feel so bad about yourself, Andy.’
‘Yes … but still,’ Andrew Cragg moaned, ‘imagine telling a copper.’ He looked at the floor and then up to the ceiling. ‘I’ll never live it down.’
‘Well,’ Brunnie leaned forward and rested his hands on the table top, ‘you know, Andy … you don’t mind if I call you Andy?’
‘No, Mr Brunnie, Andy is all right.’
‘Good, thank you, it makes things easier. Perhaps I … we can help you there.’
‘You can?’ Andrew Cragg looked alert.
‘Possibly. You see, Andy, if you play your cards right it never need go beyond this room … well, it need never leave the police station. We can say that we were acting on information received from an anonymous source. It all depends on how much you are prepared to help us, Andy.’ Brunnie paused. ‘You see, there’s no getting away from it: you are up to your neck in it. We checked out your story because we could not ignore it. We sent a sniffer dog to the allotments which you had identified and, lo and behold, one corpse was just where you said it would be, and a female, just like you described. My boss is at the post-mortem right now, but at the allotments the Home Office pathologist—’
‘What’s a pathologist?’ Cragg asked, blinking his eyes as he looked at Brunnie.
‘A pathologist, Andy?’ Brunnie replied gently. ‘Well, he’s the geezer who cuts up dead bodies to see what made them stop working, and he decides whether they’ve been a victim of crime or not.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Andrew Cragg’s eyes brightened, ‘I’ve seen those geezers on TV. Clever old boys …’
‘I imagine you have,’ Brunnie replied, continuing to speak softly and warmly, anxious to obtain Cragg’s cooperation. It was, he felt, as if a voice in his head was saying, Easy does it, Frankie, you don’t want to scare him … you want him on your side … reel him in … that’s it, gently does it … give him some slack then a little tug … then some more slack, then another little tug.
‘I just didn’t know that that was what those geezers were called,’ Cragg said apologetically.
‘So now you know they’re called pathologists.’ Brunnie smiled. ‘Anyway, he saw the bullet holes in her head at the allotment, and we thought then that it would be the likely cause of death … so we are assuming it’s not a domestic which got out of hand, not an argument between husband and wife which got messy. It’s not the case that some geezer was shooting his old trouble and strife with a legally owned shotgun … We think it’s gangland … the old criminal fraternity.’
‘What does fraternity mean?’ Cragg asked meekly.
‘A brotherhood, Andy,’ Brunnie explained, ‘like when you’re part of a gang … I’ll watch your back and you’ll watch mine … don’t grass anyone up … they’re family … they are yours and you are theirs.’
‘Yes … fraternity,’ Cragg repeated. ‘I never knew it was called that.’
‘So you’re learning, Andy.’ Brunnie once again relaxed back in his chair. ‘That’s life, it’s one endless learning curve.’ He paused. He thought it time to give the line a little tug. ‘So, come on, Andy, you know about the murder – how much else do you know? How much more do you know? Like, especially, who else was involved? We need names, Andy.’
Andrew Cragg remained silent and looked downcast. It was, thought Brunnie, a silence borne out of fear, of a man being a long way out of his depth, rather than a silence borne out of a ‘no comment’ stubborn refusal to cooperate.
‘Look, Andy,’ Brunnie leaned forward and continued, ‘this little chat we’re having is unofficial, it’s just an easy little talk between you and me. This is not being recorded; you have no brief sitting beside you advising you what to say or how to answer. I am not writing anything down for you to sign but you will not be going anywhere when you leave the police station, except Brixton Prison.’
‘The pokey?’ Andrew Cragg sounded alarmed.
‘Can’t be anything else but remand, Andrew. You’re implicated in a murder. So come on,’ Brunnie urged, ‘get real. You’re looking at life behind bars … or a few short years … or nothing at all … it all depends on the extent of your cooperation.’
Andrew Cragg buried his head in his hands and groaned deeply, as if wishing himself a long way away. ‘I didn’t know he was the Old Bill. I had been drinking all afternoon.’
‘And you like your beer, do you, Andy?’ Brunnie asked.
‘Yes.’ Cragg nodded. ‘I like it. I’m fond of a drop, I can’t deny it.’
‘Me as well, Andy. You and me both, mate. I love it, in fact.’ Brunnie leaned back and stretched his arms. ‘I couldn’t survive without pub culture … the banter, the bar billiards, the dominos rattling on the table top, the weekly quiz nights …’
Andrew Cragg’s face brightened. ‘Pub culture – I’ve never heard it called that before … And yes, the old nights in the pub, I remember them, they went down well, like the beer. I only drink during the day now, but I remember the nights in the old battle cruisers.’
‘So you might like to think that that is something you won’t be getting a lot of in the next ten years,’ Brunnie suggested. ‘Maybe more.’
Craig looked crestfallen. ‘Ten years …’
‘Possibl
y fifteen or twenty, Andy.’ Brunnie spoke calmly but firmly. ‘It all depends on the level of your involvement, and it also all depends upon the extent of your cooperation with the police. It really is time for you to decide whose back you are going to scratch. If you want to help yourself you’ll assist the police.’
‘I want to help myself,’ Cragg whined. ‘I can’t go to prison for that sort of time.’
‘Good man.’ Brunnie smiled broadly. ‘So tell me what happened?’
‘I was on the payroll. I was on a decent wedge each week as a gofer … you know, go for this, go for that,’ Cragg explained. ‘Running errands.’
‘Yes.’ Brunnie nodded. ‘I know what a gofer is.’
‘Then I got told to carry a body from a lock-up in the East End to the allotments in New Cross.’ Cragg spoke haltingly. ‘I mean, not all the way to New Cross. I carried it from the lock-up to the van and from the van to the allotments.’
‘All right.’ Brunnie nodded slightly.
‘So we drive out to the East End, to the lock up … it was like a storage depot … and there is a woman in there, young, very small … no clothes on … nothing … she was terrified. I mean, that look in her eyes … Then this geezer, quite a small geezer, comes out of the dark, walks up to her as calm as you please, puts the gun to her head just here,’ Cragg placed his right forefinger to the middle of his forehead, ‘and shoots her twice. There was hardly a sound.’
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