Untimely Graves

by Marjorie Eccles

  There was quite a bit about this poor woman, whose body had been found floating one morning like a Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia down the very same stream into which Cleo had been gazing earlier. The Mystery Woman, they were calling her, since no one had yet come forward to identify her.

  Cleo folded the paper hurriedly and picked up a stack of forms and a pen as she heard signs of George’s client leaving. She was a middle-aged woman who’d obviously been crying, but as she left she smiled a rather watery thank-you at Cleo as she sprang up to open the outer door for her. It looked as though she’d been too worried before she came out to do anything but put on the first things that had come to hand – a shocking pink scarf tied anyhow over her greying hair, a coral lipstick that hadn’t been designed for someone with her colouring and had smeared on her lips. Her emerald green jacket, though smart, went with neither. All the same, Cleo noticed her noticing her own admittedly scruffy jeans and baggy sweater. Oh Lor’! If her appearance was enough to make someone in that state give her a reproving glance, she was going to have to raid Jenna’s wardrobe for something more suitable to come to the office in.

  She made some tea and took a mug into her father. He told her the woman was called Ruby and she wanted him to try and find her daughter.

  ‘Ruby what?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Ruby. Evelyn Ruby. Her daughter Sara left home about three months ago without leaving a note or taking any of her clothes. Her mum’s aggrieved that the police don’t want to know. But that’s how it is, Sara’s over twenty-one and if she’s left home of her own accord, there isn’t really a lot anybody can do.’

  ‘You can’t afford not to take the case, though, can you? It’s business.’

  She sounded just like her mother, but he smiled. ‘So it is. I’ve told Mrs Ruby I’ll do what I can but not to be surprised if I can’t find Sara. If anyone of her age doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be. I’ll either find her straight away or not at all. If I do succeed, it’s odds on she won’t want to go home. Ten to one she’s gone off with some man her family wouldn’t approve of.’

  Cleo felt sorry for Mrs Ruby – and for her father, come to that, lumbered with such a thankless task. But Sara Ruby had her sympathy too, wanting to hide away. There’d been times, lately, when she’d felt like doing exactly the same thing.

  2

  He’d just finished breakfast and was shrugging himself into his jacket when the phone in the kitchen rang. ‘Mayo.’

  ‘Thought I might catch you before you left, Gil. Sorry I didn’t ring last night.’

  ‘Alex!’ His mouth lifted in an involuntary smile, just at the sound of her voice. Especially since she was ringing him before eight, mornings never being her best time. Even more especially considering her previous assertions that she and her fellow course-members were kept up until all hours every night, up to the eyebrows in work. But touched, and, knowing Alex, not having far to look for the reason: though she’d never admit it openly, she was worried about him, unable to forget what hell the last few weeks had been for him. He felt warmed by this unnecessary concern, but it had to be admitted that, though he’d toughed it out, as usual, it had been no picnic. And not only for himself as detective superintendent, but for every other senior officer in the Division also.

  They talked for a while, catching up on what had happened the day before. When they’d just about exhausted that, she asked, ‘What did you have for dinner last night?’

  ‘Dinner?’ he repeated, momentarily thrown.

  ‘Food. You know, the stuff that fuels the body and keeps it going.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ He laughed. ‘I had one of those M & S microwave things you left in the freezer.’ He cast a guilty glance over his shoulder towards his supper – and breakfast – dishes still stacked unrinsed and forgotten in the sink. Still waiting to be put in the dishwasher, an unthinkable sin to Alex. He thanked the Lord his life hadn’t yet encompassed the horrors of video telephones.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Which one what?’

  ‘Which meal did you have?’

  He found he had to search his memory. ‘The beef. Boeuf bourgnignon. It was delicious.’ He was able to say this with perfect truth and felt it absolved him from adding that half an hour after midnight, he’d found it necessary to get up out of bed and make a large cheese and pickle sandwich to fill up the yawning spaces. His friend Henry Ison, the police doctor, had once told him that a low blood-sugar level was not conducive to proper sleep. Alex’s understanding of how much food was good for him and his waistline didn’t necessarily coincide with his own. In his opinion, one-portion, microwaved meals were meant only for women and weeds. Someone of his size needed more than that to keep body and soul together.

  She went on, uncannily percipient, ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Like a log,’ he lied.

  ‘Hmm.’ Never mind video, he couldn’t deceive her, though it was partly true.

  It wasn’t an empty stomach alone that had kept him awake. But the sandwich, and a cup of tea, had helped him put a brake on the merry-go-round of unprofitable thoughts which had prevented him dropping off. After it, his stomach comfortably full, his thoughts in proportion again, he’d slept at least better than he had in a month.

  The cold-blooded murder of a local football star, shot through the passenger window of his car when he drew up at a red light at 3 a.m. one morning, had sent earthquake tremors throughout the Division, not without justification. Danny Fermanagh had been a lad of Irish immigrant parentage and native charm who was going places, a clean-cut boy hero, whose murder had touched a collective local nerve. His adoring public hadn’t wanted to believe the truth that emerged, that Danny, when he wasn’t playing for Lavenstock United, had been involved in small-time drugs dealing. When the killer wasn’t immediately apprehended, the police became the scapegoat: they’d had a tip-off about Fermanagh’s drug-dealing connections some time ago, it was alleged in the press – without revealing how this knowledge had been come by – and had apparently ignored it. The truth was something different, but it wasn’t expedient to say so. The footballer had been watched for months, with one particular undercover detective detailed to get matey with him in an attempt to net the bigger fish who were supplying him: Danny-boy was notoriously loose-lipped when he’d had a noggin or two. Unfortunately, those behind him had taken matters into their own hands and shut him up permanently before he could say anything too revealing.

  There’d been mistakes, yes, a reluctance to act quickly, failures of communication. Allegations of CID bullying in their attempts to pull in witnesses. However unfounded, and most of the accusations were, as Mayo knew full well, it was no surprise that Joe Public, goaded by some sections of the media, saw the whole affair as a typical police cock-up which the Division as a whole was having to live down. There was to be the inevitable enquiry, though it was felt within the Division that Mayo had been dealt a tough hand. He had a very good private idea of the killer – or, more correctly, those who were behind the murder – but that didn’t mean, even if more resources had been available – which they were not – that he’d ever get the person who’d pulled the trigger. This, he felt ominously, was going to be one of the few stickers of his career, one of those cases which were never solved. Not one that he’d ever forget, though.

  But inevitably other crimes were waiting, other problems had come along and Danny had now been consigned to that limbo labelled ‘Pending’.

  He looked at his watch, not wanting to be the one who terminated the conversation, but Alex seemed reluctant to let him go. ‘You’re looking after Moses all right? Don’t forget his vitamin supplements, will you?’

  This was just filling in time! She knew better than he that there was no chance whatever of him not looking after the cat – Moses himself would see to that, self-preservation being his middle name. As for vitamin supplements … ‘That cat’s going to live to 120, vitamins or not,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who needs the supplements.’

  Alex l
aughed, and at last said she must go. ‘Back to the salt mines. I’ll be home tomorrow. Two whole days’ rest from this madhouse!’ She didn’t sound overwhelmed by it. ‘Love you, Gil.’

  ‘Love you, and miss you, too,’ he answered, inadequate as this was to express what he wanted to say. Unable, as always, to say more. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said drily, ‘I’ll really try.’

  In line with the recommendations of her new job, she’d been sent on this two-week training course, with a weekend break in the middle. He hoped she was enjoying it: the idea of dramatis personae from the Crown Prosecution Service gathered together for two weeks of each other’s company filled him with a horrified amusement, but Alex had said she was actually looking forward to it – and it sounded as though she was in fact relishing it. Unfairly, this made him feel badly done by. She knew that he, along with most other police officers, trod warily with the CPS, who, like as not, saw fit to throw out as unsafe for prosecution, due to what they considered insufficient evidence or whatever, cases the police had toiled over for months. He appreciated that her new career was giving her a buzz and he was glad for her, but he didn’t have to like what she was doing. It smelled too much of collusion. Sleeping with the enemy.

  Because he felt guilty, thinking like that, he dutifully stacked the dishes in the machine before he went out. He also went to feed the parrot, who was tuning up for his morning recital, his shrieks sounding even more demonic than usual. Sometimes Mayo thought he’d be better off living in Oxford Circus than in this menagerie, where the occupants did not live in harmony. It would certainly be quieter.

  Moses was sitting in front of Bert’s cage, his eyes lit with an unblinking, malevolent yellow glint. No wonder the parrot was losing it. One day I’ll get you, the cat’s gaze said. Try it, said Bert’s mad glare. Mayo resisted temptation, and shut the cat in the kitchen.

  It was just on eight when he walked into Milford Road Divisional Headquarters, having decided to make time to walk down the hill to work, loosen up, clear his head and maybe tune into some of that feel good factor he heard so much about. He was met with the usual controlled hubbub associated with changing shifts that issued from the office behind the front desk – doors banging, telephones ringing, exchange of banter. He asked, as he normally did, to see the night duty officer’s occurrence book, and glanced through the usual depressing spate of crimes – drunk and disorderlies, acts of vandalism, car thefts. Routine stuff. And housebreaking. It looked very much as though Lavenstock’s finest were signally failing to come to grips with this last.

  ‘There’s a lot of it about,’ pointed out the desk sergeant, Light by name, miserable old sod by nature, when he saw Mayo’s eyes resting thoughtfully on the entries. ‘Four again last night. All that grief, just for drug money! I’d show ‘em.’

  ‘Hmm. Inspector Moon in, yet?’

  ‘No, sir, not yet,’ Light answered with relish, looking pointedly at the clock. Tough as old boots, he hated all policewomen on principle, and Abigail Moon in particular, since she didn’t put up with his old buck and gave as good as she got.

  ‘Right. Tell her I’d like to see her when she gets in, will you?’

  Light said it would be a pleasure.

  The door next to Mayo was flung open and a hefty young policewoman bounced through, nearly knocking him over. He dimly remembered seeing her around. A big girl. Beefy red arms under a short-sleeved white shirt, moon face, mouse-brown hair streaked blonde and pulled tight back in a scrunch. ‘Nobody ever tell you standing behind doors is an unsocial act?’ she demanded, before she saw who it was. ‘Whoops, sorry, sir – I thought it was someone else!’ Her face turned as red as her arms.

  ‘My fault, shouldn’t have been standing there. No harm done.’ He regained his balance, nodded to show there was no ill feeling and turned to make his way up the stairs.

  ‘Tracey,’ he heard Sergeant Light ponderously behind him, ‘a word in your shell-like.’

  Who was she?

  No one had yet come forward to identify the woman found in the flooded uplands.

  She had been discovered by two small brothers, indulging in forbidden activity. It was Saturday morning and they’d been intent on making the most of being off school on a day miraculously free from rain, and set off to fish in what at that point was normally a dismal trickle of water yielding nothing more interesting than sticklebacks and tadpoles. Now, it had suddenly, magically, become a river. Had they but known it, the Kyne had always been officially classed as a river, though it was never much more than a brook anywhere along its course, sliding lazily along in its upper reaches, becoming somewhat swifter and wider before joining the more robust Stockwell in its own deep valley … where Lavenstock, back in the mists of time, had started as a medieval river-bank settlement, expanded when it was drawn into the Black Country industrial developmental sprawl, and now spread its residential suburbs inexorably upwards towards the hills on either side.

  The two boys, from one of the estates past which the Kyne meandered, had got more than their act of disobedience warranted. Inexpertly casting their lines, they’d convinced themselves that the thing on which one of their hooks had fastened must at least be a huge salmon, if not a shark, swimming around in there. Reeling in his line, shrill with excitement, the ten-year-old at last drew forward what was attached to it: a horrid, bloated thing which had drifted into the far bank, become wedged under a group of low-branched alders and balsam, and was now freed.

  The boys, who’d been warned they’d be given what for, and not half, if their parents caught them messing around near the floods, had abruptly abandoned their tackle and fled in terror, as quickly as their wellies sinking into the squelchy mud would allow. Shane wasn’t for telling what they’d seen, but Darren, who was only eight, was blubbing for his mum (something he’d hotly deny later) and in the end Shane was glad they had told when the police cars and ambulance arrived and he had the kudos of telling his story to the police. It was as well he didn’t know then that he’d remember it in his dreams for years to come.

  Five days later, nothing had yet come of appeals in the media for anyone who might have information on a missing woman, but that was perhaps understandable, in view of what the postmortem had revealed – what had now, inevitably, become public knowledge. It could no longer be assumed that her death was an accident, or that she’d been one of those poor unfortunates who had finally surrendered to the water a life that had proved too much to endure.

  Mayo opened the pathologist’s report and flipped through it again. The unknown woman hadn’t drowned, either by accident or intent, as had at first seemed, but had been murdered before being tipped into the water, two days before she was found, it was estimated. Which meant she had died a week ago today.

  She was about forty years of age, previously healthy and well-nourished. A tall woman, five foot eight inches, having fair, shoulder-length hair, blue eyes and an unusually perfect set of teeth, without any extractions, fillings, crowns or cappings, so that the possibility of ever tracing her through dental records was remote. Nothing on her clothing helped to identify her: Marks and Spencer underwear and tights, a grey skirt from the same source, a sweater and shirt without distinguishing labels. When she had been found, she’d been shoeless, and so far the shoes had not been found, probably never would be. There was no ring on her wedding finger, but the condition of her swollen flesh made it impossible to say whether there ever had been one which had been removed. Although it had still been possible to obtain prints from her fingers, these hadn’t been found to match any in the National Computer index of criminal fingerprints. Truly The Mystery Woman the newspapers had dubbed her.

  He pushed his chair back and walked over to the large-scale map of the area hanging on the wall. The murder, when it had been revealed as such, had at least served to deflect the relentless attentions of the press from the Fermanagh affair. Which couldn’t fail to be welcome, notwithstanding the choked feelings of ra
ge and pity the untimely death of a fellow human being never failed to provoke in Mayo, however many he encountered, and by now they were numberless. But, as usual, he summoned up a pragmatic detachment, the only way he knew how to cope with it, knowing the next few days would demand total dedication from him, and from all his team: the slog of endless and mostly unproductive questioning, snatched, irregular meals, a willingness to forgo sleep, when and if necessary.

  But this time it hadn’t happened that way. Frustration was all that had happened, like butting your head into a feather pillow. Despite a well-mounted enquiry, the woman might as well have appeared from below the water as magically as Excalibur. The days went by and nothing turned up. Not a soul admitted to having seen or heard anything suspicious in the vicinity of where the body had been found, no gunshot had been heard, no untoward disturbances had occurred anywhere nearby. No one resembling her had been seen around the place either, as far as this could be ascertained from the police artist’s impression of what she might have looked like when she was alive. But this didn’t really convey anything, except that she’d looked like a million other women. Nondescript, eyes blue, hair fair. No distinguishing features. Misper – the Missing Persons Register – had been consulted, with negative results. One thing was certain, however – she hadn’t put herself into the water, and common sense said she must have gone in not too far away from where she’d been found.

  Someone, somewhere, must have known her. She couldn’t simply have slipped out of life and left no ripples. Or could she? People did. In London, floaters were regularly brought in from the Thames and never identified, known only, and eventually buried, by numbers: DB 548. Dead Body 548. A sad, small, insignificant detail, but unthinkable, shocking, even to those not easily shocked. But that was the Met, big city policing, and this was Lavenstock, Mayo’s bailiwick, under his jurisdiction, where it was his job to oversee the keeping of the peace, and where a drowned person was, thank God, still a rarity.