The Body in the Marsh

by Nick Louth

Poulet stared belligerently at Gillard and then said in fractured English. ‘You are the man who failed to find the fugitive murderer Knight, non? Maybe you should get back to your own work.’

  Glomiquet made his own apologies to Gillard as Raymond Poulet strode back to his car. Gillard didn’t blame Poulet for being irritated. He was being questioned about a death in France by some off-duty English policeman who didn’t even speak French. But every family deserved an answer, and Gillard knew that somewhere a Syrian family would be sick with worry. Gillard thanked Glomiquet, wished him a good journey, and said he would be in contact again soon, if he ever got on the cold-case review.

  ‘Yeah, so, what about that professor, eh? Knew how to give us the slip, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Gillard muttered, but Glomiquet didn’t hear. The French inspector had already turned the Citroën around, and the liaison officer had to hurry to get in.

  Kathy looked up at Gillard, and saw the dissatisfaction radiating from him. ‘There’s nothing you can do, Craig,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he said. Gillard ducked under the crime tape and entered the courtyard. Kathy followed. ‘Are we allowed to do this?’ she asked.

  ‘Nope.’ Gillard looked at the yard, a few dozen square yards of hard-standing which had over the years been fractured by weeds. He could clearly see where a car had been left. All around the yard the nettles and rosebay willowherb were high and lush, except for a car-sized area where brown stems were flattened, and only now were fresh shoots emerging. He looked around for 15 minutes, but could find nothing of interest.

  * * *

  Gillard was back at his desk in Mount Browne on the Monday, and he’d no sooner got a coffee and logged onto his computer before Shireen Corey-Williams tracked him down. ‘Good time in France?’

  ‘Yes, a very interesting insight into French investigative priorities,’ he said. Gillard knew he would be unwise to let anyone know that he had travelled abroad with a witness in the Knight case. If Rigby found out, he’d be crucified.

  ‘Rob Townsend’s been keeping me up to date,’ she said. ‘First off, he looked for the previous owner of the car before Mrs Jones, but it seems it was bought for cash at an auction in Hampshire. They say they have no idea what the purchaser looked like.’

  Gillard grunted. Whoever bought the car knew how to maximize anonymity. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. We got a bit of luck with Eurotunnel. The car was booked through to France by a Mrs Pamela Jones on Wednesday, 21 October 2016 at 9.45 a.m.’

  ‘Just a week after Liz died. I wonder if Mrs Jones is our accomplice.’

  Shireen smiled. ‘Maybe. I requested the full file details from the Passport Agency to go with that passport number, and here it is.’ She led Gillard to her desk and pulled up the PDFs of the scanned documents.

  Pamela Jones had an utterly average name matched by an utterly average face. The passport picture wasn’t great, but it showed her as about 50 with fleshy cheeks, a slight double chin, big round purple-framed spectacles and a mass of dense dark curls, held back by an Alice band. Pleasant looking but plain, forgettable in any crowd.

  ‘So here’s what we have about her,’ Shireen said. ‘Born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1964, maiden name Robinson. Widowed. No kids. The passport was applied for in early 2015, and was her first. The only record we have for it being used is on that Le Shuttle departure to France. One way. There is no record that she ever came back.’

  Tracing the passport holder’s onward travels wouldn’t be easy; Gillard knew that from previous experience of tracking criminals who fled the UK. There were normally no checks within Europe’s huge Schengen passport-free area, and the only automatic notifications would be of an arrival back into the UK, or of trips to the US, where the Advanced Passenger Information System required a separate notification. Apart from that it would be down to making requests to each and every airline, ferry operator and train company. No easy task, Gillard thought ruefully, even with a dozen officers to call on. If only she weren’t called Jones, the second most common name in the UK. More than half a million, probably hundreds of Pamelas among them.

  ‘She doesn’t look to me like a refugee smuggler. And I may only be a woman,’ she said, looking up at Craig, ‘but I don’t detect the exotic beauty that might have inspired Martin Knight to commit murder.’

  Gillard laughed. ‘No, I couldn’t agree more. But then passport pictures can make Beyoncé look like Ken Dodd.’

  ‘But not vice versa, sadly,’ Shireen said.

  Craig smiled at her, then on the screen he flicked through the copies of a neat passport application, and the original photo booth pictures the Passport Agency had sent. He suddenly noticed Shireen inhale and stiffen. A malign presence loomed behind them. He turned around to see Alison Rigby, a mug of coffee in hand.

  ‘What’s this about refugee smuggling? Got a new case?’

  ‘No ma’am. An unidentified body has turned up in a car in France, and we were wondering—’

  ‘Whether it was the rest of your ex-girlfriend, I suppose.’ She came over to them and the two detectives parted to let the chief constable look at the screen and the pile of documents. She picked up the top sheaf and began to read. ‘From my schoolgirl French it seems the body is of a Syrian national. I may be a bit slow, but I don’t see the relevance.’ Rigby turned and glared at Gillard. ‘It’s not as if you don’t have a full caseload.’

  Gillard’s Adam’s apple slid slowly up then down. ‘There may indeed be a connection to the Knight case, ma’am, because the car was found dumped at the holiday home of Mrs Knight’s best friend Kathy Parkinson. It’s a British-registered vehicle which crossed to France on a date that Martin Knight would have found useful, had he been able to hide in it. And we now know the name of the woman who owned it and drove it abroad.’

  ‘Really.’ Rigby tossed the documents back and stood with her hands on her hips.

  Craig then summoned all his courage and asked. ‘And I was wondering if I could get your permission to briefly visit France again to see the vehicle and the body. Once I’ve made more progress on the car.’

  Rigby gave him a hard and discomforting stare. ‘As you are clearly obsessed by the Knight case, it would be obtuse of me not to let you apply your talents formally. Dobbs has had nearly a year and hasn’t made any more progress than you did. At least you are coming up with some fresh ideas.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She scrutinized him thoughtfully for a full minute. ‘All right. You can go to France. And I’ll let Dobbs know that you are once again leading the investigation. We can reopen the incident room in Caterham too.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Gillard said, trying to suppress his grin.

  * * *

  With Rigby’s backing, the trail of Pamela Jones hotted up. Having a common name was only a slight inconvenience to Gillard in tracking her down. The hospital referred the question of her employment to an agency which confirmed that Mrs Jones had worked for them as a ward cleaner for six years until 2013. The addresses on file matched the one she had moved out of, plus an earlier London address in Streatham. The employment record enabled DS Corey-Williams to access Mrs Jones’s National Insurance record, which revealed that she had last worked at an electricity showroom in Wolverhampton in 2016. Two more phone calls, and Shireen had a current address.

  Four days after getting hold of Mrs Jones’s passport, the woman herself was sitting in an interview room in Wolverhampton’s Bilston Street police station opposite DCI Craig Gillard and DS Shireen Corey-Williams. And she looked absolutely terrified.

  ‘The reason we’ve asked you to be here today is to help us in connection with the death of a Syrian man, Mr Mohammed ben Alighassir,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Death? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  He passed across a photocopy of her passport and a sheaf of paperwork. ‘Mrs Jones, we know that on Wednesday, 21October 2016 at 9.45 a.m. you took your Peugeot 407 on Le Shuttle
at Ashford International station to Calais. We don’t know exactly where you went after that, or how you got back without using your passport, but we’d very much like to.’

  Mrs Jones was speechless. ‘I haven’t got a car any more. Nor a passport.’

  Gillard had to admit that Mrs Jones gave an absolutely brilliant rendition of shocked and innocent helplessness. He pointed to the photocopy. ‘This is you, yes? Your photograph?’

  She nodded. ‘But I’ve not been abroad since I was a girl. I did have a temporary passport once, but I got seasick on the ferry to Ireland. I never applied for this one. Honest.’

  Shireen held up two sheets of paper. Impatience was scribbled all over her face. ‘We got all the details from the passport office. Your application form, signed. Your submitted photograph. The details of your address. The utility bills and credit card statements you sent in, with your name on, all tied to this address.’

  ‘But I didn’t apply for it. I didn’t send any photos, or bills. You’ve got the wrong person. You must be mistaken. Jones is a very popular name.’

  Shireen laughed incredulously. ‘Look here, Mrs Jones,’ she said pointing at the passport photocopy. ‘It’s not just a random Jones, is it? This is your own face, you would agree with that? How did anyone else get these photos of you? Did they push you in a booth at gunpoint? Now it’s not unheard of for someone to pinch someone else’s identity to get a passport. But they would usually put their own photograph in if they intend to use it, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I don’t know.’ She was twisting a wedding ring on her finger. Tears were not far away.

  ‘Okay, Mrs Jones, let’s start with the basics,’ Craig said in a gentle voice. He shuffled through the papers and selected a water bill, which he pushed across to her. ‘Okay, have you ever lived there?’ He tapped his finger on the address portion.

  She read the address out: ‘146B Manor Road, Thornton Heath. Yes. From 2013 to 2014.’ She actually smiled, as if this was the first piece of good news she had received all day.

  Gillard snatched back the statement and looked at it, his brain racing. Why hadn’t he checked this before? ‘Would you excuse us a minute?’ He then guided Shireen outside into the corridor.

  ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Two things,’ he said. ‘One, from the first moment we sat down, it was absolutely obvious to me that this is not the Mrs Jones we are looking for. She has no idea what we’re on about, and she’s clearly not the sharpest knife in the block. But the second thing which I bloody should have noticed is the address.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s only when she read it out I knew. 146B Manor Road in Thornton Heath is one of Liz Knight’s rental properties. I’ve been there. It’s upstairs from Horvat’s flat. Oliver Knight showed me around it.’

  ‘That’s a coincidence, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Craig. ‘That is no coincidence.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It took an intervention by the chief constable with her opposite number in Caen to get permission for Craig Gillard to be allowed to view the body found in the boot of the Peugeot. It was already Thursday, and he didn’t want to wait until the following week in case the French decided to give up waiting for the Syrian embassy and cremate the poor man. He booked a last-minute flight late on Friday morning, hired a car and drove straight to the main police station in Caen to meet the duty liaison officer.

  A female uniformed officer in her 40s wearing the tightest skirt he’d ever seen was waiting for him. She repeated her enormously long hyphenated name for him three times, but all he caught was her first name: Liliane. After some pro forma security checks, she drove him to a secure car pound nearby where the Peugeot 407 was parked, along with dozens of other seized vehicles.

  ‘It is good you came today. On Monday it will be gone,’ she said, handing him the keys.

  Craig looked across at her. ‘Why?’

  ‘The case is closed.’ She handed him a document. ‘A charity in Greece managed to trace Mrs ben Alighassir, the man’s wife, who lives in a hostel in Berlin. She came over yesterday and identified the body.’

  ‘How? It’s a skeleton!’

  ‘What is the problem? It’s all in here,’ she said, waving the document. ‘She got separated from her husband when a refugee boat capsized, and now she has found him. So no case.’

  ‘No DNA test?’

  ‘Why spend 400 euros of taxpayer money to confirm what we already know?’

  Gillard looked heavenward. ‘But I have traced the owner of the car in the UK, as I mentioned on the phone.’

  ‘The deadline for claiming the vehicle back is past.’ She looked at him blankly.

  ‘Well, let’s see.’ Craig donned a pair of latex gloves and walked round the vehicle. It was a 2009 model, in poor condition, with two hub caps missing. The windscreen was still choked with dead leaves and twigs that had presumably fallen on it over the year it was parked at La Porcherie. They were indeed horse chestnuts. The battery was flat, so the automatic unlocks didn’t work. Craig used the key to open the driver-side door. It was tidy. There was nothing in the side pockets or the glove compartment. The back seat area offered no insights either. Finally he opened the boot which, appropriately enough, smelled as if someone had died in there.

  ‘I presume forensics have been all through this?’ Craig asked.

  Liliane drew deeply on the cigarette that Gillard hadn’t notice her light. ‘I have no idea.’ The smoke curled slowly from each nostril. Craig decided that she wasn’t anywhere near as attractive as he first thought. He said a perfunctory goodbye to Liliane, realizing that he had better get a move on to visit another corpse.

  The Caen mortuary was a newly constructed and anonymous building on an industrial estate, wedged between a manufacturer of garden furniture and a tractor dealership. Gillard’s was the only car in its car park, and the office door appeared to be locked, the blind half lowered. Well, it was France, and it was 2.45 p.m. on a Friday. Gillard, who had let the mortuary manager know he was coming, stood impatiently for 15 minutes before a white Toyota van drove into the car park. A dark-haired young man, perhaps 25, in jeans, sunglasses and Guns N’ Roses T-shirt emerged and waved a hand in which he held a burger, its paper shiny with grease. A piece of onion sat on the edge of his chin, contemplating further descent.

  ‘I’m Christophe,’ he said, his mouth half full, offering a large meaty paw.

  Gillard shook it and introduced himself. ‘Are you the manager?’

  ‘No, just a technician,’ he said, as he consumed the last half in a single anaconda bite, balled the paper and tossed it into the badly managed flower borders. He slid his fingers down his jeans, from the look of them his habitual degreasing routine. ‘Who is it you want to meet?’ He made it sound like a visit to some home for the elderly. Gillard read out the case number he had been given.

  ‘Ah, him.’ Christophe unlocked the door, powered up his PC and fiddled about with various other items at the desk. He leaned over his chair, bashed various numbers into the keyboard with clumsy but practised fingers, and called up a record. Gillard could make out many lines of writing in the reflection on Christophe’s glasses.

  ‘Has an autopsy been requested?’ Gillard said.

  Christophe shook his head. ‘The only reason he’s not been cremated yet is because the coroner hasn’t yet countersigned the identity confirmation signed by his wife.’

  ‘What do you have down as the cause of death?’

  Christophe scanned the screen. ‘NNS.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Natural, non-specific. The text says that because of the decomposition it wasn’t possible—’

  ‘Okay, I get it,’ Gillard said. He knew a ‘get out of jail free’ when he saw one. ‘Can I see him?’

  Christophe nodded, and rummaged in his desk before finally discovering the keys to the door behind him. He led Gill
ard into a bare corridor which had various metal doors going off to either side. Industrial-sized cartons of what could have been bleach or disinfectant were stacked along one wall, and their taint added an edge to the cool air. At the end Christophe unlocked a hospital-style set of double doors. The room beyond was large, the same size as an exhaust-fitting centre, but bare of everything but a series of giant filing cabinets against one wall. The disinfectant tang did not completely hide the odour of death and decomposition, something that Gillard thought he would never get used to. Christophe grabbed a gurney which lay next to a wall and rode it across the room like a kid riding shotgun on a supermarket trolley. Just before it crashed into the cabinets he jumped off and trod on the footbrake. He then manoeuvred the gurney against a cabinet door, pulled the door open, and slid out a surprisingly diminutive body bag.

  ‘Voilà. Mohammed ben Alighassir. Do you really want me to open it?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ The bag was inflated with gases, so he knew this wasn’t going to be pleasant. Christophe went and fetched two plastic aprons, face masks and plastic gloves.

  Even with all that, Gillard was unprepared for the stench that gusted from the bag when he opened it just a few inches. The corpse was curled up on its side like a huge foetus, still dressed in what had once been a loose long shirt and dark trousers. The body was mostly skeletal, but waxy strips of dried flesh still clung to one side of the ribcage to the clothing, and the underneath of the skull. Rust-brown skin, delicate as parchment, scrolled around stick-thin limbs.

  ‘The body must have been tightly sealed against the air in the boot, so the anaerobic digesters in the gut just got to work. Good job we didn’t find him after three months. He’d just have been a big bag of goop,’ Christophe said.

  ‘Definitely male?’ Gillard asked

  ‘Sure,’ Christophe shrugged.

  In places the body appeared to be glued by the remaining flesh to a section of a plasticized canvas, in which were dried, porridge-like lumps. ‘What’s that?’ Gillard asked.