Cliff Edge: a gripping psychological mystery

by Florrie Palmer

  DS Ross Evans drives Jane in a police Land Rover, a couple of officers following in a van in which to transport the body to the morgue. It takes about an hour to drive north to Moylegrove. The land is still covered with the remains of the snow that has partly melted then refrozen. It is not far from the Cauldron, about twenty minutes on foot. But Jane has mapped the route and with Sergeant Evans feeling slightly nervous, they drive on along a narrow lane towards the coast. They find a spot where they can park on the edge of the lane and walk the rest of the way. They have walking poles, necessary in these conditions when you get close to the edges of the cliffs, some of which are crumbling in places. It is about one degree above zero with a chill that in spite of their thick puffer jackets, they can feel cutting through them. Their faces hurt from the bite of the wind.

  By half past three that afternoon, Jane and Evans are standing on the frost-covered south side of the Cauldron as near to the cliff edge as they dare.

  ‘How deep would you say it is, ma’am?’

  ‘I’d guess about 200 feet.’

  ‘Agree, ma’am. I’d say so too.’

  Jane glances at Evans who is paler than usual. But for once he is not shuffling. Shows he doesn’t have to, she thinks.

  A couple of coastguards, two officers from Fishguard and an extra trained climber to aid the descent are already waiting. Jane peers down, scanning the choppy water. It is not easy to see at first but she eventually spots the corpse in a corner emerging from some overhanging rock. A disturbing sight, it seems something has hold of its feet as the waves buffet it about. A life-size balloon figure in a dark coat bobbing about in the water. Jane fiddles to get a clear focus through her binoculars. She moves the glasses to the swollen, bloated mess of a face but it is too far to get a proper look.

  They wait for the tide to go out a little further and as edges of the beach begin to appear the climber starts to descend the sheer, ragged edges of the blowhole. Slowly, he moves across the rock face toward the patch of large pebbles.

  At approximately the same time, a small motorboat slowly enters the cave through a tunnel of rock. It is battered and rocked by the sea but its highly experienced skipper is a lifeboat crew member. He sees the body and drives the boat as close and as steady as he can in the choppy, tricky waters while the photographer leans forward, studies the body and shoots some pictures.

  The diver lowers himself carefully over the side of the boat into the sea and swims to the body’s feet. Watching through her binoculars, Jane sees that what has hold of the body is not a witch but a fissure into which, thrown by the waves at the rock face, one foot has become wedged. The diver sets about releasing the trapped foot while the climber descends to the small beach. Having freed the body, the diver drags it through the water to the climber. Jane bets they feel queasy as, from what she can now see, the body is not a pretty sight.

  A stretcher has been lowered down after the climber. The diver helps and the two men cover, strap and secure the distended, heavy corpse to it.

  The coastguard officer above gets the thumbs up and slowly winches the body upwards while the climber goes up alongside it, helping to keep it level to prevent it from hitting the rockface.

  Everyone claps when the man makes it back to safety. He shudders with relief. It is definitely the worst thing he has ever had to do. The horrible remains of a face, mouth minus lips gaping, the swollen body blued by the water with its enormous pregnant-looking belly almost bursting out of its coat, puffed up thighs and cracked, wrinkled walking boots is a shocking sight. It looks barely human. Even the fleece gloves have been nibbled at. Safely covered, the stretcher must now be carried by two men on foot across the steep, slippery, dangerous terrain. It’s quite a way back to the van and they must be as quick as they can. When a submerged body that has been in cold water is brought ashore, decomposition will happen at an accelerated rate. Even after just a few hours, its appearance may be completely changed; so it should be examined as soon as possible.

  Standing watching the scene, Jane hears one constable say to the other, ‘As kids we were scared of the place and would never go near the edge. Good thing we didn’t. The witches down there are real, it seems.’

  Jane and Evans return to Fishguard where they grab some sandwiches and tea. While she eats hers in her makeshift office, the police photographer arrives with a clutch of printed photos of the body in the water. Jane pins them to the temporary whiteboard that has been hastily erected on one wall of their new room. She writes down the details of the case as known so far.

  Now she calls Carys, who never delays answering. She is as reliable as anyone can be although quite often she does nip back to her own house with various excuses when she should really stay with Meg. But Jane knows she was lucky to find her and that she is a good woman with a kind heart.

  ‘Carys, sorry to call again so soon, but I’m going to be late back. Not sure what time. We’ve had a major incident here and it’s going to take up a lot of my time. I’m going to need your help even more than I usually do.’

  Carys interrupts, ‘No worries, no worries at all. Now then, Jane, all you got to do is just tell me what’s needed, see, and then you know you can leave it to me, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh Carys, you’re my saviour. A real angel. For tonight I’ll need you to go in at about six thirty and get Meg her tea. Then would it be okay to stay with her till I get back? Should be at about eight-ish.’

  ‘I’ll just have to pop back to get my husband his tea after but apart from that I’ll stay with Meg. No worries, no worries,’ says Carys again. ‘I’ll go across now, in a minute.’ Jane knew well what that phrase meant but also that Carys would not let her down. Carys’ husband Tom works as a carpet-fitter in Carmarthen.

  ‘Oh, thank you. And could you please feed Marmy?’

  ‘Of course I will, Janey, of course I will. You know you can trust me. You can trust me.’

  ‘Carys, I know I can do that.’ Carys does so love to fish for approbation. ‘Can I call you in the morning and fill you in a bit more – so sorry but in a bit of a rush right now. Bless you. Speak tomorrow.’

  ‘No worries, no worries,’ she can hear Carys saying as she rings off. As she leaves the police station, she thinks it’s funny the way the woman invariably repeats herself. Then, taking Evans with her, she drives to the coroner’s office in Milford Haven to see the forensic pathologist assigned to the case.

  A tall, greying, avuncular man, Max Granger is bent over a naked, swollen, green-and-purple female cadaver lying face up in a shallow metal bath. He dictates to his eager young female assistant as he examines the body. She has a recorder switched on in case she misses anything. In a matter-of-fact tone, he articulates his observations.

  ‘Well, let’s see. Female, hard to tell the age on account of water damage to the skin but twenties to thirties, certainly not older. Maceration of the skin, pale areas of hypostasis, adipocere formation and where the skin has absorbed the water it has begun to peel away from the underlying tissue…’

  One cheek has a flap of wrinkled flesh extending outward from the face. It has clearly been gnawed at but then most of the rest of the facial flesh is missing. The flesh around the mouth is completely missing and the exposed teeth grin in a grotesque manner. Both eyes are also gone. The entire corpse is disgustingly white and wrinkled. Even through their masks, the stench can be easily detected. But Max doesn’t notice. He is so used to the smell of formaldehyde and decaying flesh. He studies one of the corpse’s thighs where something has managed to get in through the clothing and has nibbled a fair amount of flesh. It’s astounding how quickly these sea creatures cotton onto a free meal.

  ‘Give us a hand, would you?’ He nods to his assistant who helps him roll the body over, which must be done with great care.

  Among many other contusions where the body has smacked against rock, Max spots a small, livid, circular bruise in the lower centre of the back. Holding a magnifying glass over it, he studies it for so
me time before measuring it with a minutely precise tool while declaring the figures out loud.

  Having finished with his exam of the outside of the corpse, he now indicates he needs help to roll the body over onto its back again. The girl obliges.

  Max fetches a large, intensely-sharp knife and slowly splits open the trunk of the body, starting at the gullet and cutting carefully right down the centre to the groin. He peels back the flesh as he goes. He then cuts through both sides of the rib cage, before cutting out the sternum with two sides of ribs still attached to it. He puts the whole thing to one side. Now the lungs, heart and trachea become visible. Thick, sticky blood has pooled either side in the chest cavities. This he ladles into a plastic jug and tips down the drain at the bottom of the bath. Having disposed of two jugs-full, he then removes the high internal organs. Putting them on a table to one side, here with a smaller knife he first slices open and examines the trachea followed by the lungs and then the heart.

  With the same knife he now removes the face and hair all in one piece, leaving a bald, faceless scalp and head. Taking a hacksaw, he saws away across the front of the head to get at and remove the brain, which joins the other body parts on the table.

  Apart from the noise of the saw on bone, silence has reigned while he has been at this gruesome work but now, he speaks again. His assistant switches into high alert.

  ‘I am fairly certain death took place in the water and that the victim was conscious when she went in. A slightly bloody froth cone is present in the airway where mucous, air and water have mixed during respirations. This indicates she was alive when she went in. There’s bleeding into the sinuses, which have several millilitres of water aspiration and debris from the water has accumulated in the lungs.’

  Working fast with frowning concentration, Max injects the sternum with a thin needle and withdraws some bone marrow into a syringe which he carefully carries across the room to an area where there is an array of microscopes. He gently depresses the plunger until a drop of marrow plops into a petri dish, which he places under one of the microscopes. His tense young assistant follows, anxious not to miss a thing.

  ‘Yes,’ mutters Max, ‘as I thought. Traces of diatoms in the bone marrow indicating the heart was beating at the time she went in.’

  It is getting on for seven o’clock in the evening when, before going into the examination room, Jane and Evans are given white masks to wear over their mouths and noses.

  Max crosses over to the corpse just as Jane and Evans come into the lab. Evans takes one look at the body and starts to quietly heave so Jane points him to the door. He leaves as fast as he can.

  ‘Mr Granger, thank you for seeing us so late in the day. I’m afraid my detective is faint-hearted and I thought rather than have him throw up in here, it would be better if he left. Have you reached any conclusions so far?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about the poor chap. He won’t be the first and he certainly won’t be the last. And call me Max, will you? You are?’

  ‘Jane,’ she answers this kind man who looks to be in his late fifties. The committed type, she would say. He shakes her hand. Appreciative of this highly experienced man for making her not feel young and green, Jane eagerly returns the handshake. He is treating her as an equal and so many of his age do not.

  ‘Well Jane, here is what I know so far. Decomposition has started and the outer skin layer has loosened, what we call “washerwoman syndrome”. So I would say she’s been dead about a week. We’ll never know precisely.’ He points out parts of the corpse to which he refers as he speaks. Jane, watching him closely, notices he is good-looking.

  ‘There is no evidence that I can find so far of any natural disease. There are multiple contusions, cuts and abrasions from when the body fell or from where it got smashed against the rocks by the tides. From the lividity and scrapes on the corpse, I think it lay on its back on the seabed for a time. Crabs and suchlike have made quite a feast of the face. Only bare bit of body exposed, so that’s not unexpected.’

  He beckons his assistant to help roll the cadaver over. ‘Interestingly, I have been able to distinguish one small, round, livid bruise in the middle of the victim’s back which happened about the time she went into the water. It may well have been caused by whatever pushed her off the edge. It is clear it was also used on the coat she was wearing, which, by the way, has blood spatters on the fabric, not the victim’s, but of someone other.’

  Together with his assistant, he then rolls the body onto its back again. ‘We’ll see if we can match the DNA and the dental records, of course.’

  Max says the bruise puzzles him. Tomorrow, he assures Jane, he will send over the photos by email and hopes to have drawn some conclusion as to what might have caused it.

  Unexpectedly, Jane’s mind now sees and smells another body. A terribly burnt one. She only knows it is her father by the wedding ring. To begin with after this happened, sleep gave up on her. At night, she would struggle with repeated recurring images. At the time the PTSD counselling, kindly provided free by the force, helped somewhat; but even now these flashes still occasionally happen. Rubbing her forehead to rid it of the image, she forces herself to concentrate on the here and now.

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, I’m sorry I can’t be more use. You see, the cooling rate of victims of drowning depends on water temperature and movement. The cave experiences a lot of rapid water movement and this would slow down the cooling. On average, a body in cold water will cool twice as fast as a body on land. Rapid skin cooling may cause a person to inhale water or suffer sudden cardiovascular collapse and drown even though he or she might be a good swimmer. But in that place in these temperatures, there was no chance. The icy cold would have done the job. I suspect death would have been in a matter of minutes. Not more. But on account of that bruise, it is looking like murder.’

  ‘Murder, no less.’ Jane’s heart flutters. It will be on her shoulders.

  ‘By the way, there are still a number of tests that remain to be done, including the stomach contents. I hope to finish most of them by tomorrow.’

  Jane glances at her phone. The time is quarter to eight. She could be home by half past eight if she gets a move on. She realises she’s starving hungry.

  ‘I’d better get on. Thank you so much for everything.’ The name Max sticks in her mouth as her training tells her to call him ‘sir’. She thinks it’s because he is much older than her. She stumbles over her words, ‘Mr Gra… I mean Max,’ then giggles like a schoolgirl. Immediately feeling foolish for behaving so stupidly, she realises it is because there’s something very attractive about this intelligent, dedicated man who is tall and handsome. But Max, whose head is buried in close examination of the liver, is so committed to his work he hasn’t noticed her silliness.

  ‘Good to meet you, Jane. Bye-ee.’

  ‘Bye, now. We’ll speak tomorrow and I may see you again then.’ Thank God, she thinks. She has got away with it. Wait till I tell Meg – me, a DCI giggling in front of that dreadful body – perhaps it was because of that. It certainly was a gruelling experience, especially having that awful flashback. She had to remain steady – it was her job, more so since Evans had been such a wimp. She might have known he would be.

  Evans collects the victim’s clothes, boots, a ring and a corroded, dark-coloured chain necklace with a small cross on it. He brings the bagged evidence to the station. He says he’s starving too. Poor Ross lives in Carmarthen so he’ll get back even later than Jane.

  On the way home Jane takes pity and lets him stop at a garage shop and run in to grab some crisps, a choc bar and a drink to keep him going. He gets her a bag of crisps too.

  She tells herself that tomorrow she must arrange a thorough search of the ground surrounding the Cauldron. She also makes a note to check the weather conditions from a week ago. That it snowed over the whole of Pembrokeshire soon after Christmas she remembered clearly so it must be taken into account for covering tracks and evidence.

  Mur
der. Her mind buzzes with a mix of excitement and anxiety. She loves the idea of the chase and the thrill of catching a guilty person. She enjoys the thought of finding them, but more, the interviews that follow. She will prepare well for those interrogations and will sit with the suspect as long as it takes.

  When confronting the most disturbing individuals, whether they’re arrogant, cunning or manipulative or, as they often are, all three, she will use these traits against them. She knows they will come into the room already judging her and certain they’re smarter than her so she will make sure to appear gullible to them. She will play dumb while they talk and talk and as late as possible in the game strategically reveal what she knows. But before this can happen, she needs to find the killer.

  4

  New Year’s Eve, 2014. Cambridge

  They were celebrating the end of the year at a dinner in a Cambridge restaurant near Magdalene Bridge. The more Mike saw Bette, the harder he fell and more love-struck he became. For a reason he couldn’t explain, he had felt an instant kinship with her. Normally a pragmatic man and certainly no fatalist, with this woman he had felt as though their destinies were linked.