None but the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  ‘We’ve searched the area inside the fence. It’s not there,’ Rhona said.

  Erling studied her expression. ‘You think someone deliberately removed it?’

  ‘Without another explanation, we have to consider that a possibility,’ Rhona said. ‘How many people know about the grave?’

  Erling checked with Derek, who shrugged. ‘By now, most of the island I would think.’

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ Mike protested.

  ‘You didn’t have to. From the moment Hugh Clouston left here, the word was out,’ Derek said.

  ‘Who might take it?’ Erling said.

  ‘Kids, maybe?’ Rhona offered.

  ‘Kids?’ Mike looked taken aback by her suggestion.

  ‘Have you seen any kids hanging about the place?’ Erling asked.

  It seemed to Rhona that Mike paled at the question. Erling noticed it too.

  ‘Do local children come round here?’ he asked.

  Mike hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘I thought I heard kids playing out here on a number of occasions, but I’ve never actually seen them.’

  ‘Who lives nearby?’ Erling asked Derek.

  Derek rattled off a number of family names together with their offspring.

  ‘You check with the parents,’ Erling said, ‘see if you can find out if a skull has turned up. If we can’t locate it that way, I’ll have to start a proper investigation.’

  Rhona left them to their deliberations after checking that Derek would come back for them as soon as the light started to fade.

  ‘How far is the cottage from here?’ she asked.

  ‘A five-minute walk. I’ll pick up some provisions after I’ve checked about the skull, then come back for you. If you want to knock off earlier, just follow the track eastwards from the gate.’

  ‘What about a key?’

  ‘It won’t be locked.’

  Rhona didn’t express her surprise at this, having just spent the previous few days on Skye where many people didn’t lock their doors either.

  Back outside, she found Chrissy taking surface soil samples and recording what little vegetation there was to be found in the tarred surface around the grave.

  Putting aside the issue of the missing skull, they both got down to work.

  10

  McNab had made a point of observing the Air Support helicopter leaving its base by the Clyde, taking Rhona and Chrissy on what he had described as a jolly. Rising early from his own bed, which Freya had not shared the previous night, he’d gone up onto the roof and watched for the distinctive yellow and black shape heading north. After which he’d done fifty press-ups, had a shower, then cooked himself some breakfast.

  His new regime, since he’d laid off the heavy drinking, had led to better health, although he acknowledged that at times the drinking had just been replaced by new but equally obsessive-compulsive behaviour.

  When his time was spent with Freya he could channel his energies into sex. When that wasn’t available, he had to expend them elsewhere. Normally work would help with his terrier-like tendencies, but with no major case to concentrate on, he was, without a doubt, bored. True, there were always the run of the mill messes to clear up, but a major crime investigation gave him something to really get his teeth into.

  Even as he thought this, McNab poured another coffee and turned his attention to the subject of the old man, now lying in the mortuary awaiting his postmortem, which was scheduled for this morning. At least today, he had something in prospect to occupy his thoughts.

  A thorough search of Jock Drever’s flat had produced nothing more than a picture of a life without ornament and, apart from the photographs and what Mrs Connelly had told him, very little of the past. To live that length of time and not to have made any impact, or none to be seen, struck McNab as improbable as well as sad. Some of the bastards he’d locked up had affected countless lives and destroyed many in the process by the time they’d reached their mid twenties.

  We are what we do and where we’ve been.

  What had Jock done and where had he been? McNab found himself keen to know, despite the fact that it might have no bearing on his death. He glanced at his watch.

  Well, let’s see how he died, first.

  Jock’s clothes lay spread out on a white butcher’s-paper surface to catch any transferable evidence such as fibres or hairs. The underwear soiled by death had been bagged. Dr Sissons, dressed for the job in surgical pyjamas and plastic apron, his shower cap and goggles already in place, acknowledged McNab’s entry, his eyes glancing round as though expecting more than just him.

  ‘No Dr MacLeod?’

  ‘Sanday,’ McNab said, ‘digging up a body.’

  ‘Recent?’ Sissons said, looking interested.

  McNab shrugged, indicating he had no idea.

  ‘Okay, so now that you’re finally here, Detective Sergeant,’ Sissons said with special emphasis on sergeant, pointing up McNab’s demotion, ‘we’ll begin.’

  McNab had certainly been demoted, but he hadn’t been late to these proceedings, so it was definitely a wind-up on the part of the pathologist; McNab managed to successfully ignore it.

  McNab didn’t like postmortems although he’d attended many. He’d never grown used to the smell, the sight of folk’s innards lifted out and weighed. He didn’t like the noise of drills through bone. He wasn’t fond of the sight of blood and the dissection of the human form like a piece of meat on a butcher’s slab.

  It had always seemed to him that attending a scene of crime, however gory, could in no way compare to what he was about to witness. Yet it was worth it, if it told him the one thing he really wanted to know. How the victim had died.

  Jock Drever had been a tall man, well over six foot. Age didn’t seem to have shrunk him as it did most people. The body was sinewy and his build looked much the same as it had in the photograph of his younger self taken on his wedding day. Lying naked, the rope marks on his shins and forearms appeared more prominent, or maybe the current state of decomposition had enhanced them.

  It had been hot in the room, which normally sped up the putrification process. McNab knew his basics. Green after two to three days, marbled and bloating after a week or more. Heat sped up the process. Cold delayed it. Dryness mummified and maggots destroyed. Blowflies laid eggs in the mouth, nose and eyes, the groin and armpits if available. They normally hatched in twenty-four hours, grew half an inch in length feeding on the corpse for twelve days.

  Chrissy had caught a selection of flies for the bug man, which according to her could be fed anything to keep them alive for study, and extracted some maggots which she’d fed good Scottish mince to. Others she’d blanched in boiling water and stored in vodka. Mince and vodka were trademarks of hers, inherited from Rhona.

  Rigor mortis started around two hours after death. The rigid stage developed eight to twelve hours in, after which the fixed stage might be there for eighteen hours. After thirty-six to forty-eight hours it had left the body in the same progression it had entered – small muscles were quickest to go either way, larger muscles longest.

  Taking all these things into consideration, McNab had decided he thought Jock Drever had been dead for three days at least. What he was keener to know was how the old man had died. His own take on the proceedings featured an intruder threatening the victim by tying him up, which had unfortunately resulted in his death. Realizing this, the intruder had removed the rope to cover their tracks, and scarpered. The only part of the story that didn’t work for McNab was the fact that nothing had been stolen, not even the old man’s wallet. So what was the point of the breakin?

  It seemed Dr Sissons was about to offer his own scenario. He motioned to McNab that they should go next door, where they both de-gowned. By this time McNab was ready to burst a blood vessel. Despite listening carefully to everything Sissons had said into the overhead microphone, he still had no idea why the old man had died.

  ‘Coffee, Sergeant?’ Sissons headed for the machin
e.

  ‘Double espresso.’

  Sissons chose a straight black for himself and waited as they were served up, while McNab champed at the bit and tried not to say, ‘Well?’

  Sissons took advantage of a nearby chair, sat down and began to sip his coffee in silence. McNab forced himself to drink his espresso and bite his tongue, hoping that by not asking outright, he was pissing off the pathologist just as much as he was himself. Eventually his not-so-patient silence was rewarded.

  ‘As you heard from the recording, I believe the victim died in the chair where he was found.’ Sissons took another sip of coffee.

  Christ, the man drank coffee as slowly as he thought.

  McNab headed for the machine and got himself another double shot to avoid shouting, ‘Just tell me how the fuck he died.’

  Eventually Sissons did.

  ‘If I was to hazard a guess, I’d say he probably died of dehydration. In people over fifty, the body’s thirst sensation reduces and continues diminishing with age. Many senior citizens suffer symptoms of dehydration without even realizing it. In this case, were he tied up in an overheated room for an extended period of time …’

  ‘It would accelerate the process,’ McNab said.

  Sissons nodded.

  ‘To try and establish dehydration as a factor we can test for urea in his blood – which would be high. We can also look for other electrolytes – sodium, potassium and chloride in the vitreous fluid I took from his eye, although these change after death and are more difficult to interpret.’

  McNab was picking up the message that determining exactly who or what was responsible for Jock’s death wasn’t going to be easy.

  ‘Were the bindings taken off after he died?’ he asked.

  ‘He’d been tied up, that we have established, but blisters in the periphery of skin marks can also be formed postmortem. We can’t say for definite that he was dead when the bindings were removed.’

  McNab absorbed this. ‘But if he was freed while still alive, wouldn’t he have sought help?’

  ‘Dehydration can cause hallucinations and confusion and by then he may have been too weak to move from that chair.’ Sissons met McNab’s look. ‘None of which conjures up a pleasant thought,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You’re right. It doesn’t.’

  ‘Did he have a home help or any family member caring for him?’

  ‘Not as far as we’re aware.’

  ‘Unfortunately, abuse of the elderly isn’t uncommon. Even within the family.’ Sissons threw his paper cup into the bin. ‘A full report should be with you in a couple of days, Sergeant, and I’ll pass the clothing on to forensics.’

  McNab registered the bite of the wind as he exited the new Southern General Hospital and its £90-million state of the art mortuary and forensic facilities. Gone were the days of the old red-brick mortuary next to the Crown Court in the Saltmarket where the victims of Scottish serial killers such as Bible John and Peter Manuel had had their postmortems. McNab regretted the old mortuary’s passing, but was still impressed by the move to what Glasgow folk had, in their inimitable manner, christened ‘The Death Star’, because of its space-age design.

  And at least you can park here, he thought as he located his car in the mammoth car park. Once inside, he checked his mobile. There was a message from DI Wilson requesting his presence and a text from Freya saying she was working on her thesis tonight and couldn’t see him. Nothing from Chrissy and Rhona. It seemed Sanday was proving more interesting than the case they’d left behind.

  McNab started up the engine, wondering why no message from Orkney was more disappointing than Freya’s rejection.

  11

  The vastness of an Orkney sky was what Rhona remembered most about her last trip here. On Skye the mountains dominated, controlling where light and shadow fell.

  Here the sky is bigger than the land or the sea.

  Walking home now along the rough track that led to the cottage, the heavens a mass of purple and red, deep blue and black, even Chrissy appeared momentarily silenced by the sight. Either that or hunger and fatigue had taken over.

  They had worked until the diminishing daylight no longer allowed them to distinguish the stratification of the soils. It had been a painstaking business. Working in from the grave cut, recovering fill longitudinally in spits or small sections no more than five to ten centimetres deep per grid square, bagging the samples of soil, dating and timing them.

  Taking scene images throughout every single action as well as the time-lapse video had been crucial. Procurator Fiscals and Senior Investigating Officers were now extremely precious about who took what images during the recovery process of a body. Whereas in the past a specialist team from R2S might have been called in, now the 360-degree panel camera work was done by trained SOCOs and the PolScot imaging unit made up the court presentations. Cost had become an important factor now there was a single force, and outsiders that they would have to pay for weren’t used unless there were extenuating circumstances. Rhona had always made her own personal recording of the scene alongside R2S, so for her things hadn’t changed that much.

  The weather had held, breezy but dry, as Erling had predicted. They’d worked continuously except for a short break, during which they’d made use of the schoolhouse toilet and gratefully accepted Mike’s offer of coffee, which they’d had with the selection of sandwiches Chrissy had brought. Rhona had noted in the brief time they were with Mike that he seemed more relaxed when Erling wasn’t about, although he was clearly worried about the missing skull.

  ‘Could an animal have removed it?’ he’d said as he served up the coffee.

  ‘Animals do disturb graves, but it’s normally the smaller bones that are taken,’ Rhona had explained. ‘The skull is heavy.’

  ‘So a human being took it?’

  ‘That’s the most likely explanation.’ She paused. ‘You mentioned you’ve heard children playing nearby?’

  He looked perturbed by this. ‘Yes, but I’ve never seen them.’

  ‘Could their voices have carried from the beach?’

  ‘The dunes are in between, but I suppose that might have been what happened.’ He didn’t look convinced.

  ‘The old playground could be a draw,’ Rhona offered. ‘The surface is ideal for football and other ball games.’

  ‘Then why when I open the door is no one there?’

  Rhona wondered if perhaps the local children were simply playing tricks on him. ‘Have you met your nearest neighbours?’

  ‘Not really, no.’ He tried a smile. ‘Everyone’s been friendly enough, it’s just I’ve been too busy with the renovations.’

  Chrissy had said nothing during the interchange, but had plenty to say when they were back at work.

  ‘It’s like the Wicker Man,’ she’d announced as she’d picked up her trowel.

  ‘What?’

  ‘An incomer on a small Scottish island discovers Pagan cult and is sacrificed to their gods.’ Chrissy had paused for effect. ‘Hey, wasn’t the incomer a police officer come to investigate the disappearance of a young woman?’ At this point Chrissy had given a knowing nod to the grave.

  ‘That puts us in the firing line,’ Rhona had reminded her, ‘not Mike.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Chrissy had adopted a terrified look. ‘And we’re alone tonight in an isolated cottage. We should have brought McNab along to protect us.’

  By close of day they’d processed approximately half the fill. Rhona had drawn the section that could be seen, taken notes on the compaction, the stratigraphy of the side walls and some more soil samples, and dictated notes to Chrissy on the vegetation growth.

  All being well, tomorrow would see the skeleton fully exposed.

  They secured a plastic tarp over the area, and pegged it down.

  With the disappearance of the skull, Rhona’s concern wasn’t for the wind to lift the tarp, but for a person to. It seemed that Erling had had the same thought, because shortly before they’d finished fo
r the day, a young police officer had arrived via Derek’s Land Rover and announced that he was on sentry duty for the night.

  By his speech, Officer Tulloch was Orkney born and bred. He was also tall, handsome and immediately in Chrissy’s sights. Rhona would have felt sorry for the bloke had he not looked so pleased by the attention. Chrissy had immediately extracted the fact that he was from Sanday, his family owned a farm a few miles distant and that there was a social evening in the local hotel a few nights from now.

  ‘Will you still be around?’ he’d asked Chrissy.

  ‘It depends how long it takes to finish here.’

  Rhona had forsaken their flirtatious conversation and sought out Derek.

  ‘I’ve delivered food to the cottage for you,’ he’d told her. ‘I can run you there now.’

  ‘It’s fine, we’ll walk,’ Rhona had indicated the animated conversation still going on nearby, ‘once Chrissy’s finished her interrogation of Officer Tulloch. I’ve stored the equipment in Mike’s shed. Did you have any luck with the skull?’

  ‘Not yet, but I’ve done the groundwork. I think we’ll know soon if one of the local kids took it. What about the rest of the remains?’

  ‘We’ll reach them tomorrow.’

  Derek had wished her goodnight at that point, promising to be back the following morning. Having removed her boiler suit, Rhona quickly put on her jacket against the cold.

  ‘You’re not outside overnight?’ she’d asked Officer Tulloch.

  ‘I’m in Mike’s kitchen with a clear view of the site.’

  ‘Don’t fall asleep,’ had been Chrissy’s final orders to him.

  With the next turn in the track, their cottage came into view, the windows bright with light. Entering a small sitting room, the warmth from a solid-fuel stove hit them after the short but cold walk from the deposition site.

  Chrissy immediately made for the kitchen to check out the food. Minutes later she reappeared to inform Rhona that it would be curry tonight, the full works apparently, and it would be ready in half an hour.