After the Flood

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘One adult female.’ Louise D’Acre glanced down at the headless skeleton. ‘I can’t see any sign of trauma to the corpse and there was none to the head.’ She turned to Hennessey. T think somebody was just making sure, as I said.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Well…’ Louise D’Acre took her foot from a puddle and placed it in an area of softer mud, which proceeded to fill up with water, again covering her shoe. ‘Oh…should have changed. Nobody to blame but myself…what was I saying?’

  Hennessey reminded her. ‘Making sure.’

  ‘Oh yes, in the nineteenth century, particularly during epidemics, cholera, typhoid and so on, there were many premature proclamations of death. Stories abound of people wriggling to the surface of a pile of bodies in a cholera pit, or church wardens hearing the cries for help from beneath the ground in a churchyard…’

  ‘Hardly bears thinking about.’

  ‘But it happened, and the medical profession were forced to concede that only two symptoms meant that a corpse was dead beyond question: the onset of putrefaction and severance of head from body.’ Hennessey, widely read though not educated, wondered where else a head could be severed from. ‘Either of these two symptoms and you have death. So if the victim here was strangled, for example, then chopping off the head would be a means of making sure that she was indeed deceased. But I think I’ve done all I can here. If you could convey the deceased back to York City, I’ll do the p.m. this afternoon. I’ll go home and change now.’ Dr D’Acre smiled and raised her eyebrows. ‘One unexpected dry-cleaning bill to pay.’ She glanced at her coat, which was caked with mud near the hem, then opened it. ‘My skirt didn’t escape either. Will you be representing the police at the post-mortem, inspector?’

  ‘Yes…yes, I will.’

  ‘Shall we say 2 p.m.?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Well…’ Louise D’Acre, dressed in a green lightweight coverall smock, mouth-gauze, latex gloves and disposable headwear, adjusted the stainless-steel anglepoise arm above the dissecting table, at the end of which was a microphone. The room was brightly illuminated by filament bulbs contained behind frosted perspex sheets. ‘The deceased is skeletal…appears to be an adult female.’ She picked up the finger bones of the hand of the skeleton and said, ‘The bones are human,’ then turned to Hennessey and explained, ‘A formality, but it has to be observed.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The anatomical skeletons made out of resin used by medical students and inevitably christened “Humphrey” or “Gertrude” have turned up in the wrong places and caused consternation. But resin is significantly lighter in weight than human bone and I would have recognised a resin skeleton at the scene.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘In North America the skeletal remains of a bear’s paw have been mistaken for human bones…but this is human. So, we are in business.’ She then spoke clearly for the benefit of the microphone and the audio typist who would, later that day or the next, be typing up her verbal report. ‘The deceased was an adult female at the time of her death. Immediately obvious is that the skull has been severed at the first vertebra, but left in the same location as the remainder of the body. Skeletalisation is complete; there are no remnants of putrefaction…no possible identifying artefacts such as rings or other jewellery…no indication of clothing.’ Dr D’Acre stepped back from the table and turned to Hennessey. ‘She was buried naked.’

  ‘She was?’

  ‘Yes…and any jewellery or watch was removed. You didn’t find any metal or other non-biodegradable item in the mud taken from around the skeleton?’

  ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘Well, all of us wear something that is non-biodegradable. All clothing has metal—hooks, zip fasteners—and it also often has non-biodegradable parts—plastic buttons, toggles from duffel coats…then we all wear metal as decoration or for function: brooches, rings, wristwatches.’

  ‘Yes, but nothing of the sort was found?’

  ‘All removed, most likely to hinder identification.’

  ‘Most likely.’

  ‘But they left us the head, with all those lovely teeth to match against dental records. Especially after going to the length of chopping the head off…if he—or she, or they—had buried the head separately, or just chucked it into the river, so easy from where the skeleton was buried, if that had been done, we would be most unlikely to have identified her.’

  ‘Lucky for us, then?’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  ‘And for her family too, they’ll be grieving.’

  ‘She has a family?’

  ‘She gave birth, and did so more than once—but we’ll come on to that.’

  Louise D’Acre then spoke once again for the benefit of the microphone. There are no other signs of trauma to the body. And because the body was deeply buried, putrefaction would have come from primary invaders: bacterial flora in the gastrointestinal tract which invade the vascular system and eventually spread throughout the body.’

  This last was clearly for the benefit of Hennessey, who said, ‘I see.’

  ‘As opposed to secondary invaders, ye olde Musca domestica, for instance.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Ye common housefly, chief inspector. Size for size it puts vultures to shame. It has the ability to scent rotting flesh from up to four miles away in calm, warm conditions, but only invades to lay its maggots if the flesh is exposed. So primary invaders did the work here.’

  She paused. ‘Now, examining the severance of the head…there are striations in the base, an indication that the severance was done by means of sawing. The sawing was done neatly between the vertebrae…between CI and C2, striations noted on C2 as well as on CI. By observation of the skull and the pelvis, and the smaller, finer femur, the skeleton is that of a woman. But what determines the sex of this person in life is the pubic scarring which is observed.’ She turned to Hennessey. ‘During childbirth, scarring of the pubic bones occurs when the tendon insertions and periosteum are torn. She was a she, and she had had at least two children, possibly more.’

  ‘Noted,’ Hennessey said. ‘That will help us identify her.’

  ‘Now, two more questions remain to be answered. Age at death should be no problem—we’ll extract a tooth and cut it into a cross-section, and that will give us the age at the time she died, plus or minus twelve months. When she was buried…well, more than ten years ago.’

  ‘You can tell that?’

  ‘Well, all the periosteum that I mentioned earlier is absent. Periosteum is a membrane which covers areas of bone not covered by cartilage. Cartilage and ligaments decay and disappear after about twelve months, but periosteum is very hardy, very durable, and will last for ten years before decaying completely. So ten years is minimum, could be more than ten years she’s been in the clay, fifteen, twenty even.’

  ‘I see. All good information.’

  ‘Just earning my crust, chief inspector,’ Dr D’Acre said with a smile which could be ‘heard’ behind her facemask. ‘Can we have a photograph of this striation, please?’ She turned to the rotund man who Hennessey always found to be jovial and warm-hearted, despite his job.

  Eric Filey, also dressed in disinfected, lightweight green coveralls, advance to the skeleton, focused the lens of the camera and took a series of rapid close-up stills of the damage done to the vertebrae by the blade of the saw. That done, he retired to the far side of the instrument trolley.

  Dr D’Acre took a long, thin stainless-steel rod from the instrument trolley, gently inserted it into the mouth and prised the jaws open. They fell apart silently. ‘Might have been some resistance,’ she explained to Hennessey. ‘No rigor because there’s no flesh, but the mandible bones might have fused with time.’

  ‘Ah…’ Hennessey’s eyes were still recovering from the flash of Eric Filey’s camera.

  ‘So… Well, the deceased was a lady who knew the value of dental hygiene and, although I am no odontologist, I would identi
fy the work as being British dentistry. She has lost one incisor from the upper teeth—she probably wore a denture—but the majority of the dental work has been done on the lower teeth. There should be dental records somewhere, with luck.’

  ‘With luck,’ Hennessey echoed. ‘It’s often all about luck, hard relentless slog and luck.’

  ‘So a female adult, white European—you can determine race from the skull and other parts of the skeleton, but the best identification of race comes from the teeth. Each racial type has its own distinct type of tooth. Mixed-race people can cause confusion, but I think it’s safe to say she was a white European lady in life. Age at death, to be determined, but of middle years, the skull has fully knitted together. I’ll extract a tooth from the upper set, leave the lower teeth intact to help identification with dental records. You know, the police need a national database of dental records of all missing people.’

  ‘It would be nice…cost, as always, is the obstacle.’

  ‘It would identify her in a flash.’

  ‘Or a flicker of a screen.’

  ‘As you say, but unfortunately you’ve got a lot of old-fashioned legwork to do. I can perhaps narrow down the time of disappearance—more than ten years ago because of the complete absence of periosteum—but the dental work…It’s not primitive, late twentieth century, sticking my neck out…Don’t go back more than twenty years, not at first. She was five feet…’ D’Acre stretched a retractable metal tape measure along the length of the femur, ‘about five feet six inches tall. That is an approximation. Or about 167 centimetres.’

  ‘Of course.’ Hennessey smiled. He knew better than to ask a forensic scientist to commit to any finding except the most obvious and irrefutable.

  ‘I’ll be able to get the result of the cross-section of the tooth to you by tomorrow morning, chief inspector.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So I think that about wraps it up. Cause of death uncertain, but nothing that involved trauma to the body, no head injuries for example, nobody knocked her teeth out. But plenty of other ways to skin a cat: strangulation, suffocation, poison…I’ll check for poisoning, but the arsenic so beloved of our Victorian forefathers is very uncommon these days. You can’t just go into a chemist shop and buy it like they used to do. Lucky for us, I say.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Date of death? Well, ten to twenty years ago…but a person who would have been missed. She kept her dental appointments, so she valued herself, and so would be socially integrated, amongst her neighbours if nobody else, but more so because she gave birth, and more than once. So some now-adult children will be still wondering what happened to their mum.’

  ‘That’s plenty for us to go on. Thanks, Dr D’Acre.’

  ‘I’ll fax my report to you as soon as. And get the age at death to you as well.’

  ‘Again, thanks.’

  ‘So, if I don’t see you again before the weekend, have a good one.’

  ‘Thanks…it’s my first full weekend for six weeks.’

  ‘Doing anything with it?’

  ‘No, nothing special.’

  ‘Well, enjoy it anyway.’

  George Hennessey disliked driving to the point of actually hating it, but he accepted it as a necessary part of early twenty-first century living, and after leaving York City Hospital he took his car from the car park and returned to the crime scene. He drove up to the delightfully named Alice’s Grange Farm, and knocked politely but firmly on the thickly varnished front door, setting dogs barking from within. The door was opened by a middle-aged lady in a pinafore with flour on her hands.

  ‘Baking,’ she explained, in an accent which was strong but not local.

  ‘So I see. Sorry to bother you, madam.’ Hennessey showed her his identity card. Ts Mr Brand at home? It’s him I want to see.’

  ‘He’s in the field. Dreadful business…a skeleton…I mean, I never. He’s rediverting the beck to its original course. The police said he could.’

  ‘Do you mind if I…?’

  ‘No, please… You’d be better going back on the road and picking up the footpath. The farmyard is a foot deep in the stuff.’

  ‘Thanks. Appreciate the advice.’

  ‘You can leave your car here, if you like.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Hennessey glanced at the building. It seemed to him to be a traditional Vale of York farm building, squat, stone-built and with a solidly tiled roof, yet it had a certain newness about it.

  ‘Bought it cheap and renovated it,’ Brand explained when, a few minutes later, trouser-bottoms once again tucked into his socks, Hennessey stood in the field, being watched warily by Brand’s border collies. In front of the two men the stream ran strongly, as if somehow happy to be on its original course, and had completely swallowed any trace of the excavation carried out a few hours earlier. ‘Used to farm in Lincolnshire. Never could take to the county, but my wife comes from there.’

  ‘Ah…I detected an accent that wasn’t local. So that was a Lincolnshire accent?’

  ‘From the Bourne area, born and bred.’

  ‘One more to chalk up. When I came north all accents sounded the same, then I began to be able to tell the difference between Yorkshire and Lancashire.’

  ‘That’s not difficult.’

  ‘It isn’t now.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘Now I can tell Yorkshire-from-Sheffield,Yorkshire-from-Leeds,Yorkshire-from-York, Yorkshire-from-the-Dales, Yorkshire-from-the-coast.’

  ‘You’re a Londoner, by your accent?’

  ‘Greenwich.’

  ‘I’m from Norfolk originally. Our farm in Lincolnshire was flooded. It was quite unsettling: no indication of flooding, no heavy rain, all well at the close of the day, awoke the following morning and the whole area was like a swamp, but the river was back inside its banks…a bit creepy. I lost my crops. Other farmers lost livestock and two people were drowned. Didn’t want to experience that again. So we came north, where it floods just the same.’ Brand clearly enjoyed the joke against himself. ‘We sold the farm in Lincolnshire and bought this one. We got it cheaply because it had been abandoned. Previous owner was elderly, let it run down, as elderly folk are wont to do with their property. So we got a good deal and set to work building it up again.’

  ‘So how long have you lived here?’

  ‘Eleven years this September.’

  ‘And this field has always been pasture?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t farm.’

  ‘Well, you won’t get crops planted right next to a river, not unless there’s a good dyke there. Can’t plough up to a riverbank, can’t take your crops on to high ground.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So, yes, this has always been pasture. I keep my pigs here, Gloucester Old Spots, the orchard pig. They’ll kill for apples, and produce the sweetest pork.’

  ‘So if someone had been buried here you’d have noticed?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Definitely.’

  ‘So the body was buried before you came?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Brand pursed his lips. ‘In fact, I’m no policeman or criminal, but an abandoned farm would be a good place to bury a body. The farm was derelict for four years before we bought it. The land was in a mess, the house was a ruin. The old boy, whose ghost my wife insists is still in the parlour, kept dogs, plenty of ‘em. Had the run of the farm and by all accounts were not pet dogs, so we were told. And when they took his body away, the dogs had to be put down. So that gives you a time window of fourteen to eighteen years ago during which the body could have been buried, if it was buried when the farm was derelict.’

  ‘It also suggests local knowledge.’

  TWO

  In which one becomes two

  FRIDAY, 1st APRIL

  George Hennessey arrived at Micklegate Bar Police Station at 8.30 a.m. He parked his car at the rear of the building, entered by the staff only door, signed in and was sitting at his desk by 8.32. He picked up his telephone and punched in a four-figure
internal number.

  ‘Collator.’ The response was quick, efficient.

  ‘DCI Hennessey.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Anything for me?’

  ‘Quite a bit, sir, came in overnight, as I thought it would.’ The collator paused. ‘Between ten and fifteen years ago, twenty women in their middle years were reported missing in the UK. In this area there were three. Shall I send the files up to you, sir?’

  ‘Yes, please. We’ll be getting information about the age at death later today I hope, but yes, if you could send them up I’ll have a glance. You have selected by height as well?’

  ‘About five feet six inches, yes, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Hennessey replaced the phone gently. It rang again instantly. He snatched it up. ‘Hennessey.’

  ‘Dr D’Acre here.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘The tooth…I extracted one of the upper molars from the skeleton we looked at yesterday and cut it in cross-section. It gave an age at death of fifty-three years, plus or minus twelve months.’

  ‘Fifty-two to fifty-four years of age.’ Hennessey scribbled on his notepad. ‘Thank you very much. We have three ladies reported missing in the five-year time window we’re looking at. The files are on the way up to me right now, and we’ll see if any match. So, thanks again.’

  One did. Her name was Amanda Dunney, fifty-three years of age when she was reported missing, twelve years ago. The photograph in the file showed a full-faced, flat-nosed woman, who wore her hair in a wide mop which just covered her ears. She was reported missing by her brother, Thomas Dunney of Whitby Road, Heworth. Hennessey stood and went down the CID corridor to Sergeant Yellich’s office. He tapped on the door frame.

  ‘Morning, skipper.’ The fresh-faced younger man looked up and smiled at Hennessey.

  ‘Got a job for you, Yellich. Doing anything pressing?’