‘Okay. But I’m on the Isle of Wight right now, so it’ll take me a few hours. You’ll have to hang on meanwhile.’
‘Understood. I’ll grab some tea and leave a constable to secure the scene.’
Lapslie hung up. Well, that was the end of his weekend plans – though any more sailing had been scotched in any case. It was at times like this that he seriously thought about resigning or going off on extended sick leave. Christ, if he wasn’t entitled to sick leave, then surely no one was. The trouble was he could really do with leaving due to some injury he had received while on duty, rather than thanks to a personal condition. He would get more money that way. With an early pension and a large lump sum he could upgrade his boat and just fuck off into the sunset.
Lapslie pulled himself back to reality. It was a stupid idea, if for no other reason than the fact that he needed a bit more sailing experience under his belt – as the storm had made patently clear. No, it would be at least another year before he was in a position to realize his dream. He would have to tread water until then.
Half-smiling at his own inner joke, he looked up as a rapping came against the porthole and George’s face beamed from the other side.
*
It took just under three hours to make the journey, and Lapslie’s senses were sharpened rather than jaded from having driven flat out; he knew it would catch up with him later that night and he’d no doubt crash out.
A familiar sight met him at the crime scene. Arcs of white and flashing blue lights illuminated the area, giving it a surreal look. More like a street in Las Vegas than a British murder scene. White-suited SOCOs moved around with purposeful energy, while detectives in ill-fitting suits seemed to be wandering at random, looking for their next mug of coffee while trying to appear interested and useful. Lapslie drove slowly up to the checkpoint. He flashed his ID at the young pale-faced uniform on the gate. The lad was only there keeping the log because no one had any idea what else to do with him.
Most of the constabulary knew who Lapslie was by his reputation alone, but this young probationer clearly didn’t. ‘Can I have your name for the record, sir?’
Lapslie stared at him. ‘Chief Inspector Lapslie,’ he said, after a marked pause.
Lapslie’s name at least seemed to spark some recognition. ‘Oh right, sir, yes, please go through.’
The lad stood back and saluted. It was the first time Lapslie had been saluted for a long time, and he found he quite liked it. He nodded and drove through the taped cordon. Rank he considered allowed you a few privileges, like not having to stop and answer questions from some snotty-nosed probationer standing at a checkpoint in the middle of nowhere. Still, Lapslie supposed, he was only trying to do his job.
He parked his car by the sign marked ‘Senior Investigating Officer’ – another perk he enjoyed and appreciated. Wherever he went these days there was always a special parking place for him. On this occasion he was impressed at the speed with which the sign had been erected. He probably had Bradbury to thank for that.
As he stepped from the car and looked around he had a sudden feeling that people were moving away from him, not wanting to get too close. It was as if he was infected with some nasty and very contagious disease. In a way he supposed that he was, only it wasn’t contagious. There was a time when only he and Rouse had known about the synaesthesia, but now it was common knowledge. Still it was good to see his detectives moving with some purpose, even if that purpose was only to get away from him.
A figure emerged from a dark corner of the field. Lapslie had trouble identifying it at first due to the glare of one of the powerful arc lamps he had stupidly stood in front of.
‘Bradbury?’
‘Sir.’
‘How are you?’
‘Tired. It was my day off too. They called me in about an hour before I called you.’
Lapslie looked at her for a moment. ‘Clearly Rouse thinks you are more important than I am. Should I watch my back?’
Bradbury stared at him for a moment, unsure if he was joking or not. ‘They always like to get me here before you, sir, so I can get your parking space ready.’
Lapslie cut her short. ‘And tell everyone to move away from me when I get out of my car?’
Bradbury hesitated. ‘Fewer people make less noise. I know how you react to noise.’
Lapslie smiled at her. ‘Yes, I do. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though. Makes me feel like a leper. ‘
Bradbury remained silent. There was nothing she could say, really. Lapslie continued: ‘So what have we got?’
‘Dead male. Been dead a while from the smell of him. Looks like a tramp and it’s probably natural causes.’
There was that word again: probably. He hated it. Either it was murder or it wasn’t, and if it wasn’t then he shouldn’t be here. The pale-faced kid on the gate should be dealing with it.
‘The police surgeon’s examining the remains now,’ Bradbury said.
‘Is he? Well, perhaps a possible will turn into a definite. Let’s see what he has to say.’
Bradbury interrupted. ‘There are some other things you need to know. I—’
Lapslie cut her short. ‘Let’s go and have a look at the body first. You can tell me the rest after that. Now, where to?’
Bradbury pointed to a large bunker at the edge of the field. ‘It’s over there, sir.’
Lapslie looked over to where a large oval shape, covered in grass, was sticking out of the ground. Some kind of natural feature, or an artificial mound? ‘Will I need to suit up?’
Bradbury shook her head. ‘I’ve had a word with the Scene of Crime manager, and he doesn’t seem to think it’s necessary to wear a suit – just cover shoes for now.’
Lapslie nodded. ‘Well, it’s his decision. Lead on.’ He followed his sergeant along a well-used dirt path to the front of the mound where a large iron door was set into a flat face of earth. So, it was a bunker – a large one. As he entered he turned to Bradbury. ‘So, what is this place?’
Bradbury looked up at him. ‘It’s an old fall-out shelter from the Cold War. Built in the fifties for local politicians and dignitaries to keep them safe and running the country if the Russians had ever dropped the bomb.’
‘Local politicians and dignitaries? Brilliant – they cause the bloody war, then they make sure they have a safe place to hide when it starts. How democratic.’
Looking up at it now that he was close, Lapslie was impressed by the size of the bunker and the huge iron doors that secured it. ‘How did you get in?’
Bradbury answered quickly. ‘Locksmith, sir. Apparently took him over an hour – they were considering blowing it off at one point.’
Lapslie looked down at the giant lock still hanging from one of the metal loops. ‘Which I suppose begs the question: if we had trouble getting in, how the hell did the tramp do it?’
Bradbury nodded. ‘Yes, sir, that was one of the other questions we . . .’
Lapslie cut her short again. ‘Who found the body?’
‘A man walking his dog. Well, he smelled the body really: the dog was scratching at the door, and when its owner came to pull him away he could smell the corpse.’
Lapslie looked across at her. ‘Through these doors? Weren’t they designed to stop radiation? How the hell did a smell leak out, even one as gross as a decomposing body?’
‘The bunker hasn’t been maintained, sir. The seals have either perished or just dropped off.’
‘Council money well spent.’ He paused, thinking. ‘How did he know it was a corpse he could smell?’
‘He was an old soldier. He’d smelled a few before.’
Lapslie nodded. Forget about faster cars or more capable computers: the thing the police needed the most was a squad of people walking their dogs. The amount of crime they turned up was extraordinary.
Before they went any further they were stopped by the white-suited presence of Jim Thomson, the Scene of Crime manager and senior SOCO. He gazed across at Lapslie.
‘If you wouldn’t mind slipping a pair of these on, Chief Inspector.’
Petrol. Lapslie licked his lips to be sure. Yes, Thomson’s voice definitely tasted of petrol. Lapslie turned to face him, trying to wipe the taste from his lips with the back of his hand. Taking a pair of the transparent plastic overshoes from Thomson and slipping them over his Timberlands, Lapslie looked at the man one more time and wondered why he tasted of petrol, of all things. Did his mind just randomly assign tastes to sounds, or was there some deeper underlying logic?
He pulled himself back to reality. ‘Thank you. Are you sure you don’t want us suited up?’
Thomson shook his head. ‘Quite sure. Well not at this stage, anyway. The overshoes will be enough.’
Lapslie nodded his understanding before he turned to follow Bradbury into the bunker.
The interior was more basic than Lapslie had imagined. Nothing high-tech – just what appeared to be concrete wall, a concrete floor and piles of old tat, most of it broken. The smell of the decomposing body was strong, however, and seemed to fill the entire room with a thick, unseen fog, refusing to drift away even though the large metal security doors had been left open. Lapslie had never really got used to that smell, even though he lived in a world of tastes and smells. The instant desire to be sick faded quickly, and he wondered idly why no sound he had ever heard had provoked the taste of rotting human flesh.
He looked around. ‘A bit sparse, isn’t it?’
Bradbury nodded. ‘This is just the top level. It goes down several more floors. There are bedrooms, kitchens, command and control centres, even broadcasting facilities. Five hundred people could stay down here for over five years, apparently.’
‘As long as they don’t mind the taste of corned beef. Didn’t know we had that many important people in the area.’
‘With their families.’
Lapslie smiled. ‘Of course. Now it makes sense.’
Lapslie noticed that arc lamps had been positioned at intervals with cables running through. As they reached the far end of the room Lapslie saw a familiar figure packing up his medical bag and standing away from what seemed to be a pile of old rags lying on the floor, but which Lapslie knew to be a body. It was odd, he considered, the strange shapes, positions and appearances people took on after death. So many looked like mannequins: white and stiff, all the life taken out of them. Others died with their mouths wide open in one last desperate scream at the cruel trick that fate had played on them. So few went gentle into that good night, he pondered. Mostly they raged against the dying of the light.
Jeff Whitefoot was the police surgeon for Essex, and had been for years. He tended to share duties with the pathologist, Jane Catherall, and Lapslie usually bumped into one or the other at scenes such as this. He had always liked Whitefoot because he was his own man, and had been even in the bad old days, when the relationship between police surgeons and forensic teams was a little too cosy and often resulted in evidence being altered to fit the circumstances. So many innocent people had been sent down, many for life, because the various people investigating the crimes knew each other, drank together or could be easily bullied or manipulated into saying what was necessary. Whitefoot had always been above all that. Kept himself to himself. Never attended social events, and it would be a brave investigating officer that tried to intimidate him.
As he approached, Lapslie stuck his hand out. Peeling off his white latex protective gloves, Whitefoot took it and shook it enthusiastically.
‘Jeff. Good to see you again. It’s been a while.’
‘Chief Inspector. It’s been a while and a half.’ He gazed up into Lapslie’s eyes. ‘You okay? I heard you’d been ill.’
His voice tasted of dark chocolate with a touch of something else which Lapslie struggled to identify. Lavender, maybe? Whitefoot was always formal, never used first or familiar names. He kept his private and professional lives separate and would never compromise.
‘Under control,’ Lapslie said shortly. The last thing he wanted was a forensic cross-examination of his symptoms by a medical man. Well, not this medical man, anyway. ‘What about you?’ he added quickly. ‘I heard you were on short time?’
Whitefoot shrugged. ‘I work two and a half days a week. I haven’t got the stamina to run with the young bulls any more, but I like to keep my hand in. Keep involved, if you know what I mean. And there were . . . family issues.’
Lapslie nodded. ‘So what do we have? Was he murdered?’
Whitefoot shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Looks like natural causes – well, as natural as the death of a man who lived rough, clearly drank too much and had done for a number of years can be. Won’t really know until after the post-mortem, but there are no signs of violence, no bullet holes, knives in the back, depressed fractures of the skull, that sort of thing.’
Lapslie gave Bradbury a sideways glance. She knew what he was thinking and looked down at her feet.
‘Okay, well thanks for turning out.’
Whitefoot nodded. ‘I thought Inspector White was on call-out?’
‘He is, got a stabbing to deal with.’
‘Really? That I suppose would also explain why I’m here. Doctor Catherall is presumably at the stabbing.’
‘We all have our cross to bear, Jeff. Let me have your report as soon as you can.’
Whitefoot looked slightly indignant. ‘It will be on your desk first thing, as it always is and always will be.’
Lapslie nodded his appreciation before walking past him to where the body was lying. He looked down at the pile of rags that had once been a human being. He often wondered how and why people ended up like this: what it was within their personalities that had allowed this to happen. But then, perhaps they were just unfortunate.
He remembered his first sergeant, Fred Gimber. Gimber had been his sergeant when Lapslie was still a probationer. He had been a sergeant in the Royal Marine Commandos during the Second World War. Hard as nails, a man you didn’t cross lightly. Local villains were terrified of him. Yet there was this one old tramp that he looked after as if they were related. Lapslie had been with him one Christmas Day when Gimber had searched and found the tramp just so he could give him a bottle of whisky and a hundred cigarettes before driving him to a shelter in the area car to make sure he had a decent Christmas dinner. Later Lapslie had discovered that the old tramp had served with Gimber during the war and had won the Military Medal for bravery. He had stayed in the Army after the war, but had been kicked out a few years later due to a stomach ulcer. Without the formal structure of the Army, he had quickly fallen apart. He died a few years later and Gimber had paid for his funeral. Such was the man. Small gestures. If everyone took responsibility for what was within the reach of their arm then the world would be a better place.
Lapslie guessed that if you scratched the body of the man lying before him there might well have been a similar story. Around the corpse was an array of food wrappers, old papers, empty and broken bottles, and a worn-out haversack with ripped seams. He looked across at Jim Thomson, who had followed them to the scene. ‘So what do we know about this poor old sod?’ Thomson shook his head. ‘Nothing much. Just these.’
He handed Lapslie several old black-and-white photos of a man with a pretty wife and two small children. It was impossible to say if the man decomposing at his feet was the same one in the photo. He turned to Bradbury, handing her the photos. ‘Try and find out who he was. Natural death or not, I would like to know.’
Bradbury dropped the photographs into an exhibit bag that Thomson handed to her.
‘I’m still wondering how the hell he got in,’ Lapslie said.
‘We are working on that, sir.’
‘Don’t suppose for some bizarre reason he could have had a key? Maybe he used to be a local councillor.’
Bradbury shrugged. ‘No idea, sir.’
‘Well, when we find out who he is we might have a better chance of finding out how he got in and what he was doing here, bes
ides keeping warm and drinking.’
Bradbury nodded. She glanced away, awkwardly. ‘There’s something else I’d like you to see, sir.’
‘Something connected to this body?’
Bradbury shook her head. ‘No, I don’t believe so, sir – but odd to say the least.’ She moved away and Lapslie followed when she walked into a small antechamber just off the main room. She turned to Lapslie. ‘This room had been locked, sir—’
‘Nothing odd in that, Emma.’
‘No, sir, but it was locked with a new-style Chubb lock. Took our locksmith longer to open this door than it did the main door. Someone’s been using this room on a regular basis.’
Lapslie nodded. ‘Okay. Lead on.’
As he entered the concrete room, Lapslie glanced around. It looked like it might have been a storeroom. Empty metal racking lined the walls. At the far end, lined up on one of the shelves, was what Bradbury wanted to show him. Lapslie moved close, and stared in bewilderment.
Stretching along the entire length of the shelf, standing upright, were twelve small wooden coffins. They were perfectly shaped, and about twelve inches tall. Nine were closed, and three open. The open coffins had what looked like dolls standing up inside them.
Lapslie moved forward for a closer look. The three dolls he could see were dressed bizarrely. The first wore a beautiful lace wedding dress. The second was dressed as a soldier; on his shoulder was a small carefully stitched crown indicating the rank of major. The third and final doll was dressed as an old-fashioned teacher, with a black gown, and a mortar board perched on his head. The dolls seemed to have been made of wax, or something similar, judging by the gloss of their skin. Whatever the material was, they had been well made.
‘“There will be time to murder and create”,’ he murmured softly.
Lapslie slipped on latex gloves, picked up the doll dressed as a bride and stared at it for a moment, running his thumb across the lace and the material that made up the dress. The clothing was well tailored, and the material of a fine quality. He put down the bride doll and went on to peer at the soldier and the teacher. When he leaned over and opened one of the closed coffins it revealed another doll; this one dressed as a mechanic of some sort. It was wearing stained blue overalls and carrying what looked like a small model spanner. The difference between this doll and the ones in the open coffins was that this doll had been crushed and twisted into disfigurement.
The Thirteenth Coffin Page 2