by Wonny Lea
‘OK, guv,’ Helen said, heading off to round up the others.
Matt allowed himself a brief grin as he noted it was the first time he’d been called ‘guv’. As a DI heading up his own team it was a title he’d be happy to get used to. The problem was that he felt anything but happy. Despite the good news at work, the rest of his life seemed to be falling to pieces.
He was grateful to find the office empty and sat at his desk. Ignoring the usual pile of paperwork in his in-tray he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. His mind ran briefly over the scenario at the train station. Although there were one or two points that needed addressing, he couldn’t see that CID would have much input. The death would of course be referred to the coroner, and he would be called to give evidence, but it wasn’t as if he had a major crime to solve and so it wasn’t enough to distract him from thoughts of more personal problems.
He had last weekend, for the first time in his life, got seriously drunk for a reason other than social pleasure, and a nagging thought was telling him that the oblivion it had brought was something worth repeating. It didn’t seem all that long since he was happy, playing the field both on the rugby pitch and with a succession of girlfriends. An injury sustained in capturing a criminal had put paid to the rugby, at least for a while, but the women – or woman – was another matter.
Since Matt had met Sarah he had thought for the first time about settling down and having a family of his own, but now, with the thought barely ignited, it was being extinguished.
What was it about life? He had to admit that, in spite of what could be considered a traumatic childhood, he’d done well at school and university and his chosen career was proving to be everything he’d hoped for. It would be the icing on the cake if he and Sarah could join his sisters and play happy families but on more than one front that dream was fading fast. He knew that the thought of losing Sarah was the main reason for him feeling at the lowest ebb he could ever remember, but the potential breakup of not one, but two, of his sisters’ relationships was also keeping him awake at night.
Matt thought back to his own childhood. His parents had separated when he was seven, and as far as he knew his father had returned to his hometown of Tropea in Italy. For years Matt had avoided asking questions about his father, as they inevitably resulted in his mother crying and his older sisters shouting at him. It had been his sisters who brought him up after their mother died. He couldn’t remember a time when his mother hadn’t been ill, although there was no specific problem that he could recall other than chronic anaemia, which he now knew had been the result of years of almost constant pregnancy and numerous miscarriages. Their mother’s last wish had been that her children revert to her maiden name, and so at the age of thirteen Matthew Fattore had become Matthew Pryor.
Although he hated himself for having the thought, he had to admit that in many ways things were easier after his mother died. His sisters were old enough to take over the running of the house and although Carlo Fattore had abandoned his Welsh family there was, up until Matt’s twenty-first birthday, a generous monthly cheque.
As, one by one, his sisters flew the nest, Matt ended up alone in the family home in Pontprennau. He had since become the favourite uncle to twelve nieces, and his eldest sister Cara had been known to joke that there was more Italian than Welsh in all of them than they would care to admit, as on one occasion all three sisters were pregnant at the same time. Matt got on well with his sisters’ partners and was included in all aspects of their family lives, so it was a terrible shame that things were going wrong for two of them.
The sound of his phone ringing caused him to jump out of his skin, and feeling a bit unsure of what he was now supposed to call himself he stuck with what he knew.
‘DS Pryor.’
‘Good afternoon DI Pryor, and congratulations on your promotion – you’re going to have to get used to your new title! This is Mrs Williams, Professor Moore’s assistant. The Prof has asked if it’s possible for you to look at something he came across during his post-mortem examination of the gentleman found dead on the train this morning.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Williams, I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’
Matt replaced the receiver and dragged his mind back to what he remembered about the body. The man looked like he’d simply fallen asleep, and there had been nothing obvious to suggest anything other than death by natural causes. However, it was extremely unlikely that the Prof call him in to look at the damage caused by a massive coronary thrombosis, or a cerebral haemorrhage, or any other naturally occurring fatal phenomena.
As he walked up towards the domain of Professor Moore on the fourth floor of Goleudy, Matt wondered what exactly was going on. He’d been hoping for a meatier case, but now he was wondering if he should have been more careful about what he wished for.
The familiar smell of the hypochlorites and alcohols used for general laboratory disinfectant reached Matt’s nose as he got nearer to his destination and as always it made him feel slightly queasy. He could see Mrs Williams hovering at the doorway of the changing rooms and made his way towards her.
‘We’re in his usual room,’ she said. ‘The Prof’s suggested you look at the trousers that were taken off the dead man, and I’m to tell you that the stain on the upper right leg is new and is blood. I’ve put a set of lab clothes and overshoes out for you, and the trousers I mentioned are on the table just as you go in, along with the rest of the gentleman’s clothes and belongings.’
She left him there. Her ear was tuned to the man she had worked alongside for many years, and although Matt heard nothing, she had obviously picked up a sound that indicated that the Prof required her immediate help. As the Prof got older he seemed, to everyone except Mrs Williams, to be getting more and more cantankerous. His brilliance, as both a forensic scientist and a lecturer, was being increasingly recognised, and offers of lucrative lecture tours were pouring in from all over the world. Fortunately he was something of a home bird and so Cardiff was privileged to retain his services. According to DCI Phelps, that was mainly based on the fact that the Prof would have no desire to demonstrate his skills without Mrs Williams at his side – and she was no globetrotter.
Matt pushed open the door of the changing room and walked over to the table where the dead man’s clothes were laid out and labelled. There was a dark blue, lightweight raincoat, a cream cotton shirt, and a very traditional set of white pants and vest. The first thing that struck Matt was that all the clothes were in excellent condition and looked more likely to have been bought in John Lewis than Peacocks. The shoes certainly looked expensive: soft black leather and, like the rest of the clothes, giving the impression of money and good taste.
As far as Matt could see there were just a few belongings, but they would possibly help with identification. There was what looked like a solid gold watch, a thick, plain, gold ring, and the contents of the dead man’s pockets he’d already seen. He turned his attention towards the trousers and immediately noticed the stain Mrs Williams had mentioned. Although it appeared as if the Prof was absorbed in the post-mortem examination, he must have had one eye on Matt and told him to come nearer if he wanted to see the reason for the blood.
Grateful that he hadn’t been around when the first incision had been made Matt moved to the foot of the examination table. He didn’t mind watching these sessions but he couldn’t get over the nauseating feeling he got when witnessing the Prof’s scalpel first cut into the cold flesh. That moment was well passed and all eyes were now on the right leg of the deceased man and more specifically on a small area of skin that had been damaged.
The Prof seemed to grow a few inches in stature as he proceeded to give Matt a bit of a lesson in human biology and ran his hands over the leg.
‘This group of muscles is known as the quadriceps, and the individual muscle that has been pierced is the rectus femoris. I missed this puncture wound initially, but when I’d finished the post-mortem and couldn’t come up with a ca
use of death, we retraced our steps from head to toe and we found this little bleeder – didn’t we, Mrs Williams?
‘We then did a bit of detective work of our own and found the bloodstain on the trousers. Your SOC people will want to have a better look at those, and I will be pushing for early toxicology results as I am certain they will tell us the cause of death.’
‘Are you saying this man was injected with something that proved to be fatal?’
In his usual dismissive fashion Professor Moore looked over the top of his half-rimmed glasses and raised his eyebrows.
‘You’re the detective, my friend! All I will be able to tell you is what caused this man to keel over on the train. It will be for you to discover if he gave himself a fatal injection, or if someone else decided he should be dispatched from this world. I understand you’re leading this case in the absence of DCI Phelps, and it looks to me as if you may have been handed your first solo murder.’
Matt could barely remember changing, scrubbing his hands, and walking back to his office. His mind had suddenly become completely focused and, although one part of him wished that Martin Phelps was on hand, he was feeling a big rush of adrenaline at the opportunity of going it alone. He mustn’t blow it.
Matt reminded himself of the techniques he had learned during his time as Martin’s DS. Martin was famous as a stickler to his methods, but Matt would have to find his own way of doing things now, and quickly if this really was going to be his first lead on a murder investigation.
He walked along a short corridor towards Incident Room Three and pushed open the door to find the small team he had requested already waiting for him. PC Mullen was handing out mugs of coffee and moved one to the edge of the tray.
‘I’m told yours is strong with just a dash of milk and a spoonful of sugar. I hope that’s right.’
‘Perfect,’ replied Matt. ‘I try to cut out the sugar sometimes but I don’t last long. How DCI Phelps drinks his coffee strong and with no milk or sugar is beyond me – it tastes like poison.
‘Talking about poison brings me to a bit of news that will surprise you all as it did me. I’ve just left the Prof, who has completed the autopsy on our mystery man. I was expecting him to tell me that the deceased had suffered a heart attack or something along those lines, but far from it – unless the gentleman gave himself a lethal injection it looks as if we have a murder on our hands.’
Matt went on to tell the team about how the lack of any obvious cause of death as a result of internal examination had led to an almost microscopic examination of the surface of the body.
‘The man has quite hairy legs, especially for someone of his age, and what looks like nothing more than a pinprick is, on closer examination, something more significant. There is a small amount of dried blood surrounding it and whatever caused the injury was delivered through his clothes. There is a recent blood stain on the upper right leg of his trousers and before I left the fourth floor I asked Mrs Williams to get all his belongings sent to Alex Griffiths for the SOC team to look at them.
‘Although he wouldn’t commit himself without toxicology results, I am sure the Prof is expecting to hear that the man was killed by an injection of a fatal substance. If he’d injected himself we’d have found a discarded needle and syringe near the body, but there was nothing. What we need to find out is who injected him and why but I guess the first thing we need to know is who he is.’
Matt stopped for breath and took stock of the effect his news was having on the team.
Helen Cook-Watts was the first to speak. ‘I didn’t see the man whilst he was on the train; in fact I haven’t actually seen him at all, but from what I was told I just expected a simple “death from natural causes” verdict with us just needing to discover his identity.’
‘Well, I did see him slumped in his seat because I got there just before DI Pryor and I spoke to the woman who was sitting next to him.’ DS Matthews paused and looked deep in thought as his mind ran back over what he had been called to witness. ‘When the train lurched as it stopped that apparently caused the man’s body to fall forward and the woman, Mrs Wiseman, cry out as a dead man fell into her lap! The station staff did say the carriage would be taken out of service, but at the time we weren’t even considering it as a potential murder scene so we didn’t seal it off or anything. Shall I ask Alex Griffiths’ SOC to go over the carriage with a fine toothcomb?’
Matt nodded. ‘Yes, and we need to interview other the people who were on that train and that’s not going to be easy, although I suspect many of them will be regular commuters, catching the same train every morning.’
PC Mullen voiced her concerns. ‘Yes but one of them, according to the Prof, is a murderer, and a pretty cool customer to kill someone in a public place like that. I guess if it was death by lethal injection, the act could have been done by a man or a woman. It doesn’t require brute strength to jab a needle in someone, does it?
‘The only two people left when we arrived at the scene were Ellie Bevan and Mrs Wiseman, Hilda. The older lady was naturally in a state of shock, but calmed down when her daughter was escorted to the train by one of the porters. Apparently the daughter had been waiting in the foyer for her mother and had heard the buzz of conversation regarding a death on the train, and so she was half-expecting to find her mother had passed away.
‘After taking her contact details we were more than happy for Mrs Wiseman to be taken to her daughter’s house. Maybe if we’d suspected foul play at the time we would have detained her. After all, she was best placed to do the deed and it would have been easy for her to hide a syringe in that rather large handbag she carries.’
Matt shook his head. ‘Nothing is beyond the realms of possibility, but an elderly lady killing some random man by injecting him with a syringe full of poison that she keeps in her handbag is stretching the boundaries of madness. What possible reason would she have had?
‘Now, we still have to wait for the blood analysis to be one hundred per cent sure that we are talking about murder, but we can go public on a suspicious death and ask for anyone on the train to come forward and help with our enquiries. I’m not expecting the killer to oblige us, so it will be the usual slog of examining all the CCTV footage from the platform and station exits. I suggest we look at a timeslot of five minutes from the time the train arrived at the station. If I had just committed a murder I don’t think I would have hung around for longer than that.’
Now it was Helen’s turn to shake her head. ‘I use the train quite regularly and one thing’s always the same: everyone rushes about! If we’re looking for someone in a hurry to get out, that will be the majority of the passengers and probably most of the staff.’
‘OK, fair point,’ Matt said. ‘For the moment let’s just secure all the tapes that are relevant to the timeslot and concentrate on a public appeal for witnesses and getting a thorough examination of the carriage. I’m going to have to re-interview Ellie Bevan and consider the possibility that she murdered the man or at the very least explore the connection between them.’
Matt reconsidered his words. ‘I can’t see her being the killer, as the last thing she would have done would be to draw our attention to that photograph. She told us she was adopted but has never been in touch with her real mother or the family, and knows nothing about them. This man could be one of her biological family, so what do you think the relationship would be?’
‘I was going to say not her father, because of the age gap, but I remember reading about Charlie Chaplin being seventy-odd when he fathered his last child,’ said Helen. ‘We need to find out who he is – what about dental records?’
Matt nodded dubiously as he knew that would take some time. ‘I’m more inclined to try matching his car keys with a vehicle that could have been left at one of the stations. The train starts at Treherbert but I don’t know how many stops there are between there and where Ellie got on.’ Helen volunteered to check it out.
Matt made his first stab at creating som
e form of methodology. He didn’t draw columns on the whiteboard, as Martin would have done, but rather a series of bullet points to list the actions that were needed. When he had exhausted the list he gave each task a number and his small team were allocated specific jobs. He was happy with the way he had brought everything together, but as this was now likely to be a full-scale murder investigation he would need more help.
He headed towards the stairs and tried to remember some of the tricks Martin had taught him about negotiating with the powers-that-be for additional resources. At least he was now fully occupied and could put his personal problems on the backburner by replacing them with his first murder …
Chapter Three
‘But that was eleven years ago and to be honest I don’t even remember much about the case – I think it was before I came back to Cardiff from Swansea. I’ve been through all the paperwork, as you suggested, and although my approach would have been very different it’s unlikely that I would have found anything else and –’
DCI Phelps was interrupted by Chief Superintendent Colin Atkinson. ‘We both know that the odds are you would have found more leads – that’s what you do and that’s what I want you to do now. It’s likely that you will reach the very top of our profession, Martin, but for the time being I’m greatly relieved to have someone with your ability staying at DCI level, albeit in a different role, and with your salary enhanced to the limit of what is within my power to give.’
Martin grinned. ‘Yes, thanks for that, sir, and it’s possible, in the not-too-distant future, that I will want to move onwards and upwards, but for now any sort of desk job is just not for me. What I do need is some more information regarding my new role. Things like who’ll decide on what old cases I look at, and who I’ll be reporting to.’
‘That will be me on both counts, and I must tell you at the outset that the arrangements have not gone down well with one or two officers who probably see themselves as sitting between you and me in the chain of command. Their egos have taken a bit of a knock because they weren’t asked to head up my new section, but I think I’ve managed to massage their self-esteem by suggesting they are invaluable to me in their current positions. Anyway, let’s get some coffee and make ourselves comfortable, because explaining what I have in mind is not going to be a five-minute job.’