An Unsuitable Death

by J M Gregson

  It was the tinny electronic tones of DI Christopher Rushton, high and thin beneath the yellowing leaves of the oaks, which drew them back from the schoolboy world of games to the savage reality of the world which was their everyday life. ‘We have a murder on our patch, Super,’ he said. ‘A girl. Eighteen, or thereabouts. Fished out of the Wye yesterday, at Chepstow. But it seems beyond doubt now that she’s an Oldford girl.’

  *

  It was obliging of the corpse to present itself at Chepstow. The town houses one of the seven laboratories run by the Home Office Forensic Science Service. The police ‘death wagon’ had only a two-mile journey to deposit the remains into the care of the forensic scientists.

  On the morning after the news of the death had reached him, Lambert drove to the Chepstow laboratory. It was a bright October morning and his route ran along the A466 beside the sparkling Wye, through woods which were gathering the wistful glory of early autumn as the first yellow leaves appeared. He had been a policeman for too long to feel any guilt about enjoying the run on such a morning. He had already little doubt that this was a death which was sinister as well as tragic, but you grew used to death, to the need to distance yourself a little from even its most terrible manifestations. You had to survive and you had to remain objective.

  You even had to feel a little excitement when a death became a murder, if you were a CID man. Violence kept you in business, provided you with the contests of wit and resource which were the reason why you followed such a strange occupation. So John Lambert enjoyed his drive. He even dawdled a little, as the sun rose high enough on his left to gild the trees and make the sheep of the ancient Forest of Dean skip as if this were spring rather than autumn. He had ample time to do so on this uncrowded route, for he had not arranged to meet the scientific officer who had conducted the post mortem until ten o’clock. It was five to ten when he turned his car into Usk Road and parked in the small area allotted to visitors beside the laboratory.

  ‘Cliff Saunders,’ said the man from behind his office desk. He gave his visitor the curtest of nods and did not offer his hand. ‘I hope this won’t take long.’ He was a short, spare man with a tightly trimmed beard; Lambert found himself wanting to ask if it wasn’t inconvenient to him in his work. He was at least ten years younger than the superintendent, but curiously ill at ease, even though he was on his own ground. Not many people came into this place to discuss its findings, and Lambert sensed already that this was a man more at home with things than people, more at ease with the certainties of scientific investigation than the see-saw of conversational exchange.

  As if to reinforce this impression, Saunders said aggressively, ‘I don’t know what you expect to gain by talking to me. Everything I have to say will be contained in my official report. Your inspector has already had a verbal summary, and the full report is being typed as we speak. It will be with you first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘And I’ve no doubt it will be comprehensive,’ said Lambert evenly. ‘As comprehensive, that is, as a document can reasonably be, when it may eventually have to stand up to examination in a court of law. Cautiously comprehensive, as you might say.’

  ‘The report contains everything I have to say about this matter. The corpse was not in good condition, not even complete after all this time.’ The corners of his mouth turned downwards in a moue of distaste, as if he were a chef complaining that he had been asked to prepare a dish with inferior materials.

  Lambert realised that there was no point in trying to explain his methods to this stiff creature, no point in trying to justify his need to get to grips with a case by gathering in the feelings as well as the findings of those involved, as this man now had been, however briefly and dispassionately. Intuition was sometimes a valuable quality for a detective, but Saunders would surely have no use for such an imprecise notion. No doubt he had turned eagerly from the uncertainties and untidiness of living humanity to the certainties of the dissecting table. A certain sort of mind demanded certainty above everything, and you could not carve up living bodies to provide definite answers to every question.

  Lambert said only, ‘I find that it often helps me to talk to the man who has conducted an investigation into the causes of death. You’ll have to take my word for that.’

  ‘I don’t see how I can help you, that’s all.’

  You wouldn’t, of course. But then you’re not used to being challenged, Lambert thought. He knew that he would gain nothing by offending this austere man. He said, ‘I’m aware that you have to be careful and precise in your findings; that they may be probed for weakness at some later date by some smart-alec lawyer.’ He saw from Saunders’ face that he had struck a chord of recognition there, at any rate. ‘That is in itself a limitation. Sometimes it helps me if forensic men will go a little beyond the mere facts which are all they can safely put into an official report. Speculation may be dangerous in a legal context, but it can be helpful to policemen floundering after leads at the beginning of an investigation.’

  Saunders said woodenly, ‘I am not a doctor, Superintendent. I deal in facts. I am not at home with anything else.’

  Lambert had to resist the impulse to shout at the pompous twit that policemen also deal in facts, that he was here only because they wanted to establish the most important ones and proceed from there, that without facts they could never compile a case those cautious buggers from the Crown Prosecution Service would take up. Instead, he said doggedly, ‘Nevertheless, I think an exchange between us would be useful. Let’s just go over the facts you have established for us and see if I have any questions, shall we?’

  Saunders shrugged, then sighed petulantly. ‘If you think it will help. The cadaver had been in the water for a long time, you know. I should say ten to twelve weeks, though it’s difficult to be certain.’

  His hand flashed comically to his mouth after these last words, and Lambert realised immediately that he had been more adventurous in speech than in writing: the summary DI Rushton had already communicated to him had spoken of eight to fourteen weeks. He did not underline the point that the forensic man was already being more precise in speech than in his report; the man had already realised that for himself. Saunders might be a prickly sod, but he was sharp and intelligent, and that was more important. ‘And the corpse has been in the Wye for the whole of that time?’

  Saunders looked at him sharply. He had plainly not entertained the idea that the body might have been in other waters before it reached the river. It seemed unlikely, but it was possible, and a scientist must not disregard what was possible. The man found himself unexpectedly drawn towards the mystery that he thought he had already relinquished with his report, towards the puzzle which he now saw was just the first of many for this grizzled detective who sat so watchfully on the other side of his desk. ‘It’s impossible to say for certain just where the body has been since death. It’s certainly been in water for most of the period between the time of expiry and the hour when it was sighted in Chepstow. The deterioration and the damage from outside sources are what I would expect in a corpse immersed in a river like the Wye for ten to twelve weeks. The body was that of a young woman. Seventeen to twenty, I’d say. With a face too much damaged for normal identification, but a full set of teeth and recent dental treatment.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘We’ve already identified her from dental records. She was an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl from Oldford.’

  Despite himself, Saunders was suddenly and unexpectedly stricken with the pity of it, as the thing he had cut up turned suddenly from so much putrefying meat into a human creature, struck down at an age when she should have been full of aspiration and potential. He said dully, ‘You were quick. I only did the autopsy yesterday morning.’

  Lambert decided he might draw Saunders into the case if he offered a few of the facts the man seemed to find so reassuring. ‘There were twelve murders on our patch and the areas immediately surrounding it in the six weeks you gave us for the outside limits of this death. Nine
of them were domestics; the other three all have a corpse present and correct. So we checked the missing persons register for our area. This girl was already registered as a MISPA — we scan the computer files automatically when we have a murder victim.’ Chris Rushton would be pleased to hear him singing the praises of the technology he often affected to despise, he thought with a grim smile.

  Saunders digested the logic of these procedures, then nodded his satisfaction. ‘Well, it was murder, I should think. She didn’t die in the Wye, this one. She was dead when she went into the water.’

  ‘Alison Watts.’ She could have a name at least, even though such things were no longer of any concern to her. ‘How do you think she died, Mr Saunders?’

  A few minutes earlier, the man behind the desk would have bridled and said stiffly that his findings were in his report. Now he said, ‘Vagal inhibition. Asphyxiation or strangling, in layman’s terms. But it’s difficult to be absolutely precise as to how this came about. The neck has been too severely eaten away by the creatures of the river, you see. I showed the police liaison officer the problem when we were doing the PM. But I could get her out again if you’d like to —’

  ‘No! No need for that. I understand the problem,’ said Lambert hastily. He found the man opposite him looking up in surprise at this unsuspected squeamishness in a senior officer.

  ‘Well. I’m pretty sure from the damage to the internal organs of the throat that she was strangled. Probably with some sort of ligature. Rope or wire, in all probability; there isn’t enough left to provide any detail of what sort of ligature, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So everything points to the fact that she’s been in the river for a long time. But she couldn’t have been dumped in the river near her home and taken this long to drift down to Chepstow, could she?’

  ‘No. We’ve had plenty of rain in August and September this year. Even if a body got caught up in debris near the bank somewhere, it would have moved down to Chepstow within a week at most, I’d say. She was weighted down, Mr Lambert. There isn’t much of her feet left, I’m afraid, but the injuries around her left ankle suggest that a rope or wire was tied round it — presumably with something heavy attached to the end of it.’

  The two of them were silent for a moment, picturing the incident two to three months ago when the body was slipped into the Wye, carefully weighted to guard against its discovery, probably somewhere near the girl’s home, thirty miles upstream of where they sat. Then Cliff Saunders said quietly, ‘I imagine the rope detached itself when the foot was no longer there to retain it. Otherwise the poor kid might still be lying at the bottom of the Wye.’ He was moved at last, this man who so spurned the use of the imagination, by his vision of the waste of this young life.

  Lambert said slowly, ‘So she was killed somewhere away from the river — we don’t know how far away — and dumped into the river at some point we may never find. Probably ten to twelve weeks ago.’ The facts were stark enough. He did not quote the statistic which showed that when murders were not solved within the first week, the chances of finding the culprit decreased sharply. No doubt a forensic biochemist was well aware of such facts.

  Saunders said, ‘She wasn’t a virgin. That’s in my report, of course. But there was no chance of establishing whether this was a sex crime, I’m afraid. The flesh was much too far gone to ascertain whether there were any traces of bruising or scratching on the inner thighs, or anywhere else for that matter.’

  ‘No, I didn’t expect there would be.’ And no semen or pubic hairs or clothes fibres from the man who had done this — if it was a man. The river had long removed such traces.

  Saunders, appreciating now how his report provided many more questions than answers for the police, said, ‘The chemists are working on her clothes, but I don’t hold out much hope for you there. Washed clean by the Wye, I’m sure.’ He had the air now of a man who wanted to help, who recognised the awful complexity of this death for the people who had to find out who was responsible for it. He weighed his thoughts for a moment, then said, almost reluctantly, ‘There’s one other thing, which is only touched upon even in my report, because it’s not a matter about which one can speak with certainty so long after death. There’s not much of the genitalia left, but I’d say from the condition of the internal organs that this was a girl who was sexually active. Frequent intercourse, I should think. Whether with one partner or several, you’ll no doubt find out in the course of your enquiries.’

  It had cost this constricted man quite a lot to move from the facts of his dissecting slab into such speculation, and both of them knew it. Lambert stood up. ‘I expect you have daughters yourself, as I have.’ Saunders nodded bleakly. ‘Thank you for your help. I don’t suppose anything more will occur to you, but if you should think of something else which might be of help, please ring me.’

  The scientist nodded. ‘Where will you begin?’

  ‘With the people who were with her last. With her family, to start with. And no doubt in due course with her sexual partner, or partners.’

  None of these, of course, might be the person who was with her last of all, the person who had abruptly stilled this young life and watched her weighted body sink into the depths of the Wye. Starting so long after the event, it might be that they would never discover that ruthless operator. It wasn’t an investigation to look forward to.

  And the victim was beginning to emerge now as a real person, not the cipher she had been when John Lambert had enjoyed the colours of the forest and the glint of the river on his way to Chepstow. The drive back to Oldford, shadowed now with this death and its consequences, would be altogether more sombre.

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