The Body on the Lido Deck

by Jane Bennett Munro

  “Are only officers allowed on the bridge?”

  “Only a select few,” Grant said. “The captain, the first officer, the second or navigation officer, the third and fourth officers, the helmsman, and the quartermaster, to be precise. Others by invitation only.”

  “We need to get a core temperature,” the coroner said. “That should settle the question of when she actually died.”

  “Have at it,” I said.

  She removed a liver probe from her bag and plunged it into the remains in the approximate location of where the liver should have been.

  “I wonder if the security guards saw anything,” Officer Grant said. “I may as well talk to them while she’s doing that.”

  When he left the pool area by way of the door, Nigel and I followed him. The security guards outside looked startled. They clearly hadn’t been expecting anyone to exit. “Excuse me, madam,” the older of them said to me. “What were you doing in there? How did you get in?”

  “It’s quite all right, Hodges,” Grant said. “They’re with me.”

  “Did either of you see anyone come out carrying a head?” I asked them.

  They looked at each other. “A what?” the younger one asked in confusion. I could see why. On boats, the “head” means the bathroom.

  “A human head,” I amplified.

  “Certainly not!” retorted Hodges, clearly offended.

  “Gorblimey!” exclaimed the younger one in horror. “Are you ’aving us on?”

  Nigel hastened to appease them. “See here,” he said. “Did either of you see anybody come out of these doors since you’ve been stationed here?”

  “Just maintenance,” Hodges said. “They came to drain the pool.”

  “And ’ousekeeping,” the other chimed in. “Just now.”

  “Were either of them carrying anything?” Nigel asked.

  “Well, the bloke from ’ousekeeping ’ad a mop and bucket,” the younger security guard said.

  “You’re quite sure that was all?” Nigel persisted. “Nothing else?”

  They shook their heads emphatically.

  We went back inside the pool area.

  “The guy from housekeeping couldn’t have taken it,” Nigel said. “We were already here when he came in.”

  “Someone could have wrapped it in a towel and thrown it in one of the laundry bins in the spa,” I suggested. The spa was located on the Lido deck as well, just forward of the swimming pool. “Or thrown it in the trash. Then he wouldn’t have had to carry it out of here at all.”

  “Maybe,” Officer Grant said, “but we can’t take the chance. Whatever’s in the trash now will get off-loaded here in port, and then it’s out of our hands.”

  “We’d better search both places,” I suggested.

  “Both of what?” the captain asked.

  “Both the trash and the laundry,” I said.

  The captain seemed to be at the end of his patience. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

  Nigel hastened to explain the situation.

  Captain Sloane sighed. “Officer Dalquist, you’ll be in charge. You know what you have to do.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Dalquist said resignedly, and left.

  “I suppose it’s a mercy,” the captain said, “that we can get it done now before everyone comes back on board. The housekeeping staff is all islanders. Superstitious lot. This is going to ‘freak them out,’ as you Yanks say.”

  “Shall I go with him?” Detective Inspector Gordon Jones inquired of the captain. “I’m an islander too. Maybe I can talk to the crew and make them understand how important this is.”

  “I’ll go too,” offered young Dr. Welch. “They all know me. I did their physicals.”

  After they had gone, Nigel turned to Officer Grant. “What about the laundry?”

  “Laundry is done right here on board ship,” Grant said, “so it’s not quite so time sensitive.”

  “Why don’t we go search the laundry bins in the spa?” I asked. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “You three go ahead,” the coroner said. “I need to get an evidence tech up here to help me retrieve as much of the body as we can before the ship sails.”

  “Before the ship sails?” I asked. “You mean you’re going to let us sail off at six o’clock tonight as if nothing happened?”

  “We can’t detain cruise ships,” Chief Superintendent Braithwaite said. “We have no authority to do so. If there were a body, we’d remove it, and I’d request an autopsy if I thought it necessary; but in this case all we can do is collect as much evidence as we can before the ship sails.”

  “In that case,” Nigel said, “you’ll need us to find the head before the ship sails as well. We’d better get busy straightaway. Is the spa staff all islanders too?”

  “Australians,” I said, “and New Zealanders.” I knew this because I’d availed myself of several spa services during the cruise. So had my mother.

  “In that case,” Braithwaite said, “would you accompany me, Detective Superintendent Gray?”

  “Delighted,” Nigel said.

  That left me with Officer Grant and the coroner, who’d been on her cell phone during this conversation. She pocketed it as Braithwaite and Nigel disappeared through the spa doors. “There’ll be an evidence tech here in just a few minutes,” she told me. “Shall we see what we can retrieve?”

  “Certainly,” I said, accepting the metaphorical olive branch, and we walked back to the body. The area had become quite hot with the sun directly overhead. My clothes were now dry, so I removed the towel and looked around for a place to put it. That’s when I saw the laundry bin standing right next to the towel caddy, big as life. I peered into it. It was empty. That figured. Nobody besides me had used any towels yet today.

  I put my towel into it and went back to the body, which had dried up quite a bit since seven o’clock this morning. It was getting on toward noon, which meant five hours had passed, and some of the remains had assumed the appearance of beef jerky. It seemed likely that every bone in her body, aside from her left arm and leg, had been broken in multiple places.

  “Do you think these fingers will give you usable fingerprints?” I asked her, pointing to the one hand that I could see.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They look pretty dried out.”

  “You can cut off a finger and soak it in fabric softener,” I suggested.

  “Does that work?” she inquired skeptically. “Have you ever tried it yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I saw it on TV. But what can it hurt?”

  She shrugged.

  “You could try it and see,” I pursued.

  Again she shrugged. This woman was a hard nut to crack and no mistake. So much for olive branches. The flies were persistent, and I got tired of trying to keep them off the body, so I quit trying. There wasn’t anything I wanted to touch with my bare hands anyway. I didn’t have any gloves, and apparently neither did she.

  So I got up and moved over to the starboard windows, just in time to see another police car drive onto the pier and park next to the police van. A tall, slender girl dressed in navy-blue coveralls got out, carrying a large case.

  “Hey,” I called to the coroner, who had also moved away from the body and was now sitting in a deck chair in the shade, “I think your evidence tech is here.”

  “Good,” she said, fanning herself. “It’s about time.”

  A few minutes later, the girl entered the pool area and walked toward us. As she got closer, I saw that she was beautiful. Her features were finely sculptured, her dark eyes large and liquid, and her complexion a flawless café au lait. She wore her hair in a knot on top of her head. She greeted the coroner with a smile. “Whatcha got, Mama?”

  “My daughter, Eva Mae St. John,” Dr. Gresham-St. John said t
o me. “She’s our evidence tech.”

  I was having a hard time believing that the short, dumpy coroner and this gorgeous sylphlike creature could be related. I hoped it didn’t show. “How handy for you,” I commented and then introduced myself.

  “Have you touched any of the remains?” she asked sharply.

  Like mother, like daughter. “Not without gloves,” I replied. “Got an extra pair?”

  “Not for you,” she returned and turned her back on me to kneel by the remains and open her case.

  “I say,” Officer Grant commented, “that was a bit rude, what?”

  Eva Mae gave him an impassive look and then started unloading containers of various sizes and ignoring us completely. She had quite a few of them, but there was no way she was going to get that entire mangled body into them. She was going to need a body bag or some really big buckets—like those big orange ones from Home Depot.

  And a shovel. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. I was through trying to help. She and her mama were on their own.

  “I don’t know about you,” I said to Officer Grant, “but I’m done here.”

  He assented, and we started to leave. The pool was almost completely empty, and something shiny caught my eye. I started down into the empty pool to get a closer look, and Officer Grant said, “What are you doing, Doctor?”

  “There’s something caught in the pool drain,” I said.

  The thing that had caught my eye was an earring that had been caught in the drain along with a tangle of blonde hairs. I recognized it right away. Officer Grant whistled when I held it up for him to see.

  “Dr. Gresham-St. John!” I called.

  The coroner looked up. “What is it now, Dr. Day?”

  “You need to see this.”

  She didn’t have a chance to ask what, though, because just at that moment my stepfather and Chief Superintendent Braithwaite emerged from the spa. “What does she need to see?” Braithwaite asked me.

  I showed him. “Here’s proof that the head was here before someone removed it.”

  “What is it, Malcolm?” the coroner asked.

  “An earring and some blonde hairs in the pool drain,” he answered.

  She laughed. “All that proves is that somebody with blonde hair swam in the pool and lost an earring.”

  “It’s her earring,” I said.

  “And how do you know that?” she challenged me.

  “I saw it when I examined the head earlier.”

  “And you think that she’s the only one who might have earrings like that,” she said skeptically.

  I was rapidly losing patience with Dr. Gresham-St John. I opened my mouth, but Braithwaite forestalled me. “It’s pretty distinctive, Marietta.” He held it up to the light, and I snapped a picture of it.

  The coroner didn’t answer.

  “That woman doesn’t want to believe anything I say,” I complained sotto voce. “What’s her problem?”

  “She clearly finds you intimidating,” Grant said.

  “Really,” I said skeptically. “What gives you that idea?”

  “Because I find you intimidating as well.”

  I could think of no possible answer to that, so I just shook my head.

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Day,” Braithwaite reassured me. “If the victim’s in the system, we’ll find her.” He pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket and put the earring in it. Then he pulled out another and said, “Just put the hair in here.”

  I did so. “I assume you didn’t find the head?”

  “We looked in every trash receptacle and laundry basket,” Nigel said. “Not to mention all the cabinets and drawers. No joy.”

  “We left behind a thoroughly upset and confused spa staff,” Braithwaite said. “It’s a good job there were no customers today.”

  That made me wonder if the murder victim had ever patronized the spa. “You could go back in there and show them that earring,” I suggested. “Maybe someone will recognize it.”

  Braithwaite nodded. “There’s a thought,” he said, and disappeared.

  I heard footfalls on the metal staircase and turned to see Hal emerging from behind the bar. “I thought I might find you down here,” he said. He slung an arm around me and gave me a kiss. “Have you figured out who she is yet?”

  “No, not yet,” I said. “Plus, the head has disappeared.”

  “What?”

  “When we heard the police sirens, we all went topside to see the police arrive. Then when the police arrived here on the Lido deck, we all went back downstairs. During the time we were gone, maintenance came and started draining the pool, and the head disappeared. So Nigel and Chief Superintendent Braithwaite have been searching the spa, and the captain, Inspector Jones, the ship’s doctor, and the officer in charge of waste disposal are searching the trash and the laundry, and this is Officer Grant, who’s in charge of security.”

  Hal appeared thunderstruck. “All the trash? On this whole ship?”

  “Well, they’re a bit pressed for time,” Nigel explained, “because they have to collect all their evidence before the ship sails at six o’clock.”

  “Before the ship sails? You mean the police are going to let the ship just sail on out of here as if nothing happened?”

  Braithwaite emerged from the spa in time to hear Hal’s question. “That’s correct, sir. And you are?”

  “My husband,” I told him. “Hal Shapiro. Did anybody recognize the earring?”

  “Nobody on the staff,” Braithwaite said. “But there was a lady there making an appointment, who said it looked familiar. Unfortunately, she couldn’t be more specific.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll have better luck with the trash,” I said. “Should we go help? What time is it?”

  Hal looked at his watch. “Almost two.”

  “Did Fiona come back with you?” Nigel asked Hal.

  “Yes. She said she was going to take a little nap so we could all go to the show tonight.”

  “We’ve no time to waste,” I urged. “If we’re going, let’s go!”

  “Chief Superintendent?” Nigel said. “Can you use a few extra pairs of eyes?”

  “I suppose so,” Braithwaite said. “But we’ve a bit of a problem.”

  “What’s that?” Hal asked.

  Braithwaite motioned to the starboard windows. “They’re off-loading the trash as we speak. If they haven’t found the head yet, it’ll be going into that big lorry on the dock.”

  I looked, and saw rows of trash bags moving along a conveyor belt leading to a huge truck parked on the dock.

  “Then where does it go?” I asked. “To a landfill?”

  “To be incinerated or recycled,” Braithwaite said. “We’re an island. We’ve no space for a landfill.”

  “What about toxic fumes?”

  Braithwaite smiled. “We do have an Environmental Protection Department to deal with hazardous chemicals, just as you Yanks have an EPA.”

  “So we’re basically SOL,” Hal said.

  “SOL?”

  “Out of luck,” I translated.

  Braithwaite hesitated and then with a faint smile said, “Oh. I see. Yes, I suppose we are.”

  “So what now?” I asked him.

  “Let’s see how Marietta and Eva Mae are doing,” he replied, and we looked back toward the body.

  The coroner and her daughter were gone.

  5

  Nae man can tether time or tide.

  —Robert Burns

  NOT ONLY WERE they gone, but so were all their containers and the remains. Eva Mae must have had a body bag folded up somewhere in her case. The surrounding area had been cordoned off with police tape. Two uniformed Royal Barbados Police officers stood inside the tape, feet apart, arms folded, surveying the mess the coroner had left behind.

&nbs
p; Braithwaite lifted the tape, and Nigel, Hal, and I ducked under it. One of the officers turned and saw Hal. “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t allow you to be here. You’ll have to stay outside the tape.”

  Braithwaite came up beside me. “It’s all right, Officer, he’s with me. They’re all with me.”

  “We need to get busy and clean this up,” Grant said. “Do the police have everything they need?”

  “I’d guess so,” Braithwaite said. “My coroner is done with it, in any case.”

  “We still need to find the head,” I pointed out.

  “When did it go missing, exactly?” asked Grant. “Does anyone know?”

  I looked past him to see a tall, young man with a mop and bucket approaching. It was the same one who had been here earlier and freaked over the foot. I saw relief flicker across his face as he got closer and saw that the body was gone, foot and all. The bucket was actually a large can of industrial strength pool cleaner. “I don’t know,” I said, “but here comes someone who might.”

  They all turned to look. The crewman saw Braithwaite, and fear leaped into his eyes. Braithwaite walked toward him, holding up both hands in appeasement. “Relax, Jamal. I’m not after you. We just need to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “Oh yes.” Braithwaite chuckled. “Jamal and I are old friends. We saw quite a bit of him down the station during his misspent youth. I trust all that is past now, Jamal?”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “Excellent.” Braithwaite clapped the young man on the shoulder.

  “Jamal,” I said, “were you here when maintenance came to drain the pool this morning?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Did you remove the head from the pool, or did they?”

  If it were possible for a black man to turn white, Jamal did so. His eyes stretched wide, and he backed away from me, shaking his head. “No, mum, no way. Dere was no head in de pool, I swear.”

  “Jamal,” Braithwaite said, “settle down. Who got here first, you or maintenance?”

  “I did, Chief.”

  “So if he’s telling the truth,” Nigel said, “the head was removed before either he or maintenance got here.”