The Man with No Face

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘I see,’ said Abernethy, feeling a little weak.

  ‘I think that’s what explains this wound. Cavitation complicated by a fragmenting bullet. We came across the concept of cavitation when we examined flesh wounds, so called, non-fatal wounds where the bullet had been a clean through and through and found tissue damage extending for a considerable distance either side of the track of the bullet. It was caused by the bullet pulsating energy out to the sides as it went through the air, and through flesh. That helped explain a lot, such as why bullets which didn’t strike vital organs have still proved fatal.’

  ‘The shock wave got to the organ in question?’

  ‘That’s it. If the bullet is of sufficiently high velocity. Now, I cannot detect any other trauma, can you, Mr Millard?’

  ‘I can’t, sir.’

  ‘No bruising, no maceration, rippling of the skin caused by immersion, clothing dampened by rain but not saturated…when found he was recently deceased going by the body temperature…I don’t have to cut open his ribcage and look at his lungs to tell you that this person did not drown, Mr Abernethy.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So the only other causes of death could be suffocation or poisoning, for which I’ll have to do tests on his blood. If he sustained a fatal head injury prior to being shot I’m afraid that that evidence has quite literally been blown away. So, I can’t take it any further, Mr Abernethy. I’ll take a sample of his blood and do tests right away. That will point to oxygen starvation or the presence of toxins, if either is present, but I have now finished my examination and your fingerprint chappie can come and do his stuff.’

  Thank you, sir.’

  ‘You may convey my respects to Mr Donoghue. If it please him, my initial finding is that this adult male was most probably killed by being shot from close range, about one imperial foot separating the entrance wound from the muzzle of the firearm. He was shot by a high-velocity firearm. I can’t now and won’t later even guess at the calibre of the weapon because the elasticity of the skin makes such estimates unacceptable and unreliable.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  Reynolds peeled off his gloves and dropped them into a stainless-steel bowl. ‘He was not shot where he was found. But he was placed there within a few hours of being shot. Time of death…between four and eight hours of being found. I can’t…I won’t be drawn into being more specific . : . and you wouldn’t want me to, it could do your investigation more harm than good. It could close doors that should stay open…you see, if he was shot in a warm room and laid next to a radiator which was turned up full and kept there, then the rate of heat loss would be less than if he was shot on a hillside and left there while they decided what to do with the body.’

  ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘So I won’t be drawn.’ The tall, slender pathologist ran his long ‘artist’s’ fingers through his silver hair. ‘But I will do some calculations, and look at his blood and phone your Mr Donoghue later today. What time? Lunchtime now…be mid p.m. at the earliest.’

  Abernethy left the pathology department. He walked down the narrow corridor with pipes running along the ceiling, with recessed doors on which were fastened signs warning of radioactivity within. Eventually, he found it to be a long corridor and experienced a feeling of ‘at last’ whenever he reached the end, no matter which direction he travelled, though he also found that travelling the outward leg of the corridor towards the central rotunda of the hospital, the feeling of reaching the end of the journey mingled with a sense of release. It was down this corridor, he pondered, that next of kin are escorted with reverential solemnity to identify the remains of a relative. Not in the pathology department where he had been, but to a room close by, and not viewing the body of a loved one in a drawer as is often depicted on film, but from the other side of a pane of glass, where the deceased, by ingenious use of light and shadow, appears as if floating, neatly and tightly tucked into blankets and at peace. In such cases the corridor is sensitively long, detached from the bustle of the hospital, a quiet and private place to be when hope fades. Abernethy climbed the circular staircase of the central rotunda, up to the ground floor, and then out into the car park at the front of the hospital between the main ward block and the Accident and Emergency building which fronts Castle Street.

  Anthony ‘Tony’ Abernethy felt himself to be maturing, either that he thought, or he was growing jaded and cynical. When he had first joined the police as a uniformed cadet he was keen, eager, accounting for every minute, grateful and proud…then he had found that he slackened off, had found his ‘drops’ that every uniformed officer has, a place on his beat where he can drop in for a smoke and a coffee. During the day it’s an elderly lady who is delighted to have company, especially of young police officers, smart and handsome and sexually thrilling in their uniforms, to say nothing of the sense of rock-solid-Aberdeen-granite security that visiting police officers bring to the vulnerable elderly. Then he had been awarded an earlier than normal transfer to the CID and had again been keen, eager, accounting for every minute…grateful and proud. He no longer had his drops but began to steal time like he’d noticed other CID officers doing, Malcolm Montgomerie, for example. Especially him. Dropping in on lady friends whilst en route back to P Division after a call and reporting that the visit had lasted longer than it had, eating out while on call then finishing early or claiming an hour’s overtime at double time for having worked through a meal break, for example. Abernethy didn’t want, ever, to reach the extreme of cynicism, but he did notice he felt the lack of energetic urgency that had once driven him. And that day was no exception. He should have returned to P Division to offer a verbal feedback to Donoghue, then grabbed a pie and peas in the staff canteen. But…but…but…he’d seen the way it was done…and no harm…it was his lunch-break time. He looked about him. The day had grown into a sharp, breezy, dry, autumn day, of sun and blue sky and white cloud at five-tenths, as pilots would say, at least according to the war comics he had read as a child growing up in Thornhill. Even many years after the Second World War had ended, comic strips about Spitfires and ‘wizard prangs’ had found a ready and sizeable market, as he noted, they still do. Behind him, the impressive edifice of the GRI, to his left and behind, the cathedral of St Mungo, the size of which is belied by its position, being a natural hollow in the lay of the land. The cathedral, he felt, was a bit like the city as a whole, more, much, much more than what it first seems. Even Glaswegians keep finding out things about their town, and incomers…well, incomers…they allegedly have that sense of being thrown in the deep end when they move to Glasgow, for it is a living thing, this town, this place of heavenly green, the fish that never swam and the tree that never grew and the ring never worn. Abernethy felt a surge of love for his city and wanted to walk its streets, he wanted to walk the grid system, laid out so confidently in the nineteenth century with buildings of stone, so strong, so confident, glowing in the sun under green copper roofs. Investment, faith in the future, those planners and masons would not have lived to see their vision of Scotland’s premier city come to fruition, but like fallen soldiers, they had in a sense given their todays for the tomorrows of succeeding generations. Now, at the cusp of the millennium, Abernethy could choose, as he did, to leave his car in the car park of the GRI with a ‘police’ sign in the window to prevent it being clamped by a finely built zealot in a peaked cap, and walk Cathedral Street, towards the Concert Hall and the city centre, ostensibly taking his lunch-break, but really clearing the lingering scent of formaldehyde from his nostrils by seizing the opportunity to walk the streets of a city he was just growing to realize that he loved very, very much indeed.

  It was not just, he thought, the architecture, the care gone into the masonry which made people say that if you want to know this city you have to walk around looking at the sky. Those carefully carved statues set high in the wall, the single pinnacle, no higher than a man but which must have taken years to assemble and carve, such is the complexity
of the ornateness. Rather, it was the emotional chemistry, the spirit of the city, as is captured by the bold sweep of bronze in Buchanan Street which is Henry Moore’s sculpture, his gift to the city. The art of giving a gift is understanding the personality of the recipient. Henry Moore, Abernethy thought, had got it just right and the city had honoured him by placing the sculpture in a place of pride so that it greets pedestrians as they turn into Buchanan Street, having perhaps alighted at Central Station, and having left the station by the low level exit.

  …A woman,Abernethy pondered as he turned down the steepness of North Hanover Street towards George Square where crowds had thronged on VE Day, 1945. At that time Glasgow had scored heavily over Edinburgh, so Abernethy later learned, for Edinburgh is a city without a centre, without a focus. On VE Day in Edinburgh some people had gone to the castle, some had even gone to the forecourts of Waverley Station, some had climbed Calton Hill, many had gone to Rose Street, famous for its endless number of pubs, but most wandered the length of Princes Street searching for a point to congregate. But at the same time, the same day, with the same feeling of elation and sorrow for it all, forty-five miles away, Glaswegians had known where to gather.

  …A red-haired Celtic…definitely a woman…the city feels like a woman feels, deep, driven, passionate, fierce, loyal, hating, loving…committed…these womanly things are also Glasgow things.

  See London, Abernethy thought, well see her…that’s a mother. And see New York, see New York, well that yin’s a shipyard bully, that yin’s a gangster, that yin. And see Perth up by Dundee, see Perth, well, Perth’s a twee lassie who says please and thank you and her prayers at night, and see Dundee, well, Dundee’s a hard wee street Turk, so it is, and see Edinburgh, well, that yin’s an old woman with a fur coat with rags beneath it and holes in her shoes. Paisley and Greenock are rare wee sojers tae, but see Glasgow. Oh see Glasgow, see her…fine, fiery red-haired Celtic woman…those long legs either side of the Clyde, the grid system where they meet…her arms going up to Bearsden and Bishopbriggs, down the south side to Giffnock and Castlemilk. Her head’s at Dennistoun and that mane of hair falling back to Rutherglen and Cambuslang and out to Bothwell. That’s Glasgow…and she never sleeps…the nearest she gets is a half-sleep slumber in the dead hours, whisper who dares…poke this bitch and she’ll rise up snarling. Mess with her and you die. Glasgow. Abernethy wouldn’t live anywhere else.

  Elliot Bothwell blinked. The glare of the fluorescent lights went for his eyes. Even though they were shielded behind thick perspex, the light was too bright for his taste and comfort. He was, to an observer, an overweight man who moved in badly, barely coordinated movements, who could be seen from the side aspect, to blink involuntarily behind spectacles with extra-thick lenses. He placed his plastic work case at the foot of the corpse and began to cut the fingerprint forms as he always did when fingerprinting a corpse. A living person is not at all difficult to fingerprint; they often, most often, cooperate, just seem to fall into step once the procedure starts, offering each finger as requested, keeping the others bent back and well out of the way. A corpse, especially one stiffened by rigor and the chill of the postmortem theatre, presents difficulties in that the other fingers will not, or cannot, be moved out of the way and will tend to smudge the paper strip which is divided into five squares, one square for each finger. The recommended way to fingerprint a corpse, Bothwell had been taught, was to cut the strip into five sections and lift prints from each fingertip by placing them on individual squares, then pasting the squares on to a blank strip, thus making the single strip of five squares as required by the Criminal Records Section. One strip for each hand.

  Bothwell worked methodically, lifting the prints from each hand, faltering only on the left thumb when his grip of the bony, icy, clammy-to-the-touch digit slipped and he was obliged to repeat the operation. He noted that the fingerprints of the man without a face appeared to fall into the ‘Arches’ category. That he could tell quite easily with the naked eye and that, he felt, ought to make things easy for CRS, given that only five per cent of the population have fingerprints of the ‘Arches’ type. Five per cent. That would make things very easy indeed. Bothwell fumbled round the stainless-steel table to lift the prints from the other hand, and as he did so he couldn’t help but stare in horrific fascination at the black, red, bloody hole where the man’s face and brain had been.

  That’s what guns do to you.’

  ‘Aye.’ Bothwell nodded and glanced at Mr Millard, with his gleaming eyes and slicked-back hair, observing the lifting of fingerprints as procedure dictated. He pondered that a man must be possessed of certain qualities to be drawn to the post of mortuary attendant. He pondered further that whatever those qualities were, Mr Millard clearly had them, such was the evident pleasure he drew from his employment.

  ‘See they cowboy films and war films and gangster films, they don’t show it.’ And that, Bothwell heard with a kick-like jolt to his stomach, was said with an unmistakable note of disappointment, of frustration. Films are made for the likes of Millard, he thought, so he had heard, smuggled in, he had heard, mostly from Latin America, and distributed on the underground network. Or so he had heard. He certainly wouldn’t get what he wanted on the BBC. ‘See, you’d think they decided to roll over and go to sleep the way it’s shown on the telly. That’s not right, they’re blown apart, man. I was talking to this guy one time—he’d served in Malaya during the emergency—he said he saw a terrorist, a young lad of about fifteen, he reckoned, saw this terrorist take a short burst from a Bren gun right in the chest at a distance of about two hundred feet, four little holes in his ribcage but his back was blown open, lungs, liver, heart, kidneys, you name it, splattered all over the jungle. That’s what guns do to you, and this guy here without a face. One bullet did that. Just one. All you need, really, just one in the right place.’

  ‘So I see.’ Bothwell worked on, trying not to be upset by the gleaming-eyed man in the white coat.

  ‘See some sights in here though, see some sights right enough.’

  Bothwell didn’t reply.

  ‘Bet you see some too in your job, aye? Same as mine really, we get paid peanuts, you and me, but we see life. You and me, aye?’

  ‘Aye,’ Bothwell conceded. Now he was in a hurry to finish. But he thought the man was right in a sense, about seeing life. He had been working as a chemistry assistant in a riot-ridden inner-city comprehensive school, he had spent years mixing dull and harmless chemicals for pupils to use in experiments which were not really experiments because everybody knew what the result was going to be, or was supposed to be if the said experiment survived the sabotage of equipment; exploding test tubes in the Bunsen burner flame being a particular favourite, or so Bothwell had noticed And all the while he watched the hair of the chemistry teacher turn grey, he saw the lines appear in his face, he saw the man begin to walk with a stoop and he thought, ‘Whatever they pay you, Jim, it’s just not enough.’ Then, sitting in the staff room one lunchtime on a rainy day, he recalled, he was browsing through the vacancies bulletin distributed weekly by the local authority and he saw the post of Forensic Assistant with the Strathclyde Police being advertised. He applied for it, was accepted and just did not look back. No two jobs were ever the same, the pay wasn’t any better but like the man had just said, he began to see life. As at present, in fact, lifting fingerprints from a man on a stainless-steel table who had no face. ‘Aye,’ he said again, and thought pityingly of the grey-haired teacher with the stooped walk and recalled the man arriving at the school straight from university full of vigour and zest, radiating enthusiasm, wanting only to teach but encountering only pupils who didn’t want to learn.

  He lifted the tenth and final latent and placed it safely with the others and snapped the case shut and locked. That’s me,’ he said, turning to the assistant.

  ‘Aye. I’ll get him put back in a safe place, ready for the box.’ He advanced with a trolley and wheeled it against the dissecting table.
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  ‘Lifting it yourself?’ Bothwell was surprised.

  ‘No, I’ll get a mate to help me, swab down the table for the next one. This is a never-ending story this, Jim, never-ending. Find a job you like and it’s one long holiday, so it is.’

  Elliot Bothwell said he’d see himself out.

  Fabian Donoghue glanced at the face of his gold hunter and replaced it in his waistcoat pocket. Midday. There was a lull in the traffic coming to his desk or down his phone. Abernethy was still to feed back, as was Dr Kay, who had notified him of her receipt of the clothing the deceased had been wearing, and would be giving it, she said, her immediate attention. Elliot Bothwell would probably at the moment be lifting the latents from the deceased so it was too early to expect him to feed back. No further witnesses had come forward. The file was still very, very thin. He had, in fact, devoted that morning to catching up on paperwork in respect of other outstanding cases, deciding which requests for leave over Hogmanay to approve and which to refuse. He had decided to pursue a policy of awarding Hogmanay leave to those who didn’t get it last year. Which meant that Montgomerie and Sussock had lucked out and King and Abernethy had lucked in. He further felt that this meant that Ray Sussock would soldier through Hogmanay alone because Montgomerie would doubtless phone in sick. Malcolm Montgomerie’s attitude being, in Donoghue’s view, that if he couldn’t have leave he’d take it anyway. Mild food poisoning was, Donoghue had noticed, an ailment that Montgomerie was prone to suffer from time to time, very rapid in onset and having the benefit of a full and speedy recovery, usually necessitating only twenty-four hours off work, occasionally twice that. But only occasionally and only about three or four times in the last year. Not enough to warrant a compulsory medical, nothing to worry about if it was genuine but something Donoghue found infuriating when he knew fine well the detective constable was lying through his teeth. It wasn’t so much the lack of CID cover on such occasions, other officers were easily tempted by an extra shift at double time because of the less than twenty-four hours’ notice, rather it was what it said about the man’s attitude and commitment to a job which was after all supposed to be a vocation. A police officer subordinates more of his life to his job than the majority of the workforce. He, and she, is expected to. Yet occasionally there is a Malcolm Montgomerie with a flippant, cavalier, devil-may-care attitude, doing enough, more than enough, in fact, to keep his job, and not infrequently getting a good result, but…Donoghue stood and reached for his coat and homburg…it was the attitude of the man that Donoghue found irritating. He found that getting hold of Montgomerie was like…well, like soap on a rope, like trying to nail jelly to a wall…he’d tell Montgomerie that he’d be working over the New Year, but knew that Montgomerie would probably be up the West End, drunk and womanizing, at somebody’s party. And there was not a thing he could do about it. But that was a couple of months hence. Today, the first day of the working week, Donoghue felt anxious to get back into his routine. Although he relished his wife’s cooking, there was, he felt, nothing to beat a plate of chilli and rice and pitta bread at Malone’s Bar on Sauchiehall Street; good-size portions, a reasonable price, leather seats, deep carpets, coloured glass to filter any harsh sunlight, a place where he was a patron, felt valued and wanted and was happy to return day after day. He left his office a little earlier than he would have liked, but felt that it was an appropriate use of his time. And he really wanted a plate of chilli, so much so that he felt his mouth watering in anticipation.