Just A Coincidence & Florence (Dave Slater Mystery Doubles Book 1)

by Ford,P. F.

  Becks was Tinton’s equivalent of a forensics department. It was just him, a small team of three, and a tiny lab, but even so, they managed to continually perform minor miracles. Just as well, really, because they were under constant budgetary pressure, and if their standards were to drop just a little below brilliant, Slater knew they’d all be out of work.

  “What do you think?” Slater gestured at the mess on the ground. “Flighty thinks there might be more than one body.”

  “Pathologist assures me there’s only one head.” Becks indicated the other man on the floor. “But I’ve never seen anything like this before. I don’t want to make a joke of it, but it’s like one of those cartoons where someone gets run over by a boulder or something and the body ends up being flattened and twice as wide, you know?”

  “Except this isn’t Looney Tunes,” said Slater. “So what are you telling me? That this person was run over by a steamroller?”

  The pathologist stood up and took the two steps to join them. He looked pretty grim.

  “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to get a specialist in to do this one,” he said, addressing both of them. “I’m used to dealing with dead bodies, and I’m happy to help out, but I’m way out of my depth with this.”

  “Can you tell us anything?” asked Slater.

  “I can tell you it’s a dead body,” said the pathologist. “And I’d hazard a guess it’s female from the clothing, but after that…”

  His voice tailed off.

  “That bad?” asked Becks.

  The pathologist nodded sadly.

  “It would be wrong of me to even start,” he said. “I know what I’m good at, and I know when something’s out of my league. By all means bring the body over to the hospital mortuary and use our facilities, but you need to get someone damned good to make sense of this mess.”

  “Okay, doc,” said Becks. “Look, don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s much better to be honest than bugger something up, right? I’ve got a number I can call.”

  They agreed Becks needed to make his call before they decided what to do about the body. If they were going to move it they’d need to shovel it up into bags, and then it would be almost impossible to recreate the scene in the mortuary.

  The daylight was beginning to fade outside but there was still enough to see fairly well so Slater decided to take a look around out there while Becks made his phone call. He took a walk all around the outside of the tent. One thing was for sure; they could forget about the steamroller. In fact, they could forget about any vehicles. The grass was at least knee-high all around here, and apart from the narrow path they’d walked through it, it was totally undisturbed. He walked around again, one thought nagging away at him. How the hell had this body got here?

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of ironic cheering coming from the tent. He knew it was disrespectful for them to be having a laugh when there was a dead body splattered on the ground inside the tent, but he also knew it was big doses of black humour that helped most of them deal with this stuff.

  He wandered back to the tent to see what was going on. A rotund figure with an unruly mop of thick curls was threatening to burst one of the paper suits. The ironic cheers came from the forensic technicians, who looked pleased to see DS Norman arrive on the scene.

  “It’s all very well for you to say one size fits all,” he was saying from the entrance of the tent to PC Flight. “But it obviously doesn’t, does it?”

  Flight said something Slater didn’t catch because he was too far away.

  “That’s a very un-PC remark to make, Constable,” admonished the struggling Norman. “Maybe you need to attend one of those courses where they teach you how to address the ‘larger person’.”

  Slater was much closer now and he heard her response quite clearly.

  “With respect, sir,” said Flight patiently. “No-one else has this problem getting into these suits, so I suggest that perhaps the problem lies with the ‘larger person’ and not the suit.”

  “How dare you?” came the reply, thick with fake indignation.

  “Alright, Constable, that’ll do,” said Slater as he passed her. It was harmless banter, but this was a serious case, and as senior officer he had to make sure it didn’t get out of hand.

  “Evening, Norm,” he said, as he followed his colleague back into the tent. “Looks like the team’s back in business. What do you think?” He nodded at the grisly sight on the floor.

  “I think I’m glad I haven’t got to go home and cook after this,” said Norman. He took a good look around.

  “I also think ‘what the hell happened here?’” he said.

  “Come and take a look outside,” suggested Slater. “I can’t see how the body could possibly have got here. See if you can make sense of it.”

  They went back outside and Norman began to wander around, looking at the knee-high grass just as Slater had done earlier. He disappeared from view behind the tent, studying the ground as he walked.

  PC Flight was still outside the tent, studiously ignoring Slater since he’d asked her to stop arguing with Norman. Suit yourself, he thought. He didn’t have time to worry about her tantrums right now. At the moment, he was trying to think what they should do next. It would be dark soon, and once that happened their options would be seriously limited. Just then, his thoughts were interrupted by a curse from PC Flight.

  “Oh shit,” she said, looking towards the woods. “Here comes that stupid bloody dog again. He’ll be all over the place if we don’t stop him.”

  In the fading light, Slater could see the shape of a large dog heading rapidly in their direction. He looked friendly enough, but they didn’t need him charging all over their crime scene.

  “Has he got a stick in his mouth?” asked Slater.

  “I threw one in there to get rid of him earlier,” said Flight. “Maybe he’s bringing it back. Mind you, that was ages ago. I’d forgotten he was still out there.”

  “See if you can get hold of the stick,” suggested Slater. “Perhaps we can grab the bugger between us.”

  “Here, Danny,” called Flight. “Good dog. Fetch the stick.”

  To Slater’s surprise, the dog ran straight up to her and dropped the stick at her feet.

  “Bloody hell,” said Slater. “You should be a dog handler.”

  Flight bent down and collected the stick. Slater saw her suddenly look down and stare at the stick in her hands.

  “Oh, crap,” she said, her lips curling with distaste.

  “What?” said Slater. “What’s up?”

  “Well, I’m no doctor,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure this is no stick. It looks rather like a femur to me.”

  “Bloody hell.” Slater reached for the bone. “Where the heck did he get that from?”

  Just then, Norman reappeared from behind the tent.

  “My guess,” he said, striding over to them. “We’re dealing with an alien abduction. They took the body, performed some weird experiments and then dumped it here. They didn’t even land. Maybe they have some sort of rubbish chute or something.”

  For the first time he noticed the looks on their faces.

  “What?” he said. “Did I miss something?”

  Slater waved the bone at him. The dog made a lunge for it but Slater was too quick for him.

  “Femur,” he announced. “It looks like the ‘Hound of the bloody Baskervilles’ here has found a bone yard.”

  “Where?” asked Norman.

  “Yes, that’s the problem.” Slater pointed back in the direction the dog had come from. “Over there somewhere. But Flighty reckons he’s been gone for hours, so it could be 10 yards away or 10 miles away.”

  “Oh, terrific,” said Norman. “That’s all we need. But we can’t start a search now. Not that vague. Not in the dark.”

  He looked at Slater who returned his gaze blankly. “I think we need a plan,” said Norman.

  “I think you’re right.” Slater nodded thoughtful
ly.

  “I think we should probably start by asking the pathologist if this really is what we think it is,” said Norman. “He is still here, isn’t he?”

  Slater nodded again.

  “In the tent.”

  They trudged wearily back into the tent where the pathologist was just getting ready to head for home.

  “Can you tell us if this is what we think it is?” Slater offered him the bone.

  The pathologist took the bone, moved under one of the bright lights and began a cursory examination.

  “Oh yes,” he said, a few moments later. “Definitely a human femur. It’s a bit on the small side.”

  “Not a man, then?” asked Slater.

  “Can’t say for sure, without a proper examination,” said the pathologist. “But if I had to guess, I’d say it was a small woman or maybe even a child. I’d also suggest this body’s been dead for a good few years.”

  “Oh, wonderful. Just wonderful.” Slater sighed. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter Seven

  The Haunted Copse was one of those rare pieces of natural, old, native woodland. It didn’t cover a particularly large area, less than 10 acres in total, and in places it was barely 50 yards from one side to the other. No one really knew where the stories of ghosts and ghouls had originated, but it had could well have been from the plain and simple fact the place was very old. To be honest, Slater found it just plain spooky.

  Two paths ran through the woods, bisecting it from north to south, and again from east to west. The original body had been found just to the south of the copse, so it was decided to begin the search from that side and to sweep through in a northerly direction. If they didn’t find anything in here, they would widen the search beyond the woods.

  Slater and Norman thought it could take ages to find a grave and their time would be better spent investigating the body they already had, so they had chosen to call in a search co-ordinator who would organise and take control of the search for the place from where the dog had unearthed the small femur. They would take back control if, or when, a grave was found.

  And so, at first light, as Slater and Norman stomped their way back to the huge tent to resume their work, a bleary-eyed, hastily gathered group of officers began their sweep through the woods. Maybe it was the fact that Christine Pearce’s dog Danny had only recently excavated a small part of the grave, maybe it was just down to the awesome ability of the search dogs, or maybe it was just pure luck. Whichever factor was the determining one didn’t really matter. The important thing was that it took barely an hour before the dogs found what they were looking for.

  Slater and Norman had just watched Ian Becks finish directing the safe recovery of the body under the tent, which was now safely on its way to the hospital mortuary, when they were told the news. They had found what appeared to be a grave in the Haunted Copse.

  “Oh well,” said Becks, shrugging. “At least when my roving expert pathologist gets here we’ll have made it worth his while.”

  “This is the new-fangled mobile team, is it?” asked Slater.

  “This is exactly the type of case this thing is designed to be used for.” Becks nodded enthusiastically. “Instead of us sending everything off to the experts and their fancy equipment, they send the experts and fancy equipment here.”

  “This I have to see,” said Norman, expectantly. “It might actually be a good idea for once.”

  The ‘roving expert pathologist’ Ian Becks had referred to was actually a Home Office cost-cutting experiment, Slater later discovered. Keeping fully equipped forensic labs was becoming increasingly expensive, so someone had come up with the idea of having a small mobile team, called MAFU (Mobile Autonomous Forensic Unit).

  The team consisted of a pair of forensic experts, in this case a forensic pathologist and a forensic anthropologist, plus two skilled assistants. They had at their disposal a fully equipped truck with just about every piece of equipment they would ever need. This meant they could be sent anywhere at any time, so, in theory at least, even a small station like Tinton could handle a major inquiry without the need to send evidence away for analysis.

  Naturally, every police station in the land thought they should have MAFU at their sole disposal, but it was reserved for those cases where it was thought it would prove to be most effective. Tinton now had such a case.

  It was mid-afternoon when Ian Becks was informed the mobile unit had arrived. He thought it was quite impressive that the whole thing had been mobilised and made the journey down in not much more than six hours.

  “Yes, Ian,” agreed the desk sergeant who had phoned to advise him of their arrival. “It is amazing they can get the whole thing down here so quickly. What’s going to be even more amazing is working out how they’re going to fit their 40-foot trailer into our car park.”

  “Forty foot?” said Becks. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No, I am not kidding you,” snapped the sergeant. “I suggest you get your arse up here pronto and sort it out, because right now it’s causing traffic chaos outside the station and I’ve had to send two PCs to direct traffic.”

  “But where am I going to-”

  “It’s your team, so it’s your problem,” interrupted the sergeant. “I need those PCs for real police work.”

  “Alright, alright,” said Becks. “I’m coming up now.”

  It took almost half an hour to move all the private cars, belonging to members of staff, out of the car park to create sufficient space for the MAFU truck. There were going to be a lot of pissed off coppers when they found their cars were no longer in the car park (and even worse they couldn’t use the car park again during the MAFU stay), but finally the truck was reversed skilfully, and neatly, into place.

  The tall, bearded man who had emerged from the passenger seat earlier had introduced himself as Dr Henry Cutter. A 45year-old real ale fan, who loved to listen to loud blues and rock music, Dr Cutter was known to Becks by reputation. He was said to be one of the best forensic pathologists around. He was also known as something of a maverick, who had no qualms about saying things as he saw them.

  “That’s why I’ve got this roving pathologist job,” he told Becks as they watched the truck glide into the space they had cleared. “They don’t like me because I say what I think, and that’s often not what they want to hear. Consequently, I now get shipped out here, there, and everywhere.

  “It’s supposed to be some sort of punishment to keep me out of the way and keep me quiet. But I actually love the variety of jobs offered by travelling around, and as this is all new, I have to give feedback all the time, so they actually get to hear from me more than ever.”

  As they stood talking, the driver’s door swung open. Becks had a stereotypical truck driver image in his head, so he was completely unprepared for the figure that emerged. At first, he thought it must be some sort of joke. Perhaps Cutter had brought his 10-year-old daughter along and this was some gag they’d worked out.

  He looked doubtfully at Henry Cutter, but Cutter just beamed back at him. The small girl who had just emerged from the cab gracefully lowered herself to the ground and turned to face them.

  “And this is our forensic anthropologist, Nadira,” introduced Cutter. “Nadira, meet Ian Becks; he’s our partner in crime on this case.”

  Nadira placed her palms together and gave a little bow to Becks. He wasn’t prepared for such a greeting and didn’t know if he should bow in return, or shake hands, or what he should do. His face glowed with embarrassment.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said, extending a hand.

  “Nadira means ‘rare and precious’” explained Cutter. “And, trust me, she is both.”

  “You drive the truck?” asked Becks in surprise.

  “It’s a passion of mine,” she explained. “Henry likes his real ale, and I like to drive big trucks.”

  Becks couldn’t quite get his head around the idea that a tiny girl – he guessed she was probably an inch
or two short of five feet tall – could drive such a massive machine, but he thought better of passing further comment.

  “And, before you ask,” Cutter said, smiling. “Yes, Nadira is old enough to drive, and yes, she does know exactly what she’s doing.”

  “Oh! No,” said Becks, lying through his teeth. “I wasn’t thinking that at all.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed.” Nadira smiled up at him. “Everyone thinks I am about 10 years old when they first see me. I’m 32 years old, but my face doesn’t tell you that. And I’m only four feet ten inches tall, so I understand why people think I’m still a child. Even in Malaysia, where I come from, people make the same mistake.”

  Her teeth gleamed white against the duskiness of her skin, and Becks thought again of how Cutter had described her. Rare and precious seemed just right.

  “Right,” said Cutter, looking between Becks and Nadira. “Nadira likes to supervise the setting up of the equipment, so why don’t you take me inside and fill me in on what we’ve got so far.”

  “Oh, yes. Right,” said Becks. “Come on down to my lair, and I’ll show you.”

  He took one last, lingering look at Nadira, who was suddenly all business-like, and then led Cutter across the car park, into the building, and down to his lab.

  It didn’t take Becks long to confirm his suspicion that Cutter and the lovely Nadira were more than just colleagues. He would confess to being just a tad envious of Cutter, but as long as they got the job done, he didn’t really see that it was any of his business what else they got up to. And frankly, solving these murders was all that really mattered.

  “Can we go across to the hospital mortuary and see the body now?” asked Cutter when Becks had finished briefing him. “And if you could take us to the burial site too that would be great. At least then we’ll know our way around. We’ll book into our hotel later, and start work first thing tomorrow. I’ll do the post mortem, and Nadira will start working to excavate the bodies.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” said Becks. “I can show you where the first body was found, too.”