Dead People

by Ewart Hutton

  ‘Isn’t that a long way from here?’

  She shrugged. ‘Here is a long way from anywhere.’

  As if she had to remind me. ‘Didn’t they give you the option of staying?’

  She let me see her glance across at Fletcher’s door. ‘Home’s home, Sarge.’

  I went through to the bar and slid my car keys across to David. He stashed them on their usual shelf. ‘Bike or taxi?’ he asked as he pulled my beer.

  ‘Who knows? Let’s wait and see. I might even walk home.’

  He laughed, it was an old standing joke.

  I took my drink and a newspaper and sat down at a small table in a quiet corner. The newspaper was a front. To keep people at bay. I wanted time to reflect. I needed to review my thinking on Bruno and Evie for glaring fault-lines before I pulled it out of the birthing pool tomorrow, in front of a live and probably hostile audience.

  ‘Gottcha . . .’ Hands grabbed the back of my shoulders.

  The fright almost nailed the top of my spine into my cortex.

  Tessa MacLean slipped round in front of me, smiling. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t expect quite such a reaction.’

  ‘It’s all right, I was miles away.’

  ‘Okay if we join you?’ She nodded towards the bar, where Jeff was ordering their drinks.

  ‘Feel free.’

  She squinted at my face. I had given up on the dressing. She nodded approvingly. ‘Looking better.’

  Her hair was down, she was wearing a loose, smoke-blue cotton skirt that came above her knees, with no tights, and a light-grey V-neck sweater with a single strand of bright wooden beads, both of which drew me into her cleavage. Or perhaps it was just a homing instinct. Her hair was shiny and she smelled of soap and ionization.

  ‘You’re in here a lot these days,’ I observed.

  ‘Sandra lets me use a shower,’ she explained, tossing her hair to demonstrate. ‘There’s a certain whiff you can acquire on a dig that begins to permeate if you’re not careful.’

  ‘What about your team?’

  ‘They’re all geeks.’ She laughed affectionately. ‘It’s a badge of honour to them.’

  She sat down, looking at me curiously. ‘Are you okay? From that expression it looks as if I’ve just managed to summon you back from the land of the living dead.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I thought you would have been happier.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘I thought the rumour was that you might have wrapped it up.’

  I turned round and saw David at the bar. He waved. Tessa grinned at me. ‘Okay, but he had been talking to Sergeant Hughes before he told me.’

  The grin was infectious. ‘Don’t be fooled, Emrys Hughes only looks like the Sphinx.’

  She laughed and placed her hand over mine briefly. I looked at her for significance, but she turned her head away.

  Jeff brought the drinks over. I smiled up at him. If he was upset to see me here he didn’t show it. He had had long enough now, I rationalized, to have made his move and know how it was going to be received. Tessa smiled at me, as if reading my thoughts.

  Kevin Fletcher came into the bar. He had changed into a blazer, and his hair was damp from the shower. I returned his nod. Tessa glanced round. Don’t invite him over, I willed her.

  She didn’t have to. The bastard invited himself. He approached with a wide smile. ‘Hello, Glyn, mind if I join you?’ He nodded at Jeff, and fixed his offensive on Tessa. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher,’ he said, offering his hand, ‘but please call me Kevin.’

  Tessa introduced herself. The small talk wobbled around archaeological digs and the future prospects of wind energy. But Tessa had picked up on something that was resonating along the invisible wire between Fletcher and me. ‘Have you two known each other for long?’ she asked.

  ‘We used to work together in Cardiff,’ Fletcher explained.

  It was the smirk he used that did it. ‘How’s Linda?’ I asked spitefully.

  On reflection, the look he returned may not have been pure hate, but rather a thank-you for the opportunity I had just provided. His voice faltered. ‘The decree absolute came through three weeks ago. She moved to Manchester with her new partner.’ He ignored my surprise and looked directly at Tessa. ‘I haven’t seen my girls for over six months.’

  ‘You poor man . . .’

  Jeff and I exchanged a look of disgust. Smacked in the balls by the feather of melancholia. Fletcher had his wallet out and he and Tessa were poring over snapshots of his kids. And a fucking Cairn terrier, I couldn’t help but notice. Jeff and I had to resort to a conversation about engineering.

  Fletcher got up to buy more drinks. Tessa mimed helplessness. I shook my head and mimed in turn that it was time for me to go. She placed her hand over mine and leaned in close over the table. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she whispered, ‘you brought him over.’ I disputed that, but silently, because it was a beautifully intimate moment that I didn’t want to spoil. Tasting her breath.

  Fletcher caught the tail end and sat down aiming a scowl at me. Tessa noticed. ‘Why don’t you two work together any more?’

  I froze. Fletcher looked at me curiously, and then back to Tessa, a mean little twitch of a smile starting to work. ‘Hasn’t Glyn told you?’

  ‘No. You knew him in Cardiff, I thought that perhaps you could tell us.’

  ‘I was in Swansea at the time it happened. I’d had a promotion. But we all heard about it. Didn’t we, Glyn?’

  I had to look up. I felt sweat in the creases at the side of my nose. ‘Yes, Kevin–’ I was off duty, he was about to humiliate me, I was fucked if I was going to call him boss – ‘it was hard to miss, wasn’t it?’

  Fletcher leaned across the table towards Tessa. ‘Glyn had a pimp under surveillance. The man wasn’t major-league. What was the most you would have got on him, Glyn? Procurement? Immoral earnings?’

  ‘The guy broke people’s lives up, Kevin.’

  ‘Collateral damage. Not strictly our business.’

  ‘Kevin?’ Tessa leaned towards him.

  He looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘Is this going to be a nice story?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ He smiled, surprised, wanting her to clarify.

  ‘If it’s not going to be a nice story, I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘You asked . . .’ he said, perplexed.

  ‘I wanted you to tell me a nice story.’

  ‘It isn’t a nice story, Tessa,’ I said.

  She stood up. ‘Tell it to me yourself sometime.’ It was a command. She bent down and kissed my cheek.

  Women . . .! Once again that great big eternal exclamation mark popped up behind my eyes.

  ‘Time to go, Jeff.’ Another command. Another boy in thrall. She nodded at Fletcher. ‘Nice to meet you, Kevin.’

  We both watched her leave. The skirt swaying as her butt cut lovely warped planes out of the world. Then Fletcher and I stared at each other for a moment, hands tight on our glasses. I got up and walked to the bar. David watched me. I leaned across and poured the beer down the sink. He passed me my car keys. I left without looking back at Fletcher, the photographs of his kids and his dog still spread out on the table in front of him. I didn’t want to have to feel sorry for him.

  9

  The background buzz in the incident room shut down. I looked up, I had not slept well. Jack Galbraith and Fletcher had walked in and were setting up at the desk in front of the display board. Fletcher held up an unnecessary hand for hush. Jack Galbraith nodded out at us. Both men looked grimly pleased with themselves.

  ‘Okay,’ Jack Galbraith announced, ‘let’s start with some good news, folks. It looks like the body count at the wind-farm site is going to stop at four. I don’t pretend to understand the technical stuff, but it appears that the geology of the ground we haven’t yet uncovered will not support grave-digging.’

  He let our appreciation of this news run through t
he room before he gestured for Fletcher to take over.

  He tapped his notes together, a stage gesture. ‘As you are all aware by now, the body of Mr Bruno Gilbert was discovered yesterday at his home, and we are working on the strong presumption that his death was self-inflicted. This, together with evidence uncovered, has a direct bearing on the future focus of the investigation.’

  I put my hand up. He didn’t like it, but shit, I wasn’t going to have him skating over evidence, as if we were only the worker bees and didn’t need to know where the honey went.

  ‘Sergeant Capaldi?’ He nodded at me coldly.

  ‘What evidence is that, boss?’

  ‘The red dress that was found in the mine has been identified as belonging to Evie Salmon. I personally verified that fact with her parents yesterday afternoon. We don’t yet know about the underwear that was found on the doll, but we are hoping to get a DNA- or at least a fibre-match.’

  A susurrus ran through the room. My premonition had been confirmed. It didn’t make me happy. I tried to picture the Salmons when this had been presented to them and wondered how fucking sensitive Fletcher had been.

  He read out the relevant details of the autopsy report on Bruno. I was only half listening, I was waiting for the opportunity to make my pitch, and rehearsing it in my head. I wasn’t going to dispute the fact that death had been caused by a shotgun turning his head inside out, or that a large amount of alcohol had been found in his system. It turned out that he had also been larded with Prozac, for which he had a valid repeat prescription.

  Out of it. Just the way you would expect the self-condemned man to be.

  Fletcher went on to say that the other two tunnels had revealed nothing of any significance; likewise the wider search of Bruno’s ground.

  Jack Galbraith stepped forward. He slowly scrutinized the room, holding us in a rapt silence, before he nodded. ‘It’s time to meet the late Mr Bruno Gilbert.’ He uncovered the display board. Someone had been busy. Photographs of Bruno Gilbert in various stages of his path through life were shown, including a savoury few in the kitchen chair at the end of that path.

  Fletcher talked us through that life.

  Bruno had lived with his mother in Newport, South Wales. He had been a geologist working in the petrochemical industry, which had necessitated frequent trips abroad. On returning from one of these trips he had found his mother dead in bed. Natural causes, an aneurysm. Because they had been so self-contained, no one had visited. He had come home and gone upstairs calling for his mummy, only to discover that she had turned into a pile of jelly.

  He didn’t report it. He put her in the airing cupboard to dry out, and lived with her like that, in a big box he’d made out of cardboard, for two years. She was discovered while he was away on one of his field trips, when workmen had to break into the house to investigate a suspected gas leak. As in all the best haunted-house movies, the idiots opened the box. He was eventually cleared of any culpability in her death. But she was taken away from him and buried.

  With her gone he went to pieces. He gave up on everything. He was institutionalized to prevent him from starving himself to death. In hospital they slowly worked on pulling some focus into his life and providing him with medication that would enable him to at least cope.

  Which is how he ended up in Mid Wales, patiently hewing his way into the core of a mountain.

  Jack Galbraith took over. ‘A psychologist is building up a more-detailed picture, but I think we can see a drift in what DCI Fletcher has told us.’

  Dead Mother Syndrome. Bruno was displaying a motive as big as a billboard. Scrambled synapses voodoo. Scooping out a mountain in order to return to the womb. Installing a Rubber Woman inside that mountain, and outfitting her with a murdered girl’s dress. It wasn’t a great big leap from there to mass murder and cutting off the victims’ heads and hands.

  And the investigative joy of it was that we didn’t need to look for a proper motive. The poor bastard was crazy, he could set his own rules. We just had to delve back into his past life to see who had disappeared from it, and try to find a match with the bodies we had found on the hill.

  A branch line that could loop its way on into fruitless infinity.

  I put my hand up gingerly. Jack Galbraith frowned, but he was in a good mood. He nodded. ‘Sergeant Capaldi?’

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. ‘What if all this has been stage-managed to divert us away from the real killer, sir?’

  He didn’t blink. Jack Galbraith was nothing if not decisive. He just swiped his flat hand across the room in front of him like a stage director announcing a cut. ‘I’ll talk to you later, Sergeant.’ He turned his attention to the corner containing Emrys Hughes and his uniforms. ‘I want to thank you and all your men, Sergeant, for the sterling work you’ve put in.’ He broadened the sweep of his attention. ‘And that goes for all the rest of you who will be standing down now that we are shifting the focus of the investigation onto Newport.’

  To give Jack Galbraith credit, he did actually hear me out. Later, in the privacy of Fletcher’s office, just the three of us.

  I laid out my hypothesis that Evie’s death and burial, and Bruno’s suicide, had been staged to manoeuvre the investigation into an endless cul-de-sac. As I unrolled it, I was conscious that the vibes I was picking up were not those of universal amazement and admiration.

  When I had finished, Fletcher glanced over at Jack Galbraith, looking for permission to come back at me. He wasn’t going to get it. This one was Jack Galbraith’s baby.

  He gave me a genuinely pained look. ‘You always have been a perverse bugger, Capaldi. Why now? Why dispute the fucking obvious?’

  ‘Because I met him, sir. I don’t think he was capable of the kind of violence involved here. I don’t think he was capable of any kind of violence. The gold mine was his therapy, it was working for him. He managed to cope with the loss of his mother by making the chamber and having the doll there. It was a sort of shrine, it anchored him.’

  ‘It’s a strange sort of comfort, symbolically copulating with your mother,’ Fletcher observed snidely.

  ‘He wasn’t. Forensics haven’t found any traces of seminal fluids on the doll, have they?’ Fletcher shook his head reluctantly. ‘It was his mother’s room he was recreating, not his own bedroom, or a fuck pad.’

  Jack Galbraith cut me off with a snap of his fingers. ‘Sod the psychobabble. Give me something concrete.’

  ‘His feet don’t fit the footprints we found.’

  He shook his head and smiled slyly. ‘I prepared us for that eventuality. Remember? The possibility that the man who screwed with the diggers could turn out to be nothing more than a wind-farm saboteur?’

  I had just been softening him up. Now I loaded live ammunition. ‘There was a tooth fragment in the hut. It was in front of the body.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. He used both barrels, the poor bugger’s head was broadcast over half of fucking Christendom.’

  ‘But not in front of the body, sir. That’s my point. That tooth could have been broken prior to the shot, when someone was trying to force the gun barrel into his mouth.’

  Jack Galbraith looked at Fletcher.

  ‘Where did the shotgun end up?’ Fletcher asked me.

  ‘On the table.’

  ‘In front of him?’

  I nodded. He had seen the flaw in my argument.

  ‘The shotgun had a small raised sight on the end of the barrel,’ he explained to Jack Galbraith. ‘When he fired, the force drove him back in his seat, but the gun went the other way. If the sight had caught the tooth, the recoil would have propelled the fragment in the opposite direction from the way that the body was travelling.’

  Jack Galbraith took a moment to envisage it. ‘Plausible?’ he asked me.

  I nodded reluctantly, but came back quickly. ‘The red shoes and the red dress.’

  He frowned. ‘And what are you going to magic up for us now?’

  ‘The red shoes had bee
n left on the body so we could identify her as Evie. The red dress was hung up in the mine chamber to connect Bruno Gilbert to her. So that we would assume that he had taken his life because we were about to discover his terrible secret.’

  He exchanged a glance with Fletcher. ‘So, I can’t see your problem. As I said, why dispute the obvious?’

  ‘What’s your problem with the dress and the shoes?’ Fletcher asked.

  ‘Evie left home two years ago. One of the reasons was to reinvent herself. Get out of Hicksville. Why, when she does turn up again, would she be wearing clothes from the life that she had been trying to leave behind?’

  ‘And your answer is?’ Jack Galbraith prompted.

  ‘Because it makes her easily identifiable. Just as her killer wanted. Just as Bruno Gilbert’s suicide makes him look guilty. And the red dress seals it.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t buy it. It’s too tenuous. There are too many good reasons why she could have been wearing those clothes. You’re simply manufacturing complications.’

  Fletcher nodded in agreement.

  ‘How would a man like Bruno Gilbert connect with someone like Evie Salmon, sir?’ I asked, trying to ease off the desperation pedal.

  ‘That’s what DCI Fletcher is going to be taking the investigation down to Newport to find out. That and the identities of the other bodies. Evie left home two years ago; my hunch is that the Newport–Cardiff metropolitan area was where she went to nest.’ He shrugged his big shoulders. ‘As you said, how someone like him sucked Evie into this is a fucking mystery.’ He stared at me. ‘And you’re going to try to help us resolve it.’

  ‘Me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, why the fuck do you think I haven’t been reaming you out for that interruption in the incident room? Why do you think I’ve given you this chance to tell your side of it?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ I replied meekly. Although when I had heard him telling Emrys Hughes that he would be standing down, it had hit me that I might be about to get reacquainted with the castrated-tup-lamb fraternity.

  ‘Because, much as it pains me to admit it, you were right. There was a local connection. We’re going to find that most of Bruno Gilbert’s misdemeanours took place in Newport. But Evie Salmon was local, and somehow he got her back up here. That’s your job now, Capaldi: trace the Evie connection.’