‘Mr Rhea,’ she smiled, holding the bridle as she continued to brush the smooth hide of the handsome animal. ‘Are you on a cross-country exercise or are you lost?’
I smiled at her. ‘Neither,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for a young man who’s vanished . . . Keith Burgess. Maybe you know him?’
‘Yes, I do know him. He’s in my hay shed, fast asleep.’
‘Is he?’ The relief in my voice must have been evident to her, and so I explained the reason for my presence and for my apparently odd choice of route.
‘He’s not in trouble, is he?’ she asked in due course.
‘No, except from his mother. She might be rather angry that he didn’t get home in time to have his Yorkshire pudding.’
‘That explains it!’ she chuckled. ‘He came staggering into our yard dressed in running gear, a bit like a marathon runner at the end of his tether, and asked if he could sit down. Then he was sick all over the place, so I took him into the hayshed. It’s dry in there and he sat on the hay, with his head in his hands. I went to find something to clean his clothes but when I got back he was muttering something pretty incoherent about being late for his Yorkshire pudding and then he slumped on to the hay and went to sleep. He’s been sleeping ever since. I’ve been in to see him several times.’
I lifted the bike on to its rest and she took me into the hayshed where I saw the inert figure of Keith Burgess lying flat on his back with his vomit-stained vest and mud-stained legs.
‘A fine sight!’ I commented. ‘He’s doing this for fun, would you believe,’ and I told her about the race in which he had taken part.
‘He can stay there until he comes round,’ she said. ‘He’s not harming anything.’
‘Thanks, now can I use your phone to tell his parents where he is? They’re worried about him. I’ll get them to collect him.’
The Burgess family were relieved when I announced Keith’s whereabouts and Iris said she would drive across immediately. Then Mrs Burgess came on the line.
‘Mr Rhea,’ she said sternly, ‘is our Keith capable of understanding things?’
‘Not at this stage,’ I had to admit. ‘But when he wakes up, I’m sure he will understand whatever you say.’
‘Just make sure he knows I haven’t thrown his Yorkshire pudding out,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in wasting good food, especially when he hasn’t had his Sunday dinner so he’ll have to eat it when he gets back, even if it is cold. And tell him the gravy’s got a skin on it now.’
‘I’ll make sure he gets the message,’ I promised, and Mrs Forster smiled her understanding. I thanked her for her tolerance, then departed for home with great anticipation of a quiet Sunday evening barbecue with my family. There would be burnt sausages, bacon like pieces of charred cardboard and scorched potatoes with raw innards — but I didn’t think we’d bother with Yorkshire puddings.
Chapter Five
His means of death, his obscure burial,
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o’er his bones,
No noble rite nor formal ostentation.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564–1616
The continuing development of the reservoir brought many benefits to the people and businesses of Aidensfield and district. Although some might be considered small benefits, they were consistent. The milkman, for example, delivered to the site and increased his income; the butcher supplied the canteen as did the baker, fruiterer and fish merchant. Other local shops and garages supplied groceries, newspapers, stationery, small tools, petrol and oil for the vehicles, electrical goods like bulbs and cables, lengths of cut timber and a host of other necessities.
One man who secured a very favourable contract was the Maddleskirk timber merchant, Paddy Stone. As the contractor’s bulldozers toppled and uprooted trees and large shrubs during their landscape clearance, Paddy’s army would move in, cut the trunks and branches into manageable lengths and remove them. He increased his workforce to cope with the extra work. In addition, all the local pubs, hotels and bed-and-breakfast accommodation did well from those workmen who opted to live in the district. They spent money during their leisure time too, patronizing a wide range of businesses from bookmakers to barbers by way of clothes shops, amusement arcades, cinemas and clubs. I was aware of these mutual benefits as I made my way to the reservoir on the Monday morning following the cricket match.
Upon my arrival, I found Ken Rigby in his office. Over a coffee, we chatted about Thirsk Races and the party which followed, not forgetting the running pints race and then I explained our concern over the thefts of mobile cranes. Ken was aware of the thefts and had already taken due precautions with his site equipment. He promised to contact me if any suspicious characters were noted near the site and already had a file containing the points of identification for his cranes.
I was about to leave when the door burst open and in rushed Claude Jeremiah Greengrass followed by Alfred, his dog. Upon catching sight of me, there was a curious mixture of surprise and relief on his face. I must admit I never expected Claude to make me feel welcome but this appeared to be one such occasion. He was out of breath and panting heavily as he lunged into Ken’s office.
For a few minutes, he could not speak and so we waited with great expectation before he gasped, ‘Over there, Constable, Ken, yon side . . .’ The effort made him fight for more breath. ‘You’ve got to go . . .’
‘What is it, Claude?’ I went closer and tried to calm him. Something had upset him deeply. ‘What’s happened?’
He fought for more breath, his old chest heaving with the effort and his brow drenched in sweat; even though it was a hot June day, he was wearing his old army coat and heavy boots. He must have been boiling inside that coat; certainly he smelled as if he was perspiring heavily. In fact, he smelt as if he’d been perspiring since birth! To say he smelled like a gorilla’s armpit is perhaps an insult to the gorilla.
‘A body,’ he managed to gasp. ‘Over there, under a tree . . . dead. By, I’m glad I caught you, Constable. I heard your bike coming . . .’
‘A body?’ I asked him. ‘What sort of a body?’
‘What sort of a body?’ he glared at me. ‘There’s only one sort of body and that’s when people are dead. It’s a dead body.’
‘Not a sheep?’ I asked.
‘I know a bloody sheep when I see one! Look, there’s a dead human being over there, the other side of the dale, a skeleton in fact.’
‘Skeleton?’ I asked.
‘Aye, all bones and things. I had the devil’s own job stopping Alfred from carrying the chap’s leg over here; he likes good bones and I think he wanted to bury it somewhere for dinner later.’
‘So it’s just a skeleton?’ I put to him, anxious to clarify things before I set in motion the police procedures for dealing with a murder, suicide or sudden death. I had to know precisely what he had found. In some cases, bodies which appear to be dead may respond to lifesaving treatment if it is provided with sufficient speed, but if this was a skeleton, there was no such urgency.
‘Aye, a skeleton, under a tree. That’s what I said. Look, can’t you come and have a look instead of just standing there asking daft questions?’
‘All right. Show me. As this is on your site, you’d better come as well, Ken.’
‘We’ll take a site vehicle,’ said Ken, reaching towards the keyboard for a set of ignition keys.
In a small dumper truck, he conveyed us and Alfred across the muddy site as directed by Claude. He took us towards a larch which had been felled by one of the site-clearance machines. The shallow roots had been torn from the ground and the complete tree lay on its side, its branches crushed by its own weight. It looked a sad picture, this former handsome tree, but it was not particularly large and a bulldozer would have had no trouble pushing it to the ground.
‘Stop here,’ said Claude, and Ken obeyed. Alfred jumped out, tail wagging, as he loped into the hole left by the uprooted larch.
‘Alfred, leave!’ shouted Claude, clamberin
g from the little vehicle. ‘Leave, I say . . .’
Alfred obeyed but he stood on the edge of the crater and whined, his tail wagging as he looked to his master for guidance.
‘Leave.’ Claude waved a finger at the dog, then said to us, ‘Right, follow me. It’s in that hole; I’ll show you.’
When we reached the edge of the small crater, all I could see was a disturbed patch of earth which, at a casual glance, appeared to be full of broken roots and small stones. Alfred stood near Claude, his tail wagging furiously as he whined and whimpered, apparently anxious to be allowed into the hole. Claude told him to ‘stay’ and stepped into the hole, gingerly making his way towards a collection of broken stones. He brushed aside some of the soil which had been disturbed even since he’d left the place, and at that stage, I could recognize a skull. It was the colour of the earth and looked like a chunk of ancient timber.
Having seen that, I could identify wood-like bones among the scattered stones.
‘He’s in here,’ he said. ‘Lying that way, feet towards where the tree is lying . . . here, you can see his feet over there, and his ribs, and that’s his leg; Alfred dropped it when I yelled at him . . .’
‘You were very observant, Claude, to notice those bones. Right, I agree with you it’s a human skeleton, so we’ll have to set our procedures in motion. I think he’s been there a long time, though.’
‘Do you? What makes you think that?’ asked Ken Rigby.
‘He was under the tree roots,’ I pointed out. ‘And that larch must be twenty or thirty years old. Nobody could have buried him under the tree — it’s grown on top of him. Or her. I keep saying him, but it could be a female.’
‘So what happens now?’ asked Ken Rigby.
‘We ask a forensic pathologist to examine the scene with the bones in place, then he’ll remove them and have them tested in his laboratory. He’ll be able to tell us how old they are. He might also be able to give us a cause of death, if there’s a bullet hole in the skull or a broken bone in the neck, or he might find a broken leg. But if it’s natural causes, or poison or something other than physical damage like a disease, then it’ll be guesswork.’
‘So we can’t work on this part of the site today?’ Ken asked.
‘I’m afraid not, Ken. But the sooner I get my superiors informed, the sooner we get things moving and back to normal. Claude, I’ll need a written statement from you as the person who found the body . . .’
‘It was Alfred who found it, not me,’ he said quickly, not wishing to have his name in police records, whatever the reason.
‘I can’t interview a dog,’ I said. ‘So you’ll have to act as his spokesman. It’s just a few lines to record the event, that’s all.’
‘It doesn’t make me a suspect, or owt, does it? You read of folks who find bodies being suspects for murder and, I mean, I never touched this chap. It was after Alfred had been scratching in that soil that I saw them bones . . . we were rabbiting. We do have an agreement, don’t we, Ken? About rabbiting. Just in case the constabulary thinks I was poaching.’
‘We do,’ Ken confirmed, to put Claude at his ease.
‘You’re allowed to catch rabbits, not find bodies!’ I laughed.
‘It’s no joke, I can tell you!’ Claude muttered.
‘Right. All I need is something very brief,’ I said. ‘I can do it now. I’ll take your statement in my pocketbook while we’re waiting for the cavalry to arrive. Can I use your office and telephone, Ken? It’ll save time, my motorbike radio doesn’t get very good reception in this dale.’
‘Sure, no problem,’ the helpful site foreman said.
‘Right, let’s go back to the office.’ And so we clambered into the dumper truck with Alfred sitting on Claude’s knee and were taken to Ken’s office. He found chairs for Claude and me, then indicated the phone. I rang Sergeant Blaketon. I decided I’d give him a modest shock to start his week.
‘Ah, Sergeant,’ I said, as he answered my call. ‘PC Rhea, I’m speaking from the reservoir site. We have a problem. There’s a body here; it was found during excavations at the site . . .’
‘A body!’ he cried, and I held the phone away from my ear as he bellowed into it, ‘You’re not talking about murder, are you, Rhea? One of the site workers done another in during a fight, or something. Do we need to call CID?’
‘I doubt it. It’s a skeleton, and a very old one by the look of things,’ and I then explained where it had been found and my theories about its age.
‘Fair enough, no need to panic then. Who found it?’
‘Alfred Greengrass,’ I said, with tongue in cheek.
‘Alfred Greengrass? Is that some relation of your resident rogue?’
‘It’s his dog,’ I said. ‘He was with Claude at the time.’
‘Rhea, I don’t like flippancy in matters as serious as found bodies! So what the devil was Greengrass doing on that site?’
‘He’s got permission to take rabbits, Sergeant, to clear the site in fact.’
‘Well, tell him to stick to his job and not to go around finding skeletons. Right, I’ll call the forensic lab and see if they can spare us a wizard this morning. And you’ll need a doctor to certify death.’
‘It is a skeleton, Sergeant, and it is very dead.’
‘We must go through the established procedures, Rhea!’
‘Very good, Sergeant,’ I acquiesced.
‘You need a doctor to certify the body is dead, and a forensic pathologist to establish the cause of that death, and then we must inform the coroner who might order an inquest. You know the routine, Rhea. Now, you stay there with Greengrass. Get a statement from him, not his dog! I’ll ring the doctor and forensic, then I’ll rendezvous with you there.’
‘Right, Sergeant, I’ll just ask about the best place to meet.’
‘Beside the body, I would say,’ he said, slamming down the phone.
I did not want to commandeer Ken Rigby’s office because he would be busy; I was going to suggest we met in the canteen but Blaketon’s blunt order was final. I explained this to the others. Ken graciously allowed me to remain in his office to take the statement from Claude, then we had another coffee before returning to the fallen larch. I found myself standing beside a hole in the ground with a skeleton to my right and Claude Jeremiah Greengrass to my left. Ken had remained in his office and Alfred was standing at the edge of the hole, whining from time to time and looking first at his master and then hopefully at the bones. In a strong voice, Claude told him to ‘leave’, and being a poacher’s highly trained mate, Alfred obeyed. Sergeant Blaketon arrived very soon afterwards.
‘Trust you to go poking your nose into things that don’t concern you, Greengrass!’ were his first words.
‘I thought I’d give you summat to do, Blaketon! I wanted to brighten up the start to your week,’ was Claude’s retort. ‘And if this chap turns out to have been murdered, then you’re going to be very very busy, mark my words.’
‘And if he has been murdered, you’ll be prime suspect, seeing that you found the body!’ returned Blaketon.
‘Alfred found it, matey, not me,’ responded Claude.
I wanted to stop this banter and asked, ‘Is the doctor coming, Sergeant?’
‘Doctor William Williams is on his way, he had one patient in his surgery and I explained there was a lack of urgency. And a Doctor England from the forensic lab at Harrogate will be here in about an hour. He’ll decide whether we need call in the CID. Now, Rhea, show me this corpse or what’s left of it.’
I indicated the various bones which were visible and knew the pathologist would carefully scrape away the earth to reveal the entire remains. I hoped he might make a speedy decision so we could determine our course of action. The chances were there would be no criminal investigation due to the age of the bones, and our only action would be to arrange their burial.
I referred Blaketon to my theory about the tree growing on top of the skeleton, and he said we might be able to determine t
he age of the tree, and thus have some idea how long the skeleton had lain beneath it. To cut short a long story, Doctor Williams went through the procedure of certifying the body dead and later, Doctor England examined it in considerable detail, saying the bones appeared to be very old, probably 200 years or more. An initial examination did not establish any obvious cause of death such as a bullet wound, fractured skull or broken neck vertebrae and it was his considered opinion that the person — he felt it was a male due to the shape of the pelvic bones — had died from natural causes.
Nonetheless, he would remove the skeleton along with samples of the earth which immediately surrounded it, and would endeavour to establish the age and sex of the bones in laboratory conditions. He might determine the cause of death — evidence of some poisons, for example, did linger in bones for years after death, and if there were any minute injuries to any of the surviving bones, he might be able to suggest their cause.
By the end of that day, therefore, the bones had been removed to the laboratory in a large plastic bag and I thanked Ken Rigby for his assistance. He was then given the go-ahead to remove the larch and obliterate the grave of the unfortunate man as work on the site was resumed.
It was a few weeks later that Doctor England gave us his considered opinion. He said the bones were between 150 and 200 years old; they were those of a man aged around forty who was five feet six inches tall and who had had arthritic knees and wrists. There were strands of brown hair on the skull. The bones bore no sign of an injury which may have caused his death, nor were any of the known poisons found in his bones. In the doctor’s opinion, the man had died from natural causes. As there was no evidence of a formal burial, the man might have died from exposure in a storm or possibly from a disease, although the remote location of the dale would favour the exposure theory.
CONSTABLE AT THE DAM a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain’s best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 19) Page 8