by Wonny Lea
Alex had finished giving instructions to his team and pulled down the hood of his scene of crime suit to reveal his perfectly smooth, hairless head. There was no fear of contaminating the crime scene from him, but that was not the reason for his shiny scalp and Martin recalled that Alex had shaved his head even before joining the force.
Matt couldn’t resist a comment. ‘Thought the new Mrs Griffiths would have persuaded you to grow your hair,’ he teased the recently married SOC expert.
Matt had been unable to attend the wedding as he had been recovering from a near-fatal knife wound at the time, inflicted when he and Martin had apprehended a serial killer. Alex’s marriage, to Charlie Walsh, who headed up the IT arm of the Goleudy setup, had been organised by Charlie in less time than it took most people to do their weekly shop – that was Charlie! Although confined to a wheelchair following a serious car accident when she was a teenager, Charlie managed to live life to the full – more so on two wheels than most people did on two legs.
The wedding in Charlie’s hometown of Balbriggan had been a harmonious meeting of the Celts, with the family and friends of Charlie providing the warmest of Irish welcomes to Alex and his family and friends from South Wales. No one would have guessed that the wedding had taken so little time to organise, and from start to finish the whole affair had been a perfect match of solemn commitment and lots of fun.
Martin had his own good reasons for remembering the occasion. He had been Alex’s best man, and contrary to his expectations he had thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but the main reason for his terrific memories was the time he had spent in the company of Shelley Edwards.
Shelley worked as a civilian member of the Police Force and was the health and safety expert of the Goleudy Training Department. She was responsible for training officers at a local level and for providing quarterly seminars for the whole police force in Wales. Not being a technical expert, Shelley had looked for help in setting up the IT arrangements for these sessions. Charlie, a whizz at anything involved with pushing buttons, had willingly obliged and the two of them had soon become really good friends.
In true Irish fashion the wedding celebrations had gone on through the night, with a magical mixture of Welsh singing and Irish dancing – helped along by a constant flow of the local brew. It was at half-past five in the morning, when the sky was getting light, that Martin and Shelley had wandered off to the beach some twenty minutes’ walk away, and then on to the small harbour to watch the early morning activities of the local fishermen. Just prior to the wedding Shelley and Martin had begun a relationship, but that had been a secret shared by just the two of them, and they had attended the wedding as individual friends of the bride and groom. They had left as a couple, and Martin remembered that morning as one of the best mornings of his life – worlds apart from the one he was facing today. This was cold reality. A Monday morning, with a sky signalling rain and a field full of mud, and the discovery of a naked body the order of the day – one that had to be faced.
Alex indicated that he and his team would be about another hour at the scene and would then be taking everything back to base. He agreed with Martin that it should be possible to get the first meeting of the investigation team together by early afternoon.
As Matt lifted the tent flap for himself and Martin to leave, he was momentarily blinded by a flash of light and quickly realised they were no longer alone under the trees, as they had been joined by a number of onlookers and what looked like just a single member of the press.
The one reporter, who was holding a flash camera, wasted no time and immediately bombarded the officers with questions. After all, he was the first of his colleagues to arrive at the scene, and he knew from past experience that when the rest of the news reporters arrived he would be unlikely to get a look-in. Very soon the whole area would be swarming with people from every section of the media, and he had to make the most of this unique opportunity.
‘Morning, Chief Inspector Phelps,’ he began. ‘The woman talking to your officer over there has a very loud voice and we have all gathered that she discovered a body here, within the last hour or so. Is that right?’
‘Good morning, Mike,’ returned Martin as he recognised the reporter as Mike Hiscock, a journalist from one of the smaller local papers and was more than happy to give out the known facts of the case to him – it would make his day to get information ahead of the big boys.
‘Yes, the woman you refer to did find a body when she was exercising her dog this morning.’
‘Is it the body of a man or a woman?’ Hiscock quickly interrupted and was keen to know more.
‘I’m afraid I can’t give you that information at present,’ replied Martin.
‘Is that can’t or won’t? How did he or she die? Was it of natural causes or was she murdered?’ The reporter persisted, obviously trying to get as many questions as possible answered.
Martin and Matt had now passed the barrier of the blue and white tape and were making their way back to the car park but their footsteps continued to be dogged by this young hound from the press.
‘OK,’ said Martin. ‘As you appear to have beaten your colleagues to this story I will give you an official statement. At ten minutes past seven this morning the police received a call from a member of the public who had been exercising her dog in Coopers Field. It would seem that the dog failed to retrieve a ball and when the woman went in search of it she discovered a body. You can see for yourself where the body was found and I can confirm that we are treating the death as suspicious.’
‘That’s it?’ questioned Mike.
‘Don’t push it,’ retorted Matt. ‘DCI Phelps has already given you more than you could have hoped for at this stage, so just hop it.’
Although enough was never enough for Mike and his colleagues, he did hop it, and in fact raced ahead and was over the bouncy bridge well before the detectives had reached it – no doubt running at the behest of that ever-looming deadline.
The journey back to Goleudy should only have taken fifteen minutes but they encountered the delights of the morning rush hour in the city and that, coupled with the aftermath of a minor accident, meant having to tolerate a journey lasting almost an hour.
Not that the time was wasted as it was an opportunity to reflect on the detail, albeit scanty, of this new case and to construct a plan for solving what was most definitely a murder – but what sort of murder?
The two men tossed around every possibility they could think of. At the one end of the spectrum they considered a brutal murder, possibly premeditated, having happened at some other location and the body dumped in the field later. At the other end there was the possibility of a simple accident. An accident that had resulted in the death of the victim could easily have caused the perpetrator to panic and move the body away from where he or she, the killer, could be identified.
Who was the victim? They needed an answer to that question as quickly as possible and there were a few ways in which that answer could be provided. When Prof. Moore had completed the post-mortem examination they would have a much better picture of the deceased and then trawling through the missing persons files would be easier. But the deceased may not have been reported missing.
The scientists would be able to provide them with the all-important DNA profile but that would only be helpful if it matched records on existing databases. As on many other similar occasions, Martin considered the pros and cons of there being a compulsory national DNA database.
A closer examination would also throw more light on the cause of death – was it just a single blow to the head or had the victim been subjected to a more sustained attack? Would they discover sexual abuse or other evidence of pre-death torture? Toxicology reports would also be interesting – and was there any underlying pathology? Would they discover that drugs were involved, either prescription or otherwise?
When did she die? The level of tissue decay, together with factoring in the effects of the elements, should put a reason
ably accurate date to that. Martin had his usual feeling of frustration, a feeling very familiar to this stage of any investigation – it was the questions with no answers stage. If he could choose the answer to just one question at this moment, he would be provided with the name of the dead female. It didn’t even occur to him that the professor could be wrong about the sex.
As he thought about her identity it raised even more questions in his mind. Did she have a family, and if so, where were they? If the body was indeed that of a child or teenager surely someone would have missed her but he was unaware of any recent investigations in the area. However if the death had occurred elsewhere they would have to link up with records of existing cases throughout the UK, and Charlie and her team would have their work cut out. What if? Why? When? How? More and more questions flooded Martin’s mind as he turned the corner of a particularly familiar stretch of road and pulled into the car park at the rear entrance of Goleudy.
Although Martin had been engrossed with his thoughts, he had not been unaware of the grumblings of his sergeant’s stomach – especially as they had mirrored his own. Matt opened his mouth to speak as the car came to a halt but Martin second-guessed him.
‘Yes, we should be in time for breakfast, but in any event Iris will rustle us up an omelette, so let’s head straight for the staff café and put these stomach gremlins to rest.’
Matt grinned. ‘No wonder you’re such a great detective,’ he teased his boss. ‘Linking my intestinal protestations to the absence of food, now that’s really profound!’
Iris did indeed cook them each a cheese omelette of enormous proportions and brought them to the table with an equivalent mountain of toast.
The grapevine had already been working and she knew that the two men had just returned from the site of a murder. She couldn’t imagine what that must be like but held the view that any situation could be improved with the TLC of good home-from-home cooking and she could certainly provide that.
For the next ten minutes neither Martin nor his sergeant said a word as they both devoured everything that had been put in front of them and then picked up a second cup of coffee to take back to their offices.
‘If you can set the ball rolling regarding missing females that would be something,’ suggested Martin. ‘We haven’t got much else to go on until after the PM, but I noticed Mrs Williams was called away from her coffee back there so I assume that is already underway.’
Mrs Williams was the post-mortem room technician, without whom the professor would not start an examination. The two had worked together for more than twenty years and no one knew more about the professor’s idiosyncrasies than she did.
It was rumoured that the professor even changed his holidays to coincide with hers, as he was very much a creature of habit and Mrs Williams knew his habits and preferred ways of working, if anything, better than he did. Whatever their relationship, it worked and Mrs Williams was regarded as something of a saint by those who thought that working with Prof. Moore would be a living nightmare.
Matt went off to do whatever he could to kick-start the investigation and clear some of the existing paperwork that seemed to grow in his in-tray every weekend. Martin closed the door of his office before opening his desk drawer and taking out a sheet of paper on which he wrote the three headings he always used to brainstorm his way into an investigation.
He let his mind wander back over the crime scene and wrote down anything that he thought would help to discover who the victim was and how she had been killed. For some reason he tried to remember the victim’s hair, and the only thing that came to mind was the lack of it. The skull was certainly not exposed, other than where a blow had been struck, but he couldn’t recall much hair and the colour had not struck a chord in his memory. For the moment he just noted it as something to be checked out later, not something of particular significance.
An hour later and with no more than twenty words written on his paper he headed for Incident Room One. The usual selection of crime scene photographs were already on display and Martin knew that the clothes and soil samples etc. were being worked on in the laboratories. Everyone had specific jobs to do at the start of this murder investigation and the work was well underway.
Over the next few days the room would be a hive of activity as the individual experts and their teams brought forward more information and supported Martin’s efforts to discover the identity of the body found in Coopers Field and to bring her killer to justice.
Chapter Two
Questions are Asked
‘I got here as quickly as I could,’ Sarah told the uptight night nurse who had changed out of her uniform and was pacing between the reception desk and the main entrance to the Parkland Nursing Home.
‘It was quite exciting really,’ continued Sarah, ignoring her colleague’s moans about her lateness. ‘Some woman was out with her wire-haired terrier and the dog was messing around with some soaking wet clothes. When Mrs Pattern, that’s the lady’s name, went to get her dog from under the trees she found a dead body.’
The night nurse, who called herself Sister Grey, although she had only been qualified for just over six months and had so far failed to get a job in the NHS, stopped moaning and stared at Sarah. ‘Seriously?’ she said. You found a dead body on your way to work?’
‘No, I didn’t say that. I said that someone called Mrs Pattern found a dead body – or rather her dog did – and I only got involved because as I walked past I saw that the woman was madly hyperventilating,’ Sarah continued. ‘I think one of the police officers thought he was about to have a second body on his hands so I suggested the old paper bag routine, and within a couple of minutes she was fine.’
‘I’m surprised the police let you go,’ chipped in one of the care assistants who had been listening to the conversation.
Sarah raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you mean? I’m not a murder suspect or anything, and anyway they have my details and will probably turn up here later on as I’ve agreed to give a statement.’
‘You said a murder suspect!’ said Sister Grey. ‘When you said that the woman had found a dead body I assumed it was someone who had just had a heart attack, or perhaps a tramp – anyone could have died of exposure if they had been sleeping rough in the weather we’ve had for our so-called summer. But no, you said a murder suspect, so the police think the person was killed?’
Eva Grey had forgotten all about her apparent need to get away early that morning, and continued to question her colleague, but Sarah cut her short. ‘I know nothing,’ she said. ‘I certainly didn’t see the body, and I left as soon as I was sure that Mrs Pattern was OK. The police seemed to understand the issue of us being short of staff and so I was free to go.
‘The only other thing I heard was Mrs Pattern telling a woman police officer that the experience had been terrible and asking why anyone would want to take all their clothes off as it was hardly the weather for it.’
‘So the body was naked,’ suggested Jayne Foster, the care assistant. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to come to work. I would have had to take a look.’
‘I don’t think the police are opening up a viewing gallery,’ retorted Sarah, and she silently remembered how little it took for Jayne not to be able to come to work. Her level of absenteeism was horrendous, and the only reason Parkland still employed her was that when she was there she was one of the best care assistants Sarah had ever worked with.
‘Anyway,’ said Sarah, turning her attention back to Eva Grey. ‘I thought you wanted to get away – so just give me a quick handover of anything I particularly need to know and I’ll catch up with the rest from the Kardex. It’s my first day back after what should have been a long weekend but I couldn’t have Friday off because there was no one to cover – and I’m back this morning for the same reason.’
‘We had a bloody awful night,’ reported Eva. ‘The day staff must have willed old Mr James to hang on until after we came on duty last night, or maybe he had already gone. He was cert
ainly dead before I got to his room and it’s only the third one along the corridor.’
‘His relatives didn’t want to come in to see him but I suspect his daughter will arrive this morning and you can expect her husband to demand Colin’s watch and his wallet – they make me sick! The undertakers have been to collect the body and we’ve cleared his room, but I dare say Mr Cooper will have it filled with the next name on his list before I get back here tonight.’
Sister Grey was less than courteous about the man who owned the nursing home and little wonder as none of the staff had any illusions about him. He was a hard-nosed businessman who had no time whatsoever for the people in the beds, but who promised the earth to their relatives in order to secure a placement.
‘It was Colin James who died?’ asked Sarah. ‘I spoke to him on Friday evening and I thought he was getting better.’
‘Well, apparently after his relatives had visited him on Friday evening Dr Shaw was sent for and that must have been after you’d left,’ Eva responded.
‘It must have been,’ replied Sarah. ‘Anyway Colin’s relatives didn’t visit him, they were here to see Mr Cooper.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Eva. ‘As you know, I didn’t work Friday night, but it was obvious when I got here on Saturday night that he wasn’t going to be with us much longer – I was amazed he lasted all day Sunday.’
‘That just goes to show how unpredictable the vulnerable elderly can be, but I am just really surprised at how quickly Mr James deteriorated,’ said Sarah. ‘It hardly seems possible that only a few weeks ago he was one of the residents able to go out to the pub – but I guess he never really recovered from that chest infection. I can see from the notes that Dr Shaw saw him again yesterday evening so there’ll be no problem with the relatives getting a death certificate. It’s probably already written and sitting on Anthony Cooper’s desk.’