‘Oh,’ I said, buying for time. Then I got it. ‘You’re telling me he broke his ankle?’
‘Yes, well, it’s hard to tell if the fracture occurred pre- or post-mortem, but my guess is before, because, unless I’m mistaken, there is an indication, a very, very faint indication, of the beginnings of a heal.’
I must have given him my ‘Duh?’ look because his hand flew to his mouth as he suppressed a giggle.
‘Heal on an ankle, that’s a little pun, isn’t it? I must make a note of that.’ He sobered, no doubt giving himself a silent reprimand. ‘I meant heal as in healing. My guess is that the fracture to the talus happened about a week to ten days before our John Doe died. I’ll get Brian to have a look, too; he’s got a new-fangled camera that will help us get a bit closer.’
‘So you’re thinking maybe it was an accident? He fell over, broke his ankle, tried to crawl to a hut or for help …?’
He shrugged. ‘Of course, just as likely a scenario, since we don’t have a skull, is that something or someone smashed his head in.’
‘Or put a bullet through it,’ I suggested helpfully.
‘Indeed.’
I sucked the end of the ballpoint and stared at the blinking cursor for a full minute before asking the next question.
‘Why do you think the head is missing?’
Smithy squeezed his hands together between his thighs. ‘Good question, Diane. And as with all good questions, the answer is elusive.’ He pushed those invisible glasses back again. ‘It looks like there was a snap break to the neck which could of course mean he hanged himself — the break in the neck would make it more likely for the head to become separated from the spine when the flesh rotted away.’ He waggled his head as if in sympathy with the missing skull as he went through the possible scenarios. ‘Then again, the neck could have been broken post-mortem if the body was thrown around or dragged downstream, for example.’
I made some notes, aware Smithy was reading everything I wrote. Obviously I wasn’t the only one able to read text upside down.
‘I couldn’t see any signs of decapitation. Normally you’d see slice marks from the blade on the vertebrae if that had been the case. I can’t entirely rule it out but I don’t think so.’
‘Not a Triad execution, then? Great, well, that really narrows it down.’
We grinned at each other, and then lapsed into thought, me sucking the pen, Smithy blinking rapidly. There’s a special kind of intimacy that develops when two people think together. I took the opportunity to praise him on his weight loss. He blushed as if I’d referred to the size of his genitals rather than his waistline.
‘Yes, well, health and all that,’ he mumbled, self-consciously patting a little stiff curl cantilevered over his forehead. The touch to his head acted as a reminder.
‘It’s possible of course that our John Doe was shot in the head, but without a skull, and in the absence of organs, it’s impossible to say yay or nay on that one.’ He tapped me on the knee with his index finger. ‘Find me the skull with a bullet hole in it and Bob’s your uncle.’ With that he stood and rubbed his stomach which grumbled in complaint.
‘I’ll do my best, but finding his head after all this time is going to be tricky.’
Smithy yanked open the door of a small fridge tucked under a corner desk, and stared despondently at the contents.
‘Pigs are the most likely culprits to have made off with it,’ he said, taking out a pottle. It had a sticking plaster on the lid with ‘lunch’ written in red felt pen.
‘Any idea how long ago he died?’
‘Well, that’s going to be difficult.’ He removed the lid and sniffed at the contents. ‘I’ve sent samples of bone and tissue to the lab so we’ll see what they come up with, but it’s going to be hard to date without more specific information.’ He dipped his index finger and licked it. His expression was of resigned disappointment.
‘What kind of information do you need?’ I asked.
‘Well, if we knew whether the body was out in the open all the time, or sheltered for some of it, that would help to calculate the dates. As I say, I’ll have ESR run some tests, but in reality it’s pretty much impossible to pinpoint exactly how long he’s been out there.’
He put the lid on the pottle and placed it back in the fridge, keeping the door open with his knee.
‘All we can really do is narrow it down.’
I joined him in his lonely perusal of the fridge contents.
‘So all I’ve got to go on, really,’ I said, ‘is that he was a guy in his early twenties, with a broken ankle and maybe or maybe not a bullet in his head, or who had or had not hanged himself, who went missing some time in the last hundred and fifty years.’
We both stared mournfully into the fridge at the only things keeping that little lunch pottle company: a half container of trim milk with a suspiciously clogged opening, a single bruised pear and a six-pack of low-fat yoghurt.
‘As far as the body itself goes, at this stage, yes, that’s about it.’ Smithy removed his knee and fridge door aspirated shut. The soft gasp of the seal seemed to spark a memory. ‘Ah, but I do have something for you, though.’
‘Go on — excite me,’ I grinned.
Smithy blushed crimson. He handed me a plastic evidence box containing a boot.
‘This is from John Doe’s right foot. I cleaned it up a bit and I think you’ll find it quite a clue to pinpointing the era the body went missing.’
He was right of course. With the mud removed and good hosing down, the manufacturer’s label ‘Lowa’ was clearly visible on the inside ankle. From the style of the boot I could see it was probably made around the 1960s; checking out the label with the manufacturer should narrow the date down even more. It would at least give me the earliest possible date for the body to have been out there. I resisted the urge to kiss the top of Smithy’s head. It was the little varnished, transparent comb-over that did it.
I packed my notepad away and tucked the evidence box under my arm. Smithy was staring at the fridge again and my own stomach rumbled in sympathy. I suggested we grab a burger together at the hospital café but he declined. I thought I saw tears in his eyes. It was probably just those damn contacts giving him trouble.
Smithy said he’d hang on to the body for a couple of weeks, but if I hadn’t found a solid lead as to who this guy was by the end of the month, he’d have it cremated and the ashes stored in what was affectionately known as the dungeon. Space in the city is at a premium, even at the morgue. As they say, location, location, location.
I gave Smithy a peck on the cheek and thanked him for his time. He seemed distracted — by hunger I suspect. I said goodbye, went out the door, closed it, counted to ten, then opened it again. Smithy pretended he was bending to tie his shoe lace. I didn’t buy it. Not least because he was wearing slip-ons. I suspect he was in the middle of his first callisthenic.
‘By the way,’ I said, real casual. ‘Anything of interest in the autopsy on Snow?’
He didn’t even bother to straighten. ‘Sean’s already told me not to talk to you about that.’
‘Oh well,’ I admitted. ‘It was worth a go.’
Smithy didn’t respond. He’s not usually so churlish. I put it down to the new diet. As I was about to close the door he relented.
‘The phrase “frenzied attack”,’ he said, straightening, ‘along with the single word “unexpected”, for some reason spring to mind.’ He gave a wink accompanied by his fullest, most rigor mortis-like smile.
Shit, I thought, he’s had his teeth capped too. This new girlfriend better be worth it.
CHAPTER 10
It was a ten-minute taxi ride to Molesworth Street where I grabbed a melted cheese and relish panini from a trendy café next to the National Library. Haunted by images of a wasted Smithy, I sat on a bench in the sun and devoured my lunch. Ah, the things we do for love, I thought, which took me back to the Basin Reserve and Sean telling me his girlfriend was pregnant.
&
nbsp; I’m really superstitious about pregnant women. I’ve known too many who have miscarried to feel anything but a nervous, Tourette-like compulsion to celebrate the announcement of every pregnancy. Babies should hear only exclamations of welcome while they’re tucked away inside, before they make the break into the big, wide world. It seems reasonable to ask that of people, at least until the child has been born. After that, well, they’re fair game like the rest of us. So even though some inner voice muttered dark thoughts about this joyfully anticipated event, I shouted it down and praised Louie or Gaia or whatever bloody deity was responsible for the fusion of Sean’s sperm with that bitch’s ovum. I was doing my best!
Police HQ squats at the top of Molesworth, a big black Stalinist building with reflective glass on all its windows. They don’t open. Not from the outside or the inside. I waved my way past Joey the security guard. As I waited for the lift I saw him pick up the phone to alert level three I was on my way. Like the windows, Joey’s for show, really, because each floor is secured off with bullet-proof glass and the only way anyone can enter or exit offices is with a swipe card through the outer doors, then a security code into each inner office. Fort Knox has nothing on this place, which is odd because Central, where all the actual criminal stuff goes on, is just a simple buzz-through affair. Typical. The brass protecting their arses while the workers get theirs put on the line.
I stepped out of the lift at level three, knocked on the thick security glass, and finger-waved to Tilly when she looked up. She came swinging around the reception desk, keyed the first security pad and then swiped her card through the second door. She held it open for me and repeated the process in reverse. Tilly, in a strange reversal of Smithy’s condition, had put on at least ten kilos since I’d last seen her. Maybe the same weight just got shifted around amongst people.
‘I know,’ she said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘I’m a blimp.’
It would have been plain wrong to argue the point so I went for a lateral approach and asked what the latest goss was in cop-land. She gave me a withering look.
‘You mean apart from your ex moving in with Sylvie the sucker?’
I truly, honestly and without doubt did not want to know why Sylvie had ended up with that little nomenclature. I knew she worked in the legal division of ‘the service’, doing what I’d never bothered to ask, but I didn’t know anything else about her except that she was pregnant to my husband. Okay, ex-husband, but still. I hoped the nickname came from some foolish professional act she’d committed rather than other actions I didn’t want to visualise.
It took the next ten minutes for Tilly to issue my security clearance cards, walk me through to the little room I’d been allocated next to the kitchenette, and acquaint me with the latest updates to their internal, digital seek-and-find system. That done, and coffee mug in hand, Tilly walked me past the other offices on the level and made sure I knew everyone, which, tragically, I did. Not much changed at HQ, particularly on this floor.
Mostly people were nice and offhand, which is much the same thing, though a couple of the guys got that shifty look when they greeted me. I knew what those looks meant: these guys hung out with Sean and Sylvie and didn’t think they could handle the whole ‘good mate, good mate’s new girlfriend, plus good mate’s ex, working for the same company’ thing. Either that or they’d heard rumours about how I’d lost it when my little sister was murdered and become a liability to my cop husband because I wouldn’t butt my nose out of the investigation.
I wasn’t in a reassuring mood, so after I’d thanked Tilly and promised to catch up for a real bitch session with her in the near future, I settled down in front of my computer, typed in the password she’d given me, and opened the search engine.
I spent the next half hour locating Lowa, the boot manufacturer’s, contact details, then spending a shit-load of tax payer’s money ringing people all round the world trying to get a handle on when this particular batch of boots came on the market. I had some interesting conversations, including one with a shoe-fetishist, animal rights activist in Bavaria, though that didn’t bring me any closer to finding out about the John Doe boot. It was fun, though, and reminded me how much I used to enjoy these jobs for the police.
I had trouble finding anyone who could tell me if the German-based brand had been exported to New Zealand in the 1960s, and I got sick of confirming that, ‘Yes, New Zealand is a beautiful country,’ and breaking the surprising news that ‘No, I don’t know Peter Jackson personally.’ Occasionally, just for the hell of it, I lied and said I did know PJ, and followed it up with some interesting anecdote that I made up on the spot.
But in the end, perseverance paid off and I found out that our batch of boots went on the retail market in 1969. I’ve always thought 1969 had a lucky ring to it, and I hoped that would be the case here too. There was no style name on the boot but after describing it in detail I ascertained that this particular line was discontinued five years later in 1974.
I did the maths. If the earliest John Doe could have been wearing those boots was 1969 and if he was twenty-something when he died, he must have been born around 1949. I jotted a couple of figures down; he’d be sixty or more now if he’d lived.
I sat back in my chair and stared at the blank wall as I thought through the dates. If the boots came on the market in 1969, the body couldn’t have been there before then. So, earliest date, 1969. The only thing that could give us a secure latest date was a forensic path report, and Smithy had already admitted that the date was going to be difficult to pinpoint, given the variable effects of weather and environment on a dead body. I chewed my pen some more. Still, 1969 was a starting point.
I switched to the internal ‘missing persons’ search engine and put in the start date of 1969. I left the ‘latest’ date blank and filled in male for gender and, to be safe, typed 20–30 for the age range. I had nothing for distinguishing features, since the absence of a head was unlikely to have been a feature when he was alive.
While the computer had a think about it, I did too. I made sucking noises on the pen and the computer made those little clicking noises. I’ve always suspected that was just a sound effect built in to discourage us technically illiterate from getting impatient and banging keys to hurry the process.
I stopped chewing as several hundred names scrolled on to the screen. I was going to have to narrow my search. Start narrow, and if I had no luck I could always expand. I went back to the original search page. This time, I made 1969 the earliest date and 1974 the latest. Five-year brackets seemed a good way to start.
The names appeared at once. Only two men in their twenties went missing in that period, and remained missing. Only two, I reminded myself, who were reported to the police. The first, a Malcolm Robertson, was described as thick-set, with a ‘square’ build and a height of five foot seven. I checked my notes which confirmed my memory of John Doe being six foot two — give or take the variables of head size. Didn’t sound like a match, but I wasn’t ruling Malcolm out yet. I clicked on the other name, Steven Grigg. He’d gone missing in 1970. Height six feet. Slim build.
I jotted down the case number and took that through to Tilly who was in the middle of an intense phone conversation. She gesticulates and pulls faces when she’s on a call, as if the listener is standing right in front of her. She argued for some time with the person on the other end about his cleaning up the kitchen mess after himself, and I hoped it was her son she was talking to and not her husband. She suddenly bored of the conversation and ended it. ‘Boys,’ was all she said, so I was none the wiser. Whoever they were I hoped for their sake they did wash those dishes and wipe down the bench and put the cleaned toasty sandwich maker back in the cupboard when they’d finished.
I asked Tilly if she’d mind getting the Steven Grigg file for me and handed her the case number. Since my photo ID pass wasn’t yet security cleared, we both knew it was quicker and less problematic if she went down to the dungeon for it. She asked me to mind the desk
and I said I was more than happy to do that, but once she’d key-padded and swiped her way out and disappeared into the lift, I realised that it would be pointless my answering the phone as I had no idea how to work their system; and since no one could walk in without their own swipe card, that limited the amount of foot traffic.
I decided to do as she asked and mind the desk, so I hung about, leaned on it occasionally, gave it the odd rub with my elbow. I was doing just that when Carol Pritchard swiped her way through the doors.
She gave a very bad performance of gobsmacked surprise when she saw me, which only confirmed what I’d already suspected: Tilly had alerted everyone that I was there, including Queen Carol, senior legal advisor and privacy officer to the police commissioner. ‘Privacy officer’ was the joke on levels 3 and 4 because Carol was known as the biggest gossip in both sworn and unsworn sections of the police force, or police service as it prefers to be known. What Carol doesn’t know hasn’t happened yet. She schmoozed and cooed at me sympathetically before going for the jugular.
‘I’m so sorry to hear about Sean and Sylvie,’ she crooned excitedly. ‘You must be devastated.’
I’ve never been able to play this game — where women say one thing but mean entirely the opposite. Carol was eyeing me in the same way I’d looked at my panini lunch. I mumbled about it not being a problem, and Sean and I still being friends, and my having nothing against Sylvie — all of which goes to show that I must know more about female bullshit than I let on.
Gemma told me once that the best thing to do with women like Carol — in fact I’m pretty sure it was Carol she meant — was to turn the tables and try and get as much information out of them as possible. This, according to Gemma, had the two-fold outcome of gaining information and stopping yourself from giving any. Backed into a corner, literally, I had nothing to lose.
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