Dave Slater Mystery Novels Box Set One

by Ford, P. F.

  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.”

  Cha
pter 8

  The news from the hospital mortuary was not the best Slater had ever heard. From his preliminary findings, Henry Cutter, their pet roving pathologist, was able to confirm that their victim was definitely a girl, about five feet two inches tall, and with blonde curly hair. Her age he reckoned to be late teens or early twenties.

  He estimated she had been dead for less than 48 hours. And that was about as good as it was going to get at this stage, because, despite his best efforts, he had been unable to reconstruct the face enough to provide a good description.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Dave Slater. “But there’s so much bruising and swelling to the face it’s impossible to tell you what she looked like. I could clean the skull and get Nadira to do a reconstruction once she’s finished excavating the grave, but that’s going to take a few days.”

  “We may have to do that,” said Slater, glumly. “At the moment we’ve got nothing to go on. It’s as if she just dropped out of the sky.”

  “Ah!” said Cutter. “It’s funny you should mention that. I’ve been trying to figure out how she could have been so badly beaten and what she could have been beaten with.”

  “When I first saw her, I figured maybe she’d been run over by a steamroller,” said Slater.

  “I’ve got to be honest,” said the pathologist. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so badly smashed up as this, and what marks I can make out don’t seem consistent with any sort of weapon I’ve come across before. And then I got to thinking about how she could have got there.”

  “If you’ve got a theory I’d love to hear it,” said Slater with interest. “We’ve only got Norman’s ‘Aliens in a UFO’ theory to go on at the moment, and to be honest I don’t think it’s a runner.”

  Henry Cutter smiled, obviously appreciating Slater’s attempt at black humour. Slater was glad – he didn’t want to work with someone who didn’t understand the importance of humour to help you cope.

  “Well, you just said it,” said Cutter. “She fell from the sky.”

  “You mean from an airplane?” asked Slater.

  “I found a puncture mark on the back of her neck. I haven’t got the results yet, but it’s an unusual place to inject someone, so let’s assume she was surprised and something nasty was injected into her. Let’s suppose it was enough to knock her out. Then she’s dragged on board a small aircraft, the pilot takes off, gets to a few hundred feet, or so, opens the door and pushes her out.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Slater.

  “It would explain why there’s so much damage to the body, and it explains how she got out in the middle of all that long grass without leaving any sort of trail.”

  “Yeah.” Slater looked at Cutter doubtfully. “But how do you know she was pushed? What if she fell?”

  “Wouldn’t an accident like that have been reported?”

  “You’ve got me there.” Slater nodded thoughtfully. “And now I’m thinking about your idea, it does seem to fit.”

  “It also explains another thing,” continued Cutter. “In one or two places, coarse grass stems have actually penetrated her body. Normally they’d just bend and snap, but with the force of a body falling from a couple of hundred feet…”

  “Can you give us any idea when this might have happened?” Slater hoped the pathologist could give them at least a rough idea, to help narrow their search.

  “I’ll be able to give you a more accurate result tomorrow, but if I had to guess I would say the night before last, between 9pm and 3am.”

  “How much weight would you put behind this theory of yours?” asked Slater, looking at Cutter thoughtfully.

  “I need to confirm one or two things first,” said Cutter. “But I’d put my money on it being a winner.”

  “Well we can certainly put it ahead of Norm’s ‘aliens’ theory,” said Slater. “I’ll start looking into it as soon as I get back. It’s just a pity we can’t identify her. We haven’t even got a bloke missing right now, never mind a blonde girl in her late teens or early 20s.”

  “Pity,” Cutter said. “If only we had some dental records to compare, or DNA. Anything like that would help.”

  The first person Slater bumped into when he got out of his car later was Steve Biddeford.

  “Just the guy I was looking for.” Biddeford clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve been assigned to your murder team.”

  This was good news. Slater had a high regard for Steve Biddeford who, despite being relatively new to this work, was proving to be a valuable asset in many ways.

  “Come on then,” said Slater. “You’ll need to get up to speed, although it won’t take very long. We’re not exactly making rapid progress. But at least we’ve got a proper incident room this time.”

  Slater led the way through the building and up the stairs without saying any more.

  “You’re looking thoughtful,” said Biddeford. “Anything I can help with?”

  “We’ve got a dead body, female, no ID, face smashed to a pulp so we don’t really know what she looks like. How do we identify her?” Slater shook his head as they reached the incident room.

  “Missing persons?”

  “There isn’t even a bloke missing in the area, never mind a young girl.”

  “Ah, right,” said Biddeford. “I see your problem.”

  Slater led him into the incident room. There was a row of white boards propped against one wall. So far, two had been put up on easels and had information written in blue ink. Slater made his way to the first board and added “check possible light aircraft passing over between 9pm and 3am on Monday (29/06) night”. Then he added “SB”, Steve Biddeford’s initials.

  “Maybe you could start by checking this light aircraft theory out,” Slater said to Biddeford, who had followed him over and was now staring intently at the two boards.

  “Sure, no problem,” said Biddeford.

  Slater began to add more information to the second board. It was headed “Victim Number One”. He wrote the word “name” on the left side, but as yet, they had no name. Under that, he started a list of possible identifying features. There were lots of blanks by the time he finished. All he really knew was her height, hair colour and estimated age.

  Slater noticed Biddeford staring at the board he had just finished updating. Before he could ask why, Biddeford reached into his pocket and fished out a photo.

  “Err, Sarge,” he said to Slater. “Might this be the girl?”

  Slater took the photograph and stared at it.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  “Remember I told you I’d been asked to look out for a girl who’s gone missing from Birmingham? Who might, or might not be in Tinton? She’s the right age, the right height, and you can see she’s got blonde hair.”

  “It has to be a possibility,” agreed Slater. “But her face is unrecognisable from the damage she sustained. Can you see if you can find someone up there who can get hold of her dental records and send them down to us?”

  “I’m on it,” said Biddeford, hurrying to the nearest phone.

  Chapter 9

  Slater wasn’t quite sure if finding the grave shortly after they found the first body was a bizarre coincidence, or if there was some connection, so for the time being he and Norman were covering both and had been given the luxury of having their own incident room and a small team to help them.

  For now, the team consisted of Detective Sergeants Slater and Norman, Detective Constable Steve Biddeford, and PCs Jane Jolly and Phillipa Flight. A further PC might be allocated to man (or woman) the main office phone and handle incoming calls if one could be spared once everyone had returned from the crime scenes.

  In the meantime, Jolly was on phones, which she seemed happy to do, and Flight was on general admin, which Slater had quickly found out she hated. He realised that as far as PC Flight was concerned, she felt she was wasted indoors and should be out on the street fighting crime.

  The phone on Slater’s desk buzzed annoyingly. He grabbed
it.

  “Slater.”

  “I don’t know which one of you lot is going to handle this, but the dead girl’s mother’s here to identify the body,” said the voice of a world-weary duty sergeant down the line.

  “What do you mean ‘the dead girl’s mother’s here?’” asked Slater.

  “What do you think I mean?” the voice replied.

  “But we’re not even sure who she is yet. How the hell can someone have called the mother?” Slater was both puzzled and annoyed at this development. They’d only been sent the dental records last night and he’d yet to hear from the pathologist this morning.

  “You can keep your irritation to yourself and spare me the interrogation,” the voice came back, belligerently, “I’m just the bloke on the desk down here trying to keep everything running smoothly and in order. Right now, I’m telling you there’s a lady here who’s come to see her daughter’s body. It’s your case, so it’s your problem. And, as you don’t seem to be clear about how this place works, I’ll remind you – the only people who could have made that call are those working on the case. So I’ll thank you to direct your questions at them and not at me. But before you do that, get someone down here to look after this lady. Now.”

  “I’m sorry-,” Slater started to apologise, but it was too late. The duty sergeant had hung up. As he replaced his own receiver, he made a mental note to call in to make peace next time he went down stairs.

  “What’s up?” asked Norman.

  “The girl’s mother’s here to identify her daughter.”

  “What? Who told her? We don’t even know who-”

  “I know, right?” Slater shook his head, wondering what on earth was going on. “And when I find out which big mouth around here called her I’m going to kick some serious arse. But, right now, we’ve got a lady downstairs needing an explanation.”