The coastguard had received a report of a body seemingly washed up below the east coast cliff. There was no access on foot at this point, so they had deployed the local lifeboat, which was due to dock at the east pier within the next few minutes.
“And they’ve no idea whose the body is?” Miller asked.
“No identification, sir. Apparently the body’s desiccated, whatever that means.”
“Desiccated?” Miller said. “You’re sure that’s what they said?”
Riddle navigated the sharp turn at the foot of the 199 steps and then accelerated up Henrietta Street. “Yes,” he said. “You know what they mean?”
Miller didn’t answer at first. He was staring out of the passenger window into the darkness.
The car had reached the end of the street. Alan Powell, the pathologist, was already there talking with PC Newbold.
Miller and Riddle got out of the car. “Explain to my sergeant what desiccated means,” Miller said as he headed down the ramp that led to the east pier.
Powell watched Miller descend, before turning to Riddle. “An occasional “please” wouldn’t go amiss,” he said.
Riddle shrugged and Powell sighed.
“Desiccated, when used in relation to a body,” Powell began, “means a corpse which has a dry leathery appearance, while still largely intact.”
“Intact?” Newbold and Riddle said.
“Intact for a corpse that has been dead for a number of years.”
Whitby’s east pier often felt like the poor relation to its western neighbour. Despite aerial photographs illustrating the symmetry of the piers as they stretched out into the North Sea like a pair of elongated horseshoes, the reality was somewhat different. While the west pier was an extension of the road that ran along the harbour front and was a regular host to an almost endless stream of tourists and locals alike, the east pier was by comparison somewhat neglected.
It was much more difficult to gain access as it was reached by a very steep climb, hidden away at the end of Henrietta Street. It had also partly survived the strictures of the Health and Safety departments by remaining unfenced. While by no means abandoned, it had a somewhat forsaken feel. It came as no surprise to Riddle that Miller preferred its solitary desolation.
As Riddle looked down, the pier was lit with token indifference by a series of lamps. He could just about make Miller out as his boss stood at the foot of the steep hill, hands on hips as if scanning the horizon for rescue.
A few moments later, Miller was suddenly illuminated by the strong search light of the town’s lifeboat as it appeared round the headline and headed for a mooring.
“Come on,” Powell said picking up his pathologist’s bag, “let’s see what we have.” He led the way down the steep ramp with the air of a man about to take to the field in a rugby match.
Riddle followed, not for the first time wondering at the strange conflict between Powell’s external jollity and his serious commitment to his job.
By the time they had reached Miller, the lifeboat had pulled alongside the pier, its actions further illuminated by the headlights of a waiting ambulance.
Powell maneuvered himself onto a rusty ladder that was embedded in the pier wall and climbed down. “Permission to come aboard,” he said. Without waiting for answer he dropped the last couple of feet onto the lifeboat and walked gingerly to the port side where a shape was covered with a blanket.
The boat’s captain stepped aside to allow Powell to lift the blanket. Underneath were the human remains of a woman, her leathery skin largely intact, as Powell had predicted. She had obviously once had a mop of curly dark hair, although how much was now unclear.
As Powell’s eyes scanned the woman’s body he could see that part of her left leg had suffered some sort of injury. Bones were exposed, the light from the ambulance reflected off them.
“Good God,” Miller said. He had managed the ladder with considerably less aplomb than the pathologist. “Any ideas as to cause of death?”
Powell turned around and gave Miller a look that spoke volumes. “We’ll all have to wait,” Powell said and then his manner softened. “But after the most superficial of examinations, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of a gunshot or a wound suggestive of stabbing. There’s a break to the left hip, but that could have been the result of the fall. In fact,” he stepped in and shone a torch on the woman’s hip, “that may be recent. Very recent. How odd.”
“In what way?” Riddle asked.
“Well, the poor soul’s been dead for quite a while. Difficult to be anywhere near as precise as any of us would like, but I’d say years rather than months.”
“But the break is much more recent?”
“Yes. I’d guess a month, maybe even less.”
Miller ran his hand across his eyes. “So we’ve got a body that may have been dead for a number of years, with a broken hip that could have happened over the past four weeks, and was found at the foot of a cliff beneath where a woman was murdered less than 24 hours ago.”
Powell shrugged as if to say that was not his problem.
“Brilliant,” Miller sighed. “Just brilliant.”
As the SOCO team arrived to help the lifeboat crew remove the body, Miller climbed out of the boat and walked across to a wooden bench in the middle of the east pier. He slumped down and stared up to the cliff top where the church of St Mary was illuminated. It was less than a quarter of a mile behind it that Curlew Lane Chapel stood in darkness.
“It’s certainly a coincidence,” Riddle said as he joined his boss on the bench. “What are the odds of a body being found beneath the very cliff on which a murder occurred the night before?”
Miller turned to look at Riddle. His sergeant’s overcoat had somehow managed to escape any debris from climbing down to the boat. Was the man never untidy?
“You think it may be more than a coincidence?” Miller asked.
“It can’t be, can it? The woman in the boat has been dead years, according to Dr Powell.”
Miller returned his gaze to the high cliffs. He knew Riddle must be right, but there was something nagging at him that he didn’t like.
“Right,” Miller said. “There’s nothing else we can do tonight. Get yourself off home. Let’s meet first thing at the station. We should have something from Powell by then.”
As Riddle headed back towards the ramp that led to the road, he was passed by the pathologist who was looking worried.
“You finished for the night?” Powell said.
“I was,” Riddle said. “Is everything all right?”
Powell seemed to consider this for a moment, but then a hearty smile appeared on his face, if not in his eyes. “Hunky dory,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Riddle said good night, before climbing back to his car. As he reached the end of Henrietta Street, he turned back to see Powell deep in conversation with Miller.
“It’s an odd one, Frank.” Powell said.
Miller’s eyes narrowed. “In what way?”
Powell thrust his hands into his pockets. It was a habit he had picked up years ago whenever a problem was refusing to open up to him. He glanced back at the ambulance as it pulled away towards the police morgue. “I’d stake my reputation that she died at least a couple of years ago, but…”
“But?” Miller prompted.
“But there’s a couple of things that don’t make sense. At least they don’t make sense when set against one another.”
Miller looked into Powell’s silver-grey eyes. He had known the pathologist since he had arrived in the town almost a decade ago. His face was its usual ruddy complexioned self, but he could tell Powell was worried. “What do you mean by “set against one another”?”
Powell paused, getting his thoughts in order. “What I mean,” he said after a few moments, “is that in isolation there’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary about the discovery of the body.”
“Go on,” Miller said.
“W
ell, first things first. The body was discovered at the foot of the cliff. This is unfortunately far from exceptional.”
Miller nodded. The east cliff had gained a reputation as a suicide area. The local council had erected fences set back from the cliff top, but if someone really wanted to jump then there was little anyone could do to stop them. “But the body was found further along from where most people have jumped,” Powell said.
“There’s no fence at the chapel,” Miller said. “Just a low stone wall.”
“True, I’d normally say that just because the body was found on that tiny piece of sand doesn’t mean that was where she went over. The tide could have washed her up there.”
Miller knew this was the case. Even when the sea was relatively calm, the currents were strong enough to move things along the foot of the cliffs. “So what’s the problem?” he asked.
“Simple,” Powell said. “The body wasn’t wet.”
“What?” Miller said. “How the hell is that possible?” He stood up, now it was his turn to try to sort his thoughts into some kind of order. “Are you saying that she’d been there a long time?” Even as Miller asked the question, he knew it couldn’t be possible. Although there was only a small area of sand at the foot of the cliff and it was inaccessible by foot, there were many boats that passed under the cliffs, including some of the tourist cruises that ran all year round. It would have been a minor miracle if the body had been undetected for a couple of days, never mind months or even years.
“My estimation is that the body had been in position for no more than 24 hours.”
Miller shook his head. He was beginning to see what Powell meant. How could a body that had not been wet be in a location that was only accessible by sea?
“Then there’s only two other options,” Miller said. “Either she was taken there by a boat, which seems highly unlikely, or…”
“Or,” Powell said, his eyes filled with a sudden sadness, “she got there from the cliff top. Which means she was pushed off the cliff.”
Miller was shaking his head. “Who the hell pushes a dead woman off a cliff?”
“And one who has been dead for years,” Powell said.
Both men were silent for a few minutes as they tried to get their minds around the puzzle. But however they looked at it, there didn’t seem to be any rational explanation.
Miller leaned against a stonewall that protected the bench from the worst of the wind. “So the broken hip could have been caused by the fall?”
“Almost certainly,” Powell said. “And broken doesn’t really cover it. The hip bone’s shattered. My guess would be that she landed on her side. The sand is very soft, so it would have lessened the impact to a degree, but it would still have been considerable.”
Miller looked up as a procession of gulls flew inland to roost on the town’s rooftops.
“You said that things made sense individually but not when placed alongside one another,” Miller said. “What you say does make sense. The recently broken hip is explained by the fall.”
Powell smiled grimly. “True, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.”
“Christ,” Miller said, “there’s more?”
Powell’s face clouded over. “Perhaps we should wait until the morning. I’ll have a much better idea of where we stand when I’ve completed the autopsy.”
Miller frowned. He knew what Powell said made sense, but he trusted the pathologist and he knew that his guesses were often more astute than some people’s conclusions, even when they had all the facts.
“I’ll say this,” Powell said. “It isn’t the broken hip that is worrying me, it’s her tibia.”
“Her shin bone?” Miller said, surprise cracking his voice.
“You noticed how it was exposed?”
Miller could hardly forget. The sight of the woman’s body was burnt onto his retina.
“I saw,” he said.
“Did you notice the marks?”
“What marks?” Miller asked. He had seen more than his fair share of corpses, but there was something about the woman – something that was nagging away at him – that had made the sight more terrible than he had expected. If he was honest, he had not examined the body as closely as he should have done.
“I would say they were animal marks,” Powell said.
“That’s hardly surprising,” Miller said. “We both know the gulls will eat anything.”
“They will and they do,” Powell said. “But the marks weren’t made by gulls.”
“Then what the hell made them?”
“That’s the thing,” Powell said. “I would say they were almost certainly made by rats.”
*
Five minutes later Miller was walking down Henrietta Street. Riddle had taken the car, but as was often the case, Miller was glad of the excuse to get some air. He needed to think.
As he walked between the two rows of cottages, his mind was replaying the conversation with the pathologist. Powell’s logic had been pretty much unimpeachable as far as he could see. The first problem of how the body had ended up on the small stretch of sand seemed clear enough in the sense that it could have only got there from above. As for why, that was a whole other problem. But it was the marks on the corpse’s shinbone that seemed to be a mystery. Where the hell had that happened? It couldn’t have been on the beach, Powell had said. The marks were too old for that. So where had the woman been where rats had gnawed at her leg?
Miller shook his head in a vain attempt to get his thoughts into some sort of order.
He was now half way along the cobbled part of Church Street and as he turned right the clock tower chimed the hour. He paused to look in a gallery window at a collection of paintings that all featured moonlit scenes. They seemed so comforting, despite the dark. There were no bodies, no rats, no Satanic rites. He found himself wishing he could step inside one of the paintings. At least then he could shake the feeling that had been nagging away at him since the discovery of the second body.
He knew he was close to what had been bothering him, but for the moment it remained irritatingly out of reach.
It took Miller another twenty minutes to reach the sanctuary of his third floor apartment. He poured himself a large glass of Ben Nevis, sat back on the sofa and let the sound of Frank Sinatra envelop him. He would just have to accept the fact that whatever was nagging at his mind would have to remain unresolved for now.
Chapter 11
Miller’s alarm clock went off at seven thirty, redundant as it almost always was these days. He had been awake for two hours.
He rolled over and silenced the insistent ring and thought about putting the radio on. Instead, he reached for his phone, placed it in its dock and let the sound of Ella Fitzgerald welcome him to the day.
Ella was only into the third song on her Duke Ellington Songbook when Miller’s mobile rang. Glancing at the screen he was surprised to see Chief Constable Davis’s name appear.
“Morning, sir.” Miller said.
The voice at the other end of the phone was tight with tension. “You better come in. Now.”
“What’s happened?” Miller asked, a sudden feeling of dread banishing Ella’s voice.
“Powell’s identified the body. You’re not going to believe this.”
*
Maria Riddle rolled over in bed, her long hair sweeping across her husband’s face. “Morning,” she said, her voice pregnant with suggestion. Riddle opened one eye and smiled.
“Morning to you, too,” he said propping himself up on one elbow. He stole a quick glance at the bedside clock. 07:43. Riddle smiled and kissed his wife. Then his mobile rang.
Maria glanced at the display. “It’s Frank,” she said with weary resignation. “I’ll make coffee.”
Ten minutes later DS Riddle was fully dressed and searching for his car keys. “Under yesterday’s Telegraph,” Maria said as she sipped a strong black coffee.
“Sorry,” Riddle said.
Maria flicked her
hair from her eyes and Riddle thought for the thousandth time how incredibly lucky he was to have somehow persuaded this beautiful and bright woman to marry him.
“It’s important?” Maria said. It wasn’t really a question. She knew Miller had his faults, but he was never one to cry wolf.
“Very,” Riddle said. “Although he hasn’t said how.”
Maria kissed her husband fully on the lips. “Then you’d better go,” she said.
Riddle sighed. Sometimes he hated his job.
*
Whitby’s police station had not exactly embraced the festive season. A series of intermittent and wilted decorations had been forlornly placed around the public areas. Beyond these there was only a rather sad piece of what Riddle guessed might have once been gold tinsel.
“Good morning, DS Riddle.”
Riddle turned around to be faced with the approaching figure of Chief Constable Davis. He quickly tried to adjust his grimace into a smile, but ended up with the expression of someone suffering from a particular nasty bout of gout.
“This way,” Davis said, gesturing to his office. “DCI Miller and PC Newbold are already there.”
Riddle fell in behind Davies, wondering how Newbold always managed to be first in. It had been suggested by more than one colleague that she slept in the building, and Riddle had originally found her eagerness irritating, but these days it had somehow become endearing.
As Riddle entered Davis’s office, Newbold stood up to allow Riddle to sit down. This made him feel both awkward and apprehensive.
Miller smiled grimly. “Sorry to wake you,” he said. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
The man was uncanny, Riddle thought.
“Now we’re all here,” Davis began, as he perched on the edge of his desk. It always reminded Miller of his secondary school English teacher who would never sit behind his desk as, according to him, it created a sense of inequality. Miller would have been more sympathetic to the theory if he hadn’t been such a terrible teacher.
“Now we’re all here,” Davis repeated, “we had better get straight to it.” He picked up the pathologist’s report. “Dr Powell has identified the body found at the foot of the east cliff yesterday.”
Better the Devil You Know Page 8
