by D. S. Butler
The superintendent’s eyebrows lifted. ‘A headmaster. Are we sure the victim is an adult?’
‘Raj thinks so. There’s always a chance that when he looks closer, he might get a different answer. But he believed that the skeleton belonged to a fully grown adult male.’
‘Right, well, thanks for the update. Let me know as soon as Raj is finished with the post-mortem.’
‘Of course, ma’am. You’ll be copied in on all the reports.’ DI Morgan stood up. ‘I have a feeling this case is going to be a complicated one.’
His boss sighed and said, ‘Let’s hope you’re wrong and we get some answers quickly. This is the last thing we need at the moment. I’ve got the assistant commissioner visiting us next week. I’d prefer to show him cases we’ve put to bed rather than one like this.’
DI Morgan gave her a sympathetic smile. Sometimes he was very glad he was only a detective inspector. It seemed the higher you got in the police, the more you had to say the right thing at the right time to the right people. He wouldn’t be very good at that.
He didn’t envy Superintendent Murray her job at all.
The duty sergeant was happy to point out PC Sanderson and PC Montgomery in the cafeteria for DI Morgan. The two officers were sitting at a large table, surrounded by their colleagues, who were listening avidly to Montgomery describe his grisly discovery. He was relishing the attention and seemed to have completely recovered after his bout of sickness.
Sanderson, in contrast, was clearly not enjoying being the centre of attention and hung his head, looking thoroughly fed up.
DI Morgan’s presence put an immediate stop to the conversation.
Montgomery looked up nervously. ‘Ah, DI Morgan, we were going to come and find you.’
DI Morgan looked at the trays on the table, which were littered with empty crisp packets and sandwich wrappings. ‘I’m glad you managed to eat lunch. I was informed you were very unwell at the scene this morning.’
The officer’s colleagues chuckled until DI Morgan sent them a warning look and they all scuttled away.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Sanderson said. ‘We really were going to come and see you after lunch.’
‘Firstly, you will not tell anybody else about this morning. We need to keep this out of the press, and thanks to you that task has just got a lot harder.’
Both officers bowed their heads as DI Morgan slid into a seat opposite them. ‘Right, tell me what happened.’
Sanderson did the talking, describing the events of that morning, clearly and accurately.
‘What puzzles me,’ DI Morgan said, ‘is why you went upstairs and looked in the suitcase?’
Sanderson and Montgomery exchanged guilty glances.
Finally, Montgomery said, ‘That was my fault. The old man told us not to go upstairs, and because he was so adamant, I knew he was hiding something.’
DI Morgan leaned back in his seat and scrutinised the two officers. They looked contrite, and without PC Montgomery’s inquisitiveness, the body may have gone undiscovered for another decade.
‘I want your reports written up and on my desk by the end of the day. And don’t forget, tell no one about this.’
‘Yes, sir,’ they said in unison.
When Karen arrived back at the station, she updated Rick and Sophie on Albert Johnson’s condition. ‘It doesn’t look good. He’s heavily sedated at the moment.’
‘So Albert isn’t actually in a coma,’ Rick asked. ‘They’re keeping him sedated with drugs?’
Karen nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. The medical staff seem very protective of him and aren’t happy with us questioning him anytime soon. But, of course, we don’t want to tell them the real reason we want to speak to him yet. The longer we have to get our ducks in a row before the press get wind of this, the better.’
As soon as the body in the suitcase became public knowledge, they’d need extra officers on the case just to cope with the flood of concerned calls from members of the public.
Sophie, who was sitting at her desk, spoke up. ‘They just see him as a harmless old man, I suppose.’
‘Well, to be fair, we don’t know for sure that he’s killed anyone,’ Rick said, leaning back against his workstation.
Sophie swivelled around on her office chair to face him. ‘Well, the skeleton hardly climbed in the case itself, did it? He can’t be completely innocent.’
‘Anyway,’ Karen said, interrupting the squabble before it got started, ‘we’re still waiting to hear back from Raj on the post-mortem. It looks like it could take a while to perform all the necessary tests. One thing I did notice at the scene was some bright-blue material with the body. I assumed it was something like a shell suit. They used to be popular back in the eighties. My sister and I had matching ones.’
‘Very stylish,’ Sophie said.
‘Don’t knock it. One day you’ll look back on your youthful fashion mistakes and feel the same sense of shame.’
Sophie laughed. ‘I’m sure I didn’t wear anything as bad as a shell suit.’
‘No, you probably didn’t. They were pretty hideous. Comfy, though. We wanted them for ages and were thrilled when we got them for Christmas along with our matching L.A. Gear trainers.’
Karen had forgotten all about the Christmas she and her sister, Emma, had unwrapped the shell suits, but now memories came flooding back. The crinkly material that rustled with every movement. Kiwi lip balm from The Body Shop, Exclamation perfume, and Bananarama on the radio.
‘So around the time you and your sister were feeling very trendy in your shell suits, someone was shoving our victim’s body into a suitcase,’ Rick said.
It was a sobering thought. ‘We don’t know for sure when our victim died,’ Karen said. ‘Those suits were popular in the late eighties and into the nineties, but our victim may have carried on wearing his for years.’
Sophie gave Karen a sceptical look.
DI Morgan came out of his office and walked towards the team just in time to hear Rick crack a joke about skeletons in the cupboard.
‘Perhaps you’d like to go to the hospital, Rick,’ DI Morgan said. ‘You can wait there until Albert Johnson wakes up and is able to answer some questions.’
Rick groaned. ‘That’s a punishment for the skeleton joke, isn’t it?’
The detective inspector simply raised an eyebrow.
Rick sighed and began to pack up his stuff. ‘Fair enough.’
DI Morgan crossed his arms and leaned against Rick’s desk. ‘We can’t miss an opportunity to talk to him. If he’s as frail as the doctors suggest, we could lose our primary suspect. Keep a look out for any suspicious characters hanging around. The note we found at the scene suggests Albert’s fall may not have been an accident.’
‘Will do.’ Rick shrugged on his coat.
‘What do we know about Albert Johnson’s private life so far?’ Karen asked.
‘He lives alone,’ Sophie said. ‘He’s owned the house and lived in it for fifty years. His wife lived with him until she died ten years ago. He went to Cambridge University, then became a teacher. He taught at Greenhill Secondary School from 1970 and retired from his position of headmaster twenty years ago.’ Sophie shrugged. ‘That’s about it so far. Although, I should add that all signs point to him and his wife having a happy marriage.’
‘Okay, good. We’re going to need to expand Albert’s family tree. Can you follow up on that, Sophie, as Rick is heading to the hospital?’ Karen asked.
Sophie bit her lip. ‘I will, just as soon as I get back from my appointment, if that’s okay.’
‘Appointment?’ DI Morgan frowned.
‘Yes, remember I told you I had an appointment with a mortgage adviser? I’m going to find out today whether I can afford the house I want.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ DI Morgan said. ‘Good luck.’
‘Yes, good luck. I’ll get started on the background, and you can take over when you get back,’ Karen said.
After Sophie and Rick had
left, Karen and DI Morgan went over their notes, brainstorming and making sure they hadn’t missed anything. Karen was scribbling down a quick reminder to contact Greenhill Academy when the phone on her desk rang.
She picked it up. ‘DS Hart.’
‘Karen, it’s Raj. Could you come down to the lab?’
‘Absolutely. I’ll be straight down.’
She hung up and smiled at DI Morgan. ‘That was Raj. They’ve found something.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Karen and DI Morgan found Raj downstairs in the main lab. The air smelled of antiseptic, and the air conditioning unit buzzed in the corner.
‘That was quick, Raj. This has to be a record, even for you,’ Karen said. ‘What have you got for us?’
The pathologist looked up and smiled. ‘Don’t get too excited. I haven’t even performed the post-mortem yet. But we thought you’d be interested in this.’
It was brighter in the lab than elsewhere in the police station. The work surfaces seemed to reflect and intensify the light. All the benches were made of stainless steel, for ease of wiping down and to minimise the possibility of contamination. Raj stood in front of a light box that was nestled between a rack of pipettes and a small, bench-top centrifuge.
On top of the light box was what looked like a very old, disintegrated piece of leather and some stained papers.
‘It’s an old driver’s licence,’ Raj said, using a pair of tweezers to straighten a fragment of paper. ‘It was partially encased in a protective plastic sleeve.’
Both Karen and DI Morgan stepped closer to the light box, intrigued.
‘Can we get an ID from it?’ DI Morgan asked.
‘Not yet.’ Raj set the tweezers down on the bench. ‘We’ve scanned the licence, and with a bit of luck, we should be able to enhance the text using a computer program. We might not be able to read it all, but I hope we’ll have enough to provide some clues to our victim’s identity.’
DI Morgan stared intently at the fragments of paper. ‘That’s excellent work, Raj. It looks indecipherable to me. If you can get a name from that, I’ll owe you a pint.’
Karen found it hard to believe they would be able to extract any information from the tattered paper. It didn’t have the usual greenish hue of a driver’s licence. Instead, it was stained with yellow and brown splotches. Karen felt her stomach churn as she realised the colour change would be due to the cadaver’s bodily fluids soaking into the paper as the body slowly decomposed.
‘Who’s running the computer program?’ DI Morgan asked.
‘Harinder. If anyone can get a result from this, it’s him,’ Raj said, taking a pen from his lab coat pocket and making a note in an A5 pad. ‘I was in the pathology lab at the hospital when I discovered the licence, and brought it straight here myself. I haven’t started a full examination of the body yet.’
‘It’s a shame you didn’t find any bank cards,’ Karen commented.
Raj slipped the pen back into the breast pocket of his lab coat. ‘That would have made life easier because the plastic wouldn’t decompose as easily.’
DI Morgan turned to Raj. ‘Do you still think we’re looking at twenty to forty years ago for our time of death?’
Raj nodded. ‘Yes, I should have more for you by the end of the afternoon. I’m going to get back to the pathology lab now and Harinder will update you when he’s got a result on the licence. As I extracted the body from the suitcase, I did notice a fracture on the left side of the skull. That could have been what killed him, but it’s not easy to identify a definite cause of death when the body is in such a state.’
Karen felt a little dizzy. The lights were too bright, and the reflections on the stainless steel had a dazzling effect. It was horrible to think that a selection of bones, fabric from a garish tracksuit, and this stained, tattered driver’s licence were all that remained of a person’s life.
‘We’re assuming it was the victim’s licence . . .’ Karen said.
‘It’s pretty likely, don’t you think?’ Raj asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘I suppose, but we can’t say for sure. Do you still believe the victim was male?’
Raj pulled a face, showing his reluctance to answer the question. ‘I’m not willing to go on record yet, but I’d say our victim was a man between the age of thirty and his mid-fifties. But that’s it for now. I really need to examine the bones further before I can tell you any more. If we can get an ID from the driver’s licence, then we should be able to confirm identity with dental records, or even DNA if it came to it.’
‘Do you think you’d be able to extract DNA from the victim?’
Raj smiled and his moustache lifted. ‘Yes. Of course.’ His smile disappeared. ‘The problem will be trying to find a match in the database.’
‘Thanks, Raj,’ DI Morgan said. ‘We should let you get back to the pathology lab. I don’t suppose you have any idea how long this program of Harinder’s takes to run?’
Raj smiled as he began to meticulously remove the fragments from the light box and transfer them to an evidence storage box. Karen thought he looked more like Poirot than ever.
‘It should be finished within the hour,’ he said, and switched off the light box.
Sophie glanced at her watch and tried to hide her irritation. Her meeting with the mortgage adviser was meant to have started ten minutes ago. The delay was especially annoying today, as she needed to get back to the station as soon as possible. She crossed her legs and tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair.
All her paperwork, including the multitude of forms the bank required to be filled in, was in a single file resting on her lap. Sophie was not one to come unprepared. She had all her bank statements as well as a selection of utility bills, and a budget and expenses accounting sheet. By her own calculations, she could afford to buy the house she desperately wanted. Of course, it would mean cutting back here and there and tightening her belt, but it would be worth it.
The house she’d fallen in love with was in Washingborough, near the Washingborough Hall manor house, and was built from beautiful sandy-coloured stone. It needed some work, but most of the alterations Sophie had in mind were cosmetic.
The house had been purchased and renovated by a couple a few years ago, but they’d either got fed up with the project or run out of money, and hadn’t finished off the interior decoration. It could do with a new kitchen, but both bathrooms had already been replaced. The whole house had been rewired, and as far as she could tell the plumbing seemed sound. It was a three-bedroom house with two reception rooms. She loved the size of the rooms, which were so much bigger than in modern houses. It had a pretty front garden and parking spaces for two cars. The mature back garden had a large magnolia tree, and the beautiful flowers had been budding the first time Sophie visited the property. She’d fallen in love with the place straightaway.
She’d gone to view the house with her father, who had sucked in a breath through his teeth at the sight of the windows, which he declared needed replacing. And he looked horrified by the seventies-style wallpaper. But Sophie could see past all that. She could picture the interior decorated in warm tones and modern colours, and, most importantly, she could see herself relaxing there and enjoying her very own place.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love her parents or appreciate them. It was just that she hadn’t ever envisaged still living in her parents’ house when she was in her mid-twenties. All the articles published in the papers recently about people living with their parents when they were still in their forties had horrified her. She didn’t want to end up like that, but it was so hard to get on the housing ladder these days.
She’d been saving desperately since she joined the police, and had managed to secure a decent deposit. Many of her friends had their own houses, but most of them had been helped out by their parents or had an inheritance from grandparents. These days, buying a house was tough if your family couldn’t help you out.
She looked at her watch again. Now the meet
ing was fifteen minutes late. This was getting ridiculous. She reached for her handbag and was preparing to leave when she saw a tall woman rushing towards her with her hand outstretched. ‘Sophie Jones? I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. Nobody told me you’d arrived.’
The woman introduced herself as Pippa Kearny and babbled on, blaming her colleagues for the mix-up. Sophie felt like replying with a smart remark, but instead she smiled and shook the woman’s hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’
Pippa led the way into her office, which was really just a partitioned cubicle. Inside, there was barely enough room for her to squeeze around the desk.
Sophie managed to slip into one of the seats, put the folder on the desk in front of her, and tried to look more confident than she felt.
The mortgage adviser tapped a few keys on her keyboard and looked at her computer screen. ‘Right, so you’re looking for a mortgage. Have you seen a property you like?’
‘I have,’ Sophie said, and gave the details.
‘Okay, let’s see how we can help you.’
The next half an hour passed interminably slowly. Even though Sophie had already worked out her own finances with carefully allocated amounts for what she spent on her social life, food and other outgoings, the mortgage adviser wanted to do it her way, filling in yet another form, which was slightly different to Sophie’s format.
It was frustrating, but it would be worth it if she managed to get the house. Pippa tapped away on the keyboard, turning to Sophie and asking her questions every now and again. Finally, after pressing the enter button, her face fell.
‘Oh, I’m afraid that, according to our calculations, you won’t be able to afford that much of a mortgage. In fact, all we could offer you, if you’re buying it alone, based on your deposit, would be one hundred and twenty thousand.’
Sophie felt a sharp stab of disappointment. She’d been through her own finances and knew she could afford it. All right, her calculations didn’t leave much room for error, but this was ridiculous.
