by Jan Newton
‘This is probably a daft question, but do you think he could have been a rambler?’ Julie asked.
‘It’s not a daft question. In my experience, there are very few daft questions. He was wearing boots and they were fairly old ones by the looks of the sole pattern, though he didn’t have a rucksack.’
Greenhalgh leaned back and took a long look at the body. A frown flitted across her face. ‘He didn’t have a map or satnav either. Would you walk out here without bringing anything with you?’
‘Did the head injury kill him do you think, or could he just have fallen and then been caught out by the weather?’ Swift leaned over the blue and white incident tape to get a closer look at the face and grimaced.
Greenhalgh gently released the shoulders. ‘He could have died of exposure of course, but it’s unlikely at this time of year, even up here.’ She turned to gather up a sheaf of evidence bags. ‘And I’m not even sure yet that he died in situ. Those boots are a pretty common make but there are a surprisingly large number of other types of boot print on the ground for such a godforsaken spot.’ Kay stepped under the tape. ‘Although I’d not fancy carrying a body so far from the road, even one this slight.’ She crouched suddenly, beside her bag, and looked at the corpse from her new location. She shook her head, filed the evidence bags and snapped her briefcase shut.
‘Could he have been dumped from a vehicle?’ asked Julie.
Swift shook his head. ‘They’ve banned vehicles up here, blocked off the access with boulders. The illegal off-roaders have caused so much damage it’s made it impassable in places.’
Kay Greenhalgh raised her head and then her eyebrows. ‘Are you really saying there’s no way to get out here in a vehicle now that the path’s blocked?’ She snorted quietly. ‘The weekend warriors might not manage it, even the ones with upswept exhausts and impressive sticker collections, but a good quad bike or tractor driver with local knowledge would get you out here, no problem, wouldn’t you say?’ She looked back at the corpse. ‘Or what about a pony? There’s nothing of him, you could easily sling someone that size over a pony’s withers.’
Julie also raised an eyebrow. Every time she met the pathologist, she was impressed by the breadth of her knowledge.
‘Fair point.’ Swift tugged at his ear. ‘Can we tell if he was dumped?’
Greenhalgh shrugged. ‘It’s too sodden for there to be any tyre tracks, but the position of the body would suggest he’d been carefully placed, leaning against the rock.’ She looked at Swift. ‘Or he could have just banged his head on the rock, managed to right himself and then expired of course.’
Julie noticed the suspicion of disappointment cross Swift’s face at this possibility. ‘Do we know who he is?’ she asked the doctor.
‘There’s absolutely nothing to identify him. Nothing at all in his pockets, and he wasn’t even wearing a watch. There’s a signet ring but there’s nothing inscribed on it, no initials.’ Greenhalgh jiggled a plastic bag. ‘At least we think it must be his, although it’s not very big and it’s not actually attached to a digit. Could be a pinkie ring?’
‘Had the hand dropped off?’ Julie took the bag from Kay and examined the grisly contents. Along with the ring were several small bones.
‘Nope, too soon for that, and judging by the marks on the bones in the wrist, it looks as though a fox has had a go at it. Most of it was down there on the ground next to him.’ Greenhalgh retrieved the bag and held it up for Swift to see. There were several pieces of finger in the clear plastic bag. Flaccid skin still clung to the bones and the nails that were visible were bitten down to the quick. ‘I’m guessing the damage was post mortem.’
‘Thank goodness for small mercies,’ muttered Swift, dabbing his mouth with a large white handkerchief. ‘When do you think you’ll be able to fit him in for your ministrations?’
‘Seeing as it’s you, Craig, I’ll get it started first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve got anything – unless you’d rather be there for the main event? I know you like a hands-on approach.’ She jiggled the evidence bag and Julie laughed
‘I could go, Sir?’
‘Ah yes, you and your gruesome penchant for a good PM, Sergeant.’
‘It beats paperwork, Sir.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with being interested in watching science at work, Craig.’ Greenhalgh stepped well away from the locus and removed the shoe covers from her wellingtons. She dropped them into a large evidence bag, which was being held open by one of the uniformed constables. ‘You might even learn something.’
‘I think I’ll leave it to the sergeant, if it’s all the same to you. It’s a relief to finally have a member of the team who enjoys all the blood and guts.’
Greenhalgh shook her head and began to walk away from them. ‘Oh,’ she said, turning back to face them. ‘There was one odd thing. His good hand is twisted slightly as though he’d been holding something. It might be nothing, it could have happened as he died – some sort of reflex action or spasm – or it could have been caused by a pre-existing condition. Anyway,’ she pushed back the hood of her SOCO suit, ‘Sergeant Kite and I can discuss it in more detail tomorrow.’
Swift and Julie watched Greenhalgh walk away.
‘So where does this bewildering love of necrotising flesh come from eh, Sergeant?’
Julie shook her head. ‘It’s not that ghoulish, Sir. I just find the whole forensic pathology thing fascinating. You can find out so much more about some people after they’re dead than when they were alive. There’s nowhere to hide anything, is there, on a slab?’
‘That’s far too much information for my liking.’ Swift curled his lip.
The two dark-coated men zipped the corpse into a black body bag and slid it onto the stretcher, and the Mountain Rescue team lifted it carefully between them. The entourage was moving en masse off the hill now, leaving the two uniformed PCs to carry out a final check and remove the tapes. A huddle of mountain sheep watched them approach. All but one fled. She looked up briefly, considered them carefully then put her head down and carried on grazing.
‘Given what we’ve got to go on, it might be an idea,’ said Swift, nodding towards the sheep, ‘to bring her in and take her hoof-prints.’
CHAPTER THREE
Day One
Julie’s first impression, as she slowly crossed the reception area towards Owen Lloyd, was that he had, outwardly at least, recovered from his ordeal out on the moors. He wore what looked like brand new and expensive white trainers but his grey skinny jeans were still mud-spattered from his rural exertions. His chin was buried in the folds of a red hoody and he sprawled untidily on the low reception seating, typing frenetically into his phone. Beside him, a dark-suited man wearing a sober shirt, navy tie and a pained expression, hissed urgently.
‘Can you try to look as though you’ve just found something shocking and not as though you’re lolling on a sun lounger?’
Owen groaned with his eyebrows but there was no deceleration of his thumbs stabbing at the screen.
‘Owen, are you listening? You’d better not be broadcasting this to all and sundry on that thing.’
‘No.’
‘No, you’re not listening?’
‘No, I’m not saying anything.’ Owen glanced sideways. ‘Not about that anyway. Mr Robinson asked me not to.’
‘Oh, so how can Mr Robinson get you to do as he wants?’
Owen stopped typing and sighed theatrically. ‘Because he treats me as though I’m a person and not just one gigantic disappointment.’
The boy’s body was angled away from his father; the father’s face was becoming increasingly flushed as the boy spoke. Julie held out her hand first to the younger Mr Lloyd and then accepted the limp handshake offered by his father.
‘Owen. Mr Lloyd. It’s good of you to come in this evening. Hopefully things will still be clear in your mind.’ Owen grimaced, but didn’t reply. ‘We’ve just a couple of questions, it’s nothing to worry abo
ut.’ She smiled at the father. ‘We’ll try not to take up too much of your time.’
In the interview room, Owen hurled himself into the plastic chair in the same position he had favoured in the reception area. His words were almost glib to begin with and each sentence was punctuated with shrugs as he told Julie about the expedition. No, he couldn’t remember where they had walked or what they had seen. When she asked if he had enjoyed the trip, he looked at her as though she had suggested he might like to give up social media and read a good book, but when she asked about what he’d found, out there up in the peat, he couldn’t hide his emotions.
‘I thought it was just a sheep. A black sheep.’ He looked up at her. ‘But then I got closer, and I could see it was a person.’ He took a jerky breath. ‘From the way it… he was sitting, I knew he would probably be dead, but I didn’t expect it to be like that.’
Owen’s father moved towards his son, but Owen shifted in his chair, edging away. ‘His skin, the skin on his face, it was gross. Bits of it were flaking off.’ He swallowed and sniffed quietly. Both adults pretended they hadn’t heard, but then Owen caught his breath in a half-sob.
‘Do you want to take a break? Should we stop and let you get a drink?’ Julie ducked her head so she could see under the hood. ‘Or we could do this tomorrow if you’d prefer?’
Owen shook his head. ‘Let’s get it over with now, and then I can forget about it.’
His father shot Julie a look which confirmed they were both aware that for Owen to forget what he had seen might take far longer than the boy realised.
‘Well just say if you do want to stop. OK?’ Julie waited for the small nod before moving on.
‘Did you touch anything?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
‘I just need to know whether you might have dislodged anything, can you remember?’
Owen shook his head. ‘I didn’t touch it or anything near it. It was all totally gross.’
‘And you weren’t wearing those trainers earlier this afternoon?’
‘Obviously not, Sergeant.’ Mr Lloyd was controlling his contempt with difficulty.
‘Well, would it be all right if we had a look at the boots you were wearing, just so that we can eliminate any marks you may have made at the location from the results of our forensic examination.’ She turned to the father. ‘Perhaps you could bring them in first thing tomorrow. If you could put them in a clean plastic bag that would be a big help.’ Mr Lloyd suddenly looked less confident and Owen’s eyes widened.
‘I didn’t do anything, I swear.’
Julie smiled at him. ‘It’s OK, don’t worry. You’re doing great. I’m not saying you would have touched anything, Owen, and if you did, that’s understandable, given what you experienced out there. We just have to know if everything was in the same place as when we saw it, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t move anything. I didn’t want to touch it, any of it.’
‘That’s fine. So there was nothing with the… there were no belongings?’
Owen stuck his chin out and Julie waited for the defiant response, but instead, out of nowhere, he began to sob. ‘It… there were flies and maggots everywhere… it looked as though he was still moving.’ He swiped his sleeve across his face. ‘They were crawling all over his face, in his mouth, but he couldn’t feel them.’
Owen’s father was out of his chair now, holding on to his son, both arms wrapped tightly around him, his chin resting on the top of Owen’s hooded head. Owen made no move to push him away. Julie waited until Mr Lloyd let go, until he had rubbed Owen’s back self-consciously and sat back down in his chair.
‘That’s fine, Owen. You’ve been brilliant. If you think of anything else that might help us…’ Julie paused in the face of a stare from Mr Lloyd. It was easy to see which parent Owen had inherited his impressive facial expressions from.
‘I think I’m ready to take my son home now, Sergeant, if that’s all right with you.’
Julie watched them walk out of the building. Mr Lloyd had an arm firmly round Owen’s shoulders and the boy was leaning into his father. She realised Brian Hughes was watching her from behind the reception desk.
‘All right, Julie?’
‘I think I upset the poor lad. He’ll have nightmares.’
‘He’d have had nightmares anyway after seeing something like that.’ Brian smiled. ‘But I think you’ve just helped to improve a pretty dodgy father-son relationship. For a little while anyway.’
Swift was standing by the board and Rhys was writing down, in neat colour-coded sections, all the information they had so far. There was very little there. Julie watched Rhys stick a photograph of the body and a section of the local Ordnance Survey map on the board. A red dot marked the location where the body had been found.
‘Sorry, Sarge,’ Rhys said as she went to stand next to him.
‘What for?’
‘Well, I know you’re not too keen on corpses on the board, are you?’
‘We don’t have much of an alternative this time, do we?’ She grimaced at the photograph. ‘Besides, it’s not the gruesomeness I’m bothered about, although this one is pretty spectacular in that department.’ She stepped back and looked at the photograph, the map and the rest of the sparse information. ‘I’d just rather see the deceased as they were, as a living, smiling person. It makes it seem even more important that we find out what happened to them.’
‘If you say so, Sergeant.’ DI Swift gave her the slightly nonplussed look he’d bestowed on her at regular intervals since her arrival on his team as an eager, newly promoted detective sergeant. ‘So, what do we think?’
‘He could have been a walker.’ Goronwy offered.
‘Do people walk on their own in places like that?’ Julie asked.
‘There are all sorts of oddballs up in the hills,’ Morgan Evans offered.
‘You’re doing your charitable human being thing again then, Morgan?’ Julie laughed, still unsure of him, and whether he would see the joke, get her sense of humour.
‘It’s true though. Loads of people go walking on their own. What about your Adam?’
‘So you’re saying he’s an oddball?’
Morgan cocked his head on one side. ‘He does go out running on his own, Sarge.’
Julie couldn’t tell from his deadpan expression whether he was joking now.
‘Fair point.’ Swift stepped between them. ‘There could be lots of reasons why he was out there on his own. He could have been working out there or walking or any number of other things.’
‘Maybe he was checking sheep.’ Rhys said. ‘Or looking at wildlife or something. Rhian’s brother’s into all that Iolo Williams nature stuff. He goes all over the place with his binoculars.’
‘At least he says it’s wildlife, eh?’ Goronwy attempted to look innocent.
‘He was drunk at that wedding, you know he was, boy.’ Rhys wagged his whiteboard marker towards his annoying cousin.
‘Thank you, children and just for your information, there were no binoculars or anything else found with the body.’ Swift tapped the map on the board. ‘So he could have been on his own, but if he wasn’t, then who would have left him out there? Could he have been separated from a group and got lost?’
‘He’s not far enough off the path for that though, is he?’ Julie watched Rhys write ‘Why was he there?’on the board. ‘Even if he’d had a heart attack or a fall or something, and was on the ground, they’d still have seen him if they came back to look for him. There’s no cover up there at all. There’s no way they’d have missed him.’
‘So that leaves the possibility that someone left him there knowingly.’ Swift shook his head. ‘Or that he died of natural causes and bashed his head on his way down.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Although I’m not at all convinced about that idea. Well, we’ve absolutely nothing at all to go on so we’d better start with missing persons. Could you do that now, Goronwy, please.’ Swift waited for Goronwy’s acknowledgement befo
re moving on. ‘I’m not aware of anyone from the area having been reported missing, but we need to make sure. It’s more likely he’s from off, so you’d better make it fairly broad. If he was a tourist, then he could have been staying locally, so we’ll need to start with hotels, B&Bs and campsites in and around Rhayader and work outwards.’
‘There might be a car somewhere, Sir?’ Julie said. ‘He didn’t get there on public transport, did he?’
‘You’re right, Julie. Morgan, see if anyone’s reported an abandoned vehicle and try the car parks and the Visitors’ Centre in the Elan Valley. And get Traffic to keep an eye out for anything that could have been abandoned in a layby.’
‘He could have come from the other end though, from Pontrhydfendigaid, couldn’t he?’
‘Good point, Morgan, he could.’ Swift checked the map again. ‘So, Julie, first thing tomorrow, you’re going to go and find out more about our corpse. Morgan can check out the towns at the other end of the Monks’ Trod.’ He scratched his ear. ‘Rhys and Goronwy can tackle accommodation in Rhayader for a kick off, see if any of their guests didn’t come home recently. I’ll make a start on the hill farms and we’ll compare notes later tomorrow morning, unless anything earth-shattering comes to light before that.’ He ambled off towards his glass-fronted office. ‘Sergeant Kite and I will touch base after the PM,’ he shouted back at them. ‘I think she and I may need to go and ask a few questions in Llandrindod.’
