Death Beyond the Limit: Fiji Islands Mysteries 3

by B. M. Allsopp

  Tina nudged his leg with her head, wanting to go home.

  ‘Moce, goodnight, Salome.’

  She returned his goodnight politely and turned away. As he walked off, he heard her greet another passer-by and the man’s guttural reply.

  FRIDAY 15th September

  11

  Because the Deputy Commissioner was heading the media conference, Telecom acted with uncharacteristic speed. Half an hour before the gig was to begin, Horseman surveyed the bank of telephones dedicated to the new hotline number set up for the case. Singh had prepared a sheet of scripted prompts for the uniformed constables handling the calls. She’d spent an hour with them, rehearsing and role-playing so they’d be confident to make a basic value assessment themselves and not transfer every single call to a detective. Nothing was more predictable than that most of the expected flood from the helpful public would be useless. On the other hand, they could not afford a tip of substance to be dismissed. Some of the team would fumble or drop the ball, but he couldn’t do everything any more than a captain could play a game of rugby by himself.

  His own phone rang. ‘Horseman.’

  ‘Bula, sir. Constable Tuwai from Levuka station, sir. Something’s turned up on the beach—another body part. Definitely human—a hand.’

  ‘Have you got it?’

  ‘Io. Children found it, playing with washed-up seaweed. It’s tangled in some other tissue, too, but I’m not sure if that’s human or not. Maybe a shark vomited it up? I put the whole lot in a bag. I have it here with me at the station, sir.’

  ‘Lock it up and keep the key in your pocket, constable. Dr Young will leave immediately to collect it. Depending on available transport, he may not reach you for a few hours. Our press conference about the head will start in half an hour. If I can get out of that I’ll come, too. If not, I’ll send another detective with the SOCOs.’

  ‘Io, sir.’

  ‘Have you cordoned off the area of the beach?’

  Silence for a few moments. ‘No, sir. Sorry—I didn’t think.’

  The whole beach had probably been dug over by ghoulish kids already. ‘Set up a crime scene now and post a guard. Keep tabs on the children who found it. The main thing is the physical evidence but we need their stories too. The detective who comes with Dr Young will need to speak to them.’

  ‘Io, sir. Do you think the hand belongs to the head, sir?’

  ‘Dr Young can tell us that. I’ll be in touch. Good work.’

  He alerted the pathologist.

  ‘I’ll drop everything and be ready to go pronto, Joe.’

  ‘Thanks, Matt. Any word on the DNA yet?’

  ‘Not yet, sorry. I’ll call them again before I leave. Gotta keep the DNA guys onside, though.’

  Twenty minutes to go. Singh’s ponytail bobbed above the sound partitions Telecom had installed.

  ‘What is it, sir?’ She could tell from his face there was news.

  ‘Can you stand in for me at the conference?’

  She was shocked. ‘In twenty minutes? No way, sir. I mean…’

  ‘Sure, it’s my responsibility, I just thought you might like to.’

  He told her the news as fast as he could. ‘You’ll have to go with Matt. Fast transport is the priority. Unless there’s a scheduled flight, try to get one of our speedboats. Get Ash to bring a small team. You’ll have to take your own photos.’

  She grinned excitedly. ‘Leave it to me. Tani Musudroka will look after the hotline.’

  ‘I’m on-air in fifteen minutes. Sorry, but I have to leave for the media centre two minutes ago. Good luck!’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll manage. I’ll keep in touch.’

  12

  Singh was glad the team expanded beyond the capacity of the police speedboat. so they travelled in the launch instead. Even though it was bigger and more comfortable, the launch tested her stomach. The squall they ran into a few kilometres off Ovalau nearly finished her—the sideways tossing and the up-and-down pitching. She wished she was in the TV studio instead. She wished she could die.

  A few minutes on dry land and the balance of her mind and body was restored. The rain had eased to a light downpour. A sergeant in uniform was waiting on the jetty. He looked to SOCO Ash. Singh stepped forward, shook hands and introduced herself. Sergeant Rogoyawa failed to hide his surprise that she was the team’s senior officer.

  ‘Bula, welcome, Detective Sergeant Singh! I wasn’t expecting Inspector Horseman—we saw him on TV this morning, but—’

  She interrupted. ‘You’ll know Dr Young from last Sunday and—’

  ‘Yes. Welcome again, Doctor.’

  Introductions completed, Singh asked, ‘Can you arrange transport for the search team to the scene, Sergeant? Dr Young and I will take a look at the evidence at the station.’

  ‘All organised, sir—I mean, ma’am. The vehicle is parked back on the road. It’s only a few kilometres to the beach. We can walk to the station. It’s on Beach Street.’ He pointed with his chin to the long strip of colourful buildings opposite what would be a pleasant waterfront park in sunshine.

  Singh pulled up the hood of her raincoat, Dr Young put up his big black umbrella and they set off, trailing a retinue of children with undampened spirits. Clustered around the police station were more spectators of all ages, agog.

  Dr Young greeted Constable Tuwai as a friend. He attracted liking with his easy manners and simple friendliness. It wasn’t so straightforward for a woman to do this. She was always on guard to prove her authority.

  ‘What ingenious storage have you organised this time, Sai?’

  Constable Tuwai relaxed at the compliment. ‘Oh, not so ingenious, Doctor. I double-bagged it, took out the bottom shelf of our fridge and it fitted in nicely without squashing. I’ve boiled the kettle. You could do with a cup of tea after that rough boat trip, I’m sure. I worried about you when the squall came up.’

  ‘Let’s look at the evidence first. All I need is a clear table.’

  Dr Young spread a plastic sheet over the office table and the constable placed the black plastic bundle from the fridge in the centre. Dr Young and Singh put on gloves and masks and opened up the bag with care. The salty, rotting tang of sandy seaweed was not unpleasant. The dark green coils tangled lighter stalks of sea grapes, sand, bits of shell, sponge and jelly. A tiny crab crawled to the surface, breaking the tension. Dr Young’s eyes smiled at her above his mask.

  ‘I don’t want to disturb the integrity of the bundle until I get it to my lab. But I’ll pry gently to confirm there is a hand here. Let’s hope the crab hasn’t gobbled it all yet. This spongy tissue could be human lung, but I can’t be certain.’ He took photos.

  Singh was taken aback. ‘Lung?’

  ‘Yeah, shark attacks are savage and messy. Smaller fish get in on the act too, breaking up the sharks’ leftovers.’ He must have detected the horror of her imaginings. ‘Don’t picture exactly how it happened too much. That’s my job.’

  He lifted the strands with his probe tool, to reveal bigger lumps of the tissue he thought could be lung. ‘Ah, here we are.’ He pointed at the middle of the mass.

  Singh leaned closer. Through the translucent wrinkles of tissue, she made out fingers, curled as if relaxed in sleep. The pathologist handed her his magnifying glass. The little finger was uppermost, exposing the third and fourth fingers below. Seaweed and bits she couldn’t name obscured the rest. But, round the base of the third finger, something protruded.

  ‘Is that a ring, Matt?’

  ‘Crikey! It may bloody well be a ring. Well spotted!’ He took more photos. ‘I’ll pack this up in my cool-box now. I need to rush DNA samples through the moment we get back.’

  ‘I’ll radio the boss,’ she said. ‘We should be in time for the afternoon flight.’

  The sergeant overheard them. ‘I’ll get on to the Air Fiji ground staff here. We’ll fix it if the flight’s not full.’

  ‘Vinaka, Sergeant. Good luck! It’s important.’ To Singh’s s
urprise, Sergeant Rogoyawa raced out the door. She soon realised the Air Fiji office was probably just a few doors further down Beach Street.

  The constable turned on the kettle. ‘You’ll have time for that cup of tea now, sirs.’

  By the time Dr Young packed the cool box to his satisfaction and helped with the tea things, Singh had radioed both Horseman and Ash’s search team on the beach.

  They all sipped the piping tea.

  ‘The boss is excited. Wishes he’d been able to come. Calls to the hotline are flooding in, as expected. Ash needs longer to search the beach, which isn’t exactly fun in this rain. If we can get on the plane, he’ll take as long as he needs. The launch can wait. Five minutes, then I need to speak to the kids who found this. You said you were keeping tabs on them, Constable?’

  ‘Io, I took them to their school, here in Levuka. They were hoping for the day off—you know kids. We can go there when you’re ready, ma’am.’

  The door opened. Sergeant Rogoyawa came in looking pleased with himself and handed Singh an envelope. ‘Your tickets, ma’am. I’ll get you to the airstrip by two-thirty. That gives you an hour to talk to the children if you need that long.’ He poured himself a cup of tea.

  Singh took the tickets and checked them briefly. ‘I’m very grateful, Sergeant. This will make a big difference. Dr Young must get the tissue samples to the DNA lab without delay.’ And she was desperate to escape another boat trip.

  The sergeant took a long swill of tea and smacked his lips. ‘D’you think the head and the hand belong to the same person?’

  ‘We can’t know that yet. Fortunately we have our own DNA lab in Fiji now, so science will give us the answer,’ Singh said.

  Dr Young smiled. ‘How many times have body parts turned up at your station before?’

  ‘Never before, sir.’

  ‘Exactly, Sauli. I can’t prove it yet, but the chance of two individuals’ remains turning up here within a few days is next to none.’

  *

  The children, three boys and a girl, were dishevelled. Understandable, after kicking around seaweed on a beach before school. They sat quietly, looking apprehensive yet interested in this new experience.

  ‘You’ve done very well, children. You found something you knew was not right, and you brought it to the police. I wish all children were sensible like you. First, tell me why you were playing on the beach this morning, on a school day.’

  The girl glared at the boys. ‘We were ready for school. We waited at the bus stop—that’s beside the beach. But the bus didn’t come. Joeli here ran off to play with the seaweed on the beach. Masses and masses of it washed in overnight. Enoki and Sirilo followed him. They’re all naughty boys!’

  She rolled her eyes upwards in despair.

  ‘Is she right, boys?’ Singh tried hard not to smile.

  The boys hung their heads and kicked the floor with their bare feet. The eldest said, ‘Oi lei! It’s her fault. If she hadn’t come yelling after us, we would have gone back sooner.’

  ‘Eh! Not true! You threw armfuls of seaweed at each other, then you threw it at me!’ She appealed to Singh. ‘It was all over my head and neck. I tried to pull it off, like this.’ She thrust both arms behind her neck and swept them forward over her face. ‘And my hand felt another hand, inside all this jelly stuff. Yuck!’

  Singh reflected that the masks, gloves and careful probing had hardly been necessary.

  The boys giggled. ‘You should have seen her, ma’am. Screaming and jumping around! We all had a look, then Ani wrapped everything up in the seaweed, with the hand in the middle.’

  ‘I knew it was from a dead body. I said we must take it to the police.’

  ‘I reckon a fisherman lost his hand in a winch or something. He probably just threw it in the sea.’

  ‘You don’t know. He might want it back!’ The girl was shouting with self-righteous anger now.

  ‘D’you reckon he chucked his head in the sea after that or before?’ young Sirilo looked quite serious.

  ‘Children, calm down now and let’s be friendly. Ani was brave and did the right thing. I’m proud of you, Ani. What did you do next?’

  Joeli put his hand up. Singh nodded her permission to speak. ‘It was the bus driver’s fault. We raced back when the bus came along but the driver wouldn’t let us take the seaweed on the bus. He said we were lying about the hand.’

  Ani cut in. ‘I told the boys to tell the police, and I waited with Enoki. He’s my little brother.’

  ‘And you told the police,’ smiled Singh. ‘Sensible boys.’

  ‘I didn’t want to.’ Joeli protested. ‘The driver teased us all the way to Levuka. He stopped outside the station and made us get out and waited till we went inside. All the kids cheered and shouted. I didn’t like it.’

  ‘I hated it too. They just wanted to see us get in trouble with the police,’ Sirilo added. ‘But the constable believed us. He told us to go to school and he would drive the Land Cruiser to look for himself.’

  Ani’s eyes widened. ‘It seemed like hours. I couldn’t believe it when the Land Cruiser came along and stopped. Constable Sauli was kind. He drove us all the way to school. He explained to the headmistress why we were late.’

  ‘The police are generally kind and helpful, especially with children. I’ve got the picture now. I’m grateful to all of you. We must find out who this hand belongs to.’

  ‘He must be dead. He’d bleed to death, wouldn’t he? Unless he was in a hospital with doctors. But hospitals don’t throw bits of bodies into the sea, do they?’ Singh hoped not. But anything was possible.

  ‘Vinaka vakalevu, you can go back to class now. You have been good citizens today. I’ll ask the Commissioner of Police to send you a letter thanking you for your service to the public.’

  13

  Dr Young teased out the wrinkled pink-grey tissue. He took it in his gloved fingers and stretched it, then pressed on the surface. A little fluid oozed out. Singh detected a faint crackling.

  The pathologist pointed at the tissue. ‘See, isn’t this amazing? Definitely lung tissue and I’ll bet it’s human, even though I need cellular analysis to say so in my post mortem report.’

  They’d got to the pathology lab twenty minutes earlier. Singh had expected him to zero in on the hand. She was impatient to know if what she’d glimpsed was a ring or a strand of seaweed encircling that third finger. But Dr Young had started at the top of the bundled-up stuff, removing each component one by one, examining it and placing it either in the bin or on one of three trays on the table.

  ‘The lung’s made of remarkable stuff, Susie. Gotta be my favourite tissue. Here, put this on.’ He handed her a head magnifier and stretched the sample out more. ‘It’s light, soft, elastic and spongy. And it explains the mystery of our hand on the beach.’

  ‘It does?’ Singh prized Dr Young’s compulsive teaching. She’d learned a lot from him in only a few cases. But she wished he’d tell her the answer straight rather than insisting she work it out herself.

  She focused the magnifier. ‘It’s lots of globules joined together like fabric.’

  He smiled. ‘Exactly. I’ll put it under the microscope and you can see them even better on the monitor.’

  He pointed at the misshapen circles that separated on the screen. ‘These are alveoli, tiny air sacs. This tissue has been in the sea for days—you saw the water that ran out when I pressed it. Yet there’s still some air in the alveoli and there’re thousands of them in this piece alone.’

  He turned away from the microscope and looked at her, his eyes wide with excitement. ‘How d’you think it behaves in water?’

  Her mind went blank. He must think her stupid. Then it hit her. ‘Oh, it floats in water?’

  He looked at her as if she was the star student. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Part of a hand has floated ashore thanks to pieces of lung tangled up with it! I don’t know when the human parts met the seaweed, but that would have protected it too.’

&nb
sp; ‘They must all belong to the same person, surely?’

  ‘Almost certain, but let me get the lung sample tubes ready for the DNA crew, then we’ll look at the hand. You’re being very patient, Susie.’

  ‘Not at all, I can’t wait. Will we get fingerprints?’

  ‘Highly unlikely after days of sea immersion, but we’ll soon know.’ He continued his separating and sorting, swifter now but just as careful.

  ‘Excuse me, Susie, but you don’t seem quite your usual self. Anything on your mind?’

  Susie startled. What had he noticed? ‘I’m fine. The only thing wrong today was that launch trip. Thank goodness we could fly back.’

  ‘Hmm, I wonder if Ash has finished yet. The launch mightn’t get back before dark if he hasn’t.’ He paused. ‘Susie, I’m happy to listen if you want. About anything.’

  Desire to share her dilemma seized her. Matt was so passionate and dedicated to his work, he would understand. Completely. But she didn’t know what he would advise her to do, if anything. Why did that matter? Deep inside, might she already know what she wanted?

  ‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’

  Dr Young’s sandy eyebrows lifted. ‘Any time. Now, here’s what you’re waiting for.’

  He removed the last material obscuring the hand, or what was left of it. The thumb and part of the palm were missing, bitten or slashed away. But Singh only had eyes for the ring. Solid, about a centimetre wide. She couldn’t say what it was made from unless she cleaned it up. Dr Young flipped his head magnifier down and examined the torn edges of flesh and bone.

  ‘Something’s bitten this piece off. The teeth marks conform to those on the neck I showed you on Monday. So probably a tiger shark. But now, I need to rush these DNA samples off and the only way is to take them myself. I’ll start on a full post mortem on my return. Is Joe dropping in?’

  ‘I spoke to him the minute we arrived back. He’s pretty excited. Said he’d come as soon as he could.’

  ‘I’ll only be ten minutes. Sorry, Susie, but I’d rather you didn’t remove the ring yet. Take photos, by all means.’