Dead Heading

by Catherine Aird

  The cottages there had been built beside narrow lanes leading to a veritable rabbit warren of twisting alleys and blind corners, all designed to thwart those seeking to kidnap men to crew naval ships. These avenues of escape lay between cottages huddled cheek by jowl with each other with only an apology for a garden. Here and there dwellings had been upgraded, window-boxes and double-glazing added and old doors replaced with shiny new ones, but the general effect was still of dilapidated antiquity.

  The coming of the railway had brought navvies to build bridges and carve tunnels and they had succeeded the old seamen in the little dwellings. The most individual building in the vicinity in which the two policemen found themselves was the public house called the Railway Tavern. It was on a corner of the main street and was slightly different in appearance from the other buildings by virtue of having coloured glass windows and old saloon doors. The last known address of Norman Potts in Ship Street was only a few doors away and the two policemen found it easily enough. There was no sign of gentrification about the outside of his house; indeed it had a generally neglected look about it.

  Detective Constable Crosby gave the front door what he always thought of as an official knock. When this did not produce any response he knocked again, but louder this time.

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Sloan mildly, ‘the man’s out at work.’

  ‘Or lying low,’ said Crosby militantly.

  ‘Go round the back and see,’ ordered Sloan, ‘while I have a word in the pub. Then with a bit of luck we can clear up the orchid business and get on with finding out exactly what happened to Enid Osgathorp.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The constable disappeared down an alleyway further down the road and Sloan took himself to the Railway Tavern.

  The landlord was busy attending to his beer machines when Detective Inspector Sloan entered the saloon bar. ‘We’re not really open yet,’ he began, his voice dying away as Sloan reached for his warrant card and showed it to him. He examined this before saying, ‘Licensing hours are different now, you know, Inspector.’

  ‘We’re looking for a Norman Potts,’ began Sloan without preamble.

  ‘Join the club,’ responded the landlord unexpectedly. ‘Said he’d be in last night to settle up and did he come? No is the short answer. He didn’t.’

  ‘What about the night before?’ asked Sloan, seeing that was really what lawyers called the material time as far as the opened greenhouse doors were concerned. ‘Did you see him out and about then?’

  The landlord screwed up his face in thought. ‘He was in then quite early but he didn’t stay. Slid off before I could have a word with him about what he owes me. Saw me coming over and scarpered, I expect.’

  ‘Got a lot on the slate, has he?’

  ‘And some,’ said the landlord, adding briskly, ‘although what it’s got to do with the police I don’t know, I’m sure. Has he been in trouble then?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan laid his warrant card flat on the bar counter. ‘I’m not sure either that it has anything at all to do with us but we’d like a word with him, that’s all.’

  ‘Wanted for questioning,’ sniffed the landlord disparagingly. ‘That’s what that’s called by the mealy-mouthed. Can’t say that I’m all that surprised.’

  ‘We just wanted a word, that’s all,’ said Sloan truthfully, the police force being collectors of information not purveyors of it.

  ‘Well, I can tell you for starters that he lives alone and moans a lot,’ said the landlord who appeared to be nursing some personal grievance. ‘He’s got a chip on his shoulder as big as a sack of potatoes.’

  ‘About what?’

  The landlord gave the handles of the beer machine a final wipe. ‘Stepfather threw him out and then his wife did the same. Can’t say I blame either of them. You name it and he’s complaining about it. Miserable sod.’

  ‘Like that, is it?’ said Sloan. ‘What work does he do?’

  ‘None if he can help it, I would say,’ said the landlord. ‘Officially he’s employed by the local authority when it suits them and when they can’t get anyone better. Markets and Parks department seeing as he said he used to work in a nursery.’

  ‘That figures,’ said Sloan, getting ready to leave.

  ‘Can you tell me something,’ said the landlord, ‘seeing as you’re a copper?’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘There’s a man committed a crime in here the other evening but I don’t know what to call it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  The landlord pointed to a pair of drab curtains hanging by the window. ‘See those?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sloan. ‘What about them?’

  ‘And the radiator under the window?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan sighed. ‘Of course.’

  ‘The other evening one of my customers – he’s a plumber – put his hand round the curtain and slid his key into the bleeder valve. Must have loosened it just enough to make it leak a bit.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So next morning I notice water on the floor and send for him, don’t I? The bastard says I’ve got a leak and charges me a score for repairing it.’

  ‘I’d call that grievous harm to your pride and pocket,’ said Sloan briskly. ‘Now, tell me if Norman Potts is out and about today.’

  The landlord jerked his shoulder in the direction of the man’s house. ‘He should be in all right – at least I haven’t seen him go out this morning.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan thanked the publican and made his way back there. Crosby was waiting for him outside the front door looking distinctly uneasy.

  ‘The back door was unlocked, sir, so …’ his voice faltered and died away.

  ‘So?’ said Sloan.

  ‘So I went in …’

  ‘You did what, Crosby?’ exploded Sloan. ‘Don’t you know that that’s something that you have no right to …’

  ‘And he’s in there, sir,’ interrupted Crosby. ‘Norman Potts, I mean – at least I think it’s Norman Potts – because it’s a bit difficult to tell who anyone is with a face like it is. He’s dead, sir. Very.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Superintendent Leeyes took the news as a personal affront. ‘Norman Potts? Hanging? Where?’

  ‘From a beam in his kitchen,’ replied Sloan literally. ‘They’re all quite ancient buildings down by the old harbour and there are lots of beams in them.’

  ‘I don’t want an architectural survey, Sloan,’ Leeyes bellowed down the telephone from the police station. ‘I want to know if it’s suicide.’

  ‘Too soon to say, sir, although the rope was lashed over the beam all right,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘As I said, it looks like suicide. I can’t say for certain at this stage if it is, though, but Doctor Dabbe is due here any minute …’

  Leeyes grunted. ‘I hope he doesn’t kill anyone on the way.’ Doctor Hector Smithson Dabbe was not only the consultant pathologist to the Berebury Hospital Group but acknowledged to be the fastest driver in the county of Calleshire. He was Crosby’s only known hero.

  ‘There is one thing, sir …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There are a couple of orchids on the dresser.’

  ‘I hope, Sloan,’ said Leeyes loftily, ‘that you’re not going to start talking about flower power now.’

  ‘There were no other flowers in the house, sir, and there is no garden to speak of here since these are old fishermen’s cottages.’ He paused, wondering how to put a new thought to the superintendent without damaging his own prospects for promotion for ever. ‘There was something, though, that seemed quite purposive about the way the orchids were set out on the sideboard. As if where they were had a meaning …’ Sloan decided against saying that their position reminded him of the placing of candlesticks on an altar. There were those at the police station, he knew, who had been known to doubt aloud if Superintendent Leeyes had ever stepped inside a church, let alone been christened. Some of them, bitter men, had also been heard to express the conv
iction that his parents had never been married either.

  ‘Saying it with flowers again, eh?’ said Leeyes. ‘Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir, but it was mostly orchids that were damaged in both nurseries and the deceased – if he is Norman Potts, as we suppose – is the former husband of one of the growers.’

  ‘Are we talking remorse?’ enquired Leeyes. ‘Couldn’t live with what he’d done – that sort of thing.’

  ‘It’s too soon to say, sir.’ It was too soon to jump to any conclusions either but Detective Inspector Sloan was not going to voice that particular thought. Not with his Personal Development Discussion in the offing. ‘There does seem also to be some question of his owing money to the publican along the street.’

  ‘Has he got a record? Always worth a look, you know,’ pronounced the superintendent magisterially. ‘You can’t unchequer your history.’

  ‘We’re looking into that now,’ said Sloan, reminding himself not to sound too defensive or to start talking about any Rehabilitation of the Offender legislation designed to do just this. That always upset the superintendent. As far as he knew in history, blots on the family escutcheon remained there even unto death. Heralds were adamant on this. So was Superintendent Leeyes.

  ‘And find out who benefits from his death while you’re about it,’ commanded Leeyes. ‘Someone must.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ murmured Sloan. That was something he himself always thought of under the heading of ‘churchyard luck’. The Assistant Chief Constable, a man with plenty of Greek and even more Latin, always phrased it even more neatly as cui bono? It was an aspect of every suspicious death that he, a professional detective, always followed up as a matter of routine.

  ‘Was there a note?’ asked the superintendent more mundanely, bringing him back to earth.

  ‘Not that we have found in a superficial examination of the property,’ said Sloan with precision. He ventured to say that the cottage did not seem to be one where flowers – especially exotic ones – might ordinarily have been expected to be found.

  ‘Are you trying to tell me, Sloan, that instead of a note the orchids are meant to be a message in themselves?’

  ‘There is a definite connection between the deceased – if the deceased is Norman Potts as we suppose – and both of the nurseries whose doors were left open and the orchids in them killed,’ Sloan reminded him. ‘That at least we know – with his stepfather and his former wife, neither of whom had a good word to say for him.’

  Superintendent Leeyes sniffed. ‘Funniest suicide note I’ve ever heard of, Sloan. Orchids on the sideboard.’

  ‘If it is a message, then it would have the advantage of not having had to be written by hand,’ pointed out Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘and therefore there is no handwriting to be examined.’ It also meant that the orchids could have been put there by anybody – anybody at all – but he did not say so to the superintendent. Instead he made a mental note to have the plant pots photographed exactly where they were and examined for fingerprints or, better still, DNA.

  There was a pause while the superintendent digested this. ‘I suppose,’ he said grudgingly, ‘you’d better deal with the whole business before you get back to that missing person inquiry in Pelling and the damaged nurseries there. After all, it’s nearly three weeks since the old lady disappeared so it isn’t exactly urgent and you say the man Feakins isn’t going anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I had just hoped that we could clear up the matter of the damage to the greenhouses while we were about it before we got back to looking for Enid Osgathorp.’ He toyed for a moment with the idea of saying something about the best-laid plans of mice and policemen but he wasn’t sure if the superintendent would appreciate the reference especially as it ended with something about aforementioned plans, as the poet had it, being apt to ‘gang aft agley’.

  ‘How did he do it?’ asked the superintendent.

  ‘It would appear at first sight that he stood on a chair and then kicked it away,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, choosing his words with care.

  ‘Not what the Italians call Una Bella Morte then,’ said the superintendent, whose attendance at an Italian language class had been brief but explosive even by emotional Italian standards. His view of Omerta had upset teacher and class alike.

  ‘So,’ went on Sloan hastily, ‘Crosby’s just making sure that the distance of the chair from under the body measures up.’

  ‘It would be a help if you could make sure that Crosby measures up too,’ said Leeyes tartly. ‘I don’t know that we’ll ever make a copper out of him.’

  The rapid approach of a car heralded the arrival of Doctor Dabbe and saved Sloan from having to respond to this. The pathologist stepped briskly inside the cottage, followed by his taciturn assistant, Burns. He took in the grisly scene at a glance. ‘I can’t tell you anything about the sort of knot, Sloan,’ he said, circling the dependent body. ‘Not from here and not yet. The neck is too engorged. There are all the superficial signs of death by asphyxiation, though, especially in the face.’ He shot the inspector a perceptive glance. ‘How did you come to find him?’

  ‘We came here in the course of making some enquiries, doctor,’ said Sloan sedately.

  ‘You did, did you? I see.’ The pathologist gestured to his assistant who was rootling about in a black bag. ‘Burns, are we booted and spurred yet?’

  ‘I’m just getting the gloves out, doctor.’

  ‘Then note the ambient temperature, please.’

  As Burns took out a thermometer Sloan ventured to say, ‘It would help a lot, doctor, to know the approximate time of death.’

  ‘I daresay that it would,’ agreed Doctor Dabbe affably, ‘but it’s too soon to say. Much too soon. I’ll do my best when I’ve measured the post-mortem lividity and had a good look at him on the table. Rigor mortis seems to have been and gone so we’re talking at least sometime last night. That much will have to do you for the time being.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan nodded, while Detective Constable Crosby laboriously wrote down some measurements in his notebook. It became obvious to the others that Crosby had not yet mastered the art of doing calculations without the tip of the tongue sticking out of the corner of the mouth.

  Sloan voiced something that had been bothering him. ‘My constable tells me that the back door was unlocked when he arrived, doctor, and there is no immediate sign of a key.’

  ‘Not my field, Sloan.’ The pathologist was still circling the body. ‘The actualities of the scene of death are all yours.’

  ‘What I meant, doctor, is that we will be very interested to know if the deceased had a key in his pocket. One would have thought that normally he would have locked the back door before – er – suspending himself.’

  ‘Normally doesn’t come into it, Sloan. You should know that. And pathologists can only tell you what the brain looks like after death. Not what’s been in it before the subject died. You want a psychiatrist for that.’ He shot the policeman a quizzical look. ‘If the deceased had been up to no good, which I presume was on the cards since you two are here in the first place, then all I can offer is that old truism that shame asks for punishment.’

  ‘If you ask me this is a very funny way to go about it,’ said Crosby, straightening up and indicating the deceased.

  ‘And tell you both also that – as Shakespeare put it so well – “there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face”,’ the pathologist took another look at the hanged man and went on thoughtfully, ‘especially when its oxygen supply has been cut off by a rope.’

  ‘Applied by himself or someone else,’ pointed out Detective Inspector Sloan, taking a close look at several scratches on the beam.

  ‘I don’t see how anyone else could have got him up there,’ objected Crosby. He had taken up a position over by the sideboard, about as far away as he could from the dead man.

  ‘There are ways and means,’ contributed the pathologist obscurel
y.

  ‘Surely he must have stood on the chair with the rope round his neck and then kicked the chair away,’ persisted the constable.

  Doctor Dabbe glanced up at the beam. ‘All anyone else had to do was toss the rope over the beam and haul away. That right, Sloan?’

  ‘That’s right, doctor.’

  ‘But then he’d have to have been dead first,’ said the constable.

  ‘Or unconscious,’ voiced Sloan.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Doctor Dabbe. ‘Now, Burns, pass me an oximeter. We must get on …’

  The four men already packed inside Norman Potts’ old fisherman’s cottage in Berebury were soon interrupted by the arrival of the Force’s two forensic photographers, Williams and Dyson. Set about with equipment, the pair could be heard clattering down the narrow lane as they approached the cottage. Crosby admitted them and, with the addition of two more men, the room suddenly became very crowded.

  ‘’Ullo, ’ullo,’ said Williams, the senior of the pair, looking round, ‘what have we here?’

  ‘That’s my line,’ objected Crosby indignantly. ‘You’ve pinched it.’

  Sloan sighed.

  ‘What we seem to have,’ explained Doctor Dabbe precisely, ‘is a simple suicide. What we actually have may well not be.’

  ‘Go on, doctor,’ said Sloan, his notebook at the ready.

  ‘Well, if I was a Scotsman,’ said the pathologist, ‘I would say that “I hae ma doots”. Take a look at his mouth.’

  ‘For why, doc?’ asked Crosby insouciantly.

  Sloan winced. That this was no way for a detective constable to address a consultant forensic pathologist during the course of a case went without saying. He started to apologise but Doctor Dabbe cut him short.