by Dan Waddell
Kensal Green Cemetery was a favourite spot of his, rivalled only by Highgate Cemetery for macabre splendour. The Victorians knew how to do death. Unlike us, he thought; now we burn people and have little to do with the dusty aftermath. Genealogists won’t have graves to go to in fifty or a hundred years when tracing future generations, no inscriptions to locate and decipher, just like they won’t have letters to read and learn from, thanks to email. Nothing is permanent any more, for all time, he thought: it’s all about now.
He looked around and through the trees bowing in the wind, the tangled bushes and endless tumble of overgrown, battered graves and statues. He could see no one else. Just him and thousands of dead. It was like entering a lost world. Only the faraway hum of traffic punctuated by the sound of sirens, London’s incessant soundtrack, gave an indication of the century he was in. It felt good to be out in the open air, away from the exhaust fumes of the traffic-choked streets. There were few outdoor oases like this in central London, places of silent contemplation: the other cemeteries, of course, the odd residential square with its private gardens, and a few of the smaller parks, but that was it. Nigel knew that 150 years ago this cemetery was in open countryside. That was the whole idea. The teeming, crowded cemeteries in the middle of the city had begun spewing out their decomposing bounty, and the foul, fetid odour and miasma that resulted were the cause of disease, or so the belief was. So the newer cemeteries were built out of town – the one in Brookwood had its own mode of transport to export the city’s deceased, the Necropolis Railway. But soon London’s voracious appetite had swallowed the ground in every direction.
Nigel checked his watch: ten thirty. From his coat pocket he pulled a crumpled piece of paper torn from the notebook. ‘Lot 103’, it read. The grave of Cornelius Tiplady, Architect, 1845–85. His quest was to find whether this Cornelius Tiplady was the great-great-grandfather of his client. He wanted to see if the inscription on the gravestone mentioned some names that might link him to some of the other relatives he had found, and so confirm he had the right man. A poetic inscription might be a nice garnish to offer alongside the dry genealogical info he had unearthed, and to confirm a job well done. He needed to let people know he was back, working well. Rebuilding a business was not proving easy.
Lot 103 was off the beaten track and, as he suspected, in an unkempt part of the cemetery teeming with unruly grass, small trees and lichen, muddying his brogues as he ticked off the graves one by one. Few had escaped the ravages of the weather. He reached lot 103, took off his glasses and gave them a quick rub on the edge of his coat, put them back on and sank to his haunches.
The grave was unremarkable, standard for the time, a flat grey gravestone. No ostentation for the Tiplady family. But, as he feared, the words used to honour the deceased’s two-score years had been rendered unreadable by time and decay. He could not even make out the name, bar the outline of a capital C, which did at least offer him the comfort that the burial records had been well kept and that somewhere beneath his feet lay Cornelius, or whatever was left of him. He ran his finger gently across some of the indentations, almost able to make out the other letters of the name, even if he could not see them. He noticed there was another jumble of letters below the name, though the inscription appeared brief. A family of few words, too, it seemed. Good.
Nigel removed his bag from his shoulder, unzipped it and pulled out his shaving mirror. He had bought it when he was a student, from a barber on Jermyn Street. He stood up, stepped to one side of the grave and, trying to avoid standing on the plot next to it, angled the mirror to the sky, turning it so that any reflection of light would be cast across the face of the gravestone. He had adopted this method before, to great effect, using the reflection of the sun to cast a shadow across the lettering and so create contrast. But then he had enjoyed the benefit of sunshine. Here he did not, and it was clear after only a few seconds that it was futile. He did not have a torch to magnify the effect of the light; that would require another person, and dragging people to graveyards on weekday mornings was a difficult sell. Luckily, he knew of another, less subtle method.
He put the mirror back in his bag and took a surreptitious glance around him. What he was about to do was not just frowned upon in genealogical circles, it was an offence right up there with defacing documents and licking your fingers before opening an aged manuscript. In the conservative, preservation-first world of family history it was tantamount to desecrating a grave, a subject of fevered debate in genealogical forums across the Internet.
Nigel ran his hand through his mane of black hair, pushing back the fringe that flopped over his brow. There was still no one in sight. Bugger it, he thought, old Cornelius is not going to complain, and neither are any of his family. It crossed his mind that he was standing in almost the exact spot where Cornelius’s grieving widow and children would have stood mourning his death, but he managed to cast the thought out once more. Acid rain, bird shit, lichen, they had all inflicted worse damage on the stone than the substance he was about to use. And he did not have the materials with which to make an impression of the inscription. Instead, from his bag he produced a tin of shaving foam and a squeegee.
He shook the tin and squirted several lines of foam across the face of the gravestone. With his right hand he then smeared the foam across the stone so that the entire area was covered with a thin layer. Then he took the squeegee and wiped it gently across the stone from left to right, as if it was a window. The foam came away, except where it had lodged in the crevices of the inscription.
He stepped back. Now the legend was revealed, in menthol, the best-shave-you-can-get white.
CORNELIUS TIPLADY 1845–85.
HE WAS A CONSISTENT MEMBER OF THE CHURCH,
A FRIEND OF THE LORD, EVER AN AFFECTIONATE
HUSBAND TO JEMIMA AND AN INDULGENT FATHER.
FAITH WAS TRIUMPHANT IN HIS DEATH. SWEET IS
THE MEMORY OF SUCH FOR WE KNOW THEY SLEEP
TO LIVE AGAIN.
Jemima. That confirmed it. Cornelius and his final resting place had at long last been found. He now had enough detail on his life to produce a decent report for his client. He scribbled the epitaph in a notebook and put the materials back in his bag, then took the opportunity to scour the surrounding area. There was no one, only the distant, demented cackle of the crows and the wind rustling the trees.
Before he left, he cast a guilty look at the grave, illuminated with foam. The chemicals in it could leach into the pores of the gravestone and cause permanent damage. For the umpteenth time that morning he surveyed the grey sky. Forget the sun, he thought, what I need right now is some heavy rain.
3
Heather was waiting for Foster at the autopsy room in Kensington. It was approaching noon and he was running late, delayed by his interview with the two stoned kids who had stumbled across the body.
‘Did they see anything?’ she asked hopefully.
Foster’s face gave her the answer immediately, incapable as it was of hiding disdain. His crumpled, creased face appeared to darken, his lip curled and the mournful brown eyes narrowed. An unlamented ex-girlfriend from years ago once told him he had an ‘ugly/handsome thing going on’, a phrase he still didn’t know whether to take as an insult or compliment.
‘They could barely recognize their own mothers,’ he spat out. ‘I’ve left them with an artist. They saw a few people on their way to the churchyard. But, given the strength of the skunk they were smoking, I won’t be surprised if we get a sketch of Big Bird.’
They put on their masks, covering nose and mouth, took deep breaths and entered the pristine, stark white-tiled space. The smell of disinfectant hung in the air – almost, but not quite, managing to obliterate the underlying stench of death and decay. A couple of morticians busied themselves around James Darbyshire’s handless, naked body, supine on the dissecting table. The sternum had not yet been cut. Foster was glad; he wanted to see the body as it was when they found it, before Carlisle peeled back t
he skin like fruit rind to reveal the flesh and internal organs. Sometimes, when Foster got there, those organs were sitting in metal pans waiting to be weighed or examined. He could handle death; he could stare at a corpse and learn from it regardless of the injuries it had endured. But the sawing and splicing involved in most autopsies never failed to sicken him, which is why he liked to have a look first and read about it later.
Edward Carlisle welcomed them with a quick nod and motioned for them to follow him towards the body. Foster turned to check Heather was OK; his eyes made contact with hers, but the look she gave back was impatient, as if his concern was grating.
‘Here it is. Of course, I haven’t yet rummaged around inside, but it seems clear, as I indicated earlier, that the cause of death was a single stab wound to the heart, here.’ He pointed to a two-inch slit slightly to the left of centre of the victim’s chest. ‘I’ll have more on that later. And as for the hands, I’m almost certain they were severed prior to death.’
Foster looked at Heather. This wasn’t a case of mutilating a dead body. It was torture.
‘What has interested me are these wounds here,’ Carlisle continued.
Foster and Heather watched as his hands pointed out a series of scratch marks and nicks across the chest.
‘I can only think they are the consequences of a struggle, but there are no defence wounds elsewhere, and the victim’s shirt has not been damaged.’
‘Not even by the stab wound?’
Carlisle shook his head.
‘Then he wasn’t wearing it when he was stabbed. Or when these cuts were made.’
Foster was standing to the right-hand side of the cadaver. He walked slowly, clockwise around the table, never taking his eyes off the body. When the soles of the dead man’s feet were facing him, he stopped for perhaps a minute, his eyes fixed on the victim’s torso. By this point Heather and Carlisle were more interested in Foster’s perambulation than the corpse. He set off once more until he arrived back where he started. He leaned in for a closer look at the scratched and bloodied chest.
‘Did you shave the chest?’ he asked Carlisle, without looking up.
‘No.’
Foster stepped back and examined the torso, tilting the angle of his head slightly as he did, first to the left, then to the right, then leaning over once more. He looked around the room, his eyes eventually alighting on an empty dissecting table that had been pushed against a wall to one side of the mortuary. He walked over and grabbed it, using his strength to free the table from its awkward position, and then wheeled it over to where the others stood.
Carlisle’s eyes narrowed.
‘Can I ask what you’re doing, Grant?’
Foster held up his hand as if to say, ‘Wait and see.’
Bit by bit he manoeuvred the table into a position parallel to the one holding Darbyshire’s body, both edges touching, then he hauled himself on to it. He stood up and leaned over the dead man, his weight on his right leg. The table creaked under the strain.
He remained on his perch for some time, without speaking.
‘Heather, get up here,’ he said finally.
She hopped up beside him, while Carlisle shook his head in disbelief.
‘These aren’t defensive wounds,’ Foster said. ‘Look at the right nipple: above it is a long vertical scratch. Can you see that? Then look how it’s topped with a small diagonal nick, or looks like it is. And beneath it is a horizontal scratch.’
Heather agreed.
‘What does that look like?’
She stared at the wounds. ‘A number 1,’ she said, certain.
‘Look at the others.’
Carlisle had joined her at the other side of the table for a closer look. Foster dropped to his knees. He pointed towards the middle of the chest, his finger tracing the lines of two slanted cuts, the hairless, paper-white skin almost delicately torn.
‘See how they almost reach a point?’ he said. Then he indicated a barely distinguishable graze between the two lines, like a shaving nick.
‘That almost bridges the gap between the two wounds. It looks like a letter A.’
Foster continued his way across the man’s chest, following the outlines of each cut and deciphering a figure or letter it represented. At the end, Foster reached under the gown and retrieved his notebook from his suit pocket. He wrote down five figures: 1A137.
‘These cuts were made post-mortem,’ Carlisle commented.
‘In which case, they were for our eyes,’ Foster replied. He turned back and looked at the body for the final time. Carlisle picked up a scalpel to show what he intended to do next.
‘Fill your boots,’ Foster said, gesturing towards the body.
They left the room before the first incision was made.
4
All promise had bled from the day. It was just after three p.m. when the investigating team gathered for their first briefing, and already the lights were on at West London Murder Command – officially known as Homicide West – an anonymous building next door to Kensington police station. Inside, the mood was grim but determined. Foster was standing at the front, beside the whiteboard. The victim’s name was written on it; beneath that were pictures of his body. The top of Foster’s giant, close-shaven pate shone in the strip light.
The team had been speaking to friends and family of the deceased. Some were still out, though not Heather. At least, as far as he knew. He couldn’t explain her absence.
A few more details had emerged. Darbyshire was a trader who worked at a bank in the Square Mile. He lived out in Leytonstone, the city commuter belt, with his wife and two kids.
‘This is what we know,’ Foster declared slowly and deliberately in his rich molten croon that demanded, and always got, attention. ‘Darbyshire goes to the pub with three men at five thirty. An hour earlier, he called his wife and said he was going out with clients, but that was probably a white lie because all three were colleagues. They have four pints. One of them goes to buy a fifth. Darbyshire says he feels hot, faint. The pub is packed, cheek to jowl, so perhaps no surprise there. But he’s only thirty-one and, apart from being a smoker, he’s fit; he plays football every Sunday. Doc Carlisle tells me the heart looked healthy.
‘We’ve interviewed his mates and he seems like a happy family man. His life revolved around his job, his friends, his family and West Ham United. He was liked at work, and he had no particular worries, financial or otherwise, as far as we can tell, so not much stress.’
Looking at Drinkwater, ‘Andy, chase up toxicology and tell them to get their arses in gear. I want to know what was in his bloodstream as quickly as they can. Any medication, anything at all.’
Turning back to face the others, ‘He told one of his mates he was going outside for a fag – which, if he was feeling hot and claustrophobic, is fair enough. He leaves. Then he disappears. It’s almost seven p.m. The next time anyone sees him, he’s dead and mutilated in a churchyard across the other side of London.’
Foster let his words sink in before continuing, ‘At some point after leaving that pub, he comes into contact with his killer. The killer then either persuades him or forces him into a vehicle or a building, removes his hands and stabs him. Our killer is very strong, has help, or Mr Darbyshire is so incapacitated that our killer can sever his hands without too much of a struggle. He then does one other thing.’ From the desk in front of him Foster held up a picture showing what had been carved on Darbyshire’s chest. ‘He shaves his chest and then carves a series of letters and numbers. Look closely and you’ll see it says 1A137. Now the obvious question is: what does this mean?’
The question was met by silence.
‘A reference,’ someone suggested at last.
‘A crossword clue,’ came another.
This loosened them up, and a few ideas were floated.
‘A chess move,’ said one; ‘a map reference,’ said another.
‘Hang on,’ said DC Majid Khan, a young detective who fancied himself as a com
edian. ‘I think that’s the order for a vegetable pakora and a chicken dhansak at the Taste of the Raj in Thames Ditton.’
The rest laughed.
‘We need to investigate all of those,’ Foster went on, ignoring Khan’s attempt at levity. ‘Our killer is trying to tell us something. When we work out what, we move a damn sight closer to catching him or her.’ He cleared his throat. For the first time that day he was hit by a sudden feeling of exhaustion, but he repelled it. ‘The kids who found the body say there’s a tramp who lives in the churchyard. Ciderwoman, or whatever. Have we managed to find her?’
The answer was negative. They knew her real name was Sheena but she had not been seen around her usual patch lately.
‘She’s got to be somewhere. Probably on an alcoholiday, swigging Strongbow outside Camden Town tube. Let’s keep on it. Any news on witnesses in or around the church?’
Again he got a shake of the head. That surprised him in one sense: the churchyard was by no means secluded. It was on the top of a hill on a busy thoroughfare, enclosed by tall residential buildings. On paper, a terrible spot to dump a body.
So why choose it?
‘I want us to go through every single piece of CCTV footage from every camera in Liverpool Street from seven p.m. last night. That’s where he usually got the tube home. Who knows, maybe he made it on to one. And let’s go through all the footage from Ladbroke Grove, too.’
Suddenly Heather burst through the door, breathless. Foster looked for some sign of contrition, yet saw none.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘Tying up the loose ends on the suicidal tramp.’
The fate of the tramp found dangling from the frame of a park swing the previous Sunday morning had long since been superceded in Foster’s mind by the Darbyshire murder. He felt a wave of anger.
‘Give that bleeding heart of yours a rest. Put the tramp to one side and concentrate on this, please.’
