Deathly Affair

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Honestly? Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Oh well, no news is good news I suppose.’

  They exchanged a shamefaced look. Much as they both abhorred the crimes they investigated, for detective sergeants working in serious crime, their jobs could be monotonous when they were not working on a case.

  ‘A mugging, a ring of shoplifters, a stolen car,’ Geraldine said, reeling off a list of relatively minor infringements, ‘and mounds of reports to write. So, how was your week off?’

  Looking unusually despondent, Ariadne described her trip to visit her cousins in Athens. ‘I mean, it’s great seeing my family – I get on really well with my cousins – but it’s depressing to see how the city has changed since I was last there. A lot of the buildings look derelict and it’s more like a slum every time I visit. There’s graffiti and litter everywhere. Honestly, people think things are bad here, but they’ve no idea how well off they are...’ she broke off and rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t tell you how dreadful conditions are there. And the frightening thing is, it’s all degenerated so quickly. I know it’s unfashionable to complain about Europe,’ she went on, lowering her voice, ‘but really, the joint economy hasn’t served everyone’s interest. Greece was better off before it joined up with Germany and France. They’ve decimated the Greek economy.’

  ‘Would Greece have been any better off on its own?’

  Ariadne shrugged. ‘Probably not. But what’s really worrying is not so much the poverty, although that’s distressing enough to witness, but the numbers of people unemployed, so many youngsters who’ve never had a job. It’s frightening.’

  Despite her Yorkshire accent, with her striking long black curls and eyes as dark as Geraldine’s, it was easy to believe Ariadne’s mother was Greek. They chatted for a while. Geraldine suggested going out for something to eat, but Ariadne said she was worn out and wanted to get home to unpack.

  ‘Sure,’ Geraldine smiled. ‘To be honest, I’m pretty tired myself.’

  ‘From doing nothing?’

  ‘Exactly. It’s hardly been a stimulating week while you’ve been away.’

  ‘Well, now I’m here, I’m sure your life is about to get a whole lot more exciting.’

  She laughed and Geraldine joined in. It was good to have her friend back. They parted and Geraldine returned to her flat. It had taken her a few months to settle down in York but she felt at home now in her new apartment overlooking the river. She made herself a plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce, a recipe she had been experimenting with for a few weeks. It was not quite right yet, but it was her best effort so far. Leaving her blinds open, she ate staring out into the darkness of the night, wondering what crimes were being committed while she sat safely indoors, eating and drinking wine.

  The next morning she was woken by her phone ringing before her alarm went off.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ she grumbled. ‘Hello? Hello?’

  Still listening to the message, she switched on the light and grabbed her clothes with her free hand.

  ‘OK,’ she replied, scrambling into her jeans, ‘I’m on my way now.’

  Her colleague, Detective Inspector Ian Peterson, arrived at the location in the centre of the city at the same time as Geraldine. Together they approached the cordon. Without exchanging a word they pulled on protective clothing and followed the common approach path to the crime scene. A dead body had been discovered by a postman on an early morning round in the doorway of an empty shop in Coney Street which ran alongside the river, not far from York Minster.

  Shivering, Geraldine gazed down at the hump of ragged clothing that concealed a corpse. The lower part of the dead man’s face was covered by a grizzled beard and his lips were concealed beneath a straggly moustache. Above a large nose, dark eyes glared blindly up at them.

  ‘He looks like a tramp,’ Ian grunted, turning away.

  Geraldine suppressed a sigh. Having worked as Ian’s mentor when he was still a young sergeant, she was possibly his only colleague who was aware of the queasiness he experienced when viewing corpses. Without mentioning the subject, she did her best to protect him from the need to attend post mortems. But she could not shelter him from the brutal ugliness of crime scenes.

  ‘He hasn’t got any form of identification, only a few pounds in coins in one pocket, and an empty beer bottle in the other,’ a scene of crime officer said. ‘But you’re right. He looks as though he might be homeless.’

  Geraldine nodded. The stench of death masked any other smell from the body, but he was certainly filthy, his fingernails black with grime, his face speckled with dirt.

  ‘What did he die of?’ Ian asked.

  He refrained from wondering aloud why the major crime unit would be summoned to investigate an old hobo who had no doubt drunk himself to death, but Geraldine thought his voice seemed to imply the question. She hoped she had misinterpreted his tone.

  ‘He was strangled,’ a scene of crime officer replied quietly.

  ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope the killer used his bare hands?’ Geraldine asked.

  Craning her neck to peer under the rough sleeper’s collar, she saw a short section of a red band around his throat. Ian must have noticed it too because he muttered something inaudible under his breath.

  ‘Who the hell would bother to do that – to him?’ the scene of crime officer asked.

  Something in the dismissive tone of his voice prompted another officer to add, ‘And why are we spending so much time and effort on him?’

  Geraldine glared at her colleagues, too angry to trust herself to respond. Unwashed and homeless, the dead man had been a human being. Any one of the officers there might have become homeless had their lives panned out differently. Drugs, legal or controlled, could render anyone dysfunctional, and the decline into penury was often swift and unforgiving. If her work had taught her anything, she had come to understand that the boundary between coping with life and falling apart was flimsier than most people realised. This tramp’s murder deserved the full attention of the authorities, no less than any other victim. Justice had to be indiscriminate, like death.

  She kept her indignation to herself, determined to channel her anger into finding the killer. A cordon had been set up and the forensic tent was expected imminently. Although the weather was fine, being outside they needed to protect any evidence at the scene from the threat of deterioration and contamination. In the few moments that would elapse before the forensic tent arrived, Geraldine focused on the scene, doing her best to ignore the white-coated forensic officers and uniformed police who were guarding the cordon. She had stood in such a position many times before, but the visceral thrill she experienced never lessened. Her colleagues’ offhand reaction to the body made her uneasy, and she wondered whether the rest of the team could be relied on to devote their usual level of attention to detail at this particular crime scene.

  ‘Do you think they’ll be thorough –’ she began, and paused.

  ‘What? Who are you talking about?’ Ian replied.

  His terse response reminded her of his discomfort when viewing the dead, a handicap for a detective that he had worked hard to overcome.

  ‘Nothing,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure everything will be fine.’

  Ian gave her a curious glance. ‘Not for him, it won’t.’

  Their awkward conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the forensic tent, and they headed back to the police station to attend a briefing.

  ‘It looks as though he was sleeping in the doorway when he was attacked,’ Ian said. ‘The body hadn’t been moved, as far as the SOCOs could tell.’

  The detective chief inspector was a solidly built woman. Her authoritative manner proved effective when she challenged suspects, but made her seem heavy-handed in her dealings with colleagues. Initially put off by Eileen’s didactic manner, Geraldine had come to respect t
he kind and generous nature that lay concealed behind her ferocity.

  ‘Were there any defence wounds?’ Eileen asked, squinting at an image of the dead man.

  ‘We’re not sure yet,’ Ian replied.

  The post mortem would be able to tell them more about the nature of the attack.

  ‘He was strangled, so he was probably attacked from behind,’ Eileen said.

  Ian nodded. ‘And he might not have had any warning.’

  ‘He was probably too drunk to know what was going on,’ a constable added.

  ‘He might have been partly responsible for what happened,’ another constable said.

  ‘What does that even mean? You’re not suggesting he strangled himself?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘No, but he probably got into a fight while he was pissed, so it’s hardly surprising that –’

  ‘Just because he was homeless doesn’t mean he was either drunk or belligerent,’ Geraldine snapped, unable to control her irritation at the constables’ inane comments.

  ‘Let’s have no more of this idle speculation before we have gathered enough information to make a case,’ Eileen said firmly. ‘Ian, you’re in charge of the investigating team on this one, and Geraldine you can assist him in running the enquiry.’

  Pleased to be conducting the investigation with Ian, Geraldine barely listened as Eileen proceeded to reel off a list of officers who would be working with them.

  ‘It’s obvious what happened –’ the disgruntled constable insisted, but Eileen interrupted him.

  ‘That’s enough,’ she snapped. ‘We need evidence, not supposition. This is a murder enquiry, and the status of the victim when he was alive is not the point. Homeless or not, he was murdered, and we need to find out who killed him. Now, we all have work to do, so let’s crack on, shall we?’

  3

  While a team was endeavouring to identify the victim, Geraldine was sent to question James Harrison, the postman who had discovered the body. After stumbling on the corpse, he had been in no fit state to continue his delivery round and his boss had sent him home. He lived on the outskirts of Heslington, a few miles from Lendal Post Office where he was based. Geraldine drove out to his house to speak to him, and a middle-aged woman came to the door. When Geraldine introduced herself and asked for James Harrison, the woman nodded.

  ‘They sent him home,’ she said. ‘He was pretty upset, although from what he told me it was just some rough sleeper who got himself killed. So, can you tell us what happened? No one seems to be telling James anything.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss our investigation. And now, I’d like to speak to James, please.’

  ‘Of course.’

  James Harrison was young, tall, dark-haired and long limbed. Geraldine suspected his pallor might be a consequence of the shock he had experienced, and his shaky voice confirmed her impression.

  ‘I was just doing my rounds, you know,’ he told her.

  He spoke very fast, and so softly that she struggled to catch the words, while his eyes flickered nervously to meet hers and away again.

  ‘It was... well, it’s not what you expect to see, is it? I’ve never seen a dead body before. Never. I suppose you see them all the time, don’t you?’

  Geraldine wondered fleetingly what it would feel like, to be so distressed by the sight of a corpse. She had seen so many, but she had never felt anything other than fierce curiosity to discover who had been responsible for the victim’s death. Perhaps it made a difference that she did not usually come across corpses unexpectedly. Being mentally prepared made a difference, besides which she had become accustomed to the sight of the dead. She sometimes wondered if her work had made her become detached from all normal human feelings.

  ‘I was delivering the letters. Most of it was junk mail anyway. And he was just lying there, across the step. I assumed he was drunk, or asleep. So I –’ he paused and heaved a sigh. ‘I gave him a kick. Well, I didn’t know, did I? I mean, how was I to know he was dead? It wasn’t a real kick, more of a gentle nudge with my foot, but I didn’t know he was dead, did I? Anyway, he didn’t wake up.’ He paused, lost in his memory.

  ‘What happened then?’ Geraldine prompted him.

  ‘I leaned down and yelled in his ear, didn’t I? And he still didn’t stir. Well, of course he didn’t, because he was dead, wasn’t he? But I didn’t realise straight away. So I – I kicked him again, a bit harder. I figured if he was unconscious it wouldn’t hurt him. He half rolled over and that’s when I saw.’

  ‘Did you see the mark on his neck?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘What? No. I saw his eyes, staring. That’s when I knew he was dead. So I called 999. I didn’t know what else to do.’

  Geraldine nodded.

  ‘It’s my first week at work,’ he said miserably. ‘My third morning. What a way to start a new job.’

  ‘You did the right thing calling us,’ she reassured him. ‘And you did nothing wrong.’

  Only kicked a dead body, shifted it from its position, and contaminated the evidence left behind by the killer, she thought, but she said nothing about his carelessness, instead explaining that the police would need to take a sample of his DNA.

  ‘And we’d also like to examine the shoes you were wearing this morning. We need to eliminate you from our list of suspects.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus. All this is enough to put you off your job,’ the postman said.

  It is my job, Geraldine thought.

  From everything the postman was able to tell her, the only significant pieces of information were the time he had discovered the body and his physical contact with the victim.

  ‘Where exactly did you kick him?’ she asked, aware that the pathologist might even now be studying injuries sustained by the victim post mortem.

  The postman became cagey. ‘I didn’t kick him, really. Not deliberately. I just pushed him with my toe, to wake him up.’

  ‘You kicked him hard enough to make him roll over.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he muttered. ‘He just – he just rolled over...’

  Geraldine leaned forward. ‘What you did was perfectly understandable. No one is going to criticise you for trying to wake him up. You have a job to do, an important job, and he was obstructing you. But you must tell me exactly what you did, or the injuries you inflicted could mislead our investigation.’

  ‘I didn’t injure him –’

  ‘No, probably not. In any case, he was already dead, so you couldn’t have done him any harm.’ She smiled, trying to encourage the man to talk. ‘But you must tell me where your foot made contact with the body, or the pathologist might be misled into thinking the killer kicked the body after garroting him.’

  ‘What difference would it make if he did?’

  ‘It makes a difference,’ she replied. ‘We’re going to need to build a picture of the killer and this could affect it.’

  ‘Why do you want my shoes?’

  Painstakingly, Geraldine repeated her explanation and eventually the postman seemed to understand and left the room to fetch a pair of large black trainers.

  ‘When will I get them back?’ he asked as he handed them over.

  ‘As soon as we’ve finished examining them and identifying any footprints you left at the scene.’

  ‘I didn’t leave any footprints,’ he said. ‘I’m going to need them back for tomorrow morning, very early.’

  ‘You’ll get them back when we finish with them,’ Geraldine said, beginning to lose patience with the witness. ‘James,’ she added, quickly regaining control of her temper, ‘this is important. What you’re doing is helping us to find a dangerous killer.’

  ‘It was just a tramp,’ he muttered crossly. ‘Those people get in fights all the time.’

  ‘But this man wasn’t killed in a fight,’ she said. ‘We think he may have been murdered deliberate
ly.’

  James shrugged. ‘It comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? He’s still dead.’

  Geraldine did not bother to point out that an accidental fatality in the course of a fight was very different from a planned murder.

  4

  David observed Ann through narrowed eyelids. He did not want her to catch him looking at her, because he knew how much she hated it.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ she would ask, whenever she noticed him watching her.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re looking at me.’

  ‘So? What’s wrong with that? A man can look at his wife, can’t he? I like looking at you,’ he would reply.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re beautiful.’

  It was a glib response, but it happened to be true. Even after fifteen years of marriage, he still felt his breath catch in the back of his throat whenever he saw his young wife. With blue eyes, wispy, fair hair and very pale skin, she looked ethereal, like an angel. The first time he had set eyes on her, he had been smitten. He had been having a quick pint on his way home to his empty flat. Drinking alone in the pub had felt less lonely than sitting at home on his own and besides, one of the barmaids in his local always gave him a friendly smile. God knows he had received few enough of those when he was younger. There was nothing wrong with him but he was not exactly outgoing, always the first to be overlooked in a group of people. He spent every day studying legal documents in a quiet room, where no one ever spoke to him.

  That evening, Ann had walked into the pub with a group of teenagers, but the barmaid had refused to serve her.

  ‘No ID, no drink,’ she had said.

  Ann’s crestfallen expression touched David. On a sudden impulse, he stood up and offered to buy her a drink. He knew he could be in trouble for infringing the law, but he did not think it would matter this once. No one would ever know. And the girl was beautiful. Giggling, she accepted and asked for a glass of white wine. The barmaid must have known who it was for, but she handed over the drink without demur. With a frisson of pleasure, David handed the glass to Ann. He saw a flash of gratitude in her lovely eyes and felt his hand tremble. Expecting her to take the drink and hurry back to her friends, he was surprised when she followed him to his table and sat down beside him. The silence between them grew awkward, so he took a chance and introduced himself. He was sure she was merely leading him on for the sake of another drink, but he was happy to sit there exchanging desultory remarks and could hardly believe his luck when she responded to his advances. Her cheeks reddened slightly as she asked whether he had a car. That appeared to be the deciding factor in her agreeing to go home with him; he was glad he had recently had his car cleaned.