Deadly Revenge

by Leigh Russell

  All at once, Roger began to shiver. Nodding, he followed the constable across the grass to the house.

  32

  The initial rush of excitement in the room faded when Eileen explained that the garden where a body had been found backed on to allotments, and scene of crime officers had found sufficient evidence to establish beyond any doubt that the body had been manoeuvred over the fence. It was highly unlikely the owner of the property had lifted a body over the fence into his own garden and then called the police himself to report it. So although a body had been discovered in a private garden, it seemed they still had not found the killer. The man who had discovered the body was still visibly shaken when Geraldine went to question him. He had already given a statement to the police at the scene, but he had been so shocked by his discovery that Eileen had asked Geraldine to visit him at his daughter’s house shortly afterwards. After an hour or so, they hoped he would have calmed down enough to give a coherent account of what he had seen. It was important to speak to him as soon as possible after the event, before his memories became blurred, but the constable who had first spoken to him had not managed to get much sense out of him. In his seventies, and balding, Roger Dexter was a large man with a bushy moustache who bore himself with an air of injured authority, as though he was accustomed to being in charge of his circumstances and felt aggrieved to be involved in a situation over which he had no control. He was seated on a large plush armchair, clutching a tartan blanket. Despite the warmth of the room, and the blanket around his shoulders, he was shivering.

  ‘I didn’t know – I didn’t realise – I thought –’ he stammered when Geraldine asked him to tell her exactly what he had seen. ‘I was so surprised – I went over because I thought a house burglar –’ He broke off with a shake of his head. ‘That is –’ He drew in a deep breath and tried again. This time his words came out in a rush. ‘I thought someone was trying to break in, because I could see there was a person at the end of the garden. My dahlias were completely crushed,’ he added with a burst of indignation. ‘As soon as I glanced in that direction I saw it – saw him.’ He shuddered. ‘I’m telling you, I had no idea he was dead. How could I have known? The fact is, I thought, when I saw him – my first instinct was to call the police and report an intruder, sleeping it off in my garden. It seemed unbelievable I know, but that was what I saw. At least, that’s what I thought I saw. It never occurred to me that he might have had a stroke, or a heart attack, or whatever it was that did for him. But in any case, he was still trespassing on my property, regardless of what had happened to him. What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘What did you do? Please try to remember exactly.’

  ‘If I’d realised he was dead, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near him, I can promise you that. I would have gone straight back indoors and called the police. But I had no idea he was dead. How could I?’ He looked at Geraldine anxiously. ‘So I went over and yelled at him to get up.’

  Geraldine frowned. ‘Wasn’t that a little rash, sir? He could have been violent.’

  Roger nodded. ‘You’re right. It was stupid, I know, but I’m afraid I rather lost my temper. My dahlias, you see. He was damaging my dahlias.’

  ‘You and your dahlias,’ Roger’s daughter said, entering the room and overhearing what her father said. ‘I’ve put the kettle on, dad. Would you like a cup of tea, Sergeant?’

  Geraldine declined the offer and turned back to Roger. ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘At first I thought he must have drunk himself unconscious, because he was just lying there. Drunk, or drugged, I didn’t know what was happening, but whatever it was, I wanted him gone. I mean, it’s hardly the place you’d expect to see a dead body, lying in your dahlias, in your own back garden, is it? Not that I know where you would be likely to see one.’ He broke off with an awkward shrug. ‘I’m sorry if I’m talking too much. It’s my nerves. This isn’t a situation I’m used to dealing with. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.’

  Once he had recovered from the shock of his discovery, Geraldine thought he would be busy telling everyone he knew about his experience that morning, but for now he was still reliving the horror. She thanked him. Clearly he had no idea that the victim he had found lying in his back garden had not been a house burglar struck down by alcohol or drugs, but a murder victim who had been dead for a while.

  ‘Did you notice anything strange about the body?’ Geraldine asked.

  Roger shook his head, frowning. ‘Like what?’

  At that point his daughter came in with a tray. ‘Here, dad,’ she said to her father. ‘Tea’s ready. Are you sure you won’t have a cup, Sergeant?’

  Geraldine shook her head. ‘No, thank you. I just need to ask your father a couple more questions and then I’ll leave you in peace. Did you notice anything unusual at all at the scene, sir?’

  Roger frowned as he took a cup in a hand that shook slightly.

  ‘Apart from the dead body, you mean?’

  Geraldine nodded.

  ‘No, I can’t say that I did. There was just that man lying there and to be honest I didn’t look at anything else.’

  ‘You mentioned in your initial statement that you attempted to move the body. Can you give me more details?’

  Roger put his cup down on the low table between them and leaned forward.

  ‘Oh yes. When I found him he was lying on his front, and I thought he might struggle to breathe in that position, with his face squashed against the ground, so I did my best to roll him on to his side into the recovery position. It’s what I learned on a first aid course.’ He paused, before confiding, ‘I was tempted to leave him there to suffocate, but I thought better of it.’

  ‘Dad, you would never have left him if you thought your intervention might save his life,’ his daughter chipped in.

  There was a hint of reproach in her voice. Perhaps she intended to remind him that he was talking to a police officer, and should be careful what he said.

  Geraldine nodded. ‘Yes, of course, I understand. Did you check for vital signs?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. I’m not sure I’d know how. In any case, once I saw his face, it was pretty obvious he was dead, even to someone like me who doesn’t know about that sort of thing. And the smell –’ He wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘He was – well, he was dead all right. Dead as my dahlias. I mean, there was no way he was still alive. It was horrible, horrible.’ He shuddered at the recollection. ‘Anyway, once I had him on his back I could see there was no way he was still alive and breathing.’

  ‘Come on, drink your tea, and don’t think about it any more,’ his daughter said. ‘Sergeant, I’m sure my father’s told you all he can and we’d both appreciate it if you’d let him relax after his terrible ordeal so he can try and stop thinking about it. He did the right thing in calling you straight away and now he needs to be left to –’

  ‘Just one more question,’ Geraldine interrupted her. ‘Please, this is very important. When you moved the body, was it easy to change the position of the limbs or was the cadaver stiff?’

  ‘You mean had rigor mortis set in?’

  Geraldine nodded. Members of the public were often well versed in the jargon surrounding murder victims, from watching murder mysteries on television, but they did not necessarily understand the full implications of the terminology. Around forty-eight hours after death, rigor would have given way to a flaccid state, and in any case, from the description of the corpse, putrefaction had already commenced, which meant the victim had been dead for more than a couple of days.

  ‘No,’ Roger said. ‘He wasn’t stiff or difficult to move at all. More kind of floppy, I’d say. When I tried to turn him over on to his side, into the recovery position, he rolled right over on to his back. That’s when I saw his face and realised he was dead, so I didn’t bother trying to shift his position again after that. I just moved right away
from him – from it – and called 999. Do you know who he was? I mean, this man had nothing to do with me. I’d never seen him before. Not that I suppose I’d have recognised him if I had,’ he added.

  ‘Of course he had nothing to do with you, dad. He was obviously a burglar who climbed over the fence with the intention of breaking into the house and robbing you. If you ask me, you had a lucky escape. What if he hadn’t collapsed and died before he got to the house? You could have been attacked!’

  ‘Do you know who he was?’ Roger repeated.

  ‘Not yet,’ Geraldine replied.

  She did not try to explain that scene of crime officers had already established the victim had been killed elsewhere, and his body dumped over the fence some days after his death. There was no way that particular intruder could have attacked anyone.

  33

  Having spoken to Roger Dexter, Geraldine went to his house, where the body had been discovered. One lane of the road leading to the allotments had been cordoned off, and constables were stationed around the open ground. Two forensic tents had been erected, one in an allotment beside the site where the body had been found, and the other in the garden itself, with a protective awning over the fence that divided them. The corpse itself was already on its way to the mortuary for a post mortem. Geraldine drove to the house and parked near the cordon that had been placed around the pavement outside. Pulling on protective clothing and shoe covers, she followed the common approach path along the side of the house and drew close to the spot where the body had been deposited.

  There was a hollow in the flower bed, where a number of orange and yellow flowers had been flattened. Presumably the body had been left there in the early hours of Monday morning, under cover of darkness, when the allotments were deserted.

  ‘Have we established who he was?’ she asked a white-clad scene of crime officer who was crouching down studying the crushed vegetation.

  He straightened up and shook his head. ‘At the moment we’re trying to work out how someone managed to get him over the fence,’ he replied. ‘We also need to establish how he was brought here, and where the killer went once the body had been successfully deposited.’

  ‘And we still don’t have any idea at all who the victim might be?’ Geraldine persisted.

  ‘Not yet. He had no means of identification on him, in fact, nothing in his pockets at all, and his face is hardly recognisable as human. If we have no match for his DNA on the database we’ll be in the dark about who he is, unless someone reports him missing and we find him that way. What I can tell you is that he’s been dead for at least a week, but he’s not been here that long. We think he was dumped here some time last night, at a time when the roads round about would have been fairly quiet, and the allotments would have been deserted.’

  ‘That ties in with what the householder said,’ Geraldine agreed. ‘Whoever left him here still took a risk though. Someone could have seen what was happening.’

  A team of constables were questioning all the neighbours who had windows overlooking the allotments.

  The scene of crime officer grunted. ‘There was no moon last night and someone could quite feasibly have thrown a corpse over the fence at this point without anyone seeing, if they were quick about it. It would have been risky, but they must have worked out it could be done without anyone observing what was happening.’

  ‘A calculated risk,’ Geraldine muttered. ‘So this was carefully planned.’

  ‘It looks that way,’ the scene of crime officer agreed. ‘How long would it take to drag a body from the boot of a car, or a van, carry it across the allotments, run back to the vehicle and drive off?’

  Geraldine didn’t answer but she nodded. The scenario the scene of crime officer had suggested was plausible, and the body had certainly been transported there somehow.

  Back at the police station, there was some speculation over whether the dead body could be Jason Colman.

  ‘Yes, it’s possible, but is there anything in particular that makes you think it might be him?’ Ariadne responded to Geraldine’s suggestion with a question.

  ‘Admittedly there’s nothing about the body itself to suggest it’s Jason, but he’s been missing for ten days,’ she replied. ‘This victim has been dead for over a week, so it fits from that perspective, and there’s been no other reports of men missing recently in the area. It’s by no means conclusive, but it’s possible. At least we need to look into it. And if it is him, we need to find out how his body got there, and who was responsible.’

  ‘And then we’ll know who killed him,’ a young constable piped up. ‘But if it is Jason, why would he turn up now, out of the blue? He disappeared ten days ago.’

  For a moment no one answered, then Geraldine commented bluntly,‘He must smell pretty awful by now. That’s as good a reason as any for removing him from wherever he was being kept.’

  ‘Of course,’ the constable muttered, looking slightly uncomfortable.

  ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Geraldine said kindly.

  ‘And if it’s not Jason, who is it?’ someone else asked.

  Geraldine was fairly confident they had found Jason.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Eileen cut in. ‘And whoever it is, we need to establish the victim’s identity as soon as possible and start to investigate. It can’t be a coincidence if David’s son-in-law is found dead less than a week after David himself was murdered.’

  ‘And after his granddaughter disappeared,’ Ariadne added. ‘Don’t forget the missing baby.’

  ‘No one’s forgetting the baby,’ Eileen snapped.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Geraldine saw Ian flinch. More than anything she wanted to speak to him and hear about what was going on in his life, but there was no time. While she dithered over whether to work her way around the room towards him, he strode away. Afraid of a rebuff, she was reluctant to try to see him in his office and instead returned to her own desk. There was certainly enough work there to keep her occupied. Even if the second victim’s death had been an accident, which was possible, moving the body across the allotments and over the fence into a private garden had been a deliberate and carefully planned action.

  ‘So it looks like Jason might have been murdered as well as his father-in-law,’ Ariadne said, her usually cheerful expression dark.

  Geraldine sat down at her desk without answering.

  ‘I wonder if…’ Ariadne’s voice tailed off.

  ‘If?’ Geraldine prompted her friend.

  ‘I was just thinking the two deaths must be related. It seems too much of a coincidence otherwise.’

  ‘Hang on, let’s not run ahead of ourselves,’ Geraldine replied. ‘We don’t even know who the second body is yet. Jason could be the killer, and after drugging and suffocating his hated father-in-law he might have killed someone else.’

  ‘Someone who witnessed him suffocating David outside his house?’ Ariadne said, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘All I’m saying is that there are any number of possibilities,’ Geraldine replied. ‘That’s just one of them. It’s also possible the body found this morning has nothing to do with David and his murder. Let’s wait for the facts before we start drawing conclusions.’

  Ariadne merely grunted, as if to say, ‘All right, have it your own way, but you know as well as I do that we’ve found Jason.’

  34

  It didn’t take the laboratory long to report that the body found near the allotments was indeed Jason Colman. DNA taken from his toothbrush confirmed the identification. For the second time in a week Geraldine drove Ian to the mortuary, where Jonah greeted them with an unaccustomed air of despondency. His ginger hair looked more wispy than usual, and his blue eyes seemed to have lost their habitual twinkle. His freckled face, always pale, looked positively sickly under the bright mortuary lights.

  ‘You know how I like to solve you
r cases for you, Geraldine. I’m really sorry to have to disappoint you, but the time of death in this instance is really not at all clear cut.’ He gave a resigned shrug.

  ‘Can you give us an approximate time frame?’ Geraldine asked. ‘Even unofficially?’

  Ian raised his eyebrows. Geraldine had spoken to Jonah on her own several times since Ian avoided viewing corpses whenever possible. By contrast, Geraldine had never felt squeamish around the bodies of victims, seeing them as an opportunity to discover information about the cause of their deaths, rather than the physical remains of a living, breathing person. Thanks to Ian’s frequent absence from such viewings, Geraldine had developed a relationship of trust with Jonah who was happy to chat to her off the record. In fact his insights often suggested useful lines of enquiry.

  ‘Due to the progression in the putrefaction I’d say he was probably killed around two weeks ago,’ Jonah replied.

  ‘It can’t have been more than ten days, eleven at the most. That’s when he went missing,’ Ian corrected him.

  ‘In the light of that information, I’d hazard a guess that he was killed ten days ago,’ Jonah replied promptly. ‘You know this isn’t an exact science, Ian, but I would say it was unlikely to be much less than ten days, due to the state he’s in. So there you go, I was able to help you after all. That makes me feel a lot better. Not that it makes any difference to our friend here,’ he added, prodding the body irreverently.

  Ian watched Jonah’s actions with a scowl of distaste, but Geraldine smiled.

  ‘So we have a rough time of death. Can you do some more of your magic and say where he was killed?’ Geraldine asked.

  ‘Would you like me to give you the address?’

  Geraldine grinned. ‘Yes please, along with the name of the killer and where he or she is now.’

  ‘I can tell you that Jason definitely wasn’t killed where he was found. He was lying on his front when he was discovered, but fixed lividity shows he was lying on his back for a few days after he was killed.’