The Trouble With Tortoises
Page 18
They all stared out at the body, as another pan of hot water was cautiously poured over the ice holding it in place. The corpse bobbed on its back, looking rather like someone out for a relaxing swim. One hand rested on the ice – the hand that had been noticed by the workman that morning – and it almost made you imagine the body was resting its arm on a pillow, or the edge of a bathtub.
Clara discreetly checked her watch and wondered how long Chang’s patience would last before he sent someone to chase her up. They had already stood by the bank close to an hour. She was debating about wandering back along the path and at least letting Chang know what was happening, when Dr Deáth gave a cry of triumph.
The body had slipped free from its mooring spot. Ice still clung to its wrist, sleeve and the right side of the torso and leg, but it was no longer attached to the main portion and could be brought to shore. It was impossible to drag the body into the boat with it already loaded with four people, so a rope was hooked around the corpse’s chest and under the arms. Dr Deáth gave the body a careful look over from where he was perched, then he gave the word and the rowing boat headed back to shore, passing out a line of rope behind them. Once the boat was dragged up the bank, Dr Deáth supervised as the corpse was drawn through the channel in the ice and gently brought to shore.
Clara headed over with Park-Coombs to get a look at the mysterious man in the ice. Dr Deáth was carrying out a quick assessment of the body before it was placed on the stretcher. The face was bloated black and purple. One eye appeared to have been lost to fish or some other river creature. There were tooth marks in other areas of the face, suggesting small creatures had nibbled upon the poor man. The body had expanded with the gases of decomposition and it was hard to get an impression of what he must have looked like in life. There was no immediate evidence to suggest who he was, though Clara took in what details she could.
Dr Deáth pointed out a black patch on the sodden clothes, right in the middle of the belly.
“Stab wound,” he told Inspector Park-Coombs, though naturally Clara overheard. “Looks deep and lots of blood loss. A potentially fatal wound. But I can’t say for sure that is what killed him. He might have been stabbed and then pushed into the water and drowned. I’ll know more when I have him back at the morgue.”
“He has been dead a while, hasn’t he?” Clara asked uneasily.
“Yes,” Dr Deáth stood back and allowed his assistants to place the body on a stretcher. “Days, at the very least.”
“Over a week?” Clara pressed.
The coroner gave her an intrigued look, he was trying to work out her point, then he realised the implication.
“I would say that is very possible,” he said
Clara nodded.
“His name might be Graham Wood, if you find anything that can confirm that, I would like to know, if the Inspector does not mind.”
“Tell Clara anything you can,” the inspector told the coroner.
The polite request followed by his approval was for the benefit of those watching. Clara and Tommy took their leave, walking away as the brazier was emptied and carried off once more, and the pots and pans restored to their rightful owners. The constables dispersed, back to the station or to walk their beats, and the coroner’s assistants somehow managed to climb up the steep bank from the path to the road above, with the stretcher firmly clasped between them.
“This destroys our theory that Wood was Leong’s killer,” Tommy pointed out the obvious as they walked around the curve of the path.
“It wasn’t my theory, it was the opinion of Bobby Jones,” Clara pulled a face, thinking about that. “He was throwing Chang a line to save himself. Chang’s intimidation was worthless. Those men don’t know who killed Leong.”
“Or they do, but they don’t want to say,” Tommy replied. “Let’s face it, whoever did this was highly placed.”
“Well, I have reached a stage where I am not sure how to solve this case,” Clara admitted. “We have no evidence to tell us who was on that landing and shot Freddie and then Leong. We don’t know who was near her.”
Clara suddenly stopped still.
“Unless…”
“Unless, Clara?”
“If we knew who was arrested where, then it would provide us with a huge clue as to who might have been close enough to dispatch Leong,” Clara frowned. “But the odds of anyone remembering all that reliably, and with the chaos that was going on, are slim.”
“We don’t need to know where everyone was when they were arrested,” Tommy corrected. “We just need to know who was not on the ground floor.”
“You are supposing the killer might have still been on the upper floor when the police entered the house and began arresting people?” Clara considered this notion carefully. “If not on the upper floor, then maybe coming down the stairs. We know that none of the gang were shooting from the first and second floor windows, because they did not open. Harold noticed that. Which means the only probable reason a person would be on the stairs or upper floors is because they were going after Leong.”
“I know it could be a long shot, but it might give us a hint of where to look closer,” Tommy continued. “Park-Coombs could ask his men and see what they remember.”
“It is worth a try,” Clara agreed. “Even if eyewitness statements are often unreliable, it may at least give us a nod in the right direction.”
They had reached the top of the path and ahead was Chang’s dark green car. There was a thin line of smoke creeping up out of a window, as Chang puffed on a cigarette. As they came closer, he opened a passenger door for them.
They climbed into the back of the car, Clara first, Tommy just behind, and sat beside Chang. He finished his cigarette and rolled down the window nearest him an inch or two to throw out the stub. He said nothing until Tommy had pulled closed the door and they were snug in the car. Chang motioned to a thick, fur skin lying on the floor and Clara picked it up to throw over herself and Tommy. They were not as cold as they might have been, as they had huddled by the brazier, but they were already beginning to shiver.
“Well?” Chang asked.
“The man they pulled from the water was about Tommy’s height. He had dark hair, thinning at the temples, an obviously broken nose and I saw he was missing the tip of his finger on his…” Clara paused to look at her hands and think, “…his right hand. He was wearing a white shirt with a pale blue stripe and a waistcoat that might have been olive green, but the water had stained it so badly I am not sure.”
“Could you see a scar near his lip, here,” Chang indicated to a spot just above his lip.
Clara shook her head.
“His face was badly bloated from being in the water. I could make out the broken nose, but nothing else.”
“It could be Graham,” Chang said thoughtfully. “I can’t remember if he was missing the tip of a finger, though.”
Chang leaned forward and tapped at the screen that divided himself from the driver in front and gave a semblance of privacy to the passengers. The driver pulled back the screen but made no indication he had heard the conversation.
“Sir?”
“Do you remember if Graham Wood was missing the tip of a finger?” Chang asked.
“You would think a detail like that might stick in your mind,” Clara noted, as the driver stopped to think.
Chang gave her a fierce look.
“In my line of work, most people are missing bits of themselves. Sometimes from disease, sometimes from accidents, sometimes because they annoyed me.”
Clara gave him a bright smile.
“You don’t appear to be missing anything, at least nothing I can see.”
“I have a little more sense,” Chang hissed, then he turned back to his driver. “Well?”
“I think he did, sir,” the driver replied. “I’m not certain.”
Chang muttered under his breath – he might have been swearing in Chinese – and threw the driver’s screen back across.
“Anything you can tell me about Graham that might aid his identification?” Clara asked Chang in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice.
Chang was doing a good job of not scowling at her.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, then, in a louder voice. “We shall drive the Fitzgeralds home now!”
The car engine came to life after a couple of attempts; the engine was cold and seemed to dislike the weather as much as everyone else. They pulled away from the canal and took a discreetly circuitous route back to Clara and Tommy’s house to avoid the police.
Chang lit another cigarette and started to puff on it hard, like it might be his last.
“I don’t like this. How did he end up in the water?”
“I can’t say just yet,” Clara told him. “But he had been stabbed. Leong told me she stabbed the man who attacked her, and if that was Graham Wood…”
“Yes, yes, I understand the implication,” Chang was tetchy, annoyed the interrogation of his former employees had ended in further lies.
He refused to be drawn into conversation the rest of the way home, and Clara was not sorry for that. She and Tommy were deposited at the top of her road and had to walk the rest of the way. Chang’s car roared off in a fury, as if it had picked up on its master’s ire.
“He took that well,” Tommy observed sarcastically as they walked the last few yards home.
Didn’t he just?” Clara sighed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Early in the afternoon, Clara took Bramble to the park to see if they could find Mr Cobb. Bramble was excited about being taken to a new place and barked at the ducks in the pond, who gave him bored looks. Thoroughly overjoyed by his unexpected trip out, Bramble bounced on his hindlegs and made an old lady start when he leapt up in the air to inspect her fur muff. Clara swiftly apologised and hurried away.
It was crossing Clara’s mind that this might not be the greatest of ideas, as she arrived at the gates of the petting zoo. Bramble was now pouncing into the big snow drifts along the path, delighted by the way he sank into the icy white stuff. His curly coat was becoming dotted with balls of ice. Clara plucked at one and discovered it was firmly frozen to the dog.
“Well, you are going to have to sit by the fire when we get home,” she noted. “Preferably in that big old tin bathtub, to collect all the water that is going to melt off you.”
Bramble glanced up at her face and wagged his tail furiously.
“What shall I do with you?” Clara sighed at him affectionately, which induced such happy rapture in the dog, that he danced on his back feet and waved his front paws up and down at her.
Bramble, if nothing else, loved attention.
Chuckling to herself, Clara knocked hard on the gates of the petting zoo. She wondered if Mr Cobb was even here, though it occurred to her that in such inclement weather the animals would require more attention than normal. She waited awhile, shuffling her feet to keep warm. Bramble cocked his leg against the gatepost.
“There is a bell, you know,” a voice grumbled from behind Clara.
She turned her head and saw the same park keeper who had assisted her before. He was wrapped up so heavily in scarves and a thick woollen hat that all she could see was his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He waved at the gate vaguely, then went back to casting salt on the pathways of the park.
Clara glanced to where he had pointed and spied a wooden box nailed to the wall. It was rather like the boxes some shops and business premises had for post, instead of a letterbox in the door. Clara had not paid the box any attention earlier, assuming it was something of this nature. It was unmarked but had a door with a round knob. Clara wriggled the door open – it had swollen with the damp weather – and discovered the metal handle of a bell pull inside.
“Well hidden,” she observed to Bramble.
Pulling the handle, she heard a bell ringing somewhere behind the gates. If Mr Cobb was about, he must surely hear that. As she closed the door again, so noticed a brass plaque attached to it. The plaque had tarnished badly, and it was almost unreadable, but Clara could just make out the phrase ‘ring for attention’.
She timed five minutes by her watch and was prepared to go and come back another day, when she heard footsteps approaching. Mr Cobb opened the gate and smiled at her.
“Miss Fitzgerald.”
“I hoped I could ask for your assistance?” Clara said.
Mr Cobb’s eyes lit up, then he noticed Bramble.
“Ah, I don’t take dogs. There is a nice dogs’ home in Hove.”
“That is not why I am here,” Clara promised him. “Bramble is firmly part of the family. No, it is about the tortoise problem I mentioned before.”
“You best come in, then,” Mr Cobb ushered her through the gates and shut them behind her. “It has been a busy day. Many of my animals are not inclined towards cold weather.”
Clara noticed that the aviaries had thick blankets covering the upper portions and there were numerous bales of straw stacked ready to be distributed among the animals.
“My birds hate draughts,” Mr Cobb followed her gaze. “I put up the blankets to keep the wind out and I have put extra straw in their nest boxes. I find that even birds not normally inclined to use boxes will venture into them in the winter. They have lots of food inside, and a hot water bottle each to try to keep them warm.”
Mr Cobb showed Clara into a wooden hut that functioned as his office. Perched on a stand nearest a potbelly stove was the cockatiel Clara had noticed earlier. He raised his yellow crest at her.
“Archimedes prefers to be in here,” Mr Cobb said with a laugh. “He never has adapted to English weather. Here, sit your dog by the stove and let’s melt that ice off him.”
Clara positioned Bramble by the stove and instructed him to wait there. The poodle gave the white bird above his head a suspicious glare.
“Now, how can I help?” Mr Cobb asked, automatically filling a kettle to make tea for them both.
“You recall the friend I mentioned with a tortoise? Well, he has managed to lose the little fellow.”
“Oh dear,” Mr Cobb sighed with sympathy. “These things do happen. Could have been the wrong diet. Is he looking for a replacement?”
“He has not lost him in the sense that the tortoise has died,” Clara corrected. “What I meant was that the tortoise has wandered off.”
Mr Cobb looked relieved.
“They do things like that. Surprisingly good at disappearing, for an animal that is not precisely fast.”
“We are fairly confident that the tortoise is somewhere in my friend’s house. We have ruled out the garden, as it is too cold for Jeremiah to have wandered out there. The trouble is finding him.”
Mr Cobb nodded his head in understanding.
“If he is a small tortoise, he could have climbed into any number of cubbyholes. One of mine once clambered behind a cupboard. Took me ages to find him. I was putting out food and it was vanishing, so I knew he was nearby, just couldn’t locate him.”
“This is the situation my friend is facing, and he has asked for my help,” Clara explained. “Honestly, for a while he was convinced the fellow had been stolen, but we are now pretty certain that is not the case.”
“How can I help?” Mr Cobb asked with genuine concern.
“Well, I had this rather… eccentric idea,” Clara confessed, suddenly feeling foolish. When you thought about saying the notion out loud, to someone who had not been present when the plan was formulated, it did sound a little crazy. “I rather hoped we could teach Bramble to sniff out the tortoise.”
Clara pointed to the little dog who had his attention riveted on Archimedes. The cockatiel was glaring at him with fearsome wide eyes.
“Bramble is good at sniffing out mice and rats. It is something of a speciality with him. Therefore, I wondered if he might be taught to sniff out tortoises?”
Clara waited for Mr Cobb to laugh, or to tell her it was ridiculous. He stared at Bramble thoughtfully.
Only then did Clara realise she had been tensed with anticipation. She smiled, relieved.
“I thought you might laugh at me,” she said sheepishly.
“When it comes to animals, I am fully appreciative of their remarkable capabilities,” Mr Cobb returned her smile. “And I would never be so rude as to laugh at you, Miss Fitzgerald. I like unusual ideas, after all, I am the man who has taught guinea pigs to ring bells and rats to count.”
Mr Cobb was proud of these achievements.
“I taught Gus the miniature pony to paint. People called me crazy, until they saw him doing it. I sell his paintings when I am open in the summer.”
Clara knew she had come to the right person with her plan. Mr Cobb was the sort of man who liked a challenge and never thought any idea too bizarre to consider.
“How might we go about teaching him?” Clara asked the zookeeper.
Once more Mr Cobb’s attention was focused on Bramble. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“How do you teach a dog to track any scent? You make it rewarding for him! He sniffs out rats and mice because it is fun to catch them. All we need to do is make tracking tortoises fun.”
“I brought his favourite ball,” Clara said, digging into her handbag. As she produced a small blue rubber ball, Bramble abandoned his place by the stove to dart over to her and bounce by her feet. “I thought if Bramble could track a tortoise, he could receive the ball as his prize?”
Clara didn’t add – ‘rather than killing the tortoise’ – which was Bramble’s normal response to the animals he tracked.
“Yes, yes, that will work,” Mr Cobb beamed. “No time like the present, let’s go to the tortoise shed.”
Bramble was instantly excited when they entered the tortoise house. There were no doubt mice living around the exhibits, even though Mr Cobb was very careful about keeping everything clean, but you just could not avoid rodents slipping in after food. The small poodle started to snuffle at the edges of the pens, clawing at a hole he found until Clara dragged him a way.