by Ann Cleeves
‘How do you know it’s a man?’ Vera wasn’t questioning the woman’s judgement; she was curious. ‘You get big women.’ Like me. And you.
‘The size of the bones. Of course there’s always some gender overlap, but in this case I’d say it was conclusive. Look at the skull and those pronounced orbital ridges. The facial features are all larger than you’d expect to find in a female.’ The woman was leaning right over the table, so her face was very close to the bones. It was almost as if she was smelling them, then Vera realized that, even wearing glasses, she was short-sighted. She was simply examining them very closely. ‘There’s a little irregularity here. This man broke his arm at some point. If you have a putative identification, we should be able to confirm it. That’s if we can track down the X-rays that would have been taken at the time.’
Vera thought that Eleanor, Robbie’s doting mother, would certainly be able to help with that. She’d remember the name of Marshall’s GP, the hospital where the broken arm was fixed. It seemed a sort of magic: all this information from a heap of bones. Alchemy, like turning straw into gold. Valerie had taken an instrument from her bag and was measuring one of the larger bones. ‘I should be able to give you an estimate of how tall he was. The length of the femur is usually about twenty-seven per cent of the full height.’ There was a pause as she seemed to be doing the sums in her head. Vera admired the mental arithmetic almost more than the way the woman was creating an accurate physical picture of the victim out of so little. She struggled to do any kind of maths, even with a pen and paper.
‘I’d say he was just over six foot.’ Valerie looked up. ‘Does that tally?’
‘I don’t know, but I can check with a relative. We already have contact with the mother.’
‘And there’s some dental work. That should be definitive, if the dental records still exist.’
‘His mother should be able to help with that too.’ Vera paused. ‘Any chance you could give us a cause of death? Or would that be pushing my luck?’
‘Ah.’ For a moment the anthropologist took her attention away from the skeleton. ‘Well, of course we have to be careful about that. Even if we find signs of an injury, there’s no absolute guarantee that it caused the fatality. For instance, a nick to the rib might mean that a knife caught the bone on its way to the heart. But it might have been a relatively superficial wound, with a soft-tissue injury being the real cause of death. And sometimes substantial damage has been caused post-mortem.’
‘But in this case…’ Vera was starting to like this woman, her enthusiasm and passion for her work. Her rigour. And the fact that she didn’t talk to Vera as if she were a six-year-old or a moron.
‘In this case, I think we can be pretty certain that death was caused by blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull.’
‘The guy was hit over the head with a heavy instrument.’ Vera wasn’t sure that fitted in with their theories about what might have happened on the night in June more than twenty years before. She’d been coming to the conclusion that if John Brace hadn’t been involved, this was some kind of gangland murder: serious criminals settling old scores. But Robbie wouldn’t have turned his back on those people, and they’d have been more likely to use a gun or a knife. Something more clinical and more certain. She pushed those ideas to the back of her mind and turned to the CSI.
‘So what have you got for us, Billy? Give us the benefit of your wisdom.’
‘There’s very little clothing left on this one. I’m guessing he was mostly wearing natural fibres, cotton and wool that would have degraded quickly. But we do have his boots. Leather, size ten. Good-quality, but I think they’d have been quite old even when he was killed. You can see the wear on the sole. And there’s a belt. It has a buckle shaped like a ship. Distinctive. Again I’d have thought a relative would recognize it.’
Vera nodded. She was thinking she’d go to see Eleanor immediately after finishing here, and that would get them all the confirmation they needed. There’d be enough to work on while they were waiting for X-rays and dental records. She thought Eleanor would be pleased to know that her son hadn’t run away and left her. She’d be glad to have even these bones to bury. Perhaps that would allow her some peace in her remaining years.
Billy was turning his attention to the second body. ‘This person was wearing mostly man-made fibre and there’s much less degradation. All that time ago the industry didn’t have the same anxieties about material hanging around in landfill sites for generations, and some of it will last forever, even in situations like our crime scene. A lot of the fabric has disappeared, of course. Nothing rats like better than a bit of nylon to build their nests. But there’s enough left to give us a bit of an idea about what she was wearing.’
‘She? You’re saying this is definitely a woman?’ Vera looked towards Valerie Malcolm for support.
The anthropologist nodded. ‘Oh yes, I’d say so. I had a look earlier. The pelvic bone is reasonably intact and the features on the skull are smaller. This is a much more delicate body altogether.’
‘Besides,’ Billy said, ‘unless we’re looking at a cross-dresser, I can’t see a bloke going out for the evening in lacy black underwear. There are only a few fragments left, but they’re quite obvious when you look for them.’
So perhaps this is Mary-Frances Lascuola. But we haven’t got any record of her since the mid-eighties, not very long after she gave up her daughter for adoption. No record of her offending, of her working. So where had she been hiding in the years before she ended up in a drain near St Mary’s? Or had she been placed there at the time she dropped out of sight, and was she still lying there when Brace pushed Robbie Marshall’s body in after her?
‘Can we tell if she died at the same time as the man?’
Malcolm and Keating shook their heads almost in unison. ‘You know pin-pointing time of death is tricky, even when the body’s much more recent.’ Keating sounded disapproving, as if Vera had failed to learn an obvious lesson.
‘So she could have been in the culvert for ten years before the second body was put in?’
‘Absolutely no reason at all why not.’
Vera wished the anthropologist didn’t sound quite so cheerful. ‘I thought you could narrow stuff down with the entomology.’ Now she was clutching at straws.
‘You could talk to a forensic entomologist, but I’d say it was unlikely to get anything helpful after all this time.’
‘There are no shoes for the woman,’ Billy said, ‘and that seems a bit odd. She’d either be wearing leather or plastic and you’d think they’d still be intact.’
‘Perhaps she didn’t die on the coast that night. If they brought her in the boot of a car, for example, her shoes might have been left behind.’
‘And put her in the same culvert as the first body, but later?’ This was Valerie Malcolm. ‘Because they thought it was a decent hiding place?’
‘Perhaps. John Brace admits to putting Marshall there, but claims to know nothing about the second body. If he’s telling the truth, and that’s a bloody big “if ”, then perhaps he was seen.’
‘And someone with a dead woman to dispose of thought it’d be a great place to get rid of her. I suppose there is a weird kind of logic to it. If Brace was implicated in the first murder, we’d assume he’d done the second too.’ Billy looked up and grinned. ‘What is it about you and complex crime scenes, Vera Stanhope? What do you do to attract them?’
Vera ignored that. ‘Any idea of age on this one?’
‘Younger than the man,’ Valerie Malcolm said, ‘and considerably shorter. Five foot five. Something like that.’ She looked up. ‘No dental work.’
‘What does that tell us?’ Vera had been expecting the same wealth of information as with the male and was starting to feel impatient, disappointed that they didn’t seem able to bring the woman to life in the same way.
‘Maybe just that she had better teeth. Fluoride toothpaste has done a lot to curb tooth decay. Or that she didn’t
have access to dental care.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘I don’t think I can help with that, either. There are just fewer bones for this one. I assume they’ve been scattered by predators and the smaller ones could have been washed through gaps in the boulders at a high tide.’ Valerie looked up. ‘Sorry I can’t be more help.’
‘Not your fault, pet. And you’ve worked a marvel on the first one.’ Vera looked across to Billy. ‘Did your guys come across anything at the scene that might help with ID? A bit of jewellery maybe?’
‘You know we’d have told you as soon as we found it, if we’d come across anything useful.’ Billy pretended to look hurt.
‘Aye well, you might, but I’m not sure about that chap who was in charge while you were away gallivanting.’
‘The team is still there,’ Billy said. ‘They’ve expanded the search back up the drain and out towards the shore. I’m heading up there now. We find anything at all and you’ll be the first to know.’
Vera found herself beaming.
Afterwards she and Billy stood together outside the mortuary. ‘I could do with some help here, Billy.’ She was leaning back against her car, enjoying the sun on her face. ‘Anything at all to identify that woman. Tell your team to pull out all the stops.’
‘No need to tell them that. Not my guys.’ He walked away without saying goodbye and she realized she’d offended him and could have kicked herself for being so tactless.
Chapter Twenty
Eleanor Marshall was waiting for Vera. Vera thought she’d been waiting in her tidy house in Wallsend since news of the bodies at St Mary’s had hit the headlines. She’d taken her seat in the living room, next to the window with its starched net curtains, and all day she’d looked down the street until she’d seen Vera’s car pulling up outside. There was even a tray prepared in the kitchen: two cups on matching saucers, a jar of instant coffee and a bowl with teabags, chocolate digestives still in their packet on a plate, an empty milk jug waiting to be filled. No doubt the kettle just needed to be switched on. She’d had too much pride to telephone the police station – she’d been rebuffed too many times in the past – but she’d trusted Vera enough to know she’d be there as soon as there was anything to say.
Vera made the tea before they started speaking. It seemed part of a necessary ritual. After all this time there was no rush and Eleanor hadn’t clamoured for information as soon as the door was opened.
‘You’ve found him,’ the old lady said. The tray was on the small round table with its embroidered cloth. Vera poured tea and milk.
‘Nothing definite yet.’ Vera took a biscuit. During an investigation you ate when you could. ‘I’m hoping you’ll be able to help with that.’
‘Of course.’ She sounded grateful. At last she was being involved. At last there was something she could do.
‘Did Robbie ever break his arm?’
‘Yes. It was one winter, not many years before he went missing. He slipped on the ice, just walking out of the house, and fell awkwardly, said he felt like a clumsy fool. He was in a cast for weeks, but he still went into work and did as much as he could in the yard.’
Vera nodded to show she knew he’d been a conscientious man. ‘We’ll need the name of his GP. Where did he go to get it fixed?’
‘Rake Lane Hospital. His GP was called Dr King. I think he retired years ago. The surgery’s still there, though, just the other side of the park.’
Vera nodded again.
‘And where did he go to the dentist?’ A pause. ‘You do understand all this will help identify him?’
‘I know.’ The woman gave a little grin. ‘I watch all those detective shows on the TV. I’m addicted to them. Daft really, when I knew something violent must have happened to him, but they help me escape somehow. And the police on television always do get the killer in the end. His dentist was Moira Armstrong in Howden. She’s getting on now but she’s still practising.’
‘We found a belt,’ Vera said.
The woman’s face lit up. ‘I know the one. He always wore it. He bought it when he was away in Texas on one of his birdwatching trips with John Brace. It had a ship on the buckle, and it seemed right for him. Because he worked in the shipyard. You know.’
‘That’s the belt we found.’ Vera waited a moment so that the information had time to sink in, but Eleanor had known since she’d seen the local news that they’d found her son. ‘We’ll check with the X-rays at the hospital and the dental records, but I think we’ve found Robbie.’ Another pause. ‘He was murdered, Eleanor, but I’m sure you’ve worked that out already. He didn’t put himself in that hole in the ground. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill him?’
The woman shook her head. ‘I think he must have had a life that I knew nothing about. At home he was a loving son, and nobody would have wanted to hurt him.’
‘You’ll have seen from the news that they found two bodies where he was buried. It seems certain that the other belonged to a woman. Do you know who that might have been? I know I asked you before about girlfriends, but perhaps you’ve had time to think about it. Even if he didn’t bring her home, maybe he said something.’
‘I have been thinking,’ Eleanor said. She stared out of the window. ‘I would have liked it if he’d married and had children. I told you I was a teacher before I married. I joked to him about it, told him to find someone quickly before it was too late and I got too old to play with my grand-bairns. He said I was the only girl for him. I didn’t believe that. Not really. Perhaps he thought I wouldn’t approve of the women he was seeing. I wondered if maybe he’d found someone on his travels abroad; I wouldn’t have minded a foreign lass, as long as she made him happy. But he didn’t bring anyone home. There were nights he stayed out. He told me he was with John and Hector, but he could have been with girls then.’
‘A woman went missing sometime before Robbie. It’s possible that hers is the second body. She was called Mary-Frances Lascuola. Does the name mean anything to you?’ Vera watched Eleanor for some reaction but she only looked puzzled.
‘So he was seeing a foreigner? No, Robbie never mentioned seeing a woman with that name. I’d have remembered it.’
‘Mary was British,’ Vera said. ‘You wouldn’t have known about her background if you’d met her.’
But the woman only shook her head again. She seemed more distressed about the secrets that her son had been keeping from her than by the confirmation of his death.
* * *
Back in the police station, the team came together over tea and buns to compare notes. The official briefing would be later in the day, but this was the core group: Vera, Joe, Holly and Charlie. According to Vera, the people who mattered.
‘So you’ve both come up with the same name.’ She nodded towards Joe and Holly, and crumbs from an iced finger spilled across the desk. ‘A Scot called Sinclair. Mean anything to you, Charlie?’
He nodded. ‘He ran a club called The Seagull. It had a classy reputation. Drinks you’d need a mortgage to pay for, and the place to go if you wanted to meet famous footballers and their women, rock stars, actors. The Newcastle business mafia took it over at weekends.’
‘Judith Brace mentioned The Seagull to me.’ Vera pictured the club again in its heyday. The height of glamour. When she was a kid it had been her dream to get taken there, to drink cocktails on the terrace facing the sea. She imagined Hector there with John Brace and his cronies. She found it hard to believe that her father would have enjoyed the experience – like her, he’d never been much good in civilized company – but she felt an irrational stab of resentment all the same.
Holly broke into her thoughts. ‘According to the woman I spoke to, Mary-Frances worked there for a while.’
Vera raised an eyebrow.
‘She was a waitress, apparently,’ Holly said. ‘Not turning tricks. She was clean while she was there. It was supposed to be a fresh start. A new life.’
‘Do we believe that? S
he wasn’t just moving upmarket in the same profession?’
‘She’d only have been doing that if it was with Sinclair’s permission,’ Charlie said. ‘He wouldn’t have had freelancers working on his premises. He ran a very tight ship, did Gus Sinclair. He could be a charmer if he wanted to be – that was what his customers saw – but he was ruthless.’
‘Mary-Frances was only there for a short time,’ Holly said. ‘Something sent her back on the drugs big-style and she ended up going to a rehab day-centre in Bebington called Shaftoe House. It’s still going apparently, and I’m heading out there after we’ve finished here.’
‘Apparently Gary Keane installed a security system in the club,’ Joe said.
‘What do we know about Sinclair now? The Seagull’s been gone for years.’
‘It was burned down,’ Charlie said. ‘Everyone assumed it was insurance fraud. Whitley was changing, and the kids from Newcastle, the stags and the hens from Glasgow weren’t interested in champagne cocktails or fine dining. Word was Sinclair had it torched while it was still making him money, because he saw the way things were going.’
‘It must have been investigated.’ Vera wondered why she couldn’t remember the fire. Her dreams of sophistication literally going up in smoke. She’d probably been caught up with something at the other end of the county.
But of course Charlie had the details. ‘Sinclair had an alibi. Well, naturally he would. No way he would have done it himself, anyway.’
‘And the alibi?’
Charlie gave a slow smile. ‘He was at a police fund-raiser with half the force as witnesses.’
‘Oh, a sense of humour,’ Vera said. ‘I do like a sense of humour in a villain.’ A pause while she took the last Danish pastry before someone else could snaffle it. ‘And what happened to Mr Sinclair after the demise of The Seagull?’
‘He got a good payout.’ Charlie frowned as if he was trying to remember the exact details and was disappointed that he couldn’t come up with an accurate figure. ‘After all, it was a going concern and the last set of books showed a good profit. Then he disappeared for a while. Maybe he thought it would be tactful to keep out of the way.’
