Silent as the Grave

by Paul Gitsham

  The slightly overweight Yorkshireman was spreading sheets of printed paper and photographs across Warren’s desk.

  “OK, take me through your findings,” invited Warren as he and Tony Sutton left their chairs and leant over the table.

  “First of all, we got the blood tox and stomach contents analysis back from the lab. The volume of strong lager in his gut was consistent with four cans of that Tennent’s muck we found in the living room, but his blood alcohol level was not nearly as high as you would expect from that amount of drink. Enough to make him a bit lairy, but he wasn’t rip-roaring drunk. He could have been a bit unsteady on his feet and tripped, but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion.”

  “So he had consumed the lager fairly close to the time of death,” suggested Sutton, “and it hadn’t had time to be fully digested and absorbed?”

  “Precisely. He’d consumed the cans quickly, probably within half an hour of his circulation stopping. However, the remains of the pizza he’d eaten for tea were pretty well digested. More like four to five hours.”

  “So he’d eaten his dinner around what, ten, eleven? Then several hours later guzzled four cans of super-strength lager in quick succession,” suggested Warren.

  “In his bedroom,” interjected Sutton, “before taking the cans back downstairs, ignoring the recycle bin and leaving them on the coffee table in the living room. Then for some reason he took a header down the stairs.”

  “That doesn’t make much sense,” mused Warren, scratching his chin absently.

  “Well there’s more, Chief. The pathologist performed a full autopsy to determine the cause of death.” Harrison moved an X-ray film of the young man’s head, neck and shoulders to the centre of the desk.

  “Just as you’d expect, he died of a broken neck. Pretty much instantaneously.” He pointed to a bright white line across the vertebra. “At first glance it’s a classic fracture of the C2 vertebra. You see it in car accidents or sporting injuries where the victim hits a surface chin first, snapping their head back. In this case it also tore the carotid arteries.”

  “So he went head first down the stairs—pretty much what I thought at first glance,” said Warren, his hopes of proving it to be a suspicious death starting to evaporate.

  “Well Professor Jordan wasn’t entirely happy and he had a closer look.” Harrison pulled over a colour photograph of the victim’s face. The thin, bloodless lips were visibly cut and the skin on the chin was split wide open. A second photo showed a mess of broken teeth in the mouth, which had been levered open with a wooden tongue depressor.

  Warren stared at the photograph. “I don’t see it. These injuries look consistent with him landing chin first on the hard, wooden flooring forcing his head back and fracturing his neck.”

  A sudden intake of breath from Tony Sutton suggested that the Detective Inspector had spotted what his boss hadn’t. “No blood.”

  “Exactly. The poor bugger was dead before he took that dive.”

  Warren’s head spun, the implication clear and ugly. “What else have you got?”

  “The Prof did a full check of his body and found suspicious markings.” Another colour photograph. “First off, look at his shoulders and arms.”

  The caterer’s arms had the white, pasty cast of a bloodless corpse. A stark contrast, Warren noted, to the tops of his shoulders and his chest, which had a faint pinkish hue. The colour was clearly that of a freshly dead body, but there was a definite difference between the two patches of skin.

  A close-up of the tops of the shoulder showed faint, circular impressions.

  “There could be plenty of explanations for the discrepancy, but try this on for size. The victim was lying in bed, on his back. Another person kneels on his shoulders, pinning him down so he can’t move. He’s there for some time, long enough for the blood to leave his arms. He probably had a major case of pins and needles at the very least.”

  “Long enough to force four cans of Tennent’s lager down his neck?” asked Sutton.

  “Quite possibly.”

  “What about the fingerprints on the can? That would suggest that he drank them himself?” Warren was now playing devil’s advocate.

  “We dusted the can and found only a single set of his prints on each can. Nothing else. He would have had to remove each can from the bag and chug it in one go—and that’s going to be pretty hard going by the time you’re on your second or third one—and then place it on the table downstairs, all without adding more prints.”

  “So you’re suggesting that the cans were wiped before he drank from them—hence no prints from the retailor—then taken downstairs by somebody else careful enough not to leave their own prints?”

  “It’s certainly one interpretation.”

  “So how did he die? You said that he was dead before he fell down the stairs?” Warren’s mouth was dry.

  Harrison slid another photograph across the table, this time of the back of the young man’s head. A faint, reddish mark was visible at the base of the skull where the pathologist had shaved the hair away.

  “The Prof reckons he had his neck snapped.” He stepped over to Sutton, facing him. Placing one forearm behind Sutton’s skull, he placed the heel of his other palm under his chin.

  “You need to know what you are doing and it takes a fair bit of strength, but get the angle right and enough leverage and it’s possible.”

  Sutton swore quietly. “Who the hell would know how to do that?”

  “Probably the same sort of person who could snap the neck of a Border collie with a single kick.”

  Warren felt a flush of light-headedness come over him and grabbed the desk for support. Murder. And he was to blame, at least in part. He should have arrested the young man the moment he had admitted to doctoring Liebig’s drinks that night. Then he’d have been safely in custody, rather than at home and vulnerable. Instead, he’d told Eddleston to finish his shift and attend the station the next day, so as not to raise the suspicion of whoever the mysterious manager was who had bribed him that evening. But it was too late. They’d already alerted the suspect. He’d probably been tipped off the moment he and Tony Sutton had blundered into the hotel, bullying the manager into letting them interview the agency workers about the night Liebig had died.

  “Thanks, Andy,” he managed to mumble, before stumbling out of the room.

  He was halfway to Detective Superintendent Grayson’s office when he felt Tony Sutton’s grip on his elbow.

  “What are you doing?” he asked turning towards the Detective Inspector.

  “You don’t think I’m letting you go in there on your own, do you?” the older man hissed as he pulled Warren into the alcove separating the suite of offices from the main open-plan workspace.

  “What do you mean?” asked Warren.

  “I’m not bloody stupid. I saw the look in your eyes. You’re blaming yourself for Eddleston’s death. You’re about to march into that office and ask to be removed from the case and referred to Professional Standards.”

  Warren didn’t try to argue. “It’s my fault, Tony. What was I thinking? I should have arrested him there and then. Taken him into custody. He’d have been safe here.”

  “For one night maybe. Then he’d have been killed the next night. Or the night after that. He was as good as dead the moment he spiked Liebig’s drink back in December.”

  Warren shook his head. “That’s not the point, Tony. I didn’t follow procedure.” He leant wearily against the wall and closed his eyes. “I’m too close to this. It’s clouding my judgement. I shouldn’t be on the case.”

  “Bullshit. You made a valid operational decision and any tribunal would see that.”

  Warren smiled humourlessly. “Maybe I’ll call you as a witness in my defence.”

  “No need, I’ll be standing next to you.”

  Warren stared into the other man’s eyes. “You’re serious…”

  “Damn right I am. I agreed fully with the decision at the time and I haven’t
changed my mind.” He paused. “If you want to go down for this, I’m going to go down with you.”

  “Don’t be bloody silly, Tony. I won’t let you.”

  “You can’t stop me. And ask yourself who’s being silly here. Who the hell do you think is going to continue this investigation if you throw yourself on your sword? It’ll be brushed under the carpet. Nobody is going to want to stir up the shit over some alleged miscarriage of justice from twenty-odd years ago. This isn’t the Guildford Four. Vinny Delmarno was guilty of that murder and a lot more besides.”

  “You sound as if you approve of what they did.”

  Sutton’s jaw tightened but he said nothing. After a long few seconds he turned on his heel and stalked back into the office.

  Chapter 25

  Warren had called Sheehy again. Despite the hour, the man sounded thick-tongued and slurred his speech slightly. However, he agreed to Warren’s demand for a meeting.

  This time the two men drove out to a small park on the outskirts of the town. The cloak-and-dagger stuff was getting rather old hat, although after what had happened to Zachary Eddleston, Warren couldn’t help feel that perhaps Sheehy’s paranoia wasn’t as silly as it had first seemed.

  Warren had asked if Tony Sutton wanted to join him for the meeting. The older man had declined, instead offering to follow them at a discreet distance as backup. Warren hadn’t pushed; it was clear that he didn’t know what to feel about his former mentor and friend.

  “This is getting serious. I need everything that you have about this case and I need it now.”

  Sheehy’s breath stank of mints and coffee again, but his eyes were focused and his speech had become clearer in the past hour or so. He ignored Warren’s demand. “You first. Have you been to see Obsanjo?”

  There was no point getting into an argument. Warren outlined his meeting with the incarcerated drug dealer.

  “So you believe me?”

  Warren wasn’t ready to go that far and he said so.

  Sheehy unzipped his windcheater, removing another folder. He handed it over. “Another show of good faith, Warren.”

  “What is it?”

  But Sheehy was already walking away.

  * * *

  The A4 folder was stuffed with papers. Some of them freshly printed, others clearly photocopies of older documents or newspaper clippings. Warren spread them out across the briefing room table.

  “Let’s see what Sheehy’s got to say for himself, shall we?” Warren’s light tone belied the emotions he was feeling.

  “Boss, what’s wrong?”

  Warren felt dizzy, the piece of paper he was holding in his hand suddenly seemed hot and he dropped it back on the table as if burned, before pushing his chair back. He was going to be sick. He managed the half-dozen steps to the wastepaper basket next to the door before his knees gave way and he collapsed in front of it, retching.

  Beside him Tony Sutton was opening the door, calling into the CID office for assistance.

  “It’s OK, Tony. I’m OK.” Warren’s voice was thick, as if his tongue was too large for his mouth. He sat back, his breathing steadying.

  Sutton pressed a plastic cup of chilled water from the cooler into his hand and Warren drank gratefully, the cold liquid soothing the burning in his throat, washing the taste of bile and stale coffee from his mouth.

  Sutton picked up the sheets of paper that Warren had dropped back onto the table.

  “Oh shit,” he muttered as he looked at the heading.

  Autopsy report, Niall MacNamara. Conducted 11 May 1988.

  “You shouldn’t be reading this, Boss. It’s not right.” He thumped his hand down on the table. “What is wrong with that bastard Gavin? He can’t do this…”

  Warren waved weakly as he pulled himself to his feet.

  “It’s all right; just give me a moment.”

  “You don’t need to read this,” Sutton repeated more firmly. He was obviously appalled. Sheehy had practically ambushed Warren. That Warren had never really come to terms with his father’s suicide and the issues surrounding it was clear to all who knew him. The man had changed his surname to his mother’s maiden name when he’d joined to police. Obviously his birth name was listed in his official file and there had been no attempt at subterfuge, but it was clear that he wanted to dissociate himself from his father and his shameful past, that he didn’t want that burden hanging over him as he forged his own way in the world.

  “I have to do this, Tony. I’ve put it off too long.” Taking a deep breath, he took the sheets of paper from the reluctant DI.

  The autopsy was typed onto a standard proforma. The clunky typeface and the slightly skewed angle of some of the text indicated that it had been filled in using a typewriter. That wasn’t really surprising. From what Warren could remember computers were still pretty primitive back then, printers even more so. The proforma had probably been filled in by hand then typewritten, likely by a secretary.

  It was the first time that he had seen the report. He’d handled his father’s death certificate. He’d come across it when dealing with his mother’s estate after her death, but he’d buried it in a box file and locked it away with his and Susan’s life insurance policies and wills.

  Somehow reading the dry medical language served to distance him from the meaning of the document and as he read it out loud, his voice became stronger.

  “Deceased is a white male, approximately five feet eleven inches in height, weighing twelve stones seven pounds, positively identified as Detective Sergeant Niall MacNamara, date of birth fourth of October 1942. He was found in the driving seat of his petrol car, with the windows rolled up, engine running and a hosepipe running between the exhaust system and the passenger compartment.

  “Subject was in apparently good physical condition with weight and muscle tone within healthy parameters for a man of his age (forty-five years). A core body temperature of 35.1°C (95.2°F), and the degree of rigor mortis suggest a time of death within one hour of his body being discovered.”

  Warren’s voice trembled. What if he’d found his father earlier? He’d been in his bedroom, on a pleasant summer’s evening reading Isaac Asimov’s The Robots of Dawn. He’d never finished it, unable to come back to it even as an adult. What if he’d decided to leave his room and get some fresh air? Take a walk down the garden to see what his dad was up to in the garage? To follow his dad’s repeated suggestions, he realised with grim irony?

  His father hadn’t been a very bookish man; the only time Warren had ever seen him reading for pleasure was on the beach, on the family’s summer holiday. Warren would stuff his rucksack with as many paperbacks as his junior library card would let him take out (six if he remembered correctly) and within a week would be spending his pocket money on whatever trashy novels he could find in the beachfront shops, buried among the saucy postcards and sticks of rock.

  His father by contrast would take a single thriller with him, John le Carré usually, and read it in dribs and drabs over the fortnight. Warren wasn’t even sure that he’d finish it. Because of that, Niall MacNamara couldn’t understand why his younger son would rather spend a summer evening in his room absorbed in a good novel than outside, running around getting into trouble. Like James, Warren thought ruefully.

  He continued reading, “Lividity is fixed in the buttocks, except where the body was in contact with the car seat, consistent with the deceased having died in the seated position.” Under the pull of gravity and free from the pumping of the circulation, the blood settles to the lowest point, where it becomes fixed, staining the skin. Moving a body after death can result in a discrepancy between the position it is found in and the position it died in. Warren’s father had been slumped in the driver’s seat.

  He turned the page over to the section entitled “Dissection of organs”.

  The weight and appearance of each of his father’s internal organs had been recorded, with no abnormalities.

  “Lungs are clear of vomitus and stomach
contents, indicating the deceased did not choke from alcohol regurgitation.”

  His father had been a healthy man in his mid forties. If he were alive today he’d be looking forward to his seventieth birthday, probably in good health. Unbidden, his father-in-law sprang to mind and he pushed down the faint feeling of resentment. Susan’s parents were about the same age as his parents would have been and were active and full of life. “Seventy is the new fifty,” he’d read somewhere. His father hadn’t even seen fifty.

  The next section was titled “Cause of death”.

  “Physical examination of body reveals no trauma, puncture marks or injuries sufficient to cause death. Stomach contents reveal a significant volume of alcohol, probably whisky, consistent with a bottle found at the scene, and food remains matching the description of the deceased’s last meal. (Blood toxicology report to be completed.)

  “Deceased’s skin has red flushing indicative of raised levels of carboxyhaemoglobin, from carbon monoxide poisoning. (Blood sent for gas analysis—results to be appended.)”

  Warren turned over the sheet to reveal photocopies of laboratory results. This time the sheets had been printed using a dot-matrix printer, the perforations from the tractor-feed paper showing as black circles on either side of the copies.

  Skimming through the header, he saw that it had taken almost a week for the results to return from the laboratory. Warren remembered that week as a blur, a hideous limbo where the family couldn’t even plan the funeral properly as they awaited the death certificate and for his father’s body to be released. Of course he now appreciated that the blood results had been returned in record time, no doubt due to pressure from above, either as a professional courtesy to the family or more likely a desire to clean up the mess they found themselves with.

  First the routine toxicology screen had ruled out any illegal narcotics or prescription drugs.

  The blood alcohol concentration was approximately 0.18%—equivalent to 180mg/100ml, more than twice the drink-drive limit and sufficient for significant inebriation but not fatal.