by LJ Ross
“You never had any inkling that there might be something hidden there, until you happened to notice the silver?”
Colin shuddered.
“No, I had no idea. It was a shock.”
To say the least, Ryan thought. They came to stand a little way from the entrance to the Visitor Centre and through the fencing they could see the ruined fort.
“I bet you know all about the history of this place,” Colin said suddenly.
“What makes you say that?”
Colin shrugged.
“Your girlfriend. She’s a historian, isn’t she?”
Ryan took another long look at Colin Hart.
“I didn’t mean – that is – you were on the news, around Christmas. All about that stuff up on Holy Island. I recognise your face.”
“Good memory.”
Ryan opened his mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by some wild arm gestures from Phillips, who appeared to have been cornered by Professor Freeman. Shelving the thought for now, he instructed a PC to continue taking a statement from Colin Hart.
Once Colin was safely ensconced inside a police car, he took an extra minute to rifle through the man’s rucksack, rules and regulations be damned. His eye passed over a small rectangular post card, which bore a date stamp but no message.
* * *
The process of removing human remains from the wall cavity was long and tedious, but necessary if there was to be a successful prosecution in the future. Somewhat retrospectively, Ryan approved the resources, which included a forensic archaeological team who painstakingly exhumed the body from its resting place, layer by layer. At the same time, the police entomologist – Doctor Ambrose, a portly man who spent most of his waking hours in his cosy office at the Faculty of Biological Sciences in Newcastle – examined the bones and surrounding area for insect paraphernalia. As hour after slow hour passed, Ryan watched him shuffle around the excavation site like a mole, his myopic eyes benefiting from the help of extra-strength magnifying goggles.
Ryan remembered spending an unsettling morning in the close confines of Doctor Ambrose’s office, surrounded by the pickled remains of insects in jars and decomposing rats in plastic tubs. First editions of Faune des Tombeaux and La Faune des Cadavres took pride of place on the shelf beside his desk and lurid photographs of the process of decay were framed here and there.
Weird.
He may have been an oddball, but Ambrose could help to date a body to within a two-year period, and to within days or even hours for more recent cadavers. That made him a very useful person to know.
Standing a few feet away from where Ryan and Phillips perched atop the hill overlooking Sycamore Gap, Professor Freeman guarded her nest like a mother hen. She clucked around, watching the team of archaeologists do their work, supervising the movement of every stone, the displacement of every pebble. In an act of supreme diplomacy and in deference to his superior officer’s wishes, Ryan had decided to include her in the process, as an executive consultant.
Hours later, when his staff had done all they could for the day, Ryan and Phillips made their way to the next, distinctly less picturesque stop on their tour of Northumberland. The mortuary at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle was a triumph of clinical organisation. Banks of metal drawers lined the walls of the large, whitewashed space and trolleys stood in perfect rows; some were occupied, others were vacant. Ryan nodded a greeting to a couple of morticians he recognised and skirted past the trolleys, heading for the far corner of the room. He shivered slightly, partly thanks to the specialist cooling system, which pumped icy cold air into the rooms to offset the furnaces. Through a side door, Ryan and Phillips found themselves entering a series of ante-rooms, each set up for specialist autopsies or clinical evaluations. The lemony stench of formalin mixed with formaldehyde followed them as they headed to the door marked ‘Dr Jeffrey Pinter’.
The Senior Police Pathologist was an experienced man in his early-fifties. He was tall, shoulder-to-shoulder with Ryan who stood a couple of inches over six feet, but bonier, judging by the white lab coat which hung limply from his shoulders. For all that he bore a vague resemblance to the Grim Reaper, a fact greatly enhanced by the morbidity of his workplace, Pinter was a cheerful man. He looked up from his desk with a broad smile when they slipped inside his office.
“Ryan, Phillips,” he rose and extended a hand. “Good to see you both.”
“You too, Jeff. Thanks for taking time out of your weekend.”
“Them’s the breaks, or so they say. I’ve been looking at the lady you sent me,” Pinter clasped the lapels of his lab coat in a habitual gesture. “There are a few interesting things to note.”
“Such as?”
“Probably best to show you. Follow me, I’ve put her in Examination Room B.”
The bones had been laid out on a metal gurney like a jigsaw puzzle, to form a complete skeleton. Thin strands of wispy hair fell from the skull and crusted skin remained on parts of the bone. The three men stood above it, faces covered by surgical masks and hair protected by paper caps, so that only their eyes were visible.
“As you can see, there is a complete skeleton, which is remarkable,” Pinter said. “I think we can assume that she was enclosed inside the wall fairly soon after she died, otherwise I would have expected to see much more interference from local wildlife. Foxes have an excellent sense of smell.”
Phillips pulled a face. He had seen a few of those bodies before; men and women whose limbs had been ravaged by hungry animals.
“Aye, well, that’s something,” he said shortly, then cleared his throat. “How do you reckon she died?”
Pinter furrowed his brow so that the cap shifted on his head like a theatrical wig.
“Here,” he indicated a spot at the side of the skull. “You can see there has been some serious impact, judging from the fracture just above her left ear.”
Phillips leaned forward and saw the crack at the side of the skull, which was now more of an empty hole following concentrated decomposition in that area.
“Someone gave her a good bash.”
“You could say that,” Pinter agreed, with a chuckle that grated on Ryan’s nerves. “That seems to be the most obvious sign of trauma, from a blunt instrument or a hard impact with something solid, in my view. Probably suffered multiple whacks. Having said that, we can’t say one hundred per cent for sure that’s how she died; the remains are mostly bone, as you can see, so there’s no way for me to examine her internal organs for evidence of other trauma there.” He sucked in a breath and carried on. “Other than the fact that her bones have separated through the expected deterioration, there is a minor break in this bone in the wrist which might have occurred around the time of death. I also note a couple of healed breakages, probably from her childhood.” He pointed to the left forearm.
“I’m waiting for the histology report to come back – that should be in the next forty-eight hours, unless you need me to put a rush on it? I’ve taken samples from the bone and remaining tissue, though there wasn’t much of that.”
“Technically, this one’s non-urgent. What about identity?”
“Faulkner couldn’t find any identifying markers on the body or around the site; no handy bank cards or anything like that. We’re looking up dental records now. In the meantime, we’ll run a DNA test on the samples and compare them with the database to see if there’s a match. Otherwise, it’ll be a question of Missing Persons and good luck.”
Ryan merely nodded.
“How old is the body, do you think?”
“Well, as to that, I was going to introduce you to our new forensic anthropologist. She’s the one you really need to talk to. She’s been working with Doctor Ambrose and myself to come up with an accurate timescale. Shall I fetch her?”
With a spring in his step, Pinter skipped out of the room and down the corridor. In his wake, Ryan and Phillips exchanged a surprised glance and eagerly awaited the woman who seemed to have awakened a n
ew joie de vivre in at least one member of the mortuary staff.
* * *
Doctor Ann Millington was a methodical woman in her late twenties. She wore her long, ash blonde hair in a tail down her back and slim designer spectacles perched on her straight nose. Where Pinter had bounced out of the examination room like a character from Winnie the Pooh, she re-entered it more sedately, a slim blue folder clutched in one hand and a mug of steaming coffee in the other. Ryan eyed the mug covetously as she set it on the desktop in the corner.
“Doctor Millington?”
“My friends call me Millie,” she corrected them, offering a pale hand in greeting.
Younger than he had anticipated, Ryan thought, but she was still their go-to person for all things forensic anthropological. That meant she had made good use of her time. He took the hand that she offered and gave it a firm shake.
“DCI Ryan, sergeant. Doctor Pinter told me that you would like to discuss what we’ve been able to find out so far. He’ll join us in a few minutes because he’s had a last minute delivery.”
Ryan wasn’t sure how to feel about them referring to dead people as ‘deliveries’. In his world, a delivery meant a parcel or a gift of some kind. He didn’t understand how they could see rotting cadavers in the same light.
He set that thought aside and moved to stand opposite her, on the other side of the trolley.
“We appreciate you taking the time to come down from Edinburgh to look at this,” he began. “In real terms, it’s not an urgent case.”
She smiled slightly.
“Every case of unexplained death has a sense of urgency.”
He nodded, pleased that she was of the same mind.
“We’re particularly interested in determining the age of the body.”
“I understand. Doctor Pinter has begun DNA and toxicology sampling and is cross-referencing dental records. For the sake of completeness, I’ve already begun the process of analysing the remaining tissue samples for Carbon-14.”
The reaction from the two men seated opposite her was almost comical. Ryan adopted a carefully neutral expression in an effort to mask his total ignorance of the process of Carbon-14 dating, his basic training on the subject long since forgotten. Phillips nodded wisely and adopted a fatherly expression, with the same goal in mind.
“Would you like me to run through the process?” She offered.
Relief flooded both faces as they nodded.
“Radioactive carbon, or Carbon-14, naturally makes its way into the human body via the biological food chain. It decays over time at a mathematically predictable rate and, as soon as an organism dies, its body will stop taking on any new carbon.
“Now, during the 1950s and 60s, several leading nations, including the United Kingdom, authorised the testing of nuclear weaponry above ground. Although this stopped, the residual effect is a higher than normal level of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere. Almost double the normal level, in fact. This is particularly useful in my profession and yours, because we can test a body for carbon levels. The teeth absorb carbon very easily,” she added.
“So, you measure the carbon in someone’s teeth and compare it with known levels of atmospheric carbon around the time the teeth would have developed. Anyone born since the 1950s will have a higher level, right?”
Phillips was a quick study. He turned and met Ryan’s surprised face with a shrug.
“What? I watch the Discovery Channel, sometimes.”
“Sure, when you’re not watching Sky Sports,” Ryan muttered.
“In simple terms, yes, that’s the process” Millie agreed, cutting through their byplay like a primary school teacher. “Carbon readings have been taken every year since the ‘50s, so we can use our equations to extrapolate a birth date for our unknown victim. The results should be available very soon and will be useful in the event that nothing turns up on dental records.”
“That’s appreciated.”
Millington drew out a few sheets of paper from the folder she held.
“Here’s a copy of my preliminary report, which I’ve also sent to your office e-mail. Obviously, I will update it when the lab results come through, but I can already confirm the following things: the skeleton is definitely a female judging by the circular indentation in her pelvis, most likely of Western European ancestry. She would have enjoyed a comfortable socio-economic environment in her early years, including a balanced diet, since her bones are well-developed. The fact they remain largely intact rather than having crumbled would suggest a healthy specimen, of a height somewhere between five-feet-three inches and five-seven.”
Ryan listened while skim-reading the neatly typed report.
“Judging from the length of the femur, the molars, the cranium … I would put her age within the range of late teens to mid-twenties.”
Millie indicated the relevant areas on the skeleton lying before them, with the same detached voice cultivated by many medical and scientific professionals. From his position a good few feet away, Phillips tried not to hold it against her. He had never had a stomach for this part of the job and already he could feel his innards objecting to the close proximity with death.
For a murder detective, it was a bit of a conundrum.
“You say there were injuries?”
“Yes.” She drew out another sheet of paper showing the black outline of a skeleton, annotated with markers to denote the presence of abnormalities. “Ante mortem injuries include a couple of healed breaks in her left forearm, probably from a childhood fall. More interesting would be the break in her left wrist, which I would judge to have been sustained around the time of death, or shortly before. There is no evidence of the bone having knitted back together, you see.”
Her fingers hovered over the broken wrist, which looked more like a mass of jumbled bone matter to Ryan’s untrained eye. Still, all manner of possibilities presented themselves; had their victim struggled, fallen or been forcibly restrained around the time she died?
“Mm hmm,” was all he said. “What about post mortem interval?”
Millie crossed her arms neatly.
“I’ve estimated the age of the remains to be approximately ten years old,” she supplied. “This takes into account average temperatures in the region, the accessibility to wildlife and the general state of the body when we found it. Jeff agrees with me and Doctor Ambrose has added his thoughts. We are definitely of the view that this victim died no more than ten years ago.”
“Less than we thought,” Phillips murmured.
“Yeah,” Ryan’s voice was flat. He checked his watch.
Four-fifteen.
“Arrange a briefing for six-thirty, Frank. I want all hands on deck.”
CHAPTER 3
Phillips had done little more than make a quick detour to the gents toilet before they received a call from Jeff Pinter to say that their female victim had already been identified by her dental records, which had flagged as a priority given that she was already registered as missing at the National Crime Agency’s UK Missing Persons Bureau.
“Amy Llewellyn, reported missing on the evening of 21st June, 2005, aged twenty-one.” Ryan held out his smartphone, which displayed a departmental photograph of Amy, stored on the Missing Persons Database from the original case file and taken on the night of her birthday. She had been lovely, he thought. Petite, with dark curly hair worn in a playful bob and laughing green eyes which smiled up at the camera. He wondered if it was the fact that her features were even; the kind of generic, symmetrical beauty, which made hers the kind of face that people found familiar.
Because, he couldn’t for the life of him think why, but she was familiar.
Naturally, her details were registered on the database, so it was possible that he recognised her image from the original police appeal, back in 2005.
Except, in 2005, he would have been in London, cutting his teeth at the Met. He had been too busy around that time to pay much attention to one of the thousands of young women who were rep
orted missing every year. No, he shook his head at the image in front of him. It had to be something else.
Phillips came to stand beside him and peered at the image on the screen.
“He liked to pick ‘em,” he said knowingly.
Ryan looked across at his sergeant.
“You recognise her?”
Now, it was Phillips’ turn to look bemused.
“You’re telling me that you don’t recognise her?” He shuffled his feet, clearly discomfited. “She’s one of the missing, presumed dead that we chalked up as being one of The Hacker’s earlier efforts, not that he ever confessed to it. She fits the physical type and we found nude photographs of her in his house, after the arrest last year.”
Ryan looked away from Phillips, back at the young girl he held in the palm of his hand.
“You really don’t remember?”
Ryan shook his head slowly.
“I need some air.”
* * *
Phillips stood outside the service entrance to the mortuary and drummed his fingers against the material of his trousers, wishing for a cigarette. Or any product containing tobacco. Bugger it, even one of those e-cigs would do the trick, so long as it gave him something to do with his hands.
He put his fingers to work re-knotting his tie, which was a tropical explosion of miniature pineapples and bananas embroidered on a lime green silk background. The way he saw it, just because the job involved death, it didn’t mean that he was required to dress as an undertaker. A man needed a bit of cheer to offset the gloom.
So thinking, he risked a glance across at the man who stood a few steps apart, still and silent while hospital staff moved around them and vehicles came and went.
Ryan hadn’t said a word. Not one solitary, buggering, blasted word since he’d stalked out of the hospital fifteen minutes’ earlier. He’d offered Ryan coffee in a cheap plastic cup from one of the vending machines; weak and steaming hot, but still better than nothing.
For the first time in living memory, Ryan turned him down.
“You want to get it off your chest?”
