The Body in the Marsh

by Nick Louth

  There were only four pall-bearers, but they had no trouble shouldering the casket. After all, there was nothing of Liz in there. Just a collection of her favourite books, a copy of her award-winning Spanish Civil War thesis, her runner-up plaque for BBC Young Musician of the Year 1981, photographs and other mementoes, plus 417 letters penned by the pupils at her school. That is what Kathy Parkinson had told him.

  Eventually everyone filed inside, and Gillard was left to his own thoughts for 40 minutes, until the tolling of the church bell awoke him from his reverie. As the congregation moved into the churchyard, Gillard emerged from the car, straightened his black tie and tugged the cuffs on his charcoal-grey jacket. Then he strode off through the bracing cold into the graveyard. He stood behind a Victorian tomb, in the shadow of its moss-softened granite angel, and stared down at the mourners who congregated 30 metres away around the open grave. He watched the opening of the Good Book, with its gilt edges, and the gesticulation of the priest, whose white surplice and snowy hair were ruffled by the freezing easterly. He heard only snatches of the words: ‘Therefore commit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

  As the coffin was lowered, Gillard watched Chloe Knight sag between the supporting arms of her brother and grandfather. As he heard her sobs, his own eyes began to smart and fill. He waited until the end of the service. Waited still until the friends had departed; and then the uncles and aunts and nieces and nephews; and after another 15 minutes the priest, the parents; and finally Oliver and Chloe. He waited five more minutes until he was sure everyone had gone. Until he had her to himself, for just a few minutes. He emerged from the shadow of the tomb and walked slowly down to the grave, heaped with flowers, a glistening basalt headstone already in place on the family plot, its epitaph gilded in gold.

  Elizabeth Knight, 1968–2016

  Beloved mother, wife, daughter, teacher.

  Loved by all whose lives she touched.

  Thy remembrance shall endure

  into all generations

  I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

  John 11: 25–6

  Gillard knelt to touch the stone and to say his own private goodbyes. As he stood, he noticed the priest just a few feet away. He smiled and said: ‘I baptized her and watched her grow. Such an extraordinary woman.’ He turned to the grave. ‘She’s gone to a better place now.’

  Gillard nodded. A vision of Liz slipping out of his sight at Madrid airport flitted through his mind. Then where? The finality of her death weighed upon the memory: a funeral, a grave, a grieving family. A six-month investigation. All the evidence, tested and retested. No glimpse can survive such a crushing reality.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A year later

  While Surrey Police’s new chief constable basked in the solving of the Girl F case, a year passed and the high-profile murder case of Liz Knight slowly went cold, despite all the best efforts of the newly promoted Detective Chief Superintendent Dobbs. No new body parts had been recovered from Walland Marsh. No new cash withdrawals or credit card transactions were made. At the start of the summer the investigation was scaled back and the Caterham incident room closed down.

  The only officer remaining on the case was DC Colin Hodges, dogged Tweedledee. Hodges joked that he was still happy to work ‘under the Radar’ as he put it. But for all his shortcomings, Hodges still retained some loyalty to his old boss Gillard. He passed on every new snippet of information. Sporadic bulletins of sightings of Martin Knight, and evidence reappraisals. All of it showed that the meticulous Radar Dobbs was making no more progress than Gillard had.

  Craig continued to think about Liz, and wonder whether it was really her he had seen at Madrid. Otherwise he returned to a hermit life, all work and no play. He solved half a dozen burglaries, put a nasty wife-beater behind bars and found several stolen motorcycles at the yard of a bent dealer. Sam Phillips was still at Caterham, but now as a uniformed PC. She had ignored his occasional emails for reasons that still eluded him.

  But then, in February, progress came from a totally unexpected direction.

  It was almost 10 p.m. on a Monday night when Kathy Parkinson rang him at home.

  ‘Hello, Craig. It’s me.’

  He felt that was a slightly overfamiliar greeting. Thirteen months since the awkward goodbye at her place and the phone call with Sam, he was surprised to hear from her at all. But as she made small talk he realized she had been drinking. He decided to wind up the conversation as quickly as possible.

  ‘It’s late, Kathy, so what can I do for you?’

  ‘Something rather upsetting has happened. At La Porcherie.’

  ‘Has it fallen down?’ Gillard asked, then realized that she wasn’t laughing.

  ‘No, Craig. They’ve found a dead body there, in a car. And I have to go over and answer some questions from the French police.’

  ‘Was it actually at the property?’

  ‘Yes, parked on my land, round the back. I had a call this morning. It seems to have been found a couple of weeks ago, but because I’ve not been for three years, they took a while to trace me. They think people smugglers may have dumped the car a year or so ago there with a refugee in the boot. Oh, it’s so horrible.’

  ‘Is your place close to one of the Channel ports, then?’ Craig asked.

  ‘No, that’s the weird thing. It’s in Normandy, 60 kilometres south of Caen. It’s an obscure village, on back roads in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound an obvious place to dump a refugee. Why did they say it was a refugee?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I have to go over within seven days to make a statement.’

  ‘Well, if you can show that you’ve not been there you won’t have much to worry about. I’d still get yourself a French lawyer, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘I will, but God knows how much it will cost me.’ She paused. ‘Craig, I was wondering if you’d come over with me. I trust your judgment.’

  ‘Well…’ Craig didn’t know how to frame his refusal.

  ‘This isn’t a ploy, I promise you. And I’ll pay for your travel.’

  Craig realized he had Thursday and Friday off. He sighed and rubbed his face. ‘I’ll think about it, okay? I’ll ring you tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you, Craig, thank you so much! There’s nowhere fit for sleeping at La Porcherie, so it will have to be a hotel, mind. I’ll pay of course.’

  He hung up. She’d been as effusive in her gratitude as if he’d said a definite yes. But he hadn’t. Had he?

  * * *

  Next morning Craig rang his French police liaison contact Caspar Glomiquet, explained what had happened and asked for some unofficial help. The French officer looked up the case for him and rang back. ‘It’s sad, but not anything for her to worry about,’ he said. Glomiquet said the body had been in the car for a very long time, judging by its decomposition. The man’s name was Mohammed ben Alighassir according to the Syrian papers found with him. He was dressed in Arabic-type clothes and cheap plastic sandals, and had on him some other items including a Koran, worry beads and a small amount in Syrian pounds. The house was some way outside the village, so no one had noticed anything. ‘It’s a British-registered car. I think they probably just want to know that the car isn’t hers, and establish her movements. Just box-ticking, non?’

  ‘Is there a cause of death?’ Gillard said.

  There was at the other end of the line what he imagined to be a Gallic shrug, ending with a blown sigh. ‘The body is skeletal; I don’t think it’s going to be easy.’

  Gillard made a note of the registration details, thanked the French officer and hung up. He looked to see if anyone was on duty in Mount Browne that evening who would do some incognito checking on the PNC. He was in luck; Ro
b Townsend was there. ‘If anyone asks, you can say the French requested it,’ Gillard said. ‘In fact, I wonder why they didn’t.’

  It seemed a long wait, but Townsend eventually came back on the line. ‘Okay. It’s a Peugeot 407. Last keeper registered was more than two years ago. A Mrs Pamela Jones at an address in south London. Probably stolen at some stage,’ Townsend said.

  ‘Can you do me a favour and get a couple of PCSOs to go see her anyway?’ Gillard said. ‘I’m already in Rigby’s bad books so I can’t be seen to do it. And check ANPR. I’d really love to know where that car has been.’

  ‘I just did that. Nothing in the last 12 months. Can’t go back any longer unless it’s terrorism related, and you need a superintendent’s signature too.’

  ‘That’s true, I’d forgotten.’ Radar Dobbs was too meticulous to sign a request pass without checking. Gillard knew his connection with Kathy Parkinson, however innocent, needed to be kept quiet. It seemed that whatever secrets ANPR had on this Peugeot would disappear when the data was wiped after two years. ‘The French didn’t find anything either. I assume they have similar limitations. Thanks for trying anyway.’ Gillard sighed and hung up. He then rang King’s College London. He had Kathy Parkinson hauled out of a lecture, and she sounded quite worried as she answered the phone.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s just me,’ he chuckled.

  ‘My secretary said it was an urgent police matter! I’ve left 200 students waiting for an introduction to the psychology of fear and stress.’

  ‘Well, you have some personal stress to relate to them. Look, it’s good news. The case has piqued my interest, so I will be coming, strictly off-duty. I have some excellent contacts with the French police, so I can certainly make this a bit easier for you. How’s your French?’ he asked.

  ‘Bit rusty, but I did get first-class honours in it, so I’m sure I’ll be okay. How’s yours?’

  ‘On a par with my CSE in woodwork, but I have a liaison officer who I can speak to. In the meantime, I’ve traced the car this end.’

  * * *

  Townsend called Gillard back the following morning. ‘I got my brother in law at the Met to send a couple of PCSOs round last night – no reply – and again first thing this morning. There was a young Asian couple in residence, just been there a few months. They didn’t know Mrs Jones, but have seen the odd bit of mail for her. An elderly next-door neighbour said Mrs Jones had definitely not lived there for three or so years and had gone back to the Midlands where she’s got a sister. She used to work as a hospital cleaner at Croydon University Hospital. I’m chasing that up tomorrow, so I’m confident we can get her.’

  ‘If it’s a rental place, get them to find the landlords,’ Gillard said. ‘It’s a long shot after so many years, but they may have a forwarding address for our Mrs Jones. Can you check ports and ferry terminals too for booking references matching that Peugeot number plate? They might keep them for several years, and then we’ll get the passport number. It would be nice to know what this Mrs Jones looks like.’

  ‘Let’s hope they are indexed by number plate,’ Townsend said. ‘Otherwise there’ll be a lot of Joneses to search through.’

  ‘Come on, Rob. Didn’t you always want to keep up with the Joneses?’

  * * *

  It was a fine sunny Thursday when Gillard drove Kathy Parkinson onto the Portsmouth to Caen ferry. They enjoyed the nearly six-hour crossing in fine weather and drove the 15 kilometres south from the port into the city. Kathy had booked a room each for them in an Ibis hotel. The next day, at what to Gillard seemed an obscenely early hour of 8.15, they set off from the hotel and, after leaving the city, wove their way through delightful high-hedged countryside to the village of Pierrefitte-sur-Orne, where the gendarmes would meet them by ten. As they drove they ate slabs of delicious raspberry tart. They had intended merely to have coffee and croissants, or at most pain au chocolat, but the lure of the fruit tart was irresistible. They reached Kathy’s so-called holiday home with their clothing strewn with crumbs.

  La Porcherie was a large single-storey barn at the southern end of the village with an external rusted metal staircase and a lichen-encrusted stucco roof that sagged alarmingly in the middle. There was an overhanging gable with a hoist and rusting chains, and the whole building was overshadowed by a huge horse chestnut tree. Ground-floor shutters displayed only shreds of the royal-blue paint they once sported. The barn sat right alongside a little-used country lane, and adjoined a nettle-and-dock-consumed patch of ground that dipped sharply at the back. Rusting agricultural machinery, some of it pre-war, had been dumped alongside. A single strand of yellow crime tape marked GENDARMERIE NATIONALE – ZONE INTERDITE barred the rough gravel drive that edged the property and disappeared around the back. Gillard parked the car, and they got out of the vehicle.

  ‘Did Keith ever do anything to this place?’ asked Gillard as he surveyed what even the most optimistic of DIY fanatics would have called a hopeless project.

  ‘Oh yes. We had water connected, and electricity. We started on the roof on the back building, but then discovered the huge and beautiful timbers that held it up had death-watch beetle galleries all the way through, and would need replacing.’

  Gillard had got as far as the crime scene tape, and looking over saw that the land behind fell away sharply to a beautiful valley with pastures full of black and white cattle, edged by more horse chestnuts. As he was admiring the view a police Citroën arrived, and Gillard recognized Caspar Glomiquet emerging from the passenger side. With him was a miserable-looking 50-ish man in a car coat and suede shoes who Gillard imagined must be the regional detective. The man walked straight up to Gillard and launched a voluble oration in French, which Kathy interrupted with her own, seemingly fluent response. Introductions were given, and the detective, who went by the name of Raymond Poulet, started shrugging and gesticulating to Kathy about the location of the car. Kathy passed across various documents including her own passport, driving licence and ownership documents for the property before the conversation clearly turned to a broader subject.

  Glomiquet came to Gillard’s rescue. ‘He’s basically saying that this is a routine inquiry. Madame is not under any suspicion. A British car, ready to be taken back across the Channel, a Syrian refugee, desperate to get to the UK, who presumably paid his life savings to be smuggled in. His thinking is that at some point the guy in the boot died, maybe suffocated, who knows, and the trafficker panicked, and found somewhere remote to dump the vehicle.’

  Gillard looked quizzically at the French detective, and then back to Glomiquet. ‘But presumably a European national, perhaps even British, was on hand to go with the car, to get it across to Britain? And why would the guy be in the boot so far away from the Channel crossing?’

  Glomiquet turned to Monsieur Chicken, as Gillard had already started to think of him, and a new, richly gestured, conversation began. Poulet’s final shrug told Gillard, even before Glomiquet’s translation, that exactly how this poor guy had died wasn’t really of much interest to him. ‘He says they have so many of these people to deal with,’ Glomiquet said, excusing his colleague’s apparent indifference. ‘He says he would rather concentrate on preventing more coming than worrying about the dead. Especially someone dead for more than a year.’

  ‘But what about his family, they must be missing him,’ Kathy asked, then repeated it in French for Monsieur Poulet. There was a volley of French in return.

  ‘He asks whether we have ever had dealings with the Syrian embassy in Paris,’ Kathy translated. ‘They will try, but it’s hopeless. He says the paperwork goes in and never comes out again. The details will also be sent to the refugee agencies operating in Greece and Macedonia, to see if he was registered there, to Lampedusa in Italy in case he arrived from Libya, and to the border forces in those countries. There are also voluntary organizations which have Facebook pages to reconnect family members with each other. But he thinks the chances are that we will not get a result.’

/>   Gillard felt his fists balling and stretching in frustration. ‘Caspar, can you ask him if they plan to do an autopsy? And if they have finger-printed him and taken a sample for DNA.’

  Glomiquet’s conversation with Poulet was quite brief. ‘It depends on the coroner. If there is no reason to suspect foul play, he would be surprised if the coroner orders one—’

  ‘Of course there is foul play! This guy was illegally trafficked here—’ Gillard exclaimed.

  ‘But according to the médecin légiste it was at least a year ago,’ Glomiquet said, translating from Poulet. ‘That accords with evidence for how long the car was here.’

  ‘What firm evidence could there be?’ Gillard asked, exasperated.

  Poulet pointed at the tree above them and the windscreen wipers of Kathy’s car as Glomiquet translated: ‘Beneath the blades and in the windscreen well he found not only dead chestnut leaves from the autumn, but a layer of horse chestnut flowers which would have been deposited the previous May.’

  ‘Fair point,’ Gillard conceded.

  ‘As for finger prints, the poor condition of the body precluded it. He is not sure if DNA samples have been taken. He did not order them, but the mortuary may do so for its own records.’