A Turbulent Priest

by J M Gregson

  Tucker was furious with himself. He should have said that at the outset, demoting this death, pretending he would only show interest if it emerged that there was real meat for a top CID man like him to feed on. It was too late now. He snarled, “Well. What else do we know?”

  “Not a lot, sir, as yet. Doctor Martin wouldn’t venture much, as usual, but he did say that he thought the man had been dead for some time. More than a week, he thought. We’ve checked the missing persons register, but not come up with anyone. Looks at the moment as though he wasn’t reported missing.”

  Tucker decided that the only thing to do was to stick to his guns. “Sounds to me like a suspicious death, you know.” He brightened at the thought of difficulties ahead for his tormentor. “If it is a murder, it won’t be easy to find the killer, you know, after this much time has elapsed. Sixty per cent of killings which are not detected in the first week remain unsolved, you know. You’ve already missed the most vital time for investigation.”

  He smiled blandly at Peach. Not only had he come out with another generalisation which every copper and most of the public knew, thought Percy, but he seemed positively pleased at the thought that it was going to be difficult for his staff. “That is true, sir. The team may need the full benefit of your expertise and experience to succeed on this one.” He watched his chief’s face cloud with dismay, then switched his ground again. “Though as I say, we don’t know yet that this is a murder. At present, we have only an unidentified corpse. Could be an accidental death or a suicide. As good detectives, we must beware of generalisations made on too little evidence.”

  This time, Tucker knew it was insolence: to have his own words quoted back to him like this was plainly insubordinate. But it was difficult to know what to do about it, with Peach’s round, expressionless gaze fixed firmly at some point above his victim’s head. Tucker said desperately, “Well, anyway, we’ll see what forensic can tell us about this drowning. They often come up with—”

  “Not a drowning, sir.” This time Percy denied himself any reiteration of Tucker’s injunctions about generalisations. Instead, he transferred his gaze back to the superintendent’s face and allowed himself the most childishly innocent of his range of smiles. “That was the one useful thing our police surgeon volunteered, apparently. Chummy was dead before he went into the water.”

  Tucker felt his mind reeling. An appropriate word, for a man floundering like a fish on a line. He said tentatively, “Then it looks as if our man might have been killed by someone else after all.”

  “Oh, I should think that’s very likely, sir. I didn’t want to jump to any unwarranted conclusions. But I did notice a bloody great gash across the back of his head.”

  ***

  “There’s no need for this, you know,” said DI Peach. Chivalry did not come easily to him, especially when he found it rejected.

  Detective Sergeant Lucy Blake smiled and snatched a sideways glance at him as she drove. She liked him when he was an old chauvinist softy, though she couldn’t possibly let him know it. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Part of the learning process, a post mortem is, as you said when you insisted on my attending the first one. Seems a long time ago now.”

  She was secretly relieved to find that the post mortem was complete by the time they drove into the quiet grounds of the forensic laboratory at Chorley. She would have tightened the muscles of her stomach as usual if she had needed to stand by during the cutting of the corpse and the investigation of its organs, but she preferred not to have her digestion tested in this way, despite her assurances to Percy Peach.

  The Home Office pathologist was brisk and breezy; in her limited experience practitioners of this grisly calling often were. “Looks as though you have a murder to investigate,” he said cheerfully, as he peeled off his gloves and unhooked the microphone into which he had dictated his findings whilst he worked. “My name’s Browne. You’ll have my full report by tomorrow. If it’s any help, I’ll give you my thoughts on the major findings right now.”

  “Thank you. The less time we waste the better, when a man’s already been dead for several days.” Peach was also aware that a man submitting a report which might eventually be probed in court by a defence counsel had to be cautious on paper; no one liked being made to look a fool in public, and least of all a fool in his profession. It meant that PM reports confined themselves to facts, when a little informed speculation might well be more useful to the officers beginning an investigation.

  “Right you are.” Browne led them into an office dominated by a huge desk, which was littered with letters and documents, very unlike the neat precision of the stainless steel counters and sinks he had left behind him. He gestured at two chairs; they had to remove cardboard boxes from them before they could sit. He slumped opposite them and took off his green cap, leaving his thinning grey hair in disarray, but kept on the green rubber gumboots he wore in the lab as he slumped down in an armchair opposite them. They had been well washed, but there was a small smear of brown blood on his left sleeve, reminding them through his cheerful demeanour of what he had been doing whilst they drove here from Brunton.

  “He was dead before he ever went into the water,” said Browne.

  Percy did not say they knew that: these people worked better if they thought they were giving you lots of new information. Instead, he raised his eyebrows and said, “How did he die?”

  The man opposite them drew a deep breath, waved his arms in the air a little, then changed his mind. “Come into the lab and I’ll show you. My report is full of ‘might haves’ and ‘in all probabilities’, but I think I can show you what happened.” He led the way briskly back whence he had come. Good, thought Percy, an enthusiast. You always got more out of enthusiasts.

  Browne drew back the sheet from the head Peach had seen by the stream nine hours earlier. For the first time, he saw the face he had then chosen to leave in decent oblivion. The pathologist, or more likely his assistant, had made a neat job of stitching up the incision made from ear to ear over the top of the head for the post mortem. Someone would still have to identify what was left of this fellow, when they had found out who he was. Peach didn’t envy that person the task.

  The eyes were damaged, as he had thought they might be: what was left of the eyelids had been pulled down over the empty sockets. The pathologist lifted the shoulders stiffly sideways before they could dwell upon what creatures had been busy around the mouth. “This chap was given a hell of a clout across the back of his head.” With a silver ball-point, he indicated the white, bloodless scar which Percy had seen in the dark hair earlier. The hair had been shaved away now, to expose the trenching. “Various insect damage to the flesh around the scar, which we should ignore for our purposes. No blood left, owing to the cleansing of last night’s flood. Unfortunately, no wood fibres or other evidence as to what he might have been hit with, for the same reason. The traditional blunt instrument; I’m afraid I can’t say more.”

  “Did that kill him?”

  “In my opinion, no. It was a hefty blow, enough to render a man insensible, or certainly so dazed that he would not be able to defend himself. But the actual cause of death was almost certainly vagal inhibition — strangulation, if you prefer the layman’s term.” The silver pen moved to the carotid artery in the neck and hovered briefly over the line of a livid crimson-black line around the unnaturally white flesh. Lucy Blake tried to ignore the stitching she could see in the middle of the neck, which she knew was the top point of an incision running from the mark she could see to the pubis beneath the sheet; the cut made to enable the pathologist to remove the chest and abdominal organs en masse. Much better to concentrate on what this breezy, experienced fifty-year-old had to tell them. “This was probably made by a thin nylon rope or a length of wire. Again the water has removed any traces which might have clung to the skin, I’m afraid. But this is what dispatched your man from the land of the living.”

  “Could a woman have killed him?”


  “Certainly. The blow to the back of the head could have been delivered by a woman, or even a child, with the right implement and the right leverage. After that, he was killed by some sort of ligature round the neck, as you can see. No great strength required for that, especially if he was unconscious or nearly unconscious at the time.”

  “You don’t think he was able to put up much of a fight?”

  “No, I don’t. He was probably in his forties and reasonably fit, despite a bit of a paunch. Five feet nine and eleven stone eight. But there is no bruising on his hands and arms, and nothing under the nails that would indicate a struggle — you’ll see from my report that I don’t think he was in the water long enough for all such traces to be removed. My guess is that he was hit from behind, then dispatched at leisure. Probably never given a chance to defend himself.”

  “How long had he been in the water?”

  Browne pursed his lips. “My report will say not more than a day, and that’s what I’d have to stick to in court. Probably it was considerably less than that. There are none of the symptoms of prolonged immersion: no ‘washerwoman’s skin’ or damage by river creatures. There is hypostasis throughout the body, indicating that the corpse has been lying prone on its back for a considerable period. The blood has settled noticeably into the lower back, buttocks and thighs.”

  Browne glanced surreptitiously at DS Blake, found her cheeks still reassuringly peach rather than white. “There are certain other areas of damage in the corpse which could only have been achieved whilst it was above ground, I’m afraid. The maggots have been at work. Busy little chaps, maggots; informative, too, in this context. I have passed relevant specimens to our forensic entomologist, although I have a certain amount of expertise in this field myself. As you are probably aware, the degree of development of grubs found within the corpse often enables us to be fix a time of death with reasonable precision.”

  “So when do you think our Mr X died?”

  “You’ll have to wait for the expert’s opinion to confirm that. My report says between one and two weeks, but I’d say from the maggots ten to twelve days. Allowing for the hot weather which preceded yesterday’s downpour.”

  “You can be that precise?” said Lucy Blake.

  “The experts can. And I think our expert will confirm my opinion in the next twenty-four hours.” Browne spoke with modest pride, like a birdwatcher confident of a sighting. “We couldn’t swear to it in court, of course, but if you want a starting point for your enquiries, I would suggest ten to twelve days ago for the time of death.”

  “All right,” said Peach. “You’ve told us how he died. You’ve given us a reasonable idea when. What about where?”

  “That we can’t help you with, I’m afraid. You’ll have to search for possible sites and send any materials from them to forensic. We’ve sent his clothes for analysis, of course; sports coat and trousers, shirt, jockey shorts, short summer socks, quite good leather shoes. But I don’t think you’ll get much from any of them: the water will have removed most things which might have been helpful.”

  Peach nodded gloomily. There was nothing they could do about it, but when the Press began to bleat about police bafflement, they wouldn’t trouble to report the difficulties they faced. “So he was strangled, not drowned. Presumably someone dumped him in the stream?”

  “That would be the normal assumption. This is CID territory rather than pathology, but it seems unlikely to me. If you wanted to dispose of a body, you’d dump it in a major river, like the Ribble or the Hodder, wouldn’t you? Somewhere where it might be swiftly carried away, hopefully out to sea — not a village stream where it might be found quite quickly. And wouldn’t you do it as soon as you’d killed your victim? As I say, this chap wasn’t in the water for very long. It’s unlikely that anyone would have kept a body for ten days and then slung it into the river, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” I should have said all that, thought Peach. Still, Browne had been helpful, interested in their problems rather than dourly official. “It’s conceivable, of course, that someone had to wait his opportunity to dispose of the corpse, and saw yesterday’s floods as his chance. We’ll have to bear that possibility in mind, until we can prove otherwise, but it’s not the most likely scenario, I agree.” That was a phrase Tommy Bloody Tucker might have produced, he thought; he’d better watch himself. He looked down at the shape beneath them. Browne had drawn the sheet back over the head, emphasising the anonymity of death. “Our first problem is going to be finding who the poor bugger is. No one’s reported him missing.”

  “And I fancy whoever killed him didn’t intend to make it easy for you. We’ll make a cast of the jaws in the next hour or so. The dental records should show you who he is, if no one comes forward to claim him once you break the news of the death.”

  Peach nodded, feeling despite himself the familiar rise in excitement at the thought of pitting his wits against an enemy as yet unknown. “Anything useful in the pockets?”

  Browne smiled grimly. “That’s what I meant when I said your killer wasn’t making it easy. The pockets have been totally emptied.”

  Three

  The body of a man was found near the village of Bolton-by-Bowland last night. Police say that the corpse, which was discovered in a swollen brook at the climax of yesterday’s Bank Holiday deluge, is that of a man of about forty years of age. They are treating the death as suspicious. The body has not yet been identified, and anyone who thinks he or she might be able to help in this matter is asked to contact CID headquarters at Brunton Police Station.”

  The announcement came in the Radio Lancashire news bulletin at midday. The murderer heard it only by chance.

  It was a chilling moment, fixing the words which had seemed only half-heard vividly in the mind, so that they chimed through the next hour like a clock striking its quarters. The spot mentioned in the radio announcement wasn’t where the corpse had been laid: the image of that prone form, carefully hidden between twigs and brambles in the ditch which had seemed so remote, reared itself vividly before the killer’s eyes, as it had done so often in the last ten days. But that ditch wasn’t far from Bolton-by-Bowland. And surely there couldn’t be two corpses lying so close to each other in such a quiet, rural place?

  At first, it seemed there would be nothing on the one o’clock television news. Then, halfway through the local news on Granada, it came. There was a picture of the spot where the corpse had been found, with the brook still in swirling spate around the arches of the stone bridge and police tapes which cordoned the place hanging limply in the background. Only two pieces of information were added to the official handout which the local radio had carried an hour earlier. The first was unimportant: the body had been discovered by a man taking his dog for its evening walk at the height of the evening downpour. The second set the murderer’s pulses tingling: police believed that the corpse had been carried to the point of its discovery by the quite exceptional deluge. Much of the surrounding area was under flood waters which were now beginning to subside, and the members of the police team already assembled were now searching for the spot where the body had originally lain.

  There was a brief sequence from a hand-held camera of a line of policemen in wellingtons moving in formation along the side of a wood, and the killer knew immediately from the numbers employed that this was being treated as a murder hunt.

  The person who was to be the quarry in this search turned off the television as the announcer switched to sport. Quiet, absolute quiet, seemed suddenly necessary. You had to think coolly to keep things clear, and that seemed difficult with the shock of this revelation still throbbing in your head. It was bad luck that the corpse had been discovered like this, so soon. Just as a result of weather no one could have foreseen. The heaviest rain on record, they said. An Act of God, the insurance companies called weather like that, and certainly it had been an almost biblical deluge. But surely God wouldn’t have sent the rains just to reveal the body? The man whose corpse had
been hidden in that ditch had got his deserts, that was for sure.

  The body might have lain undiscovered for months, even years, without yesterday’s downpour. The man would have been reported as a missing person soon enough — MISPERs the police called them in the crime series on the box — but they wouldn’t have found a body. And without a body, they wouldn’t have known how the man had died. They might even have concluded that he’d gone away somewhere quiet and killed himself: God knows, he’d had enough reason to do something like that.

  But as the murderer sat with head in hands and the minutes dragged past, it began to seem not a bad thing after all that the body had revealed itself at this point. Water cleansed things; it might have brought the corpse to light, but it would have removed evidence as well, no doubt. All kinds of tiny, unpreventable things on the skin and the clothing which might have tied the victim to its murderer. And the police wouldn’t find much to help them on what was left of the body; there was nothing in the pockets, nothing at all. The band of tension which had tightened around the killer’s forehead since the news of the discovery gradually eased a little. A few minutes later, the hands were cautiously removed from the temples they had clasped for so long.

  There was an interview on the six o’clock news with the man who had taken charge of the case. This time, the murderer recorded the item, then played the tape back three times: there was nothing like being well prepared. This Superintendent Tucker gave the impression that he was used to television. He was urbane, well groomed, courteous to his interviewer’s probings: the kind of man to get the police a good name and give the public confidence. His man-of-the-world smile said that he had been through all this before, that the police would work with due diligence, but you mustn’t expect miracles. These were early days yet, he pointed out. Twice.