Dance Floor Drowning

by Brian Sellars

  Billy's heart raced as he peered over the doctor's shoulder and read for himself. He saw that someone, in a different hand, had recorded the location of the body as Man’s Head rocks, above Round Dam.

  'This is weird,' said the doctor, throwing his head back and holding up a page. 'It says: Damage to corpse – bla –bla –bla - consistent with being struck by blunt object - bla - bla - bla – partial burial at Man’s Head Rock.'

  Billy wrinkled his face in a puzzled frown. 'What's the weird part?' He extended his arms, palms upward. 'Man gets hit by something, and buried. It’s simple.'

  Hadfield shook his head. 'No, it's not, Billy. It's this word "damage",' he said. 'Saying damage to the corpse merely confirms that it was post mortem. Yet it's included here as if it's contributory to death. That's all wrong. And, on another tack, why on earth would anybody hit a corpse? It's already dead. And then here, right at the end, the actual cause of death is left open. It’s confused and ambiguous. This's all nonsense.'

  Billy stared hard at him. 'So are you saying the pathologist is hiding sommat, or lying?'

  'Well no, actually I'm not. Quite possibly he's doing the very opposite. I think he may be trying to avoid lying, but may be under pressure of some sort.' He brandished the sheaf of papers briefly, then slapped them down on to the seed trays. 'These scraps and scribbles are useless. Obviously, they are not the finished pathology report. It's pointless to speculate on what that might eventually say. But I'm pretty sure that word "Damage" instead of "Injury" will not be in it as a contributory cause of death.'

  The doctor scooped the papers together and slid them back into the envelope. He stood up, a sheepish grin on his face. 'Look, old lad, I'm sorry I went off at you. I hope we're still friends.'

  Billy was distracted, and didn't hear him. 'What about the other bloke, Doc, the dance floor drowning? D'you think they could be connected.'

  'Connected? Why do you say that? The deaths are quite dissimilar.'

  'Well think about it - two men about the same age, both murdered in mysterious circumstances, both murders covered up by the big-wigs. It just all makes me think there's a connection.' Billy chewed his cheek, frowning. 'What will you do with 'em - the papers?'

  'Hum, good question.' Hadfield tapped the envelope against his chin. 'I'm not sure yet. Maybe I should take them to the police, but that could put me right in the middle of this mess. I certainly don't want that. Also there may be more to come from whoever's passing this stuff to me. If it is a conspiracy, our informant may turn out to be one of the good guys.' He gently kicked a desiccated onion along the dusty aisle and started slowly towards the door.

  'Why not give 'em back to the pathologist?' Billy said, 'Only the pencilled bits, of course. It'd be a good excuse to get friendly with him. He might show you his real notes.'

  'Crickey! You're a dark horse, aren't you? A proper little Machiavelli.'

  'You could ask him about the swimming pool floater at the same time. If there is a connection, he might've already found it.'

  The doctor scratched his head. 'I really should give them to the police. They were obviously obtained under questionable circumstances. I just don't want the police trampling all over my life.'

  'Who's Maxy Velly?'

  ‘Machiavelli. Go to the library. Read The Prince.'

  *

  Frank Perks was having breakfast when his son, pyjama clad and bleary eyed, joined him at the table. Billy loved the early mornings when his dad came home from a night shift. He would get up and rush downstairs to him, as soon as he heard Ruff barking his welcome. Stripped to the waist, Frank Perks would wash at the kitchen sink, hands, face, armpits and hair, usually in cold water. While the kettle boiled, he'd rub liquid paraffin into his hands to soften them after handling fire bricks and mortar all night. Billy's mother would join them a few minutes later, smelling of soap and flowers. She would have washed at the washstand in her bedroom.

  He'd watch his mam and dad squeezing passed each other in their tiny kitchen, as tea, porridge, and toast, or bread and dripping were made. Often they would lark about, pretending to bump into each other in the barely corridor width space. There was always laughter and horsing around on night-weeks.

  Billy asked his dad about the old man he'd met on the tram.

  'Yeah I know him; little bloke, weightlifter, strong as an ox, bandy as a duck. He used to run a gym before the war, back when I was footballing.'

  Billy watched him fill his pint pot with tea and plop four saccharin tablets into it from a small, sugar encrusted, aspirin bottle kept in the sugar bowl.

  'He still does. It's near the relish factory. He wants me to join. He said I could take Kick Morley and thee an' all.'

  'Don't thee and thou, Billy,' his mother called from the kitchen. 'Talk nicely. You don't hear me thee-ing and thou-ing, do you?. Frank, tell him!'

  'Don't thee and thou, Billy,' said his dad, giving him a secret wink.

  'Sorry, Mam.'

  'What's he want?' his dad asked. 'I haven't seen him for years.'

  Billy looked away sheepishly. He decided it was not the time to bring up his detective work. 'I don't know. He just said I could join.'

  Marion Perks placed bowls of steaming porridge before father and son. 'I'm not having him boxing,' she said. 'You're not going, Billy. He'll get cauliflower ears and a nose like a flat iron; anyway we can’t afford boxing gloves. It's not five minutes since we bought him that Scouts uniform. We're not made o' money you know.'

  Billy's dad laughed. 'Blimey, I thought we were.'

  'It's alright you laughing, Frank, but it all costs money,' Billy's mam said. 'There's his piano lessons, scouts' uniform, he'll be wanting new football boots after the school holidays, and he never stops growing out of things.'

  'For God sakes, Billy,' his dad cried feigning despair. 'What do you mean by growing all the time? How do you expect us to keep up if you keep growing out of things.'

  Missis Perks swatted her husband with a tea towel. 'It's easy for you to laugh. You don’t see the price of stuff. Half the time you can't get anything but rabbit and offal, and when I can get sommat we can't afford it.'

  Frank Perks put his arm around his wife. 'Don't worry, love. I'll find out what old Walter Mebbey wants. It's years since I've seen him, but he was never one for wasting folk's time.'

  0o0o0

  Chapter Nine

  Rivelin Valley Road runs west from Sheffield out to the Peak District National Park. At three and a half miles long before it joins the Manchester Road, it is the second longest avenue of lime trees in Europe. Winding gently between bilberry and heather covered hills, rich pasture and mixed woodland, it is one of the loveliest roads in England. Despite the steep and often craggy hills overlooking it, it is seldom so steep as to bother a bulky bishop on his bicycle.

  Billy pedalled his bike in the dappled sunlight beneath the limes. He had the road to himself, and looked around, thrilled by its beauty. Sheep grazed the sunlit hills overlooked by jubilant skylarks. Below him on the wooded valley floor, songbirds sang to the echo. He dismounted and hid the bike behind a mossy wall. Unseen the peaty river murmured and chortled. Across the road, a lane between fields, branched uphill to the Rivelin Hotel, a remote, stone built pub. Ranged against the sky above its slate roof, Man’s Head Rock glared down.

  Billy turned away and looked down into the valley. The Round Dam, a millpond that had once powered an old cutler's forge, quietly filled and emptied with barely a ripple on its surface. Billy's dad had told him that from medieval times until the coming of the steam power, men had worked iron and steel into knives, shears, and scythes in Rivelin's water driven mills. The very anvil at Gretna Green, across which runaway lovers take their marriage vows, was made in one of Rivelin’s water mills.

  The coming of steam, and then electricity, sealed the fate of the old water mills. The great wheels, tilt hammers and grindstones stopped forever. The mill owners in their broughams, phaetons and landaus, built new hearths, forges and
grinding troughs in the east of the city nearer to the canal and the new railways. They swapped their horses for chauffeur driven motor cars and built large villas in the city's western suburbs.. The workers had to leave their idyllic cottages and gardens, and move into the teeming courts of back-to-back houses springing up around the new factories. Woodland and wilderness gradually reclaimed the valley, breaking ancient beams and toppling walls. Along the banks of fish filled millponds, enigmatic ruins quietly crumbled under moss and fern, turning with the years into beautiful dripping grottos hiding beneath willow, alder, rosebay and bramble. A necklace of reedy waters is strung out along the bright, noisy river linking each sculptural ruin with its past and defining its future.

  Billy stepped off the road and climbed the steep lane up to Man’s Head Rock. By now he knew precisely where they had found Professor Henry Darnley's body, having thoroughly grilled the hapless John Needham. He had also learned that the police had no conclusive evidence as to how the corpse came to be there. Forensic experts, apparently, could not agree. Various theories had been tested and dismissed, even including hurling a kit bag full of sand, intended to represent a corpse, from the cliff top and having some poor constable climb down to it and drag it to the burial spot. They also ruled out dragging the corpse up from the road below. Everything pointed to Darnley having been killed right there, where he was found. If so, what was he doing there? Had the killer followed him, or lain in wait? How had they known he would be there? Was he lured to his death, or accompanied to it?

  Billy had asked PC Needham if Henry Darnley had been hiking. The constable said he was not dressed for it. He was wearing ordinary day clothes; flannels, shirt, and tie, but oddly, no jacket. His shoes were expensive, handmade Oxfords, 'Last thing you'd wear for scroamin o'er rocks,' the copper had said.

  Billy found it difficult approaching the burial site. Loose scree slid about underfoot setting off little avalanches. Firm footing was impossible, and in his view certainly ruled out anyone carrying a body to the spot. He paused, turning his back to the giant's chin to look down to where the police had cleared away the bracken and exposed the shallow grave. It was only about twenty feet away. Dressed and shod as he was, Darnley would have found the going difficult. Why would he want to do it? Even more baffling was, how could the killer have surprised him on such a slippery and noisy surface?

  Darnley's head had been sticking out above ground. Before clamming up, the newspapers had reported that his dead eyes were staring up at the crags. Billy tottered over the loose stones and skidded to a halt at the gravesite. It was no more than a slight depression in the scree, and would have gone unnoticed but for the stripped out bracken. He stepped into the grave and sat down. The bottom of it was solid rock, no doubt the reason it was so shallow. Darnley's head must have been sticking out because the killer couldn't get it far enough down to cover it. He looked up at the rock face where the dead eyes had gazed.

  The idea that the killer had deliberately placed the corpse that way had, at first, seemed tempting. It hinted at some mysterious coded message. The reality however, did not support such a theory. It was probably simply that the killer had no choice. Billy could not bring himself to rule it out completely, but accorded the idea little importance. The biggest mystery, he thought, was, why had Darnley gone there. What had drawn him to his death? And how had he travelled; bike, or bus, or did he drive? If so where was his car? And also, where was his jacket?

  *

  Doctor Hadfield could not help himself. He knew he should not be poking his nose into a police murder enquiry, but he always found mysteries irresistible. Since accidentally teaming up with Billy Perks and his friends on the old Star Woman murder case, amateur sleuthing had firmly captured his interest.

  He ballooned his cheeks and shook his head thoughtfully. 'Grasp the nettle, old lad,' he told himself. 'Go and see the dratted pathologist. You know you want to.'

  Circumstances seemed to have conspired to make such a visit easy for him. He had an afternoon off, having worked the previous night on call. His girlfriend was not speaking to him, and he had no sensible demands on his time. So, even though common sense screamed that he should stay away, he decided to ignore it.

  A first class honours graduate, he had been an exceptional student, twice the winner of the Fleming-Vesalius award. Even so, not a day of general practice in Walkley, passed without some reminder of how much there remained to be learned. He wanted to do more, to be more useful, but did not know how to go about it. He often felt he was teetering between ignorance and ignominy. His overbearing boss, his ex-tutor, did not help his confidence either. Her cold glances and sighs of disapproval could bring his spirits clattering down. She particularly disliked what she called, "his childish detective games". Hardly a day passed without her raising her eyebrows and tut-tutting about it, and she had told him flatly to end his contact with Billy and his pals, or, as she had put it, "with those scruffy urchins".

  At two in the afternoon, after a lunch of grilled Spam on toast, he slid into the driving seat of his Austin Ruby. His mind rattled through the names of those who would disapprove of his actions. As ever, his father topped the list, but, as he managed to disappoint him so often and in so many ways, it no longer mattered. Dr Clarissa Fulton-Howard, came next on the list, and she was an altogether more dangerous critic. He shook her carping image from his thoughts and set off.

  The Pathology Department was across the city in a wing of a large, down-at-heel Victorian hospital. He parked the Ruby in a tree-lined street, opposite its tall iron gates. For two minutes, he sat staring at them, feeling sick with tension. He knew it made no sense, but he was undeniably scared of what might be about to happen. Handing over the illicit notes would either bring trouble tumbling down upon him, or, as Billy had suggested, smooth the way to a productive relationship with a helpful pathologist.

  When he finally plucked up the courage to get out of his car, he realised he did not know how many pathologists worked behind the impassive walls, or to which of them he should address himself. Why hadn't he checked? What an idiot! Luckily, he spotted a police constable patrolling near the gates, and was soon directed to the nearest public telephone box, a mere fifty yards away. He looked up the telephone number and dialled it. After a few false starts, he learned that he needed to speak to a Doctor Sarah Becket.

  As he walked back to the hospital, he rehearsed possible opening gambits to try on Dr Becket, but rejected them. Passing through the prison-like gates, he wondered how many laws he might already have broken and be about to break. Once inside, he stiffened his shoulders and stepped boldly, trying to look as though he had a perfect right to be there.

  The corridors smelled of cabbage and disinfectant. Green tiles faced the walls to shoulder height, thickly coated cream paint above that. He explored thoroughly, all the while pretending to know exactly where he was. There were few signs to help him. Only by listening and avoiding the sounds of bustle and urgent activity did he manage to stick to the gloomy backwaters he hoped would lead to PATHOLOGY and THE MORGUE.

  He found Sarah Becket, the only living occupant of a dimly lit room containing three operating tables, each bearing a corpse beneath a faded green sheet. She was standing at a writing shelf, fiddling with a large reel-to-reel tape recorder. He could see her only in silhouette, back lit by a frosted glass partition wall. Two men, probably porters, were moving about quietly beyond it, their images distorted by the glass. Neither one reacted to his presence.

  Dr Becket was a slight young woman with fair, curly hair. Her regulation white overall hung open over a grey skirt and red blouse. Her pale, heart shaped face was dominated by horn-rimmed glasses, through which peered large blue eyes. She looked exhausted. Hadfield knew the look. At teaching hospital, he'd seen many an intern with the same drained appearance after a double shift. He’d been one himself, and needed no convincing that Sarah Becket was out on her feet. He approached her smiling. 'Doctor Becket?'

  'I'm sorry, but whatever
it is, I'm just off home.' She disconnected the tape recorder cable from the electric lamp holder it was plugged into, and refitted the displaced light bulb.

  'I'm Doctor Hadfield. Reginald Hadfield...'

  She eyed him critically. 'They never said you were coming. Who are you?' She stifled a yawn, and shrugged apologetically.

  'I must talk to you. Please. It's a very delicate matter. I'm Clarissa Fulton-Howard's junior at Walkley …'

  'Oh, you poor dear!' She beamed at him, a cheeky sparkle coming to her tired eyes. 'And I thought my lot in life was bad …'

  'You know Clarissa?'

  'I have that dubious honour,' she said wincing theatrically. 'She thinks she's still teaching at Cambridge, or wherever it was. She's lectured me on practically everything I do - even how to wash my stockings.' She looked at Hadfield with increased curiosity. 'I really am sorry, but I do have to go. Nobody said you were coming.'

  Hadfield suddenly had a bright idea. 'Can I give you a lift home? We can talk in the car – if you promise not to fall asleep.'

  0o0o0

  Chapter Ten

  After teatime, the three friends gathered at the greenhouse. Billy arrived last having stayed to listen to Dick Barton on the BBC's Light programme at a quarter to seven.

  Kick held out a small padlock fastened to a bent staple. 'This were on the door.'

  Billy examined the door jamb and the scars of the unwelcome padlock’s removal. 'Who purrit on? Worrit Mister Eadon? He said he dint mind us coming in here.'

  'It weren't him,' Yvonne said. 'I've been and asked him. He said we can play here as long as we don't break owt.'

  'I bet it's coppers,' Kick said. 'They're just spoil sports. They know we come in here and they want to stop us, even though it's got nowt to do wi' 'em.'