Dead Weight

by Frank Smith

  ‘What about CCTV?’ Paget asked. ‘Anything covering the back lane or the street?’

  ‘Not directly, but there is a camera on the corner of Carlisle Street and King George Way, so anything coming out of the lane – like Pollock driving the doctor’s Audi, for example – should be on that tape. That would corroborate young Pollock’s story, but there is nothing covering the other end of the lane, which is where Doctor Bryant would have to drive in to park where she did. What we could do is look at the tapes on the route from Falcon Ridge into town on Wednesday night. With all those lights covering the roundabout at the bottom of Strathe Hill, we might see who’s driving, and I’ll bet it wasn’t Sammy Pollock.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Paget, ‘but that can wait till Monday. The doctor may be lying about where her car was when it was stolen, but that may be to cover an extramarital affair rather than murder, so we don’t want to stir things up needlessly. Apart from the body’s proximity to the car, there is nothing to connect the two, and until that body is identified, we have virtually nothing to investigate. So enjoy the weekend while you can.’

  ‘Well, at least we know the body isn’t that of Doctor Geoffrey Bryant,’ Tregalles said. ‘He’s been in his office since nine o’clock this morning. I checked.’

  Sunday, 13 May

  Ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, the whole day off, and she was still in her dressing gown. Molly poured herself another mug of coffee, then wandered lazily from the tiny kitchen to the living room. She took a slim folder from the bookshelf, then settled down on the sofa, legs tucked under her. Savouring the moment, she sipped her coffee slowly before setting the mug aside and opening the folder.

  Emails from David. She’d saved every one of them, printing them off, as well as saving them to a separate flash drive. They were probably safe enough there, but she’d printed them because she liked to hold a piece of paper in her hands and read the printed words. It might not make much sense, but, to her, it brought the writer closer, and the words seemed to be more real.

  Molly moistened her finger and flipped back several pages to the one dated the sixth of April. Strange how the days flew by at work, yet time slowed to a crawl when you were waiting for something really nice to happen at home. Like waiting for Christmas when she was a child. Molly slipped the page out, then closed the folder and set it aside. Another sip of coffee, adjust the cushions, wriggle around a bit to make sure she was really comfortable, because everything had to be just right before she read the email from David once again.

  Dear Molly, I don’t know how I can begin to apologize for … There it was again! That same surge of apprehension as she read the opening words. She knew there was no need to feel that way – she knew the words by heart – but it happened every time.

  He was apologizing, he said, for not having written before, then went on to explain that the malaria he had contracted in Africa, while working for Doctors Without Borders, had caught up with him again. The combination of long hours at the hospital, where he’d been working in Hong Kong, lack of sleep and ignoring the warning signs had led to his collapse. As a result, he wrote, I’ve been ‘completely out of it’ for some time.

  He went on to say that his daughter, Lijuan, had been great, visiting him every day after school, even when he didn’t know she was there, and it was she who had kept his aunt and uncle, Ellen and Reg Starkie, informed of his progress. Unfortunately, Lijuan had done all the emailing from her own Archos tablet, which, he explained, was what almost everyone was using over there, and Molly’s email address wasn’t programmed into Lijuan’s tablet. So it wasn’t until he had recovered enough to start looking at his emails that he realized what had happened.

  Molly paused there as she always did. Did Lijuan even know about her? And if she did, even though her parents had been divorced for several years, and her mother was now dead, would Lijuan be resentful of her father exchanging emails with another woman? Not that Lijuan had any reason to be jealous or feel threatened. Molly and David had known each other for such a short time before he’d had to rush off to Hong Kong that they were really no more than friends keeping in touch … no matter how much she might wish for them to be more than friends.

  Molly took another sip of coffee. It was cold. Frowning, she looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Ten thirty? Where did that half hour go? She had things to do today; she should get on …

  She snuggled down. She’d been saving the best part till last, and she was going to enjoy it, even if she had read it at least a dozen times before.

  David and Lijuan were coming to England when Lijuan’s school year finished in June. For a month! Partly, David explained, to help him get back on his feet again. The malaria had left him drained, he said, and the change would do him good. He was looking forward to seeing her again, and hoped that her new job as a detective sergeant wouldn’t keep her so busy that they couldn’t spend some time together!

  SIXTEEN

  Monday, 14 May

  Dr Reginald Starkie unzipped the body bag and stood looking down at the black plastic-wrapped figure on the table. There was almost as much duct tape as plastic wound around the body from head to foot. The tightly bound and mud-caked body had been kept in the body bag to preserve the external evidence. Once the wire, duct tape and bin bags had been cut away, the body would be lifted clear, the bag zipped up, and it would be sent for further forensic examination.

  After cutting off the two ten-kilogram plates to lighten the load in getting the body to the surface, the divers had left the rest of the wire in place, twisting the cut ends together to keep the wire from unravelling. It was copper wire – old, pitted with age and hard to bend – and Starkie was surprised that they’d managed to do such a neat job of it while under water. The weights themselves were sitting in an evidence bag on the floor of Starkie’s office, and they, too, would be sent for examination. From what he had seen of them through the heavy plastic bag, they, like the wire, were old. Cast iron beneath a chipped gold-coloured metallic paint. Big mistake by the person or persons who had gone to all that trouble to dispose of a body, thought Starkie, because it had been the reflection from the paint that had drawn the weights to the divers’ attention.

  The pathologist glanced over to where Paget stood with arms folded, gowned and masked, and wondered why the DCI had decided to attend this particular autopsy personally.

  With a nod to his assistant, they stripped away the body bag and began to untwist the wire.

  Tregalles toyed with his coffee mug. Should he go out to the machine and refill the mug, or not? The coffee from the machine was even more bitter than usual this morning, but at least it was hot and it helped keep him awake after a restless night. Restless because, while he’d been pissed off with Paget for taking over a case that should have been his, he was experiencing an undercurrent of relief. He’d hardly dared admit it, even to himself, but it was beginning to feel like old times again, when he and Paget were a team, and he was feeling more comfortable in that role than he’d felt for some time.

  He was sure that he could pass the inspector’s exam, but the question was: Did he want to? Was he prepared to move out from under Paget’s shadow and accept the responsibilities that went with the promotion?

  His phone rang. He scooped it up as if it were a lifeline. ‘DS Tregalles.’

  ‘Got someone here who says you want to see him,’ Sam Broughton said. ‘Says he’s a part-time cab driver for Ajax. I’m short-handed out here, so if you want him, you’ll have to have someone come and get him. All right?’

  Tregalles had been lucky. One phone call to the only taxi company of any consequence in town had produced a result when he’d asked if they had a record of anyone going from the Victoria Park area to Falcon Ridge, before nine o’clock last Thursday morning. There was one, the dispatcher told him, a woman who had called in at seven forty-five a.m. asking to be picked up at the Shelbourne Street entrance to Victoria Park. The name she had given was Rogers, but it had to be Lydia Br
yant.

  ‘I’ll come myself,’ he told Broughton, and grabbed his empty mug.

  ‘They call me in if someone’s ill or away for any reason,’ Gordon Sloane explained. He was an older man, heavyset, grey hair, rheumy eyes and a breathing problem. ‘Been doing it for more than a year now after I was made redundant. I used to be a manager at Draper’s until they were taken over by a chain and they downsized. It meant I wasn’t going to get as much pension, so I had to look round for work. Sometimes I get as much as a week’s work out of it, but more often than not it’s a night shift.’

  Now, sitting facing the man on the other side of the table in the interview room, Tregalles sipped his coffee. He’d offered to get one for Sloane, but the man had taken one look at the machine as they passed by and said he preferred water. ‘So, you were working last Thursday morning?’ Tregalles prompted.

  ‘That’s right. Coming to the end of the night shift, when I got the call to pick up this woman outside Victoria Park.’ Sloane pulled a folded paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to Tregalles. ‘Lou, the dispatcher – he’s the bloke you talked to – said you wanted to know what time she was picked up and so on, so he made a copy of the log. I got the call at twelve minutes to eight, and my log says I picked her up at four minutes to eight.’ He handed Tregalles a second sheet of paper.

  Tregalles looked at it and frowned. ‘Destination 128 Condor Crescent?’ he said with a sharp glance at Sloane. ‘Are you quite sure of the address?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Except she told me there was no need to go up the drive when I got there. She said something about it being hard to turn round up there, so she’d save me the trouble. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I mean, a big house like that and a driveway where you can’t turn round? But that’s what she wanted, so I dropped her at the foot of the drive.’

  ‘Outside 128 Condor Crescent? Not Eagle Crest Way?’

  ‘I do know the difference,’ Sloane said coldly. ‘But she didn’t go up to the house. She started walking up the drive as I drove away, but I had my sheet to fill in before going off shift, so I stopped a bit farther down the road, and I saw her in my mirror. She’d come out of the driveway and was legging it back the way we’d come to the steps.’

  ‘The steps?’

  ‘Steps that go all the way up the hill for dog walkers and the like,’ Sloane explained. ‘Saves them from having to go round all them winding roads to get down to the park at the bottom. Anyway, when I’d filled in my sheet, I carried on round the crescent to where it comes out on Eagle Crest Way, and I see her again. She was some distance away and her back was towards me, but it was her all right.’

  ‘Did you see where she went? Which house, or at least which driveway?’

  Sloane shook his head. ‘I was going the other way, and I was late for my breakfast as it was.’ Sloane sat back in his seat and folded his arms. ‘So what’s this all about, then?’ he asked. ‘What’s this Mrs Rogers done?’

  ‘I’m not sure she’s done anything,’ Tregalles said. ‘Can you describe her?’

  ‘She was tall; didn’t get much of a look at her face. She was wearing a mac, all buttoned up, with the hood up … except it wasn’t raining. Mind you, it was a bit nippy out. Oh, yeah, and high-heeled shoes. Shiny with real spikes on ’em. Not the sort for wandering about in the park, I shouldn’t have thought.’

  ‘Would you recognize her if you saw her again?’

  Sloane thought about it, then shook his head. ‘Like I said, I didn’t get much of a look at her face, but I’d recognize the shoes, if that’s any help?’

  Tregalles smiled. ‘It might be,’ he said. ‘You say you picked her up on the Shelbourne Street side of the park. What was she doing there?’

  ‘Dunno. She was just standing there waiting for me.’

  ‘Did she say anything when she got in?’

  ‘Just gave me the address, then moved over to sit behind me so I couldn’t see much of her in the rear-view mirror.’

  ‘She didn’t say anything else?’

  ‘Not a peep till we got to the address, like I told you.’

  When Tregalles returned to the office after assigning a DC to take Gordon Sloane’s statement, he found Molly and Sophie Kajura looking pleased with themselves. ‘We’ve been looking at the CCTV tapes from last Wednesday,’ Molly told him, ‘and Doctor Bryant’s car came out of the lane behind Parkside Place on to Carlisle Street at nine minutes past eleven. You can’t see who’s driving, but there’s no doubt about the car.’

  ‘So young Pollock was telling the truth about that,’ Tregalles said. ‘What about earlier in the evening? Did we pick up anything from the cameras covering the roundabout at the bottom of the hill?’

  Sophie turned the screen towards him. ‘As you can see, we have a couple of clear shots of Doctor Bryant driving the car at nine fifty-three. They’re a bit grainy, but there’s no doubt about who is driving the car.’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Tregalles agreed, attempting to match Sophie’s broad Welsh accent, and failing miserably. ‘We’ll need stills of both, timed and dated, and—’ A short burst of musical notes interrupted whatever he’d been about to say. ‘It’s Paget,’ he said, glancing at the screen before answering. His face became grave as he listened. ‘You’re quite sure?’ he asked, as if not wanting to believe what he was hearing. ‘Yes, yes, I see. Of course, but … Right. Two o’clock.’ Tregalles drew in his breath and let it out again slowly as he pocketed the phone. ‘They’ve identified the body the divers found in the river last week,’ he said. ‘It’s Justine Delgado.’

  Molly caught her breath and sat down hard. ‘Oh, that poor girl!’ she breathed. ‘I was afraid she might be dead, but to treat her body like that …’ She had never known Justine in life, but it felt as if she had, and she could feel the sting of tears behind her eyes.

  ‘I know how you feel,’ Tregalles said sympathetically. ‘I wish we could have done more, but we had no leads. Anyway, there’s to be a briefing here at two o’clock this afternoon, and Paget wants everyone who worked on the case to be here. Will you be all right, Molly?’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said as she got to her feet. ‘It just took me by surprise, that’s all. Don’t worry, I’ll be here.’

  ‘And so will I,’ Sophie said. She sounded as though she was looking forward to it.

  A smile tugged at the corners of Tregalles’s mouth as he moved away. He should be used to Sophie Kajura by now, but it still came as something of a surprise to hear the girl speak with such a strong Welsh accent. Sophie didn’t talk much about herself or her family, but Tregalles had learned, mainly through Molly, that Sophie had been born in Uganda to a Ugandan father and Welsh mother, where both worked as teachers at a Christian missionary school.

  Sophie was three years old when her father was killed by the LRA – the Lord’s Resistance Army, as they called themselves – during a raid on the school. By sheer chance, it was Sophie’s mother’s turn to drive into town for supplies that day, and she’d taken Sophie with her. A decision that saved both their lives, because, when she returned, it was to find her husband and every one of her colleagues butchered, the school and living quarters in flames, and the children gone – all thirty-three of them.

  Less than a month later, mother and daughter arrived in Swansea, where they lived with Sophie’s Welsh grandmother until Sophie’s mother found a teaching job in Llanelli, which was where Sophie had grown up.

  ‘Sophie may be Ugandan by birth,’ he remembered Molly telling him, ‘but she’s as Welsh as they come.’

  Tregalles had been suspicious when Sophie had first arrived from Uniforms with a scant two years in the service behind her – hardly a fair trade for Tony Brooks, who’d had close to ten years’ service when he left. Was this, he wondered, a case of Uniforms getting rid of someone thought to be incompetent or who just ‘didn’t fit’?

  But, if that had been their thinking, they’d made a bad mistake, because DC Sophie Kajura had turned out to be a gem. F
or a start, she’d put two years of legal training behind her before opting to join the police. She was a quick learner and a hard worker, and he appreciated the good work she had done for them. But that Welsh accent … He didn’t think he would ever get used to it.

  ‘Height, weight, hair and other physical features all match the information we have on Justine Delgado,’ Paget said, ‘and while we won’t have the DNA results for a few days, she did have quite a lot of work done on her teeth by a local dentist, and those records match perfectly as well.’

  ‘Do we know the cause of death?’ asked Tregalles.

  ‘There was a severe blow to the left temple with a rounded object,’ Paget told him, ‘and a second triangular-shaped blow to the back of the head, which may have been caused when her head came into contact with something sharp as she fell backwards from the first blow. However, in Dr Starkie’s opinion, neither blow was fatal. Justine Delgado died of asphyxia. She was suffocated. There were signs of bruising around the mouth, cuts and bruising inside her lips, and bits of material were found between her teeth. She choked on her own vomit. Also, post-mortem lividity blotches suggest that the body was moved several times following death. As a result, Sergeant Ormside will be setting up an incident room immediately following this briefing.’ He gave a nod in the direction of the grizzled sergeant who sat with arms folded at the end of the table.

  ‘The body is relatively well preserved due to the water being extremely cold,’ Paget continued, ‘and it was so tightly wrapped that it was waterproof, so decomposition was slowed considerably. Unfortunately, some of the worst decomposition is around the eyes, and it is not a pleasant sight, so I’m a bit reluctant to ask one of her employers to identify the body.’