Body of a Girl

by Michael Gilbert

  “What is it?” said Frank.

  “Some bloody picnicker has buried a—” He stopped.

  “B—buried w—what? Do come on. I’m freezing.”

  But Michael took no notice. Kneeling on the shingle, he scraped with his hands. It was a layer of stones which the river had been eating into. The wash of the current had nibbled away the lower stones and now the top covering had fallen in.

  From the edge something white was sticking out. Michael, who had touched it, got up, went across and washed his hands in the river. It was a ritual gesture.

  He said, “I think we’d better tell someone about this, don’t you?”

  Chapter Two

  “It’s a quiet town,” said Superintendent Clark, “and I’m aiming to keep it that way.”

  “I hope so,” said Mercer.

  The two men were in the Superintendent’s office, overlooking the roundabout at the east end of the town where the first feeder from the by-pass came in. Mercer had reported his arrival at nine o’clock that morning and the two men were taking stock of each other.

  “I hope your digs are all right. We fixed you up temporarily in Cray Avenue. It’s a fair step from the station, but I imagine you’ll be getting a car.”

  “The bed’s a bit hard,” said Mercer. “No other complaints so far.”

  “Mrs. Marchant will look after you all right. She’s a good soul. When you’ve been here a week or so, if you find something you like better, we can fix it up for you. Now the summer’s nearly over there’ll be plenty of places to choose from.”

  “Seasonal population?”

  “Mixed bag. A hard core of commuters. And a lot of retired folk. But we do get a bit of a population explosion in the summer, when people crowd down here and fill up the bungalows and houseboats and barges—or just pitch tents alongside the river. They don’t give a lot of trouble, particularly if the weather’s hot. They spend all their time in and on the water.”

  “Compared with Southwark,” said Mercer, “it sounds like a rest cure.”

  “We’ve got a few problems. There was a bit of trouble with a gang of boys who used to hang round the public lavatory under the railway arch. We got the council to shut it down, and open another one in the Square. That’s more in the public eye. It cleared the trouble. Lately we’ve had a run of shop-breaking. Transistors, tape-recorders, typewriters. Tom Rye thinks it’s the same man. You’ll find Tom very sound. Towards the end he was really holding up Watkyn.”

  “How is Watkyn?”

  “In Slough Infirmary.” The Superintendent made a face. “Exploratory surgery. He thinks it’s ulcers. Oh, come in, Tom. Have you two met?”

  “We arrived at the same moment and nodded to each other,” said Rye. “And I’ll wager you’ve been telling him what you told me when I first came here. That it’s a nice quiet manor where nothing ever happens.”

  “Near enough.”

  “Well it’s happened. Two boys found a body on Westhaugh Island this morning.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then the Superintendent said, “That’s just below the weir. Could have been an accident.”

  “Not unless the corpse buried itself.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “One of the boys – name of Michael Drake-Pelley – is a smart kid. He and his friend have been bathing off the island a lot this last two months. He says they noticed that when the new sluice was opened a lot more water came through on that side, and it’s been steadily eating away the island. The body was a good three feet down. If it hadn’t been for that sluice being opened it’d be there still.”

  “Drake-Pelley,” said Mercer. “It’s an uncommon name. He isn’t by any chance—?”

  “Yes,” said Rye. “That’s just it. He is.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Clark.

  “Michael’s father is Sir Richard Drake-Pelley, the Director of Public Prosecutions. And, like I said, Michael’s a smart boy. As soon as he’d finished telephoning us, he got on to the Daily Mirror. Gave them an exclusive. Just the sort of thing which would appeal to them. ‘Headache for the Director. Unearthed by his own son.’ “

  “Damn,” said the Superintendent. “Better get the place sealed off before Central get there. They won’t be pleased if a lot of sightseers have been trampling over it.”

  “I’ve sent Sergeant Gwilliam down there,” said Rye. “I’m not sure we’re going to get anyone from Central.”

  Both men stared.

  “I had a word with Superintendent Wakefield at Division. I thought we’d better alert him straightaway. He said he didn’t think C.I. had anyone on tap. They’ve got two men in Pakistan on this forged passport lark, one in Jamaica and one in Lagos. The rest are already booked. Greig was the last, and he went up to Cumberland on that child murder, last week.”

  “I’ll have a word with Division myself,” said Clark.

  He was back in five minutes, looking grim. He said, “I had Morrissey on the phone. He wants us to do it ourselves. He said we can have a sergeant from Central to help if we want him.”

  Mercer and Rye looked at each other. Their reactions were identical.

  “We don’t want to be lumbered with him if we don’t have to,” said Rye. “I know these boys from Central. He’ll be round our necks whilst we do the real work, and he’ll grab all the credit at the end.”

  “What about facilities?” said Mercer. “Forensic Laboratory, Central Teletype, C.R.O.”

  “They’ll give you any help you need on the technical side. Morrissey promised that.”

  “Then we’d better get moving, hadn’t we,” said Mercer. “Who takes photographs round here?”

  “Len Prothero.”

  “Put him in the back of your car, and you can drive us both out.”

  When the Romans came they found a crossing place on the bend of the river, where the water ran deep and slow, and used it to transport stones across, from Brittlesham quarry, to make up the start of their great road to the north. They called it, in their own language, the Ferry of the Stones, and the name has remained in Anglicised form to this day. There is not much of the old town left. A group of rather nice Georgian houses round the church. An outer ring of standard commuter residences, and a belt of riverside bungalows, barges, boathouses and pubs.

  As the car squeezed its way between the market stalls which were already blocking either side of the High Street, Mercer said, “The old man didn’t seem very pleased at the high compliment which was being paid to the efficiency of his force.”

  “He’s a year off retirement,” said Rye. “If this case makes a splash and it isn’t tidied up quick and neat, he’d like someone else to blame.”

  “Reasonable,” said Mercer. “Wouldn’t the traffic get up this street a bit easier if you shifted the market somewhere else?”

  “We tried to. Couldn’t do it. Six-hundred-year-old charter. Would have needed an Act of Parliament. Mind you, it’s not so bad now they’ve built the by-pass. When I first came here it really was a mess.”

  At the head of the High Street the road divided. The left turn went over the high humped bridge which had been built in the year of Agincourt, and joined the by-pass road to Staines at the roundabout on the other side. They took the minor road to the right, turning left again down a small road which was signposted ‘Westhaugh Weir. No Through Road’. The built-up area was behind them now. There was a scattering of smaller houses, and market gardens, then open country.

  After half a mile the car slowed, and turned into a track which led gently downhill, winding between a fuzz of alders, thorn trees and scrub oak. When Tom Rye stopped the car and said, “Now we walk,” Mercer thought how quiet it was. The dominating sound was the lazy roar of the waters pouring through the half-open sluices of the weir.

  A footpath between high nettles took them to a plank bridge which spanned the arm of the backwater. As they crossed it, the burly figure of Sergeant Gwilliam rose out of the bushes which crowned the backbone of the isl
and. It was no more than a spit of sand and gravel a hundred yards long and nowhere more than twenty yards wide thrown up in times past by a freak of the river.

  “Any visitors yet?” said Rye.

  “Only swans,” said Gwilliam. He was a big Welshman, with the build of a lock forward. “A pair of them. Very inhospitable. They didn’t like me being here at all. Hissed at me, they did.”

  “There’s probably a nest on the island somewhere. Lucky the cygnets are hatched, or they would have gone for you. Introduce the new skipper.”

  “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” said Gwilliam.

  Mercer nodded briefly. He was staring down into the excavation which Gwilliam had started. He said, “We’ll have some photographs before you do any more. When the pathologist has had a look at it, finish the digging carefully down each side. Disturb things as little as possible. You’ll have to scrape away the last of the earth by hand. We’ll have another set of photographs when you’ve got that far. Right?”

  Detective Leonard Prothero nodded, and started to unstrap the stand for his camera. He was thin, and sad-looking; in fact, a noted mimic, and much in demand at police concerts for his impersonations of senior officers.

  Mercer said to Rye, “There was a small house opposite where we turned. We’ll see if we can borrow some planks. When the pathologist’s finished he’ll want to get that body up with as little disturbance as possible. And put a police notice at the end of the lane – No Entrance.”

  “It’s a public footpath,” said Rye doubtfully. “This is about the favourite snogging place in Stoneferry, we’ll have to give some reason.”

  “Suspected foot and mouth disease,” said Mercer.

  Dr. Champion, the County Pathologist, was an old man. He was also a tired man. He had spent a large part of his professional life looking at bodies and pieces of bodies and in the first flush of youth had written a treatise on bruises which had brought him professional kudos. Now he was looking forward to a peaceful retirement when the only dead body he would have to cut up would be the Sunday joint.

  “Judging by the pelvis,” he said, “it was a woman. And not a very old one. She’s been dead at least a year, maybe two.”

  “As little as that?” said Mercer staring down at the assembly of clean white bones which had now been laid out on the mortuary table.

  “Quick work, I agree. Three reasons for it. First, she was buried in loose sand and shingle, not packed down in loam or clay. Second, in winter the grave would have been near enough the river for the water to seep through it. Under those conditions it wouldn’t take long to sieve away the hair and flesh and tissue. There’s some gristle left—” He poked a long forefinger into the space between the hip bones. “It takes a long time to dissolve gristle. But everything else has gone.”

  “You said three reasons.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “And the third reason’s the most important. She was stripped before she was buried. She went into the grave naked.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Quite certain. Clothing doesn’t disappear as quickly as that. There’s metal in most clothing. And leather and plastic. They last longer than human tissues. I’ve known even a cotton sheet come out after three years, with an identifiable laundry mark on it.”

  “Any idea how she died?”

  “I can give a good guess. Come and look at this.” He picked up a pencil torch and shone it into the cavity under the jaw. “You see that small bone.”

  “The one shaped like a ‘U’?”

  “That’s the one. Called the hyoid bone. Touch it with the tip of your finger. Very gently.”

  Mercer did so. He felt the bone give under the light pressure.

  “It’s been snapped,” he said. “So what does that prove?”

  “If you find the hyoid bone with a clean fracture, it’s odds-on the deceased was strangled. Manually strangled. Probably from in front. That way you naturally put your thumbs on the carotid artery.” He demonstrated, and Mercer felt two surprisingly strong thumbs dig into the top of his windpipe.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “No need to snap my hyoid bone. I take your point. Can you give us anything to help with identity?”

  Dr. Champion consulted the notes he had made. He said, “Age, I should guess, anywhere between eighteen and twenty-five, give or take a year either end. The height we can check two ways. By measuring the cadaver – but that can be quite inaccurate, particularly after it’s been disturbed. But since we have all the major bones intact, the humerus, the radius and the femur, we can use Trotter and Gleser’s tables or Rollet’s formula—” Dr. Champion peered at his notes again. “Both of which confirm a height of between five foot three and five foot four.”

  “That’s something, I suppose.”

  “I can’t invent facts to suit you, Inspector. Science is no man’s handmaid. But I’ve noticed one unusual thing about the young lady. She’s got no fillings in her teeth. None at all.”

  He shut his notebook with a snap. He thought he might just manage to get home in time for lunch.

  “Wouldn’t that be a bit unusual if she was as much as twenty-five. Most people have been to the dentist by that time.”

  “If we looked after our teeth properly,” said Dr. Champion, “if we abandoned the foolish habit of brushing them first thing in the morning and last thing at night and brushed them after every meal, and ate the right sort of foods, there’d be no need for us to trouble dentists at all.”

  It was a favourite fad of his.

  Back at the police station Mercer made his first report to the Superintendent. He said, “We can’t keep that island sealed off indefinitely. There was quite a crowd there already when I went back. Gwilliam’s going to need help.”

  “I’ll send a man down from the afternoon off-duty squad.”

  “We shan’t need one man. We shall need six.”

  “Six?”

  “I want them to go through the whole island – inch by inch – to see what they can pick up. And they ought to do it before anyone else gets onto it.”

  “I admire your zeal,” said Clark. “But don’t you think you’re overdoing it. You tell me the body’s been there a year, maybe two. There are times in the winter when the whole island’s under water. Isn’t it a bit late to start looking for clues?”

  “It seems to me something that ought to be done,” said Mercer. “If you authorise me to skip it, O.K.—”

  “Certainly not. You’re in charge. You said six men—”

  “With sticks or spikes. And a couple of scythes. They’re to clear the island first. Then walk up and down it prodding.”

  “I take it you’ll be there? You can give them their instructions.”

  “At my last station,” said Mercer, “if a plain-clothes man gave a man in uniform a suggestion, let alone an instruction, all he got was a dirty look.”

  The Superintendent said, “You’ll find that discipline is better here.”

  The opening moves in a murder investigation have been as carefully thought out and are as stereotyped as the Sicilian defence in chess. At nine o’clock that evening, as the light was beginning to go, Mercer sat in the C.I.D. room wondering what he had forgotten.

  Area sealed off. Coroner’s office alerted. Statement for the Press, cleared on the telephone with the Press Office at Scotland Yard. Copies of the pathologist’s report to the coroner and to Division. Two sets of photographs from the scene of the crime and one from the mortuary. Provisional description circulated to Missing Persons. Arrangements made for custody of the body.

  What had he left out? The Forensic Science Laboratory. But he had absolutely nothing to send them. Not a hair, not a stain, not a scrap of tissue or rag of clothing. Just a parcel of bones, picked clean by the industrious ants, scoured by sand and water. All the same, they should have a copy of the pathologist’s report; and since he had been given freedom of choice, it should go to Guy’s, who had given him much friendly assistance when he was
in Southwark.

  Tom Rye and Gwilliam came in. They were carrying a wicker basket between them, and dumped it on the table.

  “One island, contents of,” said Rye. “Five hundred fascinating relics. Would you like to list them now, or shall we do it tomorrow?”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “It depends what you call interesting. How many French letters did we find?”

  “Twenty-five,” said Gwilliam.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Mercer. “There isn’t a square foot of that island that’s level, and most of it’s covered with nettles.”

  “The youth of Stoneferry are a hardy lot,” said Rye. He started to extract articles from the basket. “One sardine tin, recent, with remnants of fish still adhering. One shoe, decrepit—”

  Mercer got up abruptly. He said, “That girl’s been there for a year or more. Another twelve hours won’t make any difference. Let’s knock off. I need a drink. What’s the best place round here for picking up form?”

  Tom Rye considered. He said, “There’s The Chough, over there on the other side of the Square, but that’s really a lunch-time pub. At this time of night your best bet would be The Angler’s Rest. Signboard, a gent holding his arms wide apart. Locally known as The Tall Story. Down the steps by the war memorial, along the towpath, and it’s on your left just before you come to the railway bridge.”

  The Angler’s Rest was an old, dark place. It smelled of stale beer, varnish, and what might have been fish but was probably dry-rot. It had uneven brick floors, yellowing ceilings, and walls covered with cases containing glassy-eyed pike and barbel, who glared down at the drinkers, like the oldest members of the club disapproving of the rising generation.

  When Mercer went into the saloon bar he attracted as much, and as little, attention as any stranger does when he goes into a pub. That is to say nobody looked at him, and everyone wondered who he was. He ordered a pint of bitter, and retired to an uncomfortable oak settee in the corner. The beer was all right. It was a good brand, and had been carefully looked after.

  About ten minutes later an inner door opened, and a barrel of a man with a sun-reddened face and close-cropped hair came out and rolled across to the bar. He ordered a light ale, a brandy and ginger ale and two Scotch-and-sodas. As he paid for them, Mercer noticed that he only had one arm.