Dead People

by Ewart Hutton

Autolysis had caused skin slippage on the chest. The green tint of putrefaction was present, but the worst of the bloat had gone, the gas and fluid accumulations already purged out. Insects were crawling or dropping out of the huge wound the tractor’s bucket had made. But no adipocere yet. I tried to remember. How long for the soapy deposits of adipocere to form?

  Her breasts had collapsed into triangular flaps on the slumped chest skin. But they were still recognisable as breasts. This was a she. This one was fresh.

  I sent out a silent prayer to the angel who watched over my hunches. Don’t do this to me. Don’t let this be Evie.

  Evie left two years ago. This one still had skin. Skeletonization would have occurred if she had been in the ground for two years. It came back to me. Those gruesome pillowcase lectures I had had with my forensic scientist. Adipocere formation takes from several weeks to months to form. There was no adipocere formation yet.

  And Evie had been gone for two years. I clutched at that.

  I found the legs. Down on my hands and knees with a trowel, an old T-shirt of Jeff’s soaked in aftershave and wrapped around my lower face, keeping the worst of the stench at bay. I had left Jeff with Donnie at the site huts, still in shock. I had called this one in from down there before I had come back up with my jury-rigged face mask.

  I knew I should have left this bit to the experts, but it was personal. I felt that I had desecrated her. She had been chopped in half as a result of my instructions. I had to do the best I could to make her at least symbolically whole again.

  The bastard had left her shoes on. It turned her back to human, and I felt my stomach churn again. Raised heels, thin strap at the back, wickedly pointed, and still recognizably red.

  One had been partially dislodged by the swelling that accompanied decomposition. I took a photograph of it and the leg in situ with my digital camera. For the forensic record. Then I grasped the heel, closed my eyes, and pulled it away. I took another photograph of the shoe, zooming in so that the grotesque dead foot was not in the shot. If I was going to have to show this picture around I wanted to keep it as trauma-free as possible.

  I stood back and looked down at the legs, still lying where I had uncovered them. We hadn’t scooped them up from the deep. This was a shallow grave. Much more so than the other one. And, given the condition of the body, it had to be much more recent.

  Why? The illogicality of it had started to crowd in on me. Why bury something on a construction site just before the work has started?

  Because, in other respects, they had been clever. By setting fire to the surrounding vegetation they had disguised the freshness of the excavation. Just another one of the many burned or blighted patches that scabbed the hillside. And they would probably have had to bury her in daylight as the torched heather would have shone like a beacon in the night. Or wouldn’t that matter around here? Was that why this place had had been chosen? Because even God had His blind spots?

  Jack Galbraith and Bryn Jones turned up shortly after the SOCO team and Bill Atkins. We were now all wearing white gauze respiratory masks and white sterile suits, which gave us the look and the fuzzy sound of the survivors of an alien virus.

  They both stared at the dressing on the side of my head. ‘Husband came home unexpectedly, eh? Had to close her legs a bit too quickly, did she, Capaldi?’ Jack Galbraith quipped, deadpan.

  I assumed that I wasn’t meant to answer that.

  He made a big deal of taking in the whole scene and groaned theatrically. ‘How do you manage it? Didn’t I say it, Bryn? On the way back to Carmarthen the last time we were here. “Just you watch,” I said. “Just you watch Capaldi fuck up the serenity. Watch him turn a nice, cold, total cul-de-sac case into a fucking Hollywood spectacular.” He looked around him with unfeigned disgust. ‘In Indian fucking territory.’

  Bryn was taking in the remains. ‘Looks like this one’s coming off the desktop.’ He glanced at me as he said it. I couldn’t tell whether it had contained a smile or a frown.

  ‘Where’s your big black box and your saw, Capaldi?’ Jack Galbraith asked eventually, breaking the silence that had accompanied his ruminations over the corpse, which was still sitting in the tractor’s bucket.

  ‘Sir?’ I asked, wondering what was coming at me.

  ‘Your amateur magician’s kit. Saw the lady in half. Missed the rest of the lesson, did you? The bit where they showed you how to put her back together again?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  He turned to Bryn Jones. ‘I’m getting a very bad feeling about this.’

  Bryn nodded his concurrence morosely.

  Jack Galbraith came back at me. ‘Tell us about it, Capaldi. What brainstorm made you decide to start mashing around this spot with that mechanical deathtrap?’

  ‘It was a lucky guess, sir.’

  He winced. He didn’t think it was lucky. He could now see part of his future stretching out in front of him with an accompaniment of mud, drizzle and Inspector Morgan. ‘The doc reckons she’s been in the ground for anything between four and eight weeks,’ he reflected.

  ‘Only a guess at this stage,’ Bryn cautioned.

  ‘Close enough to start running a working hypothesis. When did the work start here?’

  ‘Just under five weeks ago, sir,’ I said. I had already asked Donnie.

  ‘So, he just managed to dump her in time,’ he mused.

  ‘If he was local he’d have known about the prospect of the wind farm for a long time, sir,’ I said.

  He shook his head dismissively. ‘He’s not local. Give me the stats on the first one again, Bryn.’

  ‘Forensics are saying about six to eight years in the ground,’ he replied without consulting his notes. ‘Male, broad-spectrum middle-age. Zero identifying marks or indicators as to cause of death.’

  Jack Galbraith spread his arms, an index finger pointing at each of the gravesites. ‘Six years . . . Six weeks . . . What the fuck is going on here?’

  Bryn and I stayed quiet, we both knew that the question was rhetorical.

  ‘Head and hands gone in both cases,’ Jack Galbraith ruminated aloud, ‘both bodies naked. It’s too soon for a copycat, and there hasn’t been any publicity. We have to assume it’s the same workman.’

  ‘Different genders,’ Bryn observed, ‘and this latest one looks young, which would make different age ranges.’

  So, no nice, tight victim pattern to work with. This guy is not particular. And why the time spread?’ Jack Galbraith looked at me when he said it. ‘Why six years between them?’

  ‘We don’t know that this is it, sir. The final victim count,’ I ventured.

  ‘You win the coconut, Sergeant Capaldi, for providing the answer we did not want to hear.’

  ‘There’s something strange, sir.’ I had to share the illogicality that had started screaming at me as soon as I had got over my first visceral response to the sight of the body.

  ‘Something strange . . .?’ he said sarcastically, raising his eyebrows, and letting me see his glance over at the corpse in the tractor’s bucket.

  ‘They must have known about the wind farm. I thought that was why they were trying to sabotage the diggers. To get the evidence out before we could get to it. But why bury another one here just before they started the site work?’

  ‘He’s not local,’ Jack Galbraith said with conviction, ‘this is a dumping ground, I’m sure of it. So he may not have known about the wind farm.’

  ‘The site would still have been advertised, sir. Even if he had managed to get the body up here before the work started he must have seen that they were going to be pulling the hill apart to build the wind farm’

  He frowned. ‘I’m changing my mind on this one. I don’t think these are professional hits. I think we’ve got a nut job. I think we’re going to find more. I think this is his dumping ground, his squirrel’s nest.’

  ‘Why bury a fresh one, sir,’ I persisted, ‘if he knows it’s going to be discovered?’

  ‘You
may be right, Capaldi. Either he hadn’t been keeping up with the news, or that’s what he wants. The thrill of exposure. His craftsmanship coming out into the light. So much so that he decides to welcome us here with fresh meat.’

  I had a sudden bad feeling, which I was not about to share with my superiors. Could the sabotage of the diggers have been a double bluff? Was my reaction the one they had been manoeuvring for? Had I been led here to find this body? Had I been played for a patsy?

  ‘That’s when they fuck up, isn’t it, Bryn?’ Jack Galbraith continued, happily mining his new vein. ‘When they start to think they can play around with us.’

  ‘I’d be happier if he’d left us with more identifiers,’ Bryn replied morosely.

  Jack Galbraith pointed at the torso in the tractor’s bucket. ‘That thing there has to be DNA soup.’

  ‘We’re working on getting a mitochondrial DNA profile off the skeleton, too. But where do we start the match process?’

  ‘Got any missing girls in your patch, Capaldi?’ Jack Galbraith asked with a smirk. ‘That aren’t covered in wool and say, “Baa”?’

  ‘I’ve got one that went astray two years ago.’

  He frowned, he hadn’t expected that answer. ‘This one hasn’t been in the ground for two years.’

  ‘I know that, sir. But the parents will hear about this and I’d like to try and reassure them.’

  He nodded towards the torso. ‘The sight of that is not going to reassure anyone.’

  I showed him the image of the red shoe on my digital camera. ‘I can ask them if their daughter ever wore anything like that.’

  ‘If she’s been gone for two years, what’s to say she didn’t buy the shoes in the interim?’ Bryn asked.

  ‘It would be an elimination, sir,’ I pushed. ‘We can then start moving the ripple outwards.’

  Jack Capaldi shook his head. ‘She’s not local. I expect the poor cow was a tart from somewhere. But not here.’

  Bryn shrugged. ‘We’ve got to start somewhere. May as well clear the local field before we spread.’

  David Williams had said that the Salmons’ smallholding was at the head of a crappy valley. In my book a valley was a piece of level ground where the hills had come down to rest. There was nothing level about this place. It was all on a slant. The tilt in the land affected everything, the runty trees, the stone field walls, even the weeds looked tired with trying to find the true vertical.

  I walked the last fifty metres rather than risk my car’s suspension on the deeply rutted track. It was a low stone house with a patched slate roof, the rendered walls painted sky blue, which, with the wind chimes, marked the owners as outsiders. An old-model Isuzu Trooper was parked beside the grass-choked hulk of a Ford Sierra, which had probably died pining for the asphalt of Bromley.

  Mr Salmon was in a field behind the house, bouncing on the seat of an open-topped tractor, dragging what looked like a rusty iron bedstead behind to scarify the grass. He waved, and cut across at an angle towards me, the tractor taking on the universal list of this place.

  Mrs Salmon came round from the back of the house at the same time as he arrived. He cut the engine. They were both wearing blue overalls, and looked earnest and worried, as if they had been expecting a visit from the foreclosure man. Or perhaps it was the dressing over my injury, damaged cops being a not-too-reassuring sight.

  ‘Hello, Sergeant,’ Mr Salmon called out warily. His wife stayed tight-lipped.

  ‘Hello,’ I called back cheerily, ‘I thought I’d call by to allay any worries you might have.’

  ‘Worries about what?’ Mrs Salmon asked.

  Oh, shit . . . I swore inwardly. The rumour-mill had stalled. The news hadn’t reached them yet. ‘We’ve found another body, I’m afraid.’ I found myself in the weird position of trying to project casual reassurance into that announcement.

  They both blanched. Her hand went to her mouth. He tried to put an arm around her shoulder, but she shrugged him off.

  ‘It’s a girl . . .?’ Mrs Salmon croaked.

  I nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We showed you a photograph of Evie,’ Mr Salmon reminded me anxiously.

  ‘We can’t go on visual evidence, I’m afraid,’ I said, trying to make it sound procedural, hoping that they wouldn’t ask me to elaborate.

  ‘Have they done something horrible to her?’ Her voice quaked.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t go into details.’

  ‘Does she fit Evie’s description?’ Mr Salmon asked shakily.

  ‘You told me Evie left two years ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And no one has reported having seen her since?’

  They shared a glance. ‘No.’ Mr Salmon spoke for both of them.

  ‘I can’t be precise at this stage, but I can tell you that the time frame doesn’t appear to match Evie’s leaving. So you may be able to help us to eliminate her from the enquiry.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ Mr Salmon asked.

  ‘By telling me if she ever possessed a pair of shoes like this?’ I passed the photograph.

  Mrs Salmon grabbed it. She stared at it for a moment, and then shook her head slowly, an expression of palpable relief forming. ‘No. Definitely not. She would never have been allowed anything as tarty as that.’

  I glanced at her husband, who was looking over her shoulder. If anything his pallor had got worse.

  ‘Mr Salmon?’

  He pulled a weak smile and shook his head. ‘Don’t ask me, I’m not an expert on the ladies’ shoe front.’ His voice was hoarse and soft. His way of expressing relief, I thought.

  ‘Poor girl.’ She handed back the photograph. She beamed at me. This one was someone else’s problem. Her world had clicked back into its safe and comfortable groove. ‘Will you stay and have a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘I’ll walk you down to your car,’ Mr Salmon offered.

  I felt the bad vibe as soon as we started walking. ‘Are you all right, Mr Salmon?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t turn round. Please don’t let her see you turn round. Just keep on walking.’ He still had the hoarse voice, but now he let me realize that it wasn’t relief. This was a man of ash and lye, an absolute inversion of joy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Those were Evie’s forbidden shoes.’

  ‘But your wife . . .’

  ‘She never knew,’ he interrupted. He took a breath, which rattled in his throat. ‘I caught Evie in those shoes one night in Dinas when I arrived early to collect her from a party. She hadn’t had time to change back into the sensible ones. They were meant to be a secret, she’d saved up her earnings to buy them. I promised not to tell her mother.’

  I kept on walking and waited for a reaction. But I didn’t feel the trapdoor drop beneath me. Just a wave of sadness. No shock, no surprise, no horror. Had I instinctively realized that it was Evie as soon as I had seen those devastated breasts and the piteous red shoes?

  Poor Evie. I allowed her a short, silent benediction, and prepared to concentrate on her father. He was in the pre-grief stage, he was on his way to hell, he had started the flight, but didn’t know the destination yet. He was open and numb, and the state was as good as any truth drug.

  He took a deep, shaky breath, and let the cry out from the heart. ‘We brought her here to be safe!’

  ‘When did she start running away?’ I probed gently.

  ‘It wasn’t running away to begin with. It started with not coming home on the school bus. Hanging around in Dinas. Then she started hitchhiking without telling us. Newtown at first, then Hereford or Aberystwyth. She would only call us to pick her up when she ran out of money to feed herself.’

  ‘Do you think she could have ended up living in any of those places?’

  He shook his head, beginning to catch a glimpse of the abyss. ‘We don’t know. We’ve been visiting them all regularly since she went away, walking around, just hoping we might catch a sight of her.’


  ‘Did she have any close friends here? Boyfriends?’

  ‘She wouldn’t talk to us about anything like that. She would never bring kids she knew from school back here.’

  ‘You said she saved up her earnings to buy those shoes? Where did she work?’

  ‘Babysitting, mainly. And she helped the ladies at the Barn Gallery at Pen Twyn when it was open. And she used to help Mrs Evans over at Pentre Fawr with her horses.’ He smiled wanly at the memory. ‘She would help her with hers, but she had no interest in our animals.’

  I felt the spark. ‘Would that be Mrs Gerald Evans?’ I asked, forcing myself to keep it flat. Pornographer, dog killer, rustler and cheat. And now?

  He nodded disinterestedly. His flight path was tilting. He looked at me mutely. Despairingly. I knew that he wanted me to make it right again.

  I forced a smile. ‘You said it yourself, you’re not an expert on ladies’ shoes. Nothing’s definite yet.’ I inserted a sensitive pause. ‘But just to make the elimination certain, someone is going to have to come out to see you.’

  He looked at me dully.

  ‘To take DNA samples. And if it will help, we can put you in touch with counselling?’

  He nodded slackly, and then put his hand out to stop me. ‘I’m going back up to the house. I’m going to have to tell her.’

  I watched him walk back up the track towards her. She stood on tiptoe and gave me a last cheery wave.

  I pretended that I hadn’t seen it. I couldn’t wave back. I was the one who had promised her that it wouldn’t be Evie.

  *

  To David Williams’s delight we were setting up the incident room in the defunct ballroom of The Fleece. I had had no part in the decision, but, for the prospect of his future generosity, I didn’t see the need to enlighten him of that.

  The equipment was being delivered and assembled when I got back to Dinas. The SOCO team had been increased and were busy up at the construction site searching for more bodies. I had gone back to see if I could help, but they had made it very apparent that I wasn’t on the guest list.

  Jack Galbraith had returned to Carmarthen to organize the command structures at that end. The bad news was that Bryn Jones was not going to be acting as his Chief Apostle as he had been called down to deal with a gypsy arson case near Fishguard. We would have to wait for the whole team to assemble tomorrow morning before we would know who was replacing him.