The three men looked at each other, bemused.
‘It looks too old to be his own father’s, even.’ Randall frowned. ‘So I wonder whose it is and why he stitched it so carefully into his coat lining.’
‘An heirloom?’ Sullivan suggested.
Randall shook his head. ‘Hardly,’ he said. ‘It’s more of a peasant’s shoe.’
‘A reminder of something then?’
‘Search me.’
Talith cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘Didn’t I read somewhere that it was an ancient custom to bury a shoe in a house to keep the witches away?’
Not one of them laughed at this superstition. The image of the ruined house still clung to the body of this man. Somehow the idea of witches connected with the property didn’t seem so ridiculous, even here, in the stark light of the mortuary. They all stared at the dead man’s face and wondered.
Sullivan broke the silence, speaking to his assistant. ‘Come on, Marcus. We’ve work to do.’
They removed the man’s shoes next to expose a pair of holey socks through which both big toes poked. Big, fat toes with long, dirty nails curling beneath them. The feet stuck up looking almost ludicrous. Cartoon, holey socks. Feet, toes. There is no dignity in death.
Next they sliced off the man’s grubby sweater, carefully preserving the thick stain of blood around the neckline and found underneath it a cotton shirt with its collar undone. Compared to the coat and the sweater it was relatively clean apart from some blood around the collar. Underneath that was a grubby and smelly vest. His trousers were, like the coat, dirty with a dank, unwashed smell clinging to them and the pungent scent of stale urine.
‘For once, Alex,’ Mark Sullivan commented, looking up, ‘I wouldn’t mind you bringing me a nice, clean, hygienic corpse.’
‘I’ll do my best in future,’ Randall muttered, but his eyes were fixed on the trousers. Like the coat, they must once have been expensive. They were good quality, pure 100% wool, the material heavy, partly hand stitched with a silk lining to the waistband. The maker’s name was a Saville Row address. Randall might have been optimistic at this but he knew that, like the coat, they had probably been procured from a charity shop and held no clue at all to the man’s identity. Still, he might hit lucky. Their man’s underpants were similarly good quality but unpleasant to touch – slightly sticky even through gloves. Perhaps they had once been white, but it must have been a long, long time ago. Possibly when this guy last sat in a bath, he reflected.
Now naked, it was easier to see that their victim was underweight and bony, and there was a long surgical scar at the top of his right leg. ‘This,’ Sullivan said, fingering it, divining its message, ‘could be of interest. It looks like he’s had a pin and plate from a fractured shaft of femur, at a guess.’ He looked up, meeting their eyes to explain. ‘Internal fixation. Usually the result of violent trauma in younger, fitter patients, and often associated with other injuries. We’ll have full body X-rays. But, Alex, make no mistake about it: this is good news.’
Randall lifted his eyebrows and Mark Sullivan explained, ‘Prostheses have ID numbers on them. We may be able to track him through this.’
Randall grinned at him then. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘could be very good news indeed for my budget. Could save a lot of time, Mark.’
Sullivan looked smug. ‘Glad I can be of assistance, Alex. I think we’d better get on with the X-rays for now and see whether he’s had any other trauma.’
Twenty minutes later Mark Sullivan was making a visual examination of the body, recording comments as he scrutinized the man. The comments would act as an aide memoir later when he was writing up the procedure. ‘No tentative wounds,’ he said, studying the man’s forearms then looking across at the two detectives. ‘Usually people have a couple of goes if they’re about to slit their own throat.’
Talith winced.
‘You said no weapon was found?’
Randall shook his head. ‘No.’
‘And we don’t know whether he was right- or left-handed?’
Again Randall shook his head.
‘So we can be certain this is a homicide.’ Mark Sullivan looked up. ‘Agreed?’
Both officers nodded.
‘So,’ Sullivan said, ‘let’s get to work.’
DI Alex Randall watched the pathologist as he had many times before. Deft fingers, no clumsiness any more. He wished the guy well. One day, four years ago, he had seen Dr Mark Sullivan slice through his finger with a scalpel when his hands had not been quite so steady.
Well, at least, Alex, he consoled himself, you haven’t resorted to drink. Yet.
He had shed his revulsion at post-mortems years ago and now was simply an observer, making his own mental notes as the pathologist worked methodically.
Mark Sullivan began with the usual measurements and observations, taking blood samples before focusing on the man’s main injury. Then he touched the gaping throat wound with the tip of his gloved index finger. ‘Done with a bloody sharp knife,’ he said. ‘Probably a kitchen knife.’ He risked a weak joke. ‘Kitchen devil?’ Then, as neither detective managed more than a half smile, he became more serious as he measured and probed. ‘With an eight-inch blade. Not serrated. Say a meat knife?’
Randall nodded. ‘Found in most kitchens.’
‘This is a homicidal assault,’ the pathologist said. ‘Our man’s head was directed upwards and the knife drawn across the throat in a quick, hard slash. Right to left. From the front, by a right-handed man.’
‘You can be sure of that?’
‘Yep. The cut is deeper on the right side and it’s transverse rather than a “V”. Deep all the way through, shallower on the left edge and done with some force. There is a mark on the ante-vertebral muscle. One huge slash. There was nothing tentative about this. Nasty. Death would have been more or less instantaneous. Recalling the crime scene, I’d say he was practically dead when he staggered back, falling into the corner. The stains at his feet were residual oozing.’
He continued working, examining the brain, splitting the sternum to look at the heart and lungs, then moved to the man’s leg which seemed to interest him most. ‘Ha,’ he said, pleased with himself. ‘As I thought: old fractured shaft of femur. Spiral.’ His voice slowed thoughtfully. ‘Possibly as the result of a road traffic accident – maybe on a motor bike.’ He probed further. ‘Though it is a typical sportsman’s injury.’ He seemed to fish around, delicately slicing the skin as though filleting a fish, until some metal was exposed.
He studied it under a magnifying glass. ‘Hm,’ he said. ‘Now that is interesting.’
Randall and Talith looked up, alerted.
‘They haven’t used this type of internal fixation for a long time. And never in the UK. I suspect your man had a skiing accident sometime in the late eighties, early nineties, somewhere abroad. It would fit in with both the injury and the use of this particular prosthesis.’ He looked across at them. ‘Young people are anxious to get up and about however bad the injury. They’re not going to wait six weeks or more for a fracture to heal and then bang around on crutches and hang around while they work to get their fitness back. They want to be back on their skis.’
‘So why don’t we use these prostheses over here?’ Talith asked, more out of curiosity than real interest.
It earned him Mark Sullivan’s respect. ‘The screws caused some damage on insertion and they were associated with problems later – pain and some readjustment of the leg length.’
Randall glanced at Talith, puzzled. The pathologist continued, ‘What I’m saying is that your man here …’ He touched the thigh, ‘may have had a limp. There’s some wasting of the muscles here; the right thigh is a tiny bit thinner than the left. And so on.’
‘Can you say which countries did use this prosthesis?’
‘Not without some research.’ Sullivan was still looking jaunty. There was nothing he loved more than contributing his particular part to the investigation. ‘But if I’m ri
ght and this was a skiing accident … Ah, yes.’ He crossed to the computer screen and peered at the man’s X-rays. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing and magnifying the image at the same time. ‘Old wrist fracture. Scaphoid. Nasty one that, and associated with a fall on an outstretched hand. We’d have to look at Spain, France, Switzerland and the USA – basically anywhere where they do skiing.’
Randall was thoughtful. ‘Are you saying,’ he said slowly, ‘that this guy is foreign?’
‘Not necessarily. He could have been holidaying.’ Mark Sullivan stood back and appraised him. ‘He doesn’t look foreign,’ he said dubiously. ‘I would have put him as IC1. White Caucasian.’
Randall was still thoughtful. He was trying to form a profile of the man who lay on the slab, who had been brutally murdered. Homeless, a vagrant. Yet someone who’d been able to afford skiing holidays twenty or more years ago. He was building up a picture of a life – and a death.
‘Any idea of his age, more precisely?’
‘I’d say about forty-five.’ Mark Sullivan peeled off his gloves. ‘I can’t be more certain than that.’
‘Any other signs of illness or injury?’
Mark Sullivan grinned. He and Alex Randall had worked together so many times they knew each other’s drill. He shook his head in answer. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No distinguishing marks, no tattoos. No other traumas. Oh, and good teeth.’
‘OK,’ Randall said. ‘Talith, you can go back to the incident room and see if anything’s come up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I think I’ll head back via the coroner’s office,’ he said, discomfort making his voice awkward and heavy. ‘Keep Martha filled in on the results of the post-mortem.’
‘Good idea,’ Sullivan said, struggling to keep the concern out of his voice.
He was pensive as he peeled off his gloves. Martha had no attachments as far as he knew. She’d never mentioned a boyfriend or partner. But Randall …? Mark Sullivan watched him go. His suspicions were growing, though he kept them to himself.
ELEVEN
Monday, 15 September, midday.
Martha was having a day when nothing seemed to be going well. People she needed to speak to were unavailable, doctors on annual leave, relatives similarly otherwise engaged. At the back of her mind was the issue of the man murdered in Moreton Corbet, apparently homeless – a vagrant. He was still anonymous. She wondered who he was and why someone had wanted to kill him. Had it been personal or a random killing? Was he truly one of the tramps one sometimes saw around the town or was he simply a scruffy local? Had they all jumped to the wrong conclusion? Her mind tussled with the endless possibilities. So she was fidgety and restless, and glad of Jericho’s knock and his announcement that Detective Inspector Randall was wondering if he could have a word with her.
Gladly, she wanted to say but settled for a simple, ‘Yes.’ Not even tacking on, of course.
‘Alex,’ she said, rising when he entered the room. ‘I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been thinking about that poor man.’
He waited until she had sat down again then settled comfortably into the armchair. ‘I’ve just come from his post-mortem.’
‘Oh. Any surprises?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘He obviously died from a cut throat so no surprises there.’
‘No,’ she agreed.
‘Cause of death, shock and haemorrhage due to the throat injury,’ he said. ‘No doubt about that either.’
‘Any defensive wounds?’
‘No.’
‘Tentative wounds?’
Randall smothered a grin. He should have been well used to Martha’s curiosity which, combined with her medical background, meant that she frequently showed a more than competent interest in her cases.
‘Nothing except he’d had a broken leg in the past. Dr Sullivan thought it looked like an old skiing injury. It had had internal fixation.’
Martha frowned. ‘A skiing injury? Doesn’t quite fit in with a penniless vagrant, does it, Alex?’ She turned the full gaze of her green eyes on him.
For a moment he simply looked at her. Then he shook himself and focused on her question. ‘Anyone can become homeless, Martha,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘And for some it becomes a way of life.’
‘There was a plate?’
Randall nodded. ‘With an ID number,’ he said.
‘So we can trace it back.’
‘Hopefully. Mark Sullivan also thought that the operation had been done abroad. Apparently that prosthesis is not used in this country, which is why he thought about a skiing injury.’
Martha nodded. ‘A shaft of femur then?’
‘Yes.’ Randall continued, ‘He thought our man might have had a limp.’
‘Oh dear.’ Somehow it made the murdered man even more pathetic. Homeless, penniless, dirty and with a limp.
Randall continued, ‘And there was a wrist injury that had happened round about the same time.’ He frowned as he struggled to remember the name.
Martha supplied it. ‘Scaphoid?’
‘That’s it.’ Randall grinned at her.
‘Age?’
‘About forty-five. Mark couldn’t be more precise than that.’
‘And no one’s come forward in response to your press coverage to say they knew him?’
‘Nope. Nothing so far. It’s early days yet. We’ve got officers looking at all the homeless haunts and talking to other vagrants but so far no one appears to know who he is or, more importantly from our point of view, who might have murdered him.’
Martha nodded. ‘And if we can’t find out his identity he’ll have to be buried in an unmarked grave.’
‘Courtesy of the council,’ Alex agreed. ‘But with the evidence of the prosthesis I’m confident we’ll find out who he was,’ Alex said. He frowned. ‘What I mean is who he was before he joined forces with the vagrants, the shifting population. And finding out his identity, will that lead us to his killer?’
‘It might do unless it was just a random assault by someone who hates vagrants,’ Martha suggested.
Alex Randall eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I prefer the former. The idea of a random murder on a homeless person fills me with foreboding. We could have assaults on all our street people.’
Martha was silent for a moment, then she met Randall’s eyes with concern. ‘You can’t protect them all, can you?’
Randall shook his head, feeling the swamp of depression that accompanied the idea.
‘I suppose your man’s fingerprints weren’t on your database?’
‘No such luck. We got plenty of muck from under his nails but so far no skin, blood or anything else that might give us a clue as to his killer.’ He looked across at her ruefully. ‘Just dirt.’
She looked at him. Alex Randall was not a handsome man. In his forties with greying hair and a creased forehead, a thin, angular face and a tall, gangly figure, there was always something slightly hunted about him. Martha regarded him and wondered why he habitually wore that cloak of sadness, as though something in his life was holding back that boundless energy which radiated from his bony frame. She gave him a tentative smile, meant to encourage him to a confidence. Only a few years ago they had been comparative strangers.
And now?
He had become part of her life. She couldn’t imagine life without him, or working with anyone else in that particular position.
‘Are you sure he was a homeless man?’
‘Going by his clothing and general air of neglect I would think so,’ he said cautiously. ‘Also three days after his murder and in spite of intense media coverage no one has reported him missing, which indicates someone peripatetic. Rootless. A loner.’ He paused, but now he was so well used to confiding in her it seemed easy. Natural. ‘I am bothered by the fact that no possessions were found with him or near him. Absolutely nothing. No belongings.’ He frowned. ‘They all carry something. They have nowhere safe to leave their belongings so everything travels with them. But this guy … Not
hing. No ID. Except this.’
He drew out the evidence bag containing the ancient child’s leather shoe.
‘What’s that?’
‘The only thing he appeared to carry with him. It was actually stitched into the lining of his coat.’
‘But it looks ancient,’ Martha pointed out. ‘What was he doing with it?’
DI Alex Randall shrugged. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
Martha touched the bag thoughtfully. ‘A talisman?’
‘Again, Martha, I have no idea.’
‘Weird,’ she said. ‘I think I read somewhere that putting a shoe in the chimney breast stopped the witches from coming down.’
Randall smiled. ‘So what’s the connection? You think he went to Moreton Corbet protecting himself from witchcraft with an old shoe?’
She smiled back. ‘Not really.’
There was a pause.
‘So, Alex, where do you go from here?’
‘The usual, keep digging,’ he said, then, getting up, ‘I’d better be going.’
She stood up too, walked with him to the door. ‘Keep me informed, Alex.’
It seemed to touch something in him. He grinned, looked happy. ‘Do I ever not?’
And he was gone, leaving her to continue with her reflections.
TWELVE
Sukey was home and as always she filled the house with her presence. Everyone and everything seemed more colourful and exciting when she was around. Even Vera, the daily (or more literally two-mornings-a-week) cleaner seemed snapped out of her usual curmudgeonly approach to life and smiled when Sukey began to dance her round the kitchen, singing some excerpts from the musical she was due to feature in. Martha watched her, beautiful, slim and leggy, her blonde hair flying around contrasting with Vera’s stiffly permed grey locks, arthritic-like movements and stumpy legs. One thing that had always impressed Martha was the fact that though her daughter had never doubted that she would be an actress, she had never been pretentious enough to put the adjective great in front. Just to be an actress appeared to be enough for her. She had no pretensions.
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