The Tooth Tattoo

by Peter Lovesey

‘Bullshit.’ Diamond rolled his eyes. ‘For as long as I can remember, Keith, the politicians have banged on about getting more coppers on the streets. Even now, with all the cuts, they’re saying it. How will it be done? By cutting down on the backroom staff. Backroom is the dirty word. That’s you and me if we’re stuck in the office all day. We need to get out more.’

  ‘Like this?’

  He couldn’t raise another smile. ‘Front-line is the buzzword. If you’re front-line you’re in no danger of the chop.’

  ‘There hasn’t been much serious crime lately.’

  ‘Too true. A major incident would solve everything, keep us in work, get us away from our desks and stop stupid rumours flying around.’

  ‘What do we do – tell the criminal class to step up productivity?’

  ‘Not a bad idea.’

  They brooded on this until Halliwell said, ‘You do seem more depressed than usual. Is anything wrong?’

  ‘With the CID room? Where shall I start? A DI who likes nothing better than spreading alarm and dissension. A recently promoted sergeant who watches my every move. A DCI who believes all that garbage enough to dump it on me.’

  ‘You once said you wanted to be told if anyone was unhappy.’

  Diamond shrugged. ‘Fair enough, Keith. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘When I asked if there’s anything wrong, I meant in your life.’

  The big man glanced away, across the room. ‘If there was, I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Your health is okay, I hope?’

  ‘Now you’re sounding like the idiot doctor who does the annual medical. Of course I’m okay. I don’t make a point of taking my blood pressure or weighing myself, but I’m as fit as you or anyone else. Shall we end this pointless conversation and go back to work in case some of them think I’ve decided to end it all and jump off Pulteney Bridge?’

  He’d had enough of this probing. Well intentioned it may have been, but he wouldn’t be telling Halliwell or anyone else about the break-up with Paloma. Months had gone by since that walk along the towpath. Yes, he was unhappy, bloody miserable, and now CID had picked up on it, but he wouldn’t be calling Paloma to try and make up. He had his pride and she had hers.

  Two days passed before the team was gifted the suspicious death they needed. A couple walking the towpath near Lower Weston – much as Diamond and Paloma had done – spotted a floating object that at a closer look turned out to have arms and legs. They called the emergency number and a patrol car and an ambulance went to the scene.

  Normally a dead body is left where it is found so that the police can inspect the scene. This one was moving with the current and there was no telling when or where it had entered the water. A boat was used to retrieve it near Weston Lock and it was stretchered to a waiting van and taken to the Royal United Hospital mortuary.

  The first duty of the police was to identify the dead woman, but this was difficult. She was way past the point when anyone would recognise her. A body in water will sink to the bottom and only rises to the surface when decomposition begins and gases form within the stomach and lungs. The time this takes depends on the water temperature. In icy conditions, months. In the Avon in a typical English summer, not much less.

  In this case the decomposition was plain to see. Significant areas of the skin and tissue had peeled away.

  The deceased was short, at just under five feet, and slight in build. Her hair was natural black, and cut sheer at the back. She had a full set of teeth, with some whitened fillings. The white T-shirt and black jeans she was wearing gave no clue as to her identity. Nothing was in the pockets. She wore no jewellery.

  The missing persons register was consulted. Nobody from the local area matched the description, such as it was.

  An early decision was taken by the coroner to order an autopsy. It was carried out by one of the hospital’s team of clinical pathologists. The police, who provided continuity of evidence, were in attendance. Sometimes new information is discovered at this stage. Not this time.

  Identity: unknown.

  Cause of death: uncertain.

  The pathologist – a man who didn’t like wasting time – was unwilling to speculate how this young woman had died. The obvious assumption would have been that she had drowned – difficult to prove in any case and impossible in this one. Drowning is one of the most problematic of all causes of death to diagnose. For one thing, the immersion in water, possibly for a considerable time, rots the body and vitiates the evidence. If the internal organs have deteriorated, as they do in quite a short time, they won’t provide confirmation that the victim was struggling to breathe.

  In this case, the classic signs, the plumes of froth at the mouth and nostrils, must have dispersed long ago and any internal froth at the trachea and bronchi would have vanished. There were no obvious external marks of injury apart from minor lacerations probably caused by the body being moved with the current and striking submerged rocks and objects. Anyway, the state of putrefaction would have masked anything less than severe wounding. All the pathologist would say was that from the general deterioration she must have been immersed for a minimum of two weeks and probably longer.

  He added that a diagnosis of drowning is invariably a best-guess situation and this would be a very inferior guess that he wasn’t willing to hazard.

  He estimated her age at between twenty and thirty.

  As for identification, her own family would not have recognised her. Under water the body assumes a face-down position, with the face, arms and legs dragging along the bottom.

  It was only after the post-mortem, when the clothes were being put in a bag for storage, that a medical student assisting the pathologist happened to draw his attention to a faded label on the white cotton knickers.

  ‘Sir, have you noticed this?’

  He had not, whatever it was, and he was not overjoyed to be told. ‘Noticed what?’

  ‘I believe this writing is Japanese.’

  ‘Why? Can you read it?’

  The student reddened. ‘No, but I spent some of my gap year in Tokyo. I can tell the difference from Chinese.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So if her knickers were made in Japan, isn’t there a chance she was Japanese?’

  ‘Unless, like you, she travelled to Japan in her gap year. Or unless Japanese knickers happen to be on sale at Marks and Spencer. Or Tesco. I’m a histopathologist. My expertise doesn’t stretch to ladies’ underwear.’

  ‘It was just something I noticed.’

  ‘Full marks.’ Said with no gratitude.

  ‘Isn’t there a way of telling?’

  The pathologist gave a long-suffering look to the police witnesses, pulled up his face mask and asked the mortuary attendant to return the body to the table. ‘You thought we were through, ladies and gentlemen, and so did I. From the state of her, I wouldn’t know if she’s Japanese or from up the road, but there is a way of finding out a person’s racial origin from the teeth. There’s a difference between people of Caucasian origin and the Mongoloid group of Asia and it’s known as the shovel tooth – a concavity at the back of the upper incisors.’ He leaned over the skull and opened the jaws. ‘We don’t routinely go into this kind of detail. Can we get a better light on this?’ First, he ran his little finger along the back of the teeth. Then he used a dental mirror.

  An uncomfortable silence followed.

  ‘Hey ho,’ the pathologist said without a glimmer of pleasure, ‘this may be significant. These appear to be shovel teeth.’

  The student had the sense not to shout, ‘Told you so.’

  The pathologist said, ‘I’d better get one of my colleagues from odontology to confirm this. Sorry, folks, but if you want to follow this autopsy all the way through to the land of the rising sun I must invite you to return next week.’

  The following Monday, the remains were brought out again for the dental expert. She was expected to confirm the pathologist’s finding, but before starting she announced that she was no
t confident she could help. ‘I know what you’re talking about. Shovel teeth are typical of East Asians, but there are all sorts of exceptions and I wouldn’t say it’s reliable. Native Americans have them and I’ve seen many examples in Europeans.’

  ‘So you can’t tell us if she’s Japanese?’

  ‘Frankly, the knickers may be a better guide, but as I’m here, I might as well take a look. Oh dear, she is in a sorry state.’

  The examination was painstaking, using a magnifier with a halogen light. The odontologist said at one point, ‘Plenty of dental work and of excellent quality.’ She straightened up and turned to the student. ‘Was it you who noticed the label?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And you thought she might be Japanese? Well, you could be right. Have you heard of tooth tattoos?’

  A frown said the student had not.

  ‘They’re the big thing in Japan, like nail art, but for teeth, and she seems to have the residue of one. Didn’t anyone spot this?’

  Silence from the onlookers and a stony gaze from the pathologist.

  ‘They’re not really tattoos at all,’ the dental expert explained. ‘They’re attached. If you fancy yourself with a mouthful of bling you get them applied with a special glue using an LED light to fix them. They can be removed quite easily and there isn’t much left of this one, but take a look with my magnifier and tell me what you see.’

  The student leaned over and looked through the lens at where the jaw was held apart. The tiny black symbol on one of the upper incisors was chipped in a couple of places, but clearly an embellishment. ‘I do see it. Is it a Japanese character? No, I don’t think it is.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘It’s a music note, isn’t it? Looks to me like a quaver.’

  ‘I never even got to first grade, but I’m willing to take your word for it.’ The odontologist stood back. ‘This all proves nothing, but if you’re wanting to find out who she is, I would check for a missing Japanese woman with a possible interest in music.’

  ‘Not my job,’ the pathologist said.

  At the request of the coroner, the job was passed to the police, but not yet to Diamond’s CID team. The Missing Persons Register was checked again. No obvious leads were found. The supposed Japanese connection yielded nothing. Of seventeen young women reported missing in Bath and Bristol since the start of the year, none were from Japan. Fourteen had already been eliminated from the enquiry because of their height and hair colour. The tooth tattoo was thought to be an unlikely decoration for the remaining three.

  CID were brought in after a couple of days.

  ‘Any suggestion she was attacked?’ Diamond asked the uniformed inspector who had handed over the paperwork.

  ‘Impossible to say, but she did end up in the river Avon.’

  ‘No marks of violence?’

  ‘The body was too far gone to tell.’

  ‘Could be an accident, then, or suicide. Was she fully dressed?’

  ‘The shoes were missing.’

  ‘They could easily have come off in the water.’ He glanced through the post-mortem report. ‘I’ve heard of tattoos in weird parts of the anatomy, but a tooth?’

  ‘It’s the best clue we’ve got, apart from the Japanese knickers.’

  ‘Ah – the Japanese knickers.’ Diamond rolled his eyes.

  ‘We managed to confirm that the manufacturer doesn’t export them. Mind, someone from Britain could have travelled there and bought a few pairs.’

  ‘Someone from Britain or anywhere else on the globe.’

  ‘True. But the tooth tattooing is a Japanese thing. It’s popular there.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to work with that?’

  ‘Plus the music connection.’

  ‘One note.’

  ‘What do you expect – the Japanese National Anthem?’

  Diamond raised his finger. ‘I do the jokes here.’

  Back in the CID room, he told the team, ‘This is gainful employment, so we’re not knocking it. In fact, we’re going to make a big production of it. I want a display board with photos of the deceased and all the evidence, a map of the river and anything else you can think of. That’s your job, John.’

  Leaman beamed. Incident rooms were his speciality.

  ‘Ingeborg, you get a front-line job, checking the two universities and all the private language colleges to see if any Japanese students have stopped attending in the past three months. Sometimes these things don’t get reported. And Paul …’

  ‘Yes, guv?’

  ‘You’re on hotels. Examine the registers for yourself. Don’t just ask the reception people. Japanese names are pretty easy to spot. Get the details of all of them who stayed here and when they checked out.’

  ‘Isn’t some of that confidential?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Data protection.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about data protection. You’re in CID, doing a job, trying to trace a missing person.’

  John Leaman said, ‘Strictly speaking, she isn’t missing. We know where she is.’

  Diamond didn’t appreciate the logic. ‘She’s missing from somewhere, clever clogs, has to be. It’s our job to find out where, college, hotel, tour group. That’s how we’ll find her name.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Leaman said. ‘It’s the name that’s missing, not the person.’

  ‘Any more lip from you, John, and you’ll find yourself on knicker duty.’ He addressed the team in general. ‘Anyone here clued up on music?’

  ‘Depends what sort,’ Halliwell said.

  ‘We don’t know what sort. We have one musical note.’

  ‘Personally, I like the Big Band sound.’

  ‘Big Band. What’s that – Glenn Miller? Duke Ellington? You’re just the man to conduct this big band. I need an office manager. It’s backroom, I know, but how could we manage without you?’

  Halliwell gave the grin of a man who’d spoken once too often.

  ‘Ingeborg?’ Diamond said.

  ‘You already gave me a job, guv.’

  ‘Yes, but what’s your taste in music?’

  ‘I’m into roots.’

  ‘What on earth …?’

  ‘Folk, Celtic, blues, country and western.’

  Paul Gilbert added, ‘When it’s not rock, jazz or classical, it must be roots. Me, I go for modern rock.’

  ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ Diamond said. ‘I had a weekend in Vienna and visited Beethoven’s house, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert.’

  ‘We have a wide spectrum, then,’ Leaman said. ‘I enjoy decent music of all kinds, but for preference I’m a Savoyard.’

  ‘I thought that was a variety of sausage.’

  ‘Gilbert and Sullivan,’ Leaman said, not appreciating the laughs.

  ‘The thing is, why did she choose to get a musical note glued to her tooth? Is she a performer? If so, we’d probably have heard. When a musician goes missing, people notice. It gets in the news.’

  ‘She doesn’t have to be a musician,’ Halliwell said. ‘She could be a music lover, just like any of us. I’m not sure if the tooth tattoo is going to help us much more now we know she’s almost certainly Japanese.’

  Ingeborg had been doing some lateral thinking. ‘Guv, is it just a coincidence that you asked me some weeks back to get some background on that Japanese tourist who was found in the canal in Vienna?’

  ‘Must be,’ he said to cut her off, wanting to confine the discussion to what was happening in Bath. ‘Better get started on this, boys and girls. Until something bigger comes along, it’s the best way to defend our jobs. All the apparatus of an incident room. Computer back-up. Whiteboard. Photos. Action files. Big wheel – that’s me. Let’s get this show on the road.’

  After that, no one had any other option than to look busy. Paul Gilbert remarked to Ingeborg as they headed for the door, ‘Looks like the boss is coming out of his Swedish detective phase.’

  ‘We can hope,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t put money on it yet.’

  8

  ‘One more time. She won’t be back for ages.’ Tippi Carlyle, in her bed facing Mel, ruffled his hair and smoothed her hand across his cheek and jaw. ‘She’s at Weight Watchers until seven and she always goes for a McDonald’s after.’

  ‘It’s her house and you’re her daughter.’

  ‘The apple of her eye.’

  ‘Okay, which makes it worse if she comes home early and finds me in bed with the apple of her eye.’

  She wriggled and her nipples skimmed his chest. ‘You can’t deny you’re up for it.’

  ‘I don’t want to upset her and nor do you.’

  ‘Come on, big boy. Have another bite of the apple.’

  ‘And get asked to leave? I like it here.’

  She pressed closer. ‘This is what you like.’

  ‘I think we should each have a shower – separately – and be in our own rooms when she gets back.’

  ‘You’re scared of her.’

  ‘I respect her. She’s my landlady.’

  ‘Get real, Mel. She must have guessed about us in – how long? Six weeks? My Mum’s not daft. It’s not as if I’m under age.’

  ‘Agreed, but she hasn’t seen us at it. Let’s show respect and leave her guessing.’

  ‘You’re terrified she’ll kick you out. You prefer her cooked breakfasts to making love to me.’

  ‘Tippi, I want both to continue.’

  ‘Honest? Prove it, then.’

  ‘Not right now.’ He kissed her forehead, eased away, rolled over, emerged from under the quilt and started gathering his clothes.

  Tippi watched him. ‘Tosser.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  He padded back to his room, closed the door and took that shower. It doesn’t get better than this, he thought. A regular income, nice lodgings, a friendly landlady with a dreamboat daughter who can’t get enough, and any amount of music. I’ve hit the jackpot here in Bath.

  Two months into the residency, the quartet remained an eccentric bunch, but by mutual consent they stayed apart from each other except when rehearsing and performing. The accommodations office at the university had first offered them a large Victorian house on Lansdown Road to share, and Ivan had behaved as if he was being sent to Siberia. ‘That’s out of the question, wholly unsuitable,’ he’d said. ‘Can’t you give us separate lodgings?’ The others had felt the same way – nothing is more calculated to disturb than overhearing a fellow artist at practice – and said so in unison. Four addresses spread across the city were found. The quartet would need to meet only when music-making. And Douglas, having set up the residency, scarpered back to London.