Skeletons

by Robert Innes

  “Of course. You saw him yourself that day,” Angela replied.

  “The thing I’m struggling here with though, Angela, is that you claim that you and David Penn have been working on your husband’s body in preparation for the funeral. What does that actually entail?”

  “His body wasn’t in the best of states after the crash,” Angela said. “I know it was him though. He was recognisable. We’ve dressed him, made him appear immaculate. Cut his hair, his nails, did our best to make him look as close as he would want to perfection. Patrick was always very insistent that the way he went was almost as vital as his life. It needed to be perfect.”

  “You do realise that we’re going to have to open up the grave?” Blake asked her. “That’s going to be quite upsetting. We need to know that you buried the man you said you did.”

  “Of course I understand that,” Angela replied, dabbing her eyes with the sodden tissue. “That’s about the only thing that has made sense in this entire affair.” She looked at the two of them, the mental exhaustion in her evident. “Am I under arrest?”

  “No,” Patil said. “You can leave at any time.”

  Angela nodded. “I think I’d like to go home please. I’m so tired.”

  “Of course,” Blake said. “You need to stay in the village though. Whatever we find in that grave, we’re probably going to have to speak to you again.”

  “I understand,” Angela replied, wincing slightly as her broken arm brushed the side of the table. “I just need to sleep at the moment. Maybe when I’ve got a better grip of my faculties, I might be able to make a bit more sense out of what is going on.”

  Blake leant across and pressed down the recorder then watched as Patil lead Angela out of the room, thinking carefully about what she had said. Either way, there was no way that they were going to be able to make any progress until either the man who they had seen attacking Angela was detained or the grave was opened, and they saw who exactly was lying in the coffin.

  He stepped out into the corridor and pulled his phone out of his pocket to check to see if Harrison had messaged him. He had not, but the screen lit up as Sally’s name appeared. She had been trying to get hold of Blake for several days and he had repeatedly ignored her calls. Blake knew full well that it would not be enough to detain Sally and that she would know exactly why he was ignoring her, but he could face speaking to her about everything going on with him, especially when there was so much going on in Blake’s work to distract him.

  As he put his phone back into his pocket, the door to interview room one opened and Gardiner stepped out.

  “How’s it going?” asked Blake.

  Gardiner shrugged. “About as well as could be expected. He’s claiming he’s seen the body of Patrick Coopland several times this week leading up to the funeral. He’s completely mystified as to how he could possibly be alive, since the last time he saw the body was this morning when polishing the shoes still attached to said body. He’s very toffee nosed. He’s surly, un-cooperative, actually down-right rude.”

  “Imagine that,” Blake said pointedly to his most surly, un-cooperative and down-right rude officer.

  “How is Mrs Coopland doing?”

  “We’ve released her,”

  “Why?” Gardiner asked, looking dumbfounded.

  “We can’t exactly keep her here if she doesn’t want to be, Michael,” Blake replied. “What are we supposed to do? It’s not like we can charge her, or David Penn, with anything yet. Especially if that grave turns out to be empty and Coopland has pulled some sort of trick, though God only knows what.”

  At that moment, Angel appeared from the meeting room. “I’ve got the exhumation clear, and I’ve also spoken to Sharon. Ten PM tonight. Obviously we want it under the cover of darkness, to get it done as swiftly as possible so as not to give Harmschapel too many clues about what we’re up to.”

  “Right, Sir,” Blake replied. “How is she?” he asked Patil as she returned from seeing Angela out of the station.

  “A bit of a mess in all honesty,” Patil replied. “Not that I blame her. Her husband is back from the dead and tried to strangle her after she thought she’d buried him? I think I’d be scared titless in her shoes.”

  “Yeah, well it’s not about to get any better for her,” Blake murmured. “Tonight, we’re opening that grave.”

  Blake had never attended an exhumation before. As he stood in the graveyard of St Abra’s Church watching the large white forensics tent and lights being erected, he could not help but feel slightly ill at ease. He had no idea what he was going to find in the grave, but he hoped whatever it was would provide him with more answers than questions.

  “Evening, Blake,” said Sharon Donahue, the forensic pathologist that had been involved in cases since Blake had arrived in Harmschapel. Her short blonde hair blew slightly in the cold breeze that seemed to have only started whipping around the graveyard since they had arrived. “We should be ready in about ten minutes. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Is it your first?”

  “Yeah,” Blake replied, watching the tent.

  “Don’t worry. If everything is as it should be, then we shouldn’t be here that long,” Sharon told him. “Alternatively, we could be here all night. Going from what I’ve been told about why we’re doing this, your thinking is that the person who’s supposed to be occupying this coffin might not be there?”

  “That’s about the long and short of it, yes.”

  “Typical of you, Blake,” chuckled Sharon. “At least I know when I’m seeing you, I should have an interesting night ahead of me. I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

  Blake nodded as he watched her disappear around the side of the tent. He was quite confident that he could do without many more interesting cases like this.

  His phone rang for the fifth time since he had ignored it earlier. Blake sighed as he stared at Sally’s name flashing on the screen. Deciding it was best to answer it before she got any more annoyed at him, he braced himself and answered.

  “Hello?”

  As he had expected, Sally was far from friendly.

  “Oh, it lives! Finally!”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

  “I have been trying to get hold of you all day, Blake! Actually, scrap that, I’ve been trying to get hold of you all week!”

  “I know.”

  “Do you think I don’t know you well enough to know what it means that you didn’t want to talk to me?” Sally asked him sharply. “I’m going to guess that you haven’t been to get yourself checked yet.”

  Blake hesitated. “No.”

  “Knock me down with a feather,” she said wryly. “And Nathan? Have you heard from him?”

  “Yeah, yesterday. He’s not had his results back yet.”

  “Blake…”

  “I know, Sally, I know,” Blake said, hurryingly lowering his voice as Mattison walked past on his way to the tent. “It’s not exactly a great time for me at the minute. I’m about to open a grave.”

  Sally did not sound fazed by this information. “If you don’t get yourself down to that clinic, Blake, I’ll be opening a grave for you because I’ll be beating you to death with a large stick. Now, come on. You know this isn’t fair on either you or Harrison.”

  “Blake,” Sharon called from the tent. “We’re ready to start digging.”

  “Okay,” Blake told her. “Listen, Sally, I’ve got to go. I promise, I’ll ring you tomorrow when I’m done.”

  “You better, Blake,” said Sally. “I’m serious about this. Either you get this test booked or I’m going to be telling Harrison that he might want to get himself checked out.”

  “Sally!”

  “I mean it,” Sally replied. “So, think on.” And with that, she hung up.

  Blake groaned in frustration and leant against the gate, his brain swimming.

  “Blake?” Sharon called.

  “Coming,” Blake told her and set off towards the tent.

  Inside
the tent, several of the forensic team were already in the process of digging. “I take it this hasn’t been disturbed since the funeral?” Sharon asked.

  Blake shook his head. “There’s not been any chance to. Far as I know, he was just put in the ground and buried after the funeral.”

  “Urgh, I don’t like it, Sir,” Mattison said, looking like he was shivering slightly. “I hate graveyards at the best of times.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t think any of us are overly thrilled to be here, Matti,” Blake replied.

  “Oh, he’s a wuss, Sir,” Patil chuckled. “We were watching a horror film the other day and he was the one hiding in my shoulder.”

  “I was not,” Mattison mumbled sulkily.

  After a few minutes, the shovels of the forensic team hit something solid.

  “We’re there,” one called from the pit.

  The atmosphere around the grave grew visibly tenser amongst the officers.

  “Okay, we need to lift the coffin out as gently as we can,” Sharon instructed.

  “I thought there’d be a gravestone or something,” Mattison said as he watched the forensics team slowly lifting the coffin.

  “That doesn’t come till a few months later,” Angel told him from behind Blake. “The ground might sink before then if you place a large heavy stone on it too quickly.”

  Mattison did not look in the slightest bit reassured by this information.

  Finally, the coffin was lifted out of the ground and placed beside the pit.

  “Okay,” Sharon said, before looking around at the officers. “Let’s get it open. It’s certainly a nice one,” she said, admiring the wood. Blake did not know how she was being so calm. Even Angel looked slightly unnerved as a member of the forensic team produced a crow bar and placed it into the side of the coffin’s lid.

  “Everyone ready?” he said.

  They all nodded, and he put his weight onto the crowbar. With a loud, ominous creak, the door to the coffin began to prise open.

  The officers stood back as the forensics team forced the lid open further. Glancing outside, Blake could see a small crowd starting to gather at the gated entrance to the church.

  At last, with a sizable cloud of dust and soil, the coffin lid fully opened.

  Sharon waved the dust away and stared down inside. “Well, I don’t know what you were expecting, Blake.”

  Blake felt reluctant to look. “Is it empty?”

  Patil gasped as she stared down at the coffin. “How? How is that possible?”

  Blake stepped forward, fully expecting to see an empty space where the body should be and nearly fell into the pit next to it in shock. Stunned silence was all that could be heard around the grave as they looked down into the coffin.

  Angela Coopland stared back at them, mouth open and her face contorted in what looked like shock. Her huge mass of hair filled the small coffin, a clump of it matted with blood. She was dead.

  7

  Once Angela’s body had been moved out of the coffin, Sharon and the forensics team set about examining the scene. While they did this, Blake stepped outside the tent, the vision of Angela’s horrified face cemented in his mind’s eye.

  “None of this makes any sense, Sir,” Patil said as she joined him outside the tent. “We were interviewing her way after that coffin was put into the ground. I walked her out of the station, I watched her walk down the street!”

  “Mini, I was standing not three feet from her when that coffin was put into the ground,” Blake hissed. “It isn’t possible. And now, what, she’s dead, murdered no less judging by the blood, and who is our main suspect? A man who less than a week ago was killed in a car crash that was witnessed by pretty much the entire village?” He leant against the railings of the gate and stared at the church aimlessly. On top of everything he was having to think about at the moment, he felt like he wanted to do nothing else but burst into tears. “I don’t even know where to begin with this one.”

  He turned to see Sharon walking towards him, the illumination of the cameras from the forensic team briefly placing her in silhouette as she approached.

  “We’re going to take her back shortly, Blake. What I can tell you for now is that cause of death looks very likely to be a blunt trauma to the back of the head. I would say no less than one or two blows with some form of heavy object, but I’ll need some time to be sure.”

  Blake shook his head. “That grave must have been disturbed before we got here. Someone must have killed her and then placed her in the coffin before we got there.”

  “Blake, you saw us,” Sharon told him bluntly. “We had to prise that lid off with a crowbar. It had been nailed down. I’ve looked at the lid, there’s no way that happened more than once. And it’s not all that late. I can’t imagine that someone was able to dig up the coffin, open it up, put her in it and then bury it again all without anybody seeing them.”

  “Then what?” Blake asked cluelessly. “What the hell are we looking at here?”

  “DS Harte,” came Angel’s stern voice through the darkness as he approached. “I suggest we have a team meeting first thing in the morning. I think it’s safe to say we have a few people we need to speak to, no more so than David Penn. He, along with the apparently reanimated Patrick Coopland are the only reasonable suspects we have at this time.”

  “Do we know Penn’s address?” Blake asked.

  “I would think Sergeant Gardiner would have taken that during his interview,” Angel replied, as if this were obvious.

  “Well, if Penn is a suspect, we can hardly wait till morning to bring him in, can we?” Blake asked, attempting to keep his tone level. His heart was still hammering in his chest from what they had found in the coffin. “We need to bring him in now.”

  He immediately turned and started storming towards the gates.

  “DS Harte!” shouted Angel.

  Blake stopped and closed his eyes. He could already sense what was about to be said to him and he was in no mood to hear it.

  “We have nothing other than circumstantial evidence at this moment,” Angel told him, gliding over to him. His tall skeletal frame looked almost eerie against the backdrop of the church and the lights from the forensics. “We can’t bring him in for anything until we have something more solid to work with. Sharon, I assume you will be taking Mrs Coopland back to base with you?”

  “Yes, just as soon as we’ve finished up here.”

  “Excellent,” Angel replied. He placed his hat back on his head from where he had been holding it behind his back. “In that case, I will see you in the morning DS Harte, eight o’clock sharp.”

  Blake watched him leave and shook his head in disbelief.

  “He is right, Sir,” Patil ventured. “We don’t have any reason to bring David Penn in without any charge. He could have nothing to do with any of this.”

  “I know he’s right, Patil!” snapped Blake. “I wish people would stop trying to advise me on the different aspects of my life. Maybe, just maybe, I am capable of making my own decisions and it would be great if someone let me do it without arguing with me!”

  Before Patil could respond, Blake stormed off in the direction of the gates, now with the added guilt of snapping off the head of one of his favourite officers. She was just another person he knew he was going to have to apologise to before any of this came to an end.

  Blake sat in his car outside Juniper Cottage and lit another cigarette out of his ‘rainy day’ supply, the number of which seemed to be rapidly diminishing. He was struggling to remember a time when he had last felt this stressed and unable to keep his emotions in check. Then, as he inhaled deeply on the cigarette, he remembered how he had felt when he had walked in on Nathan with the woman he would go on to marry. He remembered turning up at Sally’s house, back when they had been not only best friends, but colleagues. Now, miles away from him she could only offer him nothing more than some stern tellings off, but it seemed that not even Sally could empathise on how scared Blake felt about h
is life seemingly getting out of control like this. As far as Blake could see it, the only thing stopping everything he had built up for himself since moving to Harmschapel falling apart was the wrong outcome from the test. His own words to Patil kept repeating in his head. ‘Not taking the test isn’t going to change the result.’ He hoped she would follow his advice, but he wondered if his words had been as scary for her to hear as it had been for him to be constantly thinking.

  On top of that, Blake was now being presented with a case that he had no idea how to start unravelling. All the pinpoints on the chart leading up to the discovery of Angela Coopland’s body had seemed so definite and yet now, all of them seemed to be bringing themselves into question. So many people had seen Patrick Coopland perish in the car crash, including Harrison, and yet there he had been, very much alive, trying to throttle the life out of his wife. This had been no less than twenty minutes after Blake had been witness to Angela being present at a funeral that had seen Patrick apparently being placed into the ground inside a coffin that could only have been opened with the help of a crowbar, an act that had obviously not been committed before the forensic team had opened it up to reveal Angela’s body.

  Blake shook his head as he flicked the cigarette end in the direction of a drain outside the cottage. Nothing was jumping out at him as a sensible line of enquiry to begin with. He decided the first thing he would have to do is ask Harrison to go over the events of the car crash in explicit detail to see if there was anything he might have missed.

  His heart sank again as he realised that there was somebody else he needed to speak to about the crash too – somebody that had seen just as much as Harrison, if not more. Tom, Harrison’s new best friend and probable confidant. Blake was sure there was something he did not trust about Tom, but he was uncertain about exactly how much of that was to do with resentment about how enamoured Harrison seemed to be with him rather than valid suspicion. Who was he? Where had he come from? And why had Harrison taken such a sudden shine to him?

  Blake sighed as he fiddled with the cigarette packet, debating whether to light yet another. Harrison, he knew, was kind, sweet, and had one of the most beautiful souls Blake had ever known, but experience had taught him that Harrison could also be quite naive and not the best judge of character. Tom was good looking and had the gift of the gab, a combination that Blake had witnessed Harrison fall victim to before.