by Ford, P. F.
‘So Goodnews saved her job,’ said Slater.
‘She could have done that from day one if she’d only listened,’ said Norman. ‘I think it was more like she saw a chance to leave Grimm with egg on his face, but then I always find it hard to see anything good in that woman. Anyway, we’re getting off the subject again.’
‘You’re right,’ said Slater. ‘So we’ve got an unknown man who dies in a skip, and your mate Ryan who thinks it should have been him. Like I said, it’s not a much, is it? Especially when you consider Ryan’s gone missing. How do we know whoever set the fire hasn’t caught Ryan too?’
‘We don’t,’ admitted Norman, ‘but my hunch is he’s too clever to get caught that easily. He’s trained, remember? And he would have been on his guard once he knew what had happened to the guy in the skip.’
Something had become apparent to Slater, and he had to ask the question even if it might upset Norman.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Norm, but you don’t actually know for sure that Ryan thinks he was meant to be the victim, do you?’ asked Slater, carefully. ‘I mean, it’s just your hunch, right?’
‘Well, yeah,’ said Norm, looking uncomfortable.
‘That’s probably my fault,’ said Chris. ‘Ryan has mentioned that they might come for him once or twice before.’
‘Who’s they?’ asked Slater.
‘Ah, well that’s the problem. When you’re dealing with these guys who are suffering PTSD and what have you, you never know if they’re telling you what’s real or what’s going on in their head.’
‘That complicates things,’ said Slater.
‘You’re telling me.’ Chris shook his head ruefully.
‘So maybe I’m wrong,’ said Norman, looking Slater right in the eyes, ‘but my gut says I’m right, and on that basis I feel I have to try and find out where he is and what he’s running from.’
Slater met Norman’s gaze for a moment before he spoke. ‘Well, that’s good enough for me. Your gut’s never let us down before.’
‘For real?’
‘What did you think I was going to do, turn you down?’
‘Well, no, I guess not–’
‘Right then, so we need to make a start in the morning. I assume they did a PM on the victim?’
‘Yeah,’ said Norman. They just wouldn’t tell me anything, and I doubt they’ll be too pleased to see you.’
‘I wasn’t planning on going to the police,’ said Slater. ‘I thought I’d go and see the pathologist.’
‘Ah, right. You and Eamon got on well, didn’t you?’
‘We still do as far as I know,’ said Slater. ‘We’ll see just how well in the morning.’
Chapter Forty-Six
Next morning, just after 9.30 a.m., Slater made his way quietly through the hospital and down to the basement where the mortuary and pathology laboratory was. He smiled and nodded at a lab technician who smiled and nodded back. She obviously knew who Slater was – she had seen him down here often enough and probably assumed he was on his way to see Eamon Murphy the pathologist. She didn’t ask him what he was doing or where he was going.
He stopped at the mortuary door and peered through the window to make sure there was no one around he wouldn’t want to see him here. The only figure he could see was that of Murphy, leaning over a bench apparently making some notes. Even better, there didn’t appear to be a body on either of the two tables, so he wouldn’t have to endure the sight of bodily fluids or parts being removed, weighed, and catalogued. He pushed the door open as quietly as he could and slipped through.
‘You need to do something about your security, Eamon,’ he said, as he approached Murphy.
The pathologist swung round, eyes wide in surprise. ‘Dave Slater,’ he said. ‘How on earth did you get in here?’
‘I just walked in,’ said Slater, ‘which is why you need to do something about your security. Perhaps you should start by telling everyone I’m no longer with the police force.’
Murphy looked suitably embarrassed. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, sheepishly. ‘I suppose maybe I was hoping you’d change your mind.’
The two men shook hands.
‘It’s good to see you,’ said Murphy. ‘You’re looking well. Thailand obviously suited you. Perhaps I should head out that way.’
‘I recommend it to anyone and everyone. I guarantee you’ll come back feeling ten times better.’
‘Is this just a social visit?’ asked Murphy, ‘only I’d be surprised if it was. You used to hate this place.’
Slater arranged his face into a suitable expression of guilt. ‘It’s not the place, Eamon, it’s having to watch what you do here that I didn’t like.’
‘Yes, that maybe so, but like I said, what are you really here for?’
‘Jeez, I must be so transparent,’ said Slater.
Murphy laughed. ‘Totally. So what can I help you with?’
‘You had a guy brought in a couple of weeks ago – got cremated in a rubbish skip.’
‘You mean the one DS Biddeford described as “done like a crispy duck”?’
Slater groaned his disappointment. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me that, but I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘You know I can’t discuss this with you, don’t you?’ asked Murphy.
‘Of course I do,’ said Slater. ‘But I’m told the police don’t want to get involved, and I wondered how you felt about that. And of course, technically, that means it’s not an active case, is it?’
‘How do you think I feel?’ asked Murphy. ‘The guy might have been sleeping in a skip, but he was still a human being.’
‘Well, that’s how Norm and I feel, especially as we think he wasn’t the intended victim.’
‘Victim? I thought it was being classified as an unfortunate accident.’
‘So I’ve heard. The thing is, we have good reason to believe the only accidental bit was that the wrong guy got incinerated. We think the intended victim just got lucky that night and someone else nicked his sleeping place and paid the price for it.’
‘Have you told the police?’ asked Murphy.
‘Do you really think they’re going to listen to us two black sheep? We need to make sure we can prove there’s a case before we go near them.’
Murphy studied Slater’s face and Slater got the distinct feeling he was weighing up whether or not to trust them.
‘What do you want to know?’ Murphy asked finally.
Slater grinned. ‘What can you tell me?’
‘I can’t tell you what he looked like,’ said Murphy, ‘but I can tell you he was about six feet tall. Caucasian, brown eyes, and brown hair, probably once very fit but now somewhat worn out. I would suggest he was ex-special forces judging by what was left of his tattoos.’
‘Special forces? Now there’s a coincidence,’ said Slater. ‘Any idea who he was?’
‘We took DNA, but the thing is, if he’s a special he won’t be on our database. He must be on a military one somewhere, though, if you know how to access it. We did manage to X-ray his teeth so I’m still optimistic something might come from that.’
‘Anything else you can tell me?’
‘There is one thing that was rather odd. He had recently had an operation to remove a kidney.’
‘What, you mean he had some sort of disease?’
‘I couldn’t see any signs of disease,’ said Murphy, ‘so it could be he was a donor.’
‘Wouldn’t there be a record of that somewhere?’ asked Slater.
‘Well, yes, there should be, if it was an official donation.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, there is no record that I can find that would relate to this man. However, bearing in mind he was living on the street, it could be he sold one,’ said Murphy. ‘And, of course, that’s illegal, so there certainly won’t be any record of that.’
Slater had spent the rest of his morning on personal business, and then a largely fruitless afternoon trying to identify
the dead man. A couple of wasted hours trawling the internet soon demonstrated to him that trying to figure this out without access to the channels he would normally have used as a police officer was not going to be easy.
At one point, he had toyed with the idea of approaching his former boss, Detective Chief Inspector Marion Goodnews, but that idea was quickly discarded when he recalled how fraught their relationship had become since he had offered her his spare room one night when they’d both had a bit too much to drink.
‘So how did you get on with Eamon?’ asked Norman as soon as Slater stepped into his car that evening.
‘Can I get in first?’ asked Slater, who still had one foot on the road.
‘Oooh! Sorry, Mr Grumpy,’ said Norman, amiably. ‘I take it someone’s had a bad day.’
‘I think I get to ask the first question,’ said Slater. ‘Last night, when we were talking with Chris about Ryan being missing, what was all that “Ryan’s been missing for two weeks” stuff? I thought he was hiding out at my house?’
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ said Norman. ‘I should have told you earlier. Ryan doesn’t trust anyone except me and a girl called Ginger. He swore me to secrecy about where he was.’
‘Jeez, he really is paranoid, then?’
‘So would I be if someone had tried to incinerate me,’ said Norman.
‘Okay, that’s fair enough, I suppose he’s got good reason.’
Slater was in his seat now, pulling the seat belt over his shoulder as Norman pulled away from his house.
‘So anyway, about your day?’ asked Norman.
‘Not so much a bad day as a frustrating one,’ he said, clipping the seatbelt and sitting back in his seat. ‘I’m so used to being able to check things on the police databases I forgot how difficult it would be to find a dead man on the outside.’
‘It’s not impossible,’ said Norman. ‘People do it all the time. You just have to know how to get into these things from the outside.’
‘You mean we hack into their database?’
‘What? Us? Break the law?’ asked Norman, innocently. ‘Our partnership won’t last five minutes if we get caught breaking the law, now will it?’
‘Partnership? What partnership?’ said Slater. ‘I wasn’t aware we had a partnership.’
‘Yeah, but you have to admit it would be pretty cool, don’t you think? You must have thought about what you’re gonna do now you’re back. I mean, you’ve got to pay your way somehow, right? And you did say being a detective is what you do.’
Slater looked across at Norman, but he kept his eyes firmly on the road and refused to turn his head Slater’s way.
‘You’ve put some thought into this then?’ asked Slater.
‘Well, I told you once before I’d do it on my own, didn’t I? That I’d set myself up to do a bit of security consultant work and maybe I’d get the odd detective job out of that.’
‘You did mention it,’ admitted Slater, ‘but I didn’t think you’d actually do anything about it.’
Norman grinned. ‘Oh, you thought it was just talk, did you? You see the thing is, when I first talked about it, I didn’t know you were going to quit your job, did I? I mean you mentioned it, but I didn’t think you’d actually do anything about it. Oh, sorry, did you just say something like that about me?’
Slater laughed out loud as he turned back to face the road. ‘Touché,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me there. So you were thinking about setting yourself up, but then I made myself available to join you as a partner, right?’
‘Yeah, something like that,’ said Norman, smiling. ‘So, what do you think? We’re a good team, right? It makes perfect sense. I’ll even let you put your name first if you like. I can see it now – Slater and Norman, security and investigations.’
‘Has it occurred to you I stopped being a detective because I’d had enough?’
‘You had enough of being held back by authority, red tape, and stupid rules. It had nothing to do with not wanting to be a detective any more.’
Slater raised his eyebrows. Norman glanced across at him. ‘Am I right? Or, am I right?’ he insisted.
‘Well, yeah, I suppose there is something in what you say,’ conceded Slater.
‘I’ve done some work already,’ continued Norman. ‘I’ve put out some feelers about security consultations. I even got a couple of places interested, and I’ve hardly started yet.’
‘What places?’
‘Well, there’s that fancy art college on the outskirts of town. They get a lot of private funding and they’d prefer to keep everything under the public radar so I’m pretty sure we could get some work out of them. Come on, what do you say?’
‘Let me think about it,’ said Slater. ‘Let’s see what happens with this case first.’
‘That sounds fair. So let’s focus on this case. What did Eamon tell you?’
‘Not a great deal. It seems the body was done to a turn before he got to it. He did say the guy was Caucasian, about six feet tall, with brown hair and brown eyes.’
‘Oh, that narrows it down then,’ said Norman. ‘Only about half the male population to choose from.’
‘He reckons the guy may have been special forces because of a couple of tattoos he had. He’s got DNA but the guy doesn’t show up anywhere. Eamon reckons that’s consistent with him being special forces.’
‘Crap!’ said Norman, as he turned his car into the church car park. ‘It’s not much, is it? But then I suppose it’s better than nothing.’
He pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine.
‘There was one other thing,’ added Slater. ‘The guy had very recently had a kidney removed.’
Norman turned to stare at Slater. ‘You mean he was a donor?’
‘If he was, he’s not on record anywhere.’
‘Isn’t there a black market in body parts?’
‘Eamon reckons the guy would have been super-fit once, but thinks he was in a right state now. You never know, it’s possible he was desperate and he sold one.’
‘Jeez, really? That doesn’t bear thinking about.’
They sat in silence for a moment as they considered the possibility.
‘Come on,’ said Slater, finally. ‘Sitting here’s not going to help us find out who he is.’
The hall was filled with the soft mumbling sounds of people talking and eating. Through the hatch in the kitchen, Slater could be seen on slave duties again – not that he minded. He knew very well he didn’t have Norman’s easy charm with these people, and they had decided if anyone was going to start asking questions, it would be better if it was Norm, who they were all familiar with, rather than the stranger who had yet to prove himself to be trustworthy. And Slater was okay with that. He understood why they wouldn’t trust him straight away.
‘Do you think anyone here knew the dead guy?’ he asked, as he began to work his way through an enormous pile of washing-up.
‘He wasn’t a regular here,’ said Chris. ‘We do get the odd person turning up now and then so we don’t necessarily know them all, but we hadn’t seen anyone new around that time. Of course, that doesn’t mean he hadn’t been in the area for a while, simply that he’d never been here.’
‘So it’s possible someone might have seen him out on the street?’ asked Slater.
‘It’s always possible,’ said Chris, ‘but no one’s mentioned anything and they all know what happened. We thought it was a good idea to warn them to keep an eye out, you know? Did you find anything out from your pathologist friend?’
‘Not a great deal. It seems he was probably special forces before he hit the street. White, six feet tall, brown eyes, brown hair. Could be half the population.’
‘It’s a pity he couldn’t tell you anything a bit more specific.’
‘He did say the guy had recently had a kidney removed.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Slater thought he saw Chris do a comic book double take.
‘Really? Good heavens! Was it very
recent?’
‘He couldn’t be specific because of the state of the body, but he seemed to think it had been a matter of days, not weeks.’
‘Should the poor man even have been out of hospital?’
‘According to my research, a normal donor would be out of hospital in a few days, but would then take another six or eight weeks to recover,’ said Slater. ‘He certainly shouldn’t have been out on the street fending for himself within a few days. Eamon thinks this guy’s operation had been only three or four days before he died, and if we assume he was out for at least a day before the fire, it means he can only have been in hospital for two days, possibly three at most.’
‘What sort of hospital would do that?’ Chris sounded utterly appalled.
‘Not your standard National Health Service hospital, that’s for sure,’ said Slater. ‘The possibility has to be that this was more of a business deal.’
‘You mean he sold his kidney?’ said Diane. ‘That’s too terrible to even think about.’
‘It’s a pretty grim idea, isn’t it? But I guess if you’re desperate enough, you’ll sell whatever you’ve got, for whatever you can get,’ said Slater.
‘I’ve heard of people selling their body parts, but I thought that was a third world thing,’ said Diane. ‘I didn’t think we’d ever see such a thing in a place like Tinton.’
‘Even if we’re right, we don’t know it happened around here. Don’t forget – we’re only an hour from London by train.’ Slater scrubbed a plate clean, his thoughts firmly on the identity of the missing man.
Out in the main hall, Norman was working the crowd as usual, offering a kind word here and a joke there, making sure everyone had enough to eat and there was plenty of water to drink. He had become adept at this particular job over the last three months, and jokingly described himself as the ‘head waiter’. Tonight, he was using the full range of his interpersonal skills to win people over, and he had somehow managed to bring up the subject of strangers in town and the unfortunate skip fire with everyone he had spoken to. So far, however, he had drawn a blank. If the guy had been in town before the day he died, no one had seen him, or, at least, no one was admitting they had seen him.
