He said it with both confidence and finality, closing the subject.
‘Wallace told me you used to work with him.’
‘I did a stint at HQ in Inverness. You know it?’
‘I’ve only travelled through. Runa must have been quite a change after that.’
‘Aye, but for the better. It ’s a good place to live. Quiet. There ’s time and space to think.’
‘Are you from here originally?’
‘God, no. I’m an “incomer”,’ he said. ‘Wanted to get away from it all when I took early retirement. And it doesn’t get much further away than this.’
There was no disputing that. Once we had left the harbour village, there was hardly any sign of life. The only habitation we ’d passed was an imposing old house, set well back from the road. Other than that there had been only the occasional ruined bothy, and sheep. In the gathering twilight, Runa looked beautiful, but desolate. It would be a lonely place to die.
There was a jolt as Brody turned off the road and bumped down an overgrown track. Ahead of us, the car’s headlights picked out a 20
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crumbling old cottage. Wallace had said the body had been found at a croft, but there was little left to show this must once have been a working farm. Brody pulled up outside and turned off the engine.
‘Stay, Bess,’ he ordered the border collie.
We climbed out of the car as the Range Rover drew up behind us on the track. The cottage was a squat, single-storey building that was slowly being reclaimed by nature. Looming up behind it was the peak I’d seen earlier, now only a black shape in the encroaching darkness.
‘That’s Beinn Tuiridh,’ Brody told me. ‘It ’s what passes for a mountain out here. They say if you climb to the top on a clear day you can see all the way to Scotland.’
‘Can you?’
‘Never met anyone stupid enough to find out.’
He took a Maglite from his glove compartment, and we waited outside the car for Fraser and Duncan to join us. I collected my own torch from the flight case in the Range Rover, then we made our way towards the cottage, torch beams bouncing and criss-crossing in the darkness. It was little more than a stone shack, its walls furred with moss and lichen. The doorway was so low I had to stoop to go inside. I paused and shone my torch around. The place was obviously long abandoned, a derelict remnant of forgotten lives. Water dripped from a hole in the roof, and the room we were in was cramped, a low ceiling added to the claustrophobic feel. We were in what had once been a kitchen. There was an old range, a dusty cast-iron pan still standing on one of its cold plates. A rickety wooden table stood in the middle of the stone-flagged floor. A few cans and bottles were scattered on the floor, evidence that the place hadn’t been entirely untenanted. It had the musty smell of age and damp, but nothing else. For a fire death there seemed remarkably little signs of any fire.
‘Through there,’ Brody said, shining his torch on another doorway.
As I approached it I caught the first faint, sooty whiff of combustion. But it was nothing like as strong as I would have expected. The door was broken, its rusted hinges protesting as it was pushed open. Watching my step, I went through into the other room. It was even
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more depressing than the ruined kitchen. The stink of fire was unmistakable now. The torchlight showed ancient, crumbling plaster on the bare walls, in one of which was the gaping mouth of a fireplace. But the smell didn’t come from that. Its source was in the centre of the room, and as I shone my torch on it my breath caught in my throat.
There was precious little left of what had once been a living person. No wonder Brody had looked as he did when I’d asked if it was badly burned. It was that all right. Even the white heat of a crematorium isn’t enough to reduce a human body to ash, yet this fire had somehow done just that.
An untidy pile of greasy ash and cinders lay on the floor. The fire had consumed bone as readily as it had skin and tissue. Only the larger bones remained, emerging from the ash like dead branches from a snowdrift. Even these had been calcined, the carbon burned from them until they were grey and brittle. Presiding over them all like a broken eggshell was a skull, lying with its jawbone canted off to one side.
And yet, apart from the body, nothing else in the room had been damaged. The fire that had all but incinerated a human being, reduced its bones to the consistency of pumice, had somehow done so without burning anything else nearby. The stone flags below the remains were blackened, but a few feet away a tattered and filthy mattress lay untouched. Old leaves and twigs littered the ground, yet the flames had rejected even these.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. What had shocked me to silence was the sight of two unburned feet and a single hand protruding from the ashes. The bones jutting from them were scorched to black sticks, yet they were completely unmarked.
Brody came and stood beside me.
‘Well, Dr Hunter? Still think there ’s nothing suspicious about it?’
CH APTER 3
THE WIND MOANED fitfully outside the old cottage, an eerie background music to the macabre scene before us. From the doorway, I was aware of Duncan’s indrawn breath as he and Fraser saw what was lying on the floor.
But I was getting over the shock now, already beginning to assess what I was seeing.
‘Is there any chance of getting some more light in here?’ I asked.
‘We ’ve got a portable floodlight in the car,’ Fraser said, tearing his eyes from the pile of bone and ashes. He was trying to sound blasé but the attempt wasn’t entirely convincing. ‘Go and get it, Duncan. Duncan. ’
The young PC was still staring at what was left of the body. The blood had left his face.
‘You OK?’ I asked. My concern wasn’t entirely for his sake. I’d worked on more than one body recovery where a green police officer had vomited on the remains. It didn’t make anyone ’s job any easier.
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He nodded. His colour was starting to come back. ‘Aye. Sorry.’
He hurried out. Brody regarded the remains.
‘I told Wallace it was a strange one, but I don’t think he believed me. Dare say he thought I’d gone soft after a few years off the job.’
He was probably right, I thought, remembering the doubts I’d harboured myself only a few minutes before. But I couldn’t blame Wallace for being sceptical. What I was looking at was freakish enough to flout all apparent logic. If I hadn’t seen it for myself I might have thought the report was exaggerated. The body—what was left of it—was lying face down. Without going any closer, I played my torch on the unburned limbs. The feet were intact from just above the ankle, and what made the sight even more disturbing was that both were still wearing trainers. I moved the torch beam higher, until it shone on the hand. It was the right one, and could have belonged to either a small man or a large woman. There were no rings, and the fingernails were unvarnished and bitten. The radius and ulna protruded from the exposed tissue of the wrist, their bone burned a dark amber close to the flesh and quickly becoming blackened and crazed with heat fractures after that. Just before where they should have joined the elbow, both had burned right through.
It was the same with the feet. The charred shafts of the tibia and fibula emerged from each as if the flames had eaten away everything up to this point, then came to an abrupt halt where the fire had burned them away halfway up the shin.
But other than that the surviving limbs showed little evidence of the fire that had destroyed the rest of the body. The main damage was caused by rodents or other small animals gnawing at the flesh and unburned bone. What soft tissue remained was starting to decompose normally, a marbling effect evident beneath the darkened skin. There was virtually no insect activity—often a vital indicator of how long decomposition has been under way. But given the cold, wintry conditions that was only what I’d expect. Flies need heat and light. I shone the torch around the room.
The remains of a fire lay in the hearth, and at some point a smaller one had been lit on the flagged 24
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floor. It was a good six feet from where the body lay, but that didn’t signify anything. Unless they were unconscious, no one remained still when they caught fire.
I turned the torch beam on to the ceiling. Directly above the body the cracked plaster was smoke-blackened, but not burned. An oily, brownish deposit coated it. The same fatty residue was also on the floor around the remains.
‘What ’s all that brown stuff ?’ Fraser asked.
‘It ’s fat. From the body, as it burned.’
He grimaced. ‘Bit like you get with a chip-pan fire, eh?’
‘Something like that.’
Duncan had returned with the floodlight. He stared wide-eyed at the skeletal remains as he set it on the floor.
‘I’ve read about this sort of thing,’ he blurted. He immediately looked embarrassed as we all stared at him. ‘Where people burst into flames for no reason, I mean. Without burning anything else around them.’
‘Stop talking rubbish,’ Fraser snapped.
‘It ’s all right,’ I said, turning to Duncan. ‘You’re talking about spontaneous combustion.’
He nodded eagerly. ‘Aye, that ’s it!’
I’d been expecting this ever since I’d seen the remains. Spontaneous human combustion was generally thought of in the same terms as yeti and UFOs: a paranormal phenomenon for which there was no real explanation. Yet there were well-documented cases where individuals had been found incinerated in a room otherwise untouched by fire, often with hands or lower legs partially intact amongst the ashes. A whole range of theories had been put forward to explain it, from demonic possession to microwaves. But the popular consensus was that, whatever its cause, it had to be something inexplicable to known science. I didn’t believe it for a moment.
Fraser was scowling at Duncan. ‘What the hell do you know about it?’
Duncan gave me a sheepish glance. ‘I’ve seen photographs.
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There was one woman who was burned up, just like this. All that was left was one of her legs, with the shoe still on. They call her the cinder woman.’
‘Her name was Mary Reeser,’ I told him. ‘She was an elderly widow in Florida back in the 1950s. There was almost nothing left of her except for one leg from the shin down, and the foot still had a slipper on it. The armchair she was sitting on was destroyed, and a nearby table and lamp, but nothing else in the room was damaged. Is that the one?’
Duncan looked taken aback. ‘Aye. And I’ve read about others.’
‘They crop up now and again,’ I agreed. ‘But people don’t just burst into flames for no reason. And whatever happened to this woman, there was nothing supernatural or paranormal about it.’
Brody had been watching us during the exchange, listening without joining in. Now he spoke up.
‘How do you know it ’s a woman?’
Retired or not, Brody didn’t miss much. ‘Because of the skeleton.’ I shone the torch on to what was left of the pelvis, obscured by ash but still visible. ‘Even from what’s left, the hipbone ’s obviously too wide for a man’s. And the head of the humerus – that ’s the ball where the upper armbone fits into the shoulder – is too small. Whoever this was, she was big-boned but definitely female.’
‘Like I said, I can’t see it being anyone local,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we ’d have noticed if anyone had gone missing. Any idea how long the body might have been here?’
It was a good question. While some things can be gleaned from even the most badly burned remains, an accurate time since death isn’t usually one of them. For that you need to trace the extent of decomposition in muscle proteins, amino and volatile fatty acids, all of which are normally destroyed by fire. But the freakish condition of this body meant there was enough soft tissue to run tests that weren’t possible for most fire deaths. That would have to wait till I was back in a lab, but in the meantime I could make an educated guess.
‘The cold weather will have slowed the rate of decay,’ I told him.
‘But the feet and hand have started to decompose, so death can’t have 26
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been too recent. Assuming the body’s been here all the time and not moved from somewhere else—and given the way the flagstones underneath it are scorched I’d say that ’s likely—I’d guess we ’re looking at around four or five weeks.’
‘The contractors had all finished work long before then,’ Brody mused. ‘Can’t be anyone who came out with them.’
Fraser had been listening with mounting irritation, not liking the way the former DI was taking over. ‘Aye, well, if it ’s nobody local I dare say we ’ll be able to find out who it is from the ferry’s passenger list. There can’t have been many visitors at this time of year.’
Brody smiled. ‘Did it strike you as the sort of service that keeps records? Besides, there are a dozen or so other boats that shuttle between Runa and Stornoway. No one keeps track of who comes and goes.’
He turned to me, dismissing the police sergeant. ‘So what now? I assume you’ll tell Wallace to send out a SOC team?’
Fraser butted in angrily before I could answer. ‘We ’re not doing anything until Dr Hunter’s finished what he came to do. For all we know this was probably just some wino who got drunk and fell asleep too close to the campfire.’
Brody’s expression was unreadable. ‘So what was she doing on Runa in the middle of winter in the first place?’
Fraser shrugged. ‘Could have friends or relatives here. Or could be one of those new-age types, wanting to get back to nature or whatever it is they do. You get them on islands even more remote than this.’
Brody shone his torch on to the skull. It lay face down, tilted slightly to one side amongst the ashes, the back of its once smooth crown marred by a gaping hole.
‘You think she might have smashed in her own head as well?’
I intervened before tempers frayed still more. ‘Actually, the skull often shatters in a hot fire like this. It’s basically a sealed container of fluid and jelly, so when it ’s heated it acts like a pressure cooker. You get a build-up of gas that eventually makes it explode.’
Fraser blanched. ‘Christ.’
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‘So you still think it could be accidental?’ Brody asked, dubiously. I hesitated, knowing how deceptive fire could be in its effects on the human body. Despite what I’d said, I was also aware of nagging doubts of my own. But Wallace would want facts, not hunches.
‘It ’s possible,’ I hedged. ‘I know this looks bizarre, but that ’s not the same as suspicious. I’ll need to examine it properly, but there ’s nothing here that immediately screams murder. Other than the skull, there ’s no obvious trauma. Or any signs of interference, like if the arms or legs had been tied.’
Brody rubbed his chin, frowning. ‘Wouldn’t the rope have burned away with everything else?’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference. Fire makes the muscles contract, so the limbs draw up into a sort of foetal position. It’s called the pugilistic posture, because it looks like a boxer’s crouch. But if the victim’s hands or feet are tied it prevents that from happening, even if the rope burns away.’
I played the torch over the body, letting them see how it had curled up on itself.
‘If she ’d been restrained, her arms and legs would be straight, not drawn up like this. So we know she wasn’t tied up.’
Brody still wasn’t satisfied. ‘Fair enough. But I was a police officer for thirty years. I saw my share of fire deaths, accidental and otherwise, but never anything like this. Hard to see how this could happen without an accelerant ’s being used.’
Under normal circumstances he was right. But the circumstances here were far from normal.
‘An accelerant like petrol couldn’t have done this,’ I told him. ‘It doesn’
t burn hotly enough. And even if it did, to incinerate a body to anything like this extent would have taken so much that the whole cottage would have gone up. It wouldn’t have been a localized fire like this.’
‘So what could have caused it?’
I had an idea, but I didn’t want to speculate just yet. ‘That ’s what I’m here to find out. In the meantime, let’s play safe anyway.’ I turned to Fraser. ‘Can you tape off a walkway from the doorway, and cordon 28
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off the body? I don’t want to disturb anything more in here than we have to.’
The sergeant jerked his head at Duncan. ‘Go on, go and get the incident tape. We don’t have all night.’
He made a point of saying ‘incident ’ tape rather than ‘crime scene ’, I noticed. Brody hadn’t missed it, either. His jaw muscles bunched but he said nothing as Duncan headed towards the door. Before he reached it the room was suddenly lit up as headlights spilled through the small window. We heard the sound of a car engine being switched off.
‘Looks like we ’ve got visitors,’ Brody commented. Fraser was already motioning angrily to Duncan. ‘Get out there. Don’t let anyone in.’
But it was too late. As we hurried from the room a figure was already framed in the front doorway. It was the young woman I’d spoken to on the ferry, her too-big red coat a vivid shout of colour in the depressing sepia of the cottage.
‘Get her out,’ Fraser snarled to Duncan.
She lowered her torch, shielding her eyes as Fraser shone his in her face. ‘Now that’s no way to treat a member of the press, is it?’
Press? I thought, dismayed. She ’d told me she was a novelist. Duncan had stopped, uncertain what to do. The young woman was already looking behind us, trying to see into the darkened room. Brody tried to close the door, but its rusted hinges seemed to have frozen. They gave an explosive creak, but refused to shut. Maggie gave him a smile. ‘You must be Andrew Brody. Heard about you from my gran. I’m Maggie Cassidy, Lewis Gazette.’
Brody appeared unruffled by her sudden appearance. ‘What do you want, Maggie?’
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