The Nature of Life and Death

by Patricia Wiltshire

  There were also tiny fragments of green leaf in the soil. Chlorophyll is a fascinating molecule. It is resistant to breaking down when prematurely detached from a living plant, and takes a long time to decompose; fresh leaves can remain green in soil for months, long after the intact plant has gone brown and died. This was the situation here. The stimulation of the buds on the underground stem, and the green leaf fragments in the soil, suggested to me that damage had occurred at some time in the previous summer—certainly before early autumn when these fern fronds start to turn yellow.

  I staggered up from my knees and called over to the waiting crowd: “I’m pretty sure this is a late summer grave.” A mock cheer went up. One of the most important pieces of intelligence is the timing and dating of events. It helps investigators to check the alibis of suspects against the calendar.

  My next move was to collect comparator samples from around the grave, from the grave-fill soil itself, and along any likely pathways that the offender had used. With a little luck, I would later be able to compare the profiles of these areas with any footwear, vehicles, and implements retrieved from possible suspects. Considering that a single fern frond can produce 30 million spores in one season, I expected this plant to be an important contributor to the jigsaw of evidence retrieved from this site.

  As I prepared to sample the grave, I put on my face mask. I did not want to risk coughing, sneezing, or even breathing DNA onto the corpse, or any of the hairs on my head getting into the grave. The forensic practice of “suiting and booting” not only protects the crime scene from human contamination, it also guards against anything nasty being picked up from the corpse. I was cocooned by my suit, cut off from everything and everyone. I had scraped up my samples and put each in a separate polythene bag, made a list of all the plant species I could find, took pictures of anything I thought was relevant, and made sure that all the samples were labeled and logged accurately. It seemed to take an age because of fumbling cold fingers encased in vinyl.

  “Okay, chaps, come over,” I shouted to Peter Murphy and Luke Barber.

  Peter was an environmental archeologist like me, but based at the University of East Anglia, whereas Luke worked in the Sussex Archeology Unit, which was administered by UCL. We crouched down together and they quickly removed much of the overlying material to reveal a great surprise to all of us.

  As soon as they scraped away the mud slurry from the surface and exposed a more compacted soil underneath, I gasped.

  “I’m wrong—this is not a summer-dug grave!”

  I pulled a face as I realized that the grave had been refilled in the autumn or winter. This was obvious because the grave-fill contained brown leaf litter that had been carpeting the ground in the not-too-distant past, and just as it was now on the other side of the stream, being aimlessly kicked about by other team members. A summer soil might have contained bits of green leaf and debris, but definitely not such a quantity of brown, shriveled leaf debris. How could I have been so wrong? But was the grave filled during this winter or last winter? The victim looked as though he had been in the ground for a very long time. The leaves might well have remained for a year, but there was still the puzzle of the bracken stems. I hunched down and kept scrutinizing as the entombing deposits were expertly removed by precise and rapid troweling.

  Archeologists and biologists view soils differently. As they dig, archeologists describe variations in soil color and texture in terms of “contexts”; each one possibly representing an event or episode that recorded human activity directly, or indirectly. A biologist, though, will regard a soil profile in terms of horizons formed by natural processes. Both are valid concepts which help us each form our own conclusions about disturbance and development. In a recently dug grave, the backfill is just a mishmash, but we can glean evidence both from what is included in the fill and its dissimilarity to the underlying “natural.” Archeologists and scientists are pre-adapted for forensic work; it is second nature for every item and action to be meticulously timed, positioned, measured, and recorded. However, one of the most unenviable jobs is deciphering scrappy notes from soggy, mud-spattered notebooks, where what seemed perfectly clear at the graveside can be unintelligible back in the office.

  We all gasped as more of the body became exposed. The skull and feet protruding out of the mud bath had been picked clean by maggots, birds, and rodents, giving the impression that the victim, in this strangely exposed burial site, had been dead for a long time; and, since there was virtually no evidence of interest by larger scavengers, we all thought that we might be retrieving a complete skeleton.

  “Good grief!” exclaimed Peter.

  He was not prepared for the slimy, pallid, well-preserved flesh under his trowel. He was used to seeing only ancient bone, which usually has about the same impact on the excavator as any other artifact. Luke was more relaxed because of his experience in excavating war graves. Our eyes met over our masks in sympathy for poor Peter, who was gagging as the stench grew in intensity.

  I had already collected samples of the mixed grave soil and of surface samples all around the grave edge. No one disposing of this body could have avoided picking up this soil—soil that would have plenty of condemning trace evidence. After a couple hours of intense activity, the whole body was exposed and the rest of the forensic team could enter the inner cordon to collect their own classes of evidence. At last, the pathologist was able to declare the victim dead.

  The undertakers arrived. It may surprise you that they often attend crime scenes, whatever the location, to carry a victim’s remains back to the mortuary. To see three men in formal black suits and ties, white shirts and shiny shoes, slip-sliding down the bank, trying to keep their dignity and respectful demeanor is an incongruous sight.

  The body was bagged and carried away by the silent men in black, scrambling and stumbling up the steep bank. Body gone, most of the police and others on the other side of the stream could be relieved from duty, and some were glad to be racing off to the warmth of the mortuary.

  In the old days, the police would dig out the body as best they could, undertakers would take it away, forensic teams would take samples for various purposes, and that would be that. Not now. The crime scene is a precious place for clues to offenders; it must be combed and searched very thoroughly. And archeologists must be employed to retrieve human remains in the most meticulously recorded way possible. Archeologists always insist on revealing the original cut of the grave and, now that the grave was empty, Peter and Luke kept troweling in an attempt to find it. The floor of a grave can preserve footprints and tool marks made by the digger, and these can be measured and compared with those of an eventual suspect.

  The unremitting thoroughness of the diggers had revealed something very damning. The soil that had been under the body contained no leaf litter in it at all, even though the bottom of the grave had still not been reached. This could only mean one thing. Realization then dawned. I had not been wrong at all—the grave had certainly been dug in the summertime, but it had been refilled. Sometime later, when the leaves had fallen and were covering the ground, it had been dug again, but this time not to the bottom of the original grave. The victim had been put in the newly excavated hole, but the soil used to fill it was mixed with the current season’s leaf fall. This murder was premeditated; the first grave had been dug in anticipation of the victim’s death.

  After everything had been recorded and photographed by police staff, and we were happy with our samples and notes, we jumped over the stream and climbed the slippery bank, panting and sweating in spite of the cold air. Luke went back to Sussex while Peter and I carried on to the mortuary, where work was already under way. As usual, I donned scrubs and readied my equipment, but there was little for me to do. The corpse was on its front—what a sight. This was not a skeleton but an almost perfectly preserved man with his hands tied behind his back. The washing away of the grave soil from his front by rain
had encouraged scavengers to pick him clean wherever they could reach, but that was only his face, extremities, and chest. The cold and wet had preserved the rest of him beautifully, so much so that a perfect set of fingerprints was obtained from his hands. We had started very early in the morning, but by 3:00 p.m. there had been a positive identification from NAFIS—the National Automated Fingerprint Identification Service. If a match is present in the database, the information can come back within about fifteen minutes. Here, there was a match—he was a known offender and his prints had been recorded in the database. He was a young, perfectly legal Albanian immigrant and had lived in London.

  What had killed him was very obvious—a deep knife wound in the chest. Intensive work by the constabulary quickly identified his home, his associates, and what had prompted his murder. We were shown a picture of him—what a handsome young man—and I reflected on how such good looks and vibrancy could be changed so soon after death. He had been laundering money for his illegal Albanian associates, but temptation had overcome him, as it often does. Instead of making sure that the funds had reached their families back home, he had frittered it away, having a good time. Retribution had been planned, rather than been doled out in anger. The grave site was carefully chosen so that it would be easy to find again. It was on a little island in the stream gurgling through that tiny valley in that beautiful woodland. It must have seemed remote and safe to the perpetrators, but they had reckoned without the intrepid British dog walker.

  I shuffled off to the changing room in my too-large boots, got back into my warm tracksuit bottoms and tennis shoes, and I drove back home with country-and-western music blaring all the way, drowning out thoughts of that dismal, long day. I had left in the dark before dawn and was getting home in the blackness of that late winter night. Mickey was waiting for me and we both had supper—me beans on toast and Mickey some poached trout. I wondered idly if I would be able to contribute anything other than my field report and interpretation of the grave stratigraphy, but I did not have to wait long to find out.

  A few days later, the phone rang.

  “Pattie, we know his car is back in Albania; we know it was used to take the body to the woodland and we’ve seized lots of footwear and clothing from the gang for you to examine.”

  “Great, Dougie. I’ll start on the footwear for comparison with the woodland as soon as I can.”

  “Yes, and I want you to have a go at the car too.”

  “Don’t be daft, Dougie. It has been driven across Europe and the driver must have been in and out of it all the time.”

  “Well, we want to try.”

  I thought this was being unrealistic. I had shown the power of palynological trace evidence many times, but this was a bit much. I did not have the energy to argue and, shortly afterward, Peter Lamb, principal scientist at the Forensic Science Service, and I were winging it to Milan Malpensa airport in Italy, where we could get a connection to Tirana, the capital of Albania.

  We were greeted by a British police officer who was a member of the investigating team and who had been out there for some time; he had certainly become used to the luxury of the hotel services and knew his way around. There was a lot of jovial bantering when everyone met up, but Peter and I were tired and, after a very good dinner, went off to our rooms early.

  Next day, meeting the Albanian police officers who “were at our disposal” presented quite an eye-opener. These men all seemed huge and no one spoke any English except an assigned translator whom I disliked at first meeting. He seemed shifty and we soon realized that he was capable of bending the truth to suit his convenience. At first they all ignored me completely until Dougie introduced me as the person who would be in charge of operations for the environmental work. I can still remember their faces—they really did look stupefied that this diminutive female was capable of directing anything, let alone operational work.

  Peter had to examine the car in the hope of finding fibers, blood, DNA, or any other trace evidence that might match those in the samples he had obtained from gang members’ clothing and, of course, of the victim. On the other hand, I needed soil samples to eliminate those places frequented by the gang from those in the Hertfordshire woodland. The first place to start would be the main suspect’s London home, and then the other addresses occupied by the rest of the ring. Apparently, the police had found the footwear and clothing all over the place—bedrooms, sitting rooms, and even sheds—a shoe here, a jacket there—and they just collected anything they thought might be relevant. One thing that makes life difficult for the analyst in this kind of situation is that associates often share clothes and footwear. One way to establish ownership of any of the items was to do DNA analysis. This certainly works on the inside of footwear, and one can even determine mixed profiles so that more than one wearer could be identified. Then, if the trace evidence on that item matched the burial site, further work could go from there. The residency of the gang was as complicated as the cache of clothing and shoes. Who was staying where and when? It is always difficult when dealing with criminal illegal immigrants; they learn how to cover their tracks. We could have been working on a huge mass of items for a long time, so the police decided to apply Occam’s razor and they focused on the car.

  I will never forget entering that Albanian police compound—the prison had the same entrance for security. It was like something out of a Dracula horror film; the gate was huge and had big studs. It opened into a wide yard with piles of rubbish along one side and some vehicles parked in makeshift garages along the wall on the same side as the gate. The red car was there all right. Before we could do anything, social niceties had to be observed. I was ushered into an office alongside the ramshackle garage, and the room seemed to be full of huge men, all bending down to smile at me, showing off white and gold teeth and overpowering me with garlic fumes. They definitely looked foreign—all dark and heavy stubble, but very gracious. They insisted on showing me their pride and joy—their fingerprint system. Rather than the system we use in the West, they employed one used by the Russians and even some of the British officers thought it was superior to ours. I could not judge, but it was fun to have my prints taken so that they could show me the sequence of events from ink to image.

  The result that my fingerprints were so faint surprised them; you could hardly see them at all. Through the translator, they told me that I obviously did too much housework and had scrubbed them away. I suppose my passions for cleaning and bleach had a lot to do with the disappearance of my ridges and furrows that distinguish one person from another. Although the population of the whole world has not been tested, there have never been two sets of fingerprints ever found to be identical, and even those of twins, derived from the same egg, are different. Apparently, genetics play a role but fingerprint formation is more to do with a basal layer of cells in the fetal skin being sandwiched between the dermis and the epidermis, which wrinkles as pressure is exerted by growing, underlying tissues. The way fingers are used in life, and the multitude of little scars that are inflicted on the skin, also play a part in the distinctiveness of any print.

  The Albanian police rarely had the opportunity to meet Westerners and they were keen to show us examples of their work. As we trundled across the yard toward the main building, I looked up at the faces behind, and arms poking out of, the barred windows, and wondered why so many of the prisoners were looking down at the yard. A bell clanged, the gates opened, and in flooded a mass of drably dressed women and the occasional man, carrying laden baskets covered with cloths. They all hurried across the yard and disappeared into the building.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the translator.

  “It’s feeding time.”

  “What?”

  “The families are bringing their food.”

  “But what if they don’t have anyone?”

  He just shrugged and walked toward the main door of the building. What a contrast between t
he treatment of our prisoners and theirs.

  On the other side of the yard, we were proudly ushered into a large room without windows. It was lined with long tables and the biggest array of guns I had ever seen. They all looked vicious and frightening, and had all been seized during active duty against criminal activity; they brought the possibility of death too close for comfort. I politely listened while a tall, thin man with a stoop gave us a detailed description of each weapon, with technical information that mostly went in one ear and out the other as the stilted translation was delivered. I smiled and nodded repeatedly like an automaton and, out of politeness, asked an occasional question via the translator. The only gun name I recognized was Kalashnikov, and they had lots of those. They made me shudder as I imagined them being used, as they inevitably had been. They also reminded me of a weak joke I had heard somewhere: “The English language is like a Kalashnikov. It will take you anywhere.” I suppose that is true, though, up to a point.

  The tables of guns also took my thoughts to my paternal grandfather, a man who rarely spoke unless it was to my lovely Welsh, roly-poly grandmother. I do not think I ever exchanged more than a few words of polite greeting with him, and I found him intriguing, even though my cousins thought he was just grumpy. No one was allowed to make a sound if the news was on the wireless, and we crept around like little mice, terrified of rebuke. No one wept at his funeral and he was hardly missed. I later found out that he had been a machine gunner in the First World War and had experienced a bad time. I suppose he must have used the antiquated equivalent of a Kalashnikov and killed a lot of men. Poor soul—he must have had deep thoughts at times. I wish I could have the opportunity to talk to him now. All we know is that he was an actor, and was in the first moving picture ever to be shown in Britain. This was, of course, in the time of silent films, and he used to tour with a little film company that held film shows in tents, all up and down the Welsh Valleys. He was locally famous as Dick Turpin. At the end of each showing of Dick Turpin’s Ride to York, he made the grand finale—fully masked with cracking pistols, riding onto the stage on a horse. He captured the heart of Gladys Blodwen, married her, and became a grocer.