Dead on Your Feet

by Stephen Puleston

  Moments later, he heard the sound of a woman’s voice. He rose, left his desk and found Susan Howells glaring at the Incident Room board. He walked towards her and thought he noticed Luned stifling a yawn. It would be another few hours before they’d be leaving for home, Drake thought.

  ‘I need something I can tell the press, Ian.’

  ‘Just tell them Gloria Patton’s body was discovered in a shop in Llandudno this morning.’

  ‘What about all this?’ She tilted her head at the board. ‘What am I supposed to tell the waiting public about this?’

  ‘Nothing. Don’t tell them anything. It’s a police inquiry.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. There’ll be people too frightened to sleep at night, terrified to open their doors. This is Llandudno. The average age of the residents is probably over eighty. So I need you to tell me I can reassure the public.’

  ‘We are doing everything we can. Leaving no stone unturned. Every lead being examined.’

  Howells gave Drake a sceptical glare.

  ‘This is the first day of the inquiry, so I’ve got nothing to tell you. The PR department will have to just manage any press flak themselves.’

  ‘No need to get tetchy,’ Susan said as she turned on her heels and stomped out of the Incident Room.

  ‘Damn.’ Winder spoke as he stared at the screen. ‘The Twitter account was opened by someone called I-am-the-one. Whoever opened it added a photograph of Arnold Schwarzenegger as an avatar.’

  ‘What?’ Drake snorted.

  Winder continued. ‘The email address connected to it is a Gmail account anyone could open.’

  ‘Get a warrant for Gmail to disclose all the details. We’ll have to trace the hosting company in the morning. We need to build a picture of who’s involved.’

  ‘But … there won’t be anybody available.’

  ‘Just do it.’

  Drake left the Incident Room and headed for Price’s office. The secretary had left for the day so he knocked on the superintendent’s door and, after hearing a shout from inside the room, Drake entered. The soft sheen from an LED table lamp bathed his desk, and in the pastel light the senior officer looked old, his skin pale, the creases deepening. Price and his wife had little family and working was probably his only interest. On an evening like this Drake felt sorry for Price and hoped he could avoid such a fate, but he doubted it.

  Drake sat down.

  ‘The PR department are having a fit,’ Price said.

  ‘We have to accept that onlookers and weirdoes will have taken photographs. There’ll be more of these sort of images on the internet soon enough.’

  Price nodded. ‘Scourge of modern policing. All this 24/7 media. Any luck with the website?’

  Drake shook his head. ‘The team are still working on that.’

  Price glanced at his watch. ‘It’s been a long day. That forum meeting today became a ridiculous waste of time – filled with do-gooders and semi-literate local politicians who could barely read their minutes.’

  Price sat back in his chair and fixed Drake with a stare.

  ‘Have you met the family?’

  ‘We’ve seen Gloria’s partner and spoken to members of the Orme Arts Festival committee – she was the curator. They gave us the names of some people with possible motives.’

  Price scanned the time. ‘It’s bloody late.’

  Drake stood up.

  ‘How are things, Ian?’

  Drake knew what he really meant. The superintendent wanted to know how he was coping, living on his own, and that a previous history of counselling wouldn’t be repeated.

  ‘Good, sir. Thank you.’ Drake wasn’t about to share with Price that he missed his family and that too often he blamed himself and his job for his break-up with Sian.

  Price settled back to the piles of folders on his desk and Drake pulled the door closed behind him.

  Back in the Incident Room, the atmosphere was heavy and lethargic. Winder was arguing with someone on the telephone. Luned was engrossed with paperwork. She had recently been promoted to detective constable; Drake had scanned her curriculum vitae the night before, a worry crossing his mind that she was too young and inexperienced. But two newcomers meant neither of them would know anything about him so he needn’t be concerned about comments behind his back. Drake walked over to the board and read the various names underneath the image of Gloria Patton.

  Hubert Oswald was pinned to the middle. Tomorrow the team would find out more about him, more about Gloria. Next to him was the name of Jeremy Ellingham and on the other side Geraint Wood – two of the artists Gloria had rejected from the exhibition at the arts festival.

  Winder finished his conversation, stood up, stretched his back and made no attempt to stifle a yawn. ‘No luck, boss. Nobody is available.’

  ‘Okay. Nothing more we can do tonight,’ Drake said to Winder’s obvious relief. Then he turned to Sara. ‘We’ve got the post-mortem in the morning.’

  Sara nodded, giving him a tired smile.

  It was another hour before Drake arrived home. The answer machine flashed a notification that he had a message. He played it back, listening to his mother, who sounded serious, telling him she hadn’t been able to reach him earlier and that she expected to see him on Saturday as planned. Her voice implied he couldn’t postpone. Since his father had died he had made every effort to visit her more often and as he wasn’t due to see his daughters at the weekend he had no excuse. But Gloria’s murder changed everything. It took priority. They always did. It was too late to call her back now, so he promised himself he’d ring her tomorrow.

  He had grazed all day and his stomach rumbled. He idly contemplated a takeaway meal but rifling through the freezer he found a fish pie. As it cooked he opened a bottle of beer.

  The green glass reminded him of Hubert Oswald’s place earlier that morning. He had lived with Gloria for over twenty years but had appeared unmoved by her death. A loving husband would have been inconsolable. So was Oswald’s reaction that of a man guilty of murder or guilty of indifference to his partner? As Drake ate, he thought about what their inquiries might discover about Oswald and decided that these artistic types were very odd.

  * * *

  The next morning Drake parked a safe distance away from the nearest car at the mortuary, avoiding potential accidental scratches or bumps to the Mondeo. He reached over for the newspaper on the passenger seat and scanned the Sudoku puzzle, his mind satisfied that he had already managed a couple of squares. He saw the time on the dashboard clock and headed off for the entrance. Sara had completed the paperwork needed for the mortuary assistant who was standing, casting the occasional glance towards her.

  ‘Morning, Inspector.’ The assistant hadn’t drawn a brush through his hair that morning nor a razor over his cheeks for several days. He let off a faint whiff of unwashed clothes. Drake mumbled a reply.

  ‘The doc’s expecting you.’

  ‘Morning, boss.’ Sara still had her hair in a tight plait but the navy suit had been replaced by a less formal brown jacket and trousers with sharp creases. Second day in a new job required a more relaxed dress code, Drake concluded.

  ‘Have you ever attended a post-mortem before?’ Drake said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then it’ll be difficult, your stomach will turn. If you find yourself nauseous then just leave.’

  ‘Thanks, sir.’

  They followed the technician into a corridor and at the end he pushed open the double doors to the mortuary, inviting Sara to brush past him, grinning as he did so. She paused and then shoved open the other door, ignoring him. There was a clinical, antiseptic feel to the place. ‘Ian Drake, good to see you again,’ a voice bellowed, and Drake and Sara looked around for its owner. Dr Kings emerged from behind a screen, drying his hands. ‘I hear this caused a stir.’ Kings noticed Sara and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Lee. This is DS Sara Morgan.’

  Kings kept eye contact with Sara. ‘Pleased to meet you,
sergeant. I hope you can keep Inspector Drake in order.’ He shared a conspiratorial smile with her. Another white-coated assistant pushed a trolley into the mortuary and Drake saw Kings’ face light up.

  ‘Let’s see what she has to tell us,’ Kings announced.

  Sara coughed loudly as Kings assembled the various shining stainless steel instruments he required. With a flourish he removed the white sheet that covered the body. Drake sensed Sara moving uncomfortably from one leg to another as Kings started on the task of cutting up Gloria Patton.

  The pathologist dictated as he worked, occasionally pausing to stare and ponder. ‘Rigor mortis was well advanced when I saw her yesterday. It suggests she had been dead for a minimum of eight hours when the body was discovered. The undertakers had to force her arm flat – one of their newbies got a bit squeamish.’

  Kings raised Patton’s left arm before looking over at Drake. He drew a hand along the bottom surface of the grey, wrinkled skin. ‘This discoloration is called livor mortis. It’s due to the blood settling in dependent areas. Because her arm was lying on a piece of timber, gravity will have drawn the blood to the side where the limb rested.’

  Kings placed the arm back on the trolley and moved nearer Patton’s feet. ‘The same is true of her feet. She’s been stood up post-mortem, allowing blood to settle there.’

  Sara cleared her throat noisily. Kings gave a brief, friendly smile before continuing. ‘The fact that the lividity is fixed confirms my view that she’d been dead for six to eight hours when you found her.’

  Drake nodded. ‘Patton was last seen at ten pm and her body found at eleven the following morning. So she was killed between ten in the evening and three the following morning.’

  Kings nodded as he walked round to the opposite end of the trolley where he turned his attention to Gloria’s head. ‘There’s evidence of a blunt force trauma to the back of the head.’

  ‘Is that what killed her?’

  ‘Difficult to determine externally; we’ll have to look inside.’

  He spent time recovering fragments from the wound before reaching for a scalpel. He made an incision around the hairline. Then he peeled the skin back over the face. Drake glanced over at Sara; she had a fist pressed to her mouth and a sickly look on her face. He turned back and watched Kings operating a reciprocating saw to open the skull. Carefully he removed the brain and held it in both hands to admire the mass of tissue. ‘Normal brain, no bruising or bleeding that I can see.’

  ‘So the force to the head didn’t kill her?’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘But enough for the killer to render her unconscious?’

  Kings nodded. He examined Gloria’s upper body and limbs before holding up the right arm. He raised his head and looked over at Drake. ‘Did she have a history of drug abuse?’

  ‘Not that we know.’

  ‘Because there’s a puncture wound here on her arm caused by a needle of some type. It could be anything, from self-inflicted puncture wound to medical treatment or tests. Or something may have been injected to kill her. The head injury didn’t kill her. So we can’t rule out drugs or a poison of some sort.’ He scanned the rest of her body. ‘Let’s open her up and take a look.’

  Once Kings started to open the chest cavity with a saw the sound of bone splintering and cracking filled the air and Sara stepped away from the trolley, coughing loudly. Drake looked over and she mouthed a reassurance that she would be all right and returned to his side.

  Kings stood back after a few minutes, frowning. ‘There’s a lot of fluid on the lungs which suggests pulmonary oedema. She hasn’t drowned, and her heart is normal, so it could be negative pressure pulmonary oedema from a partially obstructed airway for a while before death. That could be while she was unconscious from the head injury, but given the puncture wound we should send some samples for toxicology.’

  ‘Do you really think she might have been poisoned?’

  Kings stared at the body for a moment. ‘We can’t rule it out.’

  Chapter 6

  Sara stared down at her flat white. She dragged a hand through her hair and over her head. It was mid-morning, the café was quiet, more staff than customers. From the sickly look she had developed after the post-mortem Drake decided they needed to pause before their visit to Norma Buckland. He still remembered the feeling of nausea after his first post-mortem. It had been a straightforward case. An abusive husband had lost his temper once too often only to face his wife plunging a kitchen knife into his heart. A full and complete confession followed quickly, the relief palpable at knowing he couldn’t torment her any further.

  Gloria Patton’s murder had a ghoulish quality, and Drake guessed the scene at the shop and the post-mortem would stay with Sara for the rest of her career.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  She looked up at him. The grey tinge to her skin seemed to have made her age visibly since that morning. ‘Better now.’ She sipped on her drink. ‘We are looking for a psychopath aren’t we?’ she asked quietly.

  Drake ran a finger around the handle of his coffee cup. ‘We’re certainly looking for one very disturbed individual.’

  ‘What was the possible motive for staging her body like that?’

  Drake downed the last of his Americano.

  ‘There has to be a link to the artistic world. Maybe it was revenge for rejecting a submission or just plain jealousy.’

  ‘But to stage her body like that is really gruesome. Really sick.’ Sara shuddered. ‘What if we can’t find a link to the artistic world? And it’s the work of some …’

  ‘There’s always a motive. That’s why we have to know everything about Gloria Patton. Something about her life will hold the key to all this.’

  Sara didn’t look convinced. ‘We will catch the killer.’ Drake hoped he sounded persuasive.

  Sara finished her coffee and gave Drake a weak smile, enough to encourage him to beckon a waitress and pay the bill. Drake headed back for the car, pleased Sara had recovered some normality. He started the engine and entered Norma Buckland’s postcode into the satnav. The junction for Rhyl was a few miles east on the A55 and the journey took them past Colwyn Bay before skirting along the dual carriageway that ran parallel with the railway line and the wide expanse of shoreline. The flat, open countryside stretched out ahead of Drake and he could see Rhyl in the distance. It almost looked inviting – perhaps it was the seaside or the spring sunshine – but Drake knew the town had one of the worst levels of deprivation in Wales. The amusement arcades and slot machines attracted tourists from Liverpool but now it had become nothing more than a suburb of its near city neighbour.

  They passed hundreds of static caravans stationed like obedient soldiers staring out to sea. Then, nearing the town, neat bungalows, net-curtained windows, weed-free drives with small cars, all with proud owners retired from the stresses of Liverpool or Birkenhead. Drake found the old garage Norma Buckland used as a studio easily enough.

  The words ‘Modurdy Gerwyn’ were built into the stonework above the door. Drake doubted Gerwyn was running his garage any longer or that the current owners would be Welsh speakers. The arched opening had been bricked over and in one corner the sign on a door indicated that all deliveries should call a mobile telephone number. Drake pushed it open and from behind a makeshift dividing wall of timber partitions he heard voices and a radio playing a Bob Dylan song.

  The plasterboard shook as Drake opened a door in it and stepped into a space occupied by tables of varying sizes and age. Lengths of timber and bits of plywood were stacked on one, and another groaned with tool boxes and wooden crates. Large sheets of paper butted together covered one wall with random patterns in numerous coloured inks.

  Two people had their backs to Drake and Sara as they worked, remodelling a sculpture, but they turned when they heard their approaching visitors.

  ‘Norma Buckland?’

  ‘How can I help?’ Buckland wore a one-piece boiler suit, a couple of sizes too small f
rom the way it exaggerated everything about her ample figure. She looked up at Drake, tossing out of the way the long dark hair that flowed over her shoulders and down her back.

  ‘Detective Inspector Drake and this is my colleague Detective Sergeant Sara Morgan.’ Norma gave his warrant card a cursory glance and spoke to the younger woman by her side.

  ‘Go and get yourself a coffee, Jean.’ She folded her arms and glared at Drake. ‘I expect you’ve called about Gloria Patton.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Know her?’ Norma snorted. ‘Everyone in the art world knew her. She was a right cow.’

  ‘I understand she was responsible for rejecting your submission for the Orme Arts Festival.’

  ‘What are you suggesting? If you think—’

  ‘If you could just answer the question, please.’

  Norma narrowed her eyes, glaring at Drake.

  ‘She was one of the most thoroughly unpleasant women I have ever come across. Nobody liked her, nobody thought that she contributed anything to the art world and, more importantly, she was full of her own self-importance.’ Norma’s accent was a watered-down, cultured version of the harsh Scouse drawl prevalent in Rhyl.

  ‘Tell me about your submission to the Orme Arts Festival.’

  Norma unfolded her arms.

  ‘It was a piece I had previously exhibited in one of the premier galleries in Vienna. But Gloria Patton didn’t know that. She had the gall not only to reject the sculpture but she wrote me a patronising letter of rejection. And that is something never done in the art world.’

  Norma walked over to a filing cabinet and yanked out the top drawer. She flicked through some files until she extracted four images she handed to Drake. ‘These are the photographs of my piece.’

  Drake gazed at the gnarled faces of the small group of figures, cartoon-like, with bloated heads and enlarged feet, surprised that any gallery would exhibit them. He said nothing, although in reality he had little idea what he could have said.