A Long Time Dead (The Dead Trilogy) (22 page)

Shelby continued. “You’ve got my mobile number, haven’t you?”

“Thought you didn’t want people ringing you,” Chris smiled.

“I want that poly thing there and working as arranged, I don’t want anybody crying off. Understood?”

“I’ll sort it. Don’t panic.”

Gareth skulked in the corner, cuddling his machine.

“And ring me as soon as you’ve got any news. Any news at all.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry, he says,” talking to no one in particular. “Where’s that sodding photographer!”

Chris headed for the mortuary, past the splendour of nineteenth century buildings in the city’s centre, and out the other side where the quality plummeted into an abyss of red brick council estates.

The midday news spilled out of the tinny van radio. News of more job cuts at a local clothing manufacturer, news of men trapped in a pothole in the Dales. Then, the newscaster’s crackling voice made an unusual appeal:

“
Police are asking for help in the murder of a local girl, Nicky Bridgestock, from Wakefield. They are anxious to trace the key to her house, which was believed to have been secured by her murderer. The single Yale key is on a ring with a distinctive fob, showing a small male figurine about an inch and a half tall, in a state of sexual excitement. If anyone knows of its whereabouts, could they please contact the Wakefield Incident Room on…”

He parked the van in the mortuary car park and listened to the sports headlines. When they came and he heard the bad news, he screwed up the betting slip and tossed it on the van floor. He closed his eyes and banged the window with a fist. That was his last chance to make this week’s payment without having to sell anything and without having them pay another embarrassing visit at work.

Absorbing the stillness for a moment, he collected his thoughts and prayed that his assiduous dedication came to Bell’s attention. Quickly.

He rolled his cardigan sleeves down and covered the goose pimples on his arms, climbed from the van and trudged into the mortuary. Ann Halfpenny lounged in one of the side rooms eating a microwave lasagne and sipping coffee from a mug that bore the legend: ‘Mortuary Technician – working with a stiffy!’ It was supposed to be a rest room; it had an old black and white TV in the corner and copies of 1973
Homes and House
magazines on a low heavily stained table. Torn chairs were scattered around the room, and overflowing ashtrays and countless cigarette burns gave the fawn carpet tiles a pattern.

“Hello Annie,” Chris poked his head into the room. “Still taking the diet seriously, then?”

She waved two fingers at him. “Want some coffee?” she asked through a mouthful of pasta.

“Why not.” Chris chose a seat facing the car park. “Might as well relax until the man from FDL decides to show up. Can’t get staff these days.”

“Funny, he said exactly that about ten minutes ago.” She revelled in his embarrassment and passed the cup. “He’s through there,” she pointed at the theatre, “setting his gear up. You know, Chris,
he
refused a cup of coffee, said he didn’t want to keep you waiting.”

“Ah.”

Ann laughed at the look on his face. “Drink your coffee; I’ll wash up and then I’ll pull her out of the freezer.”

“Freezer! You’ve not bunged her in the bloody freezer?”

“No, I haven’t. But I can’t get enough of that face of yours, deary. She’s in the fridge, you prat. Go on through, I’ll be there in a mo.”

“So it’s just some writing on her left hand then?”

Chris stared at Peter Lord, Gareth’s colleague from FDL, and thought his hair was too damned long. “Won’t take us too long, eh?”

“It shouldn’t be too taxing. Shall we make a start?”

They pulled back the cloth covering Nicky’s body.

Chris winced. Her skin was not just pale any longer, but white, clammy like a bar of soap left in cold water. Her lips were blue, her fingers almost translucent, and she felt as cold as ice. Her breasts now sagged either side of her torn rib cage, sexless.

“Hello,” said Peter, waving a hand in front of Chris’s far away eyes, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, that’s fine. You didn’t startle me,” he began removing the plastic bag from Nicky’s left hand. “I’ll get the lights.”

Ann drew down the thick black blinds and suddenly the room fell from brilliant white into mind-numbing blackness. Green shapes floated before Chris’s eyes, but all he could genuinely see was a fluorescent marker by the light switch, another by the fire extinguishers, and blinking LEDs on Peter’s flash pack.

“Shall we try low power UV first?” Peter asked. They did, but all it succeeded in showing them was the glowing hairs on her arms and dark patches on her grey neck and thorax where her blood had stained. “I thought we’d get better results than that.”

“Don’t worry; let’s crack on with the heavyweight gear.”

“I heard that!” Peter’s voice boomed. No Health and Safety spiel this time; Peter threw Ann and Chris a pair of well-used goggles. “Ready?” he asked, grabbing a pair for himself.

“Go for it.” Chris held Nicky’s arm in gloved hands while Peter played the strong yellowish light across her dead flesh.

“If anything of value does show up, you’ll have to hold the PolyLight and I’ll take the snaps if that’s okay, Chris?”

“Not a problem.”

The light stroked her hand. The ink they had all seen yesterday with their naked eyes was even more discernible, appeared refined.

“Looks like…I don’t know,” Peter spoke his words slowly, concentrating on the light source, “Looks a bit like …‘R’? Wouldn’t you say?”

“Can’t really make it out, do it again.”

Peter did, and this time, he could see it quite clearly. The ink had penetrated the epidermis. The strength of the light permeating her skin reflected off the ink a slightly modified colour, giving contrast and clarity.

Chris studied the ink, came closer, close enough to feel the coolness of her skin against his own hot face. “Yeah, I see it now. Do you think that might be an ‘o’ next…or maybe an ‘a’, lower case?”

“An ‘o’, I’d say. Though I’m not totally sure.”

“How about we try a different filter?”

“Yep, I’ll go with that.”

Another two changes of filter finally convinced Peter that he was seeing was an ‘o’, after all. They then identified the following letter, a ‘g’.

They photographed her hand again, using ultra violet-sensitive film and a non-reflective sticky scale. A further thirty minutes of playing revealed four numbers of what could have been, according to Peter, a telephone number. They photographed the numbers in the same fashion with Chris teasing the light source around them as Peter struggled with the tripod’s position. The rest of the numbers were indiscernible smears.

“Shelby will be well chuffed with this,” Chris said.

Ann turned the lights back on and everyone blinked away the dazzle, stuffing the goggles back into a plastic bag.

“Good. I like it when you’re in the thick of it, you know, when an investigation like this can leap forward three of four hefty places because of the information you’ve supplied to it.”

“How long before we have the positives?”

Peter rolled up the mains flex and shut the portable machine inside an aluminium case. “I should be able to have them on your desk…” he looked at his watch, “by three.”

“Excellent!” Chris had made a mental note of the findings, but confirmation by photograph would reassure Shelby. And that was all that mattered.

Chris set off back to the office, hoping against hope that Roger would come good with the three hundred. Quickly.

Bell opened the file marked ‘Departmental Promotions’ and scanned the preliminary pages before turning to the back and reading his summary of each player’s performance, right from the application form stage, through the aptitude tests and the interview, all the way to here: acting up.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he rubbed his chin, slid his spectacles back up his nose and returned to the first page. Even now, after all the necessary ‘evidence’ was in, he had trouble making up his mind whom to appoint. It was a close call between both of them: Conniston and Hutchinson.

He gazed out through the blind and into the hibernating gardens that ambled gracefully along the HQ building on Laburnum Road. Directly below his first floor window, a small fountain trickled water into an overflowing stone bowl, though the incessant wind blew much of it away in a spray. Speckles of rain landing on the window distorted the view.

Bell liked Conniston, liked the way he performed at jobs and especially liked the reports he had accrued from Senior Officers and, ironically, from Hutchinson too. But something niggled him. He knew that Conniston’s approach to discipline was softer than his own, and certainly more lenient than Hutchinson’s. But Conniston loved the job, and that counted for a lot.

And, having considered all that, Bell was reluctant to pass such a responsibility onto Hutchinson for no other reason than the man was arrogant enough to consider himself a natural choice. Bell turned away from the fountain, retook his seat and searched the two names again, hoping for a clear answer to the dilemma.

Conniston had something even more persuasive in his arsenal than did Hutchinson. He had integrity and honesty. And of course, there was Hutchinson’s inability to control his fiscal affairs. But in Hutchinson’s favour were the years of experience, a sound understanding of technical processes and an undeniable authority figure that new-starters and wayward old-timers would take seriously.

Hopefully the answer would come soon, in less than an hour.

Roger signed off the CIS computer and sat there staring at the screen wondering what made Chris so damned jumpy, so damned insistent he came to the Bridgestock scene. His shoes were still damp, and they made him shudder as he put them back on. He just towel dried his hands and mopped up the water that had squeezed out from the laces, when the phone rang. “Conniston of Wood Street,” he said on autopilot.

“Roger,” said Denis Bell. “Roger, are you there?”

“Yes, yes, Mr Bell, sorry, I was miles away.”

“To be expected if you’ve been on duty since six.”

“I’ve had a pretty—”

“What happened on your night week? I’ve had Inspector Weston complaining about something of which he thinks I should be aware.”

Roger slumped back into his chair and squeezed his eyes closed. “Yes, Mr Bell, I can explain.”

“Good. I am glad to hear it. You’re off duty in twenty minutes. Come and see me now.”

“Now?”

“What I have to say won’t wait until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

He needed to get home for Yvonne, and then he remembered he and Lenny had a squash court booked. The two mixed in his mind as he fought for the excuse to give Mr Bell, and all he could think of saying was, “But I’ve got squash in an hour.” And then he shook his head, couldn’t believe he just said that.

“Never mind squash! I want you standing before my desk in fifteen minutes – get an escort if need be!” He hung up.

Roger abandoned the paperwork and the accumulated exhibits, picked up his old jacket for the wash, and squelched out of the office, chin resting on his chest. On the way over to HQ, he fastened the top button on his shirt and tweaked his tie into place.

Denis Bell laid his gold-rimmed spectacles carefully on his leather bound desk blotter. “Chris tells me that your wife is in a certain amount of distress.”

“He does?”

“He inferred that this could explain your absence from the office around midnight.”

“Yvonne has arthritis. It comes and goes in waves, changes as often as the damned weather. But lately her knees are inflamed and her ankles are beginning to twist inwards slightly.” He tried to smooth down his tuft of hair, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

“I can sympathise,” Bell said. “Both my parents suffered with it until they passed away. It’s a debilitating disease.” He studied his desk blotter for a moment, as though thinking of the past. Then he said, “So am I to take it that your unannounced absence was due to unforeseen family circumstances?” He raised an eyebrow, almost prompting Roger to agree.

He did, despite telling Weston that he was ill. “Yes, that’s right, Mr Bell. I had to go—”

Bell palmed away Roger’s words, picked up his fountain pen and scribbled on a sickness form. “You don’t have to explain; I just need something to shut Weston up. Weston is a man devoted to paperwork and procedures. The more the better, I think; he wakes up on page one and only goes to bed when he has reached the end of the chapter. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” he mumbled, “I think so.”

“Right, we’ll say no more on that, then.” He completed the form without another word. “How long have you worked for us, Roger?”

“About nine years. Ten in another three months or so.”

“Do you feel that you’ve gained knowledge of a wide diversity of crime scenes?”

“I’ve handled everything from RTAs, arson, rape, to murder and suicide…” he wondered what Bell was fishing for. “I suppose I’ve done almost everything a SOCO could expect to encounter, except a bomb scene, and SO13 would deal with that anyway. But,” he quickly pointed out, “that doesn’t mean I’m perfect, and it doesn’t mean I’m not still learning, because I am – willing to learn, that is. If you stand still in this profession, then you’re going backwards. Look at DNA,” he enthused, “when I started, they were only getting partials from large crime stains using Quad profiling, now with SGM they can get full profiles from next to nothing, with a probability of one in fifty-million!”

Bell leaned back in his char, didn’t stop Roger displaying his passion for the art and craft of the profession; he was enjoying the sight of someone still excited by it.

“How would you feel if I appointed Chris Hutchinson as Supervisor at Wood Street?”

Roger took a moment to think. He said, “Fine. I don’t have a problem working with anyone, Mr Bell. We get along well anyway.” He wondered where this was leading. “If you chose him,” he continued, “then he must be right for the job.”