The conveyor belt shook and the motion accentuated the vibration of the limbs. One hand was gone, the arm
And the face, one of Peter Shaw’s passions; but for now he avoided it, and especially the eyes, knowing he wouldn’t find them.
Shaw had been breathing in through his mouth since entering the incinerator room. He sniffed the air: just ash, charcoal perhaps, and seared bone. Nothing of the body itself, as if the great incinerator chimney had sucked away its essence, setting the soul free on the night breeze.
The belt juddered to a halt. Smoke rose from the charred flesh. The only noise, just on the edge of hearing, was the metal cooling around them, creaking like a stiff joint, and the bird above amongst the piping, fussing.
‘You said he was moving – when the witness saw him inside the furnace? What time was that?’ asked Shaw, not taking his eyes off the corpse.
Detective Sergeant George Valentine was at his shoulder, a grey cotton handkerchief pressed to his mouth and
Valentine might be an old-fashioned copper with thirty years’ experience but he’d be the first to admit he’d never been happy in the presence of death. When he’d got the call he’d been in the Artichoke. Six pints, Sky Sports 1. He’d been planning a Chinese takeaway, crispy-fried duck. He didn’t fancy it now.
‘Eight thirty-one,’ he said. ‘The furnace is run by computer – so there’s a record. It’s Darren Wylde – the kid’s name. He was being shown the works by the foreman…’ Valentine flipped the pages of his notebook. Shaw noticed he had a fresh charity sticker on his raincoat lapeclass="underline" Cancer Research UK, stuck over the corner of another one which read RSPB. There was always something stuck on the lapel, as though he couldn’t pass a charity tin without emptying his pockets.
‘Bourne. Gerry Bourne,’ said Valentine. ‘Foreman.’ He didn’t volunteer any other information because he didn’t enjoy talking, so if he had to speak he kept it short and to the point, saving every breath. He’d smoked forty cigarettes a day all his adult life and he didn’t need a doctor to tell him what was wrong with his lungs. He coughed with a sound like someone shifting coal out of a scuttle.
Shaw laid a gloved hand on the conveyor belt. ‘How long would it take for something put on the belt here to get as far as the point where the kid saw the corpse?’
‘Potts, the engineer on duty, says eight minutes.’
‘So when this kid turned up here in the incinerator room it was just a few minutes after the victim had gone
‘Right. Says he looked up and saw shoes, running.’ Valentine pointed up at the metal-mesh ceiling. ‘Second floor – so whoever was running was on the third.’ He shifted feet, aware that his bladder was full. ‘And sparks – which is odd. I checked – nobody on site wears metal boots. They’re issued with rubber-soled shoes for grip, plus it’s insulation. Place is a death trap.’ He tried to focus on his notebook again, knowing that black humour was one of his many weaknesses. ‘Wylde’s twenty – student at Loughborough. English. This is a summer vac job.’ He took an extra breath to finish the sentence. ‘He’s downstairs in the incident room, if you want a word.’
‘Incident room?’ said Shaw, impressed, reminding himself that George Valentine had probably run more murder inquiries than he’d had shouts on the lifeboat. Standard murder inquiry procedure required the incident room to be set up as close to the SOC as operationally possible. That way CID was on top of the crime, close to witnesses, and the forensic team.
‘I’d better get on,’ said Valentine. ‘Get the statements organized. Unless…?’
Shaw shook his head. ‘Hang about.’
There had been a note of insubordination in the DS’s voice that Shaw couldn’t fail to detect. And there was a note of something else – bitterness. Valentine had been up in front of a promotions panel on the previous Friday – his third attempt to regain the DI rank he’d lost a decade before. His third, failed attempt.
‘So,’ he said. ‘It’s less than an hour since they found the body.’
‘Right,’ said Valentine, looking at his feet. ‘Foot sloggers are checking the gates, car parks, the buses. We’ve looked at every inch upstairs. There’s a door out to a ladder which drops down into the works yard. Running man got out there. It’s all taped off.’
‘ID on the victim?’ said Shaw.
‘Odds on he’s a Bryan Judd,’ said Valentine. ‘Ran the conveyor belt on this shift for ten years. Last seen at 7.45 tonight by Potts – just before a brief power cut. The line went down at eight fifteen, back up at eight twenty-nine.’ Another extra breath. ‘There’s a fault on the grid. Emergency generator kicked in – so the blackout lasted less than a minute.’
‘Where was Judd last seen?’
‘In his office, if you can call it that. Looks more like a kennel.’ Valentine nodded at a small wooden cubicle, with smeared, dirty windows on three sides, like the deck housing on a small trawler. The only decoration they could see was a poster: country-and-western, a girl with flaxen hair and an acoustic guitar. The only thing she was wearing was the guitar.
Valentine enjoyed swearing because he knew Shaw didn’t.
‘Absolutely fuck all.’
Smoke rose from the corpse like a barbecue. The CSI team had moved in and taped off the area, and were about to erect a small forensic tent over the body and the belt. Now that the machinery was switched off – including the extractors – white dust was settling everywhere like frost.
‘Accident?’ tried Shaw.
‘Why climb on the belt?’ countered Valentine. ‘Nah. ’Fraid not.’
‘Suicide?’
‘Potts says last time he saw him, Judd was singing “The Wichita Lineman”. Apparently he did that a lot – decent voice.’
‘Right – so short of tap-dancing across the shop floor I guess we’ll have to take that as an indication of robust mental health. Security?’ asked Shaw.
Valentine stepped closer, tiring of the machine-gun delivery of questions he was supposed to know the answer to. ‘Not great. To get in here from the hospital main building – the public areas – you need a tap-in PIN number. Changes daily – but it’s not exactly the Enigma Code. Today it’s 0509.’
‘It’s always the date?’
‘Yeah. There are exterior doors but all the staff have
Shaw shook his head. ‘You got a white coat on they’ll let you operate, let alone into the building. CCTV?’
‘I’ve got Birley sitting through it now – but you know, there’s five thousand people on site. It’s a long shot. And what are we looking for? A bloke with iron shoes?’
DC Mark Birley was new on the squad. Ex-uniform, with an eye for detail, and something to prove. It was a good choice.
Shaw stepped under the scene-of-crime tape, then stayed down on his haunches so that he could get close to the skull, right inside the personal space. The thought struck him that our personal space begins to shrink at the moment of death – until it vanishes into the skin. He tried to sense that now, to feel the edge of the life that had fled – but there was nothing there, no line to cross. He got an inch closer, so that what had been the victim’s face filled his field of vision. This close the loss of vision in his right eye didn’t make any difference – in fact it could help, providing him with a crisp 2D picture.