‘In a week or so I might have called Ray Wilding,’ he said, ‘since this is Gayfield territory, but it’s his first day there as DI and he’s still bedding himself in. Besides. .’ His voice trailed off, letting us fill in the rest as we saw it. My interpretation was that maybe he wasn’t ready to trust Gayfield with anything sensitive for a while.
‘I know what you guys are thinking,’ he continued. ‘People normally bury bodies to hide them from us. They do not call us and ask us to dig them up, and when they don’t do that, they most certainly don’t use a scrambler to disguise their voice.’
‘How long’s it been there, sir?’ McGurk asked.
‘It’s fresh,’ I chipped in. ‘You can’t smell it.’
The DCS leaned forward and tapped me on the chest with a thick index finger. ‘The sergeant may well call you “sir” one day, lad, but not for a while yet. Until then, speak when you’re fucking spoken to unless I tell you otherwise.’ Then he grinned. ‘You are spot on though. . although it was just as possible that it might have been very old. Come on and see for yourself.’
He led the way forward into the taped-off area. The SOCOs were all over the place, some of them working under hand-held lights. I guessed they were looking for traces of the mystery phone caller; people sign their names in the oddest ways these days.
The burial site was located in a small, square clearing, defined by four trees. It was just big enough for the hole to have been dug, grassy but covered in broken twigs and the brown mulch of last year’s fallen leaves. The grave itself had been excavated and the answer to Jack’s question was indeed apparent. The body was fresh; it had been enshrouded in what looked like a white bedsheet; that had been partly opened, enough to let us see that it was clean, and free of insect activity. The exposed torso was also naked, part of a young adult male with dark hair; the hands folded across it had neat fingernails and its muscular definition looked sharp even in death.
‘Okay, Sauce,’ McGuire said, ‘take a bow. He’s fresh all right.’
Emboldened again, I ventured a question. ‘How long’s he been there, sir?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ he replied, ‘ask the pathologist. Can you make an estimate, Sarah?’
I’d been aware of someone else at the edge of the clearing, but I’d been too focused on the body to take in any details. When she stepped forward I had a sudden, strange illusion; that I’d stepped into a television crime drama. The woman was tall, strikingly attractive, and the hair that had escaped from the hood of her outfit was a rich honey blond. Mid-thirties, I thought, in the same ball-park as Becky Stallings. The boss looked across at her, one professional to another, having already been introduced, I assumed, waiting for her reply. It was Jack McGurk’s reaction that set me on my heels: his mouth fell open and his eyes widened, as if a second hand had come down on his other shoulder in the middle of a prostate examination.
‘Hello, Sergeant,’ she murmured, smiling. ‘If it still is Sergeant, that is.’ Another surprise; her accent was American, and a little twangy, like the dead Kennedys. I had a flash of Marilyn Monroe crooning ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’, on old grainy black-and-white film.
Jack pulled himself together. ‘Yes it is. I’m sorry: I didn’t know you were back.’
‘No reason why you should,’ she replied. ‘The university was asked not to make an announcement when I took up my post. I was worried that it might attract the wrong sort of coverage.’
I hadn’t a clue what she was taking about, but I was more interested in the poor sod lying at my feet. I took another look; at first glance I had thought he was unmarked, but second time around I saw a dark discoloration, in the centre of his chest.
‘I’d rather call it a guess,’ she told the DCS in reply. ‘Estimate would be too formal; but I’d say he died around midnight last night, give or take a couple of hours. It was warm last night, so I’d expect that rigor mortis would dissipate at the normal rate rather than more slowly, if he’d been colder in the ground. He isn’t exactly floppy yet, but it’s going. As for cause of death, I won’t know for sure will I’ve seen all of him, but that bruising interests me. It could be post-mortem lividity, but I don’t think so.’
‘Will you do the examination yourself?’ McGuire asked.
‘Unless you want to wait for a couple of days for Master Yoda to come back, yes, I’ll be doing it, with a postgrad assistant. Is that all right with you?’
He nodded, vigorously. ‘Absolutely,’ he agreed.
‘Who the hell is Master Yoda?’ I whispered to Jack. The woman called Sarah heard me.
‘It’s what the students call Professor Hutchinson, our chief pathologist,’ she explained. ‘To his secret delight, I should add, even though they only call him that because he’s very small and looks a bit like the Muppet in Star Wars.’
Beside me, McGurk was still tense. Indeed, I’d have sworn he was quivering, slightly; I make a mental note to threaten to shop him to Lisanne over his reaction to the mystery blonde.
But that was for later. ‘Do we know who he is?’ I asked, of nobody in particular.
‘No,’ someone very particular replied, ‘and from the way he’s been left, someone’s keen that we shouldn’t find out too easily.’
I blinked and looked up. The chief constable had arrived quietly, without anyone noticing his approach. He wasn’t suited up like the rest of us, but I wasn’t going to be the first to point that out, and anyway, the SOCOs had been over the area around the grave.
Bob Skinner’s past fifty now, but if it wasn’t for the grey hair, which they tell me he’s had since he was around thirty, you might not think so. He has a presence about him, and it’s common knowledge that he has something of a temper too, although he didn’t reveal it to me when I was expecting to see it, and deserving of it.
They say you can tell his mood just by looking at his eyes, but on the rare occasions when I have done, I’ve sensed an underlying sadness more than anything else, although I’ve got no doubt that everything they say about his ruthlessness is true. One thing is certain; when he joined us that night, even McGuire seemed to diminish slightly in his presence. Not the blonde pathologist though; she seemed to grow a little taller, and her jawline seemed to firm up.
He looked at her. ‘Have you seen all you need to, Doctor?’ His tone was formal; but the sparks between them were practically visible.
She nodded. ‘Yes; all that I need to here. Can I have him now? The sooner I get him in the fridge the better it’ll be tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, fine,’ the chief agreed. ‘I passed the meat wagon on the way in; you might tell them to come and get him when you leave. But I’d like you to take a look at him tonight, if you’d be so good, just in case he’s got six toes on each foot, a regimental tattoo, a bar code on his backside, or some other distinguishing feature. Becky and the guys would need to know about that right away.’
As before, his voice was different when he spoke to her; there was a deference in it that I hadn’t heard from him.
‘I was going to do that anyway,’ she replied, calmly. I whistled, mentally; she’d put him in his place. ‘I pathologist: you, simple cop.’ The words hung in the air as if she’d actually said them.
She turned to the DI. ‘Can I have your mobile number, Ms Stallings?’ She took the boss’s card as it was handed over, then walked away, taking each step carefully, since it was quite a bit darker than when we had arrived, and illuminating the path with a small torch that she’d taken from her bag.
The five of us who were left stood back from the grave, waiting for the mortuary crew to come in with their black plastic coffin. I tugged Jack’s sleeve and drew him a little away from the others. ‘Who is she?’ I asked, quietly, not wanting to be overheard again, although as I looked away I saw that Skinner, McGuire and Becky had drifted off in the opposite direction.