Silent bones, p.2
Silent Bones, page 2
‘Morning,’ Kelly greeted the others.
Rob, one of her longer-serving detective constables, peered up from his computer. ‘Heard about the body in Thirlmere, boss?’ he asked.
‘Late,’ she said. ‘It appears to be old news.’
‘Morning, boss,’ said Dan, a more recent addition to her team. He was a no-nonsense Scot from Glasgow who asked the right questions, and didn’t shy away from controversy. ‘Heard about the body in Thirlmere, boss?’ he asked.
‘You crack me up,’ she replied. Both wore suits without ties, and both towered above her. They’d be her first choice in a sticky spot.
‘So, does anyone know anything more than the young Rupert Murdoch downstairs? I’ve just had a phone pushed in my face.’
‘The squad car has arrived, boss. Morning, by the way.’ DC Emma Hide appeared, bright and keen, in sports kit, always ready for a twenty-mile run across the fells. ‘There’s something suspicious at the water’s edge, where it’s receded beyond record levels,’ she said. ‘Could be years old. And it’s not a body. It’s bones.’
Chapter 3
Kelly drove and Kate sat in the passenger seat, keeping her updated from incoming messages. It was a short drive to Thirlmere and Kelly remembered her time in central London with mixed emotions. She certainly hadn’t racked up the miles in her car like she did here in Cumbria. Six years ago, when she’d returned to her home county after a stint in the Met, life had slowed down. Bastards doing horrible things hadn’t changed: they remained the same, the scenery had just got prettier. But the pace of investigation up here was different, and she spent a lot of time driving. Not that she minded. An excuse to get out of the office and on the road, journeying through the seasons, past fells and dramatic rock formations, plunging down to dark blue lakes, was something that no job spec could advertise. She felt lucky. Mountains had replaced skyscrapers and high-rises, and she didn’t mind a bit.
‘How’s Lizzie?’ Kate asked.
‘Talking my head off. She babbles what sound like whole sentences at me, even in her sleep, and she’s so fast, I can’t keep up with her disappearing and bashing into cupboards on that wheelie contraption Ted bought for her.’
‘That’s my dream,’ Kate said.
‘What?’
‘Revenge. As soon as I’m a grandma, I’m buying the most irritating toys, like drum kits, and things that have loud horns.’
‘Nice. Did I do something in a past life?’ Kelly asked, scrunching up her face. ‘Be careful what you wish for, you’re too young to be a grandma.’
‘How is your dad?’ Kate asked.
Ted Wallis was the senior pathologist, and coroner, for the north of England and Kelly’s cases kept his mortuary busy. He also happened to be Kelly’s biological father. He was revered and respected in his professional field, but he was also Lizzie’s grandfather and the father Kelly had never had. Her relationship with the man she’d thought was her father, John Porter, had been distant and frustrating. She was always playing catch-up to get his approval. Sad how kids go to any lengths to prove themselves to the most unworthy of caregivers. It wasn’t that John Porter had been a bad father, it was just that he was no good. More to the point, he’d never been available. He’d been a copper and a good one by all accounts, but a lousy father and a lousier husband. Hence her mother’s dalliance with the dashing coroner, Ted Wallis.
Everybody keeps secrets, she told herself.
‘He’s good. I wish he’d retire but there’s no chance of that.’
‘He’ll want to know about this,’ Kate said.
‘The bones? Let’s take it one step at a time, it’s probably a deer, dead long ago after falling in to the water, or dragged in there by the Ullswater beast, who knows?’
Kate laughed. ‘Mobile crocodile. Makes you think twice about going in,’ Kate added.
‘Putting you off your daily champion wild swimming?’
‘Yeah, good point, last time I went swimming in a freezing lake was about three decades ago. Are you not slightly intrigued though?’ Kate asked.
Kelly and Johnny were keen wild swimmers, especially out of season when you could have a pool at the base of a waterfall to yourself for hours, if you had the constitution, and a thin neoprene skin to hand, in the winter. It was invigorating. The incomparable feeling of plunging into ice-cold moving water, controlling one’s breathing and calming the mind, taking the first strokes into the middle of a lake… only to be ruined by the thought that you might be taken by a huge croc at any moment. It had crossed her mind, when the sky was quiet and the mind played tricks. But she dismissed it.
‘Maybe the swans were diving for fish,’ Kelly said.
‘Bollocks they were, they never resurfaced.’
Kelly took the A66 and turned off at Threlkeld, down the road which followed St John’s Beck. It was a beautiful day. The sky was bright blue and they had the windows down. It wasn’t long before Raven’s Crag came into view, and the receding waterline of Thirlmere reservoir. They could already see that a small crowd of people had gathered and they’d heard on their radio that the pair in the lone squad car had requested help erecting a boundary. Maybe it wouldn’t be just an excuse to get out after all. There must be something to look at. Kelly turned off and headed towards the small farm at the north end of the lake. It was the best access point to the shoreline. With sadness, she noticed how in the drought conditions, the low waterline exposed the uniformity of the lake bed and revealed its true purpose. She drove over the small stone bridge and parked at the other end where two police personnel in uniforms were struggling to prevent members of the general public going any further. They faced various jibes and complaints from visitors today, because this was the best place from which to approach the fells above the reservoir, and it would be shut for at least the whole day, if not longer, depending on what they found.
The small group of people stared at Kelly’s vehicle and began to gossip, realising they must be important to be let through the tape put there by officers who weren’t answering any questions. She didn’t need to show her lanyard. The Lakes crime unit was small and Kelly was well known, thanks to a few recent high-profile cases. A few bystanders pointed at her car. She parked beside a large pile of seemingly discarded farming equipment and they got out. It was dry underfoot and the temperature was rising rapidly. The sun was hot and bright, and Kelly placed sunglasses over her eyes. One confident individual shouted a question but she ignored them, scouring the crowd quickly for any suspicious behaviour. Several phones were held aloft in the air, taking snaps to be posted on social media; their moment of fame.
A uniformed officer lifted the tape for her and Kate, and they were directed down a dusty path towards the lakeside, where another officer stood with his hands on his hips, looking puzzled.
‘Ma’am,’ he said in greeting.
‘What’s all the fuss about?’ Kelly asked.
She needn’t have waited for an answer, though.
As they approached the receding lake bed, Kelly felt as though she were somewhere else, not Cumbria, the green and lush land of forests and waterfalls, but somewhere arid and forbidding. The lake hadn’t looked like this for years. She’d heard that reserves were at 50 per cent, and now, peering at the sad pool of water in the centre, she wondered what else they’d find in the coming weeks. Stories from around the world reported dead pool levels, when water volumes were so low that rivers couldn’t flow downstream. But the water authority had reassured the general public that they weren’t close to that here.
On the ground, close to the water, vaguely resembling a human form, were several bones in a misshapen formation, some sticking up to the sky and others randomly languishing close by. They were a shade of ginger-yellow, and reminded Kelly of walks along faraway beaches, where driftwood poked out of the sand, waiting to be taken home and planted by loving gardeners, as a feature. Kate walked around the remains and Kelly knelt down to peer closer. She was no anthropologist, but she knew a human skull when she saw one. She identified the jawbone straight away, and took off her sunglasses to examine the specimen, without touching anything, knowing that they’d have to get some experts down here. The teeth were still attached, yet wonky and crowded, in what would once have been the gum, and she noticed several old-style amalgam fillings. Ribs stuck straight out of the dried muddy bed, and further down, she could see a hip bone and a further set of bones attached to it. It was incomplete, for sure, though the site would have to be excavated properly to tell. There were odd bits of detritus laying around and she noticed pieces of yellow cloth.
‘Drunken accident?’ Kate whispered. ‘I can’t remember any significant missing person cases in the surrounding area in the last ten years,’ she added.
Kelly nodded. ‘We’ll have to check. There’s not much for us to do except call in forensics and the coroner, though I’m sure he’ll want to get a forensic anthropologist down here. Looks like we’ll have to seal off the area for quite some time,’ she said. They stood up.
‘It’s so tempting to dig, isn’t it?’ Kate said.
Kelly agreed. ‘Especially that arm,’ she said. The skeleton was arranged well enough for them to make out the human form, and though missing a leg, and quite a few ribs, the arms looked intact, though in an unnatural position. Whoever it turned out to be was probably still relatively together because there were no predators in Cumbria’s lakes, though the Ullswater croc might have had a good meal off it. She knew that roughly speaking, human bodies skeletonise within around two years, but in cold water, who knew?
They looked closer.
‘Are you thinking what I am?’ Kate asked.
‘It’s an odd position. I’m no expert,’ Kelly said, ‘but it looks to me that the arms are both behind the body. Give me a minute.’
Kelly paced away and called Ted Wallis.
‘Dad, you’ve heard?’
Kate listened to the call; it was clear that Ted, like most of Cumbria, had woken up to the news of a skeleton in Thirlmere, despite the fact that Kelly had only just got down here. Kate watched as Kelly nodded and went back to the remains, bending down once more.
‘Yes. The arms seem to be behind the back in an awkward position, but they disappear into the dry mud bed, so I can’t see much,’ Kelly said into her phone.
She moved closer.
‘Yep, the teeth are intact, so we should get a dental ID. Hold on. No, no clothes as such, as far as I can see, but we do have remnants of material here and the surface of the bones look soft, as if something is glued to them. Could it be clothes?’
She looked at Kate and nodded.
‘Kelly,’ Kate said quietly. ‘Look.’
Kelly squinted to where Kate was pointing and she saw it. It was easily missed. The metal was covered in the same grey-brown dust as everything else, but the uniform shape was distinctive.
‘Dad, I think we have a bracelet.’
Chapter 4
Ted Wallis had seen plenty of skeleton remains in his forty-odd years as a pathologist. This one intrigued him. Not only was it his daughter who was waiting for him beside the body, ready to be examined, but it was already a mystery. He approached the quandary like a scientist, with a head full of questions to eliminate variables. Only that way could they ascertain who it was and how they got there. Theory wasn’t something Ted accepted. He needed hard facts, and that would take time. It would help, of course, once they had a dental ID. That would at least give them a timeline.
He normally wore a suit and tie but the weather was insufferable and he’d finally conceded that in this heat, his old body moved better in loose clothing. He wore chinos and a grey shirt, open at the collar, and based on what Kelly had told him about the lake bed, he’d opted to wear a pair of trainers that he only wore when he walked in the hills. Boots were uncomfortable and if Alfred Wainwright could scale the peaks in tweed and a flat cap, then he could also wear what he damned well like. He felt distinctly unprofessional in the casual wear, but field work called for appropriate attire.
By the time he arrived at the dry lakeside, the crowd had grown bigger to the north-east side of the great dam, which had been built by the Manchester Corporation in the 1880s. He noticed members of the press queuing up and angling for a photo opportunity, but they were being kept on the east side of the dam. There were laws directing the UK press not to show bodies, and so they wouldn’t be able to print much, even if they got close. However, they were interviewing anyone willing to give a soundbite, potentially hampering his work. But he was used to blanking out all background noise. He peered up at the fells above Thirlmere and noticed that somehow, walkers had managed to negotiate the forest behind and were lining the walkways. It took a while to get through the throng of people and press, but once he explained who he was and who he was meeting, he was allowed to proceed and parked next to Kelly’s car. He’d been told that the body lay on the west shore of the reservoir.
It was a different scene than the one Kelly had described earlier.
A forensic van was there, a dozen uniformed police, a proper cordon, and several blue tents, with people pacing up and down to and from the lake in white, full-body overalls.
Despite his own personal discomfort due to the weather, it was a fabulous day for walking, and to the east, he was sure that Helvellyn would be busy. Thirlmere was, in his view, the best starting point for the mountain, and he could see dots of colour denoting walkers’ bright clothes above the treeline, probably blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding below.
He spotted Kelly and Kate and greeted them both.
Kelly led him underneath a tarpaulin entrance to a blue tent and they went inside. He instantly felt cooler, but it was also stifling and muggy inside the plastic tomb. Lights had been erected and powered by a generator hooked up to the farm.
‘Forensics are doing a sweep of the surrounding area, and they’ve found some items of clothing already. They might not be linked to this character, obviously.’
‘Have you given him or her a name yet?’ he asked.
‘I’ve heard Captain Jack Marrow mentioned,’ she said, pulling a face.
‘Because of his missing leg?’ Ted asked, pointing at the lower body. Kelly shrugged. ‘I thought as much. Well, I can tell from the pelvis that it’s a man. Females have a larger sciatic notch, and he’s got a V-shaped subpubic angle. Though he’s not fully developed.’
Kelly’s stomach turned over. ‘A child?’
‘No, a teenager perhaps, or a small male. It’s difficult to tell because diet and environment can affect these things. You said there was a bracelet?’
‘Here,’ she pointed to the man’s wrist. ‘I assumed it was a female,’ she added.
‘Understandable.’ He bent down.
‘I’ve been informed by Eden House records that we have seven significant missing person cases dating back over the last ten years.’
‘You might well have to go back a bit further than that. In this freezing deep water, it would have been weighted down and decomposition would have been slow. I see what you mean about the arms. A body which fell into a lake, or was put there, might have moved around considerably with the water and the effect of decomposition gasses. It’s not a natural position to settle in. I’ve called an excavation team from the University of Lancaster, they should be on their way. The remains can’t be moved until they’ve done their job properly.’
‘I thought as much. How long do you think until we can get it to a lab for ID?’
‘If they start this afternoon, and it’s straightforward, then you should have some answers later today, or tomorrow. I wouldn’t hold your breath. Those missing person cases, though, anything interesting?’
‘It could be any of the males, I guess, if you’re sure. I’ll get them to go back further.’
‘I’d do that. I’m 99 per cent sure it’s male. Remember the body in Wastwater a couple of years back? That’d been in there for twenty-five years – you’d be amazed how good old bones look,’ he said. ‘The space out there isn’t big enough for what we need down here,’ he said, nodding to the small yard beside the farm. ‘You’re going to have to clear all the way up to the road.’
She agreed. ‘I’ll get on it. Are you staying here?’ she asked.
‘Absolutely. I want to meet this guy, whoever he was.’
Ted put on some plastic gloves and bent over the body, feeling gently around the sandy deposits clinging to the bones. He rubbed the metal of the bracelet gently, revealing silver links. It seemed to hang around the upper portion of the lower arm, and Ted removed it carefully.
‘It might have some kind of personal engraving on it, I’ll bag it.’
‘What do you think to the chances of determining cause of death?’ Kelly asked.
‘That’ll depend on the state of the skeleton. Any natural causes will have to be ruled out, having rotted or been washed away long ago. The forensic anthropologist will be looking for any unusual marks on the surface of the bone, once we get him out of the mud. I’ve chosen someone who worked on a similar case in Norfolk some years back. A man went missing seventeen years ago and ended up at the bottom of a canal, only to be found when it was drained to dredge for another body in a recent case. It’s amazing what you find when Mother Nature decides it’s time. I’ve notified an osteologist too. If these bones are ancient then it’ll be over to the National Trust to bring in archaeologists. That’s interesting,’ he added, staring at the remains.
‘What?’ Kelly asked.
‘There’s a fair amount of adipocere.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We call it mortuary wax. It’s essentially the leftover fat of a body. Well, it’s not left over, it’s a permanent cast of the stuff that remains from the original fat. In water, it doesn’t putrefy like the other tissues, it anaerobically transforms into a hydrolysed chalk, like soap. It takes years. Look.’
