Bernard Knight - According To The Evidence

Arthur Crippen and one of the detective constables crowded in behind, while the photographer took more pictures of the clothed body. Richard and Billy began removing the heavy boots, socks and then the crumpled dungarees and flannel shirt. As soon as the body was bare, Pryor again took great interest in studying the legs, then moved to the hands. Pulling off the underpants, he took the long thermometer which Angela handed him from their bag and slid it into the corpse’s back passage. Standing back, he waited for the mercury to settle and used the moments to speak to the detective inspector.

‘There’s something not right here, Mr Crippen. I’m not sure yet, but I suspect you’ve either got a concealed suicide here – or possibly even a murder.’

The DI remained impassive, his features retaining his usual gloomy frown. ‘It didn’t ring true to me either, doc. But what makes you think that?’

Richard turned to put on a long red rubber apron that the coroner’s officer took from a hook on the wall. After he had looped the chain over his neck and tied the tapes at the back, he put on the rubber gloves that Angela produced from their bag, then explained his suspicions.

‘A lot for me to do yet, but it’s those legs and hands that worry me. Look, from the knees right down into the feet, the skin is reddish-purple, even on the front of the shins. And both hands are the same colour.’

This time Crippen’s face allowed itself to crease into an expression of incomprehension. ‘And that tells you what?’ he demanded.

‘That this poor chap didn’t die where he was found on the floor. At least, he hasn’t been lying there ever since he died. He must have been upright for some hours. And about the only way corpses can stay vertical is when they are hanging!’

The four police officers stared at him incredulously.

It was Crippen who reacted first. ‘You’re saying that someone put him under the tractor after he was dead?’

Richard nodded. ‘The blood has drained down after death into the lowermost parts, the legs, feet and hands. Sure, it can move again afterwards, but often it becomes fixed within a few hours.’

He moved to the body again and pulled out the thermometer. Glancing at it, he called out ‘eighty-one degrees’, which Angela wrote down on a clipboard. Then he helped the coroner’s officer to roll the body over on to its face.

‘See, very little lividity on the back, where it usually settles. Most of it went down into the legs.’

Arthur Crippen, by no means an unintelligent man, struggled to adjust his mind to this new set of circumstances.

‘Doc, are you telling me that this fellow was hanged first, then stuck under that tractor?’

Even Angela looked at her partner a little dubiously. She didn’t want him making an ass of himself on his very first Home Office call-out. However, Pryor’s quietly confident manner seemed to reassure her as he explained further.

‘The logical reason is that someone wanted to conceal the true cause of death by faking an apparent accident. Whether or not it’s a hanging remains to be seen, which is what I’m going to do next.’

Taking a block of wood that stood on the foot of the autopsy table, he slipped it under the corpse’s chest as the coroner’s officer lifted the upper part of the body. This allowed the head to drop down on its mangled neck, so that the pathologist could get a good look at the skin between the hairline and the upper shoulders. It was wrinkled and bloodstained, with a few tears from the crushing weight of the great tyre, but Richard studied it with minute care.

‘I don’t want to wash it yet in case there’s trace evidence,’ he said, more to himself than the others. This prodded Angela into voicing her concern.

‘If this turns out to be criminal, what about forensic evidence?’ she asked crisply. ‘I’ve got no official standing here, so I can’t become involved, even though I’ve been doing the job for years!’

Richard looked quizzically at the detective inspector. ‘That’s a point, Mr Crippen. What are we going to do?’

The DI looked at his watch. ‘It’s mid-afternoon already. I don’t feel like hauling a chap up from the laboratory in Cardiff; it would put us back until after dark.’

He looked across at the photographer and the other detective constable. ‘We can get all the pictures we need and Amos here can act as Exhibits Officer. As Dr Bray is your colleague, already helping you with the post-mortem, I don’t see why she can’t collect any trace evidence you find and hand it over to Amos. That’ll keep the chain of continuity intact.’

It was always vital, if there was any chance of a case ending up in court, for any specimens to be accounted for every inch of the way, to be able to counter any defence accusation that samples had become mixed up.

Angela gave a little shrug, though she was secretly pleased to be more directly involved, even if it was only as a go-between.

‘Fine, but I’m only acting as a collector of any traces. I don’t want to get my knuckles rapped by the director of the Cardiff lab for sticking my nose in!’

Richard was busy peering at the back of the corpse’s neck. There were wide smears of dried blood all over it, obscuring the view.

‘Considering the damage to the neck, which is virtually squashed, there wasn’t all that much blood on the floor,’ he observed, turning his face up towards the DI. ‘Tends to confirm that he was dead before that wheel landed on him.’

He continued to study the neck, twisting the head a little each way to get a view of the sides. Then he straightened up and beckoned to the photographer. ‘Best get some pictures as close up as you can before I start cleaning it up,’ he suggested.

He stood back as the DC took his photos, a slow process as he had to change the one-shot flashbulbs between each exposure. When he had finished, Pryor asked Angela to come around his side of the table and have a close look at the neck.

‘Is there something there to pick off or is it my imagination?’ he asked her, pointing at the side and back of the neck with a gloved finger.

The biologist stared for a moment, then put on her own rubber gloves. She took a small lens and a pair of forceps from their case and bent back for another look.

‘There are a few fibres stuck in the dried blood,’ she murmured, delicately picking something off, though they were invisible to the watching policemen. She carefully placed whatever she had recovered in a small screw-top vial from the case and handed it to Amos, the detective constable whom Crippen had nominated as the Exhibits Officer.

‘What about taping the neck?’ asked her partner.

Angela nodded. ‘Better do it, though we’ll get a lot of dried blood as well.’

Another dip into the apparently bottomless murder bag produced a roll of Sellotape and some glass microscope slides. Cutting lengths off the tape, she pressed the sticky side against the skin of the neck, dabbing the whole area to pick up any tiny threads and fibres that might be there. Then she placed the tapes firmly on to the slides and again handed them to the DC, who placed them in brown exhibit envelopes which he had brought from his van and began to fill in the labels.

‘Better keep all the clothing, especially the shirt,’ she advised. ‘The lab may want to look for more fibres on them.’

What had started as an accident or possibly a suicide had escalated into a suspected homicide, so all the usual forensic precautions had to be taken.

Richard Pryor went back to his labours. ‘I’ll have to wipe it down now, if there’s nothing wanted,’ he announced.

Billy Brown brought over a sponge and an enamel pan of water from the sink so that the pathologist could clean away the blood from the neck. As soon as he had done so, he gave a grunt of satisfaction.