Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“Dr D’Acre, the forensic pathologist, believes the corpse to have been mummified in some way.” Hennessey glanced at the word “substance” on his notepad, circled it, and wrote “money motive?” beside it.

“That would explain the preserved clothing,” Dr Baft said. “I also came across a till receipt.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, in the pocket of the jacket, just where a fella would put a receipt at eighteen-oh-six hours on the fifteenth of January eight years ago. He went to the Co-op in York and bought foodstuffs. He paid with a ten-pound note and got two pounds, fifty-three pence in change. He bought vegetables, some tinned stuff, four pints of milk, and a pizza, a frozen pizza… and a packet of tea bags.”

“A bachelor?”

“You think so?”

“Living alone, anyway, one frozen pizza is a single person’s purchase.”

“I suppose it is, come to think of it. That’s a police officer’s brain working, I would never have thought of that.”

“If indeed the receipt is his, but who carries other folks’ till receipts around in their pockets? It was probably the last purchase of his life. Four pints of milk, a large packet of tea bags, he was stocking up. He didn’t expect to die.”

“Again, a police officer’s brain.”

“Too long in the job, Dr Baft.”

And the two men smiled at each other down the phone. It was the first time they had spoken to each other, and a mutual liking grew rapidly.

“The year,” Dr Baft said “that was the year my daughter was born, she was born in May, but I remember taking my wife to antenatal clinics in dreadful weather. That was the year of that bad winter. I despaired of it going, I thought the next ice age had arrived, didn’t let up until mid April.”

“I remember, who could forget? My dog loved it, though. Like all dogs he suffers in the heat.”

“There was nothing else in the pockets. No wallet, no loose change, no letters, no utility bill, nothing, as if someone had rifled his pockets, but hadn’t found or hadn’t bothered with the till receipt.”

“Which, in the end, told us much.”

“It appears. I’ve had a glance at the plastic sheeting, found nothing, but I’ll give it a closer examination this p.m.”

“Appreciated.”

The second phone call in respect of “the mummy” came from Dr Louise D’Acre.

“A single massive blow to the skull.” Louise D’Acre spoke matter-of-factly. “No other injuries, no trace of poison. He once wore a wedding ring, but had taken it off. Its ‘shadow’ was on his ring finger.”

“Ah…”

“Is that significant?”

“Answers a question. We found a till receipt in his pocket; the indication of the purchases was that he was a bachelor. It now seems he may be a divorce. But a man who lived alone anyway.”

“He was a man in his mid forties. Forty-four, -five, or -six. I took a tooth from the upper set of teeth, cut it in half. Gave me an age of forty-five, and that test asks that a margin of twelve months on either side be allowed.”

Hennessey wrote “45 ± 12/12” on his pad. “He took good care of his teeth, British dentistry, so there’ll be dental records to check once you have a possible name for him.”

“Always useful to confirm on ID.”

“Returning to the injury. It’s a concentrated impact point, from which the skull fractures radiate outwards, like spokes from a hub. A hammer blow, or a brick… something like that. But not a long object, like a golf club, that would have caused a linear fracture.”

Hennessey replaced the phone. He glanced out his office window at tourists walking the medieval walls beneath the vast blue sky. He glanced at the clock on the wall, above the police mutual calendar. Midday. Time for lunch. Like the citizens of York, Hennessey knew the quickest way to walk the city is to walk the walls, rather than the street-level pavements, and so he signed out and walked the wall from Micklegate Bar to Lendal Bridge, and thence to Lendal, and the fish restaurant.

The file on “the mummy” case grew. Hennessey now knew the man to have been murdered by being struck with a hammer, or similar object or instrument. He knew that in life the deceased had been wealthy, for he wore not the clothing of a poor man. He knew that the deceased probably lived alone, and most significantly he knew the deceased had been murdered shortly after six p.m. on the 15th day of January, eight years earlier. The man was clean-shaven and very short of stature. And his dentistry work was British. All added together, Hennessey knew it would be enough for the missing persons bureau to suggest a name. He picked up the phone on his desk, pressed a four-figure internal number, and when his call was answered he said, “Collator?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hennessey here.”

“Sir.”

Then Hennessey gave all the details he had on the deceased, adding, “not necessarily local.”

“I see, sir.” The collator was eager, anxious to please. “I’ll come back asap,” which the collator pronounced “aysap,” to Hennessey’s irritation, but the world was changing, he was closing down fast upon his retirement, and it was the small things which crept up on him from time to time, and reminded him he wasn’t changing with the world. In his day, he would have returned “a.s.a.p.” or “as soon as.” But “aysap”… he sighed as he put the phone down. He cared not for “aysap”, no matter how efficient was the youthful collator. He rose and went to the corner of his office and switched on the electric kettle and observed Micklegate Bar as he waited for the kettle to boil, the open-topped double-deckers, the people of the town hurrying, the tourists ambling. He returned to his desk carrying a mug of coffee.

The collator was efficient, so efficient that he returned “aysap” before Hennessey’s mug of coffee had cooled sufficiently to allow it to be consumed. Tony Watch, the collator informed him, had been reported missing by his sister on the 16th of January eight years earlier. Physical description matched; he was wealthy because of an information technology company he had formed, and was recently separated at the time he went missing. His home address was out near Selby; his sister, the reportee, lived “on the other side of the planet”, in Holgate. Hennessey thanked the collator and replaced the phone. He left his office and walked down the corridor to the office of the younger, life-all-ahead-of-him Sergeant Yellich, and tapped on the doorframe of his office doorway. “Grab your sun hat, Yellich, we’re off to sunny Holgate.”

“We are, sir?” Yellich stood.

“We are, sir.”

Holgate is that part of the Faymous and Faire Citie of Yorke ye tourists never see. It is black-terraced houses in rows, beyond the railway line, where washing hangs from lines suspended across the street. Hennessey and Yellich went to St Pancras’ Wynd, to number 57, being the given address of Mrs Torr, who eight years earlier had reported her brother to the police as a missing person.

“Never did like her.” Mrs Torr was a frail woman who looked older than her sixty-three years, as if stricken by an internal growth. “I grew up in these streets, so did Tony, well, he would – he was my little brother. Our dad worked on the railway in the steam days, you could smell the smoke from the railway station in these streets. I’d lay awake at night and listen to the chuff and clank of the steam trains. Now they whirr past on continuous rails with hardly a sound by comparison. Such a safe, solid sound the old steam trains used to make, I really miss the sound, but then I’m a lass, I never had to get up at three a.m. and fire one so it would be ready for eight a.m. That’s how long it took to fire one from cold, and that was a small one.”