Aaron Elkins - Unnatural Selection

“I’m about coffeed out, thanks,” Gideon said.

“A wise decision,” Clapper said, grimacing and placing a hand on his belly. “Kyle, you can come along too, lad,” he called over his shoulder. “I know you’re interested.”

Walking behind him, keeping pace with his slow, billowing stride, Gideon saw that Clapper was an even bigger man than he’d realized, matching Gideon’s six-one, but probably pushing 250 pounds. Not that much overweight, really. Brawny was more like it. Basically, he was a constitutionally thickset man to begin with, with an unusually broad thorax and a wide pelvis. He’d make an interesting skeleton, Gideon couldn’t help thinking.

His office was at the end of the little hallway, just past a door that said “Interview Room.” It was no larger than Robb’s cubicle but with real walls instead of glass partitions, and a door that opened and closed. There was the usual clutter here: charts and maps on the walls, and files scattered across the desk-but not a single one of the many plaques and commendations he had received, according to Robb, no framed copies of the magazine articles that had been written about him, nothing that would indicate he had ever been anything more than the constable sergeant in St. Mary’s.

There were a few old, framed photographs on the walls-groups of smiling constables with their arms linked, but apparently they’d been left there by his predecessor, inasmuch as none of them included Clapper. Or Robb, for that matter. On his standard-issue desk, in addition to the paperwork and a pair of reading glasses, were a logoed mug (Chirgwin’s Gift Shop) holding pens and markers, and a filigree-framed photograph (his new “girl-friend”?) facing away from Gideon. Two metal visitor chairs that matched one another but not the desk were wedged into the narrow space between desk and wall. There was a single waist-high metal bookcase with a few thick manuals in it, and on the top shelf the bag in which Gideon had brought the tibial fragment, apparently still containing the bone.

“Now, then,” Clapper said when they’d sat down-Gideon and Robb having had to angle their chairs to make room for their legs-“how long did you say the bone had been there?”

“Probably under five years.”

“Because, you see, I’ve been searching back through our local records for any outstanding mispers, and while-”

“Excuse me? Whispers?”

“Mispers, missing persons,” Robb explained.

“Yes,” Clapper said, “and while we have none on file here, the national misper register at the Yard turned up two possibilities-people that might, or might not, have disappeared during visits to the Scillies.”

“You’ve been doing your homework,” Gideon said. He knew that information of that sort-“might or might not, have disappeared during visits to the Scillies”-didn’t jump out of the computer at you. You had to dig.

“Not too hard when you know the ropes. But, you see, one is from eight years ago and one goes back twelve. You’re certain it couldn’t be either one?”

He saw that Clapper really was in a better mood today. Yesterday’s questions had been challenges, confrontations. These were genuine requests for Gideon’s opinion.

“No, I’m not certain at all,” Gideon said. “Consider it an educated guess, no more. There are a whole lot of variables that make it hard to pinpoint the time. For one thing, I’m not that familiar with climatic conditions here-moisture, temperature variation-”

“So it could be as much as twelve years old?”

“Yes, it could.” He’d certainly been wrong by that much and more before. “What do you have?”

“The eight-year-old one is… let’s see…” He shuffled a file into view on his desk. “… an eighty-eight-year-old woman from London with senile dementia who wandered away from her tour group somewhere between St. Ives and… what?”

Gideon had been shaking his head. “Not her,” he said. “First, I’m pretty sure it came from a man. Second, it’s not from an eighty-eight-year-old. The texture of bone changes with age-it gets all rough and pitted as you get older.”

“Really?” an entranced Robb said. “Is that so?”

“Oh, yes, and that tibia’s too smooth. It’s a younger person’s bone-”

“A young man’s bone, is it? Well, then, what would you say to a eleven-year-old lad who disappeared from his uncle’s…” Clapper’s face fell. “No, again?”

“No, again. Not that young. Sorry.” Gideon got up, brought the tibia back to the desk, and explained about epiphyseal union while a disappointed but moderately interested Clapper lit up a Gold Bond and Robb listened as if his life depended on it. “As you can see, the proximal epiphysis is completely fused to the shaft-not a trace of a line separating them. The age range for that to happen is sixteen-fifteen at the very earliest-to twenty-two or so. This absolutely can’t be an eleven-year-old’s bone. He’s in his mid-twenties at the earliest, and probably older than that.”

“Sixteen to twenty-two,” Clapper mused, “for that particular bone. You knew that off the top of your head, so to speak?”

“Sure.”

“You know the age ranges of all these different epiphyses?”

“Well… yes, I guess I do. All the ones used in ageing, anyway.”

“And they’re all different? Even the ones on opposite ends of the same bone?”

“Pretty much.”

Clapper, studied him, nodding, his head wreathed in smoke. “Fancy,” he said.

Gideon, not knowing what to reply, replaced the bone in the bag. “So where would you say we go from here, Sergeant?”

Clapper leaned back in his chair. “Well, now, that’s the question, all right, innit?” he said slowly. “We have here a fragmentary bone, the condition of which implies dismemberment, which in turn implies homicide-”

Gideon noted that this was accepted as a given; another difference from yesterday.

“-but we know of no one it could possibly belong to.”

“That seems to be about it.”

“Yes. So what I ask myself is, I ask myself, why couldn’t it have come off a passing ship, as so many other bones found on the beach have done?”

“Maybe it did. Personally, I’d have my doubts. No marine life encrustation on it. And from what I understand it was buried a couple of feet down. Pretty unlikely for that to have happened naturally, from shifts in the sand. So I’d have to guess he was murdered, cut up, and buried right here on the island.”

“But-” Robb hesitated until Clapper nodded his permission to continue, and then barreled ahead, the words pouring out. “But isn’t that a premature conclusion? The lack of encrustation would merely mean that the bone hadn’t lain in the ocean for a considerable period of time, isn’t that right?”

“Right,” Gideon agreed.

“Well, that wouldn’t necessarily mean it hadn’t come from offshore, would it? How do we know that it’s not from a passing yacht of which we have no knowledge? That someone wasn’t murdered and dismembered on a boat, then brought ashore onto the beach and buried-at night, I should think-after which the murderer simply went back to his boat and sailed away, with no one the wiser?”

Clapper began to answer, but changed his mind and let Gideon do it.

“I kind of doubt that, Kyle,” Gideon said gently. “If you’ve already killed someone at sea, and even dismembered him, why risk coming ashore with the body to bury it? Wouldn’t the safest, easiest thing be to simply dump the remains into the ocean? If they were already dismembered, they could be dumped separately, miles apart. The probability of any of them ever being found would be infinitesimal, much, much smaller than the chances of finding remains buried on a beach.”