Aaron Elkins - Unnatural Selection

“Yes. ‘Falling,’ you said? What about ‘jumping’ or ‘being pushed’?”

Gillie took the pipe from his mouth and pressed the bit into his cheek. “It’s always possible, I suppose, but the man had been drinking heavily last night-you can still smell it on him-and that’s a pretty narrow catwalk up there, and the railing’s not even waist-high. I see nothing that suggests anything beyond an accidental fall.”

“Oh? And what would he have been doing wandering out there on that narrow catwalk in the middle of the night?”

“Smoking a cigar.”

Clapper’s cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth. “Smoking a cigar? How do you know?”

“Because I asked Mrs. Bewley. ‘Mrs. Bewley,’ says I, ‘what would he have been doing wandering out there on that narrow catwalk in the middle of the night?’ She told me that he smoked these nasty black cigars that everyone hated-when he had one, even in his room, you could smell it all through the place-so that he often stepped out there to have one in peace without bothering anybody or being bothered by anybody.”

“Including at night?”

“Especially at night. After dinner. Look, Mike, I’ve been here twenty-two years now, and we’ve never yet had a homicide, let alone a murder, but you obviously think this needs looking into, so if you want me to do a postmortem-assuming the budget can stand it and I still remember how to perform an autopsy-I could do one for you tomorrow, much as I hate the bloody job. Not that I expect anything to come of it, you understand.”

“There are a few background elements you’re not aware of, Davey.”

“How mysterious,” Gillie said. “And am I permitted to know?”

“Not at this point,” Clapper said curtly.

Gillie smiled. “What a charmer you can be, Mike.” He folded the report, slipped it into a jacket pocket, and stood up. “I’m done with the body. Would you like me to call Algy and have him get it to the chapel?”

Algy Rennet was the coroner’s undertaker for the Isles of Scilly, and “the chapel” was the Chapel of Rest, a small room at St. Mary’s Hospital that served the community as a mortuary.

“No, as a matter of fact. I want it left here.”

“ Here? Out in the open? But-”

“I don’t want him moved. Kyle is speaking with Exeter right now. They’ll have the Truro people here by helicopter in no time, and the deceased gentleman will soon be on his way to Treliske, where the Force pathologist is probably sharpening his gruesome instruments even as we speak. He’ll do the postmortem.”

“I see,” said Gillie, showing his first sign of irritation. “Local talent not up to the job, eh? Well, I suppose they have a point. I haven’t done an autopsy in two and a half years. My bad luck to live someplace where nobody kills anybody else.”

“It’s nothing to do with you, Davey. It’s the way it works in a sus-death. Standard procedure, it’s in the book.”

Robb came into the room, with a quizzical expression on his face, as if he didn’t know how Clapper was going to take what he had to say.

“Spit it out, Kyle. What’d they say? Who’d you talk to?”

“I talked to Detective Chief Superintendent LeVine himself, who referred me to Detective Superintendent Vossey in Truro, who said-none too kindly-‘Have you looked out the window?’”

“Have you… what the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”

“The fog, Sarge. They can’t land any helicopters here from Truro or anywhere else. No planes, no boats, nothing.”

“Well, what do they expect me-”

“They expect you to handle the case yourself. You’ll have to keep them up to date with a running case log, of course, but it’s your baby, Sarge. You’re the chief investigating officer.” He chanced a smile. “And I’m your team.”

This information produced a change in Clapper that was straight out of old horror movies, where the full moon finally goes down and the misty dawn breaks at last. The hunched, misshapen figure straightened. The glowing red eyes became cool blue again, the drooling fangs sank back into their gums, the fur on the backs of his hands vanished. A normal, smiling, reasonably amicable human being reemerged.

“I see,” he said, letting it sink in for a few moments and relishing every second of it. “Well, well. Davey, go ahead and make that call to Algy. It looks as if you get to do your autopsy after all.”

“Calloo, callay,” said Gillie around his pipe.

“And you, Kyle, lad-”

I’m “lad” again, thought Robb. That’s better.

“-don’t just stand around, there’s a lot to be done. Go and get the kit-no, first get on the blower to our summer help, all three of them. Tell them to climb into uniform and get over here-Gordon will go along with the body and remain with it, and you, Martin, and Sean will assist me in a proper investigation of the scene. Never mind what they taught you at Bramshill, I’ll show you how the real coppers do it… . Kyle, I may have been a bit short with you before-”

“Not that I noticed, Sarge,” Robb said, smiling. “About as mean as usual.”

“Good, I suppose I’m imagining it. Now, before anything else, get the camera and get some pictures-no, first better run up to the catwalk and do a preliminary; see if there’s anything like a cigar stub, or ash therefrom, before the wind blows it away. Wait, don’t run off yet. I’ll want everybody in the house kept available for interviews, starting with the housekeeper. Oh, but first seal the door to the catwalk and the passageway and have one of the boys make sure no one violates it. Oh, wait, before you do anything else…”

Left alone with the bones, Gideon found his enthusiasm lagging. There was still plenty to be done-formally inventorying and describing them; looking for signs of injury, pathology, and cause of death; and, when the partial long-bone formulas came-whenever the fog let up enough to allow the ferry to bring the mail, that is-calculating a stature range. By now, of course he was virtually certain that it would match whatever Villarreal’s height had been.

The work-after the earlier excitement of finding the knife cuts, and then of pulling Edgar Villarreal out of the hat, so to speak-seemed pedestrian, even a little boring, so he was glad to take a break and run over to the museum a few blocks away to get the calipers. When he returned, the rumbling coming from his stomach prompted him to look at his watch. He was astonished to see that it was after one. Past time to go and meet Julie for lunch.

He yawned, stretched, and rotated his head to work the kinks out of his neck. Then he tidied the table, cleaned up in the tiny restroom, slipped into his jacket, and went out into the fog. He had gone half a block along Upper Garrison Lane when he stopped, turned on his heel, and retraced his steps back to the front of the police station.

With painstaking care, he made sure the effing door was good and shut.

The first indication that something was wrong was the pack of vehicles in front of the castle entrance. The clunkers that Kozlov and Mr. Moreton used to get around town, along with the motorbike that Cheryl Pinckney had rented for the photographic expeditions on which she supposedly disappeared during the day, were stowed in a small lot at the back, usually leaving an open, vacant field of gravel in front. But today there were automobiles all over the place, parked every which way in the fog. Three of them Gideon didn’t recognize, but the fourth was the unmistakable, chartreuse-striped police van. And now, on looking up at the castle, he saw a young, uniformed policeman-not Robb-looking impassively at him from the top of the stone steps that led onto the entrance bridge. Something was very wrong, something serious.