Aaron Elkins - Uneasy Relations

She wasn’t killed in the cave-in, Gideon explained, because if she’d been killed in the cave-in there wouldn’t have been any maggots.

“No maggots,” Fausto said dully. “Uh-huh.”

“No maggots,” Gideon repeated. “Look, maggots are the larvae of flies-”

“I know that.”

“-which hatch from the eggs that the flies lay on dead things-”

“I know, I know. Jesus, Gideon, tell me something I don’t know.”

“Well, what you obviously don’t know is that flies do not lay eggs on dead things when they’re covered by three, or four, or five feet of earth. You don’t find maggots on people buried by landslides. How would the flies reach them?” He waited for that to sink in.

“Oh. I never thought of that,” Fausto said quietly.

“Well, why should you? But I should have thought of it the minute

… damn, how could I miss that?” He raised his hand for another crack at his own forehead, but thought better of it.

Fausto scowled up at him. “So this means…?”

“This means that Sheila Chan spent some time aboveground between the time she died and the time the cave-in buried her.”

“You mean she laid around dead for two days? Those maggots were two days old.”

“No, no, no. Just long enough for the flies to get to her and lay their eggs. Once they did that in the open air, where they could get to her, the maggots would be able to survive underground.”

“How long would that take? For the flies to get to her and lay their eggs?”

“No way to tell, but not very long. Maybe five minutes. In a climate like this, almost certainly inside of a couple of hours.”

“So you’re saying she was killed somewhere else,” Fausto mused, “then brought out to the cave, and buried under the cave-in?”

“Not necessarily.” Gideon dropped into his chair again, quieter and more reflective now. “Corbin and Pru told me she’d been hanging around the site even though she wasn’t supposed to.”

“That’s true.”

“Okay. I think we can assume everybody knew it, so my guess would be that someone got to her right there, that she was killed right where she was found, and then they triggered the cave-in to cover her. That’d be a lot simpler and lot safer than carting a dead body around in a car.”

Fausto nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”

“This cave-in business, though… I’m out of my element here. Is it really that simple to trigger something like that? How would you do it, dynamite?”

“Dynamite, gelignite, something like that. And the cliff was unstable to begin with, from all the rain we had. So I’d say it wouldn’t have been that hard, no.”

“Can you just buy explosives in Gibraltar, or do you need to get a license or something? What I’m wondering is, could there be a record of who bought any around that time?”

“Well, yeah, you need a license, but you have to be a construction or demolition company to get one. If I remember right, there are only two companies that have them. I can check that angle out. Problem is, if the guy had any brains, he’d have skipped the license thing and sneaked the stuff in from Spain, or even better, Africa. If I were him, that’s what I would have done. I love my country, but I have to say we’re about the easiest place in the world to smuggle anything into. Or out of. But don’t get me started on that.”

Gideon leaned back in his chair. “Fill me in on the case, will you, Fausto? When did you know she was missing? What made you check out the cave? Do you know if she had any-”

“Whoa. I told you, I was just helping out. It wasn’t my case, so I don’t have all the details in my head.”

“Well, can we talk to the guy whose case it was?”

“Sure, if you want to go to the Falklands. But we ought to be able to get what information there is right here.” He picked up the telephone. “Conrad, I need the file on Sheila Chan. It’ll be in the dead files. Thanks.”

He hung up and rotated his chair to face Gideon. “I can give you the general picture while we’re waiting, though.”

The call to the police had come from Corbin. Sheila had been scheduled to present a major paper at the conference, but she had failed to show up for it. Moreover, no one seemed to have seen her since the morning of the day before. Concerned, Corbin had already checked with the desk at the Eliott Hotel, where she’d been staying, and had learned that her room hadn’t been slept in the previous night and no meals had been charged to her account since breakfast on the morning of the day before.

The police had taken it seriously, and in conducting their interviews, it hadn’t taken them long to put together two highly pertinent facts: (a) the cave-in at Europa Point had occurred exactly two days earlier, only a few hours after anyone had last seen Sheila, and (b) despite the clearly posted warnings, she had been spending a lot of time at the risky site. Guessing that she might have been caught in the slide, and hoping that she might be alive under the rubble, they had quickly mobilized an emergency rescue squad to dig for her. And after four hours of burrowing holes in the dirt, they had uncovered those shrunken, reaching fingertips.

“Uh-huh. I don’t suppose there’s going to be an autopsy report in that file?”

“I’m pretty sure there isn’t. Why would we do a postmortem on something like that? It was all pretty cut and dried, no suspicion of foul play… or so we thought.”

“That’s what I figured. And the body was cremated, so I can forget about actually looking at it.” He sighed.

The case file Fausto had asked for was brought in and laid on the desk: an unpromisingly thin manila folder with CASE CLOSED stamped on the front. As Fausto opened it, the telephone rang again. With a cluck of irritation he picked it up. “Chief Inspector Soto-” He listened, rolling his eyes. “ Again? Can’t you handle it?” A long, melodramatic sigh. “Okay, yeah, I’ll deal with him. Hell, no, I’ll come down there. Once we let him in we’ll never get rid of him.”

He stood up, unfolded his cuffs and effortlessly slipped in the links (something that Gideon had never gotten the knack of; invariably, it took him half a minute of fumbling) and shrugged into his Armani jacket. “Got one of our best customers out front. This time he’s griping about his neighbor’s budgie driving him nuts. I better talk to him.”

“Budgie?” said Gideon.

“Budgerigar. Bird. Parakeet.” He fluttered his fingers in front of his mouth. “Tweet-tweet?”

Gideon looked at him in surprise. “A complaint about a parakeet? I wouldn’t have thought-”

“Yeah, I know, not exactly DCI material, but this clown’s sister is married to the chief minister, who happens to be my boss’s boss, so

…” He spread his hands.

“Say no more. I understand completely.”

Fausto slid the file across the desk. “Help yourself. Not much there, though.” He squared his trim, narrow shoulders and stalked out the door, his mutters fading away as he headed down the hall. “I’m gonna kill him. This time I’m gonna…”

Gideon opened the file and fanned out the thin sheaf of papers inside. There was an initial report from the investigating officer, a case summary, a list of Sheila’s outgoing telephone calls from the hotel, a number of uninformative interview accounts (Adrian, Corbin, Pru, and Audrey had all been contacted during the brief missing-person phase, as had the Eliott Hotel staff), and various forms and records. Only one of them held his attention for more than a few seconds.

ROYAL GIBRALTAR POLICE PROPERTY RECORD FORM LISTING OF PERSONAL EFFECTS

Case # 2005-44

Name of deceased: Sheila Laura Chan