Peter Turnbull: Deep Cover

In the tent Vicary considered the body. It said to him poverty. It said low-skilled, possibly unemployed; it said scratching pennies. It did not say down-and-out. It was too clean and did not have the unshaven face and matted hair he had expected. ‘Have the pockets been searched?’

‘No,’ Shaftoe replied. ‘Not been touched. No reason not to have him conveyed to the London Hospital to await a post-mortem, but we became sidetracked by the suspicious appearance of the ground on which he lay.’

‘I see.’

‘I can have him removed, the mortuary van is standing by, but I’d like to stay for the excavation in case what is buried is what I think it is.’

‘I’d like you to stay as well, sir,’ Vicary replied in a serious manner, ‘and for the same reason.’

Ninety minutes later Vicary and Shaftoe stood side by side; adjacent to them stood Ainsclough, and beside him the two officers who had first cleared the shrubs and then had dug down, carefully so, until the Heath gave up its dead.

‘Female.’ Shaftoe broke the silence that had descended on the small group. ‘Remnants of clothing visible. . shoes. . the metal of the high heels is clear to see.’

‘So, one for us,’ Vicary commented.

‘Oh, yes, I’m afraid so, much less than seventy years old. . the burial I mean. The corpse appears to be that of a young. . youngish person.’

‘Alright, once the body has been photographed we’ll remove it to the London Hospital. I assume you’ll be doing the post-mortem, Mr Shaftoe?’

‘Yes, I like to follow through whenever possible. Will you be attending for the police?’

Vicary nodded slowly. ‘Yes, and for exactly the same reason. I like to follow through as well. It keeps the thread in my mind, keeps it intact and alive.’

Detective Constable Ainsclough stood silently in the ante room next to the mortuary of the London Hospital on Whitechapel Road and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. In front of him, on a table, was the clothing which had been removed from the man who had apparently lain down to die in his sleep in the snow on Hampstead Heath. The clothing had been laid neatly with clear reverence rather than dumped hastily on the table, and Ainsclough approached his task with similar reverence. Taking the wax jacket first, he felt the outside of the pockets for an indication of content, if any, therein and then probed each pocket gently with his fingertips, knowing that drug addicts’ needles are small, easily concealed and potentially deadly. He knew personally of one police officer who groped into a youth’s pocket during an arrest and search, pricked his finger on something sharp and rapidly withdrew his hand to find his index finger seeping blood. The youth had leered and said, ‘I’m positive. . and so are you now.’ In the event the HIV test proved negative, but the time that elapsed before the results were known was measured in many a sleepless night for the man, and it was a period of great strain upon his marriage. In this case, a search of the pockets of the jacket revealed nothing more than a set of house keys, just two keys held together with string, and the left rear pocket of the jeans contained a DSS signing-on card at the office in Palmers Green. That was the contents of the man’s pockets, two keys and a signing-on card. No money, not even a small amount of coinage; no identity save for a creased white card which gave his status as ‘unemployed’ and a signing-on date, a number and also his National Insurance number. Ainsclough pondered the man’s clothing: a wax jacket (without lining), a shirt, a vest, denim jeans (worn and threadbare), a pair of briefs, a pair of socks (cotton) and a pair of running shoes (well-worn with a split across the sole of the right shoe), and dressed thusly he had wandered on to a heathland in a snowstorm. Eclipsed, thought Ainsclough, just did not describe the man’s life. He replaced the clothing in a productions bag labelled so far with only a case number.

He peeled off the latex gloves and dropped them into the ‘sin bin’ provided from where they would be collected for incineration. He took the clothing in the production bag with him, by car, across London to New Scotland Yard and logged it in as evidence.

When he reached his desk on the Murder and Serious Crime Unit floor, he sat down and picked up the phone in one movement, and called the Department of Social Security office in Palmers Green. He identified himself and his reason for calling, and had the impression his call was being passed from one internal phone to another, until a man with a heavy West Indian accent finally assured Ainsclough that he could be of assistance, but only if he could call him back to verify his identity. Ainsclough gave his name and extension number and sat back and waited for his call to be returned. He glanced out of his office window, which faced west, away from the river, and relished the view of cluttered government buildings, grey and solidly built, and with small, efficient businesslike windows wherein few humans were ever to be seen. Moments later his phone warbled. He let it ring twice before picking it up. ‘DC Ainsclough.’

‘My man. .’ The West Indian voice was powerful and warm. ‘DSS Palmers Green.’

‘Thanks for calling back.’

‘I brought his name up on the computer, that signing number, I mean, and his NI number, and both came back with a claimant by the name of Michael Dalkeith.’ The DSS officer spelled the surname for Ainsclough. ‘Thirty-seven years of age.’

‘Thirty-seven?’

‘Yes, boss. . thirty-seven summers he has.’

‘I thought he looked younger.’

‘Lucky man. I could do with looking younger.’

‘Possibly, but you wouldn’t want to be in this geezer’s shoes, not even if it meant looking younger.’

‘Hey man, let me tell you. . this job is the pits, the pay is no better than the benefit given to the claimants. After travel costs we got less to spend on our bellies than the claimants, but I still wouldn’t swop places with any one of them. . so maybe he’s not so lucky.’

‘Well, he’s deceased so his luck’s out. Good or bad, he has no luck any more.’

‘So he’ll not be signing this week. .’ The man laughed softly.

Ainsclough found himself annoyed by the man’s callous humour but then reflected on the grinding thankless nature of his job. . poor pay, low morale. . it was not dissimilar to the gallows humour developed by the emergency services. It helps one to survive difficult and often unpleasant forms of employment. ‘Well, if he does sign on saying he’s lost his card, let us know, we have an identity to confirm.’

‘Yes, man, will do, he signs Thursdays. . two p.m.’

‘So I saw. Do you have an address?’

‘Yes, it’s 297 The Crest. Quite posh. We don’t get a lot of customers from The Crest; not a lot of custom at all from The Crest, boss man.’

‘Has he been signing on for a long time?’

‘Not here. . not with us. Just a couple of months with us but he was signing at the Kilburn office for a few years before then, according to his details. Got a previous address. .’

‘Yes, please, we need to trace any next of kin; can’t use the signing-on card as a definite means of identification.’

‘OK, boss, got the pen? Got the paper? It was Claremont Road, Kilburn, did well to get from there to The Crest, Palmers Green. . he’s still only a doley though.’

‘Number?’ Ainsclough again found himself getting irritated with the DSS official’s jocularity.

‘One hundred and twenty-three, single claimant there, but at The Crest he claimed for a partner and two children. He got his little self hitched. . there’s your old next of kin, captain.’

‘Well, we’ll see what we see.’ Ainsclough replaced the phone gently and reached for a new blank manila file, in which he entered the information he had just received. He closed the file and placed it in his ‘out’ tray, pending filing. Michael Dalkeith, unemployed, one of a half a dozen bodies found across London, revealed by the thaw. He got up and walked down the CID corridor to the office which Frankie Brunnie shared with Penny Yewdall. He stood in the doorway, and when Brunnie looked up at him, Ainsclough smiled and said, ‘Fancy a trip to Palmers Green?’