Barry Maitiland - Spider Trap

Mehta sniffed at a scrap of paper.‘I have a message that Morris Munns has something he wants to show us. He should be along shortly. Now, this is really your meeting, Brock. We can only charge extra for police case conferences, not our own.’ He gave Brock a grim look, inviting him to challenge him, but Brock said nothing.‘Anyway I thought we’d better speak to you,because we had another discussion last night and we seem to be approaching a preliminary consensus on your three skeletons.’

At that moment there was a tap on the door and a woman hurried in with a sheaf of papers which she handed to Mehta, who said,‘Perfect timing, Jenny.’

The documents were the combined forensic reports of the three specialists, fresh off the photocopier. Each person was given a set, and Mehta directed them to the final summary for the profile that had now emerged of the three victims, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. It confirmed that they were all males, and provided rather specific estimates of their heights-167, 185 and 181 centimetres respectively-and ages-twenty-three, nineteen and twenty-eight. Both Alpha and Bravo were right-handed,whereas Charlie was left. Available teeth were generally in good condition, with no fillings or other signs of dental treatment. As children, Bravo had had rickets and Charlie had suffered multiple fractures to his left leg. Both Alpha and Bravo had probably died from single gunshot wounds to the head, whereas the cause of death of Charlie, whose skull had not yet been found, was unknown. The size of the entry wounds were consistent with the two nine-millimetre calibre cartridge cases found on the site.

All three skeletons showed evidence of fractures, which Dr Prior felt were probably sustained close to the time of death, although Dr Mehta wasn’t so sure, emphasising how difficult perimortem trauma was to distinguish. There were sufficient traces of oxidised iron strands in the surrounding soil to support the conjecture that all three had been bound with wire to arms and legs at the time of burial. It was not possible to determine whether they had died together or on separate occasions, nor whether death had occurred on the railway site or at some other place, although the presence of spent cartridges might suggest the former. Fabric traces in the ground suggested that all three bodies had been clothed at the time of burial, but these traces weren’t substantial enough to yield more specific information, apart from the remains of a shoe, a belt buckle, two zip fasteners and some buttons, which were being further investigated.

The condition of the remains indicated a date of death between ten and forty years previously. A Seiko digital wristwatch with plastic case and LED display had been found on the wrist of Charlie, indicating an earliest date for his death of 1978, when this model first came on the market. So far, the evidence did not warrant a closer estimate for date of death than the seventeen-year period from 1978 to 1995. Maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA had been obtained from the remains of all three victims.

‘Sorry about the date, Brock,’ Sundeep said, not sounding at all sorry. ‘I suppose that’s the thing you’re most interested in, but we’ve tried everything-benzidine test, precipitin test, demonstrable fatty acids, nitrogen content. No go, I’m afraid. The only other time-related fact we have is that ballistics have matched the cartridge cases to a gun used in two other shootings in South London during the mid-eighties, but that doesn’t really narrow your time frame, does it?’

‘This bit about “indicators of non-Caucasian ancestry”, Sundeep,’ Brock queried.‘Can we be more specific?’

As they’d been reading the summary, Kathy had noticed Dr Prior shake her head several times. Now she answered Brock’s question.

‘They were black,’ she said bluntly.

It was Dr Mehta’s turn to shake his head.‘Dr Prior, I’ve been trying to emphasise to our colleagues here that such a term is arbitrary and meaningless in science. Racial categories have no biological reality.’ He sounded testy.

Dr Prior gazed calmly back at him and said,‘That’s nonsense, Dr Mehta. You’ve completely ignored my evidence in your summary. The morphological arguments are compelling and well established. Race is a biological fact, and the three victims were as black as I am. I think the police need to know that.’

‘Nonsense!’ Mehta almost shouted. ‘I quote Sauer, I quote Brace:“There are no races, there are only clines.” If we can’t dispel this wicked misconception, who can?’

The odontologist, Dr Lyons, was peering over his glasses at his forensic colleagues. From what Kathy could make of his part of the report, the dental evidence had been disappointingly inconclusive, and throughout he’d had the air of someone rather bored and impatient to get back to his laboratory. But now he, the only white member of the trio,seemed intrigued by his colleagues’increasingly irate debate about race.

It was interrupted by the arrival of Morris Munns, who bustled in with a cheerful ‘Morning all’ and an ancient leather doctor’s bag. The lenses in his glasses were so thick that Kathy was always worried that he would barge into something, which was ironic since he was perhaps the most skilful photographic specialist and enhancer of latent images available to the Met. Dr Mehta, somewhat tightlipped,invited him to speak,and from the bag he produced a plastic evidence pouch containing an irregular lump of material.

‘This is the remains of the shoe Sundeep gave me,’ Morris said in his broad cockney.‘It was found with Bravo’s body. And hidden beneath what was left of his leather instep, Sundeep was smart enough to notice something odd.’

Mehta’s sulk relaxed a little, mollified by this compliment.

‘Under examination, I found a fragment of what turned out to be rag paper.We ’ad a go with it on our new image detector equipment, digitally enhanced, and eventually came up with this.’ He passed out copies of a photographic enlargement, twenty times life size, of an irregular area of grey. Across its surface was a blur of darker grey smudges. Kathy held the picture at arm’s length, screwing up her eyes, until finally a pattern emerged.

‘Kathy’s got the idea,’ Morris said, and handed round another image, in which the first had been overlaid by red symbols, corresponding roughly to the shapes beneath. The smudges now read:

Celia’s Dream

8.22, 7/2, T4

‘Brilliant, Morris,’ Brock said,‘as always.What does it mean?’

‘I reckon it’s a betting slip, don’t you? An old-fashioned one, hand-written. The horse is Celia’s Dream, running at odds of seven to two.’

Horseracing was another acknowledged area of Morris’s expertise, and Brock was impressed. ‘What about the other numbers?’

‘Dunno for sure. 8.22 can’t be the time of the race-too early or too late and too odd. It could be the date, American style, month first-August twenty-second. Maybe Bravo was a Yank.’

‘Or the bookie was,’ Mehta suggested.

‘All right, we’ll see what we can find out,’ Brock said. ‘Many thanks. And thanks also to you and your colleagues for your report, Sundeep.Worth every penny, I’m sure. I realise what a rush it’s been. Is there anything else?’

‘Will you be wanting facial reconstructions?’ Dr Prior asked.

‘Definitely. Are the skulls in good enough condition?’

‘Oh yes. Of course, there are big differences in the thicknesses of facial tissues for different races.’ She paused with a slight smile on her lips, and Kathy realised she was needling Sundeep. ‘But we have pretty accurate tables for both pure Negroid and mixed-race subjects. The South Africans have done a lot of work in this area.’