Mark Pearson - The Killing Season

I climbed into my old Saab and after about the third attempt to start it the engine kicked into life. I pulled out and was about to head up Gun Street and pay a visit to Helen Middleton when Sergeant Coker stepped out in the road and held up his hand in a ‘Halt, who goes there?’ gesture.

I wound down the window and looked across as he leaned in.

‘Your wife told me I might find you at the Lobby. I guess I just missed you.’

‘What’s happening?’

‘She’s got the go-ahead to proceed with the post-mortem. Thought you might like to come with me.’

‘Does Super Susan know about this?’

‘She knows about the autopsy.’

‘But not about me attending?’

‘No.’

‘You think she’s going to like that?’

‘Does this face look bothered?’

I looked at his healthy, ruddy complexion and the amusement in his eyes.

‘I’ll see you there,’ I said.

Kelling Heath Hospital is an old building a few miles from Holt. As you swing down the switchback road from Bodham to Upper Kelling you have to slow down to thirty miles an hour. Not that everyone did. As I said, the normal rules of the Queen’s Highway didn’t seem to apply hereabouts. Maybe something to do with Boadicea. I pulled across the road and turned right and then right again, drove up and managed to find a parking spot in front of the building.

A young nurse told me where to go as I explained why I was there. I thanked him and walked through a couple of corridors down to the old morgue. Kelling Heath Hospital is now a rehabilitation unit for convalescing patients in the main. But it had been a TB sanatorium in the past and therefore housed a small morgue.

I pushed the door open and walked in. Sergeant Coker had beaten me there but, as I had had to stop to refuel the car at the garage on the coast road, I didn’t hold it against him.

Kate was gloved, gowned and masked and a younger woman similarly garbed was standing beside her. A forensic photographer who I recognised from the crime scene on the beach earlier was standing by, ready to record the process, and a forensic assistant was gowned and gloved like Kate and ready to help her.

Neither the sergeant nor I had bothered to gown and mask up. We stood by the door, watching. I hate post-mortems but this was by no means the worst that I had attended. Because the body had been partly mummified in the salty ground there weren’t the usual aromas that went with the procedure. Kate had once told me that smell was particulate and explained what it meant, and I didn’t feel any happier for having the knowledge of it.

‘Just about to begin, Jack,’ she said as I closed the door behind me.

‘You were never here,’ said the sergeant in a stage whisper to me.

‘Certainly not.’

Kate began by removing the cadaver’s gloves, revealing large hands, the flesh on them pale and withered, the bones prominent beneath it. As Kate had surmised there was no band on the man’s wedding finger.

‘There is no sign that he has ever had a wedding ring,’ Kate said, talking towards a microphone that was recording the progress of the post-mortem.

‘So a single man in his late twenties or thirties who has never married,’ I speculated out loud, but quietly, to the red-haired man beside me.

‘Gay?’ said the sergeant.

‘Who knows?’ I shrugged.

‘I am now spraying some alcohol spirit on the white-metal inset on his watch strap,’ said Kate, and proceeded to do as she said. Then, very delicately, she swabbed the metal with what looked like a Q-tip to me but probably had some specialist technical pathology name.

‘Looks to me like the inscription reads: ‘Amor Vincit Omnia.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ the ruddy-faced sergeant asked Kate.

‘It’s Latin,’ I answered for her. ‘Love conquers all.’

‘Definitely gay, then,’ said Coker.

He would have laughed but Kate shot him a look that made him think better of it.

It took Kate and her assistant a while to carefully cut off the clothes that the dead man had been wearing. They were bagged and logged. Naked he was pale-skinned and the flesh of his torso was every bit as deteriorated as that of his hands had been. It was as though the skin had simply been stretched over his skeleton. He had a thin, flat wooden crucifix on a chain around his neck. Kate looked closely at the damaged bones, snicked the chain on the crucifix and handed it to a forensics officer for bagging. Then she turned to us.

‘I can’t tell you if these broken bones were pre- or post-mortem. But I can tell you this man was murdered.’

‘How so?’

‘He was stabbed, middle of his chest. Right in the heart.’

‘Can you put a date on when it happened?’ asked the sergeant.

‘Not yet. The soil conditions where he was buried make it very hard to be even approximately accurate. We’ll need lab analysis. And that will take time.’

‘I guess we need to find out who he is,’ I said.

‘Good place to start,’ Kate agreed and turned back to the body on the examination table. ‘John Doe needs a name.’

It was late by the time I got back onto the coast road and headed west out of Sheringham once more.

It hadn’t rained since the late morning, which was some good news for that day at least. I had stayed with the sergeant and watched the rest of the post-mortem. Saw the dead man disassembled bit by bit. What was left of his organs weighed and recorded. His stomach opened. Its contents removed for further analysis.

I regretted breaking my diet and having that bacon sandwich.

I had wound down the window for a minute or so to let the cold air blow over me as I headed for the coast road. But it hadn’t made me feel any better so I had wound it up again and cranked up the heater. The sun was dipping ahead of me nearly into the ocean again, and although it wasn’t raining it was still cold. Bloody cold.

I looked at the sky that was purpling and darkening now, and figured we would have a frost again tonight.

I drove into Helen Middleton’s garden, the three-quarter shingle crunching satisfyingly beneath my wheels. I zipped my jacket up to the top and leaned on the doorbell. I hadn’t phoned her. The lights were on in her bungalow and I could hear classical music playing, but my spider senses were tingling. Something wasn’t right here.

I leaned on the bell once more and was relieved when I heard the sound of the music being lowered. A few moments later the door opened. But it only opened a few inches. A chain had been fitted to the inside.

Helen Middleton peered out. ‘Oh, it’s you, Jack. Can I help you with something?’

‘I just wanted to have a quick word, Helen,’ I said, smiling reassuringly.

‘I am a little bit busy,’

‘It won’t take a minute.’

She hesitated and then closed the door. It opened again a moment later.

‘I see you’ve had a chain fitted.’

‘Well, you can’t be too careful, can you?’

‘I guess not.’

I didn’t think it would be fair to point out that a small security chain like that had no chance of stopping either Bill Collier or his associate if they wanted to get into her house. Wasn’t entirely sure what would, short of a fortified steel door.

I followed Helen into her living room. As neat as ever. The figurines gleaming, the surfaces shiny, a faint hint of polish in the air.

‘I was about to pour myself a small sherry. Can I get you one?’ she asked me.

Not my nip of choice but I nodded. ‘Thank you. That would be very nice.’

‘What part of Ireland are you from?’ she asked as she walked to a cabinet and poured out two measures of sherry into a couple of matching glasses.

‘Cork.’