James Hawkins - Missing - Presumed Dead

The Major’s skull was now before them, larger than life, as an overhead projector threw a giant x-ray onto an expanse of spotless wall. “This is what was left of the cranium,” explained the pathologist, “and I would ask you to note carefully the spread of pure white speckles not commonly found in bone.” Then he balanced the actual skull in his hand and spoke to it. “So then … Yorick … What can you tell us about yourself, eh?” He paused and looked to the audience for one of them to respond on the skull’s behalf. “Anybody?” he asked, nodding questioningly to each of the students in turn.

“Was he shot, Sir?” suggested one of the students.

“Yes — well done. It would appear at this time that a single bullet penetrated the cranium through the parietal just above the lambdoidal suture.”

Sergeant Patterson, taking notes, coughed and caught the speaker’s eye.

“Here,” added the pathologist helpfully, holding up the skull and poking his finger into a hole in the back.

“The white peppered effect we see on the x-ray is almost certainly a spray of lead fragments that shredded off the bullet as it tore through the bone.”

He paused and looked around. “Any questions? … No … Alright. From initial observations then, before we explore further, how can we be reasonably certain that this death was not the result of a self-inflicted injury. In short — how do we know it wasn’t suicide?”

A serious silence ensued, then a thoughtful young man, fingering his ginger goatee, tried, “The bullet entered the back of the skull.”

“Therefore?” prompted the pathologist.

“It’s a physical impossibility to shoot yourself in the back of the head.”

“No, no, no. It’s been done before,” he said shaking his head. “Difficult, I grant you, but not impossible,” he continued, and demonstrated on himself with a pistol shaped surgical instrument. “Like this,” he added, pirouetting for all to see. “Any other bright ideas?”

A puritanical-faced young woman with her hair scraped brutally back in a rat’s tail made a few notes then demanded in a gravelly voice. “Can I ask why it’s been done before. I mean … It seems so terribly awkward. Why would someone shoot themselves in the back of the head?”

“Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise,” joked the bearded one.

She froze him with a cold stare but everyone around her collapsed in laughter. Restoring order took a few minutes and when the laughter had died down the pathologist explained. “There have been a number of cases to my knowledge where the deceased wanted someone else to take the rap. Just as murderers will often attempt to pass off their handiwork as suicide, so suicides will sometimes attempt to frame the person they believe responsible for their misfortune.”

“Perhaps you would explain how you know this wasn’t a suicide then?” demanded the woman, making it clear that she was not the game-playing type.

“Because, Ladies and Gentlemen, if this was a common or garden suicide, we wouldn’t be graced with the presence of half the brass of Hampshire C.I.D.” He bowed in Bliss’s direction. “No offence, Chief Inspector — I just want this lot to realise that’s there is more to determining a cause of death than a simple examination of the body.”

“You’ve been promoted again,” whispered Patterson with a malicious twist.

Bliss acknowledged the pathologist with a nod but his mind was still in the Dauntseys’ attic, on the skull. He had stood looking at the body in the eerily lit space for several seconds before realising that the Major’s head was still with the body. It had flopped forward under its own weight and after weeks, months or even years, the army of bugs had severed the spinal column allowing it to tumble into his lap and bury itself face down into his groin. There was only room for a few men at a time in the cramped attic and, once the photographer had finished and slipped gratefully down the ladder, Bliss, alone, had donned surgical gloves and gingerly lifted the skull to examine the remains of the face.

“Dear God,” he breathed, stunned to prayer by the sheer torment still evident on the face, a face mutilated, deformed and disfigured by war. The expression “happy release” sprang to mind as he gagged repeatedly at the sight of the gruesome artefact. But, he knew, it was the agony of life not the spasm of death that had contorted the jaws into the lopsided fleshless grimace. With the bile rising uncontrollably in his throat, he dropped the head back into the Major’s lap, shot down the ladder and, later, was thankful he had been called away from the restaurant before eating dinner.

“Before commencing the physical examination of the body,” the pathologist was saying, tearing Bliss away from the nightmarish memory, “I shall ask Chief Inspector Bliss to relate the circumstances surrounding the death — as I would in any case of this nature … Chief Inspector?”

Patterson dug him in the ribs. “Oh sorry … yes … Well, it’s still a bit of a mystery to be honest, Doctor. We know that he came back from the war in a bad way: multiple injuries; badly shot-up; bits missing, including one arm; smashed face …” he paused with the feeling he had missed something. Questioning looks from the students made him re-run the statement in his mind — he had failed to specify which war. The students were all in their early twenties. What did they know of the Second World War, or even Korea, Vietnam or the Falklands?

“He was wounded in battle outside Paris after D-Day, 1944,” he explained.

“So,” added the pathologist, “in the parlance of today’s medical students, we might say he came back a bit of a fuckin’ mess.”

A student with a cascading mane of bleach blond hair choked and had to be given a glass of water, which she eyed suspiciously before sipping carefully.

“The body was discovered in a sealed attic above a sort of turret,” continued Bliss, “and we believe he may have been dead for as long as forty years. The floor of the attic was covered in the skeletons of dead flies and other insects and we found a service revolver on the floor to his left side.”

“I guess it was his own gun,” the scenes of crime officer had said as he carefully slipped it into an evidence bag.

“It may have been army issue,” mused Bliss, thinking that either way it might be difficult to trace. “I bet it’s not registered, but let me have the serial number as soon as you can. I’ll get someone to make some enquiries with his regiment.”

Patterson, ex-army himself, standing in the room below, overheard. “I can just imagine some quartermaster-sergeant somewhere still fuming about it,” he laughed and imitated a crotchety NCO. “I see Major Dauntsey still hasn’t turned in his weapon — fifty years overdue — bloody officers think they can get away with murder.”

“Is there any reason to suppose he was killed somewhere else and his body placed in the attic?” prompted the pathologist, but he already knew the answer, he’d studied the initial police report.

“Yes, that’s a possibility,” replied Bliss. “The Major’s disabilities would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to have climbed a ladder into the attic.”

“And do you have other reasons to suppose this wasn’t suicide?”

“Yes … Even if he had climbed into the attic and shot himself, he couldn’t possibly have sealed the trapdoor and plastered over the ceiling behind him.”

“Good point, Chief Inspector. Now,” he turned to the students, “do you have any questions before we examine the rest of the body?”

The straight-laced woman was scribbling again. “Were there any personal artefacts found with the body and did he leave …?” she began.