by Francis - TO THE HILT

The Detective Chief Inspector met us, shook hands with Ivan and my mother and me and was impressed into solicitude by Wilfred's presence and medical precautions. Ivan, though in suit and tie, looked almost greyer than in his dressing-gown.

Inside the building, in a small reception area that doubled as waiting-room, a large weeping woman was being comforted in the arms of an equally large uniformed policewoman. The Chief Inspector indicated that we should wait there while he took Ivan to see the body, but Ivan clutched my arm and wouldn't go without me, so, shrugging, the senior policeman settled for taking me too.

We were all then issued with disposable gowns, with gloves, overshoes and masks for our noses and mouths. Dead bodies, it seemed, could infect the living.

I hadn't been in such a place before, but it was curiously familiar from pictures. We went down a passage into a white painted room that was clean, brightly lit, not very large and smelled not unpleasantly of disinfectant. On a high centre table, under a white cover, lay a long quiet shape.

Ivan's hand shook on my arm but civic duty won the day. He looked steadily at the white face revealed when a gowned and masked mortuary attendant pulled back one end of the covering sheet, and he said without wavering, 'Yes, that's Norman.'

'Norman Quorn?'

'Yes, Chief Inspector. Norman Quorn.'

'Thank you, sir.'

I said, 'What did he die of?'

There was a pause. The policeman and the mortuary attendant exchanged eyebrow signals that I hadn't the code to read, and the policeman also looked assessingly at Ivan's physical state, and at mine, and came to a decision.

'I'll take you back to your wife, sir,' he said to Ivan, and offered his arm instead of mine, neatly leaving me behind alone to hear the answer to my question.

The mortuary attendant first of all identified himself as the pathologist who had carried out the original post mortem.

'Sorry,' I said.

'Don't be.' He casually pulled down his mask, revealing a young face, competent.

'So… what did he die of?' I asked.

'We're not sure.' He shrugged. 'There are no obvious causes of death. No gunshots, no stab wounds, no fractures of the skull, no signs of strangulation, no household poisons. No evidence of murder. He had been dead about two weeks when he was discovered. He didn't die where he was found, which was in a rubbish dump. I saw him in situ . He had been placed there after death.'

'Well…' I frowned, 'was he simply ill? Heart attack? Stroke? Pneumonia?'

'More likely one of the first two, though we can't know for sure. But there is an abnormality…' He hesitated. 'We showed it to his sister, and she fainted.'

'I'm not his sister.'

'No.'

He stripped back the sheet as far as the body's waist, showing the dark discolorations of decomposition and the efforts made to tidy up the radical post mortem incisions. I thought it no wonder the sister had fainted and hoped I wouldn't copy her.

'Look at his back,' the pathologist instructed, and with his gloved hands gripped the shoulders and half rolled the body towards him.

There were about a dozen or more rows of darker marks in the darkened flesh, and flecks of white.

The pathologist eased the body flat again.

"Those white bits - did you see them? - are his ribs.'

I felt nauseous, and swallowed.

The pathologist said, 'Those darker marks are burns.'

'Burns?'

'Yes. The skin and flesh have been burned away in a few places down to the ribs. He must have fallen into something very hot when he died. Something like a grating. People fall on electric fires in that way. Terrible burns, sometimes. This is like that. Any thoughts?'

My chief thought was how soon I could leave the mortuary.

'He was wearing a nylon shut,' the pathologist said chattily, 'and there were man-made fibres in the lining and cloth of his suit jacket. They melted to some extent into his skin.'

In another minute, I thought, I would vomit.

I said, 'Could he have died from the burns?'

'I don't think so. As you saw, the burns extended only from below his shoulder blades to his waist. Several local burns, but not lethal, I don't think. It's most likely they occurred just after death, or anyway at about the same time. I would guess he had a stroke, fell unconscious on the fire, and died.'

'Oh.'

'Anyway,' the pathologist said with satisfaction, 'now that we have a positive identification we can have an inquest. The coroner's verdict will be "cause of death unknown" and the poor man can have a decent burial. I'll be glad to get him out of here, to be honest.'

I left him with relief and, stripping off the protective clothing, rejoined the group in the entrance area.

'Please tell us,' I said to the Chief Inspector, 'where exactly you found Mr Quorn.'

Instead of directly answering he explained that the still quietly weeping woman was Norman Quorn's sister. My mother had taken over from the policewoman the role of comforter although, true to form, she looked as if she would prefer saying 'Pull yourself together' to "There, there.'

'Mr Quorn,' the Chief Inspector told us conversationally, 'was found by council workers who went to clear away a decaying rubbish dump left behind on a farmer's land when a band of travellers moved on. We made lengthy enquiries among the travellers at their next place, but drew a total blank. We spent a great deal of time on it. The travellers pointed out that they were all much younger - we had told them the unknown body was elderly-'

'Sixty-five,' the sister sobbed.

'On the other hand, these travellers were accustomed to cook on home-made barbecues of brick supports with metal rods across, and there were signs that perhaps Mr Quorn had overbalanced backwards onto something like that. None of their current barbecues matched Mr Quorn's burns, but it was all inconclusive. There are absolutely no indications at all of foul play. So now we have your identifications, we can close the case. I'm sorry, but it isn't always possible to determine how things happened, and unless any other facts turn up…'

He left the sentence unfinished. Neither Ivan nor my mother told him that the brewery's funds had vanished with the Finance Director, and nor did I. Ivan would have to think it through, and decide.

Because of Wilfred's presence we were silent on the way back to London but spent the evening discussing nothing else.

Ivan was inclined to be glad that Norman Quorn hadn't after all run off with the money.

'We misjudged him,' he said sorrowfully. 'My dear old friend…'

'Your dear old friend,' I corrected regretfully, 'certainly did transfer the money out of the brewery. I've seen copies of about six huge withdrawals that he made just before he left. He did indeed, I'm afraid, send all the funds on their way to destinations still unknown.'

'But he didn't go !'

'No. He died. He didn't die on the rubbish tip. Someone put him there. Wherever he died, someone didn't report it to anyone, but just dumped him.'

Ivan's beliefs and intentions swung widely to and fro, but his chief instinct, as before, was not to make public the brewery's loss. Norman Quorn dead, Norman Quorn living under palm trees… it made no difference. The theft existed and either way would be covered up.

I said, 'But don't you care who dumped him? Don't you want to know where he died?'

'What does it really matter? And as Norman was homosexual-' Ivan saw my surprise. 'Didn't you know? No, I suppose you didn't, he was always discreet… but, you see, suppose he died where it was awkward for someone… do you see what I mean?'

I saw.

'And it wouldn't do Norman or the brewery any good to disclose his sexual preference or, oh dear, his theft.'