‘They won’t at his age.’
‘Sadly, and then it’s too late once your second teeth arrive and you have by then acquired a taste for sweet-tasting food and drink. Well, to continue,’ Dr D’Acre returned her attention to the corpse, ‘this lady lived in the west all her life and had a diet high in sugar content. Her teeth have been quite heavily filled. You don’t yet know her name do you?’
‘No, ma’am, not yet,’ Hennessey glanced up at the ceiling. The filament bulbs that illuminated the room were covered by opaque Perspex sheets which efficiently screened their potentially dangerous shimmer. ‘Not yet . . . in point of fact there might even be a missing person’s file already open awaiting to be matched to the deceased. That is something for me to check.’
‘Yes, seems likely if she was local but the dentistry may well confirm her ID. Dentists have to retain their files for eleven years by legal requirement. Some retain them for longer. This lady has had dental work done within the last eleven years, though not necessarily in the United Kingdom. Once I have taken casts of the upper and lower teeth, I’ll remove one and cut it in half. That will provide the age of the deceased plus or minus one year, but I can say now that she is in her mid to late forties.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think I have to disturb the face; there is no sign of head injury, none at all.’ She felt gently and painstakingly round the circumference of the deceased woman’s head. ‘No, no injury at all.’ Dr D’Acre then ran her fingertips through the scalp hair. ‘No, none, don’t even have to arrange an X-ray. So . . . fortunately I can leave this lady to be identified by any next of kin who might come forward. She has clear nasal passages. I’ll check all other body cavities for you in case she has left you other gifts . . . such is not unknown. Now, let’s see what and when she ate last. The stomach and contents thereof is always another good and useful source of information.’ She patted the stomach as she reached for a scalpel from the instrument trolley. ‘There will be some gas but not a great deal. So, deep breath, gentlemen.’ Dr D’Acre also took a deep breath. She then turned her head to one side and punctured the stomach with the scalpel. The gas within the stomach escaped with a mercifully brief ‘hiss’. ‘Smelled worse,’ she said after exhaling and taking another breath, ‘dare say we all have. I still remember the bloated floater they found in the river, pulled him from the Ouse when he was about ready to burst of his own accord. It really was so very kind of the police to bring him here when he was in that state but I cleared the lab, put all the extractor fans on full, took an almighty breath and stabbed the stomach, then ran for the door, slamming it behind me, only then did I breathe. Remember, Eric?’
‘Like it was yesterday, ma’am,’ Eric Filey grinned. ‘Like it was yesterday.’
‘Even with the extractors on it was still a good half hour before we returned. We never found out who that old boy was.’ Again Dr D’Acre stood. ‘They gave him a name and buried him in a shared plot but he was someone’s son once in his life, someone must have known him. His liver was completely shot to hell, little was left of his kidneys but there was no indication either way to tell us if he was pushed or fell into the river and so that was it. Death by misadventure. He was named John Brown and buried in the paupers’ section of Fulford Cemetery. I think of him often for some reason. I and other pathologists take a few of our patients home with us, in our heads I mean, and in that manner that poor old boy occupies a part of my mind. So he’s in Fulford Cemetery now with the contents of two other coffins for company. I will lay flowers on his grave one day soon.’ Dr D’Acre turned again and examined the stomach cavity of the deceased. ‘Well, she was very hungry when she died, I can tell you that, very hungry, the stomach is quite empty. She had had no food for probably forty-eight hours. She is well nourished so she ate well but not for the last two days of life. In her last two days she knew hunger.’ She turned to Hennessey. ‘There will . . . in fact there just must be a mis per report on this lady. There must be. She is not anorexic, she enjoyed food . . . she ate. She cared for her teeth if only adequately so and she was held against her will for fully two days before being strangled. Someone must have noticed her missing by now and have reported it.’ Dr D’Acre turned to Eric Filey and said, ‘Can we turn her again, please, Eric? Something occurs to me.’ And once again, Hennessey watched as she and Eric Filey turned the deceased upon her stomach as if she was of no weight at all. Dr D’Acre then took the scalpel and made two large incisions to the lower back at either side of the spine. ‘Shrunk,’ she said quietly.
‘Shrunk?’ Hennessey echoed.
‘Yes . . . shrunk. Her kidneys have shrunk, not by much, but still noticeably so, quite consistent with being deprived of fluid for forty-eight hours. Not a good end to a life which had probably run only about half of its expected span.’
‘But she was found out of doors,’ Hennessey mused aloud, ‘sitting upright.’
‘Yes, I think you need to talk to a forensic psychologist about that part, but I would think that the murderer or murderers probably posed her body, laying it out on the canal bank and scuttling home and waiting for it to be discovered, assuming that he, or she or they, had killed her, as I said earlier, but in fact, unknown to them, she was still alive. He or she or they simply hadn’t done the job they believed that they had done. They had not belted and braced it by, for example, pulling a plastic bag over her head for just five minutes to ensure that she was life extinct. In fact she was still alive . . . unconscious, but still alive. She was then conveyed to the place where she was eventually found and laid there. Possibly the cold brought her back to consciousness, it can do that, it can give a body a wake-up call, but by then she was dangerously cold and entering hypothermia . . . despite being in that state she sat up feeling light-headed and euphoric and looked at the lovely white landscape under the low cloud and might even have thought she was in heaven, hence the smile which you might note has now faded as the body has warmed. The smile was frozen on her face as hypothermia took her from us. So, no food or water, and thusly was less able to withstand the cold, but she evidently had full and unrestricted access to toilet facilities . . . her clothing wasn’t soiled. I will trawl for poisons as a matter of course but I do not expect to find any. I’ll send a blood sample to toxicology anyway. So, my findings will be that she was held against her will for forty-eight hours, deprived of food and fluid in that time but had access to toileting facilities, though probably not a water flush otherwise she would have drunk something. She was then strangled, removed to the place where she was found and left for dead, but briefly regained consciousness before dying of hypothermia. Murder. Without a doubt. Murder.’
Hennessey nodded his thanks, ‘Appreciated, ma’am.’
Less than an hour later George Hennessey stood silently beside a sombre Somerled Yellich and an equally sombre Carmen Pharoah. ‘It was’, they both assured Hennessey, ‘definitely the place where she was kept.’
The ‘place’ was a prefabricated metal building with a concrete floor, which had been stripped of all plant and machinery that it might once have contained, so all that remained were a few empty shelves, a two-year-old calendar on the wall, discarded plastic bags, a few isolated pieces of paper on the floor and a chemical toilet, without any form of enclosure, furthest from the entrance doorway, in the corner. A length of medium weight chain was attached to the wall close to the toilet. Two shorter lengths of a lighter gauge chain and four small brass padlocks lay on the floor, also close to the toilet.
‘Two short lengths of lightweight chain to bind her feet and hands –’ Yellich pointed them out to Hennessey, ‘well, to bind her wrists and ankles, I should say.’
‘Better,’ Hennessey turned to Yellich and smiled – ‘but I knew what you meant.’
‘Yes, sir . . . and a larger length of chain to stop her wandering too far about the floor or escaping. The lightweight chain is of sufficient length to allow her a little freedom of movement, I would think.’
‘Yes.’ Hennessey looked at the interior of the metal shed. There was, he noted, with no small amount of dismay, no source of heating nor any form of comfort. The woman had just the cold concrete floor to lie or stand or sit on. The floor area was large enough to accommodate, he guessed, perhaps five or six average size cars, and the length of chain he further guessed would have permitted her to access approximately half that area. The shed itself was one of five similar sheds, and occupied a remote location on the eastern edge of the city of York, some two or three miles from the nearest occupied dwelling, or so it appeared to Hennessey.
‘All the other units are empty, sir,’ Yellich spoke quietly. ‘That is to say, they are not in current use. They are all solidly padlocked up. It seems to have been a small-scale industrial estate, now abandoned. This particular shed had been broken into, someone had forced entry.’
‘I see . . .’ Hennessey murmured and then said, ‘It explains the electricity bill.’
‘Yes, sir, she had quite a presence of mind, as you say.’
‘Yes . . . she was kept here for two days or at least not fed for the last two days she was here . . . not allowed water either.’
‘Two days?’
‘Yes, so Dr D’Acre estimates by the absence of food in the stomach and the shrunken kidneys . . . no food or water for forty-eight hours. She would have been very cold and much weakened by the absence of sustenance. She would not have had the strength to shout, no one would hear her if she did and who would wander up here? It is too remote to be of interest to teenage vandals, and it is the wrong time of year anyway. Vandalism tends to be a summer and autumn activity, as we know, and the criminal fraternity would know the sheds had been stripped bare, that is assuming that the others are as empty as this one.’
‘We still have to check them, sir.’
‘Yes, better make sure none of the others contain any bad news. Is SOCO on its way?’
‘Yes, sir, hopefully they won’t get lost this time,’ Yellich added with a smile.
‘Good. She died of exposure by the way, froze to death as we first thought.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘But strangled prior to that and then taken out of doors and left for dead.’ Hennessey pointed to a length of electricity cable which lay snake-like on the floor. ‘Have you touched that?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Don’t. The person who kept her here didn’t pick up after himself . . . the chain, the padlocks, it’s all here and that cable was probably used to strangle her. It’s all still here. It’ll be much too much to hope that the murderer left his dabs on the chain or the locks or the cable, but ask SOCO to check them anyway, and then get them off to Wetherby. The scientists might get DNA traces . . . they’ll certainly get hers but maybe someone else’s also. Do that as soon as you can.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Yellich replied briskly.
‘I’m going back to the station. Who’s there? Do you know?’
‘Webster, sir. Webster’s holding the fort.’
‘Webster? All right, he’ll do . . . I’ll phone him from here on my mobile.’
Reginald Webster gently tapped on the highly polished wooden frame of the doorway to George Hennessey’s office and entered. Hennessey, sitting in the chair behind his desk, looked up and smiled as Reginald Webster entered. Webster always found Hennessey’s office to be much on the small side for one of Detective Chief Inspector’s rank and he noticed again how spartan Hennessey kept it, with just a Police Mutual calendar on the wall as the only form of softening or decoration. A small table stood in the corner by the office window upon which sat an electric kettle, a box of fair trade teabags, powdered milk and half a dozen half pint drinking mugs. The window itself offered a view across Micklegate Bar of the walls of the city, at that moment glistening with rapidly evaporating frost.
‘You were quite correct, sir.’ Webster slid unbidden on to the chair which stood in front of Hennessey’s desk. He handed Hennessey a manila folder. ‘Seems to be the deceased, sir, one Mrs Edith Hemmings, forty-seven years, and with a home address here in York.’
‘It’s her,’ Hennessey spoke matter-of-factly as he considered the photograph which was attached to the missing person’s file. ‘It’s a match. “Dringhouses”,’ he read the address on the file, ‘modest address, self-respecting people, privately owned homes but by her clothing . . . you know . . . I thought she’d be much more . . . more . . .’
‘Monied?’ Webster suggested.
‘Yes, that’s the word I was looking for, more monied.’ He paused. ‘Well, there is an unpleasant job to be done now.’
‘But the post-mortem has been done, sir.’
‘Yes, and Dr D’Acre had no need to disturb the face.’
‘I see . . . useful.’
‘Yes. Phone York District Hospital and ask them to prepare the body for viewing, then do the necessary, please. I see that it was her husband who reported her missing?’
‘Yes, sir . . . two days ago.’
‘Next of kin. He’ll be the one to take.’ Hennessey handed the folder back to Webster. ‘Talk to him afterwards . . . see where you get but don’t put him on his guard.’
‘You’ve found her and you want me to identify the body?’ Stanley Hemmings revealed himself to be a short, slightly built man with closely trimmed, slicked down hair which was parted in the centre as in the fashion of the Victorians, so Webster understood it to have been. It was certainly, he thought, an unusual hairstyle for the early twenty-first century. Most unusual indeed. Hemmings wore dark clothing as if he was prematurely in mourning, black trousers, a brown woollen pullover, black shoes, grey shirt, black tie.
‘Possibly,’ Webster replied. ‘But yes, we need confirmation of the identity of a body which may be that of Mrs Hemmings.’
‘My neighbour told me that that would be the way of it.’
‘Really?’ Webster stood outside the front door of the Hemmingses’ house in Dringhouses and found it to be just as Hennessey had described: modest, yet self-respecting. A three bedroom semi-detached inter-war house with a small neatly kept garden to the front, on a matured estate of identical houses.