It always begins in the same way – with a telephone call invariably reaching her at a time and place which is inconvenient. And it is always the same person who initially rings her, Jericho, her assistant, as stolid as a Shropshire potato and with as sharp a pair of eyes.
He had caught her in a packed Tesco’s this time, and she with a basket of perishables. Agnetha’s day off, nothing for tea and hungry mouths to fill at home. Hence the trip to Tesco’s. So, recognising the number, she was wary with her, “Hello.”
“I thought you’d want to know about this one, Ma’am. Straight away.”
She nestled against the corner of the deep freeze. “Carry on, Jerry,” she said. “I’m all ears.”
“Washed up by the floodin’ river,” he said in his deep Shropshire burr, the word
floodin
’ as powerful as a profanity. “John Doe. Unidentified male.” He allowed himself a slice of poetic licence. “Nearly knocked Police Constable Coleman off his feet. He was checking the properties flooded by the river and this guy swims towards him.”
Martha rolled her eyes across the packets of oven chips. “If he was dead, Jerry,” she pointed out needlessly, “he wasn’t able to swim, was he?”
“Well –” He was miffed. “In a manner of speakin’. What I mean is he floated towards him. It was a terrible shock. Knocked into ‘im.” There was a certain amount of malicious pleasure in his voice.
“I’ll be home in half an hour, Jericho,” she said decisively. “Get the Senior Investigating Officer and the police surgeon to ring me then, will you?” Mentally she
substituted
steak au poivre
for frozen pizza and chips for tea. The facts, she already anticipated, would be unsuitable for twelve-year-olds’ ears. And she would need the privacy of her study to absorb them. She glanced around her. Not the public arena of Tesco’s Superstore.
She queued for her turn at the checkout and wondered why she ever gave Agnetha a day off. Particularly on a Tuesday. It was practically bound to attract an urgent case referral.
Her curiosity was awakened as she covered the few miles home, the roads jammed with traffic turned away from the town centre. Shrewsbury was sealed off by the ‘floodin’ river’, yet again.
She swept into the drive that led to the white-washed house and parked around the back. Easier to unload the shopping. She opened the front door cautiously. Bobby, her Welsh Border collie, was ballistic to see her. He hurled himself at her legs, barking his urgent demand for a walk. But Sam would have to walk him tonight. She would be occupied.
There were eight messages flashing on the answerphone. She worked her way through them. Her mother, wondering how she was as she hadn’t been in touch for a day or two and was she eating properly? Martin’s mother, wondering how she was as she hadn’t been in touch for a day or two and was everything all right? Miranda, wondering whether she fancied going to see a new film at the pictures and was everything all right? Click. No one, wondering nothing. A friend of Sam’s suggesting they play football tonight, two for Sukey; one a pipe-voiced girl and the other a half-broken-voiced male and finally, click. No one again. She wished people would at least inform her who they were before they turned tail in front of the answer-phone.
The front door burst open at precisely half past four and, not for the first time, she reflected how very unlike two twelve-year-olds could be. Sam, with his lop-sided grin, dropping his sports bag on the kitchen floor (without investigating she knew it would contain the filthiest washing) and opening the fridge. When he spoke his mouth was already full of a peanut butter doorstep.
“‘Llo, Mum.”
Sukey, on the other hand, delicate disco queen, minced in on the highest heels she was allowed, and gave her a sideways look. “Hi, Mum,” she said warily.
Martha smiled back at her son and daughter. “Nice day at …?”
“Don’t even ask”, Sukey practically spat, cat-like. “I lost my hair elastic. The one with the gold fish on. And that awful Robin Pearson…” She wrinkled her face. “I think I hate him, Mum.”
Martha opened her mouth but Sam got in there first. “He isn’t awful.” Spraying bread and peanut butter across the kitchen.
“Pig.” Sukey made a face as some landed on her maroon school sweatshirt. “And he
is
awful.” Trying to pick the sodden crumb off the sweatshirt. “He grabbed hold of me…”
“Well – don’t hang on to the football when it lands your way then. Women,” Sam finished disgustedly.
Sukey wasn’t even listening. She was rinsing the speck of half-chewed peanut butter from her sweatshirt. Martha wondered whether they would ever stop quarrelling.
“There are some telephone messages for you both. I’ve written them on the pad and left them on memory. And … ,” she hesitated, “I’m going to have to take a couple of calls before tea. And possibly go out later.”
Immediately they both shot the same swift, guarded
glance at her. It took her aback. She knew they knew a little about her work but she wasn’t always quite so aware of its effect on them. It wasn’t something you readily shared with a pair of twelve-year-olds.
“I’ll take the calls in the study.”
“What’s for tea?” Sam again, ever conscious of his stomach. He’d finished his peanut butter doorstep.
“Pizza.” She felt apologetic.
As she closed her study door behind her she heard them whispering to each other, their differences forgotten. She hated it when they whispered. She felt so excluded – so lonely – so aware that they were twins and had each other whereas she had no one. When Martin had been alive it had not mattered. She had him – they had each other. Nicely paired. But since he had died she was very aware that they had shared her womb for nine long months. They were bonded. She was alone. The outsider. And her job isolated her even more. She’d had to tell them so much when they had been so young. That anything they heard in connection with her work was secret. That they were never to talk about it outside this house. That on the other side of the whispered conversations and scribbled names on the telephone pad was often suffering and grief, bewilderment and loss. Sometimes terrible violence and dark secrets. Headlines too. Whatever they overheard – through half-open doors, or extension phones accidentally picked up, or the answering machine, or on stray papers – they must stay silent. They had known this for all their conscious lives. She closed the door behind her.
The study had been Martin’s. Nine years ago it had been unmistakably a masculine retreat. But she had changed it, with plainer, lighter paper, a few good paintings battled over at Halls, the local auction house, different curtains with an abstract design and bold soft furnishings. She had
deliberately opted for feminine design yet somehow, subtly, the room still reminded her of him so when she entered it she sometimes wondered,
if
Martin returned from the dead how much would he recognise?
It was not simply the furnishings of the study which reminded her of him. It was in the proportions, the structure. She crossed to the french windows, mentally sweeping aside the curtains and seeing the lawn stretching towards the apple tree like a carpet of the brightest green. Of the room? He would know it. The house? He would recognise
most
of it. There had been only cosmetic changes. Superficial titivation. Nothing structural. Of her? She was different. Older. Thinner, more careworn. Quieter. More subdued.
Sam and Sukey? In nine years they had completely metamorphosed from plump toddlers to skinny children and now were on the verge of another huge change – becoming adults. Surely he would not know them. Or would he? They were flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. Genetically linked. Does one recognise the gene?
She closed the tiny gap in the curtains, sat down at the desk, switched on the reading light, stared at the wedding photograph and waited for the inevitable phone calls.
There were three things she appreciated about the Police Force. The first was their punctuality – their very adhesion to the clock. It made life so organised. If rigid. The second was their ability to relate salient facts concisely. And the third was their seductive politeness. Particularly in the case of Detective Inspector Alex Randall who would almost certainly be the Senior Investigating Officer.
Bearing out her thoughts the phone rang at exactly five o’clock, the telephone bell and the chiming of the hour from the clock on the mantelpiece indistinguishable. Knowing who it was she murmured a soft hello and her
name.
“Evening, Mrs Gunn. Detective Inspector Randall here.” He was invariably formal. Initially. Later on formalities may well be dropped as they worked more closely.
“Alex,” she responded warmly. “Thank you for ringing.”
“That’s all right.”
“I hear you have a bit of a problem.”
“To say the least. And on such a night. The river’s the highest it’s been since the millennium floods. We never thought we’d get it so bad again so soon. And we’ve got enough to do without this.”
“Oh yes. Jericho said something about …?”
“Well, I’m not sure what he’s told you but it looks like a homicide. The strangest incident of my career.” He chuckled. “Poor old Coleman had been detailed to check out Marine Terrace and make sure no one was in the properties. He opens the door, flashes his torch around and spies a body floating face down in the corner. Gave him the shock of his life it did.”
“I’ll bet.”
“We got the police surgeon to certify death at the scene. According to him he was long since dead.”
“Drowned?”
“She didn’t think so. There was no sign of it. Besides – she thought he’d probably died before the water had flooded the house. She decided it would be a good idea to have Doctor Sullivan take a look at him at the scene and then talk to you before we move him to the mortuary.” It was standard procedure in a case of suspicious death.
“Did Delyth Fontaine have any idea of cause of death?”
“Nope. And she didn’t want to disturb the body too much.”
“And Doctor Sullivan?”
“He’s just there now. He’ll be speaking to you as soon
as he’s come to some conclusion.”
“Any idea who the dead man is?”
“No identification on him.”
“He was clothed?”
“Yes – in a suit.”
“But nothing in the pockets?”
“No.” And that suggested something. He continued, “We’ve got a few lines of enquiry to follow up.”
Knowing how they worked she could anticipate them. “The property?”
“That and others.”
“Perhaps the water washed his wallet out of his pocket.”
“Maybe.” It was in the policeman’s character to always sound dubious. “We’re making a thorough search of the whole house – including the cellar.”
“Is it safe?”
“The water level’s receding at the moment. It’s halfway up the cellar walls but expected to surge again at around midnight. I expect Doctor Sullivan will give you a call when he’s examined the body.”
“OK, Alex. I’ll maybe see you later. I’ll wait for Doctor Sullivan’s call.” He rang off.
So not even frozen pizzas tonight then but a trip to a flooded house with a corpse floating inside it. What a job. She leaned back in the chair. What on earth had possessed her to be a coroner, this job which sewed up so neatly the questions of how, when and where a person had died? Even going so far as to pose these questions in her own court.
A feeling of finality. Skilled as a doctor, married to a lawyer, she had always felt that death was the final untidiness of life. And for many people that untidiness scarred the bereaved. Like the policeman she was anxious for the cause of death to be ascertained as soon as possible. For
the man, dead as he was, to be restored to his family and to be given a decent, dignified burial.
But … Given the dramatic emergence of the unidentified man’s body it would not take long for the Press to get hold of the story and put it through a mincing machine. The sooner they could give out factual statements the better. Two things were urgent. Identification and cause of death. Who was he? How had he died and when?
She spoke to the police surgeon next, an elderly GP called Delyth Fontaine who had been in the job long enough to know it inside out, almost instinctively. She rapped out the details, that she could not give a cause of death, that it was almost certainly suspicious, that the man had been dead, in her opinion, for more than twenty-four hours. That in spite of the circumstances she did not think he had drowned. Martha thanked her. It was enough to ensure a post mortem was unavoidable. They needed a skilled pathologist to begin to unravel the mystery.
Doctor Mark Sullivan must have been waiting for her phone to be free. As soon as she replaced the handset it rang again. In an echo of Randall and Delyth Fontaine he was concise, professional and factual. Well used to dealing with both the law and the medics. Only someone who knew him very well would occasionally sense the slight slurring of a few of his consonants, a momentary hesitation while he chose appropriate words, a silence when he should have spoken. Martha knew him very well. She had known him in the years before she had become coroner. Before he had started drinking.
“We have a muscular, well-nourished man – in his early forties, I should think.” A pause. “I’ve left his clothes on so haven’t picked up on any obvious cause of death. He could have fallen down the cellar steps, maybe drunk, banged his head, either simply died of a head injury or
drowned when the water filled the cellar. There are plenty of possibilities and I’m not going to be sure until I’ve done a post mortem. There’s a slash in the left side of his jacket, over the heart so my guess is there’s a wound there.” Another pause. “He died at least twenty-four hours before we found him. Rigor mortis is wearing off. From what Delyth and the policeman said I think his body might have lain in the cellar and floated up the stairs. Unfortunately or fortunately the River Severn decided to play gutter Press and expose the evidence.” In spite of the witticism he sounded tired. His speech was getting slower.
“What’s your gut feeling? Are we looking at a natural death, simple concealment or something more, Mark?”