The Garden Party (9 page)

‘No, sir,' was Billy Button's feeble reply.

‘No worries, I am sure that both our lady wives will have us most properly interred or see that our ashes are placed in an urn.'

‘Urn,' Billy Button whined, ‘that would be better, sir, much better. It is the thought of being buried alive that is so frightful and my poor body being eaten by worms . . . oh . . . it is too horrible.'

Shaftoe picked up one of the skulls and began to examine it. Two of the six stainless steel tables in the laboratory had been utilized by Shaftoe, one full skeleton lying on each. ‘The first did in fact used to happen.' Shaftoe replaced the skull and picked up one of the long bones. ‘It happened so frequently in fact that sextons would keep a stout metal stave with a pointed end and a sledge hammer to hand in case they heard banging coming from the ground where a coffin had been recently buried. They would drive the stake down into the coffin, smashing a hole through the lid so as to get air down to the luckless victim and keep said victim alive, while they and any helpers they could find dug down to him or her. It was a race against time because they had to get down there before the build-up of carbon dioxide caused the victim to asphyxiate . . . but nowadays no one is buried alive because corpses are embalmed. But, occasionally, a person is pronounced life extinct when in fact they are still with us, alive, if not actually kicking, but that happens so rarely that it makes international news when it does.' Shaftoe ran his fingertip along the length of the bone. ‘There was a case in the UK, quite recently, wherein an adult female had been pronounced dead . . . no life signs at all . . . she even had the unmistakable clamminess of touch which fresh corpses have, and she was put in a drawer at minus one degree Celsius to await embalming and the coffin. And then a mortuary assistant, a bloke just like you, Billy, opened her drawer and saw that a tear had formed in the corner of her eye and he realized that that meant she was still alive. He raised the alarm and the lady was revived and made a complete recovery. It was just not her time. In Eastern Europe, in the old days, they could not comprehend the notion of a coma and they thought that a dead body which did not bloat was the work of the devil, and so they either decapitated the person or drove a stake through their heart.'

‘Like Dracula?' Billy Button's voice shook.

‘And as for the worms, Billy, well you can forget them. You know –' Shaftoe swapped the skulls over – ‘I just have a notion that the skulls were wrongly placed. I think that is correct but DNA will confirm it. You know, if I had a fiver for every person that has said they want to be cremated or have their loved ones cremated because they don't like the idea of worms chomping away at their flesh, chomping away at their loved ones' remains . . . well, I'd be a rich man.' Shaftoe paused. ‘These two men died terrible deaths, but you see, Billy, worms are subsurface creatures, they never go lower than eighteen inches below the surface, or half a metre in new speak. They don't go down as far as the coffin.'

‘Still, I'll be turned to ash just the same.'

‘As you wish, Billy.' Shaftoe turned to consider the second skeleton. ‘Me, I want my bit of Merrie England to call my own for eternity . . . or at least for a few hundred years or so. How about you, Mr Vicary, a coffin or an urn? Have you decided?'

‘Cardboard coffin for me,' Vicary raised his voice so that it carried across the echoing laboratory which smelled strongly of formaldehyde.

‘A cardboard coffin?' Shaftoe looked puzzled.

‘Yes, sir, my wife and I have talked about it and we have both decided upon a green burial.'

‘Well, good for you and your lady wife I say, good for you.' Shaftoe beamed at him. ‘I confess I have also given the notion a little thought. How does it work?'

‘They dig a vertical grave and lower the coffin of reinforced cardboard in head upwards, fill in and plant a tree over the coffin,' Vicary explained. ‘Eventually you and the coffin will decay, leaving the tree to mark your final resting place. You can't choose the type of tree, though, because if they allowed that everyone would want an oak tree.'

‘Don't know about that.' Shaftoe grinned. ‘I think I'd like an apple tree, a Cox's Orange Pippin growing over me, or some other traditional English apple. ‘So . . . Billy . . .' Shaftoe turned to Billy Button. ‘Tell me about the bones, help me earn my crust . . . tell me what you see.'

‘Male skulls, sir.'

‘Yes. Good.'

‘Most probably European . . . they seem too large to be Asian.'

‘Again, good. Age . . . what sort of age were they when they died?'

‘Twenty-five years plus, sir?' Button offered.

‘Why do you say that?' Shaftoe smiled at him.

‘The skulls have fully closed, sir.'

‘Yes, but knitted, Billy,' Shaftoe explained, ‘we use the term knitted . . . but, yes, they have fully knitted which happens at about the twenty-fifth year of life.'

‘Knitted,' Button parroted, ‘knitted, sir.'

Shaftoe stepped back from the table. ‘Go for it, Billy, tell me more; tell me what you see.'

‘Can I look into the mouths, sir?' Billy asked nervously.

‘Yes, carry on; tell me what you see and what you then deduce from what you observe. The jaws move freely on both skulls.'

Harry Vicary became intrigued by Shaftoe's attitude towards Billy Button, noting especially how he empowered Button by including him in the post-mortem proceedings. Shaftoe was teaching him about leadership, about management of personnel. It was a wholly unexpected lesson, but also wholly welcome.

Button advanced on the first of the skeletons, took the skull and opened the mouth. He replaced it nervously and then examined the mouth of the second skull. ‘There's hardly any teeth, sir,' he said, ‘in either skull.'

‘Yes . . .' Shaftoe spoke encouragingly, ‘as if?'

‘Well, as if they had all been knocked out.'

‘My thoughts exactly.' Shaftoe smiled at Button. ‘My thoughts exactly. It is in fact very unusual to see skulls with so few teeth, except where they have been deliberately knocked out as if in retribution for some gangland infraction of rules. So tell me about the bones?'

‘The bones, sir, well, they are all dismembered, not attached to each other . . . even the spinal vertebrae have been separated.'

‘Yes, I had to guess which bones went with the other bones when I was reassembling the skeletons but I think I got it right.'

‘The femurs are intact, sir,' Button added.

‘Yes. Why is that useful?'

‘It helps determine the height of the person, sir.'

‘Good. We have all four femurs, two significantly longer than the other two. In a person of normal build the femur length,' Shaftoe asked, ‘is what approximate percentage of the overall height?'

‘Thirty percent, sir.'

‘Good man.' Shaftoe picked up a yellow retractable metal tape measure and measured one of the femurs of the other skeleton. ‘We have one person here,' he announced, ‘who, when he was alive, was five foot four inches tall, and his mate, when he was also with us, was five foot eleven. That is very approximate and possibly on the shorter side.'

‘Understood.' Vicary continued to observe from the side of the pathology laboratory.

‘So, well done, Billy.' Shaftoe smiled at Button who beamed with pride, like, Vicary thought, a rewarded child. Shaftoe pondered the skeletons. ‘You know there are an awful lot of fractures here . . . an awful lot . . . no teeth to speak of but no damage to either of the skulls, and the scorching of the bones, that is widespread and has reached inside the fractures, so defin-itely peri-mortem, and yet, as I said, the skulls are intact.' He turned to Vicary. ‘You know, Mr Vicary, this is like going back to pre-revolutionary France.'

‘In what way, sir?' Vicary asked. ‘Can't say that history was ever my strong point.'

‘In the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, the revolutionaries had their cry of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”.'

‘Yes, I have heard that.'

‘The request for equality,' Shaftoe continued, ‘wasn't a request, or a demand for equality in the communist sense; what the revolutionaries wanted was equality before the law. They wanted one single penal code and one single set of laws. You see, in pre-revolutionary France there was quite literally one law for the rich and one for the poor.'

‘Really!' Vicary smiled. ‘I didn't know that.'

‘Yes, it is quite true; to be specific there was one law for the aristocrats and one law for the commoners.' Shaftoe paused and examined a clavicle. ‘Yes, like yourself I am no historian but I believe there were few crimes for which an aristocrat could be executed but many crimes for which a commoner could be put to death, and also there were different methods of execution depending upon your social status. So that whilst an aristocrat was guillotined, which was quite wrongly thought to be a painless and an instantaneous death—'

‘Wrongly?' Vicary queried. ‘I always thought . . .'

Shaftoe replaced the clavicle upon the stainless steel table. ‘No, I assure you, death by Madame la Guillotine is very painful, but the condemned person does not make a sound because the vocal chords have been severed. There is also evidence that the executed person can remain conscious for up to fifteen minutes, more even, before succumbing to the injury.'

‘That's interesting.' Vicary raised his eyebrows. ‘Really very interesting; fascinating, in fact.'

‘Isn't it?' Shaftoe drew a deep breath. ‘It is . . . it was not at all quick and painless, but the point is that when the commoners were executed in pre-revolutionary France they were “broken on the wheel”. That method of execution involved the condemned being tied to a large cartwheel which was positioned on the horizontal plane and then being beaten to death by the executioner, who used a heavy iron bar for the purpose, but during this the skull was not touched for fear of rendering the condemned unconscious or for fear of killing him too rapidly.'

‘Strewth,' Vicary gasped, ‘no wonder they had a revolution.'

‘Indeed.' Shaftoe nodded. ‘As you say, no wonder they had a revolution.'

‘So you think, sir,' Vicary asked, ‘that these two men were executed; that these bones are the remains of a slow execution?'

‘Possibly, but don't rush me; don't rush your fences, Inspector.'

‘Sorry,' Vicary mumbled.

‘Let's just say that it could very well be that these two men were executed by being battered to death. It has a strong sense of premeditation about it and a strong sense of retribution. It was a slow, painful end for them, as if these two men upset the wrong geezer; as if they trod on the wrong set of toes, poor boys. The fact that the skulls are intact suggests the bones were separated to aid disposal, like I suggested earlier today. We can do a facial reconstruction with the skulls, obtain an accurate age at death from what teeth remain, and extract DNA . . . all that can be done and all that will be done.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘But as to cause of death, I am afraid that will be inconclusive. These injuries might amount to a cause of death in themselves . . . but . . . if they were hospitalized in time they could have recovered, and it was possibly occasioned in a remote place where the felons were not frightened of being disturbed, but that, as I said earlier, is also speculation.'

Penny Yewdall sat back in her chair with one knee raised, resting it on the edge of her desk as the wearing of her trouser suit permitted her to do. She leafed through the files which she had upon her desktop, occasionally taking a sip of coffee. Henry Vicary entered the CID room Yewdall shared with Ainsclough, who at that moment was tapping upon a computer keyboard. Vicary thought they looked busy and said so.

‘Yes, boss.' Yewdall looked up with a ready smile. ‘I'm trying to find a link, if there is one.'

‘A link?' Vicary sank into the chair in front of Frankie Brunnie's desk.

‘Yes, sir.' Yewdall sat forward. ‘We have, we think, established that the note in the wall was written and left by one Desmond Holst who is also known—'

‘Was,' Ainsclough corrected her, gently so.

‘Yes, sorry, was . . . was also known as Ralph Payne.'

‘Yes, I read your record in the file; Holst is his good guy name, Payne is his blagger's name.'

‘Yes, sir,' Yewdall responded attentively, ‘and here we have the file on Arnie Rainbird. He was charged with murder, but his plea of not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter was accepted by the Crown. He was sentenced to fifteen years and got out in ten. He was released seven years ago and has been quiet since then, by which I mean we haven't heard about him. He seems to be a career criminal so doubtless he'll be up to something.'

‘Oh doubtless, as you say, doubtless.' Vicary pivoted Brunnie's chair to left and right. ‘Doubtless.'

‘We visited Des Holst's one-time long-time mate and fellow con, one Claude Bonner. He's a sad old blagger, totally burnt-out case, but he is the one who mentioned a house party up in Bedfordshire.'

‘Yes, I read that also, something went on there. Is he a reliable witness?'

‘Seems so.'

‘Well . . . a pinch of salt.' Ainsclough tapped the top of the computer screen. The computer was down for updating this morning so we had to get Claude Bonner's address by phoning Wandsworth Prison.'

‘Yes?'

‘Claude reckons he was sent down after only his second appearance before the magistrates.'

‘A bit harsh,' Vicary commented.

‘So we thought, but the computer's back up now . . . I have his record here, he actually went down for the first time on his tenth appearance . . . so . . . he's untruthful and more than a little prone to self-pity.'

‘I see.' Vicary grinned. ‘But we can't dismiss what he told us.'