The Thirteenth Coffin (14 page)

Lapslie stopped and turned to her. ‘What?’

‘Keep me informed. I don’t normally like to get too involved with my bodies, but I’d like to know a bit more about this one.’

*

Colonel Andrew Parr had the bullet held up to the light and was examining it carefully.

Lapslie looked across at him. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘No, not really. It’s the same calibre as the ones up at the church. Enough of the bullet left to match it to the rifle – other than that, it’s all terribly disappointing. No luck in finding the rifle, I suppose?’

‘No.’

‘And how are you getting on with this past squaddie boyfriend you’re holding?’

Lapslie sighed. ‘Equally disappointing. Nothing else to link him in apart from motive and the general MO of him having sniper training. If we don’t find more before close of play today, we’ll have to release him.’

Parr grimaced and looked down for a second before changing the subject. ‘Are you doing anything on Thursday?’

Lapslie shrugged. ‘Nothing definite. Have to see where the inquiry leads. Why?’

‘I’m arranging for some of our best snipers to try and copy the shooting. See what kind of problems our killer would have had, how hard the shot was, and whether it might have needed two people to make it. We can’t make it one hundred per cent accurate, of course – different wind speeds, atmospheric conditions and so on – but we can get pretty close to it. It might help throw some extra light on whether this Army chap you’re holding could have been responsible – so if you can, meanwhile, give me more on his background . . . I was wondering if you would like to come and take a gander?’

Lapslie was interested. ‘I’d like that very much. Where do I have to go?’

‘Head for Hereford, then head for Credonhill, then look for Stirling Lines. I’ll have you booked in. Make sure you have your ID with you.’

‘I always do.’

‘Good. I’ll see you then.’

Parr put out his hand and Lapslie shook it. After that he turned and disappeared towards the car park.

After watching Parr go Lapslie turned his attention back to Gillian Holmes and the wedding dress. He hadn’t
seen Holmes since she had left the PM, and was interested to see if she was okay. He walked into the mortuary waiting room to see Emma Bradbury talking to her.

‘Everything okay?’

Bradbury looked up at him. ‘She had a bit of a turn. I thought she was okay but I found her lying on the floor in a faint.’

‘What?’

Holmes looked up at him, the colour slowly beginning to force its way back into her face. ‘I’m so sorry: I thought I would be fine. It wasn’t so much the sight, as the smell. I thought I could cope with it. I’m so sorry.’

Lapslie crouched down and looked into her face. ‘This kind of thing isn’t for everyone, and it’s harder than you think. Sergeant Bradbury and I have been doing it for quite a while, and we’re still not used to it, so there’s no shame in being upset.’

She nodded and gave Lapslie a forced half-smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘Now, do you still have the wedding dress you took off the doll?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, it’s in an exhibit bag over there.’ She pointed to her handbag, which lay on a chair at the other end of the room.

Lapslie got up and walked over. The exhibit bag was sticking out of the top of the handbag. He pulled it out and checked that the red tape seal was intact, then walked back towards Holmes and Bradbury. ‘Emma is going to take you outside for some air. I’m just going to check the doll’s dress against the damage to the real one. If they match, we’ll be a little bit closer to catching the person who has done this. I’ll come out as soon as I have finished and tell you what I have discovered.’

Holmes looked up at him again. ‘I really do think I should be helping,’ she said in a small voice.

Lapslie shook his head. ‘The body is still in there, and so is the smell. I’m not sure it would be a good idea right now. Are you?’

Holmes shook her head. Lapslie nodded to Bradbury, who led her outside and into the car park.

Lapslie returned to the mortuary with the doll-sized dress. Upon opening the exhibit bag containing the real dress, he began to examine it for any marks, tears or damage, but couldn’t see a thing.

‘Do you require assistance, perchance?’

Lapslie turned. It was Jane Catherall. She was hobbling into the mortuary with a walking stick in each hand.

‘You know, you’re the only person I’ve ever met who uses words like “perchance”?’

Putting her sticks to one side, Jane Catherall dropped into a seat. ‘You’ll have to bring it over here. I can’t examine something and stand, not after that post-mortem. I find it drains the life out of me.’ She winced. ‘Sorry – that was a bad choice of words.’

Lapslie did as he was told, and handed the dress over to her. ‘What if something drops out of the dress and we lose it?’

She took a magnifying glass from her pocket and began to inspect the garment. Without looking up, she replied: ‘I understand that you are in a hurry. I’ll get Dan to give the floor the once-over before he leaves. Here, here’s what you are looking for!’

Lapslie walked over to her and she showed him a near-invisible mend in the dress. ‘Whoever did this knew what they were doing. I am a good seamstress in my own right – you have to be if you sew enough bodies back up – and I can tell you that this is very good. Very professional. However, if you look carefully, you can see the outline of the damage in the stitching.’

Lapslie looked as she ran her finger over the damaged section.

‘Can you bring the doll’s dress over?’ she asked.

Lapslie collected the exhibit bag, broke the red tape seal, opened it and handed her the contents. Catherall opened the dress as wide as she could and then placed it over the invisible mend. It was almost a perfect match. Just a small section in the top right-hand corner of the doll’s dress didn’t quite seem to fit. A section was missing.

‘Did the doll have a veil?’

Lapslie nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Is it in the bag?’

Lapslie shook his head.

Catherall looked up at him. ‘Well I think you’ll find that the missing bit has been turned into the veil. I’ll get everything photographed before you leave, then at least you can compare the outline of the veil with the missing section. If that doesn’t work, then bring the veil in and we’ll do another match. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the doll’s dress and the original dress are one and the same. Your lady with the delicate stomach will need to get the fabrics under a microscope to check, but I’m sure she will come to the same conclusion.’

*

Struggling to her feet, Doctor Catherall began to make her difficult way back to her office. ‘Don’t forget to bag the two dresses up again, Mark.’

Lapslie watched her as she hobbled away, then he pushed the two dresses back into their respective exhibit bags. Leaving Leslie Petersen’s dress in the mortuary, he took the doll’s dress with him to the car park. When he got there, Gillian Holmes was sitting inside her car with the window rolled all the way down. The colour had returned to her face.

Leaning into the car, he handed the doll’s dress back to her.

‘Here you go. It was almost an exact match.’

She looked at him quizzically. ‘Almost?’

‘There’s a small section missing which we think was used to make the veil. I’ll have the dress sent up to your lab today, so you can check it out when it arrives. How do you feel?’

She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘My stomach is intact, but my pride is bruised.’

‘No need. When I attended my first PM I was as sick as a dog. Hopefully you won’t have to go through that again.’

‘I hope not.’

*

Lapslie cradled his head in one hand as Bradbury at the other end of the line informed him that she’d found nothing useful from Stowell’s or Leslie Petersen’s phone lists – ‘No teachers, mechanics, nurses or majors. And certainly not any recently deceased.’

Morton had finished his list at just before 11 a.m., and when Lapslie had phoned shortly after the post-mortem, Bradbury had been halfway through working on it; she said she’d phone back as soon as she’d finished. Lapslie had pulled into a lay-by to take the call, the wind rush of passing lorries buffeting his car.

Lapslie sighed. ‘I suppose with nothing else coming to light, we’ve got no choice but to release Stowell. Apparently Brent has already been on to the station first thing this morning, pressing.’

Silence on the line for a moment before Bradbury offered: ‘One consolation – with Stowell out there, we’ll be able to keep tabs on him – see where he goes.’

‘Yes, there is that. If we haven’t been able to find any links so far, Stowell might lead us to them.’

‘Also while we’re watching his movements, it will clip his wings on future murders.’

‘Yes, it certainly will.’ But Lapslie wondered whether Bradbury was pointing to that silver lining simply to
make him feel better, when in reality it was a decided setback. ‘But you know how these things work. With resources already stretched, it could be forty-eight hours before we get Rouse to rubber-stamp a permanent tail on Stowell.’

Bradbury fell silent again, then remarked, ‘Hopefully Stowell won’t be aware of that, so won’t make use of the time gap.’

‘Hopefully.’ But as Lapslie said it, he was struck with another dilemma. ‘But we’ll have to carefully consider our tactics here, because one aim will work against the other.’

‘In what way?’

‘We have to decide whether we want Stowell to be aware of our presence tailing him, so as to avoid future murders, or whether we don’t want him to be aware, so that he leads us to the next murder – makes the links in the chain that we haven’t been able to find.’

10 March 2009

Gordon Campbell had always been a fisherman. He used to go to the local rivers with his father every weekend when they lived in Scotland. The rivers made their way down from the Highlands, where they had begun their long journey as freshly melted snow. The water always seemed so much more pure and crystal-clear than anything you could get from a tap. You could see right through it to the gravel floor beneath. He had drunk from those rivers on many occasions, and it had been the sweetest-tasting water he had ever sipped.

The rivers were full of fish too: healthy, big fish that always put up the most ferocious fight when they were hooked. Only the most experienced fisherman would have any chance of landing these beauties. When you cooked them they melted on the tongue, and the taste was better than anything you could find in the supermarkets, no matter how fresh they said they were.

When his father was forced to move to England with his job, all that changed. They still went fishing, but it wasn’t the same. The banks were littered with rubbish, mostly left by other fishermen who should have known better. The water was murky, and to drink from it meant a couple of days of gut-rot. The fish were never very good either: stunted and misshapen. Pollution had made sure of that. There were a few rivers and ponds that weren’t so bad, but it was more and more difficult to find them. Nobody seemed to care, down in the South. He still fished – he couldn’t help himself – but it wasn’t the same.

He had come down to the River Erk, on the day that he died. It was the best fishing within easy driving distance. He always tried to get at least one day’s fishing a week. He found it relaxed him, blew away the stresses of work. Parking up in the nature reserve, he had walked the half-mile along the riverbank to his favourite spot. His only concern was that someone might have got there before him. On arrival he set up his equipment, unfolded his stool, got his rod and line ready and started to fish. If he was lucky enough to catch anything half decent, he would take it home to Mary and cook her a fish supper fit for the Queen.

There had been heavy rain over the last few days, and the water was running quickly. He looked up to the sky as dark clouds rolled over, heavy with another prospective downpour.
Still, he didn’t mind the weather. That was half the pleasure. As long as you were warm and had your waterproofs with you, nothing could harm you.

A distant flash of lightning illuminated the sky for a brief moment. He began to count in the way his father had taught him when he was a kid, the old Lincolnshire shepherd’s way. ‘Yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp, sethera, lethera . . .’

He had reach ‘tan-a-dic’ before the sound of thunder rolled over him.

‘Twelve miles,’ he mumbled to himself. Still a while to go before it reached him, if it was indeed coming in this direction.

As he watched, his line suddenly dipped. It was a good sign. As he stood to start pulling it in he felt a sudden blow in his back, as if he had been kicked hard. The blow was powerful enough to push him off the bank and into the water. He was only under for a matter of moments before he was pushing his way back to the surface. His first instinct was to gasp for air and spit out the small amount of water he had swallowed, but before he could do this, something was looped over his neck. He grabbed at it. It felt metallic, like some sort of thick wire.

He twisted his head to see over his shoulder. Although his eyes were still full of water, he could see the blurred outline of a figure. Whoever it was seemed to be holding some kind of a pole – or was it a fishing rod? He was holding it out so that
Gordon could grab it. Thank God, at least someone had seen him fall into the water and was trying to help him.

He felt himself being pushed back down under the water, and realized with a cold shock that whoever it was on the bank wasn’t trying to help him; he was trying to kill him, trying to hold him under the water and drown him. He grabbed the wire around his neck and tried to push it off, but it was digging into his skin, and the more he struggled the tighter it seemed to get. Blood was spurting out around the wire, which seemed to be held on the end of the pole that the figure on the river bank was holding out, like the kind of thing pet rescuers used to immobilize dogs and cats. Push and struggle as he might, he couldn’t get to the surface. He felt his strength ebbing away with his blood. Exhaustion set in, and the water rushed down Gordon Campbell’s throat. His last emotion was surprise at the fact that his life wasn’t flashing before his eyes. In fact, it was just receding into the dark and the shadows. What was his wife’s name? What were his kids’ names?