River Deep E-Book

Priscilla Masters

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Martha Gunn
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 367

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Over the years, the residents of Shrewsbury have become used to the occasional flood - living close to the River Severn, it comes as no surprise. But the latest deluge stirs up more than just mud and silt, and the locals are horrified by what comes floating to the surface...Coroner Martha Gunn is one of the first called to the scene when a body is found floating in a flooded cottage. Martha's instinct tells her that this is a homicide - a hunch borne out by the post mortem. The victim is presumed to be the cottage's tenant, James Humphreys, who recently went missing. However, when asked to identify the body, his wife Cressida is adamant that it is not her husband. Martha is left with many perplexing questions. Who, then, is the real victim? Why has he been murdered? And where has the real Mr Humphreys gone? A tense and gripping mystery, River Deep is the first in a series featuring the coroner Martha Gunn.

Leseprobe

River Deep

PRISCILLA MASTERS

“The intention of the coroner’s enquiry is to establish who died, how, where and when that person died and the cause of death.”

This is not always as simple as it sounds…

“Who saw him die?”

“I,” said the fly

“With my little eye,

I saw him die.”

Anon. “Who Killed Cock Robin?”

Contents

Title PageEpigraph123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627About the AuthorBy Priscilla MastersCopyright

1

Monday 11th February. 4pm.

Nature is a free spirit. It has no master or mistress. Rain falling on hills will trickle down to the river and a thousand trickles turn a meandering body of water, usually obedient to its constrictive banks, into a wild and destructive torrent. Water will find its own level, ignoring homes and businesses, restaurants and even temporary graveyards. Instead of protecting a town it can threaten it. Embrace it as a python encircles its victim.

You cannot tame nature.

Even on such a wet day it is a pretty fisherman’s cottage, seventh in a row aptly named Marine Terrace, its blue-painted windows staring out over the rebellious river whose level creeps slowly up its brick walls, unable to defend itself as the river rises, almost invisibly, sneaking first to the top of its banks, moving towards it with stealth, as though if seen the town will somehow defend itself. But the town has no defences–except vigilance and sandbags, and sandbags do not hold back a torrent.

You cannot contain nature. Rivers will go where they will. Corpses and the living, treasured possessions, crimes and the innocent. All can be drowned in the rampant waters of the Severn.

The cellar below number seven, Marine Terrace, is not quite so pretty as its exterior. Small, square and dark, the only light a watery grey streaming in through a tiny, dirty, nine-paned window. Rain batters the glass seeking an entry but the putty stays firm. There is no leak. It is watertight.

Although it is only mid-February the cellar is warm, insulated from the weather. Warmer than the 12º centigrade the bluebottle (Calliphora) requires to lay her eggs, more than one thousand of them. She has been attracted by a scent irresistible to her but disgusting to anyone else. Putrefaction.

Calliphora has been lured down to the cellar by the rising river which carries a cocktail of aromas, but this particular scent is the most alluring of them all. She has followed her instinct and now she fulfils her life’s function to reproduce. She has found the source, moist and warm, temptingly rich and has gained access through the large, old-fashioned keyhole, drawn by the smell as a man is to a woman’s perfume. And she has been rewarded with an ideal breeding ground. An open wound in a slowly decaying body.

While the body decays the river still rises. Nature progresses inexorably.

The river licks the panes of the window and whispers, “Let me in. Let me in.”

She will have her way. She creeps up the glass, one millimetre at a time.

Though the cellar is still dry, rats are sensitive to the rising water level. One scurries along the back wall, its whiskers tickling in alarm. If not for the threat of the water he might have been tempted by the food source. But survival is more important than food. He runs past. And looks up. The only exit from the cellar is a climb of irregular stone steps, at the top a door. The rain is growing ever more fierce. More insistent. It spits beneath the front door, rat-tats against the outside walls, splashes onto the walkway outside and forms puddles which spread by the minute. Like moving inkblots. Expanding. Joining. Irregular shapes which keep growing.

Outside in the cooling evening air a man stands halfway across the English Bridge, his head turned towards Marine Terrace. He is both fascinated and appalled by the power and the will of the river. He stares into the water and studies the antique lamp-posts crazily reflected in the moving black waters, saplings and debris bouncing along in the flow.

And now he turns from the river and accepts the invitation of the town.

In the cellar Calliphora has finished laying her eggs. She buzzes around the room searching for an exit but no scent guides her back to the surface so she settles on the cellar wall and awaits her chance to escape.

A lone hitchiker stands on the Copthorne road, thumb out, hoping for a lift to Oswestry. Aware that the rain is simultaneously both friend and foe. It makes the hiker less visible to the traffic but those who do spot the unfortunate are more likely to stop – out of sympathy.

A lorry driver pities the drenched figure, slews and stops, making the hitchhiker run eighty or so yards. A door is flung open. Words are exchanged. Fate is sealed.

He will be a useful witness.

During the night the inkblots join to form a huge black pool which spreads across the walkway in a swift movement, pauses for a moment at the front doorstep of number seven, Marine Terrace, before inching up the steps and pouring beneath the door.

Once inside she joyfully heaves the cellar door open, descends the steps in a gleeful waterfall and fills the cellar.

Water will find its own level.

Safely above the water Calliphora flies up the stairs to the ground floor room. There is only one – apart from the kitchen – and that is clean. Nothing to tempt her in there. The rats in the cellar squeak and scream. Some of them will drown.

But rivers have no conscience. Only determination.

In the corner Calliphora’s eggs are growing fat, well-fed on flesh and blood.

Their food source lifts and bobs a little, an apathetic swimmer in a waterlogged suit, air in his clothes creating a buoyancy aid.

Tuesday 12th February 2002. 7am

A grey, misty dawn.

The man wakes to silence, crosses the room and draws back the curtains. There is no traffic. So the silence is explained – yet unexplained.

The scent and sound of sizzling bacon drifts up the stairway and distracts him. But in spite of the mouth-watering aroma of his breakfast this morning he is less comfortable than the night before. Stale cigarette smoke fugs the windows; the atmosphere is sour. The man feels unaccountably nauseous. He descends and stands in the kitchen doorway.

She turns to greet him from the stove. “Well,” she says, frying pan in her hand. “The river’s beat us all.”

The man starts.

“Rose higher in the night. They’ve closed both bridges. I hope your car …”

“Sorry?”

She slews round. “Haven’t you noticed how quiet it is?”

The man listens. A pulse of silence pounds away in his ear.

“No traffic.” She tips the bacon and a slimy egg onto the plate, shovels a tomato to join it. Turns to hand it to him.

The man is gone.

She spoke the truth. The decision has been made to close the bridge. Both bridges. Welsh and English simultaneously. Frankwell is flooded, Abbey Foregate under water, Mardol drowning. The river is winning her battle. She is the tyrant now. So Shrewsbury is sealed off to traffic, to become, once again, a moated medieval island town, safe, isolated and unwilling as a virgin within the embracing waters of the River Severn. Those outside must stay. Those inside are trapped.

He is inside.

He is walking down Wyle Cop, approaching the English bridge from the safe height of the town, panicked by the blue strobes of the emergency services. He is ordered back by a firm but friendly Police Constable new to the job, PC Gethin Roberts, a Welshman. It is his first crisis and he feels proud and important to play his part. He puts the man’s anxiety down to the fact that properties nearby are filling with water. Maybe … His eyes drift towards Marine Terrace. “Not your house, I hope, Sir.” He speaks in a pleasant, Shropshire burr.

The man says nothing.

“We’ve had to shut the bridge to all traffic. Too dangerous, you see. The flooding’s terrible round the Abbey.” They both glance at the tall, red castellations of the site of Brother Cadfael’s adventures surrounded now by duckboards and oily waters. A few brave shoppers, determined not to be beaten by nature step gingerly over the slippery planks. A cyclist swishes through, creating a wash behind him. “We’re sending crews in to make sure nobody is left inside.”

The man starts. “No body, Constable?”

Gethin Roberts pulls his yellow waterproof tightly around his shoulders. Glances up at the darkening sky. “Will it ever stop raining, do you think?”

No one answers. The man has gone. Vanished again into the rain. Afterwards the constable will scold himself for not taking down details. A description. A name. Something to identify the man by other than his strangeness. For the rest of his career in the police force PC Gethin Roberts will regret not having fingered a hot suspect when he had the chance. But like most significant moments in a life, he did not know it was a chance. And now he is distracted by a van driver approaching the bridge from the other side, anxious to make a delivery. “Sorry, mate,” he says chummily. “Can’t go across there. River’s still risin’. You’ll just get stuck.” The van driver tugs a mobile phone from his jeans pocket and starts shouting into it, waving his free hand. The constable watches the driver execute a clumsy three-pointed, one-handed turn and vanish into the grey back towards the Abbey.

A grey Hyundai van sits, abandoned, in the car park behind the Lion & Pheasant.

Inside the empty house the body floats towards the top of the stairs, bumping against the half-open door. Calliphora sticks to the wall. Biding her time.

The waters continue to rise until eleven o’clock in the morning, the weather dry now but the mountain streams still draining from up river. The town suffers with quiet dignity as she has done ever since the Saxons named it Scrobbesbyrig in times approaching prehistory. Far downstream the sea tide turns and the water level rises suddenly, its escape route cut off. It spills into meadows, floods the football ground, seeps into homes, bumps the kegs in the cellars of the Abbey Inn. The pressure of river-water heaves against the front door of the house in Marine Terrace. An open invitation to the four policemen and two firemen who have been detailed to make a final search of riverside properties.

Inside the cellar of number seven, Marine Terrace, the river has reached the top of the cellar window, now a porthole which peers into subaqua scenes of greeny brown, indistinguishable shapes of debris. Tins? Bottles? A shoe? A plank of wood? A duck’s feet?

At the top of the steps the cellar door creaks like an ancient galleon and moves with the will of the wash. It is a sea battle between wood and water; the floating corpse an inert witness.

Still standing on the middle of the English bridge PC Gethin Roberts continues, bossily, to dissuade people from walking into the town.

So the day passes.

The hitchhiker has reached a destination.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, wearing fisherman’s waders PC Gary Coleman tries the door of number seven, Marine Terrace. Calliphora escapes and joyfully buzzes along the waters. Freer than the people of Shrewsbury town who cannot fly.

The sudden gush of water hits the far wall of the room and creates a wave which surges towards the cellar door. Coleman flashes a beam strong enough to penetrate the gloom. And picks up the flaccid swimmer. For a second he is too stunned to say or do anything but stands with the water swishing around his ankles. Then he fumbles in his belt for his two-way radio. “Ten nine. Ten nine,” he manages.

The code for a police officer in need of urgent assistance.

2

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 substitutedsteak 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, ifMartin 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?”

“Don’t know, Martha. I really … don’t … know. Probably a homicide.”

“Have you picked up any superficial injuries?”

“A bit of bruising on the hands and face which could be ante, peri or postmortem.”

“I see.”

He gave one of his sudden warm, soft chuckles. “You know me, Martha, I like to wait until after the PM. Keep my cards close to my chest. I’ve watched far too many pathologists make monkeys of themselves playing the guessing game.” There was something infectious about his chuckle. She laughed too.

“Martha – I was wondering if …”

“I would come and view the body in situ? Yes – it seems a good idea. Give me half an hour.”

“Good.” He sounded relieved. “And wear galoshes.”

There were always a multitude of domestic arrangements to tend to before she was free. Having cajoled Agnetha into leaving her bedroom door ajar and turning her CD player down, put a pizza and oven chips into the oven, thrown salad into a bowl and drenched it in bottled French dressing she bribed the twins into loading the dishwasher after tea and doing all their homework before changing into some trousers and a mac. She tried to ignore the fact that the twins were whispering again as she came downstairs. Twenty minutes later she was back in her car, wellies loaded into the boot and heading back down the drive, towards the town.

The roads were wet and shiny black, lit by orange lampposts and eerily quiet. Folk were staying at home, intimidated by the river, guarding their property and impotently watching. She parked on some elevated ground near the Abbey and squleched her way over the duckboards to cross the English Bridge.

No one could doubt that something was going on here tonight. The scene was lit with swiping blue strobes; floodlights beamed on Marine Terrace.

Two policemen stepped forward, recognised her and waved her through. The sky was thunderous with sudden flashes of forked lightning. The entire scene looked as threatening as a Boris Karloff movie. She dropped down the steps towards the river and walked along the path, feeling the water licking at her wellies as it dribbled again towards the properties. She was glad to reach number seven.

The front door was wide open, the scene well illuminated. A sodden room which stunk of the river-bed, three people inside. The fourth no more than a pile of soaking clothes. Randall was the first to spot her. He gave her a wide grin which she knew was relief. Once she had viewed the body it could be removed to the mortuary. Concealed from prying eyes and the first step taken in the investigation.

Mark Sullivan was standing in the corner, his back to her, the body at his feet. The atmosphere was dank and dirty and smelt like the grave. It was the river water combining with early putrefaction, mixed in with the contents of flooded sewers. She looked around her. It probably had been a comfortable – if small – home. Light wallpaper, stained furniture which had bumped against the walls. Her wellies stuck to the carpet and her steps squelched each time she lifted her foot.

“We found him here.” Sullivan indicated a door, swinging slightly. “It leads to a cellar.”

She peered round. Alex flashed his torch down the stairs. River-water lay halfway up the cellar walls. Lime washed. It looked empty. No racks of wine here. She moved back to study the door. There was a stout bolt at the top. Shot back. She knew both the policeman and the pathologist would have noted all these details. She turned her attention to the body, rivulets of water still streaming from his clothes. Short brown hair, a half-open fish mouth. Pale skin which she knew would be cold to touch. Randall was right. It would be impossible to examine him properly here. She smiled at one, small detail. Randall had already bagged off the hands. She spoke to both of them. “Look – I don’t see what we can achieve here. Let’s get him down to the mortuary. And we’ll hold the PM tomorrow? In the morning.”

She walked slowly across the bridge, glancing back at the melodrama. Underneath the river was roaring like an unleashed animal. She was glad to leave it behind and reach her car.

3

The following morning brought no relief from the town’s problems. The ring road was jammed with traffic denied access to the town. BBC Radio Shropshire announced every hour that both the Welsh and English bridges were still closed and likely to remain so. The announcer further informed its listeners that the river Severn was expected to peak sometime on Thursday.

Martha fingered her steering wheel knowing that the inhabitants of Shrewsbury would be justifiably apprehensive. They were all affected whether or not they lived in the potential wash of the river, and the truth was bleak. The TV might be flashing out pictures reminiscent of the Blitz, portraying great camaraderie, togetherness and team spirit, dinghies, canoes, going to work in fisherman’s waders and so on but the reality was sick, gnawing worry. A fear that the insurance would not cover the real cost of the damage. Loss of business. Burglary of empty property, relatives suddenly foisted on families with no notion when they would leave. All this added to the stress of being invaded by contaminated river water. And now – on top of all those problems in the town – an unidentified body had turned up. For the already overstretched police force it must have seemed like the last straw – a crime scene difficult to investigate and seal off, possibly even a murder investigation. Martha smiled and channel-hopped between the local radio station and Classic FM. She wouldn’t swap places with a police officer planning an imminent holiday! She inched her way forward in the traffic queue and finally arrived at the mortuary at ten minutes to nine, parking next to the Panda car.

They were waiting for her, Alex Randall, Mark Sullivan, four other officers – one of whom was introduced as PC Gary Coleman, finder of the body – the mortuary assistant, a pathology student from Stoke and the inevitable SOCOs with their array of specimen bags. They were all gowned up, gloves on. The body lay in the centre, still dressed, on the post mortem table. The lights were white-bright and tilted full on him. There would be no more secrets and no privacy.

Their greetings were cursory and formal. They had a job to do. Alex Randall touched her arm and started speaking from behind her. “We may have an ID,” he said quietly.

“Oh?” She turned around.

As a woman it was hard not to respond to Alex Randall. He epitomised the traditional police officer. Tall, dark-haired, with serious hazel eyes, craggy, irregular, almost ugly features and a deeply buried sense of humour which he hid effectively behind formality. She had known him for a couple of years without ever seeing his face crack into a smile.

Then one day he had been explaining a case to her where a woman had fallen, drunk, with her face down a lavatory. Her friends had subsequently pulled her out, cleaned her up and dumped her on the steps of Monkmoor police station. And quite suddenly, as he had described the state of the woman’s clothes, her hair and her mortification, his face had cracked and, instead of the ugliness, she had glimpsed a man full of life and humour – away from the job. Sometimes she idly wondered about him and waited, as for the sun to explode from behind a cloud, for that smile that wrought such a transformation. But it was rare. As rare and welcome as sunshine in an English summer. Of his personal life she still knew nothing. It was a closed book. And she had picked up no gossip about him. Even from Jericho. Which made her curious because Jericho gossiped about everyone.

Randall carried on talking softly into her ear. She caught a waft of his sharp, strange after-shave overlying the pervading stink of mortuary-formalin which always reminded her of long ago pathology lectures in the medical school.

“The house this guy was washed out of was rented to a James Humphreys, a businessman from Slough, who moved up here a couple of months ago when he got a job managing the Jaguar garage. He fits the description. Right build, right age and we’ve picked up a Jaguar in a pub car park which belongs to him. He used to leave it there overnight. According to the estate agent who rented him the property, Humphreys was waiting to see how the job panned out before bringing his wife over to Shrewsbury – which is why he’d rented Marine Terrace. He was last at work on Sunday, left round about four in the afternoon. Since then there’s been no word from him.”

She put her hand out as though to pause the proceedings. “Have you made contact with his wife?”

“There’s been a bit of a problem. She isn’t at home. The local force are doing all they can but I thought in view of the circumstances you’d want Mark to proceed with the initial examination?”

She nodded. Peter, the mortician, was well able to tidy corpses up to completely conceal the signs of a post mortem.

So one of the policemen tied her into a cotton gown. She slipped her feet into a pair of theatre clogs, pulled a paper hat over her hair so a stray strand could not contaminate trace evidence and they were ready to start. She didn’t need gloves. She was here as an observer only. She knew better than to touch anything.

The police photographer took some flash pictures and Martha watched the river-water trickling slowly into the grooves on the post mortem table and pooling in the sink. One of the SOCOs filled a small specimen bottle with it. They would analyse it for diatoms and make sure it really was river-water which dripped from the dead man’s clothes.

They moved in closer. A ring of curious spectators.

In one way all corpses share a common appearance. Young or old, male or female, black or white. They do not look alive. In fact it is hard to imagine them ever having been alive. This makes the pathologist’s job easier. It detaches him from thinking too hard about the living, breathing person and from the circumstances which led to this.

Mark Sullivan broke the silence. “Better get on with it, I suppose.” His voice, echoing around the room, bouncing off the white tiles and clinical floor, was directed at the mortician.

Two of the police officers cut the suit very carefully into halves, slicing along the seams under the arms and at the side. They did the same with the shirt, the tie, the socks, the underpants. All were placed on a table nearby ready for examination. Now the body lay naked and exposed.

Mark Sullivan’s description earlier had been accurate. Humphreys was well-nourished and muscular, dark-haired and about forty. In good shape. It wasn’t hard to surmise that he had probably been physically attractive – alive. Adding to the fact that the suit had looked expensive, Martha’s mind wandered. She was surprised he had not kept more regular contact with his wife. They were assuming he had died sometime Sunday night or in the early hours of Monday morning. Yet his wife was “missing”, “uncontactable”. She wondered whether Mrs Humphreys was, perhaps, away on holiday. It was a nice time to go. But in these days of ready communication she was curious to know where Mrs Humphreys was.

This was something else that intrigued her. No ID in his pockets? No mobile phone? She leaned across to speak to Randall. “Did you find his wallet?”

He shook his head.

“A mobile phone?”

Again he shook his head. She met his eyes and read his concern there too. “He could have been robbed,” he said, but without conviction.

She turned her attention back to the post mortem. Mark Sullivan’s eyes had fixed on a small elliptical wound a little below the dead man’s left nipple. Right over the heart. And from the set of the pathologist’s face she knew he was already querying this as the cause of death. But it looked such a small, almost insignificant injury to fell this man. Sullivan would have to delve deeper to find out the truth, expose skin, bone, finally the very chambers of the heart. However he actually said nothing, but stood motionless, his hands clasped together, as the mortuary assistant performed the preliminaries, measuring the height from crown to heels, and checking the weight.

She knew that Mark Sullivan was waiting for her to make some comment. She contrasted him to the policeman. Shorter, early forties, cropped brown hair and tired but shrewd blue eyes. He invariably looked as though he’d passed a rough night. He gave her a tentative grin.

Before even making the first cut he was busily making his observations into the tape recorder. While Martha looked on. She was not meant to be an active participator but an impartial observer – the conductor of the orchestra whose role was to make sense from the various discordances between the law and medicine. So as Sullivan penetrated the skull and brain of the dead man she observed that James Humpreys, presumptive, had been in good health and shape – right up to the moment of his death.

At first there was little to see. Some marks on the shoulders and torso which they all knew could have been caused by a fall down the steps or being bumped around in the cellar by the rising tide of flood water. As Sullivan worked on the head she turned her attention to the chest. There was inevitable discoloration of the skin, a pale, dead fish appearance and to the right of it a puzzling mark. Small, perfectly round, pinkish bruising. She wondered what he would make of this. Sullivan worked steadily, his hands seeming to grow steadier and more confident the longer he worked. His face gradually looked less lined, less tired, more relaxed as he became increasingly absorbed. Martha watched him work, seeing the man he should be and wondering why he invariably did look so strained. As he finished with the head and turned his attention back to the chest area she was even more aware of his competence. He stood back and looked first, his latexed fingers touching the small, round contusion in the centre of the chest that she had noticed. “I wonder what caused this,” he mused.

Randall leaned forward. “I don’t know. We couldn’t see anything in the house that would have caused it.”

“Well – whatever it was – there’s very little bruising. It was inflicted within a very short time of his death.”

“Is there nothing in the cellar that could have caused this wound?” Martha looked at them both.

Randall answered. “Not that I’ve seen.”

“I’ll need to study the underlying tissues. It looks superficial but inflicted with some force. Now – let’s look at this.”

Sullivan’s index finger stroked the injury in the chest now, which gaped and smiled like a baby’s mouth. Gently he brought the edges back together. Peter handed him a ruler and he measured the wound very carefully. Twocentimetres. They all marked the number and knew its significance. The width of the blade of the causative instrument cannot be larger than the size of the wound. But because a man may move either to defend himself or to try and escape when he feels the first prick of the knife a small knife may make a big wound.

Sullivan frowned and pointed out more detail. The wound was asymmetric, tapering thinly at one end, blunt at the other. “Fish-tailing,” he murmured then smiled at the policeman and Martha knew he relished this Sherlock Holmes touch.

“So, Alex,” Sullivan said. “You’re looking for a single-edged instrument, with a blade narrower than two centimetres.”

“Well we haven’t found it yet,” Alex answered grumpily, as though he imagined the pathologist thought he was handing him a solution on a plate. “But we’ll get a team to search the area – as well as we can,” he said. “The cellar’s still half underwater.” His eyes clouded. They all fell silent and Martha knew what they were thinking. The Severn, snaking round the town, no more than four steps from the front door of Marine Terrace. Expected to peak some time on Thursday and they would all have to wait.

“We may never find it,” the policeman finished. It could be washing along the bottom of the river. Embedding in the mud or shifting with the ebb and flow of the water.