Mud, Muck and Dead Things Read online

  ‘You’re the gentleman who reported finding the body?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Smith. He pursed his mouth. ‘A woman, then?’

  ‘I understand the body is female,’ retorted Jess, deliberately misunderstanding him.

  There was a brief gleam of appreciation in the dark eyes. Eli Smith wasn’t a fool. But, thought Jess, probably liked to act one.

  ‘It is, as far as I could tell. I didn’t hang about in there. I called you lot. It is,’ added Eli loftily, ‘your business. Mine is scrap.’

  ‘So I see.’ She looked up at the collection on the lorry. ‘Where do you get it all?’

  ‘It’s legal!’ said Smith immediately. ‘I got receipts.’

  ‘So you don’t farm here, Mr Smith?’ confirmed Morton wearily.

  A flicker of contempt in the dark eyes. ‘No, I don’t. There’s no money in farming no more. I’m holding on to my land until such time as.’

  ‘As what?’

  ‘Ah…’ said Mr Smith, laying a callused finger alongside his nose. ‘That’s it, ain’t it?’

  Jess sighed. ‘Tell us how you came to find the body, Mr Smith.’

  Eli’s manner changed. Beneath the teak hue of his skin, a dull red flooded across his features. ‘On my property! That’s trespass.’

  ‘If you don’t farm, what do you use the place for?’

  ‘I store my merchandise here,’ returned Mr Smith with dignity. ‘Don’t I?’ he added.

  ‘If you say you do. And do you live here, even though you don’t farm the land?’

  This earned her another look of disgust. ‘No, I don’t, and you wouldn’t ask a tomfool question like that if you went and took a look at the house. It’s all boarded up and empty and the roof is in a real bad state. Of course,’ continued Eli twisting his blunt features into a pathetic expression, ‘a poor old chap like me can’t be expected to pay for all the repairs.’

  ‘So why not sell the farm, then?’ Phil asked. He didn’t like standing around in the rain and had been shifting from foot to foot.

  ‘I told you,’ said Eli sulkily to him, ‘I’m waiting on things, until such time, like I said.’

  ‘Barmy,’ murmured Phil Morton.

  Jess had moved off a few paces to get a better look at the yard from the road and judge what a passer-by might or might not be able to see. She zipped her rainproof jacket up to her neck, stuck her hands in the pockets and wished she could pull up the hood against the persistent rain. Water was beginning to plaster her short-cropped auburn hair to her skull. But there was something undignified about a hood fitting closely over her head, which would make her look like a rambler who’d strayed into the scene out of curiosity. Moreover, people here needed to see who she was. It was like the king raising his helmet on the battlefield so that the troops could be reassured someone senior was in charge.

  Give over! she thought. You’re no Henry the Fifth; you’re just an overworked police officer and this is Friday, for pity’s sake. Why did these things always happen on a public holiday or at a weekend?

  It’s your job, by your choice, replied another little voice in her head. You gave up a normal life when you joined the force. She had a suspicion the voice belonged to her mother. Neither of her parents had understood her wish to join the police. They’d accepted it reluctantly, but her mother still resented what she bluntly called ‘the waste’. Waste of what? Jess had once unwisely asked her. ‘Of the life you could have had!’ had been the unkind reply. Jess hadn’t asked again.

  Her father, having worn a military uniform for most of his working life, had more respect for what she did, even though he also would have wished her to have chosen something else. ‘I can’t say I approve,’ he’d told her when informed of her decision. ‘It’s not what I’d have liked for you. But if it’s what you want, then fair enough. It’s a worthwhile career. But you’ll find it tough going.’

  She wondered now briefly if he had thought she’d find it too tough, and would cry off after a while. She hadn’t and he’d never commented.

  Further back by the lorry Phil had again taken up the questioning of the witness. She could see them both from the corner of her eye and the body language spoke volumes. Phil was getting tetchy. As for the witness . . . he was sounding belligerent and stood there with his solid round head sunk between his hefty shoulders, glowering at Phil. It was a picture of defiance but it was a smokescreen. It was designed to hide something. Just for a moment she wondered if it was fear.

  ‘So, Mr Smith, you came out here today to leave that load on your truck here in your yard. I understand that’s what you told us when you phoned in!’ boomed Morton much too heartily.

  ‘Then you know the answer. How many more times have I gotta say it?’

  ‘A chance visit, then? I mean, you don’t make a regular call here?’

  ‘As and when…’ Eli looked shifty.

  ‘But the only reason you came here today was to unload your truck? Did anyone expect you?’

  ‘Who would that be, then? There’s no one here.’

  ‘But you didn’t drive into your yard. You parked here, outside. That meant you would have to carry everything on that truck through the gate.’ Phil indicated the loaded truck with its collection of domestic appliances. ‘A weight like that and all on your own? You’d have a job on! Why not drive right in? Then you could climb up and just shove the things off the back. Wouldn’t that make more sense?’

  There was something terrier-like about Phil Morton. He wouldn’t let go of any question until he thought he’d got a satisfactory answer. He was compact in build and only just the required height for a police officer. He was conscious of it. Jess liked Phil and respected his ability, but he wasn’t always the easiest person to work with. Bull-baiting, she thought suddenly, that was what the two of them brought to mind, some picture in a history book of a long-vanished cruel sport. The larger powerful animal and the smaller but determined dogs snapping at it. It often worked as a technique with awkward and unsophisticated witnesses. But Jess wasn’t sure it would succeed with Mr Smith.

  ‘Thought I’d take a look round first,’ said Eli defensively.

  ‘That’s what you usually do? Take a look round first?’

  ‘Not necessarily but lately, well, there are all sorts of people around these days, you never know.’

  ‘Anyone in particular?’

  ‘Just general,’ said Eli, now looking decidedly furtive. He rallied. ‘Just as well I did, isn’t it? Because there’s a dead woman in my cowshed.’ He scowled. ‘This is nothing to do with me! I didn’t ask to find her. She’s got no right to be there and I hope, when you go, you take her with you. You ain’t going to leave her lying there?’

  ‘It’s been a shock for you, Mr Smith,’ called Jess, turning towards them and treating him to a sympathetic smile, designed to calm nervous witnesses. And the old boy was nervous. But what about? There was something, perhaps a lot, he wasn’t telling them. ‘What you need is a nice hot cup of tea as soon as you get home,’ she suggested.

  Phil gave her a look of startled disapproval.

  ‘Shock?’ Eli’s bright dark gaze leapt from Morton to her. ‘Oh, shock . . . it’s that, all right. I’ve been through enough trouble. I don’t need any more and not here. She’s got no business here, no business at all! Someone’s done it deliberate, dumped her, that’s what I reckon. Some bugger done it on purpose for me to find, and it’s not right!’

  He was definitely getting agitated. Jess decided to let him off the hook for the time being. She signalled as much to Morton. ‘Thank you for now, Mr Smith. I’ll go and take a look. Perhaps you’d like to make a statement to the sergeant and give him your details?’

  Eli eyed Phil cautiously. ‘Will I have to sign it?’

  ‘Eventually, sir, when it’s printed out. You can come in and do that, or we could call round to see you,’ said Morton.

  ‘Oh,’ said Eli, and looked shifty again.

  ‘Some problem, sir?’

  El
i sniffed. ‘I’m not one for writing. OK if I just make my mark?’

  * * *

  White-suited figures picked their way around the sea of mud that had been a farmyard and could be seen moving inside the open-fronted cattle shed on the far side. A uniformed man was guarding the blue and white plastic tape tied between the gateless gateposts. As Jess approached, having donned protective clothing, the constable lifted the flimsy barrier so that she could duck underneath.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.

  ‘Wickham, ma’am.’

  ‘Do you know who took the original report?’

  ‘Someone phoned in to the station, ma’am. The station radioed Jeff Murray and me, out in the patrol car. So we came over here and found that old chap…’

  Wickham indicated Eli Smith who was now indulging in some tirade and waving his arms about. Phil, holding his notebook in one hand, was making placatory gestures with the other, valiantly following her lead in trying to calm down the witness, but not having much luck. He looked as if he was swatting flies.

  Smith was probably on again about it being on his property, thought Jess. This was the one thing that really seemed to shock the old boy: not the finding of a corpse, the sight of death, but finding it here in his cowshed. That’s what had frightened him.

  ‘And you both, you and Murray, went into the barn, cowshed, whatever it is?’

  ‘Well, yes, ma’am. I mean, we didn’t really believe him. We thought perhaps he’d been at the home-made cider.’

  ‘Did he come with you?’

  Wickham shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t. He wouldn’t budge from the road here. He said he’d seen it once and didn’t want to see it again. We thought that if a body was there, you wouldn’t want too many people tramping round the place, so just Murray and I went.’

  The constable shifted from foot to foot and looked for the moment as if he was going to throw up. ‘It’s horrible,’ he said.

  ‘Never seen a murder victim before?’ The constable was very young. Jess guessed this must be his first time. There was always a first murder victim for them all. Violence and man’s cruelty to man, nothing could prepare you for the shock of seeing it.

  ‘No, ma’am.’ He looked shame-faced. He didn’t like having to admit it, especially to a woman. She did him the favour of not looking sympathetic. In any case, she had a bone to pick with him and his partner.

  ‘Next time you’re called to a suspicious death, don’t park your car up on the soft verge. Leave it on the road. Now we’ve got your tyre tracks in with all the others.’

  The youngster looked stricken. ‘Yes, ma’am, sorry.’ Hurriedly he added, ‘But I did spot the paint, ma’am, and pointed it out to one of them fellers.’ He indicated the Scene-of-Crime team.

  ‘Paint?’ she asked sharply.

  In reply, the constable pointed at the nearer gatepost. A smear of metallic silver-grey paint glittered amid the rust. Jess stooped to look at it. This was done very recently and by a car driven by someone either in a hurry or very careless. She’d put money on his being in a hurry. Hurry to get in here or hurry to leave? It didn’t come from Smith’s truck. They’d get it over to forensics and find out what sort of vehicle had left it. Different manufacturers used different paints. The paint smear was a real piece of luck.

  ‘Well done,’ she said.

  The young constable looked relieved.

  * * *

  Tom Palmer was coming out of the shed.

  ‘Hello, Inspector Campbell.’ He grinned.

  Before Jess had taken up her present post, every pathologist she’d come across had been nudging middle age and their long close acquaintance with death and violence had bred in them a certain detachment. Palmer, on the other hand, was young, still enthusiastic enough to bring a personal curiosity to his work. He was a Cornishman. It sounded in his voice and showed in his dark hair and eyes. Perhaps, three or more centuries ago, some shipwrecked Spanish sailor had swum ashore on the rocky Cornish coast and settled down with a local girl.

  ‘I’ve finished here. Young female, late teens to early twenties. I’d say she’s been strangled: bruises on the neck, burst blood vessels in the eyes, tongue protruding. She bit her lip in the struggle but she wouldn’t have had time to put up much of a defence. She’d have passed out. I’ll know more when I get her on the slab.’

  ‘How long has she been dead?’ Jess asked.

  ‘At the moment I’d say your guess is as good as mine, but not very long. Rigor is passing off, so let’s say thirty hours? I’ll be in a position to tell you more later.’ Palmer stripped off his thin rubber gloves. ‘Rum old place, this, isn’t it? Look at that house over there. Can’t you see Dracula flapping out of its attic window one dark and stormy night?’

  ‘I don’t need Dracula,’ said Jess. ‘I’ve got enough to do with present-day horrors.’

  She went into the shed. The girl still lay on the ground awaiting Jess’s arrival, now that the Scene-of-Crime crew had done their stuff. After Jess had left, the body could be removed and become Tom Palmer’s area of expertise.

  Jess paused instinctively in respect. The presence of death inspired a decent demeanour. Not that it was unknown for police officers and SOCOs alike to indulge in black humour, seeking to defuse a stressful situation. But this was a dead human being, even though at first glance it might be mistaken for a discarded life-sized dummy with arms and legs crooked in awkward, uncomfortable positions. We don’t all end up murdered, thought Jess sympathetically, but we all ‘pass on’, as adults in her childhood had always said, if they thought a child might be listening. Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls and all the rest of it.

  She moved closer and bent over the body. This girl wasn’t out of her late teens, she decided. Her features, even distorted as they now were, still showed signs of a youthful puppy fat. She must have been pretty before this happened to her. Her skin was unblemished; her long, thick hair was a natural-looking blond, though the staring eyes were brown. Dark smudges around them were less likely to be bruising than smeared mascara. Jess had a brief mental image of a young girl leaning towards a mirror, carefully applying her eye make-up.

  She was also nicely dressed, to Jess’s eye, in newish jeans, white T-shirt now smeared with mud, fairly new trainers. A raspberry pink showerproof jacket lay alongside her. It showed little sign of wear. She’d had money in her pocket when she’d gone out to buy all this new gear. If the shopping trip had been a recent one, they might be able to trace the jacket to a particular shop. An assistant might even remember the customer.

  No jewellery, thought Jess. No earrings, no wristwatch. Absence of these things always raised the possibility of robbery as a motive. But muggers didn’t generally strangle. They were more likely to carry a knife.

  Jess became aware of the crime-scene manager standing beside her. Perhaps he was waiting to see if she’d look as queasy as the young constable. But Jess had practice in schooling her features so that they revealed nothing. She turned her head to look at him, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘Did you take a scraping of that paint on the gatepost?’

  ‘We took it and we took plaster casts of some tyre tracks. Someone did a rapid three-point turn…’ He pointed over her shoulder into the yard and an area of churned mud protected by a line of plastic mini-tents, like a row of garden cloches. Then he gestured in the direction of the boarded-up farmhouse. ‘Do we break into the house? It’s sealed up like it had the plague in there.’

  ‘We’ll have to check it out.’ Jess frowned. Eli Smith was probably still engaged in battle with Phil Morton. ‘I’ll see if the owner has a key and tell him we’re going to search his property.’

  She went outside where Palmer waited. When she was sure no one else was looking, she drew a deep breath of air, hoping to dispel all the miasma of death. She didn’t mind if Palmer saw her do it. He’d understand.

  He smiled at her now. ‘It could be worse,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know. But she’s very
young. You can take her away as far as I’m concerned,’ Jess told him.

  They generally were young, murdered women. Older women in steady relationships didn’t go out with strange men, didn’t frequent clubs and bars alone, didn’t accept lifts from casual acquaintances. If the victim had been out and about ‘in the line of business’, she was also likely to be young. Streetwalking was a young profession, in many cases distressingly so. But there had been something depressingly ‘normal’ about the appearance of the girl in the cowshed. Not a tart, just a nice teenage girl. She ought not to be lying there dead this Friday. She ought to be planning her weekend, phoning her friends, making dates, getting ready for another shopping spree, all activities that Jess’s mother would have deemed part of ‘a normal life’.

  And look where a normal life got the dead girl, thought Jess wryly. Another entry for the murder statistics, lying in mud and filth, her body soon to be dissected and studied, her life equally dissected and discussed; if they identified her. But they should be able to do that. Thirty hours was already long enough for someone to have reported her missing.

  Beside her, Tom Palmer was nodding. ‘Got the new man arriving on Monday? This has turned up just in time to greet him!’

  ‘Don’t I know it?’ Jess grimaced as she spoke and Palmer chuckled.

  He could afford to find it amusing, she thought. He didn’t have a new boss about to arrive. A new broom, as the saying went, anxious to bring order, or rather, impose his version of order.

  Morton was squelching towards them across the yard, glum satisfaction on his face. ‘I jotted down his statement, for what it’s worth. He just repeats he came here to unload his truck, decided to check out the yard first for reasons he won’t be specific about and found the body. I’ll get it printed up. It makes sense as far as it goes…’ Phil’s voice trailed away and he gazed morosely at his notes.