Fatal Legacy (17 page)

‘Good night, Chief Inspector.’

‘How was he dressed when you found him?’

‘Surely you’ve seen the photographs – just the leather posing pouch, nothing else. Why do you ask?’

‘Look here.’

Fenwick peered at Graham’s neck, where the rope had contused the skin as he had strangled slowly. There were scratch marks, presumably from his fingernails as the noose was tightened.

‘What am I looking for?’

Pendlebury gave a deep sigh, as if a promising pupil had just failed an elementary test.

‘Look at the pattern of bruising and rope burns. See anything odd?’

Fenwick peered harder, not wanting to disappoint Pendlebury.

‘Well, the patterning is very irregular. Towards the back – I assume where the knot pressed in under his left ear – there’s a fully developed rounded bruise. On the right side the heavy contusions are all in a narrow line with spots of subcutaneous haemorrhaging beneath – and there seems to be a thin darker bruise, a sort of indentation, running round about half his neck.’

‘Not bad. What does it suggest to you?’

‘Uneven pressure, changes in the angle of the body? I’ve no idea, you tell me.’

Pendlebury bent down beside him, winced with pain and then used a little finger the size of a chipolata to point delicately at the various wounds.

‘I think that he was clothed when the noose went round his neck. This is the clear indentation of a shirt collar – no, don’t peer; I’ve taken some magnified images. It would also explain
why the bruising on the right varies above and below a clear line.’

‘So he was undressed after he died?’

‘Very possibly, and here – wait, I’ll give you the magnifying glass – look at the pattern of this bruise.’

Fenwick peered closer.

‘I think that’s the imprint of a chain. It’s cut into his neck in most places, but just there I think we’ll be able to record a clear pattern of the links.’

‘I’ll find out from his girlfriend if he wore a neck chain.’

‘And check what sort of ring he wore too, whilst you’re at it.’

There was a clear imprint of a ring on his right little finger, with a callus on the rise of his palm where it would have worn against the metal with each daily activity – holding a pen, drinking, eating.

‘I hadn’t considered robbery as a motive!’

‘Could have been taken as souvenirs, or he was stripped by someone else – an opportunist thief who wasn’t squeamish, perhaps, though I don’t think so. The leather pants he was wearing were brand new; they still had the plastic staple from the purchase tag in the label. It would have scratched and been uncomfortable, but there’s no mark on him. Either he had only just put them on before he died, or someone put them on him afterwards.’

‘We’ll try and find out who makes them, and with luck we may even be able to trace the purchase. Are these fresh?’ Fenwick pointed to two long bruises running under the dead man’s armpits.

‘They’re faint, hardly developed, but yes, they are fairly new. I’d say that they had been caused shortly before his death.’

‘Was he tied up?’

‘No, they’re too short. I’ve never seen anything like these before.’

He backed away to allow his assistant to photograph them in close-up, then continued with his minute examination of the outside of the body but found nothing further of significance. Next he opened Graham’s skinny torso and started on his internal examination and removal of the vital organs. Fenwick listened to the unusually brief commentary Pendlebury dictated
into an overhead microphone, worried by the man’s apparent preoccupation. From time to time he had to stop and straighten his back, and when he did so Fenwick noticed the sweat of pain on his face.

‘He’d had breakfast before he died, but the stomach contents aren’t fully digested. I’d say he was dead within an hour of his last meal. If you find his hotel and when he had breakfast I’ll be able to give you a clearer time of death. Right now, all I can tell you is that it was between twelve and eighteen hours before his body was found. I just need to take samples for toxicology, then I’m done.’

‘Yesterday morning, up to noon. Well, that’s a start. I’ll leave you to get on.’

Pendlebury straightened his back and winced again.

‘Lumbago?’

‘Just sciatica. Rain coming.’

The pathologist was more morose than ever and dismissed Fenwick’s attempted sympathy with a brusque shake of his capped head. He nodded to his assistant: ‘You can finish him now,’ then beckoned to Fenwick with a bloody gloved finger. ‘My office in ten minutes?’

In the stuffy office, Fenwick squeezed into the one visitor’s chair and waited patiently. To his surprise, the pathologist arrived early, his face grey with pain. As Pendlebury eased his bulk into the tiny space, the walls seemed to crowd in on them. The pathologist winced again as he lowered himself carefully into a leather chair and rearranged a faded cushion into the small of his back.

‘Whisky?’

‘Too early for me.’ It was only eleven o’clock and Fenwick shrugged away a moment’s concern for his old friend as none of his business.

‘You’re right, but I think I need the help.’ Pendlebury poured a short measure and surreptitiously used it to wash down a small white pill. ‘Well, this is a bugger.’

‘Suicide, accident or murder?’ Fenwick had to ask, although it was clear that the death wasn’t nearly as straightforward as it had first looked.

‘Exactly.’ The pathologist spread his pristine podgy fingers
on the desk top and studied them intently. ‘It could be any one of them. You’re including accident because of the auto-erotic strangulation possibility, I suppose? Hmm, yes, well it is a
possibility
,’ he placed particular emphasis on the word, which indicated clearly that it wasn’t his favoured hypothesis, ‘but no, I don’t think so. Of course, the scene was such a mess that anything’s possible.’ He looked accusingly over the top of his half-moon glasses, and Fenwick frowned.

‘Don’t tell me, I know, but the damage was done before we arrived. At least they didn’t cut the rope.’

‘Yes. Well, I don’t favour accident. Apart from everything else, the noose was entirely of the wrong type. That knot would’ve been damn painful, enough to distract him no matter how much he tried to become aroused. And the pornography you found was very mild. You’d expect something more hardcore. As I say, we can’t rule it out because of the scene, but it’s highly unlikely in my opinion.’

There was a silence in which Fenwick let the older man compose his thoughts.

‘This is a tough one, Fenwick. Whatever I think, it’s going to be hard to prove because the chain of evidence is so badly disrupted. If it was a suicide it was an inefficient one. He was asphyxiated; his neck didn’t break, so that rules out his having jumped from the branch above. He must have just kicked aside whatever he’d been standing on and swung there for quite a few minutes. Very painful way to choose to go but perhaps he didn’t realise.’

Fenwick stood up, started to pace, but quickly reached the edge of the room. He leant his back against the glass-panelled door, suddenly frustrated and eager to be gone.

‘And murder? Yes, that’s another definite possibility. If there are fabric samples from his missing clothes on the rope, it’ll help. Are there any?’

‘It’s been sent to forensic, but there was so much disturbance at the scene we’ll never be able to prove a chain of evidence with absolute certainty. Anything else?’

Pendlebury shook his head. There were no other signs of injury to the body, no old wounds, nothing else of any help. He sensed Fenwick’s impatience to be gone and concluded quickly.
He would send the samples to toxicology as a matter of routine, and most results would be through within twenty-four hours.

Fenwick ran down the steps from the hospital wing that housed the mortuary and sprinted across the car park to his car.

‘Bloody fool!’ he shouted to himself as he ran. He wasn’t talking about the doctor.

An hour later he was crouching inside the white tenting that spread from the branches of the huge beech. He’d missed the SOCO team, but a constable on duty outside gave him their message: a completed report would be with him by early afternoon. He stood now to one side of the death scene, staring up at the branches above. Twisted roots ran out from the knotted trunk to burrow into the leaf mould over twenty feet away. The ground under the tree was bare of grass and covered by years of leaves and debris in various stages of decomposition. With a caution he couldn’t help but feel was redundant, given the trampling of the night before, Fenwick moved the thick leaves aside as he edged to where the body had been lying. He brushed the dirt away with his gloved hands, sweeping a path before him about a meter wide.

When he’d got to within a foot of the trunk, he tiptoed back to the perimeter and started the sweeping action again, widening the cleared space into a wedge. Again he reached the trunk and returned to the edge of the circle he was making around it. It was hot within the tenting, and he removed his jacket.

‘Need any help, sir?’ A constable was peering inside with a look of concern.

‘Yes, Constable … Robin, isn’t it?’

The man beamed, pleased to have been remembered and blissfully ignorant of Fenwick’s knack with names. He wasn’t to realise that his beaky red nose was the only clue the DCI needed.

‘Come in. Be careful. Clear the leaf mould to your right away from the path I’ve made. Tread lightly.’

‘What am I looking for, sir? They were pretty thorough, you know.’

Fenwick raised an eyebrow and the man shut up at once. It wasn’t his place to offer opinions.

‘Indentations. They’d have been concentrating on finding trace evidence, and with the poor light this morning they could have missed the marks I’m looking for.’

The two men worked silently for another ten minutes, sweating uncomfortably as weak sunshine burned through the shade of the tree to heat the confined air in the tenting below.

‘Sir! Here, sir. What about these?’

Fenwick crouched down by the excited constable and examined the neat L-shaped pressure mark over an inch deep in the soil. Carefully they scraped the leaf mould away around it and discovered three more. Each measured about three-quarters of an inch by an inch, and they were spaced about eighteen inches apart.

‘Good man. Give me your radio and stay here. No one comes near, do you understand?’

Fenwick called the station, and another scene-of-crime team was dispatched to the beech tree. He asked for all the leafmould to be removed and searched and casts made of the impressions. There’d be hell to pay on the budget, but the Superintendent would sort that out. And anyway, he now felt that he was dealing with a murder. That the body had been undressed after death was not conclusive proof, but Jenny’s comments about Graham’s concerns, and the fact that he was planning to talk to the police, had established a likely motive. Now, he had discovered that the box on which the man had been standing had been removed. On balance, it looked like murder.

The Wainwright household was sleeping in and the
temporary
butler of the night before had left. Fenwick knocked loudly for several minutes at the front door and then in exasperation found the tradesman’s entrance. It was locked, but just as he was contemplating a break-in, a girl turned up on a bicycle.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes, I need to speak to Mr and Mrs Wainwright-Smith and I can’t get a reply. My name’s DCI Fenwick from Harlden police.’ He showed her his warrant card. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Irene, I work here.’

‘Were you working last night?’

‘Yeah, till midnight, then I went home.’

‘Which is where?’

‘Other side of the park. Look, why are you here anyway?’

Fenwick explained briefly that he had an appointment with Mrs Wainwright-Smith, and the furtive look of the casual
lawbreaker
crept into her eyes. Suddenly she seemed less inclined to let him in, and she blocked the door with her body as she unlocked it.

‘I’ll check with Mrs Wainwright-Smith to see if it’s OK. You’d best wait where you are.’

‘It’s all right, I’m expected.’

She shrugged in defeat and he followed her into a long brown-and-cream-tiled passage with scuffed dark brown doors on either side. Mrs Wainwright-Smith’s refurbishment of the house had not extended below stairs.

‘Bloody ’ell.’

The butler and cooks obviously hadn’t felt it was their job to tidy up at the end of the extended evening, and glasses, cups, mugs and leftover toast littered the surfaces.

‘What’s been goin’ on ’ere? This was tidy when I left.’ A note of anticipatory defence had crept into her voice and Fenwick wondered just what Mrs Wainwright-Smith was like to work for.

‘It was a very late night.’

‘What happened?’ Sudden fear leapt into her eyes and she backed half a step away from him. ‘Why’re you here?’

‘I’ll explain it all in a moment. Now, tell me about yesterday evening while you put the kettle on.’

His jacket was flung over a chair; he loosened his tie and surreptitiously removed his cuff links before folding his sleeves up.

‘You’re filthy. Whatya been up to?’

He rubbed his face wearily and yawned noisily.

‘Tell me about last night and I’ll tell all.’

Sensing gossip, she made two mugs of strong tea, put a
blue-and
-white-striped sugar bowl in the middle of the table and settled her comfortable bottom on to an old leather-padded chair.

‘Go on.’

‘You first.’

‘Fair ’nough. Not much to say, really. I was paid for the full
day, plus extra after eleven, and I left at twelve.’

‘How did you get here and back home?’

She raised her eyebrows at the dumb question. ‘I cycle – remember.’

‘Even at night?’

‘’Course. It’s quite safe. I use the cycle track by the river, then the footpath through the woods, and there’s only Badgers’ Break to go through before I’m home.’