The Thirteenth Coffin (3 page)

Before they went any further they were stopped by the white-suited presence of Jim Thomson, the Scene of
Crime manager and senior SOCO. He gazed across at Lapslie.

‘If you wouldn’t mind slipping a pair of these on, Chief Inspector.’

Petrol. Lapslie licked his lips to be sure. Yes, Thomson’s voice definitely tasted of petrol. Lapslie turned to face him, trying to wipe the taste from his lips with the back of his hand. Taking a pair of the transparent plastic overshoes from Thomson and slipping them over his Timberlands, Lapslie looked at the man one more time and wondered why he tasted of petrol, of all things. Did his mind just randomly assign tastes to sounds, or was there some deeper underlying logic?

He pulled himself back to reality. ‘Thank you. Are you sure you don’t want us suited up?’

Thomson shook his head. ‘Quite sure. Well not at this stage, anyway. The overshoes will be enough.’

Lapslie nodded his understanding before he turned to follow Bradbury into the bunker.

The interior was more basic than Lapslie had imagined. Nothing high-tech – just what appeared to be concrete wall, a concrete floor and piles of old tat, most of it broken. The smell of the decomposing body was strong, however, and seemed to fill the entire room
with a thick, unseen fog, refusing to drift away even though the large metal security doors had been left open. Lapslie had never really got used to that smell, even though he lived in a world of tastes and smells. The instant desire to be sick faded quickly, and he wondered idly why no sound he had ever heard had provoked the taste of rotting human flesh.

He looked around. ‘A bit sparse, isn’t it?’

Bradbury nodded. ‘This is just the top level. It goes down several more floors. There are bedrooms, kitchens, command and control centres, even broadcasting facilities. Five hundred people could stay down here for over five years, apparently.’

‘As long as they don’t mind the taste of corned beef. Didn’t know we had that many important people in the area.’

‘With their families.’

Lapslie smiled. ‘Of course. Now it makes sense.’

Lapslie noticed that arc lamps had been positioned at intervals with cables running through. As they reached the far end of the room Lapslie saw a familiar figure packing up his medical bag and standing away from what seemed to be a pile of old rags lying on the floor, but which Lapslie knew to be a body. It was odd, he
considered, the strange shapes, positions and appearances people took on after death. So many looked like mannequins: white and stiff, all the life taken out of them. Others died with their mouths wide open in one last desperate scream at the cruel trick that fate had played on them. So few went gentle into that good night, he pondered. Mostly they raged against the dying of the light.

Jeff Whitefoot was the police surgeon for Essex, and had been for years. He tended to share duties with the pathologist, Jane Catherall, and Lapslie usually bumped into one or the other at scenes such as this. He had always liked Whitefoot because he was his own man, and had been even in the bad old days, when the relationship between police surgeons and forensic teams was a little too cosy and often resulted in evidence being altered to fit the circumstances. So many innocent people had been sent down, many for life, because the various people investigating the crimes knew each other, drank together or could be easily bullied or manipulated into saying what was necessary. Whitefoot had always been above all that. Kept himself to himself. Never attended social events, and it would be a brave investigating officer that tried to intimidate him.

As he approached, Lapslie stuck his hand out. Peeling off his white latex protective gloves, Whitefoot took it and shook it enthusiastically.

‘Jeff. Good to see you again. It’s been a while.’

‘Chief Inspector. It’s been a while and a half.’ He gazed up into Lapslie’s eyes. ‘You okay? I heard you’d been ill.’

His voice tasted of dark chocolate with a touch of something else which Lapslie struggled to identify. Lavender, maybe? Whitefoot was always formal, never used first or familiar names. He kept his private and professional lives separate and would never compromise.

‘Under control,’ Lapslie said shortly. The last thing he wanted was a forensic cross-examination of his symptoms by a medical man. Well, not this medical man, anyway. ‘What about you?’ he added quickly. ‘I heard you were on short time?’

Whitefoot shrugged. ‘I work two and a half days a week. I haven’t got the stamina to run with the young bulls any more, but I like to keep my hand in. Keep involved, if you know what I mean. And there were . . . family issues.’

Lapslie nodded. ‘So what do we have? Was he murdered?’

Whitefoot shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Looks like
natural causes – well, as natural as the death of a man who lived rough, clearly drank too much and had done for a number of years can be. Won’t really know until after the post-mortem, but there are no signs of violence, no bullet holes, knives in the back, depressed fractures of the skull, that sort of thing.’

Lapslie gave Bradbury a sideways glance. She knew what he was thinking and looked down at her feet.

‘Okay, well thanks for turning out.’

Whitefoot nodded. ‘I thought Inspector White was on call-out?’

‘He is, got a stabbing to deal with.’

‘Really? That I suppose would also explain why I’m here. Doctor Catherall is presumably at the stabbing.’

‘We all have our cross to bear, Jeff. Let me have your report as soon as you can.’

Whitefoot looked slightly indignant. ‘It will be on your desk first thing, as it always is and always will be.’

Lapslie nodded his appreciation before walking past him to where the body was lying. He looked down at the pile of rags that had once been a human being. He often wondered how and why people ended up like this: what it was within their personalities that had allowed this to happen. But then, perhaps they were just unfortunate.

He remembered his first sergeant, Fred Gimber. Gimber had been his sergeant when Lapslie was still a probationer. He had been a sergeant in the Royal Marine Commandos during the Second World War. Hard as nails, a man you didn’t cross lightly. Local villains were terrified of him. Yet there was this one old tramp that he looked after as if they were related. Lapslie had been with him one Christmas Day when Gimber had searched and found the tramp just so he could give him a bottle of whisky and a hundred cigarettes before driving him to a shelter in the area car to make sure he had a decent Christmas dinner. Later Lapslie had discovered that the old tramp had served with Gimber during the war and had won the Military Medal for bravery. He had stayed in the Army after the war, but had been kicked out a few years later due to a stomach ulcer. Without the formal structure of the Army, he had quickly fallen apart. He died a few years later and Gimber had paid for his funeral. Such was the man. Small gestures. If everyone took responsibility for what was within the reach of their arm then the world would be a better place.

Lapslie guessed that if you scratched the body of the man lying before him there might well have been a similar story. Around the corpse was an array of food
wrappers, old papers, empty and broken bottles, and a worn-out haversack with ripped seams. He looked across at Jim Thomson, who had followed them to the scene. ‘So what do we know about this poor old sod?’ Thomson shook his head. ‘Nothing much. Just these.’

He handed Lapslie several old black-and-white photos of a man with a pretty wife and two small children. It was impossible to say if the man decomposing at his feet was the same one in the photo. He turned to Bradbury, handing her the photos. ‘Try and find out who he was. Natural death or not, I would like to know.’

Bradbury dropped the photographs into an exhibit bag that Thomson handed to her.

‘I’m still wondering how the hell he got in,’ Lapslie said.

‘We are working on that, sir.’

‘Don’t suppose for some bizarre reason he could have had a key? Maybe he used to be a local councillor.’

Bradbury shrugged. ‘No idea, sir.’

‘Well, when we find out who he is we might have a better chance of finding out how he got in and what he was doing here, besides keeping warm and drinking.’

Bradbury nodded. She glanced away, awkwardly. ‘There’s something else I’d like you to see, sir.’

‘Something connected to this body?’

Bradbury shook her head. ‘No, I don’t believe so, sir – but odd to say the least.’ She moved away and Lapslie followed when she walked into a small antechamber just off the main room. She turned to Lapslie. ‘This room had been locked, sir—’

‘Nothing odd in that, Emma.’

‘No, sir, but it was locked with a new-style Chubb lock. Took our locksmith longer to open this door than it did the main door. Someone’s been using this room on a regular basis.’

Lapslie nodded. ‘Okay. Lead on.’

As he entered the concrete room, Lapslie glanced around. It looked like it might have been a storeroom. Empty metal racking lined the walls. At the far end, lined up on one of the shelves, was what Bradbury wanted to show him. Lapslie moved close, and stared in bewilderment.

Stretching along the entire length of the shelf, standing upright, were twelve small wooden coffins. They were perfectly shaped, and about twelve inches tall. Nine were closed, and three open. The open coffins had what looked like dolls standing up inside them.

Lapslie moved forward for a closer look. The three
dolls he could see were dressed bizarrely. The first wore a beautiful lace wedding dress. The second was dressed as a soldier; on his shoulder was a small carefully stitched crown indicating the rank of major. The third and final doll was dressed as an old-fashioned teacher, with a black gown, and a mortar board perched on his head. The dolls seemed to have been made of wax, or something similar, judging by the gloss of their skin. Whatever the material was, they had been well made.

‘“There will be time to murder and create”,’ he murmured softly.

Lapslie slipped on latex gloves, picked up the doll dressed as a bride and stared at it for a moment, running his thumb across the lace and the material that made up the dress. The clothing was well tailored, and the material of a fine quality. He put down the bride doll and went on to peer at the soldier and the teacher. When he leaned over and opened one of the closed coffins it revealed another doll; this one dressed as a mechanic of some sort. It was wearing stained blue overalls and carrying what looked like a small model spanner. The difference between this doll and the ones in the open coffins was that this doll had been crushed and twisted into disfigurement.

As Lapslie watched, Bradbury opened each of the coffins. Within each of them was another doll, each dressed in different clothing. There was a fireman, a nurse and six others. The neck of the fireman had been crushed, falling limply onto its shoulders. Every other doll had been badly damaged in some way. All differently, but all damaged.

Numerous questions raced around his mind. Why were some dolls inside their coffins and not others? Why were the ones inside the coffins damaged and those outside them perfectly fine? What did the costumes signify? Why had they been left here, and did the dead tramp have something to do with it? Were they just dolls someone had made for a horror film, or was there something much more sinister about them? And what was the significance of the number twelve? Twelve apostles; twelve angry men; twelve days of Christmas?

The smell of lavender reached him, and he wondered just which of the dolls might be triggering that smell in his mind: the fireman, the bride, the nurse? Or maybe it was simply coming from the cloth they were made with, somebody impregnating it with lavender to keep moths away.

He turned to Bradbury. ‘I don’t suppose we know anything about the dolls, do we?’

Bradbury shook her head. ‘No, sir, nothing. I was about to get the SOCOs to bag and tag them.’

*

‘No, don’t do that. Well not for now, anyway. Do the media know about this yet?’

Bradbury shook her head again. ‘No, sir, not yet. Seems little point in telling them now. I don’t suppose there’s much of a story in “alcoholic tramp found dead”.’

Lapslie looked at her for a moment. ‘Everyone has their story, Emma – even alcoholic tramps.’ Before she could reply he changed the subject. ‘Let’s wrap up the body ready for removal and run this operation down.’

‘Before we are sure of the cause of death?’

Lapslie nodded. ‘Yes. I’m pretty sure Whitefoot is right, but just in case, no one goes in or out until we have the final results. I want the placed resealed and any sign that we have been here gone. If we do have a suspicious death then there’s no harm done because the evidence will still be intact. If, as I suspect, we don’t, then I want the place watched to see if our doll-maker returns. There are a few questions I would like to ask him.’

Bradbury seemed unsure, but nodded her acceptance.

‘I want the surveillance on for a week, twenty-four hours a day. If anyone is picked up, I want to know at once. There’s something odd about this and I want to know what it is.’

‘Chief Superintendent Rouse isn’t going to like this, sir. He’ll want to know why we’re spending money on surveillance when there’s no obvious crime.’

‘Do it anyway. By the time he finds out it will all be over – unless someone tells him.’

He turned to Bradbury. She held defensive hands up. ‘Not me. I won’t breathe a word.’

Lapslie stared at her for a long moment. ‘It might be nothing,’ he said finally, ‘but equally some important investigations have started out with something small like this.’

Before she could respond, Lapslie moved off, heading out and towards his car. As he left, he heard Emma talking with Jim Thomson, the senior SOCO.

‘Did you hear all that?’

‘I did.’

‘Then we’d better get on with it, hadn’t we?’

‘We had. I know the name of a good doll-maker, if it would help. Big hobby with my wife. She has dozens of them.’

Either Bradbury didn’t reply, or her words were lost as Lapslie walked outside.