The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries Read online

  The patrol car pulled up outside the house at half past seven. At least they hadn’t put the flashing lights and sirens on. She’d have died of embarrassment if the neighbours had seen that. She’d spent the day cleaning the place until it sparkled: no one was going to say she went off to prison and left a dirty house behind. With a sigh Daphne climbed out of Bill’s favourite chair and answered the front door. It was Sergeant Norman Dumfries, the little boy who wouldn’t eat his greens. She ushered him through to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Just because he was here to arrest her, there was no need to forget her manners.

  “Tea?” she asked as he shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

  “Er . . . Yes, that would be lovely.” Adding, “Thank you,” as an afterthought.

  She made two cups and put them on the kitchen table, along with a plate of shortbread, telling Sergeant Dumfries to help himself. “Er . . .” he said, looking sideways at Bill’s urn, still sitting on the tabletop from last night. “I’m afraid I’ve got something very awkward to tell you—”

  Daphne nodded. There was no need to make it hard on the boy, he was doing his best. “I know.”

  He blushed. “I’m so sorry, Mrs McAndrews.”

  “You’re only doing your job, Norman.”

  “I know, but . . .” he sighed and reached into his police jacket pocket. This was it, he was going to handcuff her. The neighbours would have a field day.

  “It’s all right.” Trying to sound calm. “I won’t put up a fight.”

  He looked puzzled for a moment, before bringing out what looked like a little plastic freezer bag. It was see-through, and full of grey powder. “We, um . . . the man you found in your shed had . . .” He stopped and tried again. “We did a post mortem on him yesterday. He died because he’d injected himself with . . . Er . . .” He held up the bag. “We had to take a sample to make sure. I’m sorry, Mrs McAndrews.” Gently he picked Bill’s urn off the table and tipped the contents of the plastic bag inside.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs McAndrews. We think they were already under the influence of drugs when they broke into your shed to fool around. They discovered Mr McAndrews’ remains and . . . Well, the man had residue in his nasal passages and his lungs, so it looks like they tried snorting the . . . ah . . . deceased. When that didn’t work, the man tried injecting. And then he died.” It was silent in the kitchen, except for the sound of Wee Doug snoring. “I’m sorry.”

  She grabbed Bill’s urn and peered inside. It was nearly full. “Did they both . . . ? You know?” Sergeant Dumfries nodded and Daphne frowned. She wasn’t sure she liked the thought of Bill being inside another woman, and Bill would certainly not have been happy about being inside a naked man.

  “Anyway,” Sergeant Dumfries stood up. “I have to get back to the station.” He looked left and right, as if he was making sure they were alone. “Just between you and me,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, “we’ve got a drugs war on our hands! One bloke got worked over right outside the kilt shop last night – said it was a gang with baseball bats – and the next thing you know some drug dealer gets battered to death! Mind you, at least we’ve got a witness to that one.”

  Daphne covered her mouth with a trembling hand, the girl: she was unconscious! She couldn’t have seen anything – it wasn’t fair!

  Norman helped himself to a piece of shortbread. “We found this doped-up woman at the scene,” he said, in a little spray of crumbs, “who swears blind some huge hairy bloke with a Rottweiler kicked the door down then bashed the victim’s skull in with a pickaxe handle.” He shook his head in amazement as Daphne went pale as a haddock. “I know,” he said as she spluttered. “Miami Vice comes to Oldcastle, how bizarre is that?” Sigh. “Anyway, better make sure you keep your doors and windows locked tight. OK?”

  When he was gone, Daphne sat at the kitchen table, trembling. Drug War. She let out a small giggle. The giggle became a snigger, then a laugh, and ended in hysterics. She’d gotten away with it. Wiping her eyes she pulled Bill’s urn over and peered inside. There was only about a teaspoon missing. What would that be – an ear, a finger, his gentleman’s bits? He’d miss them, even if she wouldn’t . . .

  With a smile she ripped the edge off a couple of teabags and poured the powdered leaves in. At his age he’d never know the difference.

  ONCE UPON A TIME

  Peter Turnbull

  Tuesday Forenoon

  It was, he thought, all too human. He was not a man who was medically qualified, but he had seen bones before, actual human bones, often in shallow graves, and much, much older than this bone, sitting there looking quite content in a curious sort of way, looked all too human. It had aged a little, he thought, it was certainly not as old as the bones he was used to examining but it was not recent either. It had a greyness about it, and had been chewed upon by his “friends.” The man pondered what to do. He didn’t want to appear alarmist but he also knew the value of over-reacting rather than under-reacting; and, after all, were they not told to report anything suspicious? He took the plastic bag he was carrying and walked further into the wood and emptied the contents well away from the bone. He then left the wood and walked back down the lane to the village, and to the red phone box, of the old-fashioned design because the village of Meltham was designated a conservation area, and dialled the police. Not 999; it was not an emergency, no longer life or limb – if indeed the bone ever did represent a life or limb crisis. His call was answered, eventually, by a recording of a female voice telling him that his call was “placed in a queue” and “would be answered shortly”. The recording then reminded him that if his call was an emergency he should phone 999 or 112. He was then treated to a tinny recording of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony. Eventually, his call was answered by a stressed out and tired sounding officer who took details and asked him to wait by the phone box. This he did, wrapping his duffel coat around him and stamping his feet against the cold. It was the twelfth month of the year and the Wolds are cold, cold, cold during the winter months. It was a windless day, not a cloud in a blue sky, but cold. Very cold.

  “It may be only an animal bone,” he said eagerly and apologetically at the same time as the officer opened the door of the police car and stepped out.

  “Take your time, sir,” the officer said, calmly, but with authority as he reached for his notebook and pen.

  “It’s in the copse.”

  “Let me ask the questions, please.”

  The man fell silent.

  “You are . . . ?”

  “Coleman.” The man was short, bespectacled, a mop of wild grey hair, “Clifford Coleman.”

  “And your address, Mr Coleman?”

  “The Old Rectory, here in Meltham.” He pointed. “That’s my house, just there . . . well, the roof . . . you can see from here.”

  “You didn’t phone from home, Mr Coleman?”

  “I didn’t, did I.” Clifford Coleman scratched his head. “Now isn’t that strange, I could have kept warm and had a cup of tea . . . why didn’t I do that? That will puzzle me for some time.”

  “You found a bone, you say?” The officer interrupted Coleman’s musing.

  “In the small wood.”

  “The small wood?”

  “Is the name by which it is known round here, to differentiate from another larger wood just beyond it which is known as the ‘large wood’. That’s the ‘small wood’.” Coleman turned and pointed down the pasty grey road to a copse approximately quarter of a mile distant.

  “Can I ask your age and occupation, sir?”

  “Why?”

  “Just procedure, sir.”

  “Fifty-four . . . a teacher . . . at the university . . . history. . . I am a medievalist. I often see human bones in old graves that are being excavated. There is an overlap between history and archaeology, you see, and the bone I saw in the small wood looked to me to be human. There is much medieval in the village . . . the street pattern is medieval .
. . though the oldest building dates only from the seventeenth century.”

  “Yes, yes . . . thank you, sir. Shall we walk to the wood?”

  They walked to the wood. The constable taking long, effortless, energy-preserving strides, Coleman taking short, rapid steps, but of the two it was Coleman who had to keep pace with the constable. In the wood, Coleman led the constable to where the bone lay.

  “I think you were correct to call us, Mr Coleman.” The constable knelt down and looked closely at the bone. “I am no doctor, but I have attended post-mortems and seen skeletons . . . certainly looks human to me. Not recently buried . . . it seems to be aged. Can I ask what you were doing in the wood? You have no dog that you were exercising, for example?”

  “Feeding my friends.”

  “Your friends?”

  “Oh, yes . . . foxes . . . badgers . . . creatures of the night. Animals enjoy foraging for their food and I never throw anything meaty away. Bones, fat, bacon rind . . . I bring it all to the wood and scatter it. I come at various times of the day, depending on my timetable. I’m teaching at 4.00 p.m. today and then have an evening class of mature students . . . many older than I am, doing something with their retirement. Good for them, I say . . . better than vegetating in front of day time television, I say, and their brains . . . sharp as tacks . . . get a better class of degree than many twenty-year-olds, and also . . .”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I’ll get back home too late this evening to walk up to the wood, so I came now . . . dropped the bone I had brought well away from the bone I had found . . . then phoned you. Should have phoned from my house, though . . . funny . . .”

  “Not noticed it before, sir?”

  “No. It has probably worked its way to the surface and one of my friends pulled it into the open. Probably a badger. Foxes are too lazy to do that – they prefer to scavenge . . . but old brock will claw anything up. Well, do you need me any more? I have some preparation to do.”

  “No, thank you, sir.” The constable reached for the radio attached to his lapel and pressed the “send” button.

  “Human, male.” Louise D’Acre looked at the bone. She was clad in a green coverall, disposable hat . . . latex gloves. “Well, male is an educated guess. If it was female the lady would be very tall indeed. It’s a femur, leg bone . . . and the person would be at least six feet tall in life . . . as female femurs go, it’s very long.”

  “A six footer.” D.C.I. Hennessey ran his liver-spotted hand through his silver hair.

  “At least.” Louise D’Acre knelt down and picked up the bone and placed it in a productions bag. “Well, there’s more than one bone in the human skeleton,” she said. “The rest might be around here somewhere. I’ll take this to York City.” She smiled a rare smile. She wore her hair short with just a trace of lipstick as her only make-up. Aged mid-forties, she was, thought D.C.I. Hennessey, a lady who knew how to grow old gracefully. “You can bring the rest along if and when you find them.”

  The “small wood” was, thought D.C.I. Hennessey, about one and a half acres in area of broad leafed woodland. A team of constables began to sweep across the wood, and just ten minutes into the sweep one constable stopped, held up his hand and said “Sergeant.” He had found disturbed soil, and what appeared to be a bone protruding. It was about one hundred yards from where Clifford Coleman had found the bone. Hennessey looked at the disturbed soil, at the bone, and said, “Better get Scene of Crime People here . . . photograph it as you dig it up . . . bone by bone.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Friday Afternoon

  “Hard to determine age.” Dr Louise D’Acre studied the bones which had been laid out in order on the dissecting table of the pathology laboratory of the City of York Hospital. “Not young, not elderly either . . . middle-aged. I’ll cut a tooth in cross section and determine the age that way, but at a glance I’d say that this is the skeleton of a middle-aged person of the male sex . . . white European . . . there is no obvious cause of death . . . no trauma . . . almost all the bones are here, just a few very small bones of the feet are missing, but it has been sawn up . . . quite neatly.”

  “They were found neatly too.” D.C.I. Hennessey stood at the edge of the pathology lab, observing for the police. “Stacked one on top of the other, occupied a very small place about the dimensions of a cardboard box that one person would take both arms to lift.”

  “That’s interesting.” Louise D’Acre tapped the stainless steel table with the tip of a long finger. “That means that they were completely skeletal when they were buried. The corpse was not merely sawn up, it was filleted as well. All tissue, all organs were removed. Couldn’t stack bones neatly otherwise.”

  “Or the corpse buried and then dug up some time later when the flesh had decomposed and the bones reburied?”

  “It’s possible, but the interval between burial and reburial would be measured in years. The other thing that occurs to me is that if a skeleton was dug up it would hardly be to rebury it. I would be inclined to throw it into the Ouse one dark night, bone by bone. But it does tell you one thing, though: this is your territory, not mine.”

  “Oh, please.” Hennessey smiled. “All help gratefully accepted.”

  “Well, it tells you that the person or persons who did this had a lot of space . . . some means of filleting a corpse without the risk of being disturbed . . . can’t do that in a little terrace house . . . some means of disposing of the tissue, such as a bonfire. Human tissue gives off a very sickly sweet smell when burned. Anyone who has smelled it will recognize the smell again, and be suspicious. Or alternatively, the space to bury it.”

  “A farmer?”

  “Farm workers, farm labourers . . . again, the risk of a witnesses. I would be inclined to think of someone who lives alone in a large house or a smallholding. Enough space to do this without the risk of being chanced upon.” Louise D’Acre stretched a tape measure along the spine. “It’s been chopped up, as you see, but in life he would have been about six feet tall . . . and,” she added softly, “he walked with a limp.”

  “He did?”

  “Or he wore shoes, one of which, the left of the pair, was built up. His left femur is shorter than the right.”

  “That will narrow the field down, a lot.”

  “This is murder,” Dr D’Acre said. “It can only be murder, but it’s strange . . . the cause of death must have been quite mild, but the disposal of the corpse, very messy indeed. I have rarely come across anything quite like it”

  “Nor I,” Hennessey said. “It’s usually the other way round.”

  “Indeed.” D’Acre paused. “Well, I’ll trawl for poisons, doubt I’ll find any cyanide, belonged to the Victorians, and I’ll determine his age by tooth extraction.”

  Wednesday Afternoon and Evening

  George Hennessey sat at his desk and glanced out of the window of his office at a group of tourists, well wrapped up, who were walking the ancient walls of the city. That’s York, he thought, a booming tourist industry year end to year end; even on cold winter days the walls will have tourists upon them. He felt satisfied. A good morning’s work had been done. He had then walked the walls into the city and lunched at a pub with a wood fire and had sat underneath a reprint of an ancient map which showed “The West Ridinge of Yorkshyre, the most famous and Faire Citie Yorke described – 1610”. Back at his desk, he read the report submitted by Sergeant Yellich about the man who had walked into Micklegate Bar Police Station the day previous and said to the constable on the enquiry desk, “I’m fed up of waiting to be caught. It was me that did all those burglaries.” At first the man was thought to be a candidate for detention under the Mental Health Act, but then began to reveal details only the perpetrator could know. He had reached the end of Yellich’s report when his phone rang. He let it ring twice before answering it. “Detective Chief Inspector Hennessey.”

  “Dr D’Acre, York City Hospital. I have the lab results back.”

  “
So soon?”

  “Quiet period. The deceased was fifty-three, or-four, or-five, when he died. And poisoned.”

  “Poisoned!”

  “Self-inflicted. He was an alcoholic. It probably didn’t kill him – well it would have done had he lived long enough . . . but it wasn’t the murder weapon as such. But he was a very serious alcoholic in life and had been for years. It would take very heavy drinking over a long period to leave traces of alcohol in his long bones, but it’s there. It’s offered as an aid to identification.”

  Hennessey and Yellich drove out to Meltham. Neither officer had been to the village before. The turn off to Meltham, they found, could easily be missed; a narrow lane, it drove vertically between thick woodland. Upon arriving at the village they saw it to be small, nestling in a fold in the landscape. Yellich parked the car in the centre of the village, in the square which was more of a triangle in terms of its shape. The square had an ancient and preserved pair of stocks and a memorial to the three sons of the village who had given their lives for King and Country in the 1914–18 war. There was, Hennessey noted with some relief, no mention of any loss of life from the village in the 1939–45 conflict. A woman carrying a shopping bag glared at them as she walked, quite content to let the two officers see her staring at them. A burly, well-set man glanced at them suspiciously.

  “This village don’t like strangers,” Hennessey remarked, as he nodded to the man.

  “Don’t, do it, boss?” Yellich locked the car.

  “Well, where now?” Hennessey asked Yellich. “Where do you think?”

  “Me, boss . . . tell you the honest truth, I’d try at the post office. Post mistresses in places like this know everything . . . in fact it was once my experience when I was a lad to knock on the post mistress’s door at 8.00 p.m. one evening to tell her someone had died. She wasn’t a relation, not even a friend of the family, but I was fourteen and the adults who were running round like headless chickens thought the best way to get the news into the community was to send me running up the lane to tell the post mistress that Mr Battie, my great uncle, had died.” Yellich laughed. “Classic . . . classic . . . but it actually happened.”