Kershaw, Madness – remember?’
He clearly didn’t.
Sally bent down to get a better look. She carefully slipped her fingers into the back pocket of the jeans. She pulled. Nothing happened. After a few more attempts she took a pair of scissors and began to cut off the pocket. The square of stiff material came away in her hands. Sally turned it over. Stuck to the material was a canvas wallet of indeterminate colour. It was the type that folded over itself and fastened along a Velcro strip. She pulled the Velcro apart. The inside was orange. Bright orange with black edging.
‘I remember those,’ said Jessie. ‘They were very trendy. They came in all the fluorescent colours.’
‘So this man took his eighties retro look very seriously,’ concluded DCI Moore.
‘Not retro,’ said Sally. ‘This is genuine. Look at these –’ she held up some flimsy rectangles of paper – ‘one-pound notes.’ In the side zip pocket there was a collection of change. Sally ran her fingers over the coins. ‘I’d forgotten how big they were.’ The ten-pence pieces looked like giant money, filling her dwarf palm; the five-pence pieces were twice the size of the new ones, and there was something that Jessie had almost forgotten existed: a halfpenny.
‘Anything useful like ID in there?’ asked the DCI.
‘No.’
‘Are you telling me this man has been down there since the eighties?’
‘Not necessarily, but it looks as though he’s been dead since the eighties. He should have decomposed by now. Where did you find him?’
Moore pointed to the cleared site of the fourth open pit. ‘It’s an old ash pit – lead-lined and sealed.’
Sally touched the wall. ‘It’s very cold, but it would have to be dry, too.’
‘It was when we prised it open, but all four pits used to be connected to the sewers.’
‘And they’re not any more?’
‘We won’t know until the contractors have been down here. Something still is, you can smell it.’
‘What I can tell you is that he’s been in this foetal position for a long time. Either here, or a large domestic refrigerator. Because of his immaculate condition, the day he died, and therefore the way he died, is set in stone. I’ll get him to the lab and –’
‘No,’ said DCI Moore.
‘What? Why did you call me down here?’
‘As a favour.’
‘I don’t mind doing favours, Carolyn –’
‘DCI Moore.’
‘I don’t mind doing favours, DCI Moore, but I like to know when I’m granting them.’
‘I have to think about our budget,’ Moore replied tartly.
Jessie stepped forward. ‘But, boss, this is a suspicious death. Look at his hands – someone cut his fingers off. No fingers, no ID.’
‘That may be, DI Driver, but according to you he could have died twenty years ago. Hardly the sort of case we want to blow a lot of money on.’
‘Unlike Anna Maria Klein, you mean, who guarantees the police much more press?’
DCI Moore pulled herself up. ‘If you care so much about this, it’s yours. I’m putting you in charge. Identify him, find a match in Missing Persons and if any of his family are still alive you can let them know. But you don’t get Sally. Now that she’s a fully qualified Home Office pathologist she’s become far too expensive. Bad luck,’ she told Sally. ‘You’ve priced yourself right out of the market.’
Jessie turned to the scenes of crime officers. ‘Can we get a sample of –’
‘Hold your horses, Driver,’ said Mark, suddenly bounding forward. ‘This is my crime scene, my search party, my lads from SOCO. Off you go, boys – time for a break.’
‘Don’t go anywhere. I don’t mean to state the obvious, but Anna Maria isn’t here,’ said Jessie. ‘You heard the boss, this is my crime scene now.’
‘You don’t know that this is a crime scene,’ said Mark. ‘And we haven’t finished the search yet. You may not have noticed, but there are four old coal stores we haven’t investigated and below this level are the foundations of the workhouse that was originally built on this site. We haven’t even started this search.’
‘You think this guy mutilated his own hands and dropped himself in a hole and pulled the lid over his head? Come on, of course this is a crime scene. I can’t have you lot trampling all over it – you’ll contaminate it.’
‘That is quite enough melodrama, DI Driver.’ DCI Moore moved towards the exit. ‘Mark has a point. This place may still be unsafe. Let’s keep going with what is essential: finding Anna Maria Klein. When Mark is finished, you can continue with your investigation. But, please, don’t move the body until the hyenas have moved on. Sarah Klein and I are going to make a statement.’
‘I bet you are,’ whispered Jessie under her breath.
DCI Moore shot her a look, then left. Sally took out a card and quickly scribbled a name and number on it.
‘He’s a doctor, but he’s studying forensic pathology. He’s got great potential and passion, and he’ll relish a challenge like this. Send him the body. That way we’ll get it examined without the cost of a coroner, and if he finds anything we’ll go down the normal channels.’
DCI Moore reappeared as Jessie pocketed the card. ‘Sally, would you accompany me back up to ground level? There is something I’d like to discuss with you.’
‘It’s not balls this woman is after,’ whispered Jessie as Sally made to leave.
As soon as they were out of the door Mark moved in. He started by picking up one corner of the tarpaulin and dragging it across the floor. The stiff shifted.
‘Wait,’ shouted Jessie. ‘Let’s at least take a photo of it.’ She reached out to the police photographer hovering by the rusty boiler tanks.
‘No,’ said Mark. ‘I need you upstairs, where they found that blanket. Quick, before we lose this light.’
‘She isn’t here and you know it.’
He raised his heavy lids to meet her eyes then slowly rubbed his chest.
‘Fine,’ she retorted. Placing herself between the body and the hole in the ground, she pulled her backpack off her shoulder. ‘I have my own camera. So go to hell.’
The flickering light stopped flickering, popped and then went out, taking all the other lights out with it. A soupy darkness wrapped itself around them.
‘Shit,’ said Mark. Jessie heard a thud. The corpse of an unknown man being unceremoniously dropped.
‘No one move,’ shouted Jessie. ‘Torches,
