10. THE PLACID ANGEL

An unshaved face... how confusing!

It was still a crisp morning in the countryside. Frost had fallen and everything was covered by an interlaced network of frozen cobwebs, giving the world a serene kind of beauty as if mother nature herself was a skilled sculptor.

The two detectives, Inspector Piggott and Sergeant Smethson, oblivious to anything spectacularly artistic, arrived in a muddy field on the way to Quarryvale and stomped towards the pathologist’s hunched up body as she examined a frighteningly immobile figure, half sucked into the mud. Nearby, the forensic team were busy with their tent as they searched the melting ground for anything that might point to something.

“So how is it, Dearie?” called Piggott, and Cynthia looked up and smiled back at him.

“We’ve got an interesting one here,” she said, “the fellow’s been here a while, though, maybe as long as twenty-four hours.”

“Acid, was it?” asked Smethson as he strode along just behind the senior officer.

“Acid?” asked the pathologist, “what gave you that idea?”

“When they reported it...” stammered the sergeant, “I was told it was an acid attack, or something along those lines.”

“I think the message got garbled, then,” almost laughed Cynthia Dearie. She’s young to have so much grisly knowledge, thought Piggott as he watched her, no more than thirty-five if she’s a day and yet boss of her world of morgues and broken flesh.

“Garbled?” asked his sergeant.

“If anything I’d say he was very placid,” said the pathologist, looking back at the frozen body in the mud. “Look at him, sergeant, lying there in conditions like these, and smiling like an angel!”

“Him?” stammered Smethson, “what gives with the frock? The little black dress that he’s wearing? And the thick black tights? And the high heels?”

“That’s why I call it an interesting one,” sighed Cynthia, “just look at this face if you want to learn a think or three. See the moustache? What about the chin? When do you think that chin was last shaved? I won’t be certain until after I’ve got him on the slab, but I’d be prepared to put my money on the possibility that he’s never had a shaver in his hand in his life, not ever, yet there’s the very start of whiskers showing, baby little fluffy whiskers… And that tache I mentioned, look, it’s almost as if it had been gently stuck on to a baby’s lip… But it is a man. You can take that as a given. I’ve checked, and he’s got all of the right tackle under those tights. At least, it looks to be all the right tackle, but I’ll need to answer one or two niggling questions when I get him to the lab.”

“Questions? Such as?” asked Smethson.

“I’ll let you know later,” smiled Cynthia Dearie, and she turned back to her new best friend. “He’s a good looking fellow, though,” she added.

“We’ll leave you to it then,” smiled Piggott, “I know how you like your bodies to tell their stories to you and it’s uncanny what you get them to tell you even when they’re sans speech!”

“This one’s going to be really interesting,” nodded Cynthia as the two officers walked slowly back across the field to their car.

“What do you make of it, guv?” asked Smethson.

Inspector Piggott looked at him sharply. “You know I don’t like being called that,” he said sharply, “it makes me sound like one of those cloth-eared cops in television shows, and I like to think I’m one up on any of those.”

“Of course, sir, they’ve got scripts to guide them!” joked the sergeant. “So what do you make of it?” he persisted.

“I think that Dearie’s puzzled,” replied Piggott slowly, “and she’s got every right to be puzzled. Did you see his face? The dead man’s? Did it say anything to you?”

“I’d have had heart-failure if it had!” replied his Sergeant.

“But the features… did you look at them? Did you note the eyes? Did you really look at the fellow, Smethson?”

“Of course, sir...” Though he didn’t like to mention that the sight of death still tended to turn his stomach. It was a cold and frightening reminder of his own mortality and sometimes tended to colour his dreams with the grey-blue of a grisly grave.

“What were you jabbering about, you said something about acid? Where did you get that from?” queried the Inspector.

“It was the message, sir, the constable said as they used acid… And that Bramble woman was there when he said it. She went white as a ghost for a moment as if it had happened to her, and I had to get a policewoman in to calm her down. That was last evening, and I put it down to her having had one hell of a bad day. She said some teenage toe-rag had upset her, and there was the body next door on top of everything.”

“So the idea of acid upset her?”

“Well it would, wouldn’t it? Who is she, sir? We know she can’t be Mrs Bramble unless the guy’s a bigamist, we had no idea where he is until just now, only that he’s a quiet English teacher at that comprehensive and that he’s separated from his misses, though from what I’ve seen she rather wants him back. Played away from home, she did, and got caught at it, by all accounts. But now he’s turned up dead, and if that bloke in the field is Ivan Bramble, why on God’s Earth was he dressed like a tart?”

“We’ll get DNA confirmation, but I reckon that’s who it is,” sighed Piggott. “And we’re checking on the car registration. Maybe he was in disguise, running away from something or someone… who knows? But we’ll find out.”

“You’d think he’d have got rid of that tache if he wanted to pass as a bird!”

“Dearie’s curious, and that’s got me worried,” murmured the Inspector thoughtfully. “It’s not good when an ace pathologist gets worried. But back to Evana Bramble,” he went on, “what do you make of her?”

“Fiftyish, still got some looks, smart, a bit of an enigma,” said Smethson thoughtfully.

“Would you reckon she was on the game?” asked Piggott,

“Nah. She seems too, what shall I say, decent for that,” replied the sergeant.

“And probably past it,” added Piggott.

“I’m not so far off that age myself, and I’d not shut my eyes and think of England if I was getting down and dirty with her,” sniggered his sergeant, “and I should think she’d be up for it too, with the right bloke,” he added, “but not be for sale, if you see what I mean.“

“Good God, how low can a sergeant sink?” groaned Piggott. “But answer my question, fellow, what did you see when you looked at that dead face in the field?”

Smethson thought for a couple of moments, then, “I thought he looked peaceful,” he said, “dead peaceful, like I’d like to think I might look if I found myself accidentally dead.”

“Well I saw a little bit more,” Inspector Piggott said slowly, “I saw Evana Bramble’s sister if I saw anyone at all. The likeness was almost sinister. We’ve got dead bodies, two of them now, a set of triplets and a mysterious woman living with Ivan Bramble, and I can’t see the wood for the trees!”

© Peter Rogerson 20.12.18