16 THE BODY OF EVIDENCE

The D I refuses to believe that Bramble spontaneously changed gender

“Well, have you found anything?” asked an irritable Inspector Piggott when he arrived back at the station and was confronted by a grinning sergeant Smethson. He’d come straight from the hospital and was still furious about the display put on by a school teacher who should have known better, lying in a hospital bed.

“Lots, guv, I mean sir,” replied Smethson, “and to my mind it starts to explain what’s been going on. And I don’t think there’s anything in the books that can explain it. I’m not even sure that we ought to be dealing with it, us being coppers dealing with broken laws.”

“Leave that to me. Now what did you find in the Bramble abode?” demanded Piggott.

“As I said, lots,guv-sir,” said Smethson.

“Lots of what, man?” Piggott’s irritability, brought about by the hospital patient’s insistence on exposing his genitals to one and all whilst delightedly confirming his gender, wasn’t helped by his sergeant’s frequent slip of the tongue when addressing him. He hated the traditional use of the word guv. He wasn’t anyone’s guv. Boss yes, but guv, no.

“Hair, sir, lots of hair,” said Smethson. “I had Dearie up to examine the bed, sir, and she’s pretty sure it’s human hair. About a foot long, blonde, and squished into the pillow as if it had been coming out all night. Kind of instant alopecia, if you ask me!”

“And how does that help us?” growled his senior officer.

“It sort of confirms his story. About, er, changing sex over night,” replied Smethson, “going bald like that.”

“It’s nonsense, and you know it!” snapped Piggott. “There’s no known case of anything like that happening, and if it did, hair doesn’t grow so fast as to gain twelve inches over night. Nor does a man’s private parts suddenly sprout out of nowhere, and our patient reckons his grew from nothing over night! Why, the sod even showed us, me and a nurse, which was plain embarrassing for both os us.”

“Not everything under the sun has to be known,” murmured Smethson somewhat mysteriously, and he went on to explain, “there are new discoveries being made all the time, sir, and this might just be one of them.”

“The trouble with you, Sergeant, is you’re bloody gullible!” growled Piggott. “I’d put any amount of money onto the real story that someone’s going over the top trying to pull a whole lot of wool over our eyes, and it’s not going to work, not on my watch. Oh, hell, now look who’s coming.”

“Dearie by name and dear by nature,” sighed Smethson as the pathologist approached with a whimsical smile on her face.

“Or a pathologist by any other name,” muttered Piggott, “Cynthia, what brings you to Paradise from the bowels of the dead?” he greeted her, trying not to look too unwelcoming.

“A conundrum. That’s what brings me here. A fine bloody conundrum,” she said brightly, “and in my books you’re the men to solve it seeing that you’re paid to detect.”

“If it’s anything to do with hair that falls out over night I don’t want to know,” grunted Piggott. “I like my work to be based on logic, and logic says that Mr Bramble’s been telling us a whopper,” he added, “trying to make us believe all that nonsense about waking up as a woman and then, next day, being a bloke again. I’m not believing that, not now and not ever.”

“I hope you don’t have to eat your words, Inspector,” she said, grinning. “It’s the DNA results, and you’ll never guess who’s who.”

“Don’t drag it out,” mumbled the Inspector.

“Then I won’t. The woman who called herself Evana Bramble has exactly the same DNA as the man who calls himself Ivan Bramble, down to the last little bit. They’re more identical than identical twins!”

“Then you’ve mixed samples up in your haste to embarrass me,” Piggott grunted, “and you’ll have to go right back to the start and do those damned tests again until you get it right.”

“I’m afraid nothing’s been messed up,” smiled Cynthia Dearie, “there can be no doubt about it. The woman who called herself Evana Bramble and the man who still proudly insists that he’s Ivan Bramble and with an equal amount of pride waves his evidence around are one and the same person. And to add wonderment to your problems, the woman in the field, Evana Craddock, is almost certainly a very close relative to him or her or them! Think of that: two Evana’s and one mystery. If your hair wasn’t already grey it would start going that way when you start to get your head round that little conundrum!”

“You said woman in the field,” growled Piggott, “and I thought it was a cross-dressing man!”

“With ovaries. She had ovaries,” smiled Dearie, “I thought you knew that. And if you introduce me to someone in a cute black dress and that someone has a pair of functioning ovaries I’d swear that it’s a woman till I’m blue in the face.”

“I’m lost, then,” confessed Piggott, truthfully. In fact, he knew that he’d never felt so lost. He was used to people having a fixed gender, men being men and women being women with only a few surgically altered unfortunates in between. But surgery never did add ovaries to a man who wanted to be a female … did it? And even if it was possible, he surely wouldn’t retain the male genitalia, would he? It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense, and he still believed that Ivan Bramble held all the answers somewhere in his brain. He still believed something very clever was going on, and with the dead bodies involved he was pretty sure it was murder. But why?

“I’m going to see Bramble again,” he said decisively.

“People will start talking,” grinned Dearie, “if what I’ve heard is true. Did he really wave … it … at you? In broad daylight?”

“Shut up,” groaned Piggott, “there’s more to this than meets the eye, and a great deal more than a middle-aged schoolmaster waving his tackle about, and I’m going to sort it out once and for all.”

“As long as you don’t forget the science,” said the pathologist, suddenly serious. “Because whatever you believe, science, properly investigated, can’t tell lies.”

“But it can be re-interpreted,” grunted the Inspector moodily, “and I aim to re-interpret Mr Ivan Bramble. And if at first I don’t succeed, I’ll re-interpret him until I’m blue in the face, or until he lets on what’s really been happening between him and his deceased siblings.”

Cynthia Dearie looked at him, her eyes concentrated on his face. “Just as long as you’ve got an open mind, Inspector,” she said quietly, “I’ve told you what the evidence suggests. Now you go out and prove that I’m wrong, if you can.”

“Bloody science,” sighed Piggott. “I’ll get to the bottom of this, just you see if I don’t. Come on, Sergeant, back to hospital and if he dares point anything at me then I’ll do him for obscenity, just you see if I don't!”

Smethson nearly grunted I’m with you guv, but changed his mind just in time.

© Peter Rogerson 31.12.18