2. Pretty Summer Dresses

BOB SKELLINGTON’S REMAINS Part 2

Rosie Baur, widely respected Detective Inspector at Brumpton CID, sighed.

She had a week off, the twins (teenagers by now) were away on a summer camp with their school and she was enjoying a well-earned break, spending time in the sun.

It wasn’t that she merely liked warm, sunny weather, she rejoiced in it, almost worshipped it, and exposed as much of her skin to its health-giving rays as decency would allow, and sometimes, when she was quite sure she was away from peeping eyes, even more of it.

Now she was on her favourite farm site having towed her caravan there. It wasn’t more than half an hour from home, but as she told everyone who expressed surprise that she didn’t often go further,, it might as well be at the other end of the Earth. Home was an ancient town, its narrow medieval streets sometimes crowded and not the sort of place that a middle-aged policewoman could parade her line of minuscule bikinis in. But here on the farm, even when the camp site was filled to its maximum of ten caravans, she felt comfortable being minimalistic.

But the worst thing had happened: a skeleton had been found under an isolated park home on an adjacent field, and she was the obvious go-to officer if a gap needed filling, and she was pretty sure that, what with summer holidays, a gap in staffing would need filling.

So she lay back on her deckchair with a book in her hands and waited.

She didn’t have long to wait.

Superintendent Knott’s rather shiny large car pulled slowly up to where she was reading, and he climbed out slowly, aware that he wasn’t Rosie’s favourite person and equally sure that her climb up the ranks had been justified by achievements. Only last year she had solved a sixty year-old murder when common sense suggested that even looking at it was a bad idea.

“Good to see you relaxing, Mrs Baur,” he said teasingly, not mentioning her rank as he normally would. Well, after all, she was on holiday.

“It’s just a week sir,” she replied.

“And you little ones are on summer camp?” he smiled, almost warmly.

“They’re not so little now, sir, they’re both taller than me, but yes, they’re in the Lake District with their school.”

“There was a body found…” he began, “somewhere near here…”

She pointed to the next field. “Over there,” she said, “the field belongs to a neighbouring farmer and he imported a mobile home to live in while he just about rebuilt the farm cottage to use it as his home, and when he’d finished with the van he let it for holidays. But unknown to him someone took refuge underneath it and sadly passed away some years ago but was only discovered when the bathroom floor gave way recently.”

“And we don’t know who it was?”

“I’ve no idea, sir. I’m on holiday as you can see, topping up my vitamin D levels, and I’ve left it to whoever is tasked to investigate. But it can’t be me because I’m enjoying the sun.”

“Oh dear…”

“Yes sir?”

“What with you here and DS Short in Spain with his wife, there’s only young DC Robinson, and she’s a bit short of experience.” he murmured thoughtfully.

“If it’s just a nameless skeleton…”

He nodded. “That might be the problem,” he said, “we could search the records for short sighted men with ginger beards who might have gone missing between twenty and thirty years ago, and find nobody who fits the bill…”

“Short sighted men, sir?” she asked.

“He was wearing spectacles,” he pointed out.

“And ginger beards?” she prompted.

He nodded again. “There were quite a few gingery hairs in the vicinity of his jawbone,” he muttered, “and they may have been attached before the flesh, er, decomposed.”

“Or may not,” she grinned.

“It’s being looked at by the pathologist, but with just bones he hasn’t got much to go on. There are remnants of his clothing, of course, bits of wet and weathered cloth clinging to parched bones. As I said, there was a leak which destroyed the bathroom floor and must have spent the last thirty years dripping onto our corpse. It’s twenty years since the skirt was built…”

“Skirt, sir?”

“A plastic wall that filled the space between the bottom of the caravan and the ground it was standing on,” explained the Superintendent.

“Well, Sheila should be able to investigate some of that, sir. She’s a bright and imaginative young woman and it would do her CV the world of good if she could have the solving of Mr Skeleton on it.”

“I was going to ask you…”

“Yes sir?”

“If you could, er, make yourself available to assist her should she run into difficulties. You know, offer advice based on your years of experience.”

“You mean, help her solve the case but give her all the kudos for doing it?”

Superintendent Knott looked uncomfortable, and she guessed that had he been in her position he would have towed his caravan out of the county rather than get his hands dirty on the sort of case that might prove to be insoluble. He hadn’t got where he was through intelligent hard work but rather by knowing the right people at the right time and generally crawling towards them.

She knew what would happen in the end, so she decided to take the bull by the horns.

“I’ll make myself available,” she said, “and offer whatever help may seem appropriate, and let Sheila have the outcome on her CV, as long as I can adopt my own dress code while doing it.”

He paled. “You mean … knickers and bra, like you are dressed right now?”

She smiled at him. “I’m not stupid, sir,” she said coyly, “but I have one or two nice summer dresses. Would you like to see them?”

Still pale, he shook his head. “Not necessary,” he almost barked, “I think I can trust you to be sensible.”

“Very good, sir. Then you tell young Sheila, I mean DC Robinson, where I am and the two of us will put out heads together, and then I’ll set her on what is probably the best course where unknown and very dead bones are concerned.”

“And that is?

“Forensics first, dental records and the like, DNA, scraps of cloth from garments, that sort of thing,” she said, smiling, knowing that the pathologist had probably gone part way down that path already.”

“Right,” he said, and then gave her a rare smile. “You won’t regret this, DI Baur,” he said, “I’ve got a long and healthy memory.”

“Yes sir,” she grinned back.

And then he was gone, taking her sense of freedom from the daily grind with him.

© Peter Rogerson 01.02.21