Death Scene Read online

  They knocked again but no one came to the door.

  Henry, remembering what Mrs Owens had said about no one locking their doors, pulled it open and they both stepped inside. Mickey called out. ‘Jimmy, Jimmy Cottee! You home, lad? It’s the police, got a few questions for you.’

  ‘Something’s not right here,’ Henry said, saying aloud what they had both felt since they had first stood on the doorstep.

  The carriage appeared to be divided into two living areas, with a little kitchenette in the corner and a day bed under the window and what must be a bedroom separated by a thin stud wall. Presumably that had been the mother’s room and was now Jimmy’s. Henry opened the door.

  ‘God,’ he said. ‘He’s hanged himself.’

  Mickey Hitchens pushed past. The chair lay overturned on the floor and the young man with a rope around his neck was suspended from what seemed to be a bracket, structural to the carriage itself. Mickey reached out a hand and touched the dead man’s. ‘Cold,’ he said. ‘He’s long gone, nothing to be done for him now.’

  ‘Guilt, or sorrow?’ Henry wondered. ‘You look in there for any sign of a note and I will check the other room.’

  It didn’t take long and moments later they were standing on the steps outside the railway carriage. ‘Nothing that resembles a note,’ Mickey said. ‘Poor little sod must have had it bad, though.’

  ‘But bad enough to kill her, or just himself? Mickey, I’ll wait here. Will you go and summon a constable? I’ll take another look around inside but I doubt we’ll find much.’

  Mickey nodded and tramped off across the shingle.

  SIX

  Henry was careful not to touch anything. He and Mickey would work the scene together later but for now he just needed to assess the space.

  The railway carriage was sparsely furnished but neat and clean. The day bed beneath the window had a hand crocheted afghan along its back and two rather faded red cushions. There were two chairs and a scrubbed pine table. Cooking would be done on a double burner. Pans had been suspended from the ceiling above it and shelves stocked with jars holding flour and dried fruit and sugar were set against the wall. Butter was stored in a contraption the like of which Henry hadn’t seen for quite some time, though his grandmother had owned one. A shallow glazed dish sat beneath an unglazed terracotta plate. The glazed dish held water and the butter was placed in the terracotta plate and covered with another dome of unglazed terracotta. It was a little chipped and had obviously seen a great deal of use but slow evaporation kept the butter fresh. Beneath a second, similar cover, he found cheese.

  A threadbare rug covered the lino and Henry noticed that it was set at an angle as though kicked off-square. He bent down and lifted a corner, paused and then let it drop back.

  Blood. There was blood on the floor. Someone had made an attempt to clean it up but a streak remained. Jimmy Cottee’s blood?

  Alerted now, Henry chastised himself for being satisfied with the immediate option of suicide. He should have been more cautious in his appraisal. He had rushed to judgement in the same way as Dr Arnold. Looking closely this time he spotted more traces on the doorframe and spotting on the bedroom floor.

  In the bedroom the body turned slightly. The rope was tight around the neck and the knot crude. One look at the young man’s face told Henry that he had been strangled rather than had his neck broken. Death had not been quick; it could take minutes to die that way and looking at his hands Henry thought that he could see blood beneath the nails and guessed there would probably be matching scratches on the throat. It was not uncommon for suicides, suddenly faced with the realities of asphyxiation, to scrabble for relief and tear at their throats in the attempt to loosen the rope. He had never known them to succeed. Jimmy Cottee had been alive and conscious when he’d been strung up and Henry no longer believed that his death was caused by suicide.

  The bed was narrow, carefully and neatly made up and the boards were scrubbed and covered with a scrap of rug.

  ‘So, perhaps neither guilt nor sorrow?’ Henry mused, but whatever the cause, Jimmy Cottee was now dead and this matter was getting deeper by the second.

  Henry wandered out on to the steps. He examined them carefully before sitting down but there was no sign of blood and no footprints to be wary of. The steps were narrow and steep, settling on the beach at a level about a foot lower than the concrete slab. He guessed that in the winter, storms must scour out the shingle from around these concrete supports, perhaps even undermining them. This spit of land might be a pleasant enough place in the summer – if you liked that sort of thing – but he imagined it would be a bleak kind of hole during the winter months.

  He took out his pen and his journal. Mickey always referred to this as his ‘murder book’, though in truth he used it to record many other events as well.

  Now, though, his thoughts were very much on Jimmy Cottee and how the young man had met his demise. Henry wrote,

  So, what had he done to bring down this degree of violence on his head? To judge from the condition of the body, rigor has set in and not yet passed. The nights have been warm so the body will have been slow to cool. My initial guess is that he has been dead perhaps a day, and less than two. So, after Cissie Rowe was murdered.

  Did she name him? Did she make some accusation? Did he even know that she had died? It seems possible, given that Miss Rowe’s body was discovered only yesterday morning and the news would spread like wildfire within this small and close community.

  If we had come to see him yesterday – if we had known then that this young man even existed – what would he have been able to tell us? Someone evidently believed that he knew something or had something or could lead them to something.

  Most murders have the same depressing themes in common. Greed, passion, fear. Too often all three. He evidently worshipped Miss Rowe and we are told that she was pleasant to him. I suppose she meant to be kind, but in my view it is sometimes kinder to be honest rather than to give false hope. Or is that, as Cynthia and Mickey would both tell me, simply the view of a dried and hardened cynic?

  Henry was alone close on an hour, time enough to mull over the previous day’s events in his mind, before Mickey returned with a train of officers in tow and the murder bag clasped firmly in his hand. Henry quickly dispatched the constables on house-to-house duties and brought one inside to assist in cutting the dead man down.

  ‘Make sure you cut well above the knot,’ Henry instructed. ‘We need to keep the knot intact. It’s no longer so certain that this poor soul did for himself; it may be more likely that someone helped him on his way.’

  Mickey gave him a sharp look, but held his curiosity in check until the two of them should be alone.

  ‘Right, that’s right,’ Henry instructed. ‘I’ve got the weight of the legs; you keep your arm around his chest. That’s it, don’t be squeamish, he’s past hurting you or you hurting him, just put your arm around his chest and cradle his body against yours. Then you can lower him down to us.’

  The constable did as he was bid, albeit rather reluctantly, and Henry took over the weight of the man’s upper torso as soon as he had lowered it enough. Together he and Mickey carried Jimmy Cottee through to the other room and laid the young man out on the table so they could take a better look. The constable departed to join his fellows in speaking to the neighbours.

  Carefully, Henry pulled the shirt from the trousers and exposed the trunk. The signs of the kicking and beating he had received were obvious.

  ‘Someone beat seven shades out of him,’ Mickey observed.

  ‘There’s blood on the floor beneath that rug and a smear or two on the doorframe that probably came from his hands. My guess is he grabbed at the frame as they carried him through.’

  ‘And the blood on the floor came from his lips or ears,’ said Mickey. ‘Now we can see properly, there’s cuts and splits on both.’

  ‘His death was not as simple as it first appeared,’ Henry said. ‘We were in danger of jump
ing to the same conclusions as our Dr Arnold did.’

  ‘Constable Prentice is trying to find us a boat to come up the River Adur and then be pulled up on shore. He considered it might be simpler and swifter than summoning an ambulance. They tell me the river is shallow here so it has to be something that has very little draft but there are boats enough to be had in Shoreham. Prentice will find something.’

  ‘Did you summon a doctor? We must still have death declared.’

  ‘I’ve put Prentice in charge of that too though he reckons the only one that might be available at such short notice is our old friend Dr Arnold. I think we should take the lad back up to London, get the post-mortem on this one done alongside that of Miss Rowe.’

  Henry examined the knot and then took a look at Jimmy Cottee’s hands. He was unsurprised to find the scratches on the neck and the blood beneath the fingernails as he had predicted.

  ‘Tried to free himself,’ Mickey observed.

  ‘I think it’s more of a reflex than any conscious thought,’ Henry said. ‘I think it would take great determination not to fight for life in those final instants. And I don’t believe that most people who actively seek to use this way out understand what they’re getting into. They think they can just take a length of rope and a chair and that it will be easy. You and I both know how hard it goes. And this poor young man didn’t make that choice.’

  Mickey Hitchens searched the dead man’s pockets but they were empty. His jacket hung on the back of a chair in the bedroom. A cheap wallet was lodged in one pocket, small change and cigarettes in the others. Also a key, which when Henry tried it fitted the door to the railway carriage, or rather fitted the hasp and staple and padlock that from the look of it had rarely been used. ‘No one locks their doors around here,’ he said quietly.

  ‘And we were looking for a local man. That someone helped him on his way doesn’t let him off the hook on the murder. It’s still possible that Jimmy Cottee’s death was a reprisal for the girl. It’s possible he killed his girl in a fit of temper and then some other returned the favour.’

  ‘It is. But I don’t see it. However, we must keep all thoughts in mind.’

  ‘I’ll start to process in the bedroom,’ Mickey said. ‘Then when the doctor arrives he can do his business in this room here without either of us getting in the other’s way.’

  ‘I’ll get started with the camera, photograph the body and we’ll see where we go from there.’

  It was a further hour before the doctor arrived – Dr Arnold as predicted, who seemed a little cowed by the presence of the chief inspector and his sergeant but relieved that his verdict could be directed with a fair degree of confidence this time.

  ‘Was the young man known to you?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Good Lord no, he couldn’t have afforded me,’ Dr Arnold said.

  Henry glanced at Dr Arnold, noticing the cut of his jacket and the quality of the cloth, and he nodded. Henry doubted that the likes of Jimmy Cottee could have afforded his father’s services either. ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you transport back into town.’

  If Dr Arnold noted the insincerity in that comment he showed no sign of it. Instead, he took himself off back down the shingle strand and it was only later that Henry realized that he had borrowed a constable to carry his bag for him.

  Constable Prentice had managed to secure a boat and by four in the afternoon the body was on board together with the boatman and Mickey. They had wrapped Jimmy Cottee in a blanket from his bed and Henry had locked the door with the key from the young man’s pocket and then he and the constables, who had re-adjourned at the railway carriage, set off down the beach. They had learned very little. A neighbour said that Jimmy Cottee had heard the news of Cissie Rowe’s death and had been distraught. Another said that he was ‘daft after the girl’.

  No one seemed surprised at the news that he had hanged himself. It was, to quote a third, ‘just one more rough deal in a lifetime of bad deals’.

  Henry gained the impression that Cissie Rowe was perhaps the one fine thing to have come into Jimmy Cottee’s life, and whatever the relationship had been she had definitely brightened it. But was he a man to have taken rejection hard? Had he lain in wait for her, knowing, perhaps, that she favoured another man above himself? Had he then taken his revenge?

  It was possible, Henry thought, but it felt so unlikely. Jimmy Cottee had cared deeply for Cissie Rowe. Henry could not believe that he would have harmed her. Neither could he believe that Jimmy’s death was an act of revenge. Typically someone angry enough to want revenge would hit out, would attack, would do what was felt necessary and apt with swiftness and heat. Jimmy’s death had been a slow, deliberate and painful one and Henry found that it angered him deeply.

  SEVEN

  It had been decided that Mickey Hitchens should go back to London with the body of Jimmy Cottee and Henry should remain behind. It made sense that his sergeant should go and check in with the central office, see if anything had arisen regarding fingerprints and look at the records relating to the status of Cissie Rowe, Cécile Rolland as she had been, as a foreign national.

  Henry would return to London the following afternoon when the post-mortem of Cissie Rowe was scheduled and it was hoped that Jimmy Cottee’s body would be dealt with on that same afternoon.

  In the meantime Henry made his way back to Cissie Rowe’s bungalow with the intention of looking now for anything that might relate to this mysterious Philippe. Although he and Mickey had already gathered together papers and photographs that looked relevant, it was entirely possible that now he was looking afresh, and with a fragment more intelligence about the woman’s life, he might notice something that he had disregarded before.

  When he arrived at the bungalow he was surprised and somewhat annoyed to find that there was no one on duty outside. He was even more annoyed to find that the door had been left open. Thinking that the constable might have gone inside for some reason, Henry pushed it wider and called out but it was clear from the moment he stepped over the threshold that something was very wrong.

  The bungalow, which they had left tidy and almost untouched despite their examination, was now a mess. Cissie’s possessions had been strewn on the floor, across the sofa, everywhere. Whoever had set about the place had been not just searching for something but wrecking and attacking any sense of order.

  Henry could see from where he stood that the bedroom had been similarly attacked, even the mattress turned from the bed, and a constable was nowhere in sight.

  Furious, Henry went back outside hoping that he could recall one of the officers who had walked back with him from Jimmy Cottee’s house. They were about to leave the beach and return to the Old Fort Road and were almost out of sight, but Henry bellowed at them. They turned as one and all three headed back in his direction.

  ‘Where the devil is the constable I left here?’ Henry demanded. He pointed at one of the constables. ‘You, Evans, go and rouse him from wherever it is he’s hiding. Pratt, get back to the police station and report that Miss Rowe’s bungalow has been vandalized.’

  ‘Vandalized, sir?’

  ‘Someone’s been in and searched the place and has not been very careful doing it. Your colleague is nowhere to be found.’

  ‘Prentice, you’re with me.’ Henry turned on his heel and back inside. Prentice joined him by the door.

  ‘Oh,’ Prentice said.

  ‘Quite.’

  Henry was glad that he’d kept the murder bag with him. He hadn’t thought he would need it when Mickey went back to London that night, and had hung on to it only because it would give him the opportunity to re-examine the photographs he had taken.

  Prentice voiced what Henry was thinking. ‘Where do we start, sir?’

  ‘Good question, Constable.’

  Henry bent down and checked the bag, removing the camera to see what film he had remaining. There had been no chance to restock so he would have to go carefully with it. ‘W
e start with pictures, so we can compare what we have now to what was here before. As far as that is possible, given the mess.’

  ‘What would they have been looking for?’

  ‘Right now, Constable, I have about as much of an idea as you do.’

  A clatter of boots on boards caused Henry to swing around as the errant constable appeared in the doorway. He was carrying his helmet and his face was bright red. He halted in astonishment at the sight of the room and of Henry. Then he swore loudly.

  ‘And where the devil did you get to?’ Henry demanded.

  ‘There was a boy, sir.’

  ‘A boy?’

  ‘Yes, a boy, sir. Sent to fetch me and Dr Clark. He lives next door …’

  ‘I know where he lives. What boy? Fetch you? Why?’

  ‘He said, sir, that there was a kiddie in the water. Little girl. Some fishermen were trying to drag her out but they needed the doctor and he said I was to come too, because …’

  ‘Because?’ Henry wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet.

  The constable shrugged awkwardly as though the reasons were self-explanatory.

  ‘And so you and Dr Clark went with this boy? And when you got to the scene?’

  ‘Little bastard, begging your pardon, sir, he ran off, sir. Well, me and Dr Clark, we hung around looking up and down the beach, just in case it was real, just in case there was a little girl in the water, but … Then we came back here, sir.’

  ‘And as you will see, someone took advantage of your absence.’ Henry indicated the chaos and devastation in the little bungalow. ‘How long were you gone?’