The Garden Party Read online

  ‘Thank you for coming, sir.’ Frankie Brunnie turned to Vicary as Vicary approached him. ‘I thought that you would want to be here. I phoned the directions through as soon as I realized that there was something in this but you were out.’

  ‘Yes, I was left a note in my pigeonhole. Thank you.’

  ‘Sir . . . we’re still finding bones, we are going very slowly.’

  ‘So I see.’ Vicary observed the careful, gentle manner in which the constable scraped away the soil, layer by layer. ‘But bones . . . not bodies?’

  ‘No, sir, bones, as you see.’ Brunnie pointed to the bones which had been placed in a neat pile in one corner of the cordoned off area, and which at that moment were being closely examined by John Shaftoe, who glanced at Vicary and gave him a brief smile of recognition. He then returned his attention to the bones.

  ‘We used dogs, as you see, sir, it being a wooded area; as you know, we can only use ground-penetrating radar in open spaces,’ Brunnie explained.

  ‘Yes.’ Vicary brushed a fly away from his face.

  ‘Dogs are preferable anyway if you ask me, sir. GPR images have to be interpreted, but a dog knows when he has picked up the scent of decaying flesh and they came up with the goods all right; two spaniels, as you see.’ Brunnie nodded in the direction of the two springer spaniels. ‘Alsatians have their uses in crowd control situations and in bringing down felons but you can’t beat a springer when it comes to scenting . . . gun dogs, you see. Please meet Charlie Chan and Sherlock.’

  ‘You’re joking?’ Vicary grinned.

  ‘No joke, sir. Charlie Chan is the one lying down.’

  ‘So . . .’ Vicary looked at the pile of bones and then at the slowly deepening hole. ‘What do we have?’

  ‘Two adult males, according to Mr Shaftoe, sir,’ Brunnie replied, ‘two skulls and about the right number of bones to make two skeletons. They’ve been chopped up, I mean well chopped up.’

  ‘Dismembered?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Brunnie replied, ‘I dare say that that would be a better way of putting it. Mr Shaftoe is examining them at the moment.’

  ‘So I see.’ Vicary glanced at the figure of John Shaftoe, casually dressed, kneeling on the floor of the woodland holding a long bone in each hand, and at that moment, Vicary thought, looking more like a man weeding his allotment than the Home Office Pathologist he actually was.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ the constable who was digging the hole stood and addressed Brunnie. ‘I am certain that I have reached consolidated soil now; this soil hasn’t been disturbed at all. I am coming across unbroken roots as well.’

  ‘Very good.’ Brunnie, accompanied by Vicary, walked to the cordoned off area and, raising the tape, walked to the edge of the hole in which the constable stood. The hole was, Vicary guessed, about four feet deep.

  The constable drew the tip of the blade of the spade across the soil at the bottom of the hole. ‘I’ve dug down about one foot deeper than the last piece of bone to be found, sir, and as I said, I am sure I am digging in undisturbed soil . . . totally consolidated. I am sure that nothing has been buried below this level.’

  Brunnie glanced at Vicary who nodded. ‘Very well,’ Brunnie addressed the constable, ‘thank you, that is a good job done. Get someone to help you and sift the soil as you refill the hole.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ The constable’s reply was prompt and attentive. Brunnie turned to a Scene of Crime Officer who wore a high definition yellow waistcoat. ‘Can you photograph the hole, please? Perhaps you could use something to give the photograph scale?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’ll use the spade, if I may.’ The SOCO stepped forward and took hold of the spade as it was handed to him by the constable who was levering himself out of the hole.

  ‘A hole with bones,’ John Shaftoe grunted as he got to his feet and brushed soil from his trousers. He had rolled up the sleeves of his blue shirt and drew his forearm across his brow, sweeping away beads of sweat in the process. A white, wide-brimmed cricket hat sat upon the top of his head. ‘It is quite a clever way of doing it,’ he panted. ‘You dig a hole, just a small hole . . . not as large as you would need for a body; place the bones neatly within said hole. You can place all the bones of the human body . . . an adult body that is . . . in the sort of cubic dimension of an old-fashioned television set, and two sets of bones both from adult humans could be placed in the sort of space that would be occupied by a small washing machine or a freezer . . . or in this case a hole of that size; less in fact because the constable dug down an extra foot or so, as he has just informed you, thorough man that he is.’ Shaftoe took another deep breath and shook his head. ‘I am not as young as I used to be . . . but all the flesh has been removed, that is a necessity if you are going to conceal bones in such a small area.’

  ‘And that is what has happened here, Mr Shaftoe?’

  ‘Yes, as you see, no flesh or muscle or any form of sinew remain. I’ll get the bones back to the Royal London as soon as I can. There will be no pronouncements without prior examin-ation under proper clinical conditions, but I can tell you that all the bones show evidence of having been exposed to fire.’

  ‘They’ve been burnt?’

  Shaftoe inclined his head to one side and then the other. ‘I can’t say for sure. I have seen similar scorching on bones in archaeological sites where the ancients practised cannibalism . . . or the remnants of animal bones round a camp fire. The scorching is probably the indication of attempts to burn the flesh so as to separate it from the bone rather than an attempt to burn the bones themselves as a means of destroying them.’

  ‘I see.’ Vicary nodded. ‘Understood.’

  ‘I can also tell you that that could not have been done here.’

  ‘No?’ Vicary queried.

  ‘No . . . well . . . just look around you, the proximity to a very busy road and houses; leafy, well-set Ilford.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’ Vicary glanced around him.

  ‘Space and time,’ Shaftoe remarked. ‘Both space and time would be needed to reduce a corpse into a pile of bones; you’d need quite a bonfire to burn the flesh away, then you would separate the bones and possibly boil the remaining flesh away, one or two bones at a time. This is not medical thinking, you see, Mr Vicary, this is just honest to goodness logic.’

  ‘Appreciate that, sir.’

  ‘It would take a week from beginning to end, I would think.’ Shaftoe took off his wide-brimmed white cricketer’s hat and revealed a bald head. He wiped his brow once again and replaced his hat.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes, I would think so. A massive fire which would give off the unmistakable smell of burning flesh, then isolating each bone and boiling it to remove the last remnants of muscle and sinew . . . where there is no danger of being disturbed . . . a few days’ work there, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘I see your point, sir.’ Vicary glanced towards the road and nearby houses. ‘It would not – it could not have been done here.’

  ‘As to when.’ Shaftoe shrugged. ‘That will always be inconclusive.’

  ‘We have information which suggests they have been here in excess of five years.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes . . . it was a note in a wall which alerted us to the presence. The wall was built, or rebuilt rather, five years ago. It was in the form of a rough sketch map.’

  ‘Very good,’ Shaftoe murmured. ‘Good enough, it got us here . . . it did its job.’

  Besides Shaftoe, Vicary and Brunnie, two officers shovelled small amounts of soil into a sieve which was held by a third officer, whereupon it was gently shaken over the hole.

  Shaftoe broke the brief silence. ‘I do wonder why on earth they went to the trouble of burying them. I mean, if the felons had gone to all this trouble to separate flesh from bone, they clearly wanted their two victims to disappear.’

  ‘That seems a reasonable assumption,’ Vicary replied.

  ‘So why then bury them in a shallow grave in woodland
adjacent to a busy road and densely populated area? Seems to work against their apparent intention of permanent disappearance. If they had reduced the bodies to bones then it would be a simple matter to put the bones in one or two cardboard boxes and drop them off Richmond Bridge one dark, rainy night. Let the Old Father swallow them. But to go to the trouble of burying them in a wood, you’d have the devil of a job cutting through the root plate. I mean, any infantryman will tell you that you can’t dig-in in a wood.’

  ‘Because of the roots?’ Vicary asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Shaftoe replied. ‘This hole was much, much harder to dig than would have been a similar-sized hole dug in a field.’

  Vicary turned to the constable who had excavated the hole. ‘Did you encounter roots, constable?’

  ‘Yes, sir, a few.’ The constable held the sieve quite still as he answered Vicary. ‘But it was all new growth. Any old roots had become mixed with the bones and had decayed.’

  ‘You have a point, Mr Shaftoe. Why not just dump them in the river?’

  ‘And why here?’ Shaftoe added. ‘Folk hereabouts would have called you blokes if they heard digging in the wood at night . . . and it would have been dug at night or over one or two nights because pedestrians or dog walkers would have heard it during the day, or even come across the man or men digging it. It’s a puzzle, but one for you, not one for me.’

  ‘Yes, dare say much will be answered if and when we identify the author of the note,’ Vicary replied drily. ‘I have two of my team trying to find him as we speak.’

  ‘Good luck. Well . . .’ Shaftoe brought the conversation back on track, ‘what we have here is two adult males. They are most likely north-western European going by the skull shape, but they could also be Asian; European and Asian skull shapes being very similar, with the Asian skull being slightly more finely made, but that as a general rule of thumb.’

  ‘Understood,’ Vicary commented.

  ‘Age at death.’ Shaftoe pondered the skulls. ‘Well, adult, probably older than thirty years. They both have fully knitted skulls and both have quite a lot of teeth missing, but both skulls still contain two or three teeth and that is all I need to determine their ages at time of death, within twelve months either way . . . I mean plus or minus a year.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Vicary replied.

  ‘There do not appear to be sufficient teeth to be able to determine identity by means of dental records.’

  ‘Can you tell how long they have been buried, sir?’ Vicary asked.

  ‘Nope.’ Shaftoe smiled. ‘The note you mentioned is probably a better indication than anything I can determine by scientific analysis. I’ll take a soil sample back to the lab with me; send it by courier to the forensic science laboratory, they might be able to give some indication of when the soil was disturbed, though I do not hold out much hope. Frankly, I think DNA extracted from the bones will be the best avenue to explore to determine their identity and that may be your dateline. They were presumably murdered some time after they were last seen alive. Sorry I can’t be more specific, but determining exact time of death by means of scientific analysis of remains is the stuff of television drama. So, we have a collection of charred bones, enough to make two male skeletons. I can’t see any obviously missing bones nor are there additional bones from a third or fourth body. We do not have five femurs or six clavicles, for example. I am pretty sure we have all the bones from the two bodies. And the charring . . . it seems that they were burnt to aid concealment. It takes an awful lot of heat to turn bones to ash. Here they were burnt only to remove the flesh. Like a well-cooked leg of lamb, the meat just falls right off the bone on the serving platter at Sunday lunchtime, or any type of meat, really; it is just that leg of lamb is my favourite roast meat.’ Shaftoe grinned. ‘I am sorry but I am no vegetarian or animal rights activist.’

  ‘Well said, sir.’ Vicary returned the grin in clear agreement with Shaftoe’s attitude.

  ‘Rabbits are lovely, furry little animals,’ Shaftoe continued, ‘just perfect for the casserole dish.’

  Again Vicary chuckled. ‘So, in your opinion, the bones were burnt to aid their disposal?’

  ‘I would think so; as I said, once the bones have been cleaned of all flesh and muscle and sinew, burnt and then possibly boiled to make them fully cleaned of flesh, then you can stack them neatly in quite a small space.’

  ‘Rather than drop them into the river,’ Vicary mused. ‘It is a question to answer. This is not a hurried disposal, I think.’

  ‘I would be inclined to agree.’ Shaftoe brushed a persistent fly from his face. ‘This hole took time and effort to dig.’

  ‘Yes, the root plate and proximity to the road and to the houses, as we mentioned. It is strange that no one saw or heard the hole being dug or noticed it when it had been dug.’ Harry Vicary glanced around him. ‘On a quiet night the sound of a spade being driven into the soil would carry to the houses hereabouts and do so easily. Even allowing for the trees masking the noise somewhat, the sound would still carry and a light sleeper or someone lying awake—’

  ‘Ah.’ Shaftoe held up his right index finger. ‘You have probably just answered your own question there, Mr Vicary. You see the remote location needed to burn the corpses, dismember them and then possibly boil the bones until they were free of all flesh suggests, as we have agreed, that the felons in question had access to time and space.’

  ‘Yes, we have agreed these,’ Vicary replied.

  ‘This further suggests that they had storage facilities to keep the bones hidden while waiting for wet weather to arrive; I mean waiting for the kind of storm cell that will bring the rain down in stair rods, softening the soil, and then they arrive at the wood with pickaxes and spades, dig said hole, with the rainfall deadening any noise, place bones therein, fill in, place stones on top and get away before it stops raining and dawn rises. But –’ Shaftoe shrugged – ‘that is all speculation . . . Me, well, I have to be scientific and confine my report to what made them stop kicking, if I can. I’ll have the bones removed to the Royal London and commence the post-mortem as soon as I can. Will you be observing for the police, Mr Vicary?’

  ‘Yes.’ Vicary nodded. ‘Yes, I will.’ Vicary turned to DC Brunnie. ‘We seem to be talking years buried, as the note indicated, but can you organize a search of the wood, please? You have sufficient constables. Something of relevance may still be here, still in the vicinity. I doubt you’ll find anything though, but if we don’t look it will only be here waiting to be found . . . life being like that.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Frank Brunnie smiled. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Then do a house to house, again. I doubt anyone will recall anything from five years ago in respect of the wood, but ask anyway.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Brunnie nodded his understanding of the instructions.

  ‘I’m going to the Royal London Hospital to observe the post-mortem. I’ll be there if needed. Then I will go to the Yard.’

  ‘Understood, sir.’ Brunnie turned sharply away; he was a man with a purpose.

  The small terraced house was, Yewdall silently pondered, a sound lesson to any person who might find themselves drawn to a life of crime, who might be tempted by apparently easy pickings. The house in question was on Perch Street in the appropriately, thought Yewdall, named area of Shacklewell in the London Borough of Hackney. Within the house there was a large area of living space which was divided into a kitchen cum dining area, a relaxation area comprising two armchairs in front of a television set which occupied the corner of the room, and a single bed pushed under the stairs which led to the upper floor rental. A toilet and shower cubicle were located beyond the kitchen and beyond that French windows looked out on to an overgrown garden that was enclosed by a six foot high brick wall and which was, thought Yewdall, about twelve feet square. Beyond the wall at the bottom of the garden the upper floors and roof tops of the next street parallel to Perch Street were visible. It was evident that the house had been originally a two s
torey house designed for occupation by an artisan and his family, and it was, by the time the officers visited, divided into two separate flats with certainly a long-term tenant on the ground floor and probably, guessed the officers, the same on the upper floor. A date set in the wall of an adjacent and identical house read 1885.

  Inside the lower flat everything seemed to Ainsclough and Yewdall to be old and worn, very worn. The television set was a bulky item and sat upon a table which both officers thought was of the immediate post Second World War era. The twin high-backed and high-armed armchairs which stood side by side across the threadbare carpet seemed, to the officers, to belong to the same era. The decoration, apart from faded wallpaper, was confined to a print of a painting of a sailing ship contained within an inexpensive-looking frame which hung from the wall to the left of the television. Faded net curtains prevented passengers from seeing into the flat as they walked along the pavement, which was separated from the house by a very small area of personal space approximately two feet wide. All this was the home of Claude Bonner who, like his dwelling and the furniture and fixtures and fittings therein, could be best described as ‘belonging to an earlier era’, thought Penny Yewdall. Bonner, the officers noted, was short, with a protruding stomach, and was bow-legged, round of face, bewhiskered, with straggly grey hair which surrounded the bald crown of his head. ‘Des . . . Des Holst . . .’ Bonner spoke in a slow, croaking voice but he had, noted Ainsclough and Yewdall, alert blue eyes and he stood square on to the officers, in front of the television. He nonetheless gave off the unmistakable musty smell of an elderly person. ‘I heard he went to Fiddler’s Green, old Des; he went west did Desmond. Nice old geezer but he kicked the bucket, so I heard, more than a year ago now. Old Des, he left a gap behind him.’