Body 13 (Quigg Book 2) Read online

  Body 13

  Tim Ellis

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  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2010 Timothy Stephen Ellis

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  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Books written by Tim Ellis can be obtained either through the author’s official website: http://timellis.weebly.com/ at Smashwords.com or through online book retailers.

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  To Pam, with love as always

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  Thank you to proofreader Paula Green

  (June 2012)

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  Chapter One

  In the depths of Hammersmith hospital, Quigg opened the door to the mortuary. Like fingernails on a blackboard, the wood at the bottom of the door squeaked on the red tiled floor announcing his arrival. A mixture of formaldehyde, dead flesh and percolating Colombian coffee rushed up his nose.

  As usual, he had to make a serious physical effort to control the overwhelming feelings of panic and dread that engulfed him as he entered the morgue. From the age of eight, he’d had a pathological fear of dead bodies – necrophobia the doctors called it. They had a name for everything these days. He blamed his mother for making him kiss his father’s corpse at the funeral. After that, the night terrors and bed-wetting had started.

  Having been ordered out of his sickbed by the Chief, he felt as though he belonged here. He rummaged in the pocket of his duffel coat, pulled out a burgundy-coloured handkerchief, and sneezed into it like someone with the bubonic plague.

  ‘Gesundheit, Inspector,’ the pathologist, Debbie Poulson, said, leaning against the stainless steel mortuary table, a withered cadaver half-hidden behind her slim body. ‘You look as if you should be in bed.’ Her eyes smiled above the green mask; wisps of brown hair poked from beneath her surgical cap; a circular saw in her right hand dripped blood and slivers of bone on the floor.

  He dabbed at his streaming left eye, his trembling hands and shortness of breath masked by the flu symptoms. ‘It’s your fault I’m not.’

  ‘Hardly,’ she said. ‘Yesterday it was here; now it’s not. We didn’t notice it had gone until this evening. Did some checking; still couldn’t find it; phoned the Chief - who obviously hates you.’

  He liked Debbie. She was single and had a similar sense of humour to him. Six months ago, old Bill Sawyer, the previous pathologist, had been carrying out a post-mortem when he’d had a massive heart attack. Owen Bowen, the skeletal mortuary assistant, had found Sawyer with his face in the cadaver’s open chest. Debbie was appointed the month afterwards. The first time Quigg had met her he felt a bond form between them which had grown stronger in the three months they had known each other.

  The thought of leaving the force, finding a nine-to-five job, leading a normal life – whatever that might be – had jumped into his mind on many occasions, but had become more frequent recently. He was two weeks into his thirty-fifth year and the job was all consuming. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out with a woman, or even had the time to be interested in the opposite sex, since his divorce two years ago. He needed some balance in his life.

  ‘So, the guy wasn’t dead,’ Quigg ventured. ‘He woke up, wondered where he was, couldn’t find anyone to ask, felt peckish, went to grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria and he’ll be back on the shelf once he’s finished his meal. Case closed.’

  ‘Ever thought about the theatre?’

  ‘I hate working at night.’

  Raising her eyebrows, Debbie looked at her Swatch. ‘Half past eight on a Monday night. Clearly you have some way to go in perfecting your career choice.’

  ‘Enough of the foreplay, let’s get to the heavy breathing so I can crawl back into bed. As you can see, I’m a desperately sick man.’

  Putting the circular saw on the table next to the cadaver, she pulled down her mask and walked towards the bank of ten steel doors facing the entrance. ‘You’ll die a lonely old man,’ she said over her shoulder.

  He sneezed to wake the dead. ‘I should be so lucky.’

  Debbie pulled the handle of the second door from the right. It swung open, revealing four shelves. ‘As you can see,’ she said, sliding the third shelf out, ‘the inhabitant of this one appears to have checked out without paying his bill.’

  Taking a step forward, Quigg leaned down - handkerchief pressed over his nose - and inspected the shelf. His heartbeat trebled and he thought he was going to be sick. ‘Maybe he didn’t like the service he was getting on this shelf and moved to another one.’

  ‘I wish that were the case. Owen and I have checked all the other shelves: Body 13 is definitely missing.’

  ‘Anything here you can get a DNA sample from?’ he asked, pointing to small crusts of burnt skin in the curve of the aluminium shelf.

  ‘I’ll try, but no promises.’

  ‘Any idea when it went missing?’

  ‘It was delivered with the rest of the bodies from Mugabe Terrace on Sunday morning. We noticed it had gone this afternoon, so - between Sunday morning and today.

  ‘Has anyone checked the CCTV tapes?’

  ‘Of course. That was one of the first things we did. Security found nothing.’

  ‘If it’s all the same to you and security, I’ll get forensics to take a look at them.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  He coughed into the handkerchief. ‘Identification?’

  ‘A white tag on the left big toe with ‘13’ written on it.’

  Had he been well enough he might have laughed, maybe asked her out for a drink, but all he wanted to do was get back to bed with his hot water bottle. ‘Unlucky for some. So what you’re saying is: you have no idea who it is or how old they were?’

  ‘There were fifteen bodies brought here after the fire at Mugabe Terrace and four of them were children. We’re short staffed due to sickness and a family bereavement, so we tagged and stored the cadavers. Body 13 was a scorched adult male body on a shelf until I got to it, probably on Thursday.’

  He recalled the fire in the early hours of Sunday morning, which had been all over the news. A gas explosion was suspected, but investigations were continuing. ‘At least we know it was a male. Could the tags have been switched?’

  ‘All the other bodies are accounted for.’

  ‘Photographs?’

  ‘We take them during the post-mortem, but the fire department will have taken some.’

  ‘I’ll get forensics here first thing in the morning. Not that they’ll find much after you’ve trampled all over the crime scene, but who knows, we might get lucky.’

  ‘It’s hardly the crime of the century, Inspector. As far as we knew, it was a body that had been mislaid. Why would anybody want to steal a shrivelled corpse?’

  ‘Why indeed?’

  ***

  ‘Is that you, Quigg?’

  Quigg tried to emulate a church mouse, but a cough gave him away. He was hoping to sneak back up to bed without having to engage in conversation. ‘Yes, Mum.'

  ‘I’ve a good mind to ring that Walter Bellmarsh,’ Beryl Quigg said as her son came into the living room. ‘Who does he think he is? People are allowed to be sick. You should have told him you were too ill, instead of letting him walk all over you. Too soft, that’s your trouble. Now, when I was working at the ‘muni
tions factory in 1943…’

  ‘I’m going back to bed, Mum. I’m too ill to stand here listening to you prattle on about the good old days.’ He made his way to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  ‘Oh, that’s right. Your mother’s not important enough anymore. You’ll listen to that fat tub of lard, but not your poor old mother. If I was a murder victim you’d want to talk then, but it’d be too late, Quigg, much too late.’

  After Caitlin had thrown him out a year ago, after she had kept the house, after she had sucked him dry with maintenance payments for Phoebe until he barely had enough to live on, he moved back in with his mother. It was not ideal, but he was emotionally battered and bruised, and a financial wreck. Beryl had been happy enough about it, but at the time Quigg felt as though his life had come to an end. A thirty-four year old man living with his mother. People would think there was something wrong with him - and not in a good way either. A year had passed and he was still living with Beryl.

  ‘I’m ill, Mum. I need to go to bed and sweat it out.’

  ‘What you need is a mustard plaster on your chest and a bowl of home-made chicken soup. That’s what my mum used to give us four girls. All these new-fangled remedies are just an excuse to take your money.’

  ‘A Night Nurse will do, Mum.’

  ‘It’s about time you got yourself a decent girl, never mind about night nurses; they’ll send you blind.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mum.’

  ‘Are you listening to me, Quigg?’

  ***

  ‘You look a bit better this morning, Inspector,’ Debbie said.

  So do you, he thought. She wore colour co-ordinated skirt, boots and roll-neck jumper that matched her shoulder-length hair and brown eyes. She smelled of autumn leaves and wouldn’t have looked out of place feeding the ducks in St James’ Park. ‘Surprising what a Night Nurse and hot water bottle can do.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  He had phoned forensics from home. Came straight here rather than make a detour to the station. It was now ten fifteen on Tuesday 25th November. He’d made an effort this morning, and had put on a clean shirt and an unstained tie, but his suit looked worn and crumpled, and he hid it all under the duffel coat he’d bought when Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister. He’d shaved, suffered the agony of Old Spice aftershave on two open cuts and combed his mop of prematurely greying black hair, which needed cutting. The bloodshot left eye and the nose that looked as though it belonged to a Christmas reindeer did little to enhance his angular good looks.

  ‘Anything?’ he asked the wiry Perkins from forensics who was bagging samples on the fridge shelf. With no dead bodies lying around on tables this morning, the fear had fallen away like an unneeded cloak.

  ‘Strand of hair and a dozen fingerprints up to now. I’ll let you have the results tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks. Don’t forget to get the CCTV tapes from security; see if there’s anyone carrying a dead body away.’

  Perkins nodded.

  He didn’t know much about Perkins, but he seemed a decent enough guy.

  ‘I’ve sent the skin for DNA analysis,’ Debbie said. ‘I’ll email the results over when they come in. Can I get back to work now?’

  ‘Does anyone remember anything about the body?’

  ‘It was barbecued.’

  The corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily. ‘You wouldn’t like to go out for a meal sometime would you?’ He saw Perkins stop what he was doing to watch Quigg make a fool of himself. He ran a finger round his collar, felt sweat trickling down his back making the shirt stick to his skin. His heart was beating so fast he thought he was going to have a heart attack. Well, if he were, he was in the right place.

  ‘Sometime? That’s a bit vague.’

  ‘Tomorrow night? Pick you up at seven?’

  Passing him a business card, she said, ‘I’d like that, Inspector.’

  He glanced at the card; she’d written her home address and telephone number in North Kensington on the back. He wondered when she’d done that. Maybe she’d been expecting him to ask her out. Was he that obvious? For a detective, he wasn’t very good at identifying romantic clues, but maybe she had made herself look fantastic today for him.

  ‘Call me Quigg,’ he said, slipping the card into his duffel coat pocket with all the rest of the rubbish he carried around.

  ‘Haven’t you got a first name, like normal people?’

  ‘No.’

  ***

  Chief Fire Officer Bunder was standing by the window puffing on a pipe. ‘Which particular body are you interested in, Inspector?’

  Quigg was sitting in a chair in front of the CFO’s desk at the London Fire HQ in Docklands. On the wall facing him, the minute hand of a Roman clock reached eleven forty-five. The November wind blowing in through the open window made him shiver. He shrugged further into his duffel coat and said, ‘I didn’t think people smoked pipes anymore?’

  Bunder shrugged. ‘I’m a dinosaur. They keep telling me I can’t smoke in here, but what the hell. I’ve only got four months left before my retirement. I meet them half way and stand here with the window open freezing to death.’

  Quigg wiped his runny nose with a handkerchief. ‘Before they could photograph one of the bodies,’ he explained, ‘it went missing from the mortuary. I’ll need photographs of all the victims to identify the one that’s disappeared.’

  ‘Missing, eh? Sounds a bit odd. I’ll phone Stevens - he’s the investigating officer.’ Carefully placing his pipe on the outside ledge, he shut the window and picked up the phone on his desk. He punched in a three-digit number. ‘Greg, hi, it’s Harry. Got a police inspector here who wants copies of the body snaps from the Mugabe fire. Be up in five.’ Putting the phone back in its cradle, he headed for the door. ‘Follow me,’ he said and set off briskly along the corridor.

  Quigg thought he was in a race. His breathing came in short gasps as he tried to keep up with Bunder. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Feeling dizzy, he stopped at the end of the second corridor to catch his breath, unsure of whether the CFO had turned left or right. Choosing right, he looked through the glass panel in the door and saw Bunder signalling to him. He was about to follow when his ears popped, the door blew back into his face and he was thrown onto his back. Smoke and debris filled the corridor.

  He was sure that if it hadn’t been for his outstretched hand, the force of the door would have caved his face in. Dazed, he struggled to a sitting position and felt himself for injuries. Blood ran into his left eye from a deep gash on his forehead and his top lip began to swell up and bleed. Picking himself up, he staggered through the door. Bunder lay on his side outside the remains of a room. A fire had started and flames licked the edges of a hole in the left-hand wall. Kneeling, he felt for a pulse – there was a faint flutter. As he started dragging Bunder back towards safety, two men in uniform burst through the door.

  ‘What happened?’ one of them asked, pulling out a radio. The other helped Quigg drag the Chief along the corridor.

  ‘An explosion,’ Quigg gasped. ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘Carol, get an ambulance,’ the man said into his radio. ‘The Chief’s been injured. Looks like one of Steven’s experiments finally worked.’

  Quigg began to get that eerie feeling he always got when someone was trampling on his grave wearing hobnail boots. ‘Or it could have been deliberate,’ he said.

  ‘Deliberate!’ The man with the radio asked, staring at him. ‘Who the hell are you anyway?’

  He released Bunder, stood up and extracted his warrant card from the inside pocket of his duffel coat. ‘Detective Inspector Quigg, Hammersmith CID.’ Feeling dizzy, he grabbed the fire officer.

  ‘Hang on, Sir - I’ll get the Assistant CFO.’ He spoke into the radio, ‘Hey, Carol, Mulworth again. Will you ask the ACFO to come to the photo lab? Got a police inspector here who thinks the explosion might have been deliberate.’

  Quigg’s world went black as he collapsed onto the fl
oor. He didn’t get to see the ACFO.

  ***

  The three men were sitting together in a corner of the ‘gentlemen only’ bar in the club on New Bond Street in Mayfair. Although the committee had been forced to allow women to join the club, they still retained an inner sanctum, which would be maintained as long as the constitution of the committee stayed at eighty-twenty in favour of men. None of the three were on the committee, preferring to wield power anonymously. Each wore sombre ties and dark suits as a matter of course.

  ‘Would you care for drinks, gentlemen?’ Albert, the waiter, asked. Albert, or someone just like him, had been the waiter since the club was first established in 1854.

  Until Sunday there had been twelve Apostles, but one of their number – Phillip – was unfortunate enough to die in the fire at Mugabe Terrace. Now they would need to look for a replacement – who would also be called Phillip.

  It had always been an unwritten rule that if there were more than three Apostles in the club, they would only have acknowledged each other in passing, but sat in twos or threes. They were cautious not to be seen as any more than simply acquaintances who spoke together occasionally about the weather, items of news or trivia.

  ‘I’ll have a G and T,’ Andrew responded to Albert’s inquiry. ‘Bartholomew?’

  ‘Brandy.’

  ‘Thaddeus?’

  ‘Glenfiddich.’

  Albert didn’t need to write their orders down. He was familiar with all of these distinguished gentlemen – they were three of his regulars and tipped generously. He tilted his head imperceptibly and left to fulfil his duties.

  They waited patiently until Albert returned with the drinks, set them down and left. After taking a sip of his sixty year old Armagnac brandy, Bartholomew said, ‘Quigg has been appointed to investigate the missing body.’