Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

The Bones by Peter Turnbull

True police procedurals — stories that follow a cohort of police officers through the day-today duties of their department — are more common at novel than short story length. The reason is clear: It takes a lot of juggling to fit the stories of the several officers into the overriding crime plot. No one does it more skillfully in the short form than Peter Turnbull.

Again the man saw the bones. Again he thought nothing of them. Just bones, bones in the heather. He had got used to seeing bones up here. Bones picked clean by scavengers and microorganisms. Up here on Fenwick Moor there were many bones. The moor was Keith Stoddart’s favourite place. Up here, alone, him and his thoughts. He liked it. He lived alone. Didn’t even keep a dog. Keith Stoddart was the gamekeeper for the Apsleys at Cliff Grange House. Part of the land owned by the Apsleys included a generous section of Fenwick Moor. The moor was used for grouse shooting. Large companies purchased shooting rights for a few weeks to entertain clients and potential customers. It meant good money for the Apsleys but only if there were grouse to shoot. In May, the grouse nest and lay eggs. In the May time of the year the stoats attack the grouse nests and suck the eggs. In May, Keith Stoddart goes up to “the tops” and sets and baits grouse snares. It was as he was doing that that he saw the bones. Again.

A rib cage gleaming in the strong sunlight. It was not that he approached them, rather it was that the imaginary line along which he chose to place the snares ran close to the bones. As he drew closer, he saw with detached interest that the bones were human. A full skeleton, complete with grinning skull. He walked on, carefully placing the snares. He had a job to do.

At the close of the day, when all the snares he needed to set had been set, he walked off the tops to his isolated cottage and prepared himself a meal: a simple stew. He ate it, savouring the food. He had, of late, come to enjoy cooking and eating what he had prepared. Then, as evening melted into night, he walked to the hotel. At the hotel he picked up the pay phone in the foyer and dialled the police.

“Found some bones,” he said.

“Bones? Human?”

“Aye. Thought they were sheep bones at first.”

“Where?”

“On the tops.”

“Where?”

“On the tops. Fenwick Moor.”

“That’s a big place.”

“Aye. Big enough.”

“We’ll need more information.”

“I’ll take you.”

“When?”

“Sunday.”

“It’s still only Monday.”

“Aye.”

“Who am I speaking to?”

“Tell you on Sunday.”

“We’ll need to see those bones as soon as...”

“Why? They’re not going anywhere and no one’s going near them. They’re on private land. The only person up there this time of year is me.”

“Who are you?”

“You’ll find out.”

“You could be charged with wasting police time.”

“Sunday. No sooner. No later. That’s my day off. I’m not losing time for anybody and not for a skeleton that’s been there for years anyway.”

“I can only repeat the warning.”

“The white house.”

“The what?”

“On the Kilmarnock/Glasgow Road. As you’re coming south from Glasgow there’s a white house about halfway between Glasgow and Kilmarnock. Send some men. Turn left at the white house. It’s the road to Cliff Grange. I’ll be standing in the road from ten A.M., Sunday. I’ll wait until ten-thirty A.M., then I’ll be away and I won’t be coming back.” Stoddart replaced the phone just lightly enough not to be accused of slamming it down and walked into the bar with piped music and tartan-patterned carpet. He liked a beer at the close of the day.

Stoddart saw the police car the instant that Sergeant Piper and PC Hamilton saw him. From his point of view, the car was a small white vehicle which seemed to prowl along the lane. From the point of view of the occupants of the car, he was a solitary figure, massively built, standing in the centre of the road.

“Not the sort of guy I’d like to meet on a dark night.” Piper slowed the car and halted in front of the man.

“Imagine him with a sawn-off in his hands.” Hamilton got out of the car. As did Piper.

“You’ve come, then?” Stoddart’s eyes were hard, his jaw set firm.

“You’re the gentleman who phoned us?”

“Aye.”

“We do not appreciate being kept waiting. A corpse is a serious matter.”

“It’s not a corpse. It’s a skeleton. Anyway, that’s your lookout.”

“Who are you?”

“Stoddart. I’m the gamekeeper for Cliff Grange House.”

Piper paused. “So where is it?”

Without speaking, Stoddart turned and walked off the road and put himself at the slope of the moor as it rose up from the road to the tops. The cops were suddenly aware that they were expected to follow. They did so, but not without a struggle. Stoddart was a man in his middle years but was also a man of immense physical strength. Clearly so, given the short work he made of the slope.

“He makes it look like a Sunday morning stroll to the news agent’s.” Piper clutched at a strand of heather and hauled himself a few feet further up the slope. His shirt was saturated with sweat. Behind him, Hamilton murmured something about them going back and fetching one of the police Landrovers. Eventually they stood beside Stoddart, who showed no sign of his exertions.

“Yon tree.” Stoddart pointed across the blue-grey-black, flat, gently undulating landscape.

“What tree?” Piper panted, scanning the landscape.

“Yon tree.” Stoddart nodded to the area ahead of him, still pointing. Then Piper saw a small tree of limited growth in the middle distance. “I see it.”

“Walk towards it. You’ll come across the bones near the tree, about three hundred yards short of it.” He turned and walked down the slope.

Piper and Hamilton watched Stoddart go. “Day off.” Piper smiled. They then turned and looked at the moor. “It’s a fine day for it, anyway. Some folk do this for a pastime and you and me get to be paid for it. Come on.”

They found the bones just where Stoddart had said they would find them. The skeleton was on its back. The skull grinned at them.

“Well, he was right, in a sense,” Piper said, “six days wouldn’t have made a deal of difference in this case. Even if it is murder.”

It was, in the event, a very, very clear case of murder.

“A very clear case of murder.” Dr. Reynolds reclined in his chair. He consulted his notes as he spoke on the phone. “Either that or someone caved in the skull of an already deceased person, but I doubt it. It’s the sort of injury you get if you put a pickaxe handle over someone’s head.”

“A pickaxe handle.” Donoghue scribbled on his notepad whilst holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder.

“Or similar.” Reynolds reached for his notes. “You see, it’s a linear fracture, many years old; we can tell that by the faded colour of the splintered pieces, and it’s that which makes me think that this is not a case of someone happening upon a skull and fracturing it out of devilment. The other thing that makes me think that this injury is the cause of death is the angle — it’s square on the back of the head, at the very back of the skull. The deceased would have been standing when he was struck from behind.”

“It’s a male?”

“Oh yes, male skeleton. The perpetrator would have been smaller than the victim. He was a six-footer in life.”

“I see.”

“Now, as well as the cause of death,” Reynolds glanced about his small office in the pathology department in the bowels of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary and again felt a longing for better, larger working facilities, “as well as that, I can tell you a number of other things. He was middle-aged when he died, fifty-five years of age, plus or minus a year.”

“That’s accurate.”

“I took a tooth from his upper teeth and cut it in cross section — that enables us to date it within a twenty-four-month age range.”

“So he was fifty-four or fifty-five or fifty-six?”

“Yes.”

“When do you think he died?”

“That’s difficult to tell. Certainly it’s a period measured in years. It’s completely skeletal, no trace of matter on the bones at all, and that process of skeletalisation takes years. In cases like this, it’s really up to the police to date the skeleton rather than the pathologist. You know, the corpse under the patio dates from the time the patio was laid, that sort of thing.”

“Fair enough.”

“But in this case there is nothing that I can detect which enables me to date the time of death with any degree of accuracy. It may even have been buried shallowly and have worked its way to the surface, which may explain why it was not discovered earlier.”

“Possibly, but it was on a stretch of privately owned moorland where only the gamekeeper wanders. When he phoned us he said that he thought they were sheep bones, it was apparently only a matter of chance that he got close enough to see that it was a human skeleton. If he hadn’t got so close, the bones would probably have remained unnoticed for several years to come.”

“Lucky, or unlucky, depending on your perspective. I mean, lucky for you and the ends of justice, unlucky for the perpetrator.”

“Indeed. If he or she is still with us.”

“What I can do, and will do, is to remove the jaw and send it to the School of Dentistry. If you can provide a short list of names at some point, they’ll match it with the dental records of those names and if there’s a match, you have a positive ID.”

“Thanks. We’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll have my report typed up and faxed to you ASAP. Noreen’s not in yet. I fear that she probably had too much colourless liquid for her supper again last night.”

“A lady with a problem.”

“Oh, I would say so. She’s close to losing her job because of it; maybe it’ll take that to make her sit up and take notice of herself. I’m afraid she’s killing herself. As a medical man, I can see it happening. But back to our man, that’s the nuts and bolts, and my report will be with you forthwith.”

“Many thanks.”

“Oh, before I go, I should say that the absence of textile fibre means that he was partially clad when he was killed. No footwear came with him and shoes would have been identifiable after years of exposure to the elements. It’s a further indicator of foul play.”

“Again, thanks.” Donoghue replaced the receiver, rekindled his pipe, and glanced out of his office window along the length of Sauchiehall Street. It was a fine early summer’s day. He pulled gently on his pipe and pondered a tall man being struck from behind by a smaller person. The body was then conveyed to a moorland site. A small person couldn’t carry a larger person any distance at all, so the likelihood was that some years ago, two or more people entered into a conspiracy to murder. The first step, as always, was to identify the corpse; then, hopefully, the rest should fall into place.

Fourteen days after Keith Stoddart had chanced across the bones on Fenwick Moor, they were identified. They were identified by dint of a computer search for the names of missing males aged between fifty and sixty years who had been reported as missing for more than two years and less than thirty. Twenty names sprang up on the flickering screen. Of those twenty, only one had the stature of the deceased. Douglas Minto was six feet tall and had been fifty-five years of age when he was reported missing twelve years ago. A comparison with his dental records and the teeth of the lower jaw of the bones confirmed his ID.

The file made interesting reading. It had all the pungent aroma of foul play, yet classically, without a body or a confession, there had been little the police could do. And, as always in such cases, time is on the side of the perpetrator; as police resources are stretched, more recently committed crimes scream for attention. The file on Douglas Minto began to sink lower and lower in the pile, and eventually it left the minds of hard-pressed officers and so ceased to be “alive” as the world continued to turn. But yet, time is not really on the side of the perpetrator, though there is perhaps that illusion. Should new evidence come to light, then the file can be accessed, it can be reopened. The case can be picked up where it was left off, unless the crime concerned is shown to have been committed more than seventy years ago: That’s the cutoff point, the perpetrator by then being deemed to be deceased. But twelve years ago... in police terms, thought Donoghue, as he turned the dusty pages... in police terms, twelve years was, well... yesterday. Especially in the case of murder.

Douglas Minto, according to the file, was a self-made man. His wife was forty-seven when she reported his disappearance and had been his wife for twenty-five years. It appeared to be a long-term, stable relationship. A successful union. But the interested police officer at the time had recorded his suspicions about the nature of the relationship between Mrs. Minto and a young man who had been present in the house when he had called to take a follow-up statement a few days after the initial statement had been made: “...it is my impression there is something between Mrs. Minto and the young man in the house whom she described as a family friend.”

Interesting, Donoghue pondered, reaching for his pipe. Very interesting.

The Mintos lived in comfortable middle-class Busby. They were childless. Sheila Minto didn’t work. She was a kept woman. According to the notes, the housework was done by a maid and the gardening by a gardener, a Mrs. O’Sullivan and a Mr. Dollar respectively. Mrs. O’Sullivan’s home address was some distance away in the sprawling Castlemilk housing scheme. Mr. Dollar’s address was closer at hand, in Busby itself. Donoghue picked up the phone on his desk and tapped a four-figure internal number.

“C.I.D. DC King.” A crisp, efficient voice.

“Donoghue here.”

“Sir.”

“Can you come to my office, please, Richard? Got a couple of jobs for you.”

Self-respecting poverty. That was Richard King’s first and lasting impression of Mrs. Mary O’Sullivan’s flat. She revealed herself to be a portly, amiable woman in her late middle years, very house proud but also a woman of slender means. Silver-haired, she sat in an old armchair in a flat which was clean, immaculately swept, but she didn’t seem to be able to run to polish or air freshener. Her television was ancient, probably a black and white set, and her furniture even older. Possibly it had been inherited from parents so, so many years ago, or else purchased from the charity shops.

“You’ve come to see me first?” Her voice was soft, lilting, very Irish. She had a photograph of the Pope on her mantlepiece and wound a rosary around her wrist, clinging to it like a comfort blanket.

“It’s the way my boss likes to work.” King returned her smile. “He likes to be on firm ground before he moves. He thinks that that is better than jumping in with both feet. And in this case, we are not under a deal of pressure.”

“He’s probably right.” Mrs. O’Sullivan warmed to the chubby, bearded cop who sat in her living room. “There’s much to be said for caution. So you’re interested in Mr. and Mrs. Minto?”

“Yes. Particularly Mrs. Minto.”

“Why, have you found his body?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Which can only mean you have. Don’t worry, son, I won’t be tipping Mrs. Minto, or whatever her name is now.”

“She married again?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“You seem not to like her?”

“I didn’t. Still don’t. I try not to think bad things about folk, but I didn’t take to Mrs. Minto.”

“Do you have any idea what happened to Mr. Minto?”

“I have no proof, but you see things if you clean in a house. It’s the part of my job which is interesting. It’s the people in the house. I’ve been a housekeeper all my days, son, no two houses are ever the same. It’s what makes you stay, the people, I mean, and it’s also what makes you leave.”

“So tell me about the Minto house, as you knew it?”

“A poisonous house. He was all right, Mr. Minto, a calm man, unnatural that. He was self-made but had a calmness about him which I’ve always associated with professional men. Other self-made men I’ve cleaned for all seem to have been angry, bitter, they’re driven, driving themselves hard. Mr. Minto had the manner of a doctor, but he’d made his money at a string of clothing shops.”

“What was she like?”

“Feisty. A wee feisty woman. I’ve heard that there is a chemistry which works between large, calm, biddable men and feisty wee women and I suppose that is what made their marriage work. But it was one of the households which made me pleased I never remarried. My husband was killed when he was young, we were not long married.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I never wanted another man. I was happy on my own. The Minto household made me realise how the two golden years I had as a marriage were better than the twenty-odd they had. I couldn’t live with that woman, but like I said, he seemed to be able to. Are you married, son?”

“Yes. One child. A boy.”

“Nice.”

“So, twelve years ago? The Minto household?”

“It was my second-last job before I hung up my dusters for good. The reason that I carried on was that I didn’t want to end my working days in the Minto household. So I went to do for Mr. McMillan, retired bank manager and widower.”

“What made the Minto house poisonous?”

“She did, at all times, but especially from the day she let the young man in the house, and his Landrover parked in the driveway.”

“She let a young man in the house?”

“Practically. She was in her forties, he was a student in his twenties. Clean-cut, handsome, slim. He’d be in the house when Mr. Minto was at work. I was supposed to dust and clean and vacuum and not realise what was going on.”

“But you knew?”

“Of course I knew. It made it difficult for me. I liked Mr. Minto. He’d pay me each week and there was always this voice inside me saying ‘your wife... your wife...’ but I could never say anything, but I couldn’t stay either so I went to do for Mr. McMillan. I wasn’t surprised when Mr. Minto disappeared. He didn’t disappear, she did away with him and put his body under the cellar steps.”

“Under the cellar steps?”

“Well, isn’t that where you put your dead bodies?”

King raised an eyebrow.

“The police searched the house, they questioned me. I was with Mr. McMillan by then, but I’d only left the Minto home a day or two earlier so I was questioned. But I couldn’t tell them anything. I said that I thought, but only thought, that Mrs. Minto had a thing going with the young man and Mrs. Minto, for all that she was a feisty wee thing, knew how to keep her head. Maybe the police should have questioned the young man a bit more — he wasn’t as hard-nosed as she was. He would have cracked.”

“You think so?”

“Cleaning women work with people as much as anyone. A cleaner sees how a house functions. Don’t see a cleaner as just a woman fussing over the brass. She’s a woman with eyes and ears.”

“What do you know of the young man?”

“Durham, David Durham was his name, but you’ll have a record of that.”

“We do.”

“He was a student. Wanted to be a schoolteacher. Pleasant lad by his manner, but what he was doing behind Mr. Minto’s back made him unpleasant, and Mrs. Minto, looking so smug and pleased with herself. It was then that in the middle of polishing I just downed tools and left.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“It was not until later that I realised what was different.” Ian Dollar had the healthy leathering skin of a countryman. He stood outside of his office, over the door of which was a sign which read Dollar’s Garden Centre. “I left the Minto house more or less the same time that Mrs. O’Sullivan left. Just after her, in fact, but for pretty much the same reason. I just didn’t like the household. I didn’t like Mrs. Minto messing about with her fancy man behind Mr. Minto’s back and her attitude... I mean, not bothering what me and Mrs. O’Sullivan thought, or even at all concerned that we knew what was happening. The attitude that the hired hands don’t matter, not really human beings, just robots doing tasks that they’ve been set to do. That attitude belongs to another age, and we’re well shot of it. But above that, more than that, Mr. and Mrs. Minto were ‘new’ money, they’d come up from the housing schemes. They’re the last people that should treat people like that... He was all right, but, see, her...”

“So you left?”

“Well, Mrs. O’Sullivan showed me the way. She left to have a pleasant final job to retire from. Me, I was a youngish lad, late twenties. I left to do what I’ve always wanted, start a garden centre.”

King looked around him. “You’ve done all right.”

“It’s fairly stable now. Didn’t realise the amount of work it would involve, but I stuck it and now I’m into profit.”

“So, tell me what you noticed to be different.”

“The pickaxe handle in the potting shed. About the time that Mr. Minto disappeared. It had been moved and wiped clean.”

“Really?” King saw the significance.

“Yes. I assume you’ve found his body, hence the interest.”

“You can assume what you wish to assume. Tell me about the pickaxe handle.”

“Well... confess I like your caution... well, the pickaxe handle stood in the potting shed, never used, just stood there, painted black, thick end on the ground, thinner end up against the wall. Remained like that for years gathering dust. I went into the shed shortly after Mr. Minto had disappeared and I noticed that the handle was gleaming black, as though it had been washed clean, and that it had been inverted. I didn’t see the significance at the time, if there is any significance at all.”

“I think there is a significance. Tell me, who had access to the potting shed?”

“Just myself and Mr. and Mrs. Minto.”

“Do you think the handle will still be there?”

“Who can tell? The potting shed is behind the garage. All you need to do is look.”

Mrs. Minto was still Mrs. Minto. She swayed as she looked at Richard King and the two constables who had accompanied him to her house. A woman well fallen from grace, thought King, two-bottle-a-day merchant at least. It was, by then, three P.M. and she was already “well on.” She looked at King with bleary eyes and then leered as if fancying him as her new young lover. Her home seemed to King to be a rambling mess, the pile of unwashed dishes in the sink, the smell of stale tobacco, the garden overgrown.

“Can’t keep staff,” she slurred.

“We have found your husband’s body, Mrs. Minto.”

She seemed momentarily sobered, then seemed to look ill, and then she recovered.

“He did it, then?”

“Who...?”

“Durham, Mr. David Durham... bold boy David, the boy-wonder lover. He did it.”

“Mr. Durham?”

“Head of physics at Partick Academy, last I heard. No time for old Sheila now. Left old Sheila to the bottle. He was my boy... my young man.”

“I’ll have to ask you to accompany us to the police station, Mrs. Minto.”

“To where?”

“To the police station.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Yes. Yes, you are. After a night in the cells and plenty of nonalcoholic liquid, we’ll have a chat with you and tell you why you’ve been arrested, and perhaps you could throw a bit of light on the circumstances surrounding your husband’s disappearance. If not his murder.”

“Murder...” Mrs. Minto croaked the word as she was led gently towards the waiting police vehicle. She walked calmly, as if in a dream. Richard King closed the door of the house, knowing that it would later be searched, though he doubted anything of value to the police would be found after twelve years. He walked into the garden and opened the door of the potting shed. The lock opened stiffly, and the door opened and let out a draught of musty air. There, leaning against the wall, was the pickaxe handle, thin end on the ground, just as Ian Dollar had described. Now dusty again, it had last been used to cave in the skull of Douglas Minto. King closed the door of the shed, leaving the pickaxe handle where it stood. He would draw the attention of the Scene of Crimes officer to the handle, but for now it was better left untouched. He glanced at his watch. The city’s schools would be coming out. He drove to Partick Academy.

“Sense of relief.” David Durham was a man in his early thirties. He laid the pile of exercise books on the bonnet of a Landrover in the school car park.

King had waited in the school car park. He noticed a Landrover amid the other cars. He watched as men and women carrying briefcases or piles of books got into their respective cars. When a male teacher approached the Landrover, King walked up to him and said, “Mr. Durham?”

“I’ve ruined my life,” Durham said.

King nodded.

“Yet I feel a sense of relief.”

“People often say that.”

“Do they?”

“Oh yes...” King nodded.

“I want a favour of you.”

“I doubt...”

“Hear me out.”

“All right.”

“I want to go home. I want to tell my wife. I want to hold my son.”

“I can understand that.”

“You’re a family man?”

“Yes.”

“I was stupid to get involved with her. She was a bad woman. I was young. I thrilled to it. It was fun to have an affair with an older, married woman who lived in a lavish home. I suppose you’ve seen her home?”

“Yes. Doubt that you’d recognise it now.”

“I know what you mean. I happened to drive past it the other week.”

“So, what happened twelve years ago?”

“She killed him. Evil little woman. She told me she’d murdered him. Crept up behind him and whacked him over the head with a pickaxe handle, right there in her living room. The woman who cleaned for her had walked out and she took the opportunity to kill her husband. Nobody else in the house, you see, except me. The guy who tended the garden never entered the house. He was lying there when I called round, still in his dressing gown... She was pushy... insistent... Just assumed that I’d go along with her. Before I knew what I was doing, I was loading the body into the Landrover... I just love these vehicles... This is not the one, I had an earlier model at the time.”

“That’s how you got the body up to the tops?”

“Yes. It’s the only way. A Landrover could handle that slope... A Landrover can go up a one in two... The route we took up the tops was about one in six. We did it at night. We took it to a part of the moor she knew to be in private hands. She said no one would find it. She was right for ten...”

“Twelve years. She was right for twelve years.”

“So what’s that, conspiracy to murder?”

“Probably not as serious as that. Conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice. The unwritten rule is that the more you help us, the lesser the charge will be... But I think you’re right, you won’t enter a school again.”

“Just put these exercise books back on my shelves. I doubt I’ll be marking the third-years’ homework tonight. I mean, if you’ll let me?”

King nodded. “And it’s ‘yes’ to your other request. You know where P Division Police Station is? Bottom of Sauchiehall Street? Be there by seven P.M. Otherwise we’ll be obliged to arrest you in front of your wife and neighbours.”

“I’ll be there.”