Dreams of Fear

Twenty-Four

After leaving the Barham home Saslow and Vogel drove straight to Hartland Point. Gerry Barham’s body had been found at the foot of a cliff to one side of a roughly hewn cove, which, the RNLI reported, was inaccessible from the sea due to the rock formation just offshore, and presented problems for approach by helicopter due to the cliff overhang.

There was, however, a steep path, largely taking the form of steps roughly hewn in the rock face, leading down to the cove.

Saslow followed the clifftop track and parked as close as she could to where she believed the path to be, as indicated by the other vehicles already there: two police patrol cars, a CSI van, a Coastguard Cliff Rescue truck, and pathologist Karen Crow’s little white Golf. The two detectives made their way to the cliff edge where they could see a uniformed constable standing looking down at the scene below. They introduced themselves and also peered over the cliff. A tent had been erected over what must be the place where the body lay. Vogel already knew that the body had been moved once as, when it was spotted, it had been half covered by the still incoming tide. CSIs were scurrying in and out of the tent.

The rain had stopped, but it was still pretty blowy. Vogel pulled his inadequate coat close to his body and stepped forwards.

‘Come on, Saslow,’ said Vogel, with a lot more bravado than he felt. ‘Let’s get down there and have a proper look.’

Vogel was not especially afraid of heights. But he was a city boy through and through. He never felt comfortable with steep paths and uneven ground, the Atlantic Ocean was raging down below, and gusts of wind were hitting him straight in the face. Vogel was way out of his comfort zone.

He noticed a system of ropes and pulleys were in place, and wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse.

‘You’ll have to wait a minute, sir,’ said the uniform. ‘Cliff Rescue are on site and there’s a safety officer who will rope you up and take you down.’

On cue a lithe young woman wearing a hard hat appeared alongside. She quickly supplied Vogel and Saslow with hard hats, and helped them into safety harnesses, each attached to a rope.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘the harnesses and ropes are just in case. You’ll be fine. Now follow me.’

She set off briskly. It seemed to Vogel that she launched herself in somewhat foolhardy fashion from the relative safety of the cliff top. Saslow followed at once. Vogel had little choice but to get on with it. The wind continued to whistle disconcertingly around his ears. He moved cautiously down the rough-hewn steps, making sure he had one foot firmly in place before moving the other. Saslow meanwhile was hopping rather more nimbly downwards, without, it seemed, a care in the world.

He was relieved to reach the rocks, boulders, and pebbles below. Although they too presented a challenge to a man who had never been in the least athletic.

Pieces of boat, presumably the ill-fated Lady Anne, were laid out on tarpaulins. Crime scene investigators, clad in their protective coverall Tyvek suits, were swarming over everything.

Saslow and Vogel headed for the tent, where they assumed Karen Crow was already at work. There was a cordon around it. A CSI handed them a couple of suits, thankfully just big enough to pull on over their outer clothing. As they fought their way into them, all the more of a struggle because of the strong wind, Karen Crow emerged from the cordoned-off area.

‘Twice in as many days or thereabouts, Vogel,’ she muttered.

‘Always a pleasure,’ replied Vogel.

‘Not for that poor bastard,’ responded the pathologist, cocking a thumb in the direction of the tent.

‘He did not have a good death, that’s for sure. He’s been smashed to pieces, pretty much like his boat. Both arms broken, at least one of his legs, not sure about the other, a fractured skull, and his face is a mass of bloody pulp.’

‘Is it what you would expect from the victim of a shipwreck, or could it be something else?’ queried Vogel.

‘Why would it be anything else?’ asked Karen Crow. ‘Some nutter takes a small boat out in this weather, what can you expect, for God’s sake? I’ve only been called in to follow routine procedure, surely. And what are you doing here anyway? Is there some reason why this little personal tragedy might be important enough to warrant your attention, Vogel?’

‘We think the victim is one Gerry Barham from Instow,’ said Vogel.

Karen looked blank.

‘From Estuary Vista Close, Instow,’ Vogel continued. ‘The neighbour who called in the death of Jane Ferguson, having encountered her little daughter right after she found her mother’s body.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said the pathologist, adopting a quizzical expression. ‘Well, that explains that then. If this is your Gerry Barham, and no doubt you already have good reason to assume it is, then two people who lived next door to each other have died violently, one after the other. And you don’t believe in coincidences, do you, Vogel?’

‘No. I don’t. Do you?’

‘Never have done,’ replied Dr Crow bluntly.

‘So, will you answer my question now? Could he have been killed by anything other than injuries sustained following some sort of accident at sea?’ persisted Vogel.

‘Well, considering the state he is in, that might be very hard, indeed, even impossible to ascertain,’ said the pathologist. ‘His injuries are totally consistent with having been thrown off his boat into the sea and then smashed against rocks by a raging incoming tide. That’s what happened by the way. Have you spoken to the coastguards or RNLI yet?’

Vogel shook his head.

‘Well, according to the RNLI boys who were here when I arrived, it looks almost certain his little boat was swept out on the tide when the storm was at its peak and the sea got up big time this morning. Then the incoming tides and the prevalent currents washed him and his boat ashore here. You only have to look at the state of the thing.’

Karen Crow waved one arm at the wreckage spread out on the shore.

‘You don’t have to be a doctor nor have conducted a forensic examination to have a fair idea what that sort of force has done to his body,’ she went on. ‘Apart from the external injuries which are totally obvious, he is sure to have suffered all manner of internal injuries. Poor bastard didn’t stand a chance.’

‘The question is, could he have sustained some of those injuries before his boat capsized or broke up?’ asked Vogel.

‘Well yes, of course he could. And without any help from a third party, too. He could have been thrown all over that boat of his in this weather. Like a rag doll. If, for example, there’d been a big gust of wind and his boat had veered to one side, he could easily have broken something, a leg or an arm, or both. He would then have been left pretty helpless, unable to steer or do anything to even attempt to control the boat. It’s all a bit chicken and egg.’

‘But what if a third party was involved?’ asked Vogel. ‘What if someone beat him up then left him on the boat to die? He had a fractured skull, you said. What if someone wacked him with a hammer or something?’

‘It doesn’t look like a hammer blow to the head, there’s no imprint, he could have been hit by some sort of blunt object, something with a big flat edge, an anchor maybe. To be honest, Vogel, I really doubt there’s any way of telling, after the damage those rocks over there have done to him. He’s a total mess.’

Karen Crow paused, staring out to sea as if she wished the ocean could speak, tell its story. Which was exactly how Vogel felt.

‘Look, Vogel, this is your territory not mine,’ she continued. ‘But if someone stove this man’s head in, and left him drifting aboard a small boat which was likely, in a gathering storm of up to fifty-mile-an-hour winds, to be driven by the tide into one of the most treacherous stretches of coastline in the British Isles, then where is this someone, Vogel? That’s what I’d want to know if I were you. I mean, is he also dead? Is his body washed up somewhere where it hasn’t yet been found, or caught up in something out at sea where it might never be found? In which case, it’s not much of a murder scenario, is it, if you die along with your victim? This third party must have been on the boat with our victim, mustn’t he? He couldn’t have beaten Barham up first then sent his boat off down the river with a dead man at the helm, could he? Bloody thing wouldn’t have made it into the estuary, let alone out to sea far enough to be washed back into Hartland.’

‘I don’t have the faintest idea, Karen, not yet,’ Vogel admitted.

‘No,’ said the pathologist. ‘Tell you something, Vogel, I wouldn’t like your job. That I wouldn’t.’

Vogel had a sudden vision running through his head like one of those old compacted newsreels, of every post-mortem examination he’d ever been to, all jumbled up and joined together to form a cinematic horror story. Only the previous day, it seemed like much longer ago, but it had indeed been only the previous day, he had watched Karen Crow take a circular saw to the head of a rather beautiful young woman, and he had seen her crack open that young woman’s ribcage and tear her exposed torso apart.

‘You know what, Karen,’ he remarked mildly. ‘I wouldn’t much like your job, either.’

He turned to Saslow.

‘Come on, detective sergeant,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look at our body, shall we?’

He led the way across the last few yards of rock and shingle and stepped inside the tent protecting the dead man from the elements, and from the unwanted attentions of members of the public. Not that there were likely to be many passing by this particular scene.

The body was lying on its back. Karen Crow may have turned it over in the course of her preliminary examination. She hadn’t straightened the limbs. The first thing that hit Vogel was the state of the man’s face. Only it wasn’t a face any more. It was red mush. Red mush with bits of white sticking out, which Vogel assumed were bits of bone. You couldn’t even see the eyes. This was bad. Worse than he had expected. Possibly worse than he had ever seen before. His involuntary stomach heave was as bad as he had ever experienced. He turned towards Saslow. He was about to make an excuse. He didn’t have time. He just ran for the entrance of the tent and headed, flat out, his feet slithering and slipping on wet shingle, for the shelter of a rocky outcrop forming a shallow cave in the cliff face. He almost dived inside, bent over, and was as sick as he had ever been in the whole of his life.

It was not the first time Vogel had been unable to control his nausea when faced with a dead body. But it was the first time in a very long while.