The Sedgemoor Strangler and Other Stories of Crime

The Amorous Corpse

I’d been in CID six months when the case of the amorous corpse came up. What a break for a young detective constable: the “impossible” evidence of a near-perfect murder. You’ve probably heard of that Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that didn’t bark in the night-time. Well, this was the corpse that made love in the morning, and I was the super sleuth on the case. I don’t have a Dr Watson to tell it for me, so excuse me for blowing my own trumpet. There’s no other way I can do it.

It began with a 999 call switched through to Salisbury nick at 9.25 one Monday morning. I was in the office waking myself up with a large espresso. My boss, a deadbeat DI called Johnny Horgan, never appeared before 10, so it was up to me to take some action. An incident had just occurred at a sub-post office in a village called Five Lanes, a short drive out of the city. The call from the sub-postmistress was taped, and is quite a classic in its way:

“Police, please... Hello, this is Miss Marshall, the sub-postmistress at Five Lanes. Can you kindly send someone over?”

“What’s the emergency, Miss Marshall?”

“Well, I’ve got a gentleman with a gun here. He asked me to hand over all the money, and I refused. I don’t care for that sort of behaviour.”

“He’s with you now?”

“Yes.”

“Threatening you with a gun?”

“At this minute? Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t be phoning you, would I?”

“He’s gone, then?”

“No. He’s still here as far as I know.”

“In the post office?”

“On the floor, I believe. I can’t see him from where I’m speaking.”

“Are you injured, Miss Marshall?”

“No. I’m perfectly all right, but you’d better send an ambulance for the man.”

I decided CID should be involved from the beginning. Having told the switchboard to inform DI Horgan, I jumped into my Escort and burned rubber all the way to Five Lanes. I’m proud to say I got there two minutes before uniform showed up.

The crime scene was bizarre. The post office door was open. A man lay on the floor in front of the counter with a gun beside him. He was ominously still. And two old women were buying stamps. They must have walked around the body to reach the counter. The doughty Miss Marshall was serving them. Crazy, but I suppose they remembered doing things like that in the war. Business as usual.

We put tapes across the entrance to stop a queue forming for stamps and I took a deep breath and had a closer look at the git-em-up-guy. He was wearing a mask — not one of those Lone Ranger jobs, but a plastic President Nixon. I eased it away from his face and didn’t care much for what I saw. I can’t handle death scenes. I felt for a pulse. Nothing.

My boss, Johnny Horgan, arrived soon after and took over. He was supposed to be the rising star of Salisbury CID, an inspector at thirty-one, one of those fast-track clever dicks, only two years older than me. “Did you call the hospital?”

“I just got here, guv.”

“The man is obviously dead. What’s the ambulance outside for?”

The sub-postmistress spoke up. “I sent for that.”

DI Horgan phoned for the meat wagon and a pathologist. Meanwhile, we got the full version of the hold-up from Miss Marshall:

“No one was here at the time. The man walked in wearing some kind of mask that made him look very peculiar.”

“Nixon.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Nixon, the ex-President of America.”

“He didn’t sound like an American. Whoever he is, we don’t walk about wearing masks in Five Lanes, so I was suspicious. He pointed a gun and said, ‘This is a gun.’ I said, ‘I can see that.’ He said, ‘Give us it, then.’”

“How did you respond?”

“I told him not to be ridiculous, to which he replied, ‘Hey, come on. I’ll blow your frigging head off.’”

“He actually said ‘frigging’?”

“I may be unmarried, but I’m not mealy-mouthed, inspector. If he’d said something stronger, I’d tell you.”

“So what did you say to that?”

“I said, ‘Go on. Pull the trigger. You won’t get the money if you do. I’m all locked in. And don’t even think of trying to smash the glass.’ He said, ‘Lady, who do you think you are? It’s not your dosh.’ I said, ‘It’s not yours, either. You’re not having it.’ To which he replied, ‘Jesus, are you simple? This is a stick-up.’ ”

“What happened then?”

“I led him to believe that I’d pressed an emergency button and the police were already on their way. He said, ‘Frigging hell.’ He took a step back from the counter and I thought for a moment he was about to give up and go away. Then he said, ‘I’m not quitting. I’m not a quitter.’ ”

“Just like Nixon,” I remarked.

My boss glared at me.

Miss Marshall continued, “He lurched forward again, and I wondered if he was the worse for drink, because he reached for the glass wall of my serving area, as if for support. Then he lowered the gun, I think, and said, ‘Oh, shit.’ ” She gave Johnny Horgan a look that said how about that for a maiden lady.

“You hadn’t touched him?”

“What are you suggesting? That I assaulted him? I was shut in here.”

“And nobody else was in the shop?”

“Nobody except him and me. To my amazement, he swayed a little and started to sink down, as if his knees had given way. It was like watching a lift go down. He disappeared from view. The last thing I saw was the hand pressed against the glass. I expect there are fingerprints if you look.”

“And then?”

“I looked at the clock. It was twenty past nine. Sitting on my stool here I had the same view I always do, of those notices about Parcel Force and the postage rates. The man had disappeared from sight. To tell you the truth, I half believed I’d imagined it all. It’s a fear you live with when you run a post office, having to deal with an armed robber. I was tempted to unlock my door and have a look, but what if he was bluffing? So I stayed here and called 999.”

“Good move.”

The local pathologist, Dr Leggatt, arrived and didn’t take long with the stethoscope. “Calling the ambulance was optimistic,” he told us.

“Wasn’t me,” said Johnny Horgan. “I knew he’d croaked as soon as I saw him.”

“You can’t tell by looking.”

I said, “I checked for a pulse.”

“We all agree, then,” said the pathologist with just a hint of sarcasm. “This is a dead man.”

“But what of?” said Johnny Horgan.

Dr Leggatt answered curtly, “I’m a pathologist, inspector, not a psychic.”

“Heart?”

“Weren’t you listening?”

“He’s not a young man.”

“Do you know him, then?”

Fat chance. Johnny didn’t know anyone in the county. He was fresh from Sussex, or Suffolk, or somewhere. He turned to me. I’m the local guy. But I was trying not to look at the body. Green in more senses than one, I was.

I saw my boss wink at the pathologist as he said, “His first one.” His eyes returned to the corpse. “Fancy dropping dead in the middle of a hold-up.”

“It could happen to anyone.” Like most people in his line of work, Dr Leggatt had a fatalistic streak.

“Anyone stupid enough to hold up a post office.”

“Anyone under stress,” said Leggatt — and then asked Johnny with a deadpan look, “Do you sleep well?”

The DI didn’t respond.

The doctor must have felt he had the high ground now, because he put some sharp questions to us about the conduct of the case. “Have the scene of crime lads finished?”

“All done,” said Johnny.

“Pockets?”

“He wasn’t carrying his calling card, if that’s what you mean.”

“What’s the gun?”

“Gun? That’s no gun,” said Johnny, glad of the chance to get one back. “It’s a toy. A plastic replica.” He turned to the postmistress, who up to now had preferred to remain on her side of the counter. “Did you know the man, Miss Marshall?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“But you told us—”

“Without the mask, I mean.”

“You’d better come round here and look.”

Miss Marshall unlocked, emerged from the serving area and took a long squint at the body. She was less troubled by the sight of death than me. “He’s a stranger to me. And I didn’t know it was a toy gun, either.”

“You were very brave,” Johnny told her, and muttered in an aside to Dr Leggatt and me, “Silly old cow.”

He went on to say more loudly that he’d like her to come to the police station and make a statement.

“What did you call her?” Leggatt asked, after she had been escorted to the police car.

“I meant it,” said Johnny. “She might have had her stupid head blown away for the sake of Post Office Counters Limited.”

Leggatt gave Johnny a look that was not too admiring. “What happened to good citizenship, then? Some of you coppers are born cynics. You’ve no idea what it takes for a woman to stand up to a gunman.”

“Have you?” Johnny chanced it.

“As it happens, yes. My sister stood up to one — and didn’t get much thanks from you people. You don’t know how often Miss Marshall will wake up screaming, reliving what happened this morning.”

“Hold on, doc,” said Johnny. “I said she was brave.”

The pathologist didn’t prolong it. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get this body to the mortuary.”

“Yes, and we’ve got to find his next of kin,” said Johnny.

When he said ‘we’, he meant me. He’d already decided there wasn’t anything in it for him.

I may be squeamish with dead bodies, but I’m fearless with the living, especially blondes. It was the day after the hold-up and I’d come to a flat in Salisbury, the home of a recently released prisoner. Jack Soames had served four years in Portland for armed robbery of a building society. Check your form runners first.

The chick at the door said he wasn’t in.

“Any idea where he is?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Yesterday morning. What’s up?”

Bra-less and quivering under a thin T-shirt, she looked far too tasty to be shacking up with a middle-aged robber. But I kept my thoughts to myself.

“Are you a close friend of his, miss?”

She made a little sound of impatience. “What do you think?”

“What’s your name?”

“Zara.”

“And you spent last night alone, Zara?”

“That’s my business.”

“Jack wasn’t here?”

She nodded.

“When he went out yesterday morning, did he say where he was going?”

“I’m his crumpet, not his ma.”

I smiled at that. “He could still treat you like a human being.”

“Jack’s all right,” said Zara. “I’ve got no complaints.”

Don’t count on it, I thought, sleeping with an ex-con.

Zara said anxiously, “He hasn’t had an accident, has he?”

“Does he carry a gun?”

“What?”

“Don’t act the innocent, love. We both know his form. Was he armed when he left here?”

“Course he wasn’t. He’s going straight since he got out.”

It was time to get real. “There was an armed raid at a sub-post office yesterday and a man died.”

“The postmaster?”

“No, the robber. It’s just possible he was Jack Soames. We’re checking on everyone we know.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Would you be willing to come to the hospital and tell us if it’s him?”

Zara looked, squeezed her eyes shut, and looked again. I watched her. She was easier to look at than the corpse.

“That’s him, poor lamb.”

“Jack Soames? You’re certain?”

“Positive.”

I nodded to the mortuary assistant, who covered the dead face again.

Outside, I thanked Zara and asked her where she wanted me to drive her.

She asked, “Will I have to move out of Jack’s place?”

“Who paid the rent?”

“He did.”

“Then I reckon you will.”

“I can go to me Mum’s place. What killed him?”

“We’ll find out this afternoon, when they do the PM.”

In her grief, she got a bit sentimental. “I used to call him Jack the Robber. Like...” Her voice trailed off.

I nodded. “So you knew he was an ex-con?”

“That was only through the toffee-nosed bitch he married.” Zara twisted her mouth into the shape of a cherry-stone. “Felicity. She claimed she didn’t know she was married to a bank robber. Where did she think the folding stuff was coming from? She was supposed to give him an alibi and she ratted on him. He done four years through her.”

“And when he came out he met you.”

“Worse luck.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I tried to console her. “It’s not your fault he went back to crime, is it?”

She didn’t answer, so I decided not to go up that avenue.

She said, “What did he want to do a piddling post office for?”

I shrugged.

“Where did you say it was?”

“Five Lanes.”

“Never heard of it. He told me he was going up the Benefits Office.”

“It’s a village three miles out. That’s where he was at nine-fifteen yesterday.”

“Get away,” said Zara, pulling a face. “He was still in bed with me at nine-fifteen.”

“That can’t be true, Zara.”

She was outraged. “You accusing me of lying?”

“Maybe you were asleep. You just thought he was beside you.”

“Asleep? We was at it like knives. He was something else after a good night’s sleep, was Jack.” The gleam in her big blue eyes carried total conviction. “It must have been all of ten o’clock before he left the house.”

“Ten? But he was dead by then.”

“No way.”

“How do you know?”

“Me watch.”

“It must be wrong.”

She looked down at her wrist. “How come it’s showing the same time as the clock in your car?”

My boss was unimpressed. “Why is she lying?”

“I’m not sure she is,” I told him.

“How can you believe her, dickhead, when you saw the body yourself shortly after nine-twenty-five?”

“She’s got nothing to gain from telling lies.”

“She’s muddled about the time. She was in no state to check if they were humping each other.”

“She’s very clear about it, guv.”

“Get this in your brain, will you? Jack Soames was dead by nine-twenty.”

“Would you like to talk to her yourself?”

“No, I bloody wouldn’t. You say she identified the body?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.”

I had to agree. Something was wrong with Zara’s memory.

Horgan made the first constructive suggestion I’d heard from him. “Find the wife. She’s the next of kin. She’ll need to identify him.”

I didn’t fancy visiting that mortuary again, but he was right. I traced Felicity Soames routinely through the register of electors, a slight, tired-looking woman in her fifties, who lived alone in a semi on the outskirts of Salisbury and worked as a civil servant. She was not much like the vindictive creature Zara had portrayed.

“I don’t want any more to do with him,” she said at first. “We separated.”

“But you’re not divorced?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you’re still the next of kin.”

For the second time that morning, I stood well back while the mortuary assistant went through the formalities.

Felicity confirmed that the body was her husband’s.

Zara’s steamy sex with Jack that Monday morning was beginning to look like a fantasy, but I couldn’t forget the sparkle in her eyes as she spoke of it.

“Right, son,” said Johnny Horgan when I told him I had lingering doubts. “There’s one final check you can make. The post-mortem is at two. I’m not going to make it myself. Frankly, it’s not high priority any more, one old robber who dropped dead.”

My knees went weak. “You want me to...?”

He grinned. “There’s a first time for everything. Have an early lunch. I wouldn’t eat too much, though.”

“I’m sure the body is Jack Soames,” I said. “I don’t really need to be there.”

“You do, lad. You’re standing in for me. Oh, and make sure they take a set of fingerprints.”

My hand shook as I held my mug of tea in the mortuary office, and that was before.

“So you’re the police presence?” Dr Leggatt, the pathologist, said with a dubious look at me.

I nodded. This was a low-key autopsy. The man had died in furtherance of a crime, but there was nothing suspicious about the death, so instead of senior detectives, SOCOs, forensic scientists and photographers, there was just me to represent law and order.

Cosy.

“I’m supposed to go back with a set of fingerprints.”

“No problem,” said Dr Leggatt. “We’ll start with that. You can help Norman if you like.”

Norman was his assistant.

“I’d rather keep my distance.”

“Fair enough. Shall we go in, then?”

I fixed my gaze on the wall opposite while the fingerprints were taken. Norman brought them over to me and said I could stand closer if I wished.

I nodded and stayed where I was. They were still examining the body for external signs when I started to feel wobbly. I found a chair.

“Can you see from there?” the pathologist called across.

“As much as I want to.”

“Stand on the chair if you wish.”

“Coronary,” said Dr Leggatt when he finally removed his latex gloves.

“Natural causes, then?

He smiled at the phrase. “Any middle-aged bloke who holds up post offices lays himself open to a fatal adrenaline response and sudden death. I’d call it an occupational hazard.”

Some people call me cussed, others pig-headed. I don’t particularly mind. These are qualities you need in police work. I refused to draw a line under the case.

Everything checked except Zara’s statement. The fingerprints taken at the autopsy matched the prints we had from Soames’s file at the National Identification Service. His mugshot was exactly like the man his wife and girlfriend had identified and the pathologist had dissected.

I tried discussing it with my boss, but Johnny was relentless. “Constable, you’re making a horse’s arse of yourself. Soames is dead. You attended the autopsy. What other proof do you want?”

“If he had a twin, or a double—”

“We’d have heard. Drop it, lad. Zara may be a charmer, but she’s an unreliable witness.”

“I know it sounds impossible—”

“So leave it out.”

I was forced to press on without official back-up. I won’t bore you with all the theories I concocted and dismissed. In the end it came down to whether Zara could be believed. And after hours of wrestling with the problem I thought of a way of checking her statement. She’d told me Soames had said he was going to the Benefits Office after he left her. If they had a record of his visit — after he’d died — Zara would be vindicated.

I called the Benefits people and got a helpful woman who offered to check their records of Monday’s interviews.

She called back within the hour. Zilch.

I was down, down there with the Titanic.

Then something triggered in my brain. I asked the woman, “Do you have security cameras?”

“Sure.”

“Inside the office?”

“Yes.”

I drove down there and started watching videotapes.

“Guv, I’d like you to look at this.”

“What is it?”

“Pretty sensational, I’d call it.”

I ran the video. Two sergeants from CID who remembered Soames from before he went to prison came in to look. The screen showed tedious views of people waiting their turn to speak to the staff. I pressed Fast Forward, then slowed it to Play.

“Look behind the rows of seats.”

A slight man with straight, silver-streaked hair came into shot and hesitated. He stared at one of the desks where a young woman was being interviewed, partially screened from the rest of the room. He took a step to the right, apparently to get a better view of what was going on.

I touched the Freeze Frame and held a mugshot of Soames against the screen. “How about that, guys?”

“My God, it could be him.”

“No question,” said one of the sergeants. “The face, the way he moves, everything.”

“And look at the time.”

The digits at the bottom right of the screen were frozen at 10:32.

“All right. Joke over,” said Johnny. “How did you fix it?”

“I didn’t. This is on the level.”

“Run it again.”

White-faced and muttering, my boss continued to stare at the screen until the figure of Soames turned away and walked out of shot.

“That man died at 9.20. It can’t be.”

“It must be.”

We spent the next half-hour debating the matter. Johnny Horgan, desperate to make sense of the impossible, dredged up a theory involving false identification. Zara had lied when she came to view the body: Soames had put her up to it, seeing an opportunity to “die” and get a new name, and maybe plastic surgery, before resuming his criminal career. She, the dumb blonde, had stupidly blown his cover when I called on her.

It was a daft theory. How had he persuaded his wife Felicity, who had shopped him, to join in the deception? And why would he be so foolish as to parade in front of cameras in the Benefits Office?

“Any road,” Johnny said when his theory was dead in the water, “we can’t waste time on it. The post office job was the crime. Attempted robbery. There’s no argument that the robber died of a coronary, whether he was Jack Soames or bloody Bill Sikes. The case is closed.”

For me, it was still wide open. While the arguments were being tossed around, my mind was on a different tack. What had Soames been up to in the Benefits Office? He hadn’t been interviewed, so he didn’t collect a payout.

When the others had left the room, I ran the video again and made a stunning discovery. There had been a crime, and it was far more serious than a botched hold-up. Zara hadn’t lied to me; hadn’t even made a mistake. Impossible, it had seemed, because none of us made the connection. I slipped out of the building.

I found Felicity Soames in her place of work — at one of the desks in the Benefits Office. “It took a while for the penny to drop,” I told her. “I was in here this morning to examine the security videos and I didn’t spot you.”

“Were you expecting me to be here?”

“To be honest, no. You told me you were a civil servant, but I didn’t link it with this. You must have had a shock like a million volts when your husband walked in here on Monday.”

She flinched at the memory. “I was terrified. He stood staring at me, putting the fear of God in me.”

“We have it on tape. I watched it five times before I saw you behind your desk. We were all so gobsmacked at seeing him alive that we didn’t give anyone else a look.”

“He wasn’t there for an interview. He just came in to check on me.”

“To let you know he was out.”

“Yes, I’ve lived in terror of him for four years. I put him away, you know. My evidence did it.”

“And you’re all alone in the world?”

“Yes.”

“No, you’re not, love. You’ve got a big brother. And you called him and poured out your troubles.”

At the mortuary, I asked to see the body of the post office robber.

“I had the impression you’d seen enough of him already,” said Dr Leggatt, smiling.

“Would you get him out, please?”

The pathologist sighed and called to his assistant. “Norman, fetch out number seven, the late Mr Soames, would you?”

I said mildly, “Jack Soames isn’t the post office robber.”

The doctor hesitated. “How do you work that out?”

“But I’d like to see his body, just the same.”

Leggatt exchanged a world-weary look with Norman, who went to one of the chilled cabinets and pulled out the drawer.

It was empty.

Leggatt snapped his fingers. “Of course. He’s gone.”

“Not here?”

“Storage problems. I asked the undertaker to collect him.”

“Along with the real post office robber, I suppose?”

Leggatt said, “You’re way ahead of me.”

“I don’t think so, doctor. The man who held up the post office probably died of a heart attack triggered by stress, just as you suggested.”

“What a relief!” Leggatt said with irony. But he wasn’t looking as comfortable as he intended.

“You came out to Five Lanes and collected him. On the same day, Jack Soames, recently released from prison, decided to let his wife know he was at liberty. After a passionate lie-in with his girlfriend, he made his way to the Benefits Office where Felicity worked. She was terrified, just as he wished her to be. He had a four-year score to settle. When he’d gone, she phoned you.”

“Me? Why me?” said Leggatt in high-pitched surprise that didn’t throw me in the least.

“Because she’s your sister, doctor. She’s really suffered for blowing the whistle on her husband. Waking up screaming, night after night, all because she stood up to him. You told us about that after DI Horgan made his insensitive remark about the sub-postmistress.”

“Idiot,” said Leggatt, but he was talking about himself. “Yes, that comment angered me at the time. I’d forgotten. So much has happened since. And you made the connection?”

He’d virtually put up his hand to the crime. Elated, I held myself in check. “I think you saw an opportunity and seized it. You’d already taken in the body of the post office robber, a middle-aged man with greying hair, not totally unlike your brother-in-law. No one seemed to know who he was, so he was heaven-sent. You had a marvellous chance to kill Soames and end your sister’s suffering without anyone knowing. You’re a pathologist. You know enough to kill a man swiftly and without any obvious signs. An injection, perhaps? I think you believed your sister was in real danger.”

“She was.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Leggatt shook his head. “There was no ‘maybe’ about it. He was waiting outside the Benefits Office for her. He wasn’t there to make a scene. He intended violence.”

“And you approached him, invited him into your car, killed him and drove him here. You chose a time when Norman was out of the mortuary — possibly at night — to unload the body into a drawer, the drawer supposedly holding the bank robber. You changed the tag on the toe.”

“You watch too much television,” Leggatt commented.

“When I came here with Zara, you wheeled Soames out. You knew I wasn’t likely to take a close look at the face, seeing that I’d been so troubled by the sight of death. Anyway, I hadn’t taken a proper look at the real robber.”

“Your inspector did.”

“Yes, but he delegated everything to me. He’s new to our patch. He didn’t know Soames, except from mugshots, so when he saw the security video from the Benefits Office he had Soames imprinted on his memory.”

“You’ve got Soames on video? Thank God for that.”

I nodded. “I expect your defence will make good use of it. Extenuating circumstances — is that the phrase?”

“Professional misconduct is another,” said Leggatt. “Doctors who kill don’t get much leniency from the courts.”

“You carried out the autopsy on Soames, deciding, of course, that he died of a coronary, and it wouldn’t be necessary to send any of the organs for forensic examination. But what did you plan to do with the other body — the poor old codger who dropped dead when the sub-postmistress looked him in the eye?”

“Not a serious problem,” said Leggatt. “This is a teaching hospital and bodies are donated for medical research. We keep them here in the mortuary. It could all be fixed with paperwork.”

“I wonder if we’ll ever discover who he was,” I said, little realising that it would become my job for the next six weeks. A DC who solves an impossible crime doesn’t get much thanks from his superior. The reverse, I discovered. I’m still looking for promotion.