man who had a crush on Vivien and whose eyes made no secret of the fact, waited for her to reach him then raised the tape to let her through.
‘What’s the score?’ she asked.
‘At first sight, I’d say normal and complicated at the same time. Come and see.’
At the far end was a kind of square cavity wall. Vivien turned her head and saw that on the opposite side there was another exactly the same. Most likely, one or more columns, now demolished, had formed a line between them.
In front of her, through a gap in the concrete, she saw a forearm covered in what remained of a cotton jacket. A skull with traces of shrivelled skin and hair could also be glimpsed inside, grinning like a figure from the Day of the Dead. But this was no allegory – this was very real evidence of violent death.
Vivien walked up to the wall. She looked carefully at the arm, the body, the material of the sleeve. She tried to peer inside, seeing what details she could make out. She knew how important first impressions could turn out to be.
She turned and saw that the crime scene officers and a man of about forty in a sportcoat and a pair of jeans were standing just beyond the tape, waiting for instructions. Vivien had never seen the man before but from his vaguely bored air she guessed he was the medical examiner. Vivien walked over to them. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s try getting him out of there.’
Jeremy Cortese stepped forward and pointed to the worker who had been standing to one side. ‘If you like, there’s one of my men here who has no problems with dead bodies. In his spare time, he helps his brother-in-law who’s an undertaker.’
‘Call him over.’
Cortese signalled to the worker, who came towards them. He was in his early thirties, with a boyish face and vaguely oriental features. Shiny dark hair peeped out from under his hard hat. Vivien thought there must be something Asian about him.
Without a word he walked past them, went to the wall and bent down to pick up the pneumatic hammer from the ground.
Vivien went up to him. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tom. Tom Dickson.’
‘All right, Tom, listen. We have a delicate situation here. This has to be done with extreme care. Everything inside that hole could be important. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you used a hammer and chisel, even if it takes longer.’
‘Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. You’ll find everything the way you want it.’
Vivien placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘I trust you, Tom. Carry on.’
She had to admit the man knew his business. He widened the gap in such a way as to make the inside accessible, making the rubble fall outwards but without moving the position of the body.
Vivien asked Salinas for a torch and went closer to take a look inside the hole. There was still a lot of daylight, but the semi-darkness inside made it difficult to see. She shone the torch at the walls and the dead man. The narrowness of the space had stopped the body from sliding to the ground. The dead man was resting on his left side, his head tilted at an unnatural angle. It was this that had given the impression, when seen from the outside, that his head was resting on his shoulder. The enclosed environment and the lack of humidity had partially mummified him, which was why he was much more intact than would normally have been the case – and which also made it much more difficult to calculate how long he had been hidden here.
Vivien knew that for the families of missing persons, the worst thing was the anguish of not knowing. Someone
left home and never came back. And in the absence of a body, his loved ones spent their whole lives wondering what, where and why. Never giving up a hope that only time could gradually extinguish.
She pulled herself together and resumed her inspection.
When she aimed her torch at the ground she discovered, next to the feet of the corpse, an object covered in dust that looked at first glance like a kind of large wallet. She asked for a pair of latex gloves, slid into the opening, and bent to pick it up. Then she straightened up and signalled to the crime scene team and the medical examiner.
‘OK, gentleman, it’s your turn.’
As the team got to work, she examined the object she had in her hand.
She blew on it gently to remove the layer of dust. The material was imitation leather, and must once have been black or brown. She could see now that it wasn’t in fact a wallet, but a document holder. She opened it carefully. There were two hard plastic sheets inside, stuck together, which made a slight tearing noise as she pulled then apart.
Inside were two photographs.
She parted the plastic and gently slipped her fingers in to extract them without ruining them. She examined them by the light of the torch. In the first, a young man in a helmet and combat uniform was leaning on a tank and looking gravely at the camera. Around him there was vegetation that suggested a tropical country. She turned the photograph over. There was something written on it, faded by time, with some of the letters almost erased, but not enough to make them illegible.
The second photograph, which was much better preserved, surprised her. The subject was the same young man who had been looking thoughtfully at the camera in the previous photograph. Here, he was in civilian clothes, a psychedelic T-shirt and work pants. In this image he had long hair and was smiling and holding a big black cat out to the camera. She studied the man and the animal closely. At first she thought it was a deformation caused by the angle, but then she realized that her first impression had been correct.
The cat had only three legs.
There was nothing written on the back of this photograph.
She asked the other officer, Bowman, for two plastic bags, and slipped the document holder and the photographs inside them. She went up to Frank Ritter, the head of the crime-scene team and handed them over to him.
‘I’d like you to analyse this material. Look for fingerprints, if there are any. Examine the victim’s clothes. Plus, I’d like these photographs to be enlarged.’
‘We’ll see what we can do. But if I were you I wouldn’t hold out too much hope. Everything looks pretty old to me.’
The ME walked around the stretcher and came and joined Vivien. They limited the introductions to the absolute minimum.
‘Jack Borman.’
‘Vivien Light.’
They both knew who they were, where they were and what they were doing. Right now, any other consideration faded into the background.
‘Any idea yet of the cause of death?’
‘In layman’s terms, I’d hazard a guess, from the position of the head, that someone broke his collar bone. With what I don’t know. I’ll know more after the post mortem.’
‘How long do you think he’s been here?’
‘From the body’s state of preservation, I’d say around fifteen years. But the state of the hiding place also has to be taken into account. An analysis of the fibres should get us there. And I think forensic tests on the material of the clothes will come in useful, too.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
As the medical examiner walked away, Vivien realized that everything that could be done had been done. She gave the order to remove the body, said goodbye to the men, and left them to their tasks. At this point, she considered it pointless to talk to the worker who had found the body. She had given Bowman the job of taking down the details of all the people who might be useful to their investigation. She would talk to them later,
