the water. He’d forgotten his name…
“Short back and sides,” agreed the pathologist. “What’s left of it.”
Gideon, thought Sloan to himself: that’s who it was. He’d beaten the army of the Midianites with his hand- picked men, had Gideon.
“I’ve been looking for occupational signs for you,” said Dr. Dabbe.
“That would help,” said Sloan warmly. “In fact, Doctor, anything would help at this stage. Anything at all.”
“You haven’t got anyone like him on the books as missing, then,” said the doctor, correctly interpreting this.
“Not in Calleshire,” said Sloan. “Not male.”
Detective Constable Crosby hitched a shoulder in his corner. “Plenty of girls missing, Doctor. All looking older than they are. All good home-loving girls,” he added, “except that they’ve left home.”
The white slave trade mightn’t be what it had been but it kept going. It wasn’t, however, Sloan’s immediate concern. He kept his mind on the matter in hand: an unknown body. “What sort of occupational signs, Doctor?”
“Well, he’s quite muscular, Sloan. You can see that for yourself. I’d say he wasn’t a man used to sitting at a desk all day. Or if he was, he went in for some strenuous sport too.”
Sloan wondered what the masculine equivalent of housemaid’s knee was.
“Actually,” said Dabbe, “there’s no specific sign of a trade about him at all.”
“Ah,” said Sloan non-committally.
“He didn’t have cobbler’s knee or miller’s thumb,” said the pathologist, “and I can’t find any other mark on his person that’s come from using the same tool day after day.”
Sloan wondered what sort of occupational mark the police force made on a man—day after day. Varicose veins, probably.
“And he isn’t covered in oil,” said Dr. Dabbe.
Oil wouldn’t have come off in the water, Sloan knew that.
As a possible cause of death shipwreck after a fall on board receded a little from the front of his mind.
“There’s something else that isn’t there,” said the pathologist.
“What’s that, Doctor?” All that came into Sloan’s mind was that ridiculous verse of everyone’s childhood: “I met a man who wasn’t there…”
“Nicotine stains,” replied Dr. Dabbe prosaically. “I should say he was a non-smoker.”
“We don’t know at this stage what will be a help.”
“Well, I hope you aren’t counting on a fingerprint identification because this chap’s skin’s more than a bit bloated over now.”
Even the deceased’s physical identity was taking a little time to put together.
“Fingernails—what’s left of them—appear to have been clean and well cared for,” continued Dabbe.
“Make a note of that, Crosby,” commanded Sloan. Manners might maketh man but appearance mattered too.
“As far as I can see,” said the pathologist, “he was clean generally.”
That, too, ruled out a whole subculture of the voluntarily dirty. The involuntarily dirty didn’t have well-cared- for fingernails and they weren’t well nourished as a rule either.
“And he’s not a horny-handed son of the soil,” concluded Sloan aloud. “Is that all you can tell us, Doctor, from the—er—outside, so to speak?”
“Bless you, no, Sloan,” said the pathologist cheerfully. “That’s only half of my superficial examination. I, of course, use the word ‘superficial’ in its purely anatomical connotation of appertaining to the surface, not in its pejorative one.”
“Naturally,” murmured Sloan pacifically. The doctor wasn’t in court now. He didn’t have to choose his words so carefully.
“And for the record,” added the pathologist breezily, “he hasn’t any distinguishing marks within the meaning of the Act.”
Detective Inspector Sloan nodded, any vision he might have had of easy identification fading away. Even with what the Passport Office engagingly called “special peculiarities” listed just for that very reason—to help identify a particular person—it wasn’t always easy. Without them it could be very difficult indeed. “Anything else, Doctor?”
“He wasn’t mainlining on drugs…”
Times had certainly changed. Once upon a time drug-taking hadn’t been one of the characteristics of dead young men that pathologists looked for and—having found them—echoed Housman’s parodist, “What, still alive at twenty-two…?”
“There are no signs of repeated injections anywhere,” said Dr. Dabbe smoothly, “and no suspicious ‘spider’s web’ tattoos on the inside of the forearm to cover up those signs.”
An old art put to a new use.
“No tattooing at all, in fact,” said Dr. Dabbe, proceeding in an orderly manner through the fruits of his superficial examination.
Detective Constable Crosby made a note of that.
“His ears haven’t been pierced either,” remarked the pathologist.
Times had certainly changed. Detective Inspector Sloan decided that he was getting old. Unpierced ears were a feature that he should have noticed for himself. The Long John Silver touch was something that had grown up since he was a boy. When he, Sloan, saw ear-rings on a man he was still old-fashioned enough to look beyond them for the wooden leg.
“In fact, Doctor,” concluded Sloan aloud, “he was a pretty ordinary sort of man.”
“You want to call him John Citizen, do you?” Dr. Dabbe raised a quizzical eyebrow. “There you would be barking up the wrong tree, Sloan.”
“He seems ordinary enough to me,” persisted Sloan.
“There’s no such thing as an ordinary man,” responded Dr. Dabbe instantly. “We’re all quite different, Sloan. That’s the beauty of the system.”
“There doesn’t appear,” he said flatly, “to be anything out of the ordinary about this man.” One thing that Sloan wasn’t going to do was to get into that sort of debate with the pathologist.
“Ah, but I’m not finished yet, Sloan.”
Dr. Dabbe had in some respects hardly started. He beckoned Sloan nearer to the post-mortem table and tilted an inspection lamp slightly. “You will observe, Sloan, that this man—whoever he is—has been in the water for quite a time.”
Sloan repressed a slight shudder. “Yes, Doctor.”
“And,” continued the pathologist, “that in spite of this the body is scarcely damaged.”
Detective Inspector Sloan obediently leaned forward and peered at the supine figure.
“The lack of damage is interesting,” declared Dr. Dabbe.
Sloan held his peace. If the pathologist wanted to be as oracular as Sherlock Holmes and start talking about dogs not barking in the night there was very little that he, Sloan, could do about it.
“It isn’t consistent with the length of time the body has been in the water, Sloan.”
So that was what was interesting the doctor…
Before Sloan could speak the pathologist had moved the shadowless overhead lamp yet again. This time the beam was thrown over the deceased’s left hand.
“There are a couple of grazes on what’s left of the skin of the fingers,” he remarked in a detached way. “He might—only might, mind you, Sloan—have got them trying to save himself from falling.”
Sloan tightened his lips. For all his scientific objectivity, it wasn’t a nice picture that the pathologist had just conjured up.
5
For death is a debt,
