‘Rigor mortis has set in. A body normally loses a degree of temperature every hour but it dropped below freezing last night. She could have been dead for twenty-four hours, perhaps longer.’
The pathologist scrawls his signature on a clipboard and goes back to his staff. The DI motions me to follow her. We pick our way across the duckboards to the tree.
Today I have my walking stick- a sign that my medication is having less effect. It is a nice stick, made of polished walnut with a metal tip. I’m less self-conscious about using it nowadays. Either that or I’m more frightened of my leg locking up and sending me over.
The photographer is shooting close-ups of the woman’s fingers. Her nails are slim and painted. Her nakedness is marbled with lividity and I can smell the sweet sourness of her perfume and urine.
‘You know who this is?’
I shake my head.
The DI gently rolls the hood upwards, bunching the fabric in her fists. Sylvia Furness is staring at me, her head hanging forward, twisted to one side by the weight of her body. Her ash blonde hair is matted into curls and is darker at her temples.
‘Her daughter, Alice, reported her missing late Monday afternoon. Alice was dropped home after a horse- riding lesson and found the front door open. No sign of her mother. Clothes lying on the floor. A missing persons report was filed on Tuesday morning.’
‘Who discovered her body?’ I ask.
She motions over my shoulder towards a farmer who is sitting in the front seat of a farm truck. ‘Last night he thought he heard foxes. He came out early to take a look. He found Sylvia Furness’s car parked in the barn. Then he saw the body.’
Veronica Cray lets the hood fall and cover Sylvia’s face. The death scene has a surreal, abstract, achingly theatrical sensibility; a whiff of sawdust and face paint, as if somehow it has been laid out like this for someone to find.
‘Where is Alice now?’
‘Being looked after by her grandparents.’
‘What about her father?’
‘He’s flying back from Switzerland. He’s been away on business.’
DI Cray plunges her hands into the pockets of her overcoat.
‘This make any sense to you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘There’s no sign of a struggle or defence injuries. She hasn’t been raped or tortured. She froze to death, for glory’s sake.’
I know she’s thinking about Christine Wheeler. The similarities are impossible to ignore, yet for every one of them I could find an equally compelling difference. Sometimes in mathematics, randomness itself becomes a pattern.
She’s also contemplating whether Patrick Fuller could have been involved. He was released from custody on Sunday morning having been charged with stealing Christine Wheeler’s mobile.
Uniformed officers have gathered beside the farm shed, waiting to begin a fingertip search of the field. Veronica Cray makes her way towards them, leaving me standing beside the body.
Nine days ago I glimpsed Sylvia Furness through an open door as she undressed in her flat. Her muscles were sculptured from hours in the gym. Now death has turned the sculpture to stone.
Stepping across the duckboards, I reach the perimeter of the roped area and begin walking up the slope towards the oak ridge. My polished cane is useless in the mud. I tuck it under one arm.
The sky has a porcelain quality as the sun fights to break through the high white clouds. The last of the mist has burned off and the valley has fully materialised, revealing humpback bridges and cows dotting the pastures.
I reach the fence and try to scramble over it. My leg locks and I fall into a ditch full of knee-high grass and muddy water. At least it was a soft landing.
Turning back, I scrutinize the scene, watching as the SOCOs lift Sylvia’s body down from the tree and lay it upon a plastic sheet. Nature is a cruel, heartless observer. No matter how terrible the act or disaster, the trees, rocks and clouds are unmoved. Perhaps that is why mankind is destined to chop down the last tree and catch the last fish and shoot the last bird. If nature can be so dispassionate about our fate, why should we care about nature?
Sylvia Furness froze to death. She had a mobile phone, but didn’t call for help. He kept her talking until the battery ran out. Either that or he was here, taunting her with it.
This was a piece of twisted sadistic theatre, but what was the artist trying to say? He gained pleasure from her pain; he revelled in his power over Sylvia, but why did he leave her body so obviously on display? Is it a message or a warning?
There he is again, the man who knows Johnny Cochran’s distant cousin; the one who tried to talk to my fallen angel. He’s a regular corpse chaser, isn’t he? The grim reaper.
I watch him cross the field, ruining his shoes. Then he falls over the fence into the ditch. What a clown!
I’ve known my share of shrinks, doctor-major types who administer mental enemas, trying to get soldiers to bring their nightmares into daylight like some steaming pile of crap. Most of them were bullshit artists, who made me feel like I was doing them a favour by telling them things. Instead of asking questions, they sat and listened- or pretended to.
It’s like that old joke about two shrinks meeting at a university reunion and one looks old and haggard while the other is bright-eyed and youthful. The older-looking one says, ‘How do you do it? I listen to other people’s problems all day, every day, year after year, and it’s turned me into an old man. What’s your secret?’
The younger-looking one replies, ‘Who listens?’
A guy I know called Felini, my first CO in Afghanistan, used to have nightmares. We called him Felini because he said his family came from Sicily and he had an uncle in the Mafia. I don’t know his real name. We weren’t supposed to know.
Felini had been in Afghanistan for twelve years. At first he fought alongside Osama Bin Laden against the Soviets and then finished up fighting against him. In between times he reported to the CIA and DEA monitoring opium production.
He was the first westerner into Mazar-e-Sharif after the Taliban captured the city in 1998. He told me what he saw. The Taliban had gone through the streets, strafing everything that moved with machine guns. Then they went from house to house, rounding up Hazaras, before locking them in steel shipping containers in the broiling sun. They baked to death or suffocated. Others were thrown alive into wells before the tops were bulldozed over. No wonder Felini had nightmares.
Strangely, none of that changed how he felt about the Talibs. He respected them.
‘The Talibs knew they were never going to win over the locals,’ he told me. ‘So they taught them a lesson. Each time they lost a village and won it back again, they were more savage than before. Payback can be a bitch, but it’s what you have to do,’ he said. ‘Forget about winning hearts and minds. You rip out their hearts and break open their minds.’
Felini was the best interrogator I’ve ever seen. There was no part of the body he couldn’t hurt. Nothing he couldn’t find out. His other theory was about Islam. He said that for four thousand years the guy who carried the biggest stick had been in charge and been respected in the Middle East. It’s the only language the Arabs understand- Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish, Wahhabi, Ismaili, Kufi- makes no fucking difference.
Enough of the nostalgia. They’re taking the bitch’s body down.
A bird flies out of the trees in a clatter of wings. It startles me. I brace my hands against the top strand of wire, feeling the cold radiate from the metal.
On the lower reaches of the field, dozens of police officers are shuffling forward in a long unbroken line. Clouds of condensed vapour billow from their faces. As I watch the strange procession, a realisation washes over me, a sense that I’m not alone. Peering into the trees, I scan the deeper shadows. On the periphery of my vision I notice a movement. A man is crouched behind a fallen tree, trying not to be seen. He is wearing a woollen hat and something dark is covering his face.
Without even realising it, I am moving towards him.
