BLIND SPOT - AND TWO OTHERS

BLIND SPOT PART 1

 1

  I sat at my desk squinting at the computer screen. Subliminally I registered the sound of the foghorn that belonged to the ferry returning from Onehouse Island.

  From the tiny second-floor suite of offices that I rented, I had a fine view from my window of the local charity shop on the other side of the street. If I cared to crane my neck I could see as far up the road as the Oxmarket Indian restaurant with its luridly coloured sauces and irresistible egg fried rice. But right now, the subject on my screen had banished all thoughts of food.

  My tax returns.

  My accountant, wasn’t happy with my claim for new clothes after a night hiding in a ditch spying on an adulterous wife, had put paid to a decent pair of jeans and jacket.

 I removed the small travel kettle from the bottom drawer of my desk, filled it up with water from the communal kitchen just down the corridor and spooned in a couple of heaped teaspoons of instant coffee into my chipped mug, ordained with the badge of Arsenal Football Club.

  On my return, I noticed that my mobile was vibrating into life.

  “A body has washed up on the beach.” It was a Detective Inspector Paul Silver, of the Suffolk Constabulary. A source of income I had come to rely on.

  “Suspicious death?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping we’ll find out.”

  “By ‘we,’ I assume you mean me.”

  “That is what I pay you a consultancy fee for.”

  “Has the deceased got a name?”

  “Not yet.” He replied. “Fancy meeting me at the scene in fifteen minutes?”

  “Make it thirty.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s something I need to do on the way.”

  “See you in half an hour then.”

  I ended the call, logged out of the computer, and left the office, locking up behind me.

  The ‘something’ I had to do was to call in at the local cemetery. I didn’t have any flowers to put on Zoë’s grave, which was conveniently positioned near a bench close to a hedge. Initially, after she had been buried, I went through this ritual once a week when I sat there and chatted with her and told her my news. However, since I had met Kimberley and had recently become engaged it had stretched to once a month, but I still made sure that I did it, honouring my dead wife. Obviously, I knew that I was talking to myself, but I still found something comforting about doing it. Kimberley completely understood and never tried to stop me.

  While I sat there I reflected on Zoë’s little foibles – how she could have watched the TV series Pride and Prejudice over and over again on DVD and how she always had to wear something mauve and how she loved to learn ballroom dancing before eventually getting up from the bench, groaning slightly as my limbs were stiff from the breeze. I walked over to her gravestone, feeling the wet grass percolating beneath my feet and I traced the etched letters on the cold stone with my fingertips. I knew the words off by heart: Zoë Handful – A loving wife and friend – We will always have New York. A closing phrase that only we would have understood.

  Nearby the sound of the sea was faint in the background. There was a hint of mist in the air, swirling across the silhouettes of the gravestones and the stark brittle trees. From here I passed through the lichgate and followed the narrow path back to where I had parked my car.

 I took the coast road and within five minutes saw the vehicles parked at the roadside from some distance away. The sky was black and blue, brooding confused, rolling in off the ocean low and unbroken. The first spits of rain smeared across my windscreen by the intermittent passage of its wipers. The pewter of the sea itself was punctuated by the whites of breaking waves ten or fifteen feet high and the solitary blue flashing light of the police car next to the ambulance was swallowed into insignificance by the vastness of the landscape.

  Beyond the vehicles, cottages huddled against the prevailing weather, expectant and weary, but accustomed to its relentless assault. Not a single tree broke the horizon. Just lines of rotting fence posts along the roadside and the rusting remains of tractors and cars in deserted gardens. Blasted shrubs showed brave green tips that clung on with stubborn roots to thin soil anticipating better days to come.

  I parked beside the police car and stepped out into the cold easterly wind blowing off the North Sea. I gathered my quilted anorak around me and cursed the fact that I had not brought my Wellington boots, before setting off down the path to the beach.

2

  Paramedics declared the man dead, though anyone could have done the job. Neck twisted at an unnatural angle; one leg folded in half from the impact; blood seeping from the skull. He had lost a shoe on the way down and his shirt had been ripped open, probably by an overhang of the cliff face. Suffolk Constabulary had spared a single SOCO, who was photographing the body.

  “Want to place a small wager on cause of death?” DI Silver asked me.            

  “Not yet,” I replied. I heard a bell chime distantly, which forced me to subconsciously check my watch. I frowned, puzzled, when I saw that the time was ten minutes past nine. I put my watch to my ear and could just about hear the ticking above the waves softly kissing the damp sand of the beach.

 “Did he jump or was he pushed?”

 I crouched down beside the SOCO who was taking close-ups of the victim’s hands. “There are no nicks or scratches on his fingers or thumbs.”

  “Meaning?”

 “If he’d been pushed, he’ll have scrambled for purchase, clawed at the sides of the rock.”

 “Impressive.”

  The SOCO let off another flash.

  “Has he a name?”

  “Simon Nunn.”

  “Local?”

  “Sergeant Higgins is checking all that out,” DI Silver responded. “I’ve never come across him before.”

  “How did you find out his name?”

  He held up a transparent plastic bag that contained a leather wallet.

  “Couple of credit cards and a store card.” DI Silver said. “Fifty pounds in cash. But no driving licence.”

  I looked upwards at the small crowd gathering, voyeuristically looking down at the scene. The body had come to rest against a shelf of rock fifty feet below the cliffs-edge and fifteen feet above a narrow path that snaked its way down to the beach.

  The path was fringed on both sides with trees, with a mixture of sand and bare rock underfoot. The sunshine dipped through the branches and at any other time would have looked pretty.

  “Who found him?”

  “That woman over there,” DI Silver said.

  He pointed to a no-nonsense looking middle-aged lady with spectacles and a practical air: self-confident, tall, almost six feet. Thin and far from a beauty.

  She was wrapped up against the cold and was carrying a hardback copy of Death Comes to Pemberley in her gloved hands.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello?” she looked at me curiously.

  “My name is John Handful,” I told her.

  “My name is Joanna Finn.” She responded with reservation.

  “I’m a consulting private detective for the Suffolk Constabulary.”   

  A smile came, briefly, “Oh, a real-life Sherlock Holmes. How exciting!”

  “It’s not as exciting as it sounds,” I explained. “Most of the time it’s pretty mundane stuff. Missing pets, cheating spouses.”

  “And the odd dead body found on a beach.”

  “And the odd dead body found on a beach,” I repeated. “Would you mind telling me how you came to find it?”

  She looked at me gravely. “I always come here before I go to work and read a couple of chapters of whatever book I’m reading at the time, just to help me unwind at the start of the day.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a headmistress.”

  “Oh.”

  “Of the girl’s-only comprehensive in Oxmarket.”

  With a touch of sardonic humour, she watched me reassess her in the light of that revelation. Not a do-gooding bossy spinster as I had first thought, but a fulfilled career woman of undoubted power.

  “I enjoy it,” she said positively.

  “Yes, I can see that.”

 “Yes. Well. . .” She shrugged. “As I was saying, I come down here to relax before I start work and saw that man lying where he is now.”

  “Have you ever seen him before?”

  “No,” she said firmly.

  I could see her as a headmistress. Throughout all her remarks and actions ran the positive decision-making of one accustomed to command.

  “Thank you, Mrs Finn,” I said.

  “It’s Miss, Mr Handful.”

  “Sorry, Miss Finn.”        

  A van arrived at the beach, having obviously taken the only access road about a mile up the beach. It was from the mortuary, here to collect the body. Another job for the pathologist, Dr Kira Reed.

  “Anyone saw what happened?” I asked suddenly, as I re-joined the investigating team.

  DI Silver shook his head. “Somebody walking their dog thought they’d heard a scream as they came around the headland.” He pointed down the beach, to somewhere that was hidden from view.

  “Would a suicide scream as he fell?”

  “I know I would,” DI Silver shrugged. “But there again I’m scared of heights.”

  I stared upwards again. “So, he either fell or he jumped.”

 “Or possibly given a sudden push,” DI Silver added. “No time to even think about clawing his way to safety.”

  We stood in silence for a moment. A pair of old pros who’d seen almost everything the job could throw at us. The mortuary attendants were approaching, one of them carrying a body-bag.

  “Lovely morning,” one of them commented. “All done and dusted, Tonto?”

  “Dr Madsen hasn’t arrived yet” The SOCO replied.

  The attendant checked his watch. “Think he’ll be long?”

  Tonto just shrugged. “No idea, Wilsy.”

  Wilsy puffed air from out from his cheeks. “Going to be a long morning,” he said.

  “Long morning,” his partner echoed.

  My mobile sounded and I moved away a little. Caller ID: Kimberley.

  “Everything all right?” I said into the phone.

  “One of my laboratory technicians hasn’t turned up for work?”

  “What’s so strange about that?”

  “He hasn’t had a day off in all the time he’s worked here.”

  “Have you tried phoning him?”

  “Of course, I have,” she snapped. “There is no reply. I even sent someone from human resources round to his house. There’s no one there.”

  “Has he any family?” I asked. “Girlfriend, boyfriend, anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know what I can do to help?” I admitted. “Don’t worry too much. He’ll probably turn up later.”

  “John, I’m worried about him.”

  “Why?” I pressed. “Surely you’ve had someone at Bio-Preparations take a day off before without permission?”

  “Of course,” she retorted. “But this guy is severely visually impaired. And he’s been known to take a walk along the cliff path for exercise every morning before he comes to work.”

  I turned back in the direction of the corpse.

  “What is his name?” I asked.

  “Simon Nunn.”

  Once again a bell chimed distantly.

3

  The living and the dead were greeted by stainless steel: benches, basins, scalpels, and scales, disinfected and polished to a dull gleam under the halogen lights.

  The place seemed deserted until a cleaning lady appeared wearing elbow-length rubber gloves. I didn’t want to contemplate what she had been cleaning.

  We moved through another door and Dr Kira Reed had her hands inside a butterflied ribcage. She was an attractive woman with smooth clear skin, the colour of weak tea or dark honey, and it had a translucent glow behind it. Half a dozen students were gathered around her, dressed in matching surgical scrubs and cloth caps.

  “You see that?” Kira asked, adjusting a lamp on a retractable metal arm above her head.

  Nobody answered. They were staring at the disembowelled body with a mixture of awe and disgust.

  She pointed and raised her eyes to her students, but no one responded.

  “What are we looking for, Dr Reed?” One of them asked, eventually.

  “Evidence of a heart attack or otherwise.”

  She waited.

  Silence.

  “I swear you’re all blind. Right there! Damaged heart tissue. You don’t always find the clot, but cardiac arrhythmia can still be the likeliest cause of death.”

  “He suffered a heart attack?” One of the students asked.

  “Do you think?”

  Kira Reed’s sarcasm was lost on them.

  “Sew him up, for Christ’ sake,” she said, impatiently peeling off her surgical gloves. She tossed them overhead like she was shooting in a netball match. It rattled the bin. She had scored.

  “You wanted to tell us something,” DI Silver asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  The pathologist led us to a glass walled office with a desk and filing cabinets. Having collected a three-ringed binder, she waved it above her head like a tour leader, and we followed her down another corridor until she stopped before a steel door. Pulling down the handle, she opened the door, breaking the airtight seal with a soft hiss. Lights were triggered automatically, and I felt the breath of frigid air. Four cadavers were on trolleys beneath white sheets. Three walls of the room had metal drawers where more bodies laid within.   Dr Reed checked a nameplate and tugged a handle. There was another hiss as the seal broke and Simon Nunn slid into view on metal runners. The joints were stiff with rigor mortis and his skin was marbled with lividity.

 “I found traces of acetazolamides in his bloodstream.” Dr Kira Reed said as she pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves. “And signs of Latonoprost used on his eyes.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Quite a significant amount,” the pathologist responded. “Which after further examination of the eyes confirmed to me that Simon Nunn suffered from acute glaucoma.”

  “We knew that he had impaired vision.” I told them.

  “There is evidence of laser microsurgery to the drainage canal in the front of his right eye.” She said. “But none to the left.”

  “Time of death?” DI Silver asked.

  “I would have said, late last night.” Dr Reed said. “No earlier than ten o’clock.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The victim measures at five feet seven and weighs a hundred ninety pounds.” She began. “Both legs were broken and his ribs were cracked. The stomach showed traces of ham, egg, and chips. Trace evidence from the recovered clothing was unexceptional and the thick lensed glasses he had been wearing had shattered on impact.”

  She handed DI Silver the three-ringed binder containing the autopsy report and photograph and then slid the body from view.

  “Sorry, guys,” she said cheerfully. “Apart from him suffering from acute glaucoma, the cause of death is nothing more exciting than multiple organ failure due to massive impact trauma. In other words, it was the fall that killed him.”

  “Thank you, Dr Reed,” DI Silver said, quickly flicking through the report. “But I also want to find out why he fell.”

  “Can’t help you there, I’m afraid,” she shrugged, smiling. “Now, if you excuse me. I’ve got some work to do.”

 She turned around and walked back through the big double doors and left us standing in the corridor of the mortuary.

4

  “You may go in now.”

  We had turned up unannounced at the doctor’s surgery at eleven and were only made to wait forty-five minutes before we were allowed to see Doctor Madsen. We entered the consulting room to find Zoë’s replacement seated behind his desk. He was a neat, methodical, and precise man with a neat, methodical, and precise voice.

 “I can’t give you long, Detective Inspector,” he gestured to the two vacant chairs opposite his desk.

 We sat down and DI Silver explained the reason for his visit.

“I expect you’ve come to ask me whether I’ve seen Simon recently.”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor hesitated and puffed out his cheeks. “I prescribed him Acetazolamide and Latonoprost. Latonoprost is a Prostaglandin analogue that increases the flow of fluid out of your eye, which in turn reduces the pressure within your eye. These eye drops are usually applied once a day.”

  “First thing in the morning or last thing at night?” I asked.

  “The morning.”

  “Did they help him with his symptoms?”

  “What are you implying?”

  “I’m not implying anything, Doctor Madsen.” I said. “I’m simply asking you a question.”

 “They were the best type of eye drops for his level of glaucoma.” Lurking behind the acceptable aroma of soap, antiseptic and strong mints I thought I could detect a whiff of alcohol. He rose, a fraction unsteadily, to his feet. “And now you’ll have to excuse me. I have a very busy day ahead.” He pressed the buzzer and moments later we found ourselves in the open air.

 The surgery was behind a house, a splendid Victorian villa that came with the job. I had lived there with Zoë for eighteen months and moved out after she had died. Doctor Madsen had been sympathetic and had helped me find my current flat. It was well known within this small community that he liked a drink and his marriage wasn’t one of the greatest, but I had never noticed it before until today.

  We walked down the long gravel drive and entered a crescent of breeze-block council houses, a few private dwellings, the Willow Tree pub and a huge beautiful Georgian house. Next came the post office, which was a two-up two-down, suitably fortified and which doubled as the local corner shop.

  We eventually came to the quay, where the dark legions of yet another weather front was assembling out on the horizon. The wind filled the silence between us, carrying the cries of distant seagulls as they fought to master its gusts and currents and the constant indistinct chiming of a bell.

  Coiled rope and orange buoys laid draped over piles of rusted chains. Creels for crab and lobster stood piled up against the wall. Tiny fishing dinghies lay canted at odd angles, secured to loops of rusted iron.

  The new landlord of the Waggoner’s’ Rest was a big man with a fuzz of white hair fringing an otherwise bald head who introduced himself as Chris ‘Butch’ Poulson. He had already made changes, with the interior now better lit and conversation replacing music. The place was just noisy enough – no chance of anyone eavesdropping on our conversation.

  A pint of Calvors 3.8 for me and an orange juice for the Detective Inspector, were ordered and feeling reckless we picked up a couple of menus. They were multi-page laminated things, almost as big as the circular table by the window that we had chosen. I saw ham, egg, and chips on page two, and investigated no further.

 “Cheers,” I said, raising my glass.

 “What are your assumptions on this case?” He asked me and took a sip of his orange juice.

 “Paul, you know that I don’t make assumptions,” I swallowed a mouthful of Calvors. “To assume would make an ass out of you and me.” I paused, inviting him to comment, but he said nothing. “Let me look at Dr Reed’s report?” I asked, eventually.

  DI Silver handed me the three-ring binder and I laid it on the table in front of me and slowly opened it to be greeted with the autopsy photograph of Simon Nunn on the first page.

 The body looked awful in the autopsy photograph. Laid out flat and naked on a stainless tray and the camera’s flash had bleached his skin pale green.

  Awful.

  But then, dead people often looked pretty bad.

  I closed the folder sharply at the arrival of our lunch, brought to us by a young girl in her early twenties, who looked rather suspiciously at my reaction.

  “Thank you,” DI Silver winked at the waitress and tipped his glass to his mouth. I’d noticed before how the Detective Inspector opened his mouth when he drank – as if attacking the liquid, showing it his teeth.

  I handed over the folder, which he placed by his feet and we both devoured our lunch as if it were to be our last meal on this earth.

 “Want another?” I asked, eventually.

 “Why not?”

 I brought the drinks through. “I suppose we will have to pay Bio-Preparations a visit?”

 The Bio-Preparations complex was locally known as Cobra Mist and was situated on a ten-mile shingle spit known as ‘The Headland.’ A legacy from the Cold War era, it was originally an over-the-horizon backscatter radar that monitored aircraft and rocket flights from far behind the Iron Curtain. It was closed for a while because of interference from a Russian trawler sprouting strange aerials that was constantly spotted outside the twelve-mile exclusion zone. After years of neglect, the pharmaceutical giant Bio-Preparations bought the site and the rest as they say is history. A vast grey building dominates the spit hugged tight to the coast between Oxmarket and the north of Felixstowe. It is visible from the main quay in Oxmarket and the locals call the spit an island, probably because access is only available by ferry. There is a military landing craft to take vehicles across for those working at the complex. Foot passengers travel by launch.

 “Afraid so,” DI Silver shrugged. “Are you okay with that?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Don’t forget that’s how Kimberley and I met.”

  Our recollections were suddenly interrupted by the noisy arrival at the bar of old Danny, the fishermen. A short man with a round, shining face beneath a smooth, shiny head. His shirt collar was frayed. He wore a grey pullover with stains down the front, tucked into trousers a size too big that were held up high around his stomach by a belt tightened one notch too many. His Wellington boots had seen better days and the room was now filled with the salty aroma of the sea and the faintly unpleasant perfume of body odour.

  “Beer, Danny?” The landlord asked him.       

  “Might be the last one for a while.” Danny replied, slamming down a pile of change on the shiny wooden surface. Normally, a man of cheerful disposition he had the air of someone who had been knocked down by the trials and tribulations of life once too often.

  “Why’s that, Danny?” The pint of frothy beer was placed on the bar in front of him.

  “Bloody rope from one of the anchor buoys got caught up in the propeller of my boat, when I was hauling my nets in.” He swallowed half of the pint and wiped the froth of the beer from his top lip. “Can you believe my luck? Ever since Mary died eight years ago my luck has run out.”

  “When did this happen?” The landlord asked sifting through the loose change on the bar. He made sure that he only took the right money as he was being scrutinized by the old fisherman’s sharp dark eyes that shone at him through frameless glasses.

  “Early hours of this morning,” the old man replied. “Probably about five o’clock. I never wear a watch, so I’m guessing. But I’m not normally far off.” He added, reflectively.

  “How long will it take to repair?” DI Silver asked.

  “Oh, it’s already repaired.” Danny shrugged. “I can’t afford to have the Lovelace sitting idle. Probably haven’t got enough f*****g money to pay the bill, when I get it...”

  “I know you’re upset,” the landlord interrupted, smartly, “but please don’t use language like that in my pub.”

  “Sorry,” Danny said, holding up a dirty hand in apology. “My Mary would have crossed herself and prayed for my forgiveness if she had heard me use words like that.”

  “Where is the buoy now?” I asked, closing the binder, and sliding it across the small table to DI Silver.

  “Floating around the North Sea somewhere.” Danny shrugged. “Ringing its melancholy bell with the rise and fall of the swell.”