On Borrowed Time

Chapter 3

3

A little over fifteen minutes later, Caroline parked her Volvo in a bay outside the Horse and Jockey pub in Manton.

She vaguely recognised it as being on one of Mark’s favourite cycle routes, and noticed the bike racks outside, ready to welcome the day’s cyclists when the pub opened later that day. Dexter was sitting propped against a low wall at the side of the Horse and Jockey, his hands in his pockets. He nodded as she approached him.

‘Morning. Find it alright?’

‘Sat nav,’ Caroline replied, holding up her phone.

‘Where we’re going, we won’t need a sat nav.’

‘Never had you down as a Back to the Future fan, Dex.’

‘No, I mean literally. You heard what I said about the shoes, right?’

Caroline followed Dexter down Cemetery Lane – a narrow, winding track to the side of the Horse and Jockey. Before long, the promised cemetery appeared on their left, before another track spurred off to their right.

‘Up here,’ Dexter said. ‘It doglegs back on itself a bit as it goes uphill. Hope your calf muscles are warmed up.’

Dexter strode up the cycle path with Caroline in tow. After a few seconds, she noticed the train line down below, with some clear activity happening in the mouth of the tunnel.

‘Dex, stop. I’m having trouble holding onto my stomach this morning as it is. Tell me now: have we got a jumper?’

‘Nope. A dangler.’

‘In the tunnel?’

‘Sort of. In the mouth of it. The tunnel runs right underneath Manton and comes out the other side. The whole village is built over the train line. Our customer was found hanging in the mouth of the tunnel.’

‘Christ. Who found him?’ she said, marching after Dexter again.

‘Train driver.’

‘Dex, stop again.’

‘No need. He hit the brakes. Your stomach’s fine.’

At the top of the hill, the path turned to cross the railway, then banked back down along the far side of the track, in the direction from which they’d just come, but east of the railway.

‘Where does that go?’ Caroline asked.

‘Joins the A6003 by the bridge. Popular cycle route, apparently.’

‘Not today, it won’t be.’ She looked down at the path, noticing what looked like fresh tyre marks in the dirt. ‘Look at that, Dex. Looks recent.’

‘Yeah. I know. I was hoping you weren’t going to say that.’

Caroline said her hellos to the officers at the scene and took in everything in front of her. From her position, she could see along the railway line in the direction of Oakham as it ran right under her feet. Behind her, the village of Manton. From here, she couldn’t see the mouth of the tunnel, but she could easily see how someone could access it. A small fence separated the path from a bank of scrubland, which sloped down towards the mouth of the tunnel, with only a cursory metal barrier at the edge.

‘Has someone been down here?’ Caroline asked, gesturing to the trodden-down foliage on the bank.

‘Yeah, it’s the only way to get access. But I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it was fairly well trodden when we arrived,’ PC Joe Lloyd said. ‘That’s what made us think it wasn’t quite right. Looks to me like someone’s dragged him down from here, then tied him to the metal barrier and lobbed him off.’

‘It’s possible,’ Caroline said, crossing her fingers and hoping that wouldn’t turn out to be the case. ‘I’ll need a list of everyone who’s been down there for elimination purposes. We’ll need SOCO to comb it all for fibres. There’s no way someone’s got down there and back without leaving a trace. It looks brutal.’

‘Nettles, brambles, the lot,’ PC Lloyd said. ‘Wouldn’t fancy my chances without a decent pair of boots and some waders. We can get to it round the side now, if you like. They’ve closed the line.’

Caroline and Dexter followed PC Lloyd further along the track as it snaked back down on the far side of the railway line. As they reached the bottom of the hill, she noticed someone had already rigged up a set of steps for getting over the low fence and onto the train line. She looked to her right, at the diesel locomotive stopped on the track, having been reversed back from the tunnel entrance.

‘Where’s the driver?’ she asked.

‘Having a sit down behind the train. He didn’t fancy seeing the body again, funnily enough.’

‘So what happened?’ Caroline asked as they approached the mouth of the tunnel.

‘Our boy the driver, Gary Stoddart, he’s left Oakham station and is on his way to Stamford. He says there was a speed restriction in place because of engineering works, and that’s the only reason he’d managed to stop in time. Otherwise, it’d be a proper messy job,’ PC Lloyd said.

‘What time was this?’

‘A few minutes before six. The train left Oakham around five-fifty. Probably takes a minute or two to get here. Maybe a bit more with speed restrictions.’

‘And when was the last train to come through here before that?’

‘Yeah, we thought of that. The lad was hanging right in the middle of the tunnel, so he’d have been hit by any train coming in either direction. There was overnight engineering works, though. This train was the first one of the day.’

Caroline looked at the body in front of her. She didn’t like to make too many assumptions without evidence, but some things were clear. It was a male, late twenties or early thirties, and he hadn’t been strung up in the few minutes before he was found. She could see from the colour of his skin that he’d been dead at least a couple of hours.

‘Where were the engineering works?’ she asked.

‘Just south of Manton Junction.’

‘Can’t see them from here?’

‘Nope. Probably wouldn’t hear them, either.’

Caroline slowly nodded. Whether he’d hanged himself or someone else had put him there, one thing seemed clear: the intention had been for him to be hit by an earlier train, ensuring certain death and making identification of the body a lot more difficult.

‘Any ID?’ Caroline asked.

‘Nothing. Just the clothes he’s wearing.’

‘What state were they in?’

‘Fine. That’s the weird thing about it. If he’d been dragged down there, his clothes’d be in a right state. Something’s clearly been dragged down, though. You can tell by the state of the ground.’

‘But not him, perhaps. It looks like there’re some tyre tracks round the bend there.’

‘Yeah, I noticed those. They were there before we got here. The only way in’s the way you just came,’ PC Lloyd said. ‘There’s a gate and bollards down the other end. Just about wide enough for a bike or two, but there’s no way you’d get a car in. Or out.’

‘Difficult to turn around, though.’

‘I wouldn’t fancy it. But if you’ve got a small enough car, I reckon it’d be doable up the top there. Probably more of a twenty-seven-point turn than a three-point-turn, but it’s not like anyone’s watching. It’s either that or reverse all the way back out, and that wouldn’t be any easier.’

‘Has anyone spoken to that pub on the corner? Horse and Jockey, was it?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Alright. Can you, please? We’ll need to get hold of their external CCTV. With any luck, there’ll be a camera pointing the right way and we’ll be able to identify any vehicles that came down this track. Am I right in thinking they’d have to drive past the pub?’

‘Yeah, I can’t see how they’d manage it otherwise.’

‘Alright, good. Excellent. That’s got to be our best shot, then.’

‘If the cameras are working,’ PC Lloyd said, causing Caroline’s heart to sink.

‘Yeah. If the cameras are working.’

Caroline nodded and smiled at the pathologist, Dr David Duncan, who she vaguely recognised. She had no idea how he’d managed to get here before her, especially as he lived further afield, but she looked on agog as he stood a little way away from the body, jotting down notes with one hand whilst popping Hula Hoops in his mouth with the other. Caroline walked over to him, noticing a few crumbs stuck in his greying beard as she greeted him.

Dr Duncan spoke with a velvety baritone voice which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a luxury chocolate ad. ‘I must say, DI Hills, you’re very good for business. It used to be a rare treat to come out to Rutland, but I can almost set my watch by the murder rate since you’ve arrived.’

‘Alright, thank you. I don’t need reminding. Is it murder then?’

‘Ah, now you know jolly well that’s not for me to say. But if I were you I wouldn’t be taking any holidays any time soon. There’s some bruising and chafing around the neck which isn’t entirely consistent with hanging. You can see where it’s tugged and bruised the skin. I’d say he’s been pulled down here.’

‘Dead or alive?’

‘Tricky to say. Not dead long, if he was. Either killed just before he was dragged down, or heavily sedated. There’s no sign of incongruous lividity. If he’d been dead for a little while before being hanged, I’d expect to see the blood pooling at its lowest point. Here, that’s the feet. So he was either killed shortly before being dragged down here, or he was brought in bolt upright on a roof rack.’

Caroline couldn’t help but chuckle at the imagery. Gallows humour was often a required ingredient of the job. ‘Could he have been alive when he was brought down?’

‘Possible. If he was alive, he was sedated, because there are no signs he tried to remove the noose. We’ll have to do a toxicology report to confirm.’

‘Smells like he’d been drinking pretty heavily. Would that do the trick?’

‘Unlikely. Although he might’ve drunk himself into a deep sleep and not been able to react quickly enough to strangulation, for example. Especially if it was forceful enough to damage the windpipe or just happened to catch the vagus nerve. If you apply enough pressure to just the right point on the side of the neck here, it causes a rapid drop in heart rate and blood pressure and can easily render someone unconscious. If your man here had low blood pressure anyway, that effect could be achieved more easily. Alcohol would’ve reduced his blood pressure, too. It’s entirely possible he might’ve had a head start. We’ll be able to confirm in more detail once we’ve got him on the slab, but there’s certainly some odd bruising which could well be consistent with prior strangulation. I wouldn’t like to say just yet, though.’

Caroline looked back at the body — the third since she’d arrived in Rutland — and mentally prepared herself for what was to come.