Superintendent Thornton was waiting impatiently for Tim and Ricky to return to the station.
‘There you are at last, Yates. I didn’t expect your little jaunt to take half the day.’
Tim swallowed his annoyance while Ricky quickly made himself scarce, disappearing in quest of coffee.
‘It’s quite a long way to Baston Fen, sir, and I think we’ve been gone only a couple of hours. Did you want to discuss my new plans for catching the farm vehicle thieves?’
‘Naturally I do want to talk to you about that, but something more urgent has come up just now. There’s been a murder. I want everyone to attend a briefing.’
Tim was surprised that the Superintendent, usually cautious to a fault, was so quickly prepared to categorise a newly-discovered crime as murder. It was normal police practice to describe non-natural deaths as ‘unexplained’ or ‘suspicious’, at least until Forensics had done their work.
‘A murder! Are we sure it’s a murder, sir, or at this stage are we just looking at a suspicious death?’
Superintendent Thornton glowered at him.
‘‘We’ are quite certain it’s a murder, Yates, unless you think that a suicide is capable of cutting off her own head and secreting it somewhere.’
‘You mean that a headless corpse has been discovered?’
‘That’s precisely what I mean. Do you think it’s rash of me to conclude that the poor woman’s been murdered?’
‘I... No. Where was she found?’
‘Floating in the Fossdyke Canal.’
‘But that’s not on our patch.’
‘I know that, Yates. But North Lincs have asked us to help if we can. Just to keep a watching brief at first and then see if we can throw light on any of the evidence, when they’ve gathered as much as they can. We might be able to help them to identify the woman, for example. It’s not unheard of for people to travel from South to North Lincolnshire, is it?’
Tim ignored the question. ‘They’re quite sure it’s a woman?’
‘I believe so. There was considerable mutilation to the body, but the sexual organs were identifiable.’
‘Sounds nasty.’
‘It is nasty, Yates, very nasty. But there’s no point in my standing here telling you what I know piecemeal. Michael Robinson’s here from Lincoln to brief us. We’ve just been waiting for you and MacFadyen to return before we begin. Michael needs to get back to Lincoln as soon as he can.’
Tim’s hackles rose slightly. He and DI Michael Robinson were exact contemporaries and had attended several police courses and conferences together. Michael was popular with most of his colleagues and had certainly managed to ingratiate himself with the top brass: Tim had no doubt that a glittering future lay ahead of him, one that would far outstrip Tim’s own. Personally, Tim found Robinson both arrogant and patronising; worse than that, he’d noticed Robinson grabbed the credit for other people’s good ideas and hard work whenever he could, though no one else seemed to have rumbled him. Sly bastard.
Tim followed Superintendent Thornton to the briefing room. Ricky MacFadyen slipped in after them, clutching a mug of coffee, just before Thornton closed the door. Most of their colleagues were already seated, talking quietly to each other as they waited. Tim was a little irked to see DS Juliet Armstrong standing at the front of the room, earnestly talking to DI Robinson. Surely she didn’t like that twat?
Juliet glanced across at Tim and smiled before taking a seat in the front row. Following her gaze, Michael Robinson also saw him and came bustling down the room to greet him. As he drew level with Tim, he extended a large hand. Reluctantly, Tim held out his own hand to have it crushed too warmly for rather too many seconds.
‘Good to see you, Timmo,’ Robinson boomed. He had a square, pinkish face and dirty blond hair. Tim was a little over six feet tall, but still he had to look up to meet Robinson’s eye. He squirmed inwardly at the nickname that Robinson had just invented.
‘Good to see you, too, Mike. It must be at least a year since we last met.’
‘Very probably – I don’t remember. Dennis has been telling me about your problems with the vehicle thefts. Just give us a shout if you like. Two heads are better than one!’
Tim bridled visibly. He’d worked for Superintendent Thornton for almost seven years and never yet been invited to call him by his first name. Pointedly he looked across at Thornton, still hovering beside them, and raised an eyebrow, but his boss was beaming like a schoolmaster supervising two prize pupils. Whether or not he had permitted Robinson to call him ‘Dennis’, he clearly didn’t resent the familiarity.
‘I rather thought you were here so we could help you,’ said Tim stiffly.
‘What? Oh, yes. Never leave a stone unturned in a murder case, I always say. Or any serious crime, for that matter.’
‘Quite so,’ murmured Thornton, glaring at Tim.
‘Well, let’s get on with it, shall we? You’ll need to get back to Lincoln double quick.’
‘Considerate as ever, I see,’ Robinson replied levelly. ‘Right you are, then.’
He turned on his heel and strode back up to the front of the room. Superintendent Thornton followed in his wake and took the seat next to Juliet. Tim preferred to remain standing at the back.
Michael Robinson evidently intended to run the briefing like a tutorial. He paced up and down in front of the white board, waving a marker pen as he spoke.
‘Good morning, everyone. Feel free to interrupt me if anything I say isn’t clear. How many of you know the Fossdyke Canal?’
Andy Carstairs raised a hand as if he were indeed a student in class. Robinson waved the marker pen at him by way of encouragement.
‘I used to go there as a kid. It’s a kind of tourist spot. I think its proper name is the Fossdyke Navigation.’
For a moment DI Robinson looked disconcerted. Tim smirked. That would teach the didactic bastard.
‘Quite right, though locally it’s usually called the Fossdyke Canal, or just the Fossdyke. Originally it was built by the Romans, so it’s an important part of Lincoln’s heritage. It’s been used commercially on and off to transport goods for the last two thousand years. It joins the River Trent to the High Bridge in Lincoln.’
Robinson flicked a switch and turned on the projector that was mounted in the ceiling. A faint image appeared on the grey-painted wall.
‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘that doesn’t show up very clearly, does it?’
‘It’ll work better if the blinds are down,’ said Superintendent Thornton. ‘DI Yates, would you do the honours?’
Tim took his time to saunter across to the rear window and press the switch that lowered the blind. Juliet got up to deal with the other window. Tim gave her a nod and a grateful thumbs-up.
‘Cheers!’ said Robinson. ‘That’s much better. Now, as you can see, there’s a long stretch of towpath – about six miles of it – running from Lincoln to Saxilby.’
The image was much clearer now. It showed a map of the canal. The stretch of towpath to which Robinson had just referred was marked, together with some lock gates and a pub. It was a simple sketch map of the kind reproduced in tourist handbooks, rather than the more elaborate Ordnance Survey version. A red cross had been placed about halfway along it.
‘The body was found just here,’ Robinson continued, stabbing at the cross with his marker pen.
‘When was it found, sir?’ The question came from Giash Chakrabati. Robinson shot him an irritated look.
‘I was just coming to that. The body was discovered yesterday afternoon, at 14.23, to be precise, by a cyclist who’d stopped for a break. He noticed what appeared to be a bundle of rags near the bank. When he’d taken a closer look, he cycled back to a fisherman he’d passed earlier to ask him to help. They raked the bundle in to the bank with the fisherman’s gaff and managed to haul it out of the water. It was the headless body of a woman. As you can imagine, both were deeply shocked.’
‘Do you know how long she’d been in the water?’ Juliet asked.
‘The body’s still with the pathologist. He may be able to tell us more exactly, but his first impression is less than a week.’
‘And the head?’ said Tim. He was intrigued now and couldn’t help getting involved. ‘Is there any possibility that it’s also in the canal?’
Robinson rolled the marker pen in his palm and appraised Tim for rather too long.
‘Obviously there are frogmen searching the canal, and we’ll arrange to have it dragged, too. But we don’t have the head yet. I wouldn’t have forgotten to mention it if we’d found it, DI Yates!’
A murmur of laughter rippled round the room. Tim flushed and gave Robinson a curt nod to acknowledge his reply. It was galling to hear his colleagues respond to Robinson’s mockery, even though he knew that any light-hearted quip was always welcome to relieve the tension in a murder briefing. He’d often injected some humour into his own briefings; just not at someone else’s expense, like that clever sod.
Juliet cleared her throat. Robinson looked across at her and immediately became serious again.
‘Did you want to say something, DS Armstrong?’ He was almost deferential.
‘I was wondering… how was she decapitated? Can you tell what kind of implement was used?’
‘That’s a good question, with unfortunately a not very pretty answer. It wasn’t a clean cut by any means. Again, we have to wait for Forensics to be more accurate, but first impressions are that it was hacked off quite roughly with a fairly crude instrument. Not something like a chainsaw, in other words; more probably, a knife or a hatchet. The murderer had several goes at it before he – or she, but not many women would have had the strength – succeeded.’
Juliet shuddered.
‘Was the head cut off post mortem?’
‘Probably. But at this stage I can’t say for certain. Judging from the other wounds on the torso, I think it’s likely she was already dead.’
‘The body was clothed?’ It was Andy Carstairs speaking. ‘Yes. Fully clothed. She was wearing denim jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. And a short jacket. Her underwear didn’t appear to have been disturbed. Of reasonable quality, but all chain store clothes. As such, hard to trace, of course. Only her shoes were missing.’
‘Anything in the pockets? Anything at all that might help to identify her?’ Andy continued.
‘No, nothing. No keys, purse, mobile phone, anything like that; not even some loose change; and no handbag, though that might still be in the canal.’
‘Any idea about her age?’ Tim risked another question.
‘Obviously it’s more difficult to estimate her age when we don’t have the head. Forensics should be able to help with that, too. Our best guess is that she was a young woman, not a teenager. Perhaps not more than twenty-five. Fairly slight build, though that doesn’t help to guess her age.’
‘Was she white?’ Giash Chakrabati asked.
‘Yes. Sorry, I should have mentioned that.’
‘Have any young women been reported missing on your patch?’ Tim again.
‘No, not recently; and none on yours, either, according to Den… Superintendent Thornton.’
‘I take it you haven’t talked to the Press yet?’ The Superintendent seized the mention of his name as his cue to butt in. Typical question from him, thought Tim: dealing with the media was never far from uppermost in his mind.
‘No, but we’re going to have to issue a bulletin soon. To tell you the truth, I’d really appreciate some advice on how to draft it,’ Robinson said, with what Tim considered to be uncharacteristic humility. ‘I usually try not to give too much away, but I probably can’t avoid mentioning that the corpse is headless. We can’t provide a proper description of the victim, for a start. But it’s tricky: I don’t want to create sensationalist headlines for the gutter press.’
‘Quite so. I take your point.’ Superintendent Thornton said unctuously. ‘DS Armstrong is our expert on press releases. I’m sure she’ll be happy to help you. If the briefing’s over, you can use my office.’
‘I think that’s all I have to tell you for now,’ said DI Robinson, putting down the marker pen. ‘Thank you very much, everyone, for paying attention. I’ll keep Superintendent Thornton posted as I learn more, of course.’
‘In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled,’ said the Superintendent severely to the room in general, himself catching as many eyes as he could as his team prepared to pack up and leave. ‘Don’t forget that anything suspicious, however small, that you happen to hear or see could help DI Robinson to solve this case.’
‘Such as finding a head in a bag,’ Tim heard one of the PCs mutter as he left the room. Despite himself, Tim couldn’t help another smirk.