Unfortunately, Annie’s unexpected revelation had not opened the floodgates. Quite the opposite. After dissolving in tears again, she eventually composed herself enough to continue answering ‘no comment’.
After an increasingly frustrating thirty minutes, Warren had eventually admitted defeat, and sent her back to her cell whilst they awaited the CPS to authorize charging. With his afternoon suddenly free again, he decided to take a trip to the Lister hospital to meet with Professor Jordan.
The post-mortem on the adult body found in Farley Woods had been performed as a priority case. Even a liberal application of Vicks VapoRub on his top lip failed to fully disguise the smell of decomposition, although Warren admitted that the odour might be psychological. He’d only managed a light lunch, and had resisted the urge to have a snack, but his stomach still made an ominous gurgling noise.
‘The deceased is definitely male,’ said Jordan. ‘I’d say in his late twenties. Approximately 185 centimetres tall, but significantly underweight. Unfortunately, exposure to the elements and scavengers has made gross examination of his internal organs of limited use.’
The body had been laid out on a steel table. With the clothing removed, Warren could see the full extent of the body’s decomposition.
‘I’ll need to run more tests to rule out other causes, but at the moment I’d say he bled to death from a shotgun wound to his left thigh.’
Jordan pointed to the remains of the leg. The remaining flesh was peppered with several black pellets.
‘One of the pellets looks to have nicked the femoral artery. The kneecap is also dislocated, although I would suggest that is more likely to be due to the body falling awkwardly.’
‘Before or after he was shot?’ asked Warren.
‘Impossible to say, although the joint is swollen, suggesting that there was a significant delay between the injury and the cessation of the heart pumping. The damage to the artery is relatively minor – if the bullet had entered a few millimetres to the left, it would have missed it entirely, so the exsanguination took some time.’
‘Long enough for him to crawl away from the location he was shot?’
‘Possibly.’
Warren eyed the man’s hands. He didn’t even need to ask if fingerprints were possible. The skin on the remaining digits had all but disappeared. His stomach gurgled again at the sight of obvious bite marks.
‘Any clues about ethnicity?’
‘I’d say white, Caucasian, although the skin discoloration makes that tentative. His hair is a dark brown, and there is some of his beard left, although a lot is missing.’ Jordan’s tone was grim. ‘Doubtless a search of any local nests or burrows will find more of it. I’ve taken samples for DNA analysis, and dental X-rays, so if he’s in the system we may get a hit.’
‘Have you had a look at what he was wearing?’
Jordan nodded, leading Warren over to a paper-covered table where the man’s clothing had been neatly laid out.
Under the bright, fluorescent lighting, the man’s trousers appeared to be dark blue jeans.
‘The label shows the inside leg to be 31 inches, which is consistent with the man’s height. But the waist is 34 inches. Even with the state of the body, I can see that’s several inches too wide. Either he lost a lot of weight since buying them, or the trousers didn’t originally belong to him. I’d suggest weight loss.’
Jordan lifted a battered, black leather belt. ‘It looks as though at least two more holes have been made in the belt to make it tighter.’
He returned to the jeans. ‘Aside from the significant staining from the blood, and the mud, I’d say that the jeans were already very dirty when the victim was shot.’ He pointed to a black mark on the right knee. ‘That looks like engine oil to me.’ He pointed at another, white stain. ‘And that looks like paint.’
‘I’ll get them analysed,’ said Warren.
‘The T-shirt also hasn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in a very long while.’
Up close the once-white material was stained and grimy. The neck and the cuffs were both heavily frayed.
‘I’d say the staining on the inside is probably sweat. It’s not just grubby, it’s filthy. It’s what I’d expect to see from someone who has been living rough for some time with no access to washing facilities.’
Could the mysterious man have been homeless? Living in the woods? In that case, how had he been shot? And why was he only wearing a thin T-shirt? In Warren’s experience, homeless people tended to wear most of their clothes regardless of the weather; they couldn’t exactly hang them up in a wardrobe.
Warren recalled the observation from the briefing. ‘I don’t recognize that logo,’ he said, peering closer at the T-shirt’s chest. ‘It looks as though it might be foreign. Is there a label inside?’
‘Yes, although it’s a fairly standard multi-language European wash label. It’s a UK extra-large. Again, a couple of sizes bigger than I’d expect someone of his build to wear.’
Forensics would be taking the clothes away for further analysis, but Warren snapped a picture of the logo and the label on his phone so he could start someone looking on the clothing databases to identify where it came from. Jordan obligingly turned the jeans over, so Warren could photograph the size label and leather tag on the rear waistband. Again, it looked unfamiliar, although the raised lettering had been worn down to almost nothing from rubbing against the belt.
‘There are some seeds and what looks like small fibres stuck to the turn-ups. I’ll recommend that Forensics use sticky tape on the surfaces and see what they find. If they are different to the plant species near to where he was found, they might provide a clue to where he was before he died.’
‘What about the pockets?’
‘Empty as far as I can tell. I’ll leave the trace evidence team to poke around inside for anything small, but there was no wallet, phone or keys, coins, notes or even scraps of paper that I could see.’
That was also unusual. Even homeless people tended to accumulate pocket litter over time: receipts, bus tickets and tissues were a ubiquitous part of daily life. Had the man’s pockets been emptied?
‘What about underwear?’
‘Filthy again.’ Jordan held up a pair of stained, black briefs. ‘Be glad of your facemask; they’re pretty ripe. Urine stains at the front, faecal stains at the rear. He could have urinated as he died, but I see no evidence that he defecated. Judging from the state of the rest of the clothing, and the obvious age of the underwear, I’d say the victim had worn these for weeks or even longer.’
There was no obvious logo on the underwear, and again, Jordan held them aloft as Warren photographed the care label.
‘Let’s have a look at the footwear,’ he suggested.
‘Socks are unbranded and very well worn.’ Jordan pointed to two holes in a white sports sock. He flipped one over and showed Warren a badly repaired hole on the heel.
‘Who darns their socks these days?’ asked Warren.
‘Not homeless people,’ said Jordan, ‘far easier to pick up a new pair from a clothing bank. For that matter, why would the victim keep the same clothes for so long? You can get clean, second-hand clothes from homeless shelters or churches, no questions asked.’
Remembering the offer from DC Marshall at briefing, Warren took photographs of the black trainers from several angles, including inside the shoe. Up close, it was clear that the footwear was also very well worn; with the tattered rubber soles peeling away from the uppers. The laces were frayed at the end, the aglets missing. There appeared to be the remains of a pattern on the insole, but Warren couldn’t get a clear picture. He’d ask Forensics to dismantle the shoe and photograph it under different light sources to see if it could provide any clues.
Finishing up, Warren thanked Jordan, before removing his protective clothing. He’d deliberately worn old clothes, but as he left the morgue and headed back to his car, he felt as though he carried the stink of death with him. He’d have to shower when he got back to the station and change into his spare suit.
Warren finally made it back to Middlesbury late afternoon. As he entered the office, Moray Ruskin got up to greet him, his face grave.
‘A call just came in a couple of minutes ago. They’ve found Joey McGhee. It’s not good.’
The main train line between London and Cambridge ran through Middlesbury. The express service could deliver commuters to the centre of London in as little as forty-five minutes at peak time.
To the south of the town, the line was raised up on a viaduct to pass over the river Herrot. It was underneath the arches that held the tracks aloft that the body of Joey McGhee was found by a cyclist. Looking at the way the cyclist was dressed, and the way that Ruskin was admiring the man’s bicycle, Warren wondered if the two of them were training for the same event.
‘Looks like an overdose,’ said CSM Gupta, as she clambered up the embankment to greet Warren and Ruskin. ‘He was pronounced dead at the scene. I haven’t had a chance to look at him properly, but he’s surrounded by drug paraphernalia.’
Over her shoulder, Warren could see a bright red sleeping bag. He hoped that the man had at least been warm.
‘How was he found?’
‘Apparently, he was pretty much blocking the towpath. The cyclist had to dismount to go around him. He said it isn’t unusual for there to be rough sleepers down here, but they are usually tucked against the wall out of the way. The man’s a medical student, and he said that something didn’t feel quite right, so he had a look-see. That’s when he called it in.’
Warren felt deflated. McGhee had been a potential witness. He cursed himself for not trying harder to keep him at the station the evening he’d shown up. But what could he have done? McGhee had been determined to leave. Even if Warren had managed to find him a warm place in a cell and plate of hot food, he knew that McGhee would probably have turned it down. He’d clearly been wanting more than just a hot meal, and he wouldn’t have been able to do what he wanted in a police station.
He also felt a sense of guilt. It looked as though Grimshaw had been right. How much of the forty-five pounds he had given the man had he injected?