DELAHAYE AND LINES HAD BECOME regulars at the café, their cups of tea often presented before they’d even ordered food.
Now Delahaye sat alone, staring out the window and half listening to the animated gossip of the off-shift nurses from nearby Selly Oak Hospital.
Outside, the rush hour traffic was relentless in the pulsing heat, drivers desperate to get home for tea and telly.
The bell above the door pinged. A glorious redhead entered, looked around, spotted him, then smiled with relief and approached the table. Delahaye straightened.
Professor Angela Simmons took a seat opposite. She blinked at the tattoos revealed by his short-sleeved shirt, then parried his gaze as it travelled over her. Delahaye cleared his throat.
Angela called the waitress and ordered a glass of orange juice.
‘You have tattoos,’ she said. ‘Well, well.’
Delahaye smiled. ‘And?’
‘Seth Delahaye – not so much an experience but a story to be read.’ It was the first time she hadn’t used his police rank to prefix his name. As if he was a proper person.
‘You’re not a fan of tattoos then?’
Angela shrugged. ‘My dad says the only people who have tattoos are rough sailors and tough whores.’
‘Well, I’m not a tough sailor,’ said Delahaye, and she laughed. There followed a shy silence.
‘Gary Clarke,’ she prompted.
‘We’ve sod all,’ said Delahaye.
‘So, we’re just waiting for the inevitable,’ she said, as the waitress delivered her juice. Angela took a sip, glancing out at the street beyond. Delahaye studied her face surreptitiously, looking away quickly when she returned her attention to him. She pulled a cardboard file from her bag and placed it in front of him.
‘I brought what you asked.’
Delahaye read the document quickly and frowned.
‘Tiss Coleman only had an external post-mortem?’
Angela nodded. ‘There was no need for an internal autopsy because it was clear from the head injuries how she’d died. Also, the lorry driver was the one to blame as he was drunk at the wheel. He claimed full responsibility. The doctor who’d completed the examination stated that she would have died instantly so there was no need.’
Delahaye read on. ‘And she had stretch marks . . . ’
‘Yes, of the type usually caused during advanced pregnancy.’
‘Were there no other external signs of childbirth?’
‘No,’ Angela said. ‘All possibilities are on the table. She could have carried the baby to full term and given it up for adoption. Or maybe it was stillborn. She could’ve miscarried or even have had a late abortion. But for that information you’d need a full internal autopsy.’
‘There would have been . . . imprints . . .markings on the pelvic structures . . . ’ said Delahaye.
‘I’m impressed,’ said Angela.
‘We are our bones,’ Delahaye murmured. Angela gave him a confused look. ‘The girl I told you about? The one who helped us find Banlock Farm? She said that once. It’s always stuck with me.’
‘Well, she’s right,’ said Angela. ‘The only way you’ll know a child was born to Miss Coleman is if you exhume her body and have an experienced pathologist perform another autopsy looking for that specific evidence.’
‘Nev Coleman owns the land outright; he could bury his family on his land and, anyway, I don’t think it matters to the case. I just wanted to know.’
Angela rustled through the file and pulled out another piece of typed paper. ‘There are two more very important details related to this. Firstly, there is no death certificate for Sophia Coleman. Towler and I discussed the possibility that she died at home, and Neville Coleman and his daughter held a private – or secret – funeral on the land.’
‘It’s illegal not to register a death,’ said Delahaye. ‘He’d know that, being an ex-copper. And you’d need a death certificate to arrange a normal funeral.’
‘But he didn’t arrange a normal funeral. He buried her himself.’
Delahaye sat back in his seat. ‘Does Tiss have a death certificate?’
Angela pulled out copies of both Tisiphone’s birth and death certificates, passed them to Delahaye.
‘If Tiss’s child was born,’ she said, ‘he or she would be about fifteen or sixteen now.’
‘Difficult to miss or hide,’ said Delahaye.
‘Yes, and a birth must be registered too. But there isn’t a child’s birth certificate related to Tisiphone Coleman at that time in any of the records. So there’s no grandchild – at least not officially.’
‘Well, this is where the plot thickens,’ said Delahaye. From his satchel, he pulled out WDC Gibson’s research: a thin wad of papers; copies of records, all stamped, dated and signed. He handed Angela a social services report summary:
On the morning of 14th August, 1969, a male child, whose approximate age was estimated to be three years-old, was taken into emergency social care from the property of Mr Neville Coleman, of Banlock Farm, Worcestershire. The Social Service team was in attendance with West Mercia Constabulary’s armed officers. The complainant had been a man who had claimed to have been the boy’s biological father with no evidence to support this claim. He had tried to ‘rescue’ the boy from the obvious neglect, but discovered he could not enter the property because of the pack of large aggressive dogs, and Mr Coleman’s firearm. The child is Mr Coleman’s grandson and both had been living in squalid conditions among his animals for some time. The boy was thin and malnourished, and suspicious of strangers. He also preferred to use animal sounds instead of speech and opted to move on all fours instead of walking. Mr Neville Coleman was suffering severe mental health issues and could no longer cope with the child or the animals. Mr Coleman was admitted to Rubery Hill Hospital for treatment and the child was fostered then adopted out of county . . . to Staffordshire.
‘It’s helpful to have a birth certificate for a child you’re trying to adopt,’ said Angela. ‘But so much of this child’s information would be missing, not least the actual birth date and the name of the father, so . . .’
Delahaye pondered this. ‘So, there is a grandson.’ He looked to Angela. ‘It does put the rumour to rest.’
‘But it doesn’t explain why there’s no birth certificate,’ said Angela. ‘Unless the deadline to register the birth was missed. For example, if mother or baby had been too ill, they may have just forgotten to do it.’ She shook her head.
‘Somehow forgetting to register a death can be forgiven. But not registering a child’s birth – that’s more than just sloppy, it’s deliberate, has to be.’
Angela turned her glass. ‘But think of that poor man, going mad and having to give away his only surviving family, and then him being taken away from him forever. It’s shameful.’
Delahaye rummaged in the file and pulled out the official list of evidence and observations by the authorities for why the child was removed so forcefully from his grandfather’s care. He handed it to Angela. ‘Check out point 10A to D.’
Angela read, her hand creeping up to her mouth, her eyes wide with dismay. ‘My God, how does a child ever come back from that?’
They sat in silence for a moment, the chime of the other diners’ cutlery washing over them.
‘Thank you,’ Delahaye said eventually. ‘I know it’s not a pathologist’s job to do my research for me.’
Angela smiled. ‘It made for an interesting change from my own paperwork.’
‘Coleman is somehow right in the middle of it all, but he is totally innocent.’
‘You believe that?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Delahaye. ‘It’s the other stuff I find difficult to believe, frankly.’
‘But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Clinical lycanthropy . . . Using sweets to lure these boys. It’s so old-fashioned, almost cliché.’
‘I don’t think the sweets are the lure,’ said Delahaye. ‘I think he himself is the main attraction.’
Angela studied his face. She drank the dregs of her juice and stood. Delahaye shook her strong, capable hand with its short, practical nails and subtle callouses. Sensing he’d held on for too long, he released his grip, reached into his jacket pocket and passed her a small white card.
‘That has my number on it in case you . . . need it.’
Angela smiled.
‘Thank you.’ She slid the card into her blazer pocket. ‘Until I need to use it.’
When Delahaye returned to the station, his calm mood was blighted by WDC Gibson’s horrified face as she handed him the telephone: ‘Sarge, a body’s been found.’