That One May Smile Read online

  ‘A three inch entry wound, Mike. Looks like a smooth blade and...’ he examined the wound intently, ‘...a sharp one. No hesitation either.’ He stood back from the body and frowned. ‘I’ll be able to give you more details after the autopsy, obviously, but from the amount of blood I’d say our perp hit the aorta sooo...’ he weighed up the bulk of the body, years of experience allowing a quick, and the detectives knew from previous cases, an uncannily accurate, estimate, ‘I’d say you are looking for a knife four to six inches long and three inches wide at its widest point. Probably a smooth blade but, again, I’ll have more details after autopsy.’ Anticipating the next question, he continued in a rush, ‘This afternoon, ok?’

  West nodded and the pathologist, with a careless wave of bloodstained latex to the rest of the team, turned and headed back to his car.

  The scene-of-crime team, eager to move the body now that the pathologist was finished, were waved back by Andrews. ‘We’ll need a few minutes, ok?’

  Both men circled the body again. ‘Well-dressed bloke,’ commented Andrews eyeing the well-cut, charcoal grey suit. West agreed and donning a pair of latex gloves he opened the jacket ignoring the sucking noise as the congealed blood tried to hold on. Both men’s eyebrows raised in surprise as they saw the label. Armani. Their victim had money anyway.

  West carefully searched the jacket pockets and then, with difficulty, the trouser pockets. He was about to give up when his finger found a screwed-up scrap of paper deep in the trouser pocket. Carefully, he undid the folds, smoothing out the creases to read what was written.

  ‘Come to good,’ he read aloud, raising an eyebrow at Andrews. ‘Mean anything to you?’

  Andrews took the scrap of paper in his gloved hand and read it for himself shaking his head. ‘Could mean anything.’

  ‘Or nothing,’ West muttered, taking the scrap of paper back and putting it into an evidence bag. He handed it to a crime scene officer for processing, with a request for a copy as soon as possible.

  Their examination over, they stepped back to allow the body be taken away, stripping off their gloves as they moved.

  ‘We’ll need the whole area searched, Peter.’ West said turning to Andrews, ‘Get some help from the station, there’s a lot of hiding places here. Then organise someone to do a house-to-house on all the houses around the graveyard, someone might have seen or heard something. Dr Kennedy’s estimate is ten hours ago, give or take an hour, which gives us between ten and one.’

  He looked around the graveyard, ‘What the hell was he doing here at that time of night? Hardly the place for a romantic assignation!’ He pointed up at the church parapet where light fittings could be seen. ‘Check what time the lights are switched off at, Peter. If it’s before ten, they may have had torches. Someone may have seen lights moving around.’

  He nodded over to the house just visible through the trees. ‘I’ll go and have a word with the woman who phoned in. See if she has anything to add. I’ll take Morgan with me.’

  Morgan joined them at a shout from Andrews and quickly filled them in on the woman he had interviewed earlier.

  ‘Johnson, Kelly Johnson,’ West repeated, puzzlement creasing his brow. He knew that name from somewhere. He turned to Andrews, who he knew, remembered every detail, every name, making him a god-send as a partner.

  ‘That name rings a bell but I can’t remember why?’

  He could almost see the wheels of the other man’s mind spin.

  ‘Married to Simon Johnson, the man who went missing three months ago,’ Andrews replied, almost without hesitation. ‘Sergeant Clark was handling the case. If I remember correctly the bloke got on a train in Belfast with his missus, went to get a coffee and never came back. As far as I know there have been no sightings of him since but no suspicion of foul play either.’

  West frowned. ‘Her husband vanished three months ago and now she just happens to find a dead body, she’s not having much luck, is she? What’s your impression of her, Andy?’

  ‘Looks like an addict. Too thin. Greasy uncombed hair, dark shadows under dull, lifeless eyes. Dirty clothes, smells like she hasn’t washed in a while,’ Garda Morgan quickly offered, then thought a moment. ‘I suppose it could be grief and stress either, if what you say is true. Can’t be easy, her husband disappearing like that.’

  West nodded, ‘Ok, let’s go talk to the lady. Pete, I’ll leave you here to organise the search and meet you back at the station.’

  He took a final look back at the crime scene where the team were busily wrapping up the body for transport to the morgue. Something told him this wasn’t going to be a simple case. He stripped off his paper suit and dumped it and his gloves in a bag in the boot of the car for disposal, and with a nod at Morgan he headed to the house.

  The woman who opened the door was certainly unkempt, greasy hair hiding her face as she dabbed ineffectually at fresh stains on an already grubby sweatshirt. West knew enough about women’s fashion to know she was wearing pyjama bottoms and not a new trend in trousers - the presence of ducks and rabbits were a definite give-away, he thought. She was muttering under her breath as she opened the door and West’s first thought was that Garda Morgan had missed telling them that she was mentally unstable.

  He addressed her gently by name and she lifted her face. There were tears in her eyes but just as West was about to apologise for interrupting her, she snapped, ‘Did you have to ring the bell so hard. Once would have been enough. Look what you have made me do!’ She continued rubbing her sweatshirt, with what West thought was a more than disreputable towel, and made no effort to invite them in.

  Sergeant West quickly regained his stride and said, less gently now, ‘My name is Sergeant West,’ he said, showing his identification, ‘May we come in, Mrs Johnson.’

  She neither looked at the identification nor acknowledged his introduction but turned abruptly and headed back into the house. The two men, after a glance at each other and a shrug from Morgan, followed her into the kitchen.

  It was a nice room, West thought, looking around. Dirty and untidy now but he could see it would be a cosy place to sit. A large oak table of venerable years sat in the centre of the room surrounded by four unmatched chairs with padded seats of various colours. Pleasingly eclectic, West thought, admiring the patina of the old oak table while at the same time wincing at the mess and clutter.

  Opposite the doorway the large curtainless, sash window allowed light stream into the room catching the dust motes in the air and on every surface in the room. A number of cups, mugs and other containers sat on every surface holding liquid in various stages of decay. Some were covered in soft fuzz. Others, West noticed with fascination, held a more established form of fungus in various shades of grey and green; mostly coffee, very, very old coffee West guessed, eyeing one spectacular fungal exuberance in awe.

  Kelly Johnson had gone to the sink under the window and was running water. She picked up the kettle and filling it asked, in a calmer voice, ‘Would you like some coffee?’ and, without waiting for a reply, switched the kettle on and opened a cupboard for cups. Finding it empty she looked around, apologising. ‘I’m sorry; the place is a bit of a mess. I’ve not been too well recently, I’m afraid, and things have got a bit on top of me.

  ‘To say the least,’ she continued smiling a little, taking some cups and mugs off the table, emptying the contents into the sink with an audible glug. A sour, rancid smell briefly wafted toward the two men and their noses crinkled automatically in response. Kelly seemed oblivious but both men were glad to see she washed the mugs thoroughly before shaking them dry and spooning in instant coffee. ‘Please,’ she turned her head and looked at the men properly for the first time. ‘Sit down. I’ll just be a sec.’

  She grabbed a sugar bowl from the counter and put it on the table. Filling the mugs with boiling water she added a teaspoon to each and carried them over. Neither man had sat, she noticed, and then realised all the chairs, apart from the one she had been using, were piled
high with papers and clothes, some clean and some, she thought in faint embarrassment, not. She quickly scooped the clothes up and, opening a door, shoved them out of sight. The papers she shoved onto the floor without ceremony.

  ‘There you go,’ she said blushing slightly and sat down. She pushed the coffees toward them and nodded to the milk, ‘It’s fresh. I got it this morning. I brought the bag back with me when I went out with you,’ she nodded at Morgan who nodded back in some embarrassment. He had been so thrown by the discovery of the body he hadn’t noticed. He looked sideways at Sergeant West gauging his response to this breach of procedure.

  Kelly, aware at the same time that perhaps it wasn’t the thing to have done addressed the sergeant herself, ‘That was ok, wasn’t it? Perhaps I should have left it there! I’m afraid I didn’t think...’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Johnson. It’s not a problem.’ West assured her. He watched her for a moment while he added milk from the tetrapak and slowly stirred his coffee. She was a mess, he thought, but why? Grief, he knew, could quickly transform people into ghosts of the person they had been. He had seen it all too often, that inability to overcome the sadness and despair of loss, the way it consumed relentlessly.

  He had believed that the not-knowing involved in missing persons must be the most difficult part, but the mother of a missing child he had sat with earlier in his career had argued otherwise. She had said, that however bad the not-knowing was, the certainty of death was far worse. The not-knowing, she had explained as he had waited with her while police had combed the area for her blond, curly-haired, four year old son, meant there was always an element of hope. The discovery of her dead child in a neighbour’s ornamental fish pond had wiped all hope, all belief in a happy ending, plunging her into the cold, hopeless certainty of death.

  But her ordeal had lasted only two days. West examined Kelly’s worn, pale face. Simon Johnson was missing for three months – that’s a lot of stressful days and nights, he thought with a flash of sympathy. Just when did hope turn into a demon, seen on every street corner, in every shop; constantly on your mind, taunting you with faces that looked like, voices that sounded like, so that you persistently turned, a half-smile of relief at the ready, a half-smile that quickly faded into awkwardness when you had accosted another total stranger, and another, and another so that eventually it was easier not to go out at all.

  He sipped his coffee and waited, watching as she added sugar to her own and stirred slowly. She put her mug down with steady hands and sat back looking directly at him and for the first time he could see elements of the beautiful woman she must have been, before grief had done its worst, painting grey shadows, etching lines, removing light and vitality.

  Garda Morgan sat quietly. He had been with the sergeant at a number of interviews since he had been transferred the previous year from Garda Headquarters and had learned to admire his slow, methodical approach. Like everyone else in the Foxrock station, he knew West had originally trained as a solicitor and he supposed this was where he had learned his interview skills. Whatever, it always did the job. People leaked information when he was around, no doubt about it. He successfully stifled a yawn; it was a slow process though and he wasn’t so good at the sitting and waiting himself. He tried to avoid a surreptitious glance at his watch as the minutes ticked by, wishing he had been left in the graveyard where all the action was.

  West put his mug on the table. ‘I know you told Garda Morgan earlier,’ he started quietly, his voice low and gentle, ‘but can you tell me again, from the beginning, what happened this morning.’ He watched her closely as she hesitated, started, stopped, hesitated again and then told her tale. She took her time with the telling, he noted, closing her eyes now and then, as if to confirm that what she was telling them was what had happened.

  She finished on a sigh and then, after an audible intake of breath, she added, ‘There was so much blood. And the noise. I think I’ll hear the noise for a long time.’ She lifted her mug and, this time her hands shook, and the mug clinked against her teeth as she took a long drink of the cooling coffee.

  ‘It is not something you ever get used to, I’m afraid,’ West admitted. ‘People think they know what it’s like from television but the reality, as you have discovered, is much different. Perhaps you should talk to someone,’ he suggested, ‘there are a number of very good counsellors who do work for us when needed.’ He ignored the emphatic shake of her head and reached for his wallet, quickly removing a card and placing it on the table in front of her. ‘In case you do need to talk to someone, give them a call.’

  Kelly ignored the card and stared at him coldly, arms now crossed tightly, defensive.

  West sighed. He could never understand why people refused to avail themselves of professional help when necessary. Why was there such a resistance to seeing a counsellor, he wondered. His mother insisted it was still regarded as a self indulgent nonsense that only Americans resorted to. He never argued with his mother. He didn’t have enough time to win. Nevertheless, he had made use of a counsellor when he had needed to and he knew the benefit.

  He regarded the tight, cold face before him. Oh well, he thought, I tried.

  ‘I just have a couple of questions and then we’ll be on our way,’ he said, getting back on track. He hesitated a moment, thinking about the morning’s chain of events, trying to get them arranged neatly in his head, looking for a sense of order in the chaos. ‘You went through the church gate on your way to the supermarket. Are you certain the gate was locked?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ she said clearly without hesitation, her voice firm again.

  ‘And you locked it again after you had gone through?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘I always do.’

  Sergeant West paused, thinking about the gate and the position of the body. ‘And you didn’t notice anything unusual on your way to the shop?’

  She echoed his pause, and then stumbled over her reply as she wondered, herself, how she had not seen the body on the way through, when it lay not fifteen yards from the path. ‘N…no, I d…didn’t notice anything. I wasn’t really awake, I suppose. I’ve had a lot on my mind and was in a bit of a daze, I guess. I just looked straight ahead.’

  ‘And on your way back you just happened to look over to your right?’ he queried, watching her face intently, seeing myriad expressions flitting across, confusion turning on a spin to indignation.

  ‘No, that’s not what happened,’ she answered, the indignation flashing in her eyes. She stood abruptly, looked down on him in obvious frustration. ‘I didn’t just happen to look over. I dropped the padlock and the chain. It’s an awkward system and I was being particularly clumsy this morning. I don’t normally drop them. Then, when I bent to pick them up I turned that way. I didn’t know what I was seeing, really.’ She turned and walked to the window and stood looking out, her tired eyes glazing with tears that stung; prickled and stung before being rubbed vigorously away with an impatient rub of her hand. She took a deep steadying breath and continued in a quieter voice.

  ‘Sometimes people leave rubbish in the graveyard, plastic bags and things. I thought that’s what it was, at first. I remember being cross that people would dump such a big bag of rubbish. I don’t think I wanted to believe what I was seeing, really.’ She looked at both men, her eyes shimmering with tears that continued to well. ‘I don’t know why I walked over. I don’t even remember doing so; it was all a bit of a daze really. Then when I got a little closer I knew…’ she struggled with the memory a moment more, ‘I knew it wasn’t rubbish. A body...I knew he was dead; there was so much blood and that awful,’ she gulped, ‘that awful, awful smell. I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing, you know, it seemed so bizarre. Not the kind of thing that’s supposed to happen in real life, is it? Then...then I reached out and touched him...he was so cold!’

  ‘Did you recognise him,’ West continued, ignoring her obvious distress at the memory.

  She gasped. ‘Recognise him? N
o, of course, I didn’t,’ she began, and then stopped and frowned. ‘Actually,’ she admitted, ‘I don’t know. I didn’t really see his face that well; I was so stunned by the whole scene. Once I saw he was dead I backed away and, then, when I went back with the constable I didn’t go near at all.’

  But she got close enough to touch him, West thought and the face was turned toward her. Even without seeing a full face most people would recognise someone they knew. He let it go for the moment.

  ‘You have a key to the gate,’ he changed track, ‘how does that work?’

  ‘Oh, there are lots of them, I’m afraid. Everyone on this road has one; it comes with the house, something to do with the right-of-way. Then…’ she counted on her fingers, ‘… the council have one so they can get their machinery in to cut the grass and hedges; the church have one or two; the volunteers who clean the church have one that they share and the bell ringers have one. And, of course,’ she shrugged, ‘there may be others that I don’t know about. We’ve only lived here about eight months.’

  West nodded and glanced at Morgan, ‘I think that’s about it, Mrs Johnson. You have been very helpful.’ He stood and taking a business card from his inside pocket, gave it to her.

  ‘Sometimes people think of things later that they wished they had told us. Please ring me if you think of anything.’

  She looked at it for a moment then, looking at him, said sharply, ‘I have told you everything, Sergeant West.’

  He gave her a small smile. ‘Keep it anyway. Just in case.’ He nodded again. At the front door he paused and turned to her, ‘Just one final question?’ At her nod he continued, ‘Do the words, come to good, mean anything to you?’

  It was a shot in the dark. He had remembered the scrap of paper found on the body just as they were leaving and thought he had nothing to lose by asking. He certainly didn’t expect the woman to go weak at the knees and clutch at the door as if it were a lifebelt in rough sea. He reached out to her, shocked at her unexpected response, but she quickly backed away moving the door so it stood like a barrier between them.