Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection - Books 1-3

Chapter 7-1

“Before I tell you what I"ve ascertained so far, I need to ask you something,”

“Go ahead, ask me anything,” Ross replied, wondering just what was in the mind of Hannah Lewin.

“When you searched the area around the site where the remains were found, I presume you found various items?”

“We did, but we have to consider the fact this was a wharf, a dock for loading and unloading of ships, and all sorts of rubbish will have been thrown into the water over the years, and a fair amount since it closed down.”

“I know that, Inspector,”

“Andy, please,” he interrupted.

“Yes, sorry, Andy. Anyway you found this hammer, right?”

Hannah held up the hammer that had found in close proximity to the skeleton.

“Well, actually, it was Doctor Nugent who found it, as he carried out his initial examination of the remains at the scene. It was quite close by and had obviously also been disturbed by the digger when they were clearing the dock.”

“No other tools? Any specific metallic fragments, drinks cans excluded?”

“No, just the hammer. Doctor Nugent thought it may have been the murder weapon.”

William Nugent gave a sort of nervous cough, untypical of the man, as he waited for Hannah to continue. Before she did, she beckoned with her hand to draw the two detectives closer to the remains on the table.

“Well, for once, my friend William is in error.”

Nugent coughed again, and began to speak.

“Yes, but…”

“Oh, do shut up, please, William. Nobody says you were negligent. You weren"t in a position to make a full examination in situ so you couldn"t have been expected to see the rest.”

Nugent appeared mollified by Hannah"s words and stood back a little to allow her to go on.

“Look here,” she said, as the detectives moved closer to the table. She held the hammer closer to the skull until it was lined up with the hole that was previously thought to be the cause of death.

“What are we looking at?” asked Izzie Drake.

“Here,” said Lewin. “The small perforation in the skull was almost certainly made by the hammer but from the small indentation present, I can almost certainly say this blow, though it would have certainly incapacitated the victim and possibly caused a loss of consciousness, really did not pierce the skull sufficiently far to cause any damage within the brain cavity. And, once the skeleton had been fully cleared of the thick sludge and mud that covered the midsection, we saw these.”

Hannah pointed towards the skeletal legs, and Ross and Drake"s eyes followed her finger until it came to a stop, and both detectives immediately knew exactly what she was indicating to them.

“Bloody hell,” said Ross.

“Oh s**t,” added Drake.

“Exactly,” said Hannah Lewin.

“Not quite what you expected us to find, eh, Inspector?” came the voice of William Nugent, over Ross"s shoulder.

“That"s why you wanted to know if we found any metallic fragments?”

“Yes, it would have helped of course, but it doesn"t change the fact that your victim was shot in both kneecaps before he ended up in the river. I hoped you might have found the remains of the bullets or shell casings from the shooting. They would have helped me to identify the type of ammunition used and therefore give you a possible identification of the type of murder weapon. As it is, I can still hazard a guess, but you need facts, not guesses really.”

Both Ross and Drake continued to appear a little shell-shocked at this new revelation. Ross"s thought immediately went back in time to his teens, when the TV news and the newspapers were full of stories about "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, and the IRA"s use of kneecapping as a means of spreading fear among the community, and often used as a deterrent when applied to those they believed had betrayed their cause, perhaps by talking to the police or the troops deployed in that benighted province during that sad time. He decided not to mention those thoughts right now; that being something he would save for discussion between himself and Drake back at the station. The inspector let up a silent prayer that if and when they identified the victim, he wouldn"t find himself embroiled in a case involving the terrible and bloody events that had taken place back in sixties Belfast. With the Northern Irish capital lying just across the Irish Sea from Liverpool he knew the chances were high that any number of IRA members and members of their opposition in the loyalist community factions had at any given time used the port of Liverpool as an entry and exit point for their forays to mainland Britain, and the ramifications of having to investigate an IRA killing on his home turf were enough to make Ross shiver involuntarily. For now, though, he eventually asked,

“So, you don"t think the blow to the head was fatal, and we now know the victim was kneecapped as well, before being killed, as there"d be little point doing such a thing post-mortem, so I have to ask you, what do you think killed the poor bugger?”

Hannah Lewin stood looking down at the pitiful-looking assembly of bones that lay before them on the cold steel of the autopsy table for a full twenty seconds before finally replying to Ross"s question.

“Well, I"d agree with your assumption regarding the bullet wounds to the knees, absolutely no point in taking such measures against a corpse. They certainly would have been excruciatingly painful, but, like the blow to the head, not fatal in themselves, and therefore the only assumption I can make, and it is only an assumption, based on the lack of confirming evidence, is that your victim was probably shot first, and then, while on the ground he was struck on the head and then thrown alive into the water.”

Izzie Drake, her face a mask of a mixture of anger and horror now asked,

“Are you saying they, whoever they were, just tossed him in the river like a piece of rubbish and left him to drown?”

“That"s my best guess, Sergeant,” Hannah Lewin replied. “There doesn"t appear to be any other answer to the question of how your victim found his way into the water, does there?”

“That"s just horrible,” said Drake, who then went on, “What makes you sure the body was thrown into the water, and not into the dried up dock after it had been closed off from the river?”

“That"s where we come to the rest of the results of my examination,” said Hannah Lewin.

“Please go on, Hannah,” Ross encouraged her.

“Well, from the state of the bones I can tell you there is enough evidence to suggest they were immersed in water for a long period of time. Also, there was sufficient detritus found in the immediate vicinity of the remains after cleaning to be able to date some of it, the drink cans for example, and under the remains we found these coins, none of which bears a date later than 1963, not conclusive I know, but they were probably in the victim"s pockets and fell through the bones as the clothes gradually deteriorated in the water, hence them being found in the mud immediately below the remains. There were four old cans in the mud we cleared away, two Coca- Cola cans, one Sprite and one Tizer, and each still bore the date stamps on the base that helped me identify when those cans went on sale.”

“You can determine such things after all this time?” asked the sergeant, becoming engrossed with Lewin"s findings.

“Oh yes, that"s not difficult at all. I"ve done work around the world on burial sites and communal graves and you"d be amazed at the huge databases that are being built up to assist in the identification of all sorts of artifacts found on and around corpses and skeletal remains.”

“Amazing,” said Drake, as Ross then also intervened with a question of his own.

“Okay,” he said, “but, can you give me anything else at this point that will help us to identify just who the victim was?”

“I think I can,” Lewin smiled at the inspector. “I can tell you that the victim was male, which Doctor Nugent of course had already ascertained, I know, and, from the shape of the skull I can tell you the victim was almost ninety nine percent of Caucasoid extraction.”

“A white male then?” Ross asked, then added, “but, you said only ninety-nine percent, Hannah. Explain the one percent, please.”

“This is Liverpool, after all, Inspector,” she replied. “You must remember that over the years there has been a great deal of inter-marriage between people of various races, typical in most large ports around the world. Your victim may have been of mixed race origin, one British parent, the other of any other race exhibiting similar Caucasoid characteristics, but if I had to testify on the spot, I"d say yes, this poor soul was a white male of between fifteen and thirty years of age.”

“Okay, I accept that,” Ross said, thinking for a moment of his own, mixed-race background, and then, “The bullet-holes, Hannah? Small calibre I presume?”

“Definitely,” she replied. “A shotgun would have done far more damage, particularly from close-range.”

“Close-range?” asked Izzie.

“Of course. You"re not going to shoot someone in the knees from long distance, Sergeant. Whoever did this had to be standing in close proximity to the victim and obviously had to be within close firing range so as to be on target with both shots, so to speak.”

“You"re right of course. I should have known that,” Izzie said, feeling slightly foolish in front of the forensic specialist.

“Don"t worry about it,” Ross interjected, refusing to criticize his assistant. He knew all this new information was a lot to take in and he"d seen Izzie"s face when she"d realised just how the victim had probably been eliminated. It wasn"t a particularly good way to go, if there ever was such a thing. “I do have a question, though.”

“Of course, please ask anything you want,” Lewin replied.

“Leaving the shooting aside for a moment, why didn"t the body rise to the surface? I thought dead bodies always floated after a period of time.”

You"re correct, of course, and under normal circumstances, a body sinks as the lungs fill with water, and stays there until bacteria in the gut and chest cavity produce enough lighter than air gasses, methane, hydrogen sulphide and good old carbon dioxide, at which point the cadaver will float to the surface like a balloon. In the case of this poor young man, something obviously prevented that, which probably means he was weighted down before being allowed to sink into the water. There would probably have been enough heavy items on a dockside for your killer, or killers to utilize as a weight. Or they may have used a number of smaller items and placed them in his pockets, or he may simply have got trapped in some underwater detritus, which held the body down and kept it from floating to the surface. I can take a look at the scene if you like. There may be something that gives me a clue as to what kept the body under water, instead of returning to the surface.”