Authors: Lindsay Ashford
Birmingham was still sleeping when they reached the churchyard. The tombstones looked eerie in the grey light of dawn and the dew-covered grass clung to the women’s legs as they made their way to Moses Smith’s grave. A trio of crows eyed them malevolently from a broken fence post.
‘What do you think?’ Megan asked as Delva peered at the disturbed patch of earth.
‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ Delva knelt beside the grave. She looked very different from last night, clad in khaki cargo pants with a rip in the left thigh that exposed her ebony flesh. The hood of her top was up, covering her hair, and it flopped forward as she bent closer to the earth. ‘Did you bring your trowel?’
Megan nodded. Without a word she started scraping away the soil nearest to the tombstone. Delva did the same at the other end of the rectangle. There had been no rain for the past few days, so although the topsoil was damp with dew, the earth beneath it was dry and easy to move. The air had an early morning chill about it but a bead of sweat trickled down the back of Megan’s neck. Her heart was pounding in her chest. It felt very wrong, disturbing a grave. She wondered if the person whose handiwork they were examining had felt the same.
For a while they worked away in silence. Both were using a light scraping technique – the way an archaeologist might work – for fear of damaging anything that might lie beneath the surface. Suddenly Delva let out a little cry.
‘What is it?’
‘Something hard…a corner of something.’ Delva was panting for breath. ‘A box, I think.’
As they both scraped away at the surface, lettering appeared. An E and a K. Then and I and an N.
‘
Nike
!’ Delva sank back onto her calves, her arms flopping to her sides.
Megan stared at the familiar logo. It was a shoebox. A cardboard shoebox. What could be inside it? Someone’s dead cat? Some sort of time capsule buried by kids for a laugh?
Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw when she lifted the lid. At first she thought she was looking at the face of a doll; a very old, very damaged doll. It was wrapped in blue fabric that turned out to be a pillow case. It was only when Megan pulled the fabric aside that her fingers told her this was no doll. There were tiny hairs protruding from its brown, leathery arms.
‘It’s a baby.’ She looked at Delva, who was kneeling, open-mouthed at the head end of the box.
‘But it’s…’ Delva shook her head. ‘It’s all…’
‘I know.’ Megan bit her lip, filled with a sudden, overwhelming sadness. ‘I think it’s been dead for a very long time. So long that the body’s mummified.’
‘Mummified?’ Delva stared at her in disbelief. ‘I thought that kind of thing only happened in hot countries?’
‘It does,’ Megan nodded. ‘But it can happen in cool climates if a body is stored somewhere warm and dry for a long time’ She let her eyes travel back up the tiny body from the feet to the face. She was thankful that its eyes were closed and the eyelids still intact. She had seen many dead people but his was the first time she had seen a dead child. She swallowed hard. ‘What’s clear,’ she said, ‘is that this body has been brought here quite recently.’ She listened to herself
speaking, as if she was outside her own body. She knew she sounded as if she was giving a lecture but she couldn’t help it. It was the only way to stem the rising tide of emotion that the sight of the baby had released. ‘This couldn’t have happened here,’ she went on. ‘The body wouldn’t have been preserved in this way in these conditions.’ She glanced about her. The crows were still eyeing her from their perch on the fence post. One of them hopped down and edged towards the grave. With a flap of her hand she shooed it away.
‘So someone has brought the baby here and buried it.’ Delva nodded her head slowly. ‘It can’t have been long ago. I mean, look at the box – it’s hardly rotted at all and the print’s still quite clear.’ She glanced at the baby’s face and looked away. ‘Why would someone do that?’
‘I don’t know.’ A wave of nausea swept up from her stomach. She coughed and swallowed in a bid to suppress it. Then, a little unsteadily, she got to her feet, wrapping her arms round her middle as she straightened up. ‘I don’t know what I expected to find here.’ She said the words softly, almost to herself. ‘But it certainly wasn’t this.’
‘What do you think we should do?’
Megan shook her head, her eyes on the gravestone. ‘We’re going to have to report it to the police.’
‘But what if it’s something completely innocent? Unrelated to what happened at the prison, I mean.’
‘Delva, it can’t be innocent, can it? Someone has concealed a dead baby for – I don’t know – years and years, maybe decades, and now they’ve buried it in someone else’s grave with no marker of any kind…’
‘Yes, I see what you mean.’ Delva rubbed her chin, crumbs of soil sticking to her skin. ‘We’ll have to put one hell of a positive spin on it, though, won’t we?’
* * *
An hour later a procession of police boots had beaten a path through the grass and weeds to the grave. DS Willis was obviously less than impressed by Megan’s maverick approach. Predictably, he was more concerned about what she’d done to the burial ground than what had been found in it.
‘You do know that it’s an offence to interfere with a grave, don’t you?’ He stared at her, his eyebrows arched.
Megan opened her mouth to reply but Delva got in first. ‘Oh come on, Detective Sergeant,’ she said, ‘Do you honestly expect us to believe that anything would have been done if Doctor Rhys hadn’t taken the initiative?’ Before Willis had a chance to respond, she let fly with a second round: ‘It’d make a great story on tonight’s evening news, wouldn’t it? Body of a baby found by BTV after police refused to investigate…’ She paused, her eyes blazing.
‘We didn’t refuse to investigate, Ms Lobelo, we simply hadn’t got the manpower…’
‘Whatever,’ Delva spread her hands, palms up. ‘But I don’t think it would do you any favours at this point to start criticising what Dr Rhys has done.’
Willis’ eyes narrowed. ‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Of course not, Detective Sergeant,’ she replied, a tight smile stretching her generous lips, ‘I’m just deciding how to word the story.’
With a grunt Willis turned away, wandering across the grass to greet the photographer who had come to record the body
in situ
.
‘Well done,’ Megan breathed, squeezing her friend’s arm. ‘You handled that far better than I would have done.’
‘Yeah – power of the media can be a wonderful thing sometimes, can’t it?’ Delva winked at she glanced at her watch. ‘I’m going to have to go and get ready for work. You coming? We could grab a quick coffee – I’m gasping
for one.’
‘So am I,’ Megan nodded, ‘but I want to wait for the pathologist. Do you mind? I’ll call you as soon as I get back to the office.’
Alistair Hodge arrived a few minutes after Delva had gone. His hair was sticking up in grey tufts and he was unshaven. Apparently he had rolled out of bed and driven straight over. He knelt beside the shoebox, his face devoid of expression. Slowly and deliberately he pulled the fabric away from the tiny corpse so that the whole body was exposed. It was a while before he spoke. ‘A boy,’ he said without looking up. ‘Looks to be newborn. Umbilical stump still in evidence but the flesh is dessicated. I’ve seen it once before – a few years ago now. Case of a baby that was hidden under floorboards by the mother.’ He shook his head. ‘She was only thirteen. Terrified of disgracing her parents.’ He glanced up at Megan. ‘It’s the most common form of mummification in temperate climates, you know?’
‘Common?’ Megan gave him a puzzled frown.
‘Put it this way,’ the pathologist replied, ‘You’re much more likely to find a mummified baby in this country than a mummified adult. It’s all dependent on the rate of cooling. The body of a newborn infant will cool and dry much more quickly than that of a man or a woman ‘ He leaned closer to the shoebox. Taking a magnifying glass from his pocket he held it close to the baby’s sunken ribcage. ‘Hmm…thought so,’ he muttered.
‘What?’
‘Looks like moth holes. Do you see?’ He passed the magnifying glass to Megan. She hesitated a moment, struggling with the fact that this was a baby. She had learned to suppress her feelings when dealing with the corpses of adults. She must do the same now, otherwise she would be of no use at all. Angling the magnifying glass towards her,
she moved it back and forth until she had a clear view of the pitted skin.
‘I didn’t know moths were attracted to corpses.’ She managed to keep her voice steady as she passed the magnifying glass back to him.
‘They’re not, usually. But dessicated flesh is like fabric. The Brown House Moth is the usual candidate – we’ll check it out in the lab’
‘How long ago do you think he died?’ It felt strange, calling the little thing in the box ‘he’. It made the baby real. Where was the woman who had given birth to him, she wondered? Was she still alive?
‘Could be five years, could be fifty,’ the pathologist shrugged. ‘Very hard to estimate when the body’s been removed from the conditions in which mummification occurred.’
‘I suppose there’s very little hope of identifying someone so young?’
Hodge shook his head. ‘Almost no chance, I’m afraid. No dental records, obviously. Unless someone sees it on TV and comes forward…’ He tailed off, pulling the blue shroud back over the shrunken body.
‘Why would someone do this?’ Megan was thinking aloud now. She didn’t expect Alistair Hodge to venture an opinion on the motive. But to her surprise, he did.
‘Could be a house move,’ he said. ‘Someone conceals a baby, lives in the house for many years, then moves on. They’re afraid the body will be discovered by the new owners, so they move it before they go.’
‘But why bury it here?’
‘Nearest graveyard, I’d guess. Mother has some sort of religious belief and wants her child laid to rest in consecrated ground.’ He glanced around at the overgrown tombstones. ‘This place is ideal, isn’t it? Church no longer in use. No
one keeping an eye on the graves.’
She nodded. ‘But why this grave?’ She told him about the connection with Carl Kelly.
‘Hmm,’ he rubbed his bristly chin. ‘That’s one hell of a coincidence.’
‘But what does it mean?’ She blinked as the sun came out from behind a cloud. ‘Let’s just assume for a moment that Carl Kelly was murdered. And let’s also assume it was some sort of revenge for the death of this man.’ She nodded at Moses Smith’s tombstone. ‘How does a long-dead baby connect with that?’
‘And was the baby put here before or after Carl Kelly died?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, that’s something we might be able to find out in the lab,’ Hodge said. ‘We can run tests on the box, check local weather conditions over the past few weeks.’ He reached for the cardboard lid, studying the logo. ‘Don’t think it’ll tell us a lot more, though. See this bare strip?’ He pointed to a place on the lid where the print was missing. ‘Someone’s ripped off a sticker – probably a serial number. That would have told us where and when the shoes were sold and might even have given us the name of the person who bought them.’
‘I doubt that’s going to matter much.’ Detective Sergeant Willis’ voice startled Megan. He had walked noiselessly across the grass and was peering over her left shoulder.
‘Why do you say that?’ She stepped sideways, uncomfortable about having him so close.
‘A TV appeal should do the trick. I’ve spoken to Ms Lobelo’s boss at BTV.’ The tone of his voice made it clear that the intention was to pre-empt any plans Megan and Delva might have made about the handling of the story. ‘We’ll get something on air by lunchtime. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone comes out of the woodwork by this
time tomorrow.’
‘What – you think the person who did this is going to turn themselves in – just like that?’ Megan and the pathologist exchanged glances.
‘I didn’t say that, did I?’ DS Willis frowned at her. ‘It’s usually a neighbour or a friend from way back when. It’s rare for the perpetrators of this type of crime not to confide in someone somewhere along the line.’
‘Oh? You’ve come across cases like this before, have you?’ Megan tried not to let her dislike of the man creep into her voice.
‘Well, not personally, no,’ he replied, ‘but it stands to reason, doesn’t it?’
Megan blinked. There was no point arguing the toss: clearly he’d decided there was only one way to take this forward and he was sticking to it. She hoped Delva would be able to persuade her editor to keep her name out of any news reports. Otherwise she could kiss goodbye to any further assistance from Dom Wilde. Gathering up her jacket and bag from the grass she said goodbye to the pathologist and gave a curt nod to DS Willis. She took a last look at the shoebox before turning away from the grave. The thought of the tiny, stiff body inside made her stomach lurch.
Moses Smith. The name on the gravestone echoed through her mind as she drove away from the churchyard. He was the only link; the only clue to this mystery. She would start by finding his death certificate. It shouldn’t be difficult; a quick trawl of the internet should do it. Someone must have buried him. Someone had paid for that that tombstone. And her instincts told her that whoever it was would also know something about the baby.
Delva Lobelo allowed herself to smile as the red light went off. She had managed to get the whole thing on air without dropping Megan in it. The editor had given her a hard time about that but she had fought her corner and won. She had told him she had a duty to protect her sources and had hinted that if she did, there would be more to come. And he was as keen as she was to dish the dirt on Balsall Gate nick, so he knew it was in everyone’s interests to keep schtum.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’
It was Natalie, one of the researchers. Nice kid. Not like some of the arrogant little shits BTV attracted. Natalie was bright but she had respect. You didn’t get the feeling she was counting your wrinkles and marking off the days till she could step into your shoes.
‘Thanks.’ Delva switched off her laptop and gathered up the hard copy version of the news she had just read out.
‘I’m going to Balsall Gate Prison this afternoon.’ Natalie spoke quietly, as if she was reluctant to push herself forward.
‘Are you?’ Delva raised one eyebrow. ‘Who are you visiting?’
‘A lifer called Dominic Wilde. I’ve told him I’m a sociology student. He seems quite…well, you know…quite well educated. For a…’ she tailed off with a shrug, as if she was afraid that she was not being politically correct.
‘Is this your first visit?’
Natalie shook her head. ‘I’ve been writing to another one
as well. I went to visit him but it was no good. He was only interested in… you know.’ She flushed and looked at her feet.
‘Yes, I can imagine,’ Delva said. Natalie was a pretty little thing. She wondered why the producer had chosen her to write to the prisoners in Balsall Gate. It would take a tough cookie to put up with the sort of crap she was likely to get from the inmates. ‘How do you find it, going there?’ she asked. ‘Must be a bit of an ordeal.’
‘Oh no,’ the girl smiled brightly. ‘I love it. It’s absolutely fascinating. And I don’t really feel like me because I wear a wig.’
‘Really?’ Delva laughed. ‘How do you get the names of the guys you write to?’
‘From court, initially,’ Natalie said. ‘That’s how I got the first one – I sat in on his trial and when he was sent down I asked the court usher which prison he’d be going to.’ She flicked a strand of dark hair away from her face. ‘I didn’t have to go to court for this one though.’
‘Oh? How come?’
‘We’ve got this new guy on the team – Tim – have you met him?’
Delva shook her head.
‘He’s an ex-copper. Knows how to access Home Office records.’ She smiled and her cheeks went pink again. She muttered something else about him but she said it to her feet so Delva couldn’t quite make it out.
‘Well,’ Delva said, ‘you could find yourself slap in the middle of a very big story – so keep your antennae up, eh?’
‘Actually, I was going to ask you,’ Natalie looked up, her face earnest. ‘How do you think I should play it? Should I ask outright about Carl Kelly? Say I saw it on the news?’
‘Hmm,’ Delva rubbed her chin as she considered this. ‘Yes, if you’re fairly subtle about it. You could say something
like: “Wasn’t it awful about that baby in the churchyard? Is it true what they were suggesting on the news? That the grave belonged to a victim of a prisoner who died in here the other day?” Then you can sit back and see what he says. I mean, he might clam up, but I don’t think it would make him suspicious in any way.’
Natalie nodded. ‘Great – thanks.’ She scuttled off to fetch the coffee. When she came back she put it down without a word.
‘Thanks, Natalie,’ Delva smiled. ‘And good luck for later.’ She watched her disappear through the studio door. It was a shame someone more senior wasn’t going in her place. It was unlikely this timid girl was going to get the kind of scoop they needed to take the story further. Delva wished she could go herself. She laughed as she visualised the lengths she’d have to go to to disguise her identity. No, she thought, she was going to have to rely on Megan for the information she needed.
Megan had locked herself in her office with strict instructions to the admin staff to keep Nathan MacNamara away. If anyone else wanted to see her they would have to phone first. The subsequent lack of interruptions allowed her to find out quite a lot about Moses Smith. She had called up his death certificate, which stated that the cause of his demise was blood loss due to stab wounds. She had also found a short newspaper article from the
Birmingham Evening Mail
dated 16th March 1991, which stated that Moses Smith, a father of one, had been stabbed to death. His partner – rather confusingly, as they were not married – was named Sonia Smith. She was quoted as saying that the murder had been carried out by a gang of three masked men who had broken into the flat while the family were asleep. Her age at the
time of the murder was nineteen. The name and age of the child were not given. The article ended with an appeal for information. Apparently Moses and Sonia Smith had not known the identity of any of the men.
There was no address given for the Smiths, other than the fact that they lived in the Balsall Gate area of the city. Megan tried the electoral roll for 1990, but drew a blank. If Moses Smith was into drugs he was probably the type to move from one place to another without ever getting onto the voters’ register. She wondered where Sonia Smith was. She would be thirty-six or thirty-seven by now. And the child would be at least seventeen. She did a search of birth certificates with father’s name Moses Smith, but found nothing. Could that child be the baby she had found in Moses Smith’s grave? A child whose birth was never registered? Alistair Hodge had said he thought it was a newborn. Perhaps it had been only days old when the murder took place and had died soon after its father. But how? And why would the mother have hidden its body?
She needed to find Sonia Smith. Her only chance with a name as common as that was the burial records. Someone must own that plot in St Mary’s churchyard and the chances were it was Moses Smith’s partner.
A couple of phone calls revealed that the records had been transferred to the City Library. She would have to go in person to look the records up, but it was only half a mile from her office. She was about to go out of the door when Delva phoned.
‘You will let me know if you find anything, won’t you?’ Delva said when she heard where Megan was off to.
‘Of course I will – but don’t hold your breath,’ Megan replied. ‘With a name like Smith the only real chance of finding her is if she’s stayed at the same address since the burial.’
‘Hmm, I s’pose that’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it? It’s what? Seventeen years ago?’
‘That’s right. And I don’t think I’d want to carry on living in the place where my partner had been murdered, would you?’
‘God, no,’ Delva said. ‘Have you got any other ideas?’
‘Not really. I’m going to the post-mortem on the baby later this afternoon, though. I’ll be interested to know how old he really is – both his age when he died and the length of time he’s been dead.’ Megan paused for a moment then said: ‘You didn’t mention my name on the news, did you?’
‘No – I promised I wouldn’t, didn’t I?’ There was a trace of irritation in Delva’s voice, as if she was cross with Megan for not trusting her.
‘And you didn’t say anything about the strychnine?’
‘No.’ There was a definite sigh this time. ‘All I said was that the baby was found in the grave of a man who was murdered more than a decade ago and that one of his alleged killers died yesterday, in Balsall Gate prison, of a suspected drugs overdose.’
‘What about Willis’ appeal? He didn’t say anything about me, did he?’
‘No. It was a straightforward thirty-second soundbite of him asking for anyone who might know something about the baby to come forward.’
‘Okay – thanks,’ Megan said. ‘I’ll call you if I get anything. Promise.’
It took her less time than she’d thought it would to get her hands on the burial records. Not that she had her hands on them, strictly speaking. She had to wear white gloves to examine the big leather-bound book that had been removed from St Mary’s when the building was deconsecrated. Even
though the last entries were only fifteen years old the book smelt musty. The dates on the first few pages were from the nineteen-fifties, which gave an indicaton of how few burials had taken place there over the last decades of the twentieth century. Balsall Gate had once been a thriving community but slum clearance programmes and tower blocks had put paid to that. For as long as Megan could remember, Balsall Gate had been the kind of district you would only live in if you were desperate.
She found what she was looking for, her gloved finger moving down a page headed ‘March 1991’. There he was: Moses Smith. Interred on March 28
th
. Plot owned by Sonia Smith of Flat 29, Coniston House, Hartley Street, Balsall Gate.
With a sigh, Megan shut the book. She remembered Coniston House. It was one of three tower blocks that had been blown up five years ago after the council finally admitted that the flats were uninhabitable. They were riddled with damp and structurally unsafe. She had watched, fascinated, from her office window as they crumbled to dust.
As she walked out of the library she felt a sudden urge to go and talk it all over with Dominic Wilde. There wasn’t any need, she told herself. Why should he be able to cast any more light on what had happened? As far as she was aware, he had told her everything he knew. She blinked as the realisation came. That she wanted to see him, full stop.
She told herself that she mustn’t. That it would be madness to stoke this spark of…what? Lust? It didn’t feel like lust. More like a yearning for a kindred spirit.
Jonathan’s coming to see you this weekend
, she reprimanded herself.
But he might not come
, a voice in her head hissed back.
Dom Wilde’s face hovered before her eyes as she crossed the street. And instead of turning right to go back to her office, she took a left. She knew she was abusing the power
the Ministry of Justice had granted her: the right to visit the prison for her research without any prior warning. But she put this to the back of her mind, overpowered by the need to see him, to hear his voice. Ten minutes later she was walking through the churchyard, past the grave of Moses Smith with its border of police tape fluttering in the breeze. And five minutes after that she heard the huge wooden door of Balsall Gate jail bang shut behind her.