Unnatural Selection (21 page)

“Yes.”

“And is that also something you just happen to know? I mean I’m just curious, but doesn’t seem the sort of fact a person would just happen to-”

“I don’t just happen to know it,” Gideon said, laughing. “Back in the eighties, an anthropologist named Curtis Wienker did a paper on the skeletal anomalies that go along with this kind of agricultural work. My prof in graduate school made it the core of his seminar on applied anthropology, so I remembered it, and Kyle let me use his laptop to look it up again on PubMed, and that’s where I saw the ninety pounds. That’s where I got most of the rest of what I’m telling you, too.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” Clapper said.

“There’s one more thing,” Gideon said. “This rough, bulgy area on the left scapula is an old enthesopathy, an inflammation, at the point where the tendon of the trapezius inserts. That too is usually a result of stress, heavy stress, and when you consider the function of the trapezius and the-”

“Tut-tut-tut-tut-tut, you’re losing me.”

“In a nutshell, Mike, if you went around reaching up with your left arm to pick fruit-thereby rotating your scapula-while your left shoulder was already bearing the weight of that heavy bag, this is exactly what you’d expect that shoulder to look like.”

Gideon put the bone down and leaned both hands on the table. “I rest my case.”

Clapper nodded slowly and sat down in the other chair, thinking it over, patting his breast pocket in search of the cigarette pack that he’d left in his office, but not bothering to get up to get it. “But what of the squatting facets? Where do they come in?”

“Well, I was wrong there too-”

“They’re not squatting facets?”

“No, they are squatting facets, but they probably didn’t come from squatting. Remember, what causes them isn’t necessarily squatting as we generally picture it. Specifically, you get them from repeated dorsiflexion of the foot.” Again, he illustrated as he had the day before, placing his hand palm-down on the table, then bending it sharply upward. “And-think about it for a moment-climbing up and down a ladder, especially with a heavy bag on your back, would involve a whole lot of highly stressful dorsiflexion.”

He, too, sat down. “It all fits, Mike.”

“Yes, it does. It’s also all circumstantial.”

“Well, naturally. I can’t positively ID this guy-not so far, anyway-but what would you say the odds are of finding a dismembered fruit picker buried on a beach on St. Mary’s?”

“Well, now, maybe not so poor as you think. There’s a lot of agriculture here. A lot of farms.”

“Yes, but what are the crops?”

“The crops? Ah, well, mm…”

“Flowers, bulbs, and potatoes,” Robb called as he hung up the phone. “And then they harvest kelp, too.”

“There you are,” Gideon said. “Unless they grow their potatoes on trees here, he’s not a local.”

“I take your point,” Clapper said with a smile as the phone rang again and Robb picked it up. “All right, this deserves some looking into. I believe I’ll start by seeing what there is to be learned about Mr. Villarreal’s supposed demise in the wilds of Montana.”

“Alaska,” Gideon said.

Robb held out the telephone. “Sarge, it’s for you.”

“Take it for me, lad.”

“No, he wants you. Sounds serious. Something’s up.”

“All right, all right, I’ll take it at my desk.” Clapper slapped his thick, corduroyed thighs and thoughtfully stood up. “Very interesting, Gideon. Back in a tick.”

A minute later-Gideon hadn’t gotten around to getting out of the chair yet-Clapper came barging out of his office and into the corridor, but it was a different Clapper, far more akin to the coarse, rough character Gideon had met the other day. “I’ll need you, Kyle! Let’s get going!”

Robb was on the telephone with another caller. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s not quite ten, Sarge. The office is still open.”

“You’ve done enough bloody nursemaiding for one day,” Clapper shot back. “The office is closed. Switch the telephones to the service, let Anna do something useful. Pack it in. Now!”

“Straightaway, sir,” Robb said, practically jumping out of his chair. He uncovered the mouthpiece. “I’m sorry, miss, we’ll have to ring you back on that.”

“What’s up, Mike?” Gideon asked.

“Not your concern,” Clapper snapped without turning around to look at him.

Robb paused at the table that held the two different kinds of headgear. “Which hat, sir?”

“Screw the effing hats,” Clapper snarled, striding toward the front and roughly motioning for Robb to follow. At the door he turned back to Gideon with a parting growl. “If you go out, make sure you pull the effing door good and shut after you.”

Gideon, deciding that further conversation with Clapper at this point was not in his best interest, silently watched them go.

On a guess, he thought, I’d say that call was from Exeter.

But in fact the call had come from Star Castle, and the man who had made it stood waiting for them in the fog, at the base of the age-worn stone staircase, hands delicately folded in front of his discreet little paunch, as Robb pulled the van up in the grassy parking area at the entrance to the castle.

“I am Mr. Kozlov’s majordomo,” the pasty, dark-suited man with the pencil mustache said. “My name is Mr. Moreton. You’ve come about the unfortunate deceased gentleman. You’ll want to see Mr. Kozlov. I’ll take you to him.” He turned to precede them up the stone steps. “If you’ll be so good as to follow me.”

“No, we don’t want to see Mr. Kozlov, we want to see the unfortunate deceased gentleman,” Clapper said.

A very slight lift of his eyebrows showed that Mr. Moreton considered this a contravention of etiquette, but he acceded without dissent. “Certainly.” He continued majestically up the steps before them.

They followed him across a short stone bridge that crossed a dry moat, then under the “ER 1593” carved into the great lintel, and through the castle wall onto the grounds. Robb, if Clapper remembered correctly, had toured the place not long before, when it was open to the public as part of some anniversary having to do with the accession of Charles II-or was it the execution of Charles I?-but it was the first time Clapper had been inside. Yet it was Robb who looked with curiosity at the historic walls around them. Clapper didn’t go in much for history.

Once through the massive entryway they continued single file on a narrow pathway, perhaps five feet wide and paved with granite blocks, that ran between the fifteen-foot-high stone retaining wall-the inner wall of the ramparts-and the castle building itself, forming a deep, claustrophobia-inducing passageway around the building and apparently serving as a storage area for dustbins, gardening equipment, piles of stone for repairing the retaining wall and the paving, pottery shards, and similar odds and ends. A few heavy outpipes, waste pipes of one kind or another, ran from the building into the rampart’s wall, about ten feet above the passageway. Higher up, the top of the castle disappeared into the fog, making the well of the passageway seem even deeper and more tunnellike.

“You wouldn’t know the name of the unfortunate gentleman, would you?” Clapper, a step behind Moreton, asked.

“Mr. Joel Dillard, a member of the consortium. The doctor arrived about twenty minutes ago. He’s in the kitchen now, if you wish to-”

“Twenty minutes? You took your time calling the police, didn’t you?”

“Mr. Kozlov didn’t think it was a police matter. A simple fall. But Dr. Gillie said, in a case like this, where there’s been a violent death, the police must be notified. We certainly didn’t intend to violate the law. If we have, please accept-”

“All right, all right,” Clapper said gruffly. There were only three doctors on the island and all of them served both as deputy coroners and as police surgeons. Davey Gillie was one of the better ones, probably the very one Clapper himself would have called to the scene to make out the death certificate, as procedure required for any sudden death, suspicious or otherwise.

“Next time something like this happens-” Robb began, as they turned the first corner of the building. They were still in the well of the passageway.

“Next time!” Mr. Moreton cried with feeling. “Let’s hope there’s no next time!”

“Next time, call 999,” Robb went on gently. “That’s the best thing to do.”

Not necessarily, Clapper thought. In this case it was probably better that he hadn’t. Once he called this in to headquarters, there would be a crime-scene team, and very probably a couple of detectives, out from Truro within the hour to look things over, and the fewer paramedics and technicians and such that had been mucking around, stepping in the blood and all, the better.

“You found the body?” Clapper asked Mr. Moreton as they turned the second corner.

“No, our housekeeper, Mrs. Bewley.”

“Don’t let her leave. We’ll want to talk with her.”

“Yes, of course.” He slowed and stopped at the next corner. “The gentleman… the remains… are just beyond. Is it all right if I don’t-”

Clapper pointed to a nearby door. “Go in there and wait. That’s the kitchen, is it?” He’d seen Davey Gillie at a table, writing.

“Yes, sir, the kitchen,” Moreton said gratefully, scurrying for the door. “Shall I get Mr. Kozlov?”

“Get Mrs. Bewley. No, wait, get them all. Everyone in the house. Ask them to wait in the kitchen as well.”

Mr. Moreton nodded and opened the door.

“Thank you, Mr. Moreton,” Robb called, earning a sullen glare from Clapper.

The two policemen turned the corner together, but Clapper then stopped at once, putting out his arm to stop Robb as well. “Now that’s what I call a bloody mess,” Clapper said disgustedly.

“Good God,” a shaken Robb whispered.

Joey Dillard’s body lay sprawled, partly on its back, partly on its side, on the stone paving, one blackened, dulled eye open, the other one half-lidded. One foot, shoe-less, was propped awkwardly against the retaining wall, the leg that went with it twisted unnaturally under him. A bent, broken pair of glasses hung pathetically from one ear. There was a great deal of blood, matted in his hair and soaked so heavily into his sweatshirt that most of the logo on it, something about Ethical Treatment, couldn’t be read. More blood coated the paving, tarry and congealed.

“He’s been here a while, I’d say, sir,” Robb said as professionally as he could manage, despite the quaver he could hear in his own voice. “You can see one of his eyes, and the cornea’s just about opaque, so that’s two to three hours at a minimum, and the blood is well on the way to drying. I’d say eight to twelve hours.”

“My goodness,” Clapper responded meanly, “did they teach you all that hard stuff at Bramshill?” He raised his eyes toward the still invisible roof of the castle. Robb thought he was merely rolling his eyes, but no; Clapper was looking for something. “You’ve been here before. What’s up there?”

“Up there?”

“No, down here,” Clapper snapped. “If I say ‘up there,’ what else can it mean but ‘down here’?”

Robb gulped. This was as vinegary and dyspeptic as he’d ever seen Clapper, and his resentment and anger were starting to get the better of the awe in which he generally held the Great Man. Well, almost. But what the hell was the ferocious old bugger’s problem this time?

“Well, there’s not really anything up there, Sarge,” he said neutrally. “See about twenty-five, thirty feet up, where the stone facing ends, and then there’s another floor, set back a little, with shingles on the outside? That’s the third floor-where all the guest rooms are, I think.”

This time Clapper really did roll his eyes, making it clear that the information he was hearing wasn’t what he wanted to know, and Robb hurried nervously on. “Well, at the top of the stone facing up there, just above the level of the windows, there’s a sort of walkway all around the outside, under the eaves. You get out onto it from the third floor by walking up five or six steps and going out this little door-”

“Aah!” Clapper said, and Robb relaxed a little. “Yes, I can see there’s a little railing there. That’s where he fell from, Kyle.”

“Certainly possible, sir.”

“No, it’s definite. Come a little closer-that’s enough, no nearer to the body than that. See that outpipe above us? If you had your wits about you, you’d have observed by now that it’s been broken. One end emerges from the building, quite awry, and the other end, also awry, drains into the retaining wall. Between them is a space of approximately eighteen inches, from which, by power of intellect, we may take for granted the existence of a missing eighteen-inch section of pipe. Now where do you suppose that missing section might be? Where would a smart, privileged, university-educated youth like yourself look?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Robb said, his face stiffening.

“I don’t know, sir,” Clapper mimicked. “Well, have you thought of looking at the body? You don’t suppose that the aforementioned missing section of pipe and the length of wonderfully similar-looking pipe that peeps ever so subtly out from under his hip could be one and the same?”

“Oh,” Robb said. “I… I didn’t see it before. He must have struck it on the way down and carried it with him.”

“From which you conclude…?”

“That he…” Robb glanced up at the wall of the building before continuing. “That since there are no windows directly in line with the body, it follows that he fell from that little walkway.”

“As the night the day,” said Clapper. “Or, more likely,” he added, “that he was pushed.”

“You’re saying that you think we have a suspicious death here, Sarge?”

“Well, think about it for a moment. Yesterday we dug up a beachful of bones belonging to a murdered man who, if we are inclined to believe Gideon-which I am-was a member of this consortium of Kozlov’s. And today-no, last night, from the looks of him- another member of said consortium suffers a violent and mysterious death. Considering the normally peaceable nature of our little part of this green and pleasant land, what would be your conclusion?”