The Grave Tattoo
There was more traffic on the narrow road than Jake had expected and he had a couple of false alarms; one Land Rover looked much like another at a distance. But just after eight, his patience was rewarded. Red Fiestas like the one Judy drove were less common and when one emerged from the village to speed down the road towards him, Jake pulled the brim of his baseball cap further over his eyes and squinted out from under it. As the car drew level, he recognised Jane’s profile. He waited till she had turned north on the main road, then he slipped into gear and after her.
The road towards Thirlmere followed the arrow-straight line of the old Roman road, so Jake hung well back. At least the weather meant Jane had her lights on, so it was easy to keep her in sight. He was oblivious to the misty beauty of the lake on his left and the ghostly outlines of trees on his right as he drove, focused only on the red tail-lights up ahead. He didn’t even notice the signs announcing roadworks ahead. Jane’s car disappeared round a long shallow bend and, as he swung round behind her, he saw disaster ahead. The lights controlling the single-lane traffic through the roadworks turned from amber to red just as Jane shot through. He was tempted to jam his foot down and go for it, but at the last minute he ran out of nerve and slammed the brakes on, slewing to a stop just as headlights approached from the opposite direction. Heart pounding, he clenched the steering wheel. Christ, that had been close.
Jake wiped sweat from his upper lip and waited impatiently for the light to change. He glanced down at the map to confirm what he already thought. There wasn’t anywhere for Jane to turn off, not till she got to the head of the lake. On one side was water, on the other the steep wooded lower slopes of Helvellyn. If he stepped on it, he might just catch her. As the light changed from amber to green, he shot forward and raced up the road. But by the time he reached the point where decisions had to be made there was still no sign of the Fiesta. Here, Jane could either have carried on into Keswick or forked right towards the main drag leading to the M6 and anywhere. Jake hesitated for a moment then gambled on the road to what he considered civilisation. His superior speed and road-holding might just be enough to catch her. And if he didn’t, he could always double back to Keswick and cruise the car parks.
A mile later, he rounded a bend and almost went into the back of a tractor ambling along between the low stone walls bordering the road. Time to give up the chase. Frustrated beyond words, he took advantage of the next gateway to make a seven-point turn and head back to Keswick. Half an hour’s searching later, he was forced to admit defeat.
There wasn’t much point in going back to the road end. When Jane returned, she would be going home, back to the protective bosom of her family. And he couldn’t think of any other way to cross her path. At least he could be fairly certain Jane hadn’t come up with any documentary evidence to support her theory, otherwise she would have been spending her time with Anthony Catto at Dove Cottage.
At that thought, his brain made one of those unfathomable leaps that scientists call inspiration and priests divine intervention. When he and Jane had been together, they’d spent a week in Barcelona. To save on luggage, they had taken only his laptop. She had loaded her email software on to his machine and he had never removed it. It should still be there, complete with stored password. He could raid her account without her ever knowing. He had no doubt whatsoever that there would be a trail. These days, there was always something in the mail.
River pulled on a white lab coat over the clothes she had been wearing the previous day. In spite of only having had a couple of hours’ sleep, she felt as if her brain cells were sparking like metal under a welding torch. Good sex would do that every time, she thought, stretching her arms out above her head and enjoying the feeling of well-being that surged through her. It had been the best fun she’d had in a long time.
There had been nothing awkward about waking up together either. They hadn’t spoken much, it was true–she’d been too eager to get online to see what basic information she could gather about Fletcher Christian, and he’d been happy to let her use his computer. It had all felt very relaxed, very natural. She had no idea where it was going. But for now, she was more than happy to make the journey.
River fastened her coat, grabbed a clipboard with her notes and hurried through to the funeral parlour’s embalming room where Pirate Peat lay in wait for her, his body exposed under the glare of fluorescent strips and TV arc lamps. As she entered, she gauged her audience. Two students taking their masters degrees in Forensic Anthropology, one other from Archaeological Sciences and one palaeobotanist. And to one side, a cameraman, sound woman and a director. ‘Before we begin,’ she said, looking at the students, ‘I’m going to apologise to you in advance. Some of what I’m going to go through today will be simplistic in the extreme. That’s because I have to pitch it at a TV audience who don’t have the advantage of your undergraduate degrees. After we’re done with the filming, we can sit down and go over what we’ve looked at with a little more scientific rigour. But please watch carefully what I’m doing and take notes where you need to. Are you all happy with that?’
They nodded and grunted assent. ‘We’ll need you all to sign a release,’ the director chipped in, ‘authorising us to use your images in the final programme.’
‘Will there be a fee?’ one of the male students asked slightly mutinously.
‘Just being here should be fee enough for you,’ River said. ‘This is not an opportunity that comes along very often. I can say with some degree of certainty that you’ll be the only two masters students in the country who’ll be getting such a hands-on experience with a bog body this year. So just be grateful we’re not charging you for the favour.’ She turned to the director. ‘Before we get started, I wanted to run something past you. I’m told there’s a rumour buzzing round the town that this could be the body of Fletcher Christian.’
‘Who’s Fletcher Christian?’ the director asked.
River tried not to roll her eyes. ‘The guy who led the mutiny on the Bounty.’
‘What? Like in the Mel Gibson film?’
‘That’s right.’
The director looked at her as if she was mad. ‘So how did he end up in a bog on Langmere Fell? I mean, that was in the South Pacific, right?’
‘Right. But apparently he was from round here. And there was a rumour that he made it back to the Lakes.’
‘Cool.’ The director looked vaguely impressed.
‘I was wondering if we could incorporate the speculation into what we’re doing? Wouldn’t that make it a better sell to the viewers?’
‘I suppose so. I’ll need to run it past Phil, though. He’s the boss.’
River tried to curb her impatience. ‘I’ve already done a little bit of research online this morning. Why don’t we just proceed as if we’re going to go down that path? I can make reference to it as I work. Then if Phil decides against it, you can always edit it out. How does that sound?’
The director spread his hands. ‘Why not? Anything to make a dead body sexier.’
River allowed herself the smile of a woman who knows what sexy really means. ‘Are we ready?’
The sound woman stared down at her dials and muttered, ‘Up to speed.’ The cameraman looked through his eyepiece and said, ‘Rolling.’
River stared down at the body. ‘Even a body as old as this one gives us a wealth of information. Our bodies encode our personal identity. They tell the world what has been done to them and what they have done to themselves. Even the most superficial examination can tell us something.’ She pointed as she spoke. ‘The skull, the pubic synthesis, the joint degeneration–all this conspires to tell us our man was around forty years old.’
She looked up at the students. ‘This body was found in Carts Moss, a boggy area towards the base of Langmere Fell. That’s unusual enough in itself to generate local interest. But when the word spread about these tattoos…’ She paused to indicate the dark shading on the chestnut-coloured skin, then looked up again and continued:
‘…a completely different level of interest was aroused.’
She ran her hand gently over the remains on the table. ‘Forensic anthropology is all about identity. Who was this person? What happened to them while they were alive? And what impact did that have on how they died? Most of what we do is solid scientific fact. But like the archaeologists, we also have to rely on other evidence, some of it anecdotal, some of it social, because the science is meaningless without a context. And when it comes to anecdotal evidence, we’ve already got an intriguing possibility right here. Could this be the body of a Cumbrian called Fletcher Christian who sailed away in the Bounty on a voyage to the South Seas where he led a mutiny against his captain? Certainly that’s what some locals believe. As we make our journey towards discovering all this body has to tell us, let’s bear in mind the possibility that we might just be able to identify this body very precisely even though it’s been in the ground for a couple of hundred years.’
She turned to the whiteboard set behind her. ‘And cut,’ the director said. ‘We need to change our camera position, River. So we can see what you’re writing.’
A few minutes later, everything was ready again. River took a blue marker pen and started to make a list on the right-hand side of the board. She headed it Fletcher Christian. Below, she wrote a list based on what she’d garnered from her swift sweep of the internet.
Born 25/9/1764 Moorland Close, nr Cockermouth, Cumbria
Male
Height 175 cm
Hair: very
dark brown Dark complexion
Strong made
Star tattoo on left breast
Tattooed in South Sea Island style–buttocks completely coloured black, probably with decoration lines round the upper border
Slightly bow-legged
Very sweaty, particularly in the hands–? primary hyperhidrosis?
One version of his death on Pitcairn refers to him being shot in the shoulder
She stood back and surveyed what she had written. ‘It’s not much, I know, but we’re lucky in that it does give us some concrete physical evidence to go on.’
River turned back to the body. ‘Well, we know our body is male. We also know that its age is consistent with it being Mr Christian. And he does have long dark hair. That will have been darkened by exposure to the peat, but we can conduct tests to establish more clearly its original colour.’ She took a tape measure from her pocket and stretched it out alongside the body. ‘A hundred and seventy centimetres. Apparently five centimetres shorter than our man. Any comments?’
The female forensic anthropologist said, ‘We all lose height as we age. And we can’t be certain how accurate the initial measurement was. So it doesn’t exclude this being him.’
‘Correct,’ River said. ‘Sadly, we can’t make any estimate as to his weight because we don’t have any idea how much soft tissue has been leached away by the acid in the peat. We’ve got very little left and certainly not enough to make even a reasonable guess. He does look quite broad in the shoulder, however. So, again, we have nothing to contradict our wild hypothesis. The other disappointment because of the lack of soft tissue is that we’ve no way of knowing whether our cadaver suffered from any disorder of the sympathetic nervous system that would lead to hyperhidrosis. Now, let’s take a look at his leg bones. Anyone have anything to say?’
They crowded round the table. The director took the opportunity to rearrange his crew to capture a new angle. The same student spoke again. ‘The leg bones look pretty straight to me. I wouldn’t have thought he was bow-legged.’
‘I don’t agree,’ her opposite number said. ‘Look at the knees. The medial femoral-tibial joint is worn down on both legs. If he started out as mildly bow-legged, over the years that would have put stress on the inside of the knee joint and caused this kind of arthritic presentation. Especially if he led a physically active life.’
‘The arthritis could have nothing to do with being bow-legged,’ the female student protested. ‘It could be simple wear and tear, particularly if he was overweight.’
‘I don’t think there were many fat sailors around in the eighteenth century,’ the young man countered. ‘The food was crap and the work was hard. And besides, he’s pretty young at forty to have that level of joint degeneration.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you,’ River said. ‘Again, we can’t exclude Mr Christian on the basis of our findings. At this point, then, all we can say is nothing we’ve seen with our eye contradicts the possibility. And we have one piece of non-invasive evidence that does give some weight to our idea.’ Reaching beneath the table, she pulled out the X-ray and CAT scan images of the cadaver’s shoulder. While she waited for the camera to set up on the portable light-box she’d had the students bring down from Carlisle, she ran through what she had already told Ewan Rigston about the injury to the shoulder blade. Then she ran through it twice more for the camera. By the end of that recital, she was beginning to feel bored with herself. Time to move swiftly on.
‘What we’re going to be doing for the rest of this session is taking samples. We’ll be taking teeth for stable isotope analysis to find out where he was living when they were formed. More teeth so we can age him more precisely. A bone sample from the femur for stable isotope analysis to see where he’d been in the last ten to fifteen years of his life. We’ll be analysing them back at the university with the mass spectrometer. We’ll also be taking hair and nail samples to check for toxicology and different food substances. And the contents of the gastro-intestinal tract so the palaeobotanists can have their fun. We’ll try to find enough soft muscle tissue to use for DNA and toxicology. And when we’ve done all that, we’ll have a much better idea of this man’s identity. Whether he’s Fletcher Christian or not, he can’t hide from us.’
River looked straight down the barrel of the camera. ‘And when we know more about who he is, maybe we’ll even have some idea of who killed him.’
The events of that fateful night have been described by several of those present. My brother Edward has shown me those accounts and I find them accurate by and large as to the facts of the matter, though necessarily faulty when it comes to imputing thoughts and motives. You may easily satisfy yourself as to the true course of events from their stories. What I must say most clearly and strongly in my own defence is that I had no intention that Lieutenant Bligh and his companions should perish or be forced to endure the trials of that terrible voyage across the Pacific in an open boat. There was land within easy reach when we cast them off from Bounty. A navigator of Bligh’s stature and with his knowledge of those waters must have known he could easily make landfall then and there. There was no need but Bligh’s overweening vanity for them to be afflicted with such a torment as he forced them to endure. He became a hero as a result, but he could have killed them all in the doing of it. And that is the measure of the man.
19
DI Donna Blair dealt with the final allegedly urgent piece of paper on her desk and looked out across the incident room. ‘Kumar,’ she shouted.
The young PC who was supposed to be tracking down Jane Gresham looked up apprehensively. ‘Yes, ma’am?’
‘In here.’ Donna drummed her fingers on her desk as she waited for him to scramble into her office. ‘Have we got Jane Gresham yet?’
‘No, ma’am. I finally tracked down her workplace. She works at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, Queen Mary University of London, but the only address they’ve got for her is the Marshpool. The girl I spoke to says Gresham’s off somewhere on study leave, she thinks her boss might know where. So the boss is going to call me back.’
‘Christ. I’ve still got a bloody uniform on the door. This is costing money we haven’t got. You know how it works in an investigation like this–we’re not high profile, so we don’t get the budget.’
‘Surely the kid would have shown up by now if she was planning on hiding out there?’ PC Kumar was still fresh enough to the job to think he would earn Brownie p
oints by making obvious suggestions to his boss.
Donna rolled her eyes. ‘And maybe she’s been hiding out somewhere else on the estate, waiting till the heat dies down and she can get to her safe house.’ She sighed. ‘Stick with it. Have you tried going through the phone book for the Lake District to see if there are any Greshams listed?’
‘I was going to, but then the woman at the university said study leave, so I thought maybe the neighbour got it wrong.’ As soon as the words were out of his mouth, PC Kumar knew his mistake.
‘I’m the one who’s paid to think,’ Donna said. ‘While you’re waiting for Jane Gresham’s boss to call you back, get started on the phone book. I expect there’s only a few dozen Greshams in the region. And before you get stuck in, get me the media centre, or whatever the press office is called this week. Now it’s beginning to look like she might have done a runner, it’s time to get the kid’s face out there.’ Kumar retreated and Donna scowled at his back. It wasn’t him she was pissed off with. What really pissed her off was being outsmarted by a thirteen-year-old. If anyone doubted Tenille Cole’s parentage, here was their answer.