CATHERINE
MOLONEY

1

Jane Doe

DI Gilbert (‘Gil’) Markham found the restrained Gothic style of Sherwin college chapel very much to his taste.

  It was Sunday morning and he felt a strong inclination to linger, savouring the warmth of a shaft of sunlight which picked him out in the choir stalls as he reflected on the startling developments of the previous day.

  He had been looking forward to nothing more exciting than jam roly-poly and custard followed by a soporific address from Oxford’s divisional commander when Bill Knowles had burst into Hall with news of the grim discovery beneath staircase eleven.

  ‘Looked like the ole lard bucket were gonna keel over,’ DS George Noakes had declared afterwards with all the severity of a fellow chubster who had been put on a strict diet following the previous year’s health scare. ‘Anyway, it’s par for the course with a place like this, innit…. You’re bound to trip over skellies all over the shop with it being medieval an’ all that.’

  The DI was amused by his wingman’s assumed sang-froid, Noakes having clearly made up his mind not to be impressed by the city of dreaming spires. ‘One more for the museum,’ the DS had said comfortably, declining to be distracted from his pud. ‘“Jane Doe from Henry the Eighth’s times” or whatever. The punters’ll go gaga. Kerching!’

  But even Noakes was obliged to revise his opinion when informed that these remains were highly unlikely to be ancient, given nothing of the kind had been called in by the builders who renovated that same staircase some twenty odd years previously.

  Judging by the reaction of Markham’s boss DCI Sidney (or ‘Slimy Sid’ as he was known to the troops), one might have thought the DI had personally engineered the discovery in order to wriggle out of the ‘seminal’ session on restorative justice scheduled for that afternoon.

  ‘It’s almost as though murder follows you around,’ Sidney observed disagreeably on hearing of the find beneath the staircase where Markham had lived as a final year student.

  ‘He made it sound like you freaking well dumped them bones there yourself!’ Noakes exclaimed wrathfully. ‘Like you were doing a Doctor Crippen or summat…. when anyone’d know you had your nose in a book all the time.’

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sergeant.’ He tried to ignore the implication that he was far too busy to have murdered anyone.

   ‘Not that I’m saying you were the murdering kind, boss.’ Too late, Noakes realized his gaffe.

  Markham grimaced. ‘When in a hole, Noakes –.’

  ‘Stop digging,’ DC Doyle and DS Kate Burton chorused in unison.

  The gangling red-haired young DC and DS Burton, the other members of Markham’s close-knit ‘gang’, were visibly delighted to be in Oxford.

  Only Noakes resolutely refused to succumb to its picturesque charms.

  But then George Noakes was a law unto himself….

  As he sat there, the DI congratulated himself on having kept Noakes out of the clutches of Sidney’s henchmen on the Retirement Plan Committee and the rubber-soled mob at the Office for Police Conduct. No mean feat given Noakes’s spectacular talent for alienating his superiors and the investigation into what had occurred at the conclusion of the Bluebell murder case. The latter was the tightest of corners, but somehow it had bound the two men even more closely together.

  Markham well knew that he and Noakes were called ‘The Odd Couple’ by CID’s resident wits, but he could not conceive of ever being able to dispense with his point man. If anything, watching his upwardly mobile contemporaries greasing away to Sidney and the top brass at this conference made him all the more appreciative of Noakes’s unvarnished authenticity, even if his political incorrectness made life decidedly tricky at times.

  ‘Can’t you rein the man in, Markham,’ was Sidney’s never-ending complaint. ‘He gives an appalling impression of service values.’

  Noakes didn’t give a flying fajita for ‘service values’, but he never misstepped when it came to comforting the anonymous victims of murder or making ‘toerags’ squirm once they were in his sights.

  Moreover, the DS was instinctively simpatico to his legendarily chilly and fastidious boss, somehow taking in Markham’s unuttered past as a victim of childhood abuse without anything explicit on the subject having ever passed between them.

  Added to all of this – and Markham’s lips quirked at the incongruity – his teacher girlfriend Olivia Mullen was a staunch adherent of Noakes, revelling in his sergeant’s subversiveness and touched by his devotion to ‘the guvnor’. She was just about the only person able to get away with teasing the old warhorse – certainly the only one able to dispel any grouchiness.

  The thing was, for all Noakes’s run-to-seed slobbishness – the salt and pepper thatch that  never would lie down along with the hangdog features, paunchiness and shockingly bad dress sense –  he had a romantic, almost poetic, chord in his nature which vibrated to Olivia’s lightest touch. Hugely admiring of her willowy ethereal looks and long red hair, he confided to Markham that she put him in mind of ‘them witches in picture books’ (a typically mixed compliment, but Markham got the gist) and never objected when she discoursed on books and poetry on the basis that ‘her voice was like music or a choir doing one of them oratorio thingies’.

  These troubadourish tendencies did not go down well with Muriel Noakes, the sergeant’s snobbish overbearing wife who had a soft spot for ‘Gilbert’ Markham (‘such a charmer and so reliant on George’) but little time for his ditzy partner with the bohemian hair and clothes.

  It was a wonder to many back home in Bromgrove how Noakes and his ‘missus’ had ever ended up together, but Markham knew that whatever the truth of the matter his DS was bound to Muriel by ropes of steel. They were regulars on the ballroom dancing circuit – ‘poetry in motion’ was one surprising description of the stumpy policeman and his Bet Lynch lookalike wife – and Noakes was fiercely protective of Muriel and their daughter Natalie. When Noakes found out during the Bluebell case that Natalie was almost certainly not his biological daughter but the result of Muriel’s teenage indiscretion, he went temporarily off the rails, almost precipitating a crisis in his relationship with Markham. But the two detectives had weathered the storm and come out the other side, though Markham had no idea whether Noakes had made a clean breast of everything to the women in his life. Somehow, he suspected family Omertà had won the day, so he was destined never to have an answer to that question.

  Initially, Kate Burton and Noakes had been as prickly as a pair of cacti. A psychology graduate, she was earnest, quietly tenacious and according to Noakes ‘an all-round smarty pants’. Her parents had opposed a career in the force (‘no job for a woman’), but she had won them round to the point where they were inordinately proud of her success. Earmarked for great things, she had appeared to waver after splitting from her fiancé in the fraud squad and deferred taking her inspector’s exams.

  It was an open secret in CID that she carried a torch for Markham, but the DI had been incredulous when Noakes finally took it upon himself to deliver a few home truths, dismissing it as an over-developed sense of respect for her boss. ‘Nah guv, you c’n take it from me, she’s got it bad,’ the DS replied, before adding graciously, ‘but I’ll give her this, the lass never made a tit of herself down the pub or owt like that.’ Seeing as Burton was virtually teetotal, a sozzled meltdown was unlikely to occur, but this was small comfort to Markham in the circumstances and he vowed to raise the subject of her promotion again once the conference was over.

  At least she and Noakes had now shaken down well together, each valuing the other’s loyalty and dedication. Burton no longer flinched at her colleague’s breaches of PC good taste while he refrained from excessive eye rolls when she ‘went off on one’, as in sharing her prodigious knowledge about various branches of psychology (‘the world and everything’). Indeed, a shared enthusiasm for true crime documentaries had even resulted in some amicable fact-sharing that had proved useful in recent investigations. Noakes had mellowed to the point that he was almost fatherly towards his eager beaver colleague while she had come to appreciate the nonconformist integrity that ran through him like a stick of rock.  Markham suspected Burton still occasionally resented the intimacy he shared with Noakes, but these days she was less touchy about being a third wheel.

  DC Doyle, for all his youth, was what Markham thought of as a Steady Eddie. Now he had obtained that criminal law degree and passed his sergeant’s exams, the promotion board beckoned so he would doubtless be moving to pastures new in due course. In the meantime, he was a valued member of the unit. Gangling, ginger-haired and personable, he was affectionately irreverent towards Noakes, who was his invariable confidant when it came to matters of the heart (since for some reason the course of true love never did run smooth) and the prospects of their beloved Bromgrove Rovers.

  Yes, Markham was highly satisfied with his little band whose loyalty was unquestioned (despite Sidney’s best efforts) and regarded it as a stroke of good fortune that they were all at the conference together.

  His gaze drifted to the black-and-white chequerboard tiling of the chapel floor. Something about the symmetry of its patterns soothed him and he lingered on, enjoying the sunlight and the peace.

  As houses of God went, this little chapel was unpretentious and almost cosy.

  His eyes wandered to the far end where an oak screen depicted the twelve apostles posing stiffly in choir stalls much like the one in which he was sitting. Was it his imagination, or did Judas Iscariot – carrying the money purse with its thirty pieces of silver – bear more than a passing resemblance to DCI Sidney?

  Above the screen an arched stained-glass window depicted a repentant Mary Magdalene, clad in ruby red, raptly contemplating a skull in the depths of a turquoise cavern. Markham had been fond of this image from his student days and knew it was a traditional memento mori – as emphasized by the faded flowers and miniature coffin in the background  – but the discovery of that skeleton beneath staircase eleven gave it a new and poignant resonance.

  Was their victim a woman, he wondered. The Magdalene’s eyes seemed to look sorrowfully out of the stained-glass image as though to say ‘Yes’.

  He recalled the muttered commentary of the pathologist who attended the scene yesterday afternoon. ‘Gracile bones…. circular pelvic inlet…. most likely female…. all a bit jumbled.’ Markham had shuddered at that. ‘I’ll confirm after the PM.’

  Now he thought how much he missed Doug ‘Dimples’ Davidson, their usual pathologist back in Bromgrove, the compassionate eyes belying his bluff farmer’s appearance. ‘Dimples wouldn’t have talked about them bones like they were a bleeding Rubik’s cube,’ as Noakes put it, not caring at all whether he was overheard.

  Beneath the main window were three smaller arches depicting Saint George and the dragon. Something about the earnest gaze of the wimple-clad princess the saint was supposed to have rescued reminded Markham of Kate Burton….

  Burton, of course, would be waiting impatiently in the Bursar’s office behind the Porter’s Lodge, itching to get on with it but reluctant to seem too eager.

  He understood that mixture of emotions only too well… the adrenalin rush of a murder investigation which was also somehow shameful and vampiric because it derived from the extinction of a fellow human being. As though they were feasting on dead men’s bones.

  His gaze wandered back to the Magdalene and that sightless skull.

  Do not store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, but rather lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.

  An unwelcome picture of those neglected remains, cobwebbed over with spiders’ webs and runnelled by insect larvae and god knows what else, suddenly rose up before him. But he forced it down. Whoever their victim was, he or most likely she was long past their pain. Nothing could hurt them further.

  All that remained was to seek justice.

  His mouth twitched at the thought that Noakes and Doyle were probably tucking into a full English in Hall while Kate Burton was forced to cool her heals in the Bursar’s office. Personally, he couldn’t face a grease-fest with the rest of them, preferring to gather himself in the seclusion of the college chapel.

  Sidney, gimlet-eyed, had reluctantly acceded to the Principal’s suggestion that ‘one of their own’ take over the investigation. Markham hadn’t warmed to Sir Paul Mirfleet with his bombast and drinker’s complexion, but he jumped at the offer to solve the mystery of staircase eleven. No doubt there would be ‘territorial’ issues with Thames Valley Police, but they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. Superintendent Ian Charleson from St Aldates was due to see them, so hopefully any ruffled feathers could be smoothed down…. assuming Noakes didn’t trample all over local sensibilities with his size twelves.

  The Bursar Philip Greaves had combined maximum efficiency with minimal warmth towards the DI and his team. Another florid specimen with pinched features, he aped the mannerisms of the Principal in a way that Markham found faintly nauseating. But at least he had temporarily made over his own rooms behind the porter’s lodge for their convenience. ‘Prob’ly bugged ’em,’ Noakes observed with cheerful insouciance. ‘That fella looks like a grade A snoop.’ Privately, he resolved to do a sweep before installing full incident room facilities.

  The minutes ticked by and yet Markham still could not tear himself away….

  His mind travelled back in time to those halcyon student days which had seemed then to stretch out hazily to infinity.

  The framed group pictures of students in full fig (sub fusc academic dress) that lined the oak panelled corridor outside the chapel made him feel sad. So much starry-eyed anticipation. So many hopes and dreams…. And then the bitter-sweet awakening once the wine of life was drunk, leaving only the dregs….

  Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, he told himself wryly looking slowly round the chapel.

  The sun had now moved round to the plain-leaded lancet windows that lined both sides of the choir leaving his stall in shadow.

  Markham shivered, as though a chilly finger had touched him, admonishing him for wasting time when there was a murderer to catch.

  But was this murder, he asked himself.

  And if so, whose were the bones interred in the sludge under that staircase…. such a desolate resting place. Even more horrible when one thought of all the students pounding up and down stairs, blithely unaware of the grave site beneath their feet.

  His eyes returned to the enigmatic Magdalene in her strange subterranean lait. The ruby red mantle had somehow lost its lustre, seeming to pool about her feet like an upswell of blood…. Unconstrained. Unstoppable.

  Somehow, he was unable to look away.

  Above her in a rose window, God the Father extended his arms wide as though to welcome all lost sheep into the pen.

  But there was a wolf in the sheepfold,

  And Markham was determined to find him.

                                                       ……………………………………..

‘Cushty!’

  As far as Noakes was concerned, the Bursar’s rooms were a distinct improvement on the usual accommodation available for CID investigations.

  ‘He’s got one of them George Clooney Nespresso machines an’ all…. Jammy bastard.’

  Kate Burton was clearly embarrassed by these Del Boy raptures, but Doyle just grinned. ‘We’re in the wrong job, sarge. Should have worked harder at school, then we’d be the ones with the swank office.’

  The DS grunted and continued exploring the Bursar’s oak-panelled domain, clumping through the Axminster-carpeted rooms – study and tastefully appointed bedroom – like it was an episode of Through the Keyhole, thought Burton despairingly as she waited for him to complete his inspection.

  ‘Flat screen telly…. drinks cabinet an’ fridge an’ two computers…. Talk about a gravy train!’ Noakes plonked himself onto the chesterfield. ‘Hey, d’you think he’s got his fingers in the till? Cos this set-up’s worth a fortune.’

  ‘They pay vice-Chancellors and all the senior people top whack.’ Doyle pursed his lips and spoke with all the authority of a new-minted BA Law (2:2). ‘Bursar at a place like this…. He’s got to be on a hefty salary.’

  ‘Plus there’ll be perks and benefits,’ Burton added thoughtfully, looking round at the Old Masters and the vast mahogany desk. ‘And they probably do stuff in the private sector.’

  Nice work if you can get it.

  ‘You c’n tell Greaves is a boozer,’ Noakes declared sanctimoniously. ‘Ain’t seen a nose like that since ole Basher went on the batter at his leaving do.’

  Recalling the legendary DCI ‘Basher’ Briggs, Burton privately thought CID was well rid but forced a strained smile.

  ‘Mr Greaves has certainly done well for himself judging by this lot,’ she said. ‘Bursar’s a responsible position, though, so he must be up to the job…. And anyway, there’s always a drinking culture in places like this. They’re stuck in a time warp…. Brideshead Revisited.’ The censorious sniff with which this last was uttered suggested Burton’s views on Oxbridge leaned towards the puritanical.

  ‘Brideshead Revisited.’ Noakes mulled it over. ‘Oh yeah, I remember now…. poofters carting teddy bears round the place an’ speaking in daft voices.’

  Burton looked as though she regretted having ever mentioned the cult classic, but the DI’s arrival mercifully prevented further discussion.

  The lean dark face smiled at them. But Markham’s eyes were sad.

  ‘I’ve just had a call from the pathologist,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yeah, the Jigsaw Man.’ Noakes was distinctly unenthusiastic. ‘Fitted all the pieces together has he?’

  ‘Indeed he has, Sergeant.’ The DI’s gaze wandered briefly to an exquisite Madonna and Child which had the chiaroscuro hues of a valuable antique on loan from the college vaults. Then he looked steadily at the team.

  ‘Our victim is a young woman, around twenty years old…. She was five months pregnant…. The bones of the foetus had become displaced from the pelvis, but there’s no doubt about it now.’

  ‘Poor lass,’ Noakes said gruffly, clearing his throat. ‘Pregnant…. an’ chucked out with the rubbish.’

  Burton’s throat contracted as she thought of the corpse disappearing beneath cement and slurry, slowly digested to a skeleton…. fermenting underground.

  Doyle looked sick. ‘Did the doc say how she died, sir?’

  ‘Strangulation…. Apparently there was enough left to identify a hyoid fracture.’

  Burton found her voice.

  ‘Is there an ID, boss?’

  ‘We’re waiting on official confirmation from dental records, but there’s a strong possibility it’s a third-year English student who disappeared from Sherwin during her final year…. Catriona Rowlands…. She was never traced.’

  ‘How come she jus’ disappeared, guv.’ Noakes got up from the chesterfield and began prowling the deep pile crimson carpet. ‘I mean, a girl that age…. an’ a student here at Posh Central….  They musta had some idea.’ He kicked a thin-legged side table by way of relieving his feelings. ‘An’ her in the family way too…. jus’ don’ make any sense….’

  For all that it was a bright winter morning, the Bursar’s quarters seemed suddenly drained of light as though the air had somehow turned grey.

  The four detectives contemplated each other, pinch-faced.

  ‘Sit down, Noakesy. It’s making me sea-sick watching you wear out that carpet,’ the DI said finally.

  Moodily, the DS complied, taking a savage satisfaction in the fact that muck from his brothel creepers had transferred itself to the sofa’s chintz valance.

  ‘They pulled out all the stops,’ Markham continued.

  ‘Not if they didn’t check under that bloody staircase they didn’t,’ Noakes burst out mutinously.

  ‘On the face of it there was no reason to reopen the earthworks,’ the DI said levelly. ‘The builders working on staircase eleven were adamant no-one unauthorized had been down there…. the site foreman was positive about it at the time….’

  ‘“At the time”?’ Burton had picked up on the ambiguity. ‘Does that mean he got it wrong, sir?’

  ‘I’ve got a hunch that site security wasn’t all it was cracked up to be…. The firm in question was McMaster & Son…. they eventually went bankrupt after settling various claims involving breaches of health and safety.’

  ‘So they freaking lied.’ Noakes’s piggy eyes had narrowed to suspicious slits.

  ‘It’s a distinct possibility,’ the DI agreed. ‘But at the time McMaster had a good reputation …. There were contracts with several of the colleges…And besides, the last confirmed sighting of Ms Rowlands was in Cornmarket Street…. Several students placed her there.’

  ‘What about the family?’ Doyle asked. ‘Did they have any idea she might be pregnant?’

  ‘Her mother died while she was still at school,’ Markham replied. ‘Father remarried when she was in the sixth form…. I believe there’s a stepmother and half-sister….’

  Doyle digested this. ‘What about the dad…. is he still around?’

  ‘He died five years ago,’ the DI informed them heavily. ‘Ms Rowlands’s stepmother and half-sister are out of the country…. planning to spend Christmas in Lech –.’

  ‘What’s over there then?’ Noakes asked belligerently.

  ‘It’s an Austrian ski resort,’ the DI explained. ‘But they’ll be travelling home as soon as it can be arranged. And to answer your original question, Constable, according to the case files, the family had no idea why she went missing…. certainly no notion that she was pregnant.’

  It was clear that the DI meant to get a jump on the local police, Burton thought approvingly.

  Then a thought occurred to her.

  ‘Did you ever meet Ms Rowlands…. I mean with its being your old college, sir?’

  ‘The way Hissing Sid was carrying on yesterday, it sounded like he’s got you in the frame for this one, guv,’ Noakes observed amiably.

  ‘Very reassuring, Sergeant,’ came the dry response.

  Markham smiled at Burton. ‘We were in the same year, Kate, but oddly enough I don’t have any vivid recollection of her…. Strange, because the English students were a pretty flamboyant crowd.’ He reached into the pocket of his immaculately tailored pinstripe and produced a photograph.

  ‘The Bursar was kind enough to give me this,’ he said. ‘Pass it round.’

  ‘She was very pretty,’ Burton commented once they had done so. ‘So petite and dainty.’

  ‘Must be Mediterranean blood somewhere,’ Doyle said thoughtfully. ‘Or maybe South American…. Brazilian perhaps with those big dark eyes….’

  ‘Nice-looking lass,’ was Noakes’s more prosaic verdict. His stubby forefinger stroked the picture. ‘What a chuffing waste.’ Then almost angrily, as was always the case whenever the DS felt he had been betrayed into showing his emotions, ‘What about boyfriends?  With a stunner like that…. there had to be some bloke sniffing around.’

  Something flared at the back of his eyes causing Markham to wonder if his wingman was remembering Muriel and Natalie, each of them wronged by a man….

  ‘Ms Rowlands was on the rebound at the time when she was last seen,’ he said.

  ‘You’re kidding me.’ Doyle was incredulous. ‘You mean someone knocked her back?’

  ‘She and her boyfriend had split up a month or so before she went missing,’ the DI informed them before adding, ‘Actually, he’s a Fellow here.’

  ‘The boyfriend?’ This sounded promising to Noakes.

  ‘Dr Jon Warrender…. Yes, he’s a senior Research Fellow and Tutor in Classics.’

  ‘Bully for him,’ Noakes grunted. ‘Where was he when the lass went missing?’

  ‘A JCR event in the college bar.’

  ‘That’s the Junior Common Room,’ Burton translated.

  ‘Off his face then.’ Noakes never had much time for acronyms.

  ‘Along with most of his peers,’ Markham said. ‘It was June, so everyone was whooping it up after final exams. An all-nighter.’

  Somehow Burton couldn’t envisage her elegant boss ‘whooping it up’. Dinner for two at an expensive restaurant was more his style, she thought wistfully.

  ‘If they were partying, he coulda snuck off an’ done the dirty without anyone clocking him then.’ It was obvious Noakes liked Warrender as their prime suspect.

  ‘There was never anything to tie him to Ms Rowlands’s disappearance, Noakes.’

  Burton noted the formality of ‘Ms Rowlands’. The DI was always mindful of victims’ dignity and woe betide any subordinate who so far forgot themselves as to engage in gallows humour.

  ‘She had other boyfriends,’ Markham continued, ‘but nothing to explain why she suddenly walked away from her life.’ He sighed, ‘There was speculation that maybe she had a breakdown or something traumatic happened…. maybe an amnesic episode…. or possibly she didn’t want to be found….’

  ‘You mean they thought she might have done a Reggie Perrin…. faked her own death?’ Doyle sounded bemused.

  ‘Well, that was one line of thought…. Even so, the case went nowhere.’ The DI ran a hand through the curling black hair that, did he but know it, had led to civilian typists back at Bromgrove Station christening him their ‘studmuffin of the month’.

  ‘Whass the plan, guv?’ Noakes was growing impatient. Time to feel a few collars as far as he was concerned, and the sooner the better.

  The DI glanced at his watch.

  ‘I’ve asked the Bursar and Chaplain to join us,’ he said. ‘They’ll be along any minute.’

  ‘What about the local Plod?’ Noakes looked as if he relished the idea of a face-off.

  ‘Sidney’s squaring it with them. We’ll be meeting with Superintendent Charleson tomorrow morning, Noakes…. Diplomacy’s the order of the day.’

  Good luck with that, Burton said to herself, her mind roving over Noakes’s hair-raising track record with officialdom.

  Catching Markham’s eye, she blushed. Something about his expression suggested he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  ‘You and Doyle will be setting up our incident room, Kate.’

  ‘In here, sir?’ It sounded as if she couldn’t believe her luck.

  ‘Well, if we can manage to sweet talk the Bursar…. and convince him we’re house-trained.’

  Her face fell as she looked at Noakes, but Kate Burton was nothing if not determined.

  ‘I’m on it, sir,’ she said firmly.

  There was a discreet rap at the door.

  The advance party had arrived.