Farewell to the Dancing Man Ch. 21-24

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Cynthia's Story.

I won't hear from her again. I remember the day that she left, she seemed happy enough to be going away for a holiday on her own. As the final boarding call came over the loudspeaker she gave me a light peck on the cheek. "Look after you father won't you? Don't let him go to the pub every night getting drunk. Make sure he buys the right food for you, and don't ask him for presents all the time." She turned to Father, "Good-bye Darling, look after Cynthia won't you, don't let her go out every single night, make sure that she does her homework and look after yourself." She kissed him quickly on the lips and dashed through the gate and on to the plane.

Daddy and I walked up to the roof top viewing area and waved like idiots as the plane taxied away, like everyone else there, not knowing or caring if she saw us. We stayed until the plane, its propellers clawing at the air, roared down the runway and slowly lifted out over the coast and away. Daddy put his arm around my shoulder as we left.

That night Daddy took me out to a restaurant for my very first grown-up dinner. He was ever so sophisticated. As the menu was written in French and my command of the language left a lot to be desired, it certainly didn't run to the standard necessary, he explained the dishes to me but left the final choice up to me. He allowed me a sip of wine. I know some of the people there were looking at us strangely as if I was some little piece that he was trying to impress and possibly seduce, but I didn't care, I even imagined that was what was happening and fell into the mood of things by making believe that he was my employer and I was his new secretary that he was taking to dinner while his wife was out of town, It was fun watching the expressions on their faces when I touched him on the arm when I was making some point or other. The women looked down their collective noses and sniffed without sniffing at us while the men couldn't hide their envy at my father having dinner with such a young and attractive woman.

Father fell into the mood as well and placed his hand over mine when he wanted to attract my attention. The waiter hovered all night, whisking away dishes as soon as the last morsel left it. "The meal was to Sir's liking? Would Madam like another cup of café, and after dinner mint per'aps?" All the time I could see him trying to see down the front of my dress. I could imagine him in the kitchen regaling the staff with a running commentary on the bit of young fluff that the dirty old man at table 12 had. He over-filled Father's coffee cup when I deliberately leant forward to whisper something in Daddy's ear while he poured.

The Maitre 'd' bowed deferentially to Daddy as he paid the bill. "I 'ope Sir and Madam found everything to their satisfaction and will be gracing our 'umble establishment again soon." He pointedly emphasised the word 'madam'.

"Mam'selle and I found the meal most enjoyable and the service most attentive. The vegetables were maybe just a touch overdone but this was not enough to detract from what promises to be the start of a most memorable evening. Come along Darling.

We laughed so much that Daddy couldn't drive for ages after we got into the car. "You should have seen the looks on the old dears' faces, what they must be saying now. "Shocking Mabel, he's old enough to be her father. I wonder if her parents know that she's going with an older man? And the men, I can see them now standing in the loo, "Did you see that lucky old bastard that just left? She was a bit of all right, probably just started working for him and has been told how she can climb up the corporate ladder. I bet she gets a raise soon, if you know what I mean."

"What about the waiter, I'm surprised that all he did was over-fill your cup. He spent all his time trying to look down my dress, not that he could see all that much."

"Well not most of the time, you were a bit naughty when you leant forward when he was pouring coffee, I could have been scalded."

"Sorry Daddy, I just couldn't resist it. It felt great being the centre of so much attention."

"Don't get used to it, this is only for special occasions." Daddy drove the car into the garage and we got out. "How would you like to make us a cup of coffee before we go to bed?"

"Okay." I fussed around in the kitchen preparing coffee and cutting us each a slice of cake that Mummy had left us. "Ready." I called down the hallway. We sat in silence in the kitchen, eating our supper. Daddy seemed a little subdued now. "What's the matter, missing her already?"

"Yes, do you know that this is always a hard time knowing that there are so many things that can happen and looking forward to the day when she is back home again."

"But nothing will happen. Cheer up Daddy, in no time at all she'll be back."

"I hope so."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

There was a message on Brownlow's desk when he arrived for work, it was from the Forensic Pathologist and asked to come down to the Path Lab as soon as possible.

The Path Lab is hidden in the nether regions of the headquarters building and access is gained by following a convoluted series of dimly lit corridors. Eventually, after several wrong turns, Brownlow found himself standing outside a door on which was as sign that read:

PATHOLOGY LABORATORY

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER

THE GENIOUS IS IN

"Enter." The voice from within was highly pitched and clear. Brownlow entered. "Ah,you must be Brownlow, come, come, come in my boy, park it by all means." He indicated a high stool, "Tea? I'm just brewing a batch." He took a beaker of boiling water from a stand over a Bunsen burner and poured it over teabags in badly stained mugs. "Milk and sugar?" He opened the specimen fridge and removed an open bottle of milk. The sugar, and Brownlow hoped that it was, came from a beaker on the shelf that bore a strong resemblance to several other beakers on that shelf.

"No thanks all the same, I might just give it a miss this time. I have this thing about the food that I eat, I like to know where it's been."

"Tush, what a nonsense. This is all good clean stuff, no little nasties among this lot."

"I think that I might just concentrate on the business at hand, if that's all right with you?"

Doctor Richard Pressman looked at Brownlow over his half glasses. He was a tall thin man in his mid to late forties, he had that pale, grey, pasty look that confirmed the many hours he spent hovering over his table and equipment analysing bits of people to establish cause of death. His tousled hair, also grey, confirmed that his involvement in his work overruled any consideration for his appearance.

"If you really must." He took a long sip from his mug of tea and a mouthful of sandwich that he had also retrieved from the specimen fridge. He pushed the food to one side of his mouth to allow him to speak with reasonable clarity. "What we have here is a male Caucasian, probably in his thirties but I can't be one hundred percent sure of that. Cause of death, well I can tell you how he didn't die much more easily than how he did. It was not likely to have been a gunshot. I can rule out an accumulative metal poison but not an organic one. An injection either by accident or deliberate of a drug is a possibility. He was not struck over the head by any form of object due to the lack of cranial fracture. As to who he was that's a doosie, if you can locate his dentist his records will confirm his identity but good luck with that, you'll need it."

"How can you be sure that this man didn't die from any of the methods mentioned?" Brownlow asked.

"In order to answer that I would have to make an assumption. In my line of work assumptions are not good enough, beyond reasonable doubt, that's the words the judge uses to the jury. The first thing that has to be done is to find out if there any precedents that can assist me in my work. As far as how establishing the time of death there is no precedent to be had. Now we could, if it was a chemical action that caused the deterioration of the corpse, use an accelerator to establish a rate of deterioration over a short period and then project that until the we reach a condition similar to that of our friend here. Unfortunately in this case the action was bacteriological not chemical. If you wanted to wait for however many years it takes, I could set up a similar scenario, but I could very well be enjoying my retirement when we get to that point. Another fly in the ointment is that we cannot be certain if at any point in time over the last twenty years or so that the owners of the tank did not pour disinfectant down the drain to stop the smell and kill off all of the bacteria, they would take an indeterminate length of time to recover. So many variables to consider, therefore I have to say that it will be virtually impossible for me to tell with any degree of certainty, the time of death."

"As for gunshot. Usually with the gunshot as a causal factor, two things occur; either the bullet hits a bone on the way in or out of the body and there would be evidence of that, or it lodges in the soft tissue and would have been found in the residue taken from the vicinity of the body, it was not. If it was murder, and of that we can be almost certain, the victim would most likely have been shot in the head, no evidence of that. If a shotgun had been used there would have been pellets in the residue, not evidence of that."

"As for poisons, accumulative metal poisons would leave a residue in the bone marrow, no evidence of that. If it was some other form such as strychnine or a neurotoxin any evidence of that would have been lost in the bacteriological decomposition of the body, no evidence and no basis for a provable hypothesis."

"Could there be any other cause of death?"

"I can rule out strangulation because there was no damage to the bones in the neck. I can't rule out all together the use of a knife, but proving it poses a problem, again no possibility of a provable hypothesis."

"Is there anything that you can tell me about our friend that would help my investigation?"

"Oh many, many things."

"Such as?"

"Such as you can rule out robbery as the motive for his demise."

"Why?"

"Because of these." He produced a plastic bag containing several items of gold jewellery. "A vain man was our Mr P.L.T. If you look closely at this signet ring you can make out the initials PLT. Also there is an inscription on the back of his watch; 'To P with all my love J'. 'J' had expensive tastes, this is a very expensive watch."

"Interesting. I think that we have found the late lamented Paul Thomas."

"One thing you could investigate that could establish the earliest time of death."

"What's that?"

"The type of septic tank that he was found in. If, as you suggest, he has been missing for around twenty years, you could have trouble proving it."

"How?"

"Because the single chamber tanks were not in general usage at that time. The most common type was a dual chamber model. The first chamber had a series of three baffles designed to keep the solids on the surface and allow only primary treated liquids to pass to the second chamber where it passes through a rubble bed. I haven't been able to work out the purpose for this chamber. Subsequent septic tanks were of the single chamber type because it was realised that the bacteria in the liquid was what broke down the contents. While the outlet pipe was only marginally lower than the inlet, inside the tank was a tee junction with the long leg pointing down, this effectively meant that the liquid passing out of the tank was drawn from about twelve inches below the seething mass of nasties bobbing around on the surface."

"When did the single chamber tank come into use?"

"In the early sixties."

"I think that I have enough to go on for the time being, thanks Doc, I owe you a beer."

"Don't you want to hear the rest?"

"There's more?"

"I have told you that he was a male Caucasian of about thirty years of age. Now let me paint the rest of the picture, he was six feet tall and was in all probability a man of some athletic prowess. This much I can tell from the bone structure. It is likely that he served in the Second World War and received a minor gunshot wound. Appearance was also important to this man and he certainly took pride in his."

"How can you tell this from the bones?"

"It's not just the bones that we look at. While the long legs suggests the athletic ability, his signet ring was of a small diameter so he wasn't overweight. The fact that he wore it on his left hand suggests a mixture of vanity and practicality. If he was to play a sport such as tennis he wouldn't wear it on the hand that held the racquet unless he was left handed, but he wore his watch on his left wrist and lefties usually wear theirs on their right wrist. And if you look closely at the bone that ran from his left wrist to his index finger you will see that there are some lumps that suggests that at some time he wielded a hammer with more enthusiasm than skill. Now while there is a certain amount of conjecture in all of this, I am confident that it will give you a reasonably accurate picture of your man."

"What about his war service? You mentioned something about that."

"Ah yes! See here, this is the bone in the upper left arm, by the way my report will use the correct medical terminology for all of this but for you I'm keeping it simple, now if you look closely you will see a lump on the side of the bone, If this was a fracture you would see evidence of the bone having knitted together, that evidence does not exist. This indicates a gunshot wound that just grazed the bone as the most likely cause and given his age and the most likely time for that to happen would be during the Second World War."

"Could it have been the result of a hunting accident?"

"Unlikely. The most common penetration as a result of hunting accidents is for the bullet to traverse from a low point in an upwards trajectory, usually as a result of a dropped weapon. This wound had a horizontal trajectory common it a war wound, hence the suggestion of war service."

"How soon may I have your finished report?"

"In a day or two. What you will get will be proven facts. I will also give you several hypotheses based on those facts. Now you will not be able to use these as hard evidence, they will be in the report to assist you in your identification process."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Brownlow's Story

I couldn't believe it, there I was looking forward to another session with the adorable Cynthia Swain and what should happen, she puts up the shutters, that's what! 'Peter and I are trying to make a go of our marriage and I don't want anything to jeopardise our plans'. Just who the hell does she think she is? And that business about not knowing anything, huh! A likely story. She lived there, she was having it off with Paul Thomas, I'm pretty sure the body is his and she knows nothing! Pull the other leg, it's got bells on it. I'm almost certain that the remains are all that's left of him and I just know that she's in this up to her pretty little neck. Now all that I have to do is prove it and then let's see her refuse me.

I wandered back to my desk still thinking about her. Why can't I get her off my mind? My previous lovers never had this affect on me so why does she? Could it be because none of my previous lovers ever dumped me, in fact I had to waste a lot of energy avoiding them.

I put together the facts as I knew them, they were a little thin on the ground and I needed more time to get things sorted. I walked to the Chief Inspector's office to see if he would allow more time for the investigation. "No!" The was basically what I thought he'd say and I wasn't wrong. "There is no way that I can commit that much time and effort to what is essentially ancient history. There is nothing on our files that would warrant a continuation of this investigation. If this man wasn't missed then why should he be missed now?"

"How do we know that he wasn't missed?"

"While you've been wandering around closely questioning one witness, many times it seems, we lowly footsloggers have been going back through the files of that era, and do you know what we found? Nothing! Certainly nothing to justify wasting any more of our valuable time."

"Could it be that we were looking in the wrong place?"

"Enlighten me."

"Up until now we've been looking for someone vaguely fitting a not very precise description, needle in a haystack stuff. I, on the other hand have a name to attach to that body and that gives us something tangible to work on."

"Okay, against my better judgement I'll give you another twenty-four hours. Now get out of here before I change my mind. By the way, I think that you should find someone else to question."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What I mean is that there must be other witnesses other than Mrs Swain. Now you are going down to Archives."

Archives would have to be the most boring place on earth. I spent the best part of two hours going over two years supply of missing persons records without any luck at all. Paul Thomas had not been declared a missing person in all that time.

"No luck?" Constable Henderson the dusty custodian of the dusty records asked her superfluous question.

"It looks as if who I thought it was wasn't missed, at least no-one reported him missing."'

"How certain are you that it is this person?"

"Almost positive. If it is who I think it is he was supposed to have run off to England with someone else's wife."

"Then why don't you check with the Passport Office and see if he actually left the country, they would have records of any visas issued around that time."

"You are a genius, I could kiss you."

"Cease and desist Sir. What would my husband and my three adult sons, who by the way are all first division rugby union forwards, say if they that I was in danger of being kissed by you."

I didn't answer, I heard nothing that came after 'cease and desist' because I was well on my way out of the basement before she had finished what she was saying.

The Department of Immigration staff were not exactly falling over themselves to assist my investigation, but then they weren't entirely unhelpful either, they did nothing. Bloody public servants, at first they said that there was no possible way for me to have access to their records without first getting a subpoena. I threatened to not only get one but to lodge a complaint to my Minister about the way that they were obstructing a criminal investigation.

Reluctantly I was led down this long corridor to a small office populated by a clerk who sat trying to keep awake while attempting solve the Herald (Sydney Morning Herald) crossword. "This gentleman, one of this state's finest, would like you to check back through the microfilm records to see if a visa was issued to a Paul Thomas."

"No can do."

"How so?" Talkative aren't we.

"Firstly I need a 72634 dash 5 in triplicate and subpoena before I can check my records."

"Okay, where do I get one of those 72634 dash 5 forms?

"It can only be obtained by applying to the Minister."

"And just how do I do that?"

He thrust a sheaf of papers at me with a pained sigh. "Just fill out this 72634 dash 2 which is a request for the release of information. It will then need to be signed by a Supreme Court Judge, the completed and duly signed form is then forwarded through the appropriate Department channels to Canberra. When we get the authorisation back we will contact you and arrange a time for you to view the appropriate file."

"Keep it calm, count to ten." I told myself. "Okay let's see if there is any way that we can cut through the bullshit. I am in the middle of a murder investigation, trying to establish the identity of a body that has been dead for the best part of twenty years and you jumped up bureaucrats are doing your level best to hinder my investigation. How would it be if I were to go to MY Minister and request a court order forcing you to comply with my request." It was all bluff mind you, I knew full well that State Jurisdiction did not have precedence over Commonwealth.