Square Snapper (Detective Inspector Burgess) (2 page)

His favourite toy, a large barbecue, dominated his outdoor patio. He had also placed a few stackable plastic chairs and a coffee table for those summer evenings spent contemplating the stars, Elephant beer in hand. He could hear the seven o’clock news from his grandmother’s living room upstairs and, after depositing his keys on the bureau just inside the door, switched on the TV to hear the island’s spin on the day’s events.

He wandered over to the fridge and pulled out a cold beer. As would be expected, the murder was the top story and Johnny McCabe, microphone in hand, was at the scene taking his time describing each gruesome detail for maximum impact. “They’ll be selling a lot of Bermuda Gazettes tomorrow morning,” thought Burgess as he spotted one of their journalists in the background. He watched as the photographer panned the crime scene showing the body, now covered with a sheet, resting on the ironshore next to the water’s edge while Johnny, in an unusually civic minded mood, issued a call to the public to come forward with any information. He must have seen the body. God help those in Miami manning Crime Stoppers tonight, mused Burgess. Bermuda being such a small island, the police had an arrangement with the Miami-based Crime Stoppers unit. This way, tips could be called in anonymously to an 800 number; something that worked well considering that everybody in Bermuda knew everybody else… and as Bermudians liked to joke, even if you didn’t know them, you could still be related to them!

He noticed uniformed police protected the area from trespassers and he thought he caught a glimpse of Jacintha Brangman making her way back to her car. Jacintha. Now there was an enigma. He wondered what she did for relaxation. What would it be like to hold the hand of a woman who spent her time cutting up the dead? Quickly banishing that unsavoury thought from his head, he walked out on to the patio, taking a pull on his beer. Putting his feet up on the coffee table, he took out his notebook and began to read.

“Leon! Leon! Are you out there?”

“Yes, Nana,” he shouted up to the picture window. Nana never called him by his nickname. She was of the old style, very correct, almost formal. You never used slang with Nana and you always minded your manners. Even Archie was a different man around her. She adored him and treated him as one of the family and Archie, in turn, would do anything for Nana. He was always tinkering with her car and threatening to give her a lift on his vintage Triumph bike. She would giggle coyly and give Archie another slice of lemon meringue pie or whatever other food she had cooked for her “boys”. Nana knew she had them both wrapped around her little finger.

“Well come on up here and help me finish this ham and macaroni… and fill me in on this murder. You caught him yet?”

There was no escaping the enquiring mind of Nana. Burgess looked forward to his meal with his grandmother who had an insatiable zest for life and an even greater need for the latest information. If information was power, then Nana was queen of the neighbourhood.

Chapter 3

Archie surveyed the ramshackle bedroom. It was in an abandoned cottage on the outskirts of Somerset, full of old Styrofoam fast food containers and stinking of rotting food and mould. Cardboard and bits of newspaper had been stuffed in the window slots and wild chickens were clucking and scratching amongst the debris. The man’s body was lying on what was left of a stained mattress visible in the dim light, lips drawn back in a rictus. Froth had already dried around his cracked lips. His emaciated arm still had the rubber tourniquet around it and the needle lay close to his hand. Outside it was hot and humid. It actually felt a little cooler in the dark cottage but the smell of decay was sickening.

Archie immediately produced a jar of Vicks vapour rub and placed some under each nostril. He offered the jar to the uniformed officer guarding the scene.

“Helps with the smell,” he explained as the officer looked at him quizzically. “A trick I learned from a pathologist in Barbados.” The officer took some gratefully, removing the handkerchief he had been holding over his nose and swatting at the flies with his notebook.

“What do you think, Detective?”

“At first blush, I’d say massive overdose. Doesn’t look like it took long for him to die and it can’t have been pretty either.” Archie bent closer to the body. “Pin-point pupils, froth, discolouration of the fingernails. I’ll bet it’s heroin. Has the pathologist been called?”

“Yes, we radioed this in some time ago but she’s coming from King Edward’s, so it’ll probably take about half an hour before she gets here.”

Jacintha Brangman’s headquarters were in the basement at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital located close to the capital city of Hamilton, about forty minutes from where the body had been found. While the island, shaped like a fish hook, is only twenty-one miles long, the legal speed limit is around twenty miles per hour, so even cruising at thirty, it would still take a while for her to reach Somerset on the western tip.

“Do we know who he is?”

“Yeah, Sinclair Butterfield. Better known around here as ‘Sinky’ - although some prefer to call him ‘Stinky’. He’s a known addict. Harmless. Does odd jobs for people.”

Archie turned from the body and shooed away a chicken, observing that the Government’s Feral Chickens Working Group had not got as far as Somerset. This was the body appointed to cull the wild chickens that roamed the island. There had been a huge public outcry for them to be dealt with in the wake of the increasing cases of bird flu reported in the international news. He looked around. Some days this job depressed him; the total waste of a life. On the other hand, he had never seen an overdose victim with such an expression on his face. The back of his neck prickled. There was something not quite right about this. He took out his cell phone and dialled Burgess’s number.

“Well, flag your concerns to her and have her do more than a cursory examination of the body. Perhaps a complete tox report and look for any other signs that it might be more than just an overdose. Also, make sure you get forensics to check for fingerprints on any works.”

“Okay, gotcha. Here she comes now. I’ll call you back.”

At this moment the familiar Subaru of the pathologist pulled up. Out she stepped, black bag in hand. Dressed in a sun dress which floated around her and with a wide headband holding back her long, wavy hair, nobody would guess that she was there to examine a corpse.

“
Second
overdose?” Archie’s interest was really piqued feeling that familiar tingling at the base of his skull.

“Yes, another one early this morning on Court Street. A hooker, apparently. I’m pretty sure it’s diacetylmorphine but I want to run some more tests.”

“So I was right. Heroin’s the culprit. What do
you
think? The body doesn’t look right to me but I can’t put my finger on it.”

Jacintha was fully focused. Snapping on her latex gloves, she crouched down beside the body and deftly went to work examining it closely and putting plastic bags on its hands and bare feet.

“I agree with you, Detective, there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

“Archie, call me Archie,” he flashed her a roguish grin.

“Archie, then. This looks suspicious to me. That rictus could mean strychnine poisoning, but I’ll need to examine the body thoroughly in a better light and I’ll also order a toxicology report. Judging from rigour and his liver temperature, I’d say he’s been dead no more than a few hours at the most. Probably no more than six, even though the flies have already started laying larvae in his nose, eyes and mouth. They usually take a couple of days to hatch. We don’t have a resident bug expert – we could do with a ‘Grissom’ from ‘CSI: Las Vegas’, but I’m pretty happy with this preliminary time line without going into that.”

“Do you think they may call in forensics from Canada?” Archie began to sense things were going to spiral out of control if they couldn’t solve these cases pretty quickly.

“Well, if things carry on the way they have been, I’ll be glad of the help.” Jacintha looked up and warm brown eyes smiled at him. Archie felt his pulse quicken. No wonder Buddy was a little sweet on her. She was gorgeous and not a little intimidating.

Archie walked out of the cottage straight into the lens of the ZBF photographer. “How the hell do they get here so fast?” he wondered. Johnny McCabe thrust a microphone at him.

“No comment,” said Archie as he made his escape.
Oh God, now they
’
re really going to stir things up on the rumour mill.
Archie could only imagine the tongues wagging and opinions spouting on the popular People’s Corner aired on the radio each day. The e-mails and telephones would be abuzz with gossip. Archie had never known a place such as Bermuda for bush telegraph. Three dead bodies in two days and one definitely a murder; this was going to rattle some cages in very high places.

Chapter 4

Burgess wiped his shaven head and neck carefully with his handkerchief. His office air conditioner, balanced precariously in the window and duct-taped around the edges for waterproofing, left a lot to be desired. It was noisy, smelly and basically did not work. It was ironic really. The easiest way to break in anywhere was to push in the air conditioning unit. He was not surprised that nobody had bothered to break into his office. The furniture was old and the petty cash was, well, very petty. He sat with the telephone to his ear murmuring a “yes sir” from time to time, half listening to the phones and conversations of his colleagues in the background.

This was the worst part of the job. The dead bodies, the hardened criminals, the long hours, all of that he could take, but having to keep his superiors happy, that was another story. This time it was the Superintendent. Normally his boss, the Detective Chief Inspector, would handle communications with the Super. However, recently diagnosed with cancer, he was currently away at Johns Hopkins receiving treatment and the task of heading up investigations and reporting to the superintendent now rested fully on Burgess’s shoulders. He preferred a hands-on approach to solving cases and normally left the politicking and handholding to the DCI. Every encounter with the superintendent only increased his admiration for his boss.

“Detective Inspector Burgess, we’ve got to get this resolved asap.” He pronounced it “Ay-sap” which irritated Burgess.

“Yessir.”

“The Minister of Tourism is all over me. If this girl is a tourist, we’ve got to get her identified and minimize the damage to the island’s reputation. If she’s Canadian, we’ve got to be even more careful. Remember the fall-out from that botched investigation of the murdered Canadian boy? It’s still a political hot potato.” He was referring to a case several years before which had soured relations with the Canadian Government and brought about a downturn in Canadian tourism to Bermuda. Bermudians had been outraged and, as justice had never been done, the wound had never fully healed. Bermudians were particularly sensitive to anything involving violence towards tourists as it offended their sense of hospitality and pride in their island.

“Yessir.”

“Where’re you on this?”

“We have men canvassing the Shaw Park neighbourhood and I’m waiting to get a report from the pathologist. She’s away from the hospital at the moment on another case.”