Chapter 21
The sight of Jamie naked and exposed was a sobering reality check. It reminded her that we’re all the same when we die.
Kelly perched on the same steel stool as yesterday and watched Ted switch on his mic. Their conversation sat between them.
‘Ready for this again?’ Ted asked.
She nodded. ‘I’m good.’
‘You don’t look well; are you feeling a bit peaky?’ he asked as he looked inside the horrific wounds to Jamie’s upper torso.
It was her father’s way of telling her she looked like shit.
‘I’m not sleeping,’ she told him.
‘Par for the course in an investigation like this,’ he said.
She nodded.
She’d seen mangled bodies plenty of times before but having just listened to Jamie being discussed so vividly on a podcast made her tremendously uncomfortable.
She felt as though when alive, he had been a player on a stage, like somebody’s puppet, and he’d walked blindly into danger.
Or perhaps it wasn’t blind. Why else hide his sister with a huge suitcase full of documents?
Kelly was a realist. Some might say a cynic.
Her mind was analytical and logical. She must be convinced of something before believing in it.
She was a fan of conspiracy theories because most of them were entertaining and scandalous to contemplate, but that didn’t mean she believed them, not because they didn’t make sense but because they were often debunked by experts.
Conspiracy theorists were treated as nutcases, outsiders, charlatans and weirdos.
But the DiggerMan didn’t come across that way and neither did the people discussing Hampton-Dent.
They were convincing.
So was her father.
She acknowledged that the Twin Towers turning to dust when they were made of solid steel was weird, and JFK being assassinated by his own government was shocking, and chemtrails were real, but the moon landings being faked and flat earth theories discredited themselves before they had a chance with a mainstream audience.
But she’d always had affection for loners.
Those with enough courage to stand up to the crowd.
That was what DiggerMan did. He used his voice for the people who couldn’t.
That was what was so special about the internet.
Social media allowed ordinary people to be part of the conversation without the establishment interfering, and that was what appealed to most people with a rebel inside them, like Kelly.
But was there more to it other than clickbait and sensationalism?
‘Are you all right?’ Ted asked her, jolting her.
She realised she was staring at the body.
‘It’s such a waste, isn’t it? He was so successful and clever.’
Ted stared at her. ‘You know a fair bit about him already then?’
‘Somewhat. It’s a reminder that life can be snuffed out any minute.’
‘Isn’t it just? I have no idea how I’ve lasted so long,’ Ted said.
‘Don’t talk like that, Dad. You are everything to me and Lizzie.’
They shared a rare moment of emotional exchange.
It wasn’t that their relationship was sterile, anything but.
Ted threw Lizzie around screaming, onto sofas and rugs, and she chased him around the park in Keswick on market days.
Their life together was vital and growing in energy by the day as Lizzie became a toddler.
But these quiet moments where Kelly told Ted how precious he was were rare.
She understood how little time he had left compared to what had gone before, and they were playing catch-up.
She’d only discovered her true paternity a couple of years ago.
For forty years she’d believed another man was her blood father.
They’d lost so much time. Which was one reason she turned up to so many of his autopsies.
It might seem macabre, but it was time she could spend learning from him, watching him, loving him.
The man on the slab told them everything they needed to know about how transitory life was.
‘And this is the young woman’s brother, you say?’ Ted looked at Jamie. She nodded.
‘How terribly sad. Is it a domestic do you think?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure. She was hiding away in a hotel in Skelwith Bridge for a reason.’
‘Ah, the German spy of Skelwith Bridge!’
‘You know it?’
‘Of course!’
‘Apparently she asked to stay in the exact room.’
‘Do you think it’s significant?’
‘I’m not discounting it. Anybody who hides something purposely in the room occupied by the ghost of a spy deserves attention to me,’ she said. ‘Not because I believe in ghosts but because they did.’
‘Quite. Well, he hid out in Rydal Caves if that means anything to you. I read local histories when I get the chance.’ He winked over his mask and she smiled at him. They got back to the man on his slab.
‘Falls are brutally violent,’ Ted said, beginning his examination of the body. He walked around it and observed the corpse. Kelly watched him and imagined Jamie in life, persuasive, cogent, winning.
A brother.
Ted spoke into his mic. Two assistants busied themselves.
‘Extensive blunt force trauma. Multiple injuries consistent with a fall from height of approximately thirty feet. Impact site appears to be the cranium and left shoulder. Visible evidence of defensive preservation wounds on both hands and wrists, indicative of trying to break his fall.’
He looked up at Kelly.
‘Is that conclusive?’ she asked.
‘Not one hundred per cent. However, it’s what I look for in suicides, because genuine ones give up and don’t try to break their fall.’
‘Christ, is that true?’
‘We can only go on the data. On average, accidental falls are more survivable because people try to protect their heads. I’m sorry, it’s not a very pleasant conversation for a Wednesday evening is it?’
Kelly listened to the list of terrible wounds, and it was moments like this that she knew a spirit – the essence of somebody – had left a body. Jamie’s body was simply a pile of flesh and bone lying on the gurney.
‘Does what you know about him lead you to see this as a desperate conclusion to a psychological problem?’
She considered his explanation and decided that no, from what she knew about Jamie Robbins so far, he showed no signs of mental disorder.
‘Three in four suicide fatalities have tried before,’ he said.
‘Jesus. He doesn’t fall into that category either.’
Discussing suicide stats was probably one of the more rigorously cheerless topics she’d contemplated lately.
‘Forty-four per cent have a mental illness,’ he carried on.
‘This is where your psychological autopsy comes in?’ she asked him and he nodded. He’d explained to her that though you couldn’t prove without doubt that somebody did not actually jump from height, the behaviour of the person in the run-up to the incident often was the biggest indicator.
‘Subarachnoid haemorrhage, cervical spine fractures, rib fractures and numerous fractures of upper body appendages.’
She found Ted’s voice soothing despite the topic of the monologue.
‘It’s as if he dived off the banister,’ he said.
She waited for him to explain.
‘If he fell over the lip of the wooden rail, his body would have flipped, like an acrobat. It indicates that he had no time to do that. He went straight down.’
‘Witnesses heard him shout out.’
‘Are you sure it was him?’
‘Not one hundred per cent.’
‘Because that would indicate him being conscious and further support the defensive injuries. He landed awkwardly, but then thirty feet isn’t a long time to think about what’s happening.
We both agree that the banister was almost impossible to fall over, especially if you’ve stayed in the hotel three nights already, and the items indicating a scuffle, I think, give you your answer.
I’d treat this as homicide unless more evidence comes to light.
That’s what I’ll write in my report, so you have my verdict, for now. ’
Kelly chewed her lip and nodded.
Two homicides, three if she counted the baby.
‘If there was a scuffle inside or outside his room, and he fought with someone, perhaps that explains why the Clem Allins meditation he was listening to was paused? He wasn’t expecting somebody. The conference was busy. Anybody could have entered the hotel and gone up to the second floor.’
‘Quite. OK, let’s turn him over.’
An assistant helped him turn the body and Kelly looked away.
It felt improper for her to watch as Jamie’s exposed flesh was dumped so unceremoniously on its front, like a wet seal.
When she looked back, she could see huge blood pooling and discolouration and was reminded just how quickly a human body deteriorated once it had expired.
It was in the process of consuming itself right now and Ted’s job was to investigate the clues left behind before it turned to biological mush.
Nature sure did a fine job of cleaning up after itself, but when a human soul was involved it wasn’t easy to appreciate.
She turned away again as Ted took samples from crevices and orifices, then examined Jamie’s nails and hair. She found it incredible that Ted still knew what he was looking at when he rummaged through Jamie’s broken scalp.
‘Did you see this?’ he asked.
Kelly went to the body and Ted showed her Jamie’s right hand. His forefinger and middle finger seemed to be welded together with glue.
‘He grabbed something before he died.’
‘Or as he was dying?’ Kelly asked.
Ted prised apart his fingers and revealed a small torn strip of purple material.
‘Gold dust,’ Kelly said.
It looked as though it came from the torn scarf they found outside his room. The purple one which had been tossed aside, as if by accident, but now Kelly knew that the wearer had contact with Jamie as he slipped.
Or was pushed.