EQMM 2007-12 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fiction: THE MUMMY by Peter Turnbull

Art by Allen Davis

Fans of Peter Turnbull’s York police series starring DI Hennessey and Sergeant Yellich will be glad to know that they’ve got not only this new story to add to the series but a novel-length case out from Severn House. Booklist says of the book, entitled Chelsea Smile (May ‘07): “A solid British police procedural with a plot full of unexpected twists and a pair of protagonists who can play in the same league as any of Britain’s top cop duos.”

The body was found in the shrubs, next to the towpath, beside the York to Hull canal, out in the country, beyond the suburbs where the landscape is flat, and that year, courtesy of a rainy summer, the foliage was lush, lush enough to partially conceal a human corpse. The body in question was wrapped in a heavy-duty plastic sheeting like a rolled-up carpet and had been laid by the canal side, in long grass. It was found by a jogger. He had noticed it rather than found it. It had first caught his eye on the Saturday as he ran past. It was still there on the Sunday, when families walked the towpath. It was there on the Monday and still there on the Tuesday morning. But on the Tuesday evening the man, the jogger, found his thoughts turning on the length of rubber sheeting. It nagged him with a growing realisation that the item in question was just the right length and width to be the grossest form of fly-tipping. The realisation stayed with him, hovering in his mind like an annoying fly which by its noise took up a disproportionate amount of space. So that on the Wednesday he set out on his normal morning run taking with him a pair of gloves and ran until he reached the spot where the roll of plastic lay, slowed to a walk, and finally stood over it, and waited until another jogger going in the opposite direction had passed by. It had not been moved or disturbed in any way since he had first seen it: It was clearly his fate to find out if it contained what he feared it contained. The plastic was old, stiff, fragile to the touch. He took the edge of the roll and peeled it back He saw a hand. Human. Male, he thought.

He replaced the plastic, slowly, reverentially, and carried on jogging. There was a phone box on his route, and it was the closest phone to that stretch of the canal that he knew. He ran at a steady pace, until he reached the phone box. The box was occupied by a middle-aged lady, chatting excitedly, and the jogger sat on a dry stone wall until the occupant had finished talking, whereupon she replaced the phone and exited the box, holding the door open for him, saying she was sorry and hoped his call wasn’t urgent.

“No urgency at all,” replied the jogger. “No urgency at all.

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