Innocent Graves
Peter Robinson
The eighth novel in the critically acclaimed Inspector Alan Banks series. Detective Inspector Banks had seen crimes just as savage in London, but somehow the murder of a teenage girl seemed all the more shocking in the quiet Yorkshire village of Eastvale. Deborah Harrison had been found one foggy night in the churchyard behind St Mary's, strangled with the strap of her school satchel. But Deborah was no typical sixteen-year-old. Her father was a powerful financier who ran in the highest echelons of industry, defence and classified information. And Deborah, it seemed, enjoyed keeping secrets of her own…
Peter Robinson
Innocent Graves
The eighth book in the Inspector Banks series
Chapter 1
I
The night it all began, a thick fog rolled down the dale and enfolded the town of Eastvale in its shroud. Fog in the market square, creeping in the cracks between the cobbles; fog muffling the sound of laughter from the Queen’s Arms and muting the light through its red and amber panes; fog rubbing and licking against cool glass in curtained windows and insinuating its way through tiny gaps under doors.
And the fog seemed at its thickest in the graveyard of St. Mary’s Church, where a beautiful woman with long auburn hair wandered barefoot and drunk, a wineglass full of Pinot Noir held precariously in her hand.
She weaved her way between the squat, gnarled yews and lichen-stained stones. Sometimes she thought she saw ghosts, gray, translucent shapes flitting among the tombs ahead, but they didn’t frighten her.
And she came to the Inchcliffe Mausoleum.
It loomed ahead out of the fog, massive and magnificent: classical lines formed in marble, steps overgrown with weeds leading down to the heavy oak door.
But it was the angel she had come to see. She liked the angel. Its eyes were fixed on heaven, as if nothing earthly mattered, and its hands were clasped together in prayer. Though it was solid marble, she often fancied it was so insubstantial she could pass her hand right through it.
She swayed slightly, raised her glass to the angel and drained half the wine at one gulp. She could feel the cold, damp earth and grass under her feet.
“Hello, Gabriel,” she said, voice a little slurred. “I’m sorry but I’ve sinned again.” She hiccupped and put her hand to her mouth. “’Scuse me, but I just can’t seem to-”
Then she saw something, a black-and-white shape, sticking out from behind the mausoleum. Curious, she squinted and stumbled towards it. Only when she was about a yard away did she realize it was a black shoe and a white sock. With a foot still in it.
She tottered back, hand to her mouth, then circled around the back of the tomb. All she could make out were the pale legs, the fair hair, the open satchel and the maroon uniform of St. Mary’s School for Girls.
She screamed and dropped her glass. It shattered on a stone.
Then Rebecca Charters, wife of the vicar of St. Mary’s, fell to her knees on the broken glass and started to vomit.
II
The fog tasted of ashes, thought Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, as he pulled up his raincoat collar and hurried down the tarmac path towards the faint, gauzy light. Or perhaps he was being fanciful. Even though he hadn’t seen the body yet, he felt that familiar clenching in his stomach that murder always brought.
When he reached the scene, just off a narrow gravel path past the shrubbery, he saw the blurred silhouette of Dr. Glendenning through the canvas screen, bent over a vague shape lying on the ground, like a dumb-show in a Jacobean drama.
Fog had played havoc with the usual order of arrival. Banks himself had been at a senior officers’ meeting in Northallerton when he got the call, and he was consequently almost the last person to arrive. Peter Darby, crime-scene photographer, was there already, and so was Detective Inspector Barry Stott, who, for reasons clear to anyone who saw him, was more commonly known as “Jug-ears.” Stott, who had recently been transferred from Salford upon his promotion from detective sergeant, was a temporary replacement for DS Philip Richmond, who had gone to Scotland Yard to join a special computer unit.
Banks took a deep breath and walked behind the screen. Dr. Glendenning looked up, cigarette dangling from his mouth, its smoke indistinguishable from the fog that surrounded them.
“Ah, Banks…” he said in his lilting Edinburgh accent, then he shook his head slowly.
Banks looked down at the body. In all his years in Eastvale, he hadn’t had to deal with a crime like this. He had seen worse in London, of course, which was part of the reason he had left the Met and transferred up north. But you clearly couldn’t hide from it any more now. Not anywhere. George Orwell was right about the decline of the English murder, and this was exactly the kind of thing it had declined into.
The girl, about fifteen or sixteen by the look of her, lay on her back in the long grass behind a huge Victorian sepulchre, upon which stood a marble statue of an angel. The angel had its back turned to her, and through the fog Banks could make out the chipped feathers of its wings.
Her eyes stared into the fog, her long blonde hair lay fanned out around her head like a halo, and her face had a reddish-purple hue. There was a little cut by her left eye and some discoloration around her neck. A trickle of blood the shape of a large teardrop ran out of her left nostril.
Her maroon school blazer lay bunched up on the ground beside her, and her white blouse had been ripped open at the front; her bra had then been removed-roughly, by the looks of it.
Banks felt the urge to cover her. In his job, he had already seen far more than a man should, and it was little things like this that sometimes affected him more than the blood and guts. The girl looked so vulnerable, so callously violated. He could imagine her shame at being exposed this way, how she would blush and hurry to cover herself if she were alive. But she was beyond shame now.
Below her waist, someone had pulled her skirt up to reveal her thighs and pubic region. Her long legs lay open at a forty-five-degree angle. Her white socks were down around her ankles. She wore shiny black shoes with buckles fastened at the sides.
Lying beside her was an open satchel. The strap had come free of the metal ring at one end. Using his pen, Banks pushed back the flap and read the neatly inked address:
Miss Deborah Catherine Harrison
28 Hawthorn Close
Eastvale
North Yorkshire
England
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
European Community
Earth
Solar System
Milky Way
The Universe.
He smiled sadly to himself. It was a typical teenager’s sense of playfulness, exactly the same thing he had done at school.
Hawthorn Close meant money, as did St. Mary’s in general. It was an area of large, mostly detached houses, each with an acre or two of garden, long drives and croquet lawns shaded by copper beeches. To live there, you had to make enough money to employ a gardener, at the very least. St. Mary’s School required money, too-about £1200 per term. Banks had checked when he first arrived in town, but soon found he couldn’t afford to send his daughter, Tracy, there.
Banks cadged some evidence bags from one of the SOCOs and, holding the satchel by its edges, tipped the contents inside one of them. All he found were a couple of exercise books with the name “Deborah Catherine Harrison” written on the cover, a portable chess set, a few cosmetic items and three loose tampons in cellophane wrappers. But why had the satchel been open? he wondered. The buckles seemed strong enough, so he doubted it came open during a struggle. Had someone been looking for something?
Glendenning directed one of his underlings to take oral, vaginal and a
nal swabs and comb the pubic hair. Then he groaned and got to his feet. “I’m getting old, Banks,” he said, massaging his knees. “Too old for this sort of thing.” He jerked his head towards the body. Tall and white-haired, with a nicotine-stained mustache, the doctor was probably in his late fifties, Banks guessed.
They moved away, letting the screen block their view of the victim. Every so often, Peter Darby’s flash exploded, creating a strobe-light effect in the fog. Banks accepted one of Glendenning’s Senior Service. Normally he smoked Silk Cut tipped, but he had cut down drastically on his smoking over the last few months and wasn’t even carrying a packet with him. Well, he thought, as Glendenning proffered a gold, initialled lighter, cutting down had been easy enough to do in a lazy summer with no murders to investigate. Now it was November and there was a body at his feet. He lit up and coughed.
“Ought to get that cough seen to, laddie,” said Glendenning. “Might be a touch of lung cancer, you know.”
“It’s nothing. I’m just getting a cold, that’s all.”
“Aye…Well, I don’t suppose you dragged me out here on a mucky night like this just to talk about your health, did you?”
“No,” said Banks. “What do you make of it?”
“I can’t tell you much yet, but judging by her color and the marks on her throat, I’d say asphyxia due to ligature strangulation.”
“Any sign of the ligature?”
“Off the record, that satchel strap fits the bill pretty nicely.”
“What about time of death?”
“Oh, come off it, laddie.”
“Vaguely?”
“Not more than two or three hours ago. But don’t quote me on that.”
Banks looked at his watch. Eight o’clock. Which meant she was probably killed between five and six. Not on her way home from school, then. At least not directly.
“Was she killed here?”
“Aye. Almost certainly. Hypostasis is entirely consistent with the position of the body.”
“Any sign of the rest of her underwear?”
Glendenning shook his head. “Only the brassiere.”
“When can you get her on the table?”
“First thing in the morning. Coming?”
Banks swallowed; the fog scratched his throat. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Fine. I’ll reserve you the best seat in the house. I’m off home. You can get her to the mortuary now.”
And with that, Glendenning turned and faded into the fog.
Banks stood alone for a moment trying to forget the girl he had just seen spread-eagled so cruelly before him, trying desperately not to see Tracy in her place. He stubbed out his cigarette carefully on the side of the Inchcliffe Mausoleum and pocketed the butt. No point leaving red herrings at the crime scene.
A couple of yards away, he noticed a light patch on the grass. He walked over and squatted to get a closer look. It looked and smelled as if someone had been sick. He could also make out the stem and fragments of a wineglass, which seemed to have smashed on the stone edging of a grave. He picked up one of the slivers carefully between thumb and forefinger. It was stained with blood or wine; he couldn’t be certain which.
He saw DI Stott within hearing range and called him over.
“Know anything about this?” he asked.
Stott looked at the glass and vomit. “Rebecca Charters. Woman who discovered the body,” he said. “Bit of an oddball. She’s in the vicarage. WPC Kemp is with her.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to her later.” Banks pointed to the mausoleum. “Anyone had a look in there yet?”
“Not yet. I sent PC Aiken to see if he could come up with a key from the vicar.”
Banks nodded. “Look, Barry, someone’s got to break the news to the girl’s parents.”
“And seeing as I’m the new lad on the block…”
“That’s not what I meant. If you’re not comfortable with the job, then get someone else to do it. But get it done.”
“Sorry,” said Stott, taking his glasses off and wiping them on a white handkerchief. “I’m a bit…” He gestured towards the body. “Of course I’ll go.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll join you there soon. Before you go, call in DC Gay and DS Hatchley and tell them to get down here. Someone might have to drag Jim out of The Oak.”
Stott raised his eyebrows. Banks noticed his little moue of distaste at the mention of Detective Sergeant Hatchley. Well, he thought, that’s his cross to bear.
“And get as many officers out on the streets as you can. I want every house in the area canvassed as soon as possible. It’s going to be a long, busy night, but we’d better work fast. People forget quickly. Besides, by tomorrow the vultures will be here.”
“Vultures?”
“Press, TV people, sightseers. It’s going to be a circus, Barry. Prepare yourself.”
Stott nodded. PC Aiken turned up with the key to the mausoleum. Banks borrowed a torch from one of the search team, and he and Stott trod carefully down the weed-covered steps.
The heavy wooden door opened after a brief struggle with the key, and they found themselves in the dark with the dead; six sturdy coffins rested on trestles. A few tentacles of fog slid down the stairs and through the door after them, wreathing around their feet.
The small tomb didn’t smell of death, only of earth and mold. Fortunately, there were no fresh Inchcliffes buried there; the family had left Eastvale fifty years ago.
All Banks could see on his first glance around were the spider-webs that seemed to be spun in the very air itself. He gave a little shudder and shone his torch over the floor. There, in the corner furthest from the entrance, lay two empty vodka bottles and a pile of cigarette ends. It was hard to tell how recent they were, but they certainly weren’t fifty years old.
They found nothing else of interest down there, and it was with great relief that Banks emerged into the open air again; foggy as it was, it felt like a clear night after the inside of the tomb. Banks asked the SOCOs to bag the empty bottles and cigarette ends and search the place thoroughly.
“We’ll need a murder room set up at the station,” he said, turning to Stott again, “and a van parked near the scene; make it easy for people to come forward. Exhibits Officer, phone lines, civilian staff, the usual thing. Get Susan Gay to see to it. Better inform the Chief Constable, too,” Banks added with a sinking feeling.
At the moment, Banks was senior man in Eastvale CID, as Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe had broken his leg while fixing his drystone wall. Technically, Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Wormsley, from North Yorkshire Regional HQ at Northallerton, was supposed to be in charge of a murder investigation. However, Banks knew from experience not to expect much beyond the occasional phone call from DCS Wormsley; he was rumored to be far too close to finishing his scale matchstick model of the Taj Mahal to be bothered with a mere murder. If it came from anywhere, Banks knew, the main hindrance would come from the new chief constable: Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle, a high-flier of the pushy, breathe-down-your-neck school of police management.
“We’ll also need a thorough ground-search of the graveyard,” Banks went on, “but we might be better doing that in daylight, especially if this fog disperses a bit during the night. Anyway, make sure the place is well secured.” Banks looked around. “How many entrances are there?”
“Two. One off North Market Street and one off Kendal Road, just by bridge.”
“Should be easy to secure, then. The wall looks high enough to deter any interlopers, but we’d better have a couple of men on perimeter patrol, just to make sure. The last thing we need is some intrepid reporter splashing crime-scene photos all over the morning papers. Is there any access from the riverside?”
Stott shook his head. “The wall’s high there, too, and it’s topped with broken glass.”
“Welcoming sort of place, isn’t it?”
“I understand they’ve had a bit of
vandalism.”
Banks peered through the fog at the lights in the vicarage. They looked like disembodied eyes. “You’re a bit of a churchman, aren’t you, Barry?”
Stott nodded. “Yes. St. Cuthbert’s, though, not St. Mary’s.”
Banks nodded towards the vicarage. “Do you know who the vicar is here?”
“Father Daniel Charters.”
Banks raised his eyebrows. “I thought so. I don’t know all the details, but isn’t he the one who’s been in the news a bit lately?”
“He is,” Stott said through gritted teeth.
“Interesting,” said Banks “Very interesting.” And he wandered off towards the vicarage.
III
The woman who answered Banks’s knock at the back door was in her mid-thirties, he guessed, with a lustrous cascade of auburn hair spilling over her shoulders, an olive complexion, large hazel eyes and the fullest, most sensuous lips he had ever seen. She also had a stunned, unfocused look on her face.
“I’m Rebecca Charters,” she said, shaking his hand. “Please come through.”
Banks followed her down the hall. A tall woman, she was wearing a heavy black shawl draped over her shoulders and a loose, long blue skirt that flowed over the swell of her hips almost down to the stone flags of the hallway. Her feet were bare and dirty, with blades of grass stuck to her ankles and instep. There was also a fresh cut by the Achilles tendon of her right foot. As she walked, her hips swayed just a little more than he would have expected in a vicar’s wife. And was it his imagination, or did she seem a little unsteady on her pins?
She led him into a living-room with a high ceiling and dull, striped wallpaper. WPC Kemp stood by the door, and Banks told her she could leave now.
Bottle-green velour curtains were drawn across the bay window against the fog. An empty tiled fireplace stood directly across from the door, and in front of it lay a huge bundle of brown-and-white fur that Banks took to be a large dog of some kind. Whatever it was, he hoped it stayed there. Not that he disliked dogs, but he couldn’t stand the way they slobbered and fussed over him. Cats were much more Banks’s kind of animal. He liked their arrogance, their independence and their sense of mischief, and would have one for a pet were it not that Sandra, his wife, was violently allergic.
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