Innocent Graves

by Peter Robinson

  Hatchley grunted. “These foreigners would lie as soon as look at you,” he said. “Especially to cover up for one another.”

  “West Yorkshire CID are already checking it out,” Banks went on, “but I’m afraid Detective Sergeant Hatchley has, in his inimitable fashion, probably put his finger on the truth of the matter. So we’ll take this alibi with a large pinch of salt. DI Blackstone said they’ll sit on Jelačić until we get there. I think we’ll let him sweat for a couple more hours.

  “Now we don’t have anything in from the lab yet, but from my observations of the scene, what we’ve got here looks like a sex murder. There was an arranged quality to it all. But I want to stress looks like. Right now, we just don’t know enough. There are several other avenues we simply can’t afford to overlook.” He counted them off on his fingers. “School, family, Jelačić, boyfriends and the couple at the vicarage, for starters. Rebecca Charters lied to me last night when I asked where her husband had been at the time of the crime. She gave him a false alibi and I’d like to know why he needed it, especially given the recent scandal involving him. We also need to know a lot more about Deborah Harrison’s life. Not just her movements yesterday, but her interests, her activities, her sex life, if she had one, and her past. We need to know what made her tick, what kind of person she was. Any questions?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Good. Barry, I’d like you and Sergeant Hatchley to spend the morning going through the records of all known sex offenders in the county. You know the procedure. If anyone sounds likely, make inquiries. After that, ask around at some of the restaurants and cafés in the St. Mary’s area, places that might have been closed after eight or nine last night, when the uniforms did their house-to-house. You never know, our man might have stopped off for a cup of tea on his way to the graveyard.”

  Stott nodded.

  “And, I’d also like you to try and find out anything you can about Jelačić from records, immigration, wherever. Does he have form back home? Has he ever committed a sex offense of any kind there?”

  Stott scribbled notes on his pad.

  “Susan, I’d like you to team up with me and check out a few things closer to home. For a start we’ve got to find out exactly what Deborah’s movements were yesterday, who saw her last. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So if there’s nothing else,” Banks said, “let’s get on with it. Everyone check in with the murder room at regular intervals.”

  Given their tasks, they drifted away. Except DC Susan Gay, who topped up her milky coffee and sat down again.

  “Why me, sir?” she asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “Why am I teamed up with you on this? I’m only a DC. By rights it should-”

  “Susan, whatever your rank, you’re a good detective. You’ve proved that often enough. Think about it. Taking Jim Hatchley around to a girls’ school, a vicarage and Sir Geoffrey Harrison’s…It would be like letting a bull loose in a china shop.”

  Susan’s lips twitched in a smile. “What exactly will we be doing?”

  “Talking to the family, friends, teachers. Trying to find out if this isn’t just the sex murder it seems, and if someone had a reason to want Deborah Harrison dead.”

  “Are you going to check her parents’ alibis?”

  Banks paused for a moment, then said, “Yes. Probably.”

  “The chief constable won’t like it, will he?”

  “Won’t like what?”

  “Any of it. Us going around poking our noses into the Harrison family background.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I mean, it’s pretty common knowledge around the station that they’re in the same funny-handshake brigade, sir. The chief constable and Sir Geoffrey, that is.”

  “Oh, is it?”

  “So rumor has it, sir.”

  “And you’re worried about your career.”

  “Well, I’ve passed my sergeant’s exam, as you know. I’m just waiting for an opening. I mean, I’m with you all the way, sir, but I wouldn’t want to make enemies in the wrong places, not just at the moment.”

  Banks smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s my balls on the chopping-block, not yours. I’ll cover you. My word on it.”

  Susan smiled back. “Well, that’s the first time not having any balls has ever done me any good.”

  II

  When she woke up shortly after eight o’clock on Tuesday morning, Rebecca Charters felt the hammering pain behind her eyes that signaled another hangover.

  It hadn’t always been like this, she reminded herself. When she had married Daniel twelve years ago, he had been a dynamic young cleric. She had loved his passionate faith and his dedication just as she had loved his sense of humor and his joy in the sensual world. Lovemaking had always been a pleasure for both of them. Until recently.

  She got up, put on her dressing-gown against the chill and walked over to the window. When they had first moved to St. Mary’s six years ago, her friends had all said how depressing and unhealthy it would be living in a graveyard. Just like the Brontës, darling, they said, and look what happened to them.

  But Rebecca didn’t find it at all depressing. She found it strangely comforting and peaceful to consider the worms seething at their work just below the overgrown surface. It put things in perspective. It also reminded her of that Marvell poem Patrick had quoted for her just on the brink of their affair, when things could have gone either way:

  But at my back I always hear

  Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

  And yonder all before us lie

  Deserts of vast eternity.

  Thy beauty shall no more be found;

  Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

  My echoing song; then worms shall try

  That long preserv’d virginity:

  And your quaint honor turn to dust;

  And into ashes all my lust.

  The grave’s a fine and private place,

  But none I think do there embrace.

  What an easy seduction it had been, after all. The poem worked. Marvell would have been proud of himself.

  Rebecca pulled back the curtain. Some fog still drifted around the yew trunks and the heavy gray headstones, but the drizzle seemed to have settled in now. From her window, she could see uniformed policemen methodically searching the ground around the church in a grid pattern.

  Deborah Harrison. She had often seen Deborah taking a short cut through the churchyard; she had also seen her in church and at choir practice, too, before the trouble began.

  Deborah’s father, Sir Geoffrey, had deserted St. Mary’s at the first hint of a scandal. The school had stuck with Daniel, but Sir Geoffrey, to whom appearances were far more important than truth, had made a point of turning his back, taking his family and a number of other wealthy and influential members of the congregation with him. And St. Mary’s was the wealthiest parish in Eastvale. Had been. Now the coffers were emptying fast.

  Rebecca rested her forehead against the cool glass and watched her breath mist up the window. She found herself doodling Patrick’s name with her fingernail and felt the need for him burn in her loins. She hated herself for feeling this way. Patrick was ten years younger than she was, a mere twenty-six, but he was so ardent, so passionate, always talking so excitedly about life and poetry and love. Though she needed him, she hated her need; though she determined every day to call it off, she desired nothing more than to lose herself completely in him.

  Like the drinking, Patrick was an escape; she had enough self-knowledge to work that out, at any rate. An escape from the poisoned atmosphere at St. Mary’s, from what she and Daniel had become, and, as she admitted in her darkest moments, an escape from her own fears and suspicions.

  Now this. It didn’t make sense, she tried to convince herself. Daniel couldn’t possibly be a murderer. Why would he want to murder someone as innocent as Deborah Harrison? Just because you feared a person might be guilt
y of one thing, did that mean he had to be guilty of something else, too?

  As she watched the policemen in their capes and Wellingtons poke through the long grass, she had to face the facts: Daniel had come home only after she had gone to see the angel; he had gone out before she thought she heard the scream; she hadn’t known where he was, and when he came back his shoes were muddy, with leaves and gravel stuck to their soles.

  III

  The mortuary was in the basement of Eastvale General Infirmary, an austere Victorian brick building with high drafty corridors and wards that Susan had always thought were guaranteed to make you ill if you weren’t already.

  The white-tiled post-mortem room, though, had recently been modernized, as if, she thought, the dead somehow deserved a healthier environment than the living.

  Chilled by the cooling unit rather than by the wind from outside, it had two shiny metal tables with guttered edges and a long lab bench along one wall, with glass-fronted cabinets for specimen jars. Susan had never dared ask about the two jars that looked as if they contained human brains.

  Dr. Glendenning’s assistants had already removed Deborah Harrison’s body from its plastic bag, and she lay, clothed as she had been in the graveyard, on one of the tables.

  It was nine o’clock, and the radio was tuned to “Wake up to Wogan.” “Do we have to listen to that rubbish?” Banks asked.

  “It’s normal, Banks,” said Glendenning. “That’s why we have it on. Millions of people in houses all around the country will be listening to Wogan now. People who aren’t just about to cut open the body of a sixteen-year-old girl. I suppose you’d like some fancy classical concert on Radio 3, wouldn’t you? I can’t say that the thought of performing a post-mortem to Elgar’s Enigma Variations would do a hell of a lot for me.” Glendenning stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and pulled on his surgical gloves.

  Susan smiled. Banks looked at her and shrugged.

  The girl on the slab wasn’t a human being, Susan kept telling herself. She was just a piece of dead meat, like at the butcher’s. She remembered June Walker, the butcher’s daughter, from school in Sheffield, and recalled the peculiar smell that always seemed to emanate from her. Odd, she hadn’t thought of June Walker in years.

  The smell-stale and sharp, but sweet, too-was here, all right, but it was buried under layers of formaldehyde and cigarette smoke, for both Glendenning and Banks were smoking furiously. She didn’t blame them. She had once seen a film on television in which an American woman cop rubbed some Vick’s or something under her nose to mask the smell of a decomposing body. Susan didn’t dare do such a thing herself for fear the others would laugh at her. After all, this was Yorkshire, not America.

  Still, as she watched Glendenning cut and probe at the girl’s clothing, then remove it for air-drying and storage, she almost wished she were a smoker. At least that smell was easier to wash away than the smell of death; that seemed to linger in her clothes and hair for days after.

  Deborah’s panties lay in a plastic bag on the lab bench. They weren’t at all like the navy-blue knickers, the “passion-killers,” that Susan had worn at school, but expensive, silky and rather sexy black panties. Maybe such things were de rigueur for St. Mary’s girls, Susan thought. Or had Deborah been hoping to impress someone? They still didn’t know if she’d had a boyfriend.

  Her school blazer lay next to the panties in a separate bag, and beside that lay her satchel. Vic Manson, the fingerprints expert, had sent it back early that morning, saying he had found clear prints on one of the vodka bottles but only blurred partials on the smooth leather surface of the satchel. DI Stott had been through Deborah’s blazer pockets and found only a purse with six pounds thirty-three pence in it, an old chewing-gum wrapper, her house keys, a cinema ticket stub and a half-eaten roll of Polo mints.

  After one of his assistants had taken photographs, Glendenning examined the face, noting the pinpoint hemorrhages in the whites of the eyes, eyelids and skin of the cheeks. Then he examined the weal on the neck.

  “As I said last night,” he began, “it looks like a clear case of asphyxia by ligature strangulation. Look here.”

  Banks and Susan bent over the body. Susan tried not to look into the eyes. Glendenning’s probe indicated the discolored weal around the front of the throat. “Whoever did this was pretty strong,” he said. “You can see how deeply the strap bit into the flesh. And I’d say our chappie was a good few inches taller than his victim. And she was tall for her age. Five foot six.” He turned to Susan. “That’s almost 168 centimeters, to the younger generation. See how the wound is deeper at the bottom, the way it would be if you were pulling a leather strap upwards?” He moved away and demonstrated on one of the assistants. “See?” Banks and Susan nodded.

  “Are you sure the satchel strap was the weapon?” Banks asked.

  Glendenning nodded. He picked it up and held it out. “You can see traces of blood on the edge here, where it broke the skin. We’re having it typed, of course, but I’d put money on this being your weapon.”

  Next, he set about removing the plastic bags that covered the hands. Gently-almost, Susan thought, like a manicurist-he held up each hand and peered at the fingernails. Deborah’s nails had been quite long, Susan noticed, not the bitten-to-the-quick mess hers had been when she was at school.

  When Glendenning got to the middle finger of her right hand, he murmured to himself, then took a shiny instrument from the tray and ran it under the top of the nail, calling to one of his assistants for a glassine envelope.

  “What is it?” Banks asked. “Did she put up a fight?”

  “Looks like she got at least one good scratch in. With a bit of luck we’ll be able to get DNA from this.”

  Passing quickly over the chest and stomach, Glendenning next picked up a probe and turned his attention to the pubic region. Susan looked away; she didn’t want to witness this indignity, and she didn’t care what anyone said or thought of her.

  But she couldn’t shut out the sound of Glendenning’s voice.

  “Hmm. Interesting,” he said. “No obvious signs of sexual interference. No bruising. No lacerations. Let’s have a look behind.”

  He flipped the body over; it slapped against the table like meat on a butcher’s block. Susan heard her heart beating fast and loud during the silence that followed.

  “No. Nothing,” Glendenning announced at last. “At least nothing obvious. I’m waiting for the test results on the swabs but I’d bet you a pound to a penny they’ll turn up nothing.”

  Susan turned back to face the two of them. “So she wasn’t raped?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Glendenning answered. “Of course, we won’t know for sure until we’ve had a good look around inside. And in order to do that…” He picked up a large scalpel.

  Glendenning bent over the body and started to make the Y incision from shoulders to pubes. He detoured around the tough tissue of the navel with a practiced flick of the wrist.

  “Right,” said Banks, turning to Susan, “We’d better go.”

  Glendenning looked up from the gaping incision and raised his eyebrows. “Not staying for the rest of the show?”

  “No time. We don’t want to be late for school.”

  Glendenning looked at the corpse and shook his head. “Can’t say I blame you. Some days I wish I’d stayed in bed.”

  As they left Glendenning to sort through the inner organs of Deborah Harrison, Susan had never felt quite so grateful to Banks in her life. Next time they were in the Queen’s Arms, she vowed she would buy him a pint. But she wouldn’t tell him why.

  Chapter 3

  I

  St. Mary’s School wasn’t exactly Castle Howard, but it certainly looked impressive enough to be used as a location in a BBC classic drama.

  Banks and Susan turned through the high, wrought-iron gates and drove along a winding driveway; sycamores flanked both sides, laying down a carpet of rust and gold leaves; double-winged seeds sp
un down like helicopter blades in the drizzle.

  Through the trees, they first glimpsed the imposing gray stone building, with its central cupola, high windows and columns flanking the front entrance. Statues stood on the tops of the columns, against a frieze, and double stairs curled out at the front like lobster claws.

  St. Mary’s School for Girls, Banks had read, was founded in 1823 on forty acres of woodland by the River Swain. The main building, completed in 1773, had been intended as a country house but had never been lived in. Rumor had it that Lord Satterthwait, for whom the house had been built, lost much of his fortune in an ill-advised business venture abroad, along with the money of a number of other county luminaries, and was forced to flee the area in disgrace for America.

  The grounds were quiet this morning, but a group of girls in maroon blazers saw Banks pull up and started whispering among themselves. The car was unmarked, but Banks and Susan were strangers, and by now everyone must know that Deborah Harrison had been murdered.

  Banks asked one of the girls where they might find the head, and she directed him through the front door, right down to the back of the building, then along the last corridor to the right. Inside, the place was all high, ornate ceilings and dark, polished wainscoting. Susan’s footsteps echoed as they walked. It was certainly a far cry from the institutional gloom of Eastvale Comprehensive, or from Banks’s old redbrick school in Peterborough, for that matter.