Innocent Graves

by Peter Robinson

  “Sustained. Ms. Castle, please stop insulting the witness.”

  Shirley Castle bowed. “My apologies, Your Honor, Chief Inspector Banks. Let me rephrase the question: what was your attitude to Mr. Pierce from the start?”

  “We decided he was a definite suspect, and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we proceeded to build up our case against him in the usual, accepted manner.”

  “Thank you, Chief Inspector,” Shirley Castle said, sitting down and trying to look bored. “No further questions.”

  “Then I suggest,” said Judge Simmonds, “that we adjourn for the weekend. Court will be in session again at ten-thirty Monday morning.”

  III

  On Monday morning, it happened: exactly what Owen had been fearing.

  When he tried to reconstruct the sequence of events later, back in his cell, he couldn’t be sure whether Jerome Lawrence had actually managed to call out Michelle’s name before Shirley Castle jumped to her feet. Either way, Judge Simmonds listened patiently to the objection, then he dismissed the jury for yet another voir dire.

  What followed was a legal wrangle that Owen, educated as he was, could only half follow, so mired was it in tortured English and in citing of precedents. As far as he could gather, though, both sides put their points of view to the judge. Jerome Lawrence argued that Michelle’s evidence was relevant because it established a pattern of violent behavior that had its natural outcome in Deborah Harrison’s murder, and Shirley Castle countered that the proposed evidence was nothing but vindictive fantasy from an unreliable witness, that it proved nothing, and that its prejudicial effect by far outweighed any probative value it might have.

  Owen held his breath as Judge Simmonds paused to consider the arguments; he knew that his entire future might be hanging in the balance here. His mouth felt dry; his jaw clenched; his stomach churned. If Simmonds disallowed the evidence, Owen knew, there could be no reporting of what had gone on in the jury’s absence. Only a very few people would ever know about what had happened between him and Michelle. If Simmonds admitted it, though, the whole world would know. And the jury. He crossed his fingers so tightly they turned white.

  Finally, Simmonds puckered his lips, frowned, and declared the evidence inadmissible.

  Owen let out his breath. The blood roared in his ears, and he felt his whole body relax: jaw, stomach, fingers. He thought he was going to faint.

  Shirley Castle flashed him a discreet thumbs-up sign and a quick smile of victory. The jury was brought back in, and Jerome Lawrence called his next witness.

  Dr. Charles Stewart Glendenning made an imposing figure. Tall, with a full head of white hair and a nicotine-stained mustache, the Home Office pathologist carried himself erectly and had just the right amount of Scottish burr in his accent to make him come across as a no-nonsense sort of person. The serious expression on his face, which had etched its lines over the years, added to the look of the consummate expert witness.

  He entered the witness-box as if it were his second home and spoke the oath. Owen noticed that he didn’t rest his hand on a copy of the New Testament and that the wording was slightly different from everyone else’s. An atheist, then? Not surprising, Owen thought, given the evidence of man’s inhumanity to man he must have seen over the years.

  After spending what remained of the morning establishing Dr. Glendenning’s credentials and responsibilities, Jerome Lawrence finally began his examination-in-chief after lunch.

  “Rebecca Charters has already described finding the body and calling the police,” he said. “Could you please describe, Doctor, the condition of the body at the scene?”

  “The victim lay on her back. Her blouse was open, her brassiere torn and her breasts exposed. Her skirt had been lifted above her waist, exposing the pubic region, in the manner typical of a sex murder. Her underwear was missing. I understand it was later found nearby. On closer examination of the face, I noticed a reddish-purple color and traces of bleeding from the nose, consistent with death by asphyxia. There was also a small, fresh scratch by her left eye.”

  “Could you tell us what you discovered at the post-mortem?”

  “The girl was-had been-in good general health, to be expected in a girl of sixteen. There were no signs of toxicity in her organs. On further examination, I concluded as I had earlier, that death was caused by asphyxia due to strangulation.”

  “Would you care to elaborate on asphyxia for the members of the jury, Doctor?” Jerome Lawrence went on.

  Glendenning nodded briefly. “Some strangulation victims die from vagal inhibition, which means heart stoppage caused by pressure on the carotid arteries in the neck.” He touched the spot beside his jaw. “The victim in this case, however, died because of obstruction to the veins in her neck and the forcing of the tongue against the back of throat, cutting off her air intake. There are certain telltale signs. People who die from vagal inhibition are pale, those who die from asphyxia have reddish-purple coloring. There are also petechial hemorrhages, little pinpricks of blood in the whites of the eyes, eyelids, facial skin. Contrary to popular fiction, the tongue does not protrude.”

  Owen glanced over at Sir Geoffrey and Lady Harrison, the victim’s parents, who had attended almost every day. Lady Harrison turned to her husband and let her head touch his shoulder for a moment. Both were pale.

  Owen felt he glimpsed, at that moment, the cold-blooded logic of the prosecution’s strategy, like the dramatic structure of a play or a novel, and it sent a chill up his spine.

  After hearing Rebecca Charters’s emotional account of finding the body and then Banks’s solid, professional testimony about the police investigation, if things had gone according to plan the jury would next have heard Michelle’s testimony. They would have seen only a sweet, innocent young girl in the witness box and heard how this monster in the dock had attempted to strangle her. (He was certain she would have touched her long, tapered fingers to her throat as she described the attack.) Then they would have heard the gruesome medical details of the effects of strangulation. And what would they have thought of Owen after all that?

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Lawrence went on. “Could you tell, in this case, how the victim was strangled?”

  “Yes. With a ligature. A satchel strap, in fact.”

  “And was this found close to the scene?”

  “Yes. It was still attached to the victim’s satchel.”

  “In your expert opinion, do you have any reason to doubt it was used as the murder weapon?”

  “None at all. We carried out a number of tests. The satchel strap matched the indentations in the victim’s throat perfectly. It was angled slightly upwards, cutting into the skin at the bottom part, indicating that she had been strangled from behind and that her attacker was taller than her. There was also blood around the edge of the strap.”

  “How much taller was the killer?” asked Jerome Lawrence.

  “The victim was five foot six, so I would put the attacker at least six inches taller, perhaps more.”

  “And the accused is six foot two, as has already been established?”

  “So I believe, yes.”

  “Would it have required a great deal of strength?”

  “A certain amount, yes. But nothing superhuman.”

  “Would the manner of attack make it difficult for the victim to fight off her attacker?”

  “Almost impossible. There wouldn’t be much she could do. She might manage a wild scratch, of course, or a backwards kick to the shins with her heel.”

  “You mentioned a ‘wild scratch.’ Would this be possible if she were strangled from behind?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s quite conceivable she might reach behind and scratch her assailant.”

  “Was it possible to tell whether she had been killed in St. Mary’s churchyard or elsewhere?”

  “Yes, by the extent of post-mortem lividity, such as it was. This-” he turned to explain to the jury without Lawrence’s prompting, “means that when the
heart stops, the blood simply obeys the force of gravity and sinks to the lowest part of the body. It gathers and stains at points where the flesh is not in contact with the ground. Parts of the body that do remain in contact with the ground will remain white, of course, because the pressure will not allow the blood to settle in the capillaries. In this case, the staining at the back of the neck, small of the back and backs of the legs indicated that the deceased had been lying in the same position since her death. Also, as lividity was in its early stages, she couldn’t have been there for very long. It generally begins about thirty minutes to one hour after death, develops fully between three and four hours and becomes fixed between eight and ten hours. The lividity was still faint, and blanching still occurred.”

  “Could you explain blanching for the benefit of the court?”

  “Certainly. Before the blood coagulates in the vessels, if you touch an area of lividity it will turn white. When you remove your fingertip, it will resume its lividity. After four or five hours the discoloration hardens, becomes clotted, and pressure will not cause blanching.”

  “And what does this tell you?”

  “Amongst other things, it helps determine time of death. As I said, lividity had only just started and there was no sign of rigor mortis, which usually begins in the eyelids about two or three hours after death. I also took temperature readings, and based on a mathematical calculation, I came up with time of death somewhere between five o’clock and when she was discovered.”

  “No earlier?”

  “In my opinion, that would be very unlikely indeed.”

  “And as the victim’s friend Megan Preece reports parting with Deborah near the bridge at six o’clock, and the evidence of Daniel Charters places Owen-”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained.” Judge Simmonds pointed with a bony finger. “Mr. Lawrence, behave yourself. You ought to know better.”

  Lawrence bowed. “Your Honor. Thank you, Dr. Glendenning. I have no further questions.”

  Shirley Castle stood up to cross-examine. “I only have a couple of questions, Doctor,” she said briskly. “Minor points, really. I shan’t keep you long.”

  Dr. Glendenning inclined his head and smiled at her in a gentlemanly way.

  “I assume you supervised the collection of oral, vaginal and anal swabs at the crime scene?” Shirley Castle began.

  “I did.”

  “And did you find any traces of semen?”

  “None.”

  “None at all?”

  “That is correct.”

  “In your post-mortem examination, did you discover any signs of forcible intercourse?”

  “I found no signs of any intercourse at all, forcible or otherwise.”

  Shirley Castle frowned. “Yet you referred to this as a ‘sex crime’ in your earlier testimony. Does that absence of evidence not strike you as unusual in such a crime?”

  “Not really. There are many kinds of sex crimes. The way the clothing was disturbed was reminiscent, in my experience, of a sex-crime scene.”

  “And we have already heard your enviable credentials as an expert on such matters, Doctor. How accurate is your estimate of time of death?”

  “It’s always an approximate business,” Glendenning admitted. “There are so many variables.”

  “Could you give the court an example of how you might determine time of death?”

  “Certainly. As I have already indicated, there are a number of factors, such as rigor mortis, lividity and stomach contents, but body temperature is often the most accurate. If the temperature at the time of death is normal-thirty-seven degrees centigrade-and it takes the body twenty-four to thirty-six hours after death to fall to the temperature of the environment, then one can make a back-calculation to the time of death.”

  “Twenty-four to thirty-six hours,” said Shirley Castle, frowning towards the jury. “That’s between a day and a day and a half. That’s a rather broad margin for error, isn’t it?”

  Glendenning smiled. “I did say it was an approximate business.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t say how wildly inaccurate it was.”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained, Mr. Lawrence.”

  Shirley Castle bowed. “My apologies. Doctor, how long would it have taken Deborah Harrison’s body temperature to reach that of the environment?”

  “Well, again it’s hard to say precisely. She was healthy, normal, slim, partially unclothed, and it was a moist evening, with a temperature of ten degrees centigrade. I’d say quicker rather than later.”

  “Say twenty-eight hours? Twenty-six?”

  “Around there.”

  “Around there. Very well. Does the body cool at an even, steady rate?”

  “As a matter of fact, no. It falls in a sigmoid curve.”

  “And how do you arrive at time of death from temperature?”

  “Glaister’s formula. In this case the victim’s temperature was thirty-five point five degrees centigrade. One subtracts this from the normal temperature of thirty-seven degrees and multiplies by one point one. The answer, in this case, is one point six-five hours. Taking the temperature of the environment into account, that becomes between one and two hours before I arrived on the scene.”

  “What might affect the rate at which temperature falls?”

  “It’s hard to say exactly. A number of factors.”

  Shirley Castle took a deep breath and leaned forward. “But it is not hard to say, is it Dr. Glendenning, that thin people cool quicker than fat ones, and Deborah Harrison was thin. On the other hand, healthy people cool more slowly than weak ones, and Deborah Harrison was healthy. Naked bodies cool quicker than clothed ones, yet Deborah Harrison was only partially clothed. Bodies cool quicker in water than in air, yet in the humidity of the fog Deborah Harrison was subject to both. Am I right?”

  “These are all relevant factors,” admitted Glendenning.

  “According to evidence already given,” Shirley Castle went on, “Deborah was last seen alive at six o’clock, which rules out her being murdered earlier, wouldn’t you say?”

  Glendenning raised his eyebrows. “I would say so, yes.”

  “But the body was discovered by Rebecca Charters at six forty-five. Is that correct?”

  “I understand so.”

  “And the first police officers arrived at six fifty-nine?”

  “Objection.”

  “Yes, Mr. Lawrence?” Judge Simmonds asked.

  “I’d like to know where Ms. Castle is going with this line of questioning, Your Honor.”

  “The defense requests Your Honor’s indulgence. This will become clear in a short while.”

  “Make it fast, Ms. Castle.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Deborah Harrison was last seen at about six o’clock, and her body was discovered in St. Mary’s graveyard at six forty-five. That leaves forty-five minutes during which she could have been murdered. Now according to your evidence as regards time of death, Doctor, she could have been murdered later than six-thirty, couldn’t she?”

  Glendenning nodded. “Yes, she could have been.”

  “In fact, death could have occurred even as late as six-forty, couldn’t it?”

  “Yes. But I believe Rebecca Charters heard-”

  “Please, Doctor. You should know better than that. Rebecca Charters has already admitted that what she heard could easily have been some animal or another. Now, given that nobody actually saw Owen Pierce enter St. Mary’s graveyard, and given that time of death could have occurred as late as six-forty, when Mr. Pierce was already in the Peking Moon, there is no direct evidence placing him at the exact scene of the crime at the exact time the crime was committed, is there, Doctor?”

  “This is not-”

  “And as no-one saw either Deborah Harrison or Owen Pierce enter the graveyard,” Shirley Castle charged on before anyone could stop her, “then it follows that Deborah could have gone somewhere else first, couldn’t she?”

  “It�
��s not my place to speculate on such matters,” said Glendenning. “I’m here to testify on matters of medical fact.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Shirley Castle. “Facts such as time of death. It’s a lot of leeway to give the definition of a fact, isn’t it, Doctor?”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained. Will you get on with it, Ms. Castle?”

  “I have no further questions, Your Honor,” she said, and sat down.

  Very clever, thought Owen, then he turned to watch the juror who looked like a wrestler try to scratch an egg stain off his club tie.

  IV

  A week later, after more legal arguments and a succession of dull, minor scientific witnesses, from the fingerprint man to the officer responsible for keeping track of the forensic exhibits, Owen watched Shirley Castle intimidate the hair expert, who ended up retreating into scientific jargon and admitting that it was virtually impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that hair found on a victim’s or suspect’s clothing could be positively matched to its source.

  The final prosecution witness was Dr. Tasker, biologist and DNA expert, a thin-faced, thin-haired academic of about forty, Owen guessed. He seemed to know his stuff, but there was a tentativeness about his delivery that threw Jerome Lawrence off kilter occasionally.

  Owen wondered if the jury were as bored as he was by the interminable descriptions of autorads and enzyme scissors, by the testimony as to the scientific validity of polymerase chain reactions and the meaning of short tandem repeats, by the seeming hours spent describing the extreme care taken against the possibility of contamination of laboratory samples.

  When Shirley Castle stood up to cross-examine the next afternoon, Tasker seemed a little in awe of her, and if Owen were not mistaken, perhaps a mite smitten, too. Maybe she realized this. Her tone, as she began, was relaxed, friendly, a little flirtatious even.

  “Dr. Tasker,” she said with a smile, “I’m sure the court was most impressed yesterday with your account of DNA analysis. You would seem to have proved, without blinding us all with science, that the DNA derived from the bloodstain on Mr. Pierce’s anorak was indeed the DNA of Deborah Harrison. Is this true?”