Innocent Graves

by Peter Robinson

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll believe you.”

  Pierce looked her in the eye. “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t do it.”

  Somehow, Rebecca felt great relief. “What can we do for you?” she asked.

  Almost as if he didn’t believe his good fortune, Pierce remained speechless for a while. His eyes filled with tears and Rebecca felt, for a moment, like taking his hand. But she didn’t.

  Finally, in a cracking voice, he said, “I need help. I have to put my life back together again and I can’t do it alone.” As he spoke, he regained his composure and wiped the tears away briskly. “It may seem cold, calculated,” he said, “but it isn’t. When I found out who you were, I remembered you from court and I was drawn to you because I thought you’d understand, you know, about being thought guilty when you’re innocent, about all the hypocrisy they talk about truth and justice. I’m sure your husband didn’t do what he’s been accused of. No more than I did.”

  “But I thought you would be angry with us. My husband gave evidence against you.”

  Owen shook his head. “All he did was tell the truth. It didn’t make any difference to the case. It was me on the bridge. I never denied that. And it must have been terrible for you finding the body. No, I hold nothing against you or your husband. Look, I have no friends, Mrs. Charters. Everyone’s deserted me. I have no close family. Even strangers treat me like some sort of monster if they recognize me. I need support, public support. I need it to be seen that decent, intelligent people don’t think I’m a monster. I need you on my side. You and your husband.”

  “You might have come to the wrong place,” Rebecca said. “You wouldn’t want to join a losing cause. Remember, my husband is still under suspicion.”

  “Yes, but he has carried on in the face of it all. And I know you believe in him. You’ve stuck by him. So have a lot of other members of the congregation, I’m sure. Don’t you see, Mrs. Charters, we’re both victims, your husband and I?”

  Rebecca thought for a moment, remembering the hypocrisy of some parishioners. “All right, then,” she said. “I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll talk to my husband.”

  “Thank you,” breathed Owen.

  “But will you do one thing for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Will you come to church tomorrow morning? I’m not trying to convert you or anything, but it would be good if you could be seen there. The people who still come to St. Mary’s have, for the most part, stuck up for Daniel and believed in his innocence, as you say. If we take you into the congregation, they might do the same for you. I know it might sound hypocritical, the way people judge by appearances, but they do, you know, and perhaps if…Why are you laughing?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Charters, I really am. I just can’t help it. Of course I’ll come to church. Believe me, it seems a very small price to pay.”

  III

  It was just after two o’clock in the morning and Banks kept waking up from disturbing dreams. He and Sandra had been out to a folk night in the Dog and Gun, in Helmthorpe, with some old friends, Harriet Slade and her husband, David. The star of the evening was Penny Cartwright, a local singer who had given up fame and fortune to settle back in Helmthorpe a few years ago. Banks had first met her while investigating the murder of Harold Steadman, a local historian, and he had seen her once or twice in the intervening years. They chatted amicably enough when they met, but there was always a tension between them, and Banks was glad when the chit-chat was over.

  Her singing was something to be relished, though. Alto, husky on the low notes but pure and clear in the higher range, her voice also carried the controlled emotion of a survivor. She sang a mix of traditional and contemporary-from Anon to Zimmerman-and her version of the latter’s “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” had made Banks’s spine tingle and his eyes prickle with tears.

  But now, after a little too much port and Stilton back at Harriet and David’s, Banks was suffering the consequences. He had often thought that the blue bits in Stilton, being mold, had mild hallucinogenic properties and actually gave rise to restless dreams. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t yet found a scientist to agree with him; he was sure of it. Because every time he ate Stilton, it happened.

  These weren’t satisfying dreams, the kind you need to make you feel you’ve had a good night’s sleep, but abrupt and disturbing transformations just below the threshold of consciousness: computer games turned into reality; cars crashed through monitor screens; and the ghost of a young woman walked through a foggy graveyard. In one, he had terminal cancer and couldn’t remember what his children looked like. All the while, voices whispered about demon lovers, and crows picked bodies clean to the bone.

  Thus Banks was not altogether upset when the phone rang. Puzzled, but relieved in a way to be rescued from the pit of dreams. At the same time, apprehension gripped his chest when he turned over and picked up the receiver. Sandra stirred beside him and he tried to keep his voice down.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes,” Banks mumbled. It was a woman’s voice.

  “This is DC Gay, sir. I’m calling from the station.”

  “What are you doing there? What’s happened?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but it looks like there’s been another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another girl disappeared, sir. Name’s Ellen Gilchrist. She went to a school dance at Eastvale Comprehensive tonight and never arrived home. Her mum and dad are climbing up the walls.”

  Banks sat up and swung his legs from under the covers. Sandra turned over. “Where are they?” he asked.

  “They’re here, sir, at the station. I couldn’t keep them away. I said we’re doing all we can, but…”

  “Have you called her friends, boyfriends?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s all been done. Everyone her mum and dad and her friends from the dance could think of. We’ve woken up half the town already. As far as I can gather, she left the dance alone just after eleven o’clock. Had a headache. Her parents only live on the Leaview Estate, so it’s not more than a quarter of a mile down King Street. They got worried when she hadn’t turned up by midnight, her curfew. Called us at twelve-thirty. Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “They said normally they’d have given her till one, more likely, then give her a good talking to and pack her off to bed. But they said they’d heard about that killer who got off. Owen Pierce. That’s why they called us so soon.”

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Banks rubbed his eyes, trying once and for all to rid himself of the Stilton dreams. He sighed. From one nightmare to another. “All right,” he said. “Get someone to put on a strong pot of coffee, will you, Susan? I’ll be right over.”

  Chapter 17

  I

  An early rambler from Middlesborough set off from a bed and breakfast in Skield and found the girl’s body tucked away in a fold of Witch Fell, above the village, at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. An hour later, the detectives from Eastvale and the Scene-of-Crime Officers began to dribble in, closely followed by Dr. Glendenning, who was out of breath by the time he had climbed up to where the body was.

  Banks stood at the edge of the terrace, which he suspected was a lynchet, an ancient Anglian plowing strip leveled on a hillside. Such lyncheted hills went up in a series of steps, of which this was the first. The strip was about ten yards wide and dipped a little in the middle.

  The girl’s body lay spread-eagled in the central depression, as if cupped in the petals of a flower. The little meadow was full of buttercups and daisies; flies and more delicate winged insects buzzed in the air, some pausing to light on the girl’s pale, unyielding skin for a moment.

  Several buttercups and daisies had been twined in her long blonde hair, which lay spread out on the bright green grass around her head like the halo in a Russian icon. Her blouse had been torn open and her bra pulled up, revealing small, pale breasts, and her short skirt was up around her thighs, her dis
carded panties on the grass beside her. As Banks got closer, he noticed the discoloration around her neck, and the open shoulder-bag by her arm, some of its contents spilled on the grass: lipstick, a purse, compact, nail-file, chewing gum, perfume, keys, address book, earrings, hairbrush.

  The similarities to the Deborah Harrison scene were too close to be ignored. And Banks had just convinced himself that Deborah had been murdered by someone she knew for some sort of logical reason. Now it looked as if they were dealing with a sexual psychopath-one who had murdered two young girls in the area.

  Banks stood back as Peter Darby took photographs and then watched Dr. Glendenning perform the on-scene examination. By then, Superintendent Gristhorpe had arrived and Jimmy Riddle was rumored to be pacing at the bottom of the hill trying to decide whether to attempt the short climb or wait until the others came down to him.

  Banks sniffed the air. It was another fine morning. A couple of sheep stood facing the drystone wall as if just wishing it would all go away. Well, it wouldn’t, Banks knew. No more than the tightness in his gut, which felt like a clenched fist, would go away before tomorrow.

  “Well?” he asked, after the doctor had finished his examination.

  “As we’re not in court, laddie,” said Glendenning, with a crooked grin, “I can tell you that she probably died between ten o’clock last night and one or two o’clock in the morning.”

  “Do you think she was killed here?”

  “Looks like it from the lividity on her back and thighs.”

  “So he brought her here alive all the way from Eastvale?”

  Banks made a mental calculation. The girl, Ellen Gilchrist, had disappeared on her way home shortly after eleven o’clock last night. By car, it was about thirty miles from Eastvale to Skield, but some of that journey was on bad moorland roads where you couldn’t drive very fast, especially at night. For one thing, the sheep were inclined to wander, and as anyone it has happened to will tell you, running into a sheep on a dark road is a very nasty experience indeed. Especially for the sheep.

  It would probably have taken the killer an hour, Banks estimated, particularly if he took an indirect route to avoid being seen. Why bother? Why not just dump her in Eastvale somewhere? Was location important to him, part of his profile? Did he hope the body would remain undiscovered for longer here? Not much hope of that, Banks thought. Skield and Witch Fell were popular spots for ramblers, especially with the good weather.

  “There’s a nasty gash behind her left ear,” Glendenning said, “which means she was probably unconscious when he brought her here, before he strangled her. It looks like it could have been caused by a hammer or some such heavy object. Cause of death, off the record, of course, is ligature strangulation, just like the last one. Shoulder-bag strap this time, instead of a satchel.”

  “And the bag’s open, also like last time,” Banks mused.

  “Aye,” said Glendenning. “Well, you can have the body sent to the mortuary now.” And he walked off.

  Banks tried to run the scenario in his mind as if it were a film: girl leaves friends at end of School Lane, walks onto King Street, busy during tourist hours but quiet at night, apart from the odd pub or two. Some street-lamps, but not an especially well-lit area. Most kids are still at the dance, but Ellen’s going home ahead of her curfew because she has a headache, or so her friend said. She walks alone down the hill towards the Leaview Estate, not more than ten minutes at the most. Car pulls up. Or is it already waiting down the road, lights turned off, knowing there’s a school dance, hoping someone will be careless enough to walk home alone?

  He’s standing by the car, looking harmless enough. He can’t believe his luck. Another blonde, just like Deborah Harrison, and about the same age. Or did he know who he wanted? Had he been watching her? Did he know her?

  As she passes, he grabs her and drags her into the passenger seat before she knows what’s happening. She tries to scream, perhaps, but he puts his hand over her mouth to muffle her. He knocks her out. Now she’s in the passenger seat, unconscious, bleeding behind her ear. He straps her in with the safety belt and sets off. Maybe someone saw the car, someone else leaving the dance? He has to get her to an isolated spot before he’s seen.

  All the way to Skield, he savors what he’s going to do to her. The anticipation is almost as thrilling as the act itself, maybe even more so. He anticipates it, and later he relives it, replays it over and over in his mind.

  He parks off the road, out of the way, car hidden behind a clump of trees, perhaps, and drags her up the hillside. It’s not very far or very steep, the first lynchet, but he’s sweating with the effort, and maybe she’s coming round now, trying to struggle, beginning to realize that something terrible is about to happen to her. They get to the lynchet, and he lays her down on the grass and does…whatever he does.

  “Alan?”

  “What? Oh, sorry, sir. Lost in thought.”

  Superintendent Gristhorpe and DC Gay had come to stand beside him as uniformed officers searched the area.

  “We’d better get back to the station and get things moving,” said Gristhorpe. “We can start by questioning all the friends who were at the dance with her again, and then do a house-to-house along King Street, check out the pubs, too. I’ll get someone to ask around Skield as well. You never know. Someone might have been suffering from insomnia.”

  “Sir?”

  Both Banks and Gristhorpe looked around to see PC Weaver, one of the searchers, approach with something hooked over the end of a pencil. When he got closer, Banks could see that it was one of those transparent plastic containers that 35mm films come in. Living with Sandra, he had seen plenty of those.

  “Found this in the grass near the body, sir,” he said.

  “Near the shoulder-bag?” Gristhorpe asked.

  “No, sir, that’s why I thought it was odd. It was on the other side of her, a couple of yards away. Do you think it could be the killer’s?”

  “It could be anyone’s, lad,” Gristhorpe said. “A tourist’s, maybe. But we’d better check it for prints as quickly as we can.” He turned to Banks. “Maybe we’ve got one who likes to photograph his victims?”

  “Possible,” Banks agreed. “And we already know one keen amateur photographer, don’t we? I’ll get Vic Manson on it right away. He should be able to do a comparison before the morning’s over.”

  Just at that moment, a red bald head, shiny with perspiration, appeared over the rim of the meadow. “What’s going on?” grunted Chief Constable Riddle.

  “Oh, we’ve just finished here, sir,” said Banks, smiling cheekily as he walked past Riddle and headed down the slope.

  II

  The church was hot and smelled like dust burning on the element of an electric fire. Owen remembered hearing somewhere that most household dust was just dead skin. Which meant the church smelled like dead bits of people burning. Hell? All flesh is grass. The heaps of dead, dry grass burning in allotments, or autumn stubble burning in the country fields, vast, rolling carpets of fire spread out in the distance, palls of smoke hanging and twisting in the still twilight air.

  Owen took off his jacket and loosened his tie. He had never been comfortable in churches. His parents were both dyed-in-the-wool atheists, and the only times he had really been in church were for weddings and funerals. So he always wore a suit and tie.

  Of course, it was all right when you were a tourist checking out the Saxon fonts and Gothic arches, but a different story altogether when there was a vicar up front prattling on about loving they neighbor. Owen had always distrusted overly churchy types before, feeling that the church offered a public aura of respectability to many who pursued their perversions in private. But the vicar in this case was Daniel Charters, now one of the few allies Owen had in the entire world.

  Today it was the hoary old chestnut about how you get nothing but bad news in the papers and how that can make you cynical about the world, but really there are wonders and miracles going on all around y
ou all the time.

  That morning, Owen could certainly relate to the first part of the sermon, if not the uplifting bit. Just before he had set off for church, he had screwed up the News of the World in a ball and tossed it across the room.

  Judging by the looks he got when he walked into St. Mary’s, and by the way so many members of the congregation leaned towards one another and whispered behind cupped hands, even the upmarket clientele of St. Mary’s had had a butcher’s at the News of the World over their cappuccino and croissants.

  And there it was, blazoned across the front page in thick black letters: THE STORY THEY COULDN’T TELL IN COURT. Obviously Michelle’s journalist friend had probed her thoroughly. There was a reference to Owen’s liking to take photographs, phrased in such a way that it sounded downright sinister, and a mention of his love of kinky positions. He also, it appeared, liked his sex rough and, as far as partners were concerned, the younger the better. Michelle came out of it sounding more like a victim than a willing lover. Which, Owen supposed, was the intention.

  There was also an old, slightly blurred, photograph of the two of them and a scrap of a letter Owen had written Michelle once when he was away at a conference. The letter was a perfectly innocuous can’t-wait-to-see-you again sort of thing, but in this context, of course, it took on a far more disturbing aspect.

  He recalled the day the photograph was taken. Shortly after Michelle had moved in with him, they had taken a holiday in Dorset, visiting various sites associated with Thomas Hardy’s novels. In the small graveyard at Stinsford, where Hardy’s heart was buried, they had asked an American tourist to take a photograph of them with Owen’s camera. It turned out a little blurred because the tourist hadn’t quite mastered the art of manual focusing.

  Somehow, seeing the photograph and handwriting reproduced in a Sunday tabloid angered Owen even more than the innuendos in the article. Michelle had obviously handed them over to the reporter. It was a violation, a deeper betrayal even than what she said about him. He was quickly beginning to wish that he had killed Michelle.