by Steve Mosby
It made me feel cold inside. Was this how I was going to end up? If Ally remained missing then the police would take it seriously eventually but they’d believed Haggerty too, thrown their weight behind the case, and his wife and son had never been seen again.
You’ll never see this one again.
Never get her back.
That was not going to happen to her. To them. My fist was clenched on my thigh. I relaxed it.
‘Did my father say why he was interested in your case?’
‘Not exactly. I got the impression he’d read about it at the time, and it had stayed with him. He did mention you and your mother – that he couldn’t bear to think of losing you both. I think that’s what made it stick in his mind.’
I nodded. Maybe that had been part of it, but there was more. Other connections. Obviously, the location wasn’t far away from Whitkirk. There was the old man arguing with Lorraine Haggerty, and a larger, younger man. A rust-coloured van. My father would have recognised many of those things from Wiseman’s novel. Perhaps even from whatever real crimes lay behind it.
Something else occurred to me.
‘Did he ever … contact you? The man responsible?’
For a long moment, Haggerty said nothing.
‘That was the other thing your father wanted to talk about. I don’t know how he knew about it. It was never made public, so I presume he had some inside information from the police.’
I stopped rubbing my hands together.
‘About what?’ I said.
‘About the flower. There were lots of them, of course. We held a service for Lorri and Kent a while afterwards – I can’t remember how long – and there were a lot of flowers then. But even before that: flowers and cards and notes from strangers. It surprised me, to be honest. How kind people can be.’
A flower. I felt sick.
‘This was different though?’
‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘It was the strangest thing. As far as I know, nobody ever established it was even connected, but there was obviously something odd about it. I called the police as soon as it arrived. They took it away.’
‘What was it?’
‘A black flower. It arrived a year or so afterwards. Just in an envelope, no stamp or anything. Just posted through the door.’
‘You said the police took it?’
‘Yes. Your father said he wasn’t sure what it meant, but that was part of what he was looking into. Do you have any idea if it’s connected?’
Yes, I thought. I didn’t know how but yes, it certainly was connected. The little girl in the book had a black flower in an adult woman’s handbag. My father had one too – tucked away in his copy of the book.
But I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’
Haggerty didn’t need to hear any of what I knew. I wasn’t in a position to offer him closure right now, or much of anything at all. The only thing I could have told him was that his wife and child were surely dead, and he must have told himself that a hundred times already without it making an impact.
What did the flowers mean? And where had my father’s come from?
I was lost in thought, and almost jumped when Haggerty spoke again.
‘Do you know what the worst thing is?’
‘The worst thing?’ I said. ‘No. What is it?’
‘It’s not knowing why.’
I looked at him, and Haggerty stared back, right into my eyes.
‘Not knowing why it happened,’ he said. ‘Why them.’
I didn’t really know what to say.
‘Maybe there is no reason. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe that’s all there is to it.’
‘No. They were targeted. I’m sure of it.’
There was no way he could know that, and I didn’t reply.
He said, ‘You only remember the things you did wrong. I told Lorri I loved her a million times over the years. I know that happened, but I don’t really remember it. What I remember is resenting them both, especially when work got tough. Thinking how complicated they made everything for me. Being angry when Kent cried in the night and I had to get up early. Those sorts of things. I probably only thought them once or twice, but that’s what I remember.’
He shook his head and looked away.
I stood up. Maybe a little too suddenly.
‘Thank you for your time, Mr Haggerty.’
‘Andrew.’ He held his hand out and I shook it; his grip was almost lifeless. ‘If you find anything out, anything at all …’
‘I promise.’
I walked away, as quickly as I could manage without looking as though I was running. When I reached the corner, I glanced behind me and saw that Andrew Haggerty had remained sitting on the bench, almost as still as the bronze figures in the middle of the square.
For him, his past would always remain his present. His entire life, defined now by a handful of guilty thoughts. The kind of thing you shouldn’t think but do, and then, when the worst happens, can never forgive yourself for.
That would not be me.
It wouldn’t.
Surely, you’re entitled to make that kind of mistake. You should be entitled to think something awful so long as you’re prepared to edit it afterwards. Because you can’t help your thoughts, can you? They’re all first draft. It’s not fair to be condemned by them for ever.
I thought: No. I’m going to find you, Ally.
I was determined to.
Even if it requires a descent into Hell.
Chapter Thirteen
The first dead body Hannah encountered, it was generally agreed, had been a tester.
An obese old lady had lain dead in her detached house one summer for over a fortnight before being found. Hannah’s partner at the time, a far more seasoned officer, had gone pale at the sight of her: would probably have crossed himself if he’d had a religion. The elderly woman had died on the settee, but a great deal of her had collapsed onto the carpet by the time they arrived, and decay was misty in the air like pollen. And yet Hannah hadn’t blinked as she snapped on the gloves at the doorway. She had felt sad for the dead woman, of course, but nobody had seen that, and it wouldn’t have impressed them if they had. What they noticed was the way the young constable moved around the room with such quiet authority, apparently no more disturbed by the dead than she was by the living.
So word got round quickly. Hannah Price had a stomach of cast iron. And of course, there had been much worse scenes over the years. Traffic accidents where people were spread over the tarmac in streaks; a motorcycle helmet, apparently discarded, except for the almost comically screwed-shut eyes visible through its open visor. Four homicides, all women, all DV. One woman beaten to death with a kettle; a second stabbed; two more with necks covered in bruised, fluttering fingerprints. A man who hanged himself from a doorknob, his eyes and tongue bulging out of a plum-coloured face. None of these sights had fazed her in the slightest. Viscera, at least of the physical kind, just didn’t bother her.
In theory, then, the bodies found this morning should have been easy.
The autopsy suite was in the basement of Whitkirk’s mortuary, situated almost directly below the place where Hannah had stood with Neil Dawson while he identified his dead father’s clothes. That room upstairs was designed to be sombre and respectful, with everything cushioned and curtained, so there were no visual or emotional sharp edges for the bereaved to cut themselves on. Down here, it was very different, albeit similarly fit for purpose.
The suite housed six aluminium tables, each of them separated from the next by weighing scales, sink units and hoses, all of it illuminated by artificial lights that angled out of the walls on adjustable metal hinges. Swabbed down, sterilised and polished, the fixtures gleamed, bringing out every detail in the bodies that lay here.
The dead always seemed unworldly, unreal to Hannah, and seeing them down here amplified that. The complex shapes, colours and textures were a stark contrast to the bright surfaces and clean angle
s. Usually, that made things even easier. Today, staring down at the remains that had been pulled from the river below the viaduct, it didn’t help at all. These bodies, as old and fragmented as they were, were as real as a clench in her chest.
Or a mark on a map. Right, Dad?
‘We have the remains of two victims.’
The pathologist, Owen Dale, was walking back and forth between the metal dissection stations in the autopsy suite. His boots squeaked slightly on the white tiles. They were fresh and new, but of the same generic type as the ones he’d been wearing at the riverbank when she’d arrived back there again this morning, after the phone call from the dive team co-ordinator. As dawn broke, Dale had been half waded in, directing both the divers and his assistants, laying out plastic sheeting, supervising the awkward retrieval of two bodies from the water.
Hannah had watched from the bank, staring blankly.
Trying to hold herself together.
The search team was looking for the woman seen with Dawson, in case she had also ended up in the water. But neither of these two bodies belonged to her. They might, she thought, have some relation to a cross drawn on an old map.
Now, she was just trying to hold herself together. Beneath the disinfectant and chemicals, the air in here still stank of that river. It made her think of weeds and mud, and stagnant pools deep in forests.
‘This is the first set.’ Dale stopped by the nearest table. ‘I’ll call this Victim A for the time being, as it was the first to be retrieved from the river. It appears to be a complete skeleton, albeit broken into a number of pieces.’
Hannah was rubbing the backs of her fingers against her lips. Victim. She tried to put that word – and its necessary opposite: murderer – out of her mind, forcing herself to examine the remains instead.
Most people’s image of skeletons come from ghost stories and children’s cartoons: smooth, bright-white bones and pitch-black eye sockets; a grin that was almost friendly; a cackling pirate’s flag. The reality was a world away. The bones Dale was standing beside now looked organic, but barely human. The skull was recognisable, and yet even that reminded Hannah of old, brown pottery unearthed after years spent underground; it was difficult to imagine there had ever been a face stretched over it, or that thoughts and emotions had taken place inside.
The idea that the body became one with the earth after death was common and, of course, it was true. Flesh decays; cells break down; molecules scatter. Eventually, the body is recycled, the physical essence of a person absorbed by the world and transformed into something new. That was why some cultures had myths about trees growing in graveyards. But looking at the remains before her now, Hannah thought the opposite was also true. As the body of Victim A had decayed, it appeared to have taken on characteristics from the landscape around it. Just as the river had absorbed this body, so, it seemed, the body had absorbed the river. The arm and leg bones were brown and weathered as twigs, while the hands and feet were mottled a mossy-green colour. The ribs were uneven – straggly and twisted, like the roots of a fallen tree. On the left-hand side, a number were broken, bent inwards as though clasping for the long-absent heart.
She said, ‘What do you mean, “broken into pieces”?’
Dale waved it away.
‘It’s the wrong word. The body has been in the water for quite some time. I’d say several years at least. Given the environment – the turbulence of the river – it’s not surprising to observe this level of detachment at the joints. I mean, we’ve both seen our fair share of floating feet over the years.’
‘But the body wasn’t dismembered?’
‘There are no tool marks on the bones.’
‘Okay.’ Maybe that was something. ‘So what can you tell me?’
Dale pulled a face. ‘Not much beyond the fact that Victim A is a fully grown adult male. I’m trying to get a forensic anthropologist in. He or she will have a better chance at estimating the victim’s age and how long he’s been in the water. But I can’t promise anything. On the plus side, there’s a good set of teeth available for identification. Unlike Victim B.’
Hannah couldn’t look at B for the moment. Fortunately, Dale nodded at a sodden pile of fabric on the station beside the first victim. ‘It might also be possible to identify some of A’s clothing, after we’ve finished unravelling it.’
‘Cause of death?’ Hannah asked.
‘Again, it’s impossible to say for certain. But there’s a clear injury to the skull, and I’d say that looks like a solid candidate.’
Hannah had already seen what Dale was referring to. A coin-sized piece of bone was missing from the side of Victim A’s skull, with tiny fractures cracking out from it. Obvious blunt-object trauma: a lot of force onto a small area.
She gestured towards the broken ribs.
‘What about that injury?’
Dale peered at the corpse. ‘Impossible to say. Whether it’s pre-or post-mortem, I mean. My guess would be it was caused by the weight that was included in the sack with the body.’
Hannah shifted slightly – reluctantly – and turned her attention to the third table along. The bodies had been found in two separate hessian sacks, both resting five metres below the surface in the silt of the riverbed. Each bag had also been given its own dissection station. Both were vile, sodden slumps of material, which had originally been tied at the top with rope. Dale and his team had cut them open at the side to remove the bones, allowing the pans beneath the tables to catch any remnants of river water and decay that ran off the plastic sheets. Aside from the bones, the mulch, and whatever tatters of clothing had survived, each sack had also contained a large, heavy rock.
Dale rolled his hands around each other.
‘Tumble, tumble, tumble. Bang.’
She could easily picture what he was implying: the bag falling down through the air, then striking the water; the boulder breaking the dead man’s ribs as the sack smashed through the surface of the river. True to Hannah’s reputation, that picture didn’t trouble her. What she found much harder to imagine was the face of the man on the viaduct above: the one who’d tipped the body over the edge and watched it fall. For now, he was just a silhouette against the sky, leaning over, watching as his victim sank away out of sight. She didn’t want to give that man a face, but she couldn’t get away from the question:
Is this it, then, Dad?
Is that you?
‘And so to Victim B,’ Dale said. ‘What’s left of him, anyway.’
The second set of remains – the second so far, she reminded herself – had clearly been in the water for much longer, and the bones had made an almost full transformation into something from a riverbed. It was much worse than the first. She found it hard to look.
‘Male,’ he said. ‘But, once again, I can’t tell you how old he was at the time of death or how long ago he died. Not yet.’
‘Do you think it’s the same killer?’
As soon as she said it, she regretted the question. For one thing, that was her job to figure out, not his. For another, the answer was obvious. Maybe she was just looking for even the smallest scrap of hope. There was none, of course. Her father had done this – killed not just one, but two people. She knew it deep down.
Dale glanced at her, a curious expression on his face.
‘It’s not my place to confirm or deny,’ he said. ‘But even without the method of disposal being identical – the sacks – I’d say you’re looking at the same perpetrator. Victim B shares a similar injury to A. Even if he’s been a bit more aggressive with this fellow.’
Dale made a knocking gesture with his fist.
‘As you can see, the front of the skull is entirely missing.’
Hannah nodded.
Yes, she could see that.
It was the obvious aggression she found hardest to deal with. The first body was bad enough; this second one was something else altogether. Even in death, you could see it: that someone had squatted over Victim B and repeatedly brough
t an object down onto the man’s face, literally caving in the front of the skull. And then they had folded him into a sack and dropped him into the river.
Someone.
Hannah looked at the empty cup of B’s skull, then back to Victim A. At its missing coin of bone.
‘The weapon,’ she said.
‘Blunt object. Small diameter.’
‘Consistent with a hammer?’
Dale pursed his lips and nodded to himself.
‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘I think you’re right.’
Hannah was driving.
You’re going to get yourself in trouble.
Maybe. Well, she was already in trouble of course. There was a potential murder weapon lying in her father’s house right now, and there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it that wouldn’t lead to even more trouble. Not just for her father, but now for her.
Call it in? That was the sensible thing to do – except, without the map, it was just a hammer. There was no reason to look at it twice. Obviously, with the map, it made sense. But if she reported that, she was opening herself up to scrutiny. Hannah had sat on what she knew, made that anonymous call, not told anyone her suspicions. She wasn’t confident enough she’d covered all the angles. There was no CCTV on that payphone, for example, but lots elsewhere. If she put herself in the crosshairs, someone would surely be able to find her nearby, close to the time the call had been made. Circumstantial at best but that was only off the top of her head, and who knew what else she might have missed? These little details added up. One thing police work taught you was that however careful someone thought they’d been, there was always something.
So she wasn’t going to call it in.
At least the fear – the dread – was diluted slightly now. She’d found out something close to the truth, and it was as bad as she could have expected. But now, she was annoyed as well as scared. With him. With herself.