by Jane Adams
‘Sounds like an academic Noah’s Ark.’ Tynan joked.
Maria laughed. ‘I think this Norman Luther was quite a man in his own way. The community thrived, they were self sufficient within ten years and thinking of setting up a second house in twelve.’
Mike was frowning slightly. ‘Sounds like a grand-scale return to “The Good Life”,’ he said. ‘Weird, all the same. But you’d view them as fairly harmless?’
‘Well,’ Maria said cautiously, ‘in Norman Luther we’re not looking at some Jim Jones or David Koresh, if that’s what you mean.’
‘If it wasn’t for their acceptance of modernity, they’d sound a bit like the whatchamacallits, the Mennonites and all that lot.’
Maria nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’d guess something close to that,’ she said. Then, ‘Tell me, John. This Sam of yours, did he say if he’d ever gone back, visited his old home?’
‘I asked Embury about that. It seems that when Sam left, well, that was it. His name was struck off the register — quite literally, from what I can gather. Sam’s dead to them now. If he fails outside, he can never go back home to stay.’
* * *
It took Mal fifteen minutes of hard running to get to a phone. In his panic he’d run straight to the nearest visible road. It was a good mile following the bend in the roadway back to where he’d left his car. Mal had realized this almost as soon as his feet had hit tarmac. He’d turned the other way instead, to where he could see the lights of the closest farmhouse, yellow in the distance.
He clutched his shotgun, the weapon still broken over his arm. Cartridges loaded.
Swearing to himself, he ejected them, slipped them into an empty pocket and snapped the weapon closed, flinging it over his shoulder on its leather strap even as he picked up pace once more, the dogs loping beside him.
* * *
Mike stared out into the blackness beyond the window. The storm had passed but night seemed to have followed early.
How would it feel, he wondered, for someone like Sam to leave everything he had ever known, and, for all Mike knew, maybe believe he risked damnation as a result?
What would it feel like for Pearson?
Sam, from all accounts, was a practical man, intent on sorting out his life in a methodical if slightly plodding way.
But Pearson? Pearson had left the house to study to be a teacher, presumably, with the blessing of the Elders. But he had come back. To be forced to leave, be rejected by his own people, must have been a double blow for someone as intense and uncompromising as Pearson.
He glanced at Maria and then at John, getting up to make more coffee.
What would it feel like suddenly not to belong? To lose family, religion, livelihood all in one fell swoop?
Was it any wonder Eric Pearson took a bitter view of life? Was it any excuse?
‘Penny for them?’ Maria said.
Mike smiled at her. ‘Not worth it. Mind wandering, that’s all.’
She smiled back at him and reached across the table for his hand.
Out in Tynan’s hall, the telephone began to ring.
Chapter Thirteen
Saturday 2 a.m.
By the time Mike arrived, the scene had been cordoned off and a narrow walkway, flanked by red and white tape, guided him to the place where the body had been found.
The police surgeon was already there, together with the SOCO. A young woman in white overalls was recording the scene on video. A stills camera hung from a strap across her body.
The entire area was illuminated by dragon lights. Two of them, strung up on makeshift supports. Their brilliance cast everything and everyone into stark relief, giving people and objects twice their own number of shadows. Colours were washed out almost to monochrome.
Price was already there. He saw Mike and came over, his face pale in the brilliant light.
‘It’s a kid, guv. Early to mid-teens from what they can see. Wrapped up in a rubbish bag.’
Mike followed his gaze to where the police surgeon knelt, directing the young woman with the camera to take still shots. She moved closely around the body, recording the ground before she stepped. Taking macro shots in situ of anything alien to grass or trees. Framing her body shots to indicate exact locations. Precise relationships.
Others stood around at the edge of the cordoned area. Watching, waiting for their cues.
Mike glanced upwards at the sky. The clouds had thickened and the air grown even more chill as they stood there. A rough shelter had been rigged to cover the site, polythene sheeting that cracked and rustled in the rising wind.
‘Who found the body?’
‘Man named Malcolm Fisher. Out after rabbits.’ Price nodded his head back towards the road. ‘He’s in the car.’
Mike glanced back one more time at the murder scene, then turned towards the road.
‘Let me know when they’re about to move the body,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and talk to Mr Fisher.’
Mal was drinking coffee in the back of the Area car. He was a youngish man, mid-twenties, Mike thought, though shock and pallor had aged him. He put his cup down and shook Mike by the hand. Then drew back abruptly as though not certain that had been the correct thing to do.
‘Did you touch anything?’ Mike asked him.
Mai shook his head emphatically.
‘Like I told them other lot,’ he said. ‘I bent down to see and it looked like a hand, with the fingers just sticking out of the hole.’ He shrugged as though still disbelieving. ‘So I pulled the plastic, like, just a little way and shone my torch right inside and I saw it. Lying there. And these eyes, wide open and looking at me. And then I ran.’
Mike nodded slowly. ‘And you touched nothing else? You’re certain of that?’
‘I touched nothing. I came in through the trees and I saw this rubbish lying on the ground like someone dumped it there.’
He shook his head. ‘I only came out looking for rabbits,’ he said. ‘Then I saw this bloody rubbish strewn all over the place and I got so fucking mad . . . I mean, you know. . . dumping stuff like that.’
He turned to look at Mike, his expression tense and hurt.
‘I kicked it,’ he said. ‘The kid in the bag, I mean.’ He halted suddenly, breaking down, bringing up his hands to cover his face. Mike heard the words muffled through Mai’s fingers. ‘I kicked it. I didn’t know it was a kid . . . Someone killed him and then I go and do a thing like that.’
‘You didn’t know,’ Mike told him softly. ‘You didn’t know.’
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday 9 a.m.
It had always seemed to Mike that a murder investigation should be a more dramatic affair. That there should be more outward sense of urgency. Of fevered activity.
There should be people rushing from place to place, gathering clues, putting them together and snatching the answers from nowhere. Something as violent and blasphemous as the taking of another human life should leave more traces. Shake the fabric of the universe in some tangible, obvious regard.
But that was never the way of it.
Mike stood in the clinically clean room waiting for the post mortem to begin and considering, step by cautious step, just where his investigation should take him.
An incident room had been set up on the roadside close to where the body had been found. Road blocks stopped the sparse traffic. Anyone remotely local would be interviewed this morning, though even that, most basic of procedures was of little use until a timeframe could be established. For that, they needed a time of death.
Price stood close by, champing at the bit far more visibly than Mike. He wanted to get on. To be out there, doing, solving, creating his own kind of organized havoc in order to get to the bottom of this.
He was angry, Mike could see that. Angry and hurt in the way that all officers became over the death of a child. That was when it became personal. That was when the case became their own.
Normally at a crime scene some approximate parameters could be established — how long the bo
dy had been there, an approximate theory as to cause of death.
In this case, with the body wrapped tight in its pathetic black shroud, the only clue had been the dryness of the grass beneath it when, finally, they had lifted it onto plastic sheeting and carried it away.
Hot days, but it had rained the last two nights. Been dry before.
At least two days, then, maybe three.
Mike sighed and tried not to speculate too much. Tried instead to concentrate on what would happen next.
Soon the pathologist would begin. A description would be circulated. Anyone seen in the area over the last few days would be found and questioned. Missing persons reports searched in detail — time consuming and, Mike knew from experience, often unrewarding.
Then, if they struck lucky, they’d find his family. His name. Get a recent photo and media time to circulate it. There’d be sightings, many of them. Most leading to dead ends or other kids unrelated to this one. Each lead would be checked, collated and rechecked. Each failure would become a personal one. Each possible breakthrough the stimulus to keep on looking. To push that little bit further.
Mike felt suddenly depressed at the prospect.
The crash of the double doors being opened and a trolley being wheeled into the room brought him from his reverie. He watched as the body, still in its protective wrappings, was laid on the table.
The outer coverings were peeled back. The whole package weighed and then the careful visual examination began, the pathologist speaking all the while into a microphone suspended above the table.
He felt Price move closer as the black plastic was cut away and the body finally laid out in full view. Even from where he stood, Mike could see that parts of the hand and a small area of the shoulder, had been chewed and scratched. But the face seemed untouched. Unclosed eyes staring up at nothing and the jaw slack, leaving the mouth to fall open when the body moved.
Just for an instant, Mike remembered Stevie. The shock he had felt when he’d tried to close his eyes and found the lids refused to shut, the muscles drawn into spasm after death.
‘They used to put pennies on the eyes of the dead,’ Mike said softly. ‘To stop them from opening.’ Price made no reply.
The pathologist continued with his ritual.
‘Male Caucasian. Estimated thirteen to fifteen years. Height, five feet two, one hundred fifty-seven centimetres. Evidence of bruising to the right temple, left shoulder and the right side of the rib cage two centimetres above the nipple.
‘You have that?’ he asked, waiting for his assistant to record the marks on the body chart.
The photographer from the crime scene circled the body as she had earlier, recording each injury. Preparing to switch to video as the operation progressed.
Mike watched as they took samples of hair, swabs from nose, mouth and rectum. Examined the eyes for signs of asphyxia. Scraped beneath the short nails.
He watched as they sat the body forward to examine the back, noting the marks of hypostasis on the right-hand side. He flinched, as he always did, at the eerie sound of expelled air forced upward from the lungs and through the larynx as the body was eased forward, head lowered towards the knees and samples of the spinal fluid taken.
He stayed while the boy was washed and the X-rays taken, feeling like some anxious parent watching as their child was examined, and thinking all the time about his own dead son. But when the surgeon produced the dissecting knife and laid the body straight to make the first cut, Mike left swiftly. Striding across the room to the swing doors. Pushing through and hearing them clang loudly behind him.
Price followed only minutes later and joined Mike in the car.
‘Should be bloody strung up,’ he said. ‘Fucking bastards. Just give me ten minutes and a length of rope. That’s all they’re bloody worth.’
* * *
Saturday evening
Mike sat alone in his flat and watched the press conference on the evening news, glad that this at least had been taken out of his hands.
The superintendent read a pre-written statement. He looked grey and strained, Mike thought. Maybe he liked this kind of personal appearance as little as Mike.
‘The body of a teenage boy was found at ten p.m. last night,’ he said. ‘It had been dumped, wrapped in a black dustbin liner, close to a spinney locally known as Bright’s Wood, just outside of Colton.’
The news cut to pictures of the murder scene. Police cordon, covered area, a small group of people moving purposefully about, and, close by, a long-lens view of a line of searchers moving slowly across the neighbouring field.
‘The body has not, as yet, been identified but it is believed to be that of a teenaged boy, aged between thirteen and fifteen years. Five feet two inches in height with light blue eyes and sandy hair. A red sweatshirt believed to belong to the victim was also found at the scene.’
Mike watched as the camera cut once more, this time to the red garment that had been found bundled into the bag with the dead boy. The bloodstained sleeve had been tucked back out of sight and the shirt was wrapped inside a clear plastic bag. The logo of an American football team showed clearly on the chest.
It hadn’t been purchased locally. That much they did know. But the labels had been removed and a slight tear at the neck had been mended, badly, in green thread.
The sweatshirt was probably the best lead they had.
There followed an appeal for information. A hotline for informers and frightened relatives. A reassertion that everything was being done to bring the killer or killers to justice.
‘This is a despicable crime,’ the officer was saying. ‘An act of true evil. I want to assure the public that every avenue of investigation is being pursued and that this force will not rest until the boy’s killer has been brought to book.’ His left hand moved unconsciously to twist the large onyx ring he wore on his right hand. Then Superintendent Jaques turned to the assembled journalists, fielding questions from the floor.
No, as yet there were no suspects.
No, the cause of death had not yet been established and, no, he couldn’t comment on whether or not the boy had been sexually assaulted until all the reports were in.
Mike switched off then and leaned back in the only armchair his tiny flat contained.
‘The cause of death has not yet been established,’ he repeated softly to himself, then laughed grimly.
It wasn’t policy, he knew, to put out over the air that the boy had almost bled to death from a ruptured artery after repeated rape. Or that someone had finished him off by pressing something with soft blue fibres over his face when he was far too weak to even try to struggle.
No, Mike thought, he didn’t suppose they could really put that out over the air on the teatime news.
Chapter Fifteen
Sunday morning
Eric Pearson skimmed through the Sunday papers. Johanna brought him three of them every Sunday when she took the children out for their weekly visit to the park.
Eric didn’t like the family going out en masse like that. Didn’t like knowing they would be gone for two or three hours, perhaps, but it was something Johanna insisted upon doing and, these days, he didn’t seem to have the energy to argue with her. Arguments required too much sustained concentration.
Eric skimmed the papers, trying to catch up on the week’s news. He could hear the children and Johanna chattering away in the kitchen below and the sound of the radio coming from his eldest son’s bedroom.
Eric could almost believe the world to be sane and normal once more.
Almost, but not quite.
For several minutes Eric stared at the twin images on the page in front of him before beginning on the text. The first was taken with a long lens. The slight edge distortion and the unguarded pose of the man in the centre of the shot told him that.
It was the DI who had come to his house. Nosing about, looking at his photographs.
‘Detective Inspector Mike Croft,’ the caption read, ‘directing op
erations yesterday.’
Eric skimmed through the text. The finding of a boy’s body out Colton way. And this man was heading the investigation.
Eric almost spat in disgust. It was the other picture that really got to him. Superintendent Jaques holding forth at a press conference the night before.
‘A despicable crime.’ Eric almost laughed. ‘Promise they will bring the guilty to justice! Ha!’ What did Jaques know about justice?
And this other man, this Croft, he was working with him.
Eric put the paper aside and stared upwards at the ceiling. He had almost liked Croft. Almost believed that he might be different. But he would be just like all the rest if Jaques was working with him.
‘Corrupt as hell,’ Eric said softly to himself. ‘The whole damned lot of them, corrupt as hell.’
He leaned right back in his chair, his eyes still fixed to the ceiling as though trying to peer through to his bedroom overhead. At the old bed with its shot springs and its sagging mattress and at the box file that held the journal.
Jaques’ name was in there. Eric knew it. If he thought hard enough he could even recall the words.
‘Corrupt as hell, the whole damned lot of them. Corrupt as hell,’ Eric repeated to himself.
* * *
Mike stood on the cordoned walkway and gazed at the empty space where the body had lain.
In the two adjoining fields volunteers and police could be seen walking in close formation, continuing their intensive search. At the edge of the wood, undergrowth had been cut back and carefully lifted aside, then sifted by hand for any random fragment that didn’t belong. The wood had been subjected to the same meticulous attention.
The boy had died elsewhere. That much was certain. Had been killed and left for some time half turned onto his side and with something pressing against his right shoulder.
Later, long enough to develop marks of hypostasis but not long enough for rigor to have set in, the body had been moved, wrapped in a plastic bag with the knees curled close against the chest.
Later still, he’d been brought here.