‘Length one hundred and forty centimetres. Weight ... Head circumference ... Bruising around the cricoid cartilage, signs of manual strangulation. Measurements of distances between thumbprints.’ She looked up at Joanna. ‘Here, look.’ Joanna peered at the opened neck and Cathy pointed at a tiny bone. ‘The hyoid,’ she explained. ‘It’s broken. It was definitely manual strangulation. A medium-sized hand.’ She frowned. ‘Doesn’t exactly narrow the field.’
‘Nails?’ Joanna asked, and Cathy Parker looked at her with respect.
‘I see Matthew has taught you something. They were not long talons but definitely not bitten.’ She spoke into the dictaphone. ‘Some nail marks. Right...’ she turned to the SOC officer, ‘we’ll cut the clothes off.’
There was something infinitely pathetic about the removal of clothing from the thin body ... clothes the boy had probably scrabbled into hastily – as boys do. The threadbare sweat-shirt advertising a can of coke, the baggy jeans that hid such thin legs holes in grubby, white sports socks, underwear and a huge T-shirt, all dropped into plastic bags, labelled and piled up ready for forensics. The only odd note was the new Reeboks. Joanna picked them up, safely encased in their plastic bags. They were cross-laced. Joanna looked at one of the SOC officers.
‘How much?’ she asked, holding out the shoe. ‘Eighty, ninety quid,’ he said. ‘They don’t come cheap.’
She nodded. ‘I thought as much.’
Cathy was still dictating. ‘White Caucasian male ... age about ten ...’
An hour later she spoke to Joanna. ‘I’ll have the report typed up by tomorrow but, off the cuff, manual strangulation – as you know,’ she said in a voice purposely matter-of-fact. For all of them the post-mortem of a murdered child was a distressing event. ‘He was physically small – not terribly well nourished but not emaciated.’ She looked at Joanna. ‘His disappearance hasn’t been reported?’
Joanna shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Then we have to consider the possibility that he is an absconder, perhaps from a children’s home or from a family where he was not missed. Don’t people sometimes wait a while with a kid who’s done a “runner” before ...?’
She paused, then picked up one of the child’s hands. ‘The tattoos ...’ She ran one of her fingers along the knuckles of the right hand. ‘Love,’ she read. ‘These are quite interesting, Inspector, aren’t they? Amateurishly done a few years ago. I’ve only ever seen them on a child so young who was in care ... Still,’ she smiled, ‘I expect you’ve noticed them too. There are a few other unsavoury aspects to this boy. He’d tried a noxious mix a few times of intravenous drugs.’ She pointed to the ugly, pitted scars that spotted both arms. ‘Usually Harpic, talcum powder, sodium bicarbonate or even flour. It ekes out the drug and causes the ulcers. He’d had a go a time or two but I don’t really think he was a habitual user – at least I can see no evidence of regular use, one or two scars, that’s all. He was rather undernourished and had slightly prominent ears. Left ear pierced – by an amateur. The holes aren’t straight. Teeth not too decayed – one or two properly done fillings which I’ve recorded. Teeth nicotine-stained, as were his fingers.’
She looked at Joanna. ‘If it’s any consolation there’s no trace of carbon monoxide or soot in the lungs. I am perfectly satisfied that he was dead before being set on fire. He put up no fight.’ She touched Joanna’s shoulder. ‘He died a quick and humane death – lost consciousness swiftly. He did not struggle. He probably never knew what happened. But as there is one side – here is another. He had been sexually abused over a long period – possibly a number of years. I think it started when he was quite young. There’s intense scarring around the anus. He might have been five or six when first abused, possibly even younger.’
‘The motive was sexual?’
Cathy Parker shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not this time. I’ll have to wait for the results of the swabs, of course, but I don’t think there was a sexual motive for this boy’s death. He had not been abused recently – possibly not for a year or more. There was no new scarring. The old scars had healed up. However ...’ she showed Joanna tiny round marks on the thin, bony chest with its prominent ribs and stick-like upper arms. ‘You know what these are?’ she asked, and Joanna nodded. ‘Someone burned him on numerous occasions with a cigarette. Again ...’ she touched the marks, ‘not recently. I think the last one was done not less than six months ago.
Joanna blinked. ‘Was there no one to act as advocate for this poor sod?’ she asked. ‘And the thousands like him? No one he could turn to? Damn it,’ she said angrily, ‘where is this caring society we’re all supposed to be part of?’
‘Try social services,’ Cathy said drily.
‘Well, his mother then?’
‘Come on ...’ Cathy’s eyes met hers. She turned to the trolley and picked up the ring. ‘What do you make of this?’
‘Either a present,’ Joanna said, ‘maybe from a friend – or else he nicked it.’
Cathy peered at it. ‘It’s got initials on it. And it’s fairly distinctive. It should be a good lead.’
‘It’s a start,’ Joanna agreed.
Cathy crossed to the sink and began washing her hands as the mortician sewed up the body, then she turned back and stared for a while at the boy’s face, still calm and waxen.
‘He must have been a very pretty child, you know,’ she said, ‘with his blond hair and blue eyes and, I dare say, a cocky, confident manner, fashionable clothes and a swagger. Under other circumstances he might have been a choirboy, or a teacher’s pet, a Little Lord Fauntleroy, or had doting parents.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Joanna said, ‘he had none of that. Accident of birth and he ends up like this, on the slab aged ten.’
Cathy Parker replaced the sheet, covering the boy’s face, and the mortician’s assistant wheeled the trolley back into the refrigerated temporary grave.
‘So where do I look?’ Joanna muttered more to herself than out loud. ‘And where do I begin?’
Cathy was drying her hands on the towel. ‘Have you heard anything from Matthew?’ she asked casually.
Joanna flushed. ‘A letter,’ she said, ‘before he went.’
Cathy Parker gave her a hard stare. ‘Jane Levin and I have been friends for many years.’
Joanna closed her ears to it.
She returned to the station and met Mike Korpanski coming out of her office. ‘So you’re back?’ he said. ‘How did the PM go?’
‘As we thought – manual strangulation. We’ve informed the coroner’s office. They’ve set the inquest for next week. There doesn’t seem much doubt about the verdict. Homicide.’
He nodded.
‘There were a few important facts brought to light that you should know about, Mike.’ She looked at the tall DS with his black hair and muscular frame – the result of many hours spent at the local gym – and she thought how much she had grown to depend on him in the six months they had worked together. How very different was the easy, friendly relationship that had sprung up recently from the early weeks of resentment and hostility.
‘The boy was the victim of repeated abuse – from an early age, five or six, both physical and probably mental. Cathy Parker found unmistakable evidence of repeated sexual abuse. But none recently and the motive for his murder was not sexual. He had also been burned with a cigarette on more than one occasion and was a drug abuser.’
Mike gave a quick snort. ‘A typical teenager then?’
‘Hardly,’ she said.
Mike frowned. ‘So it wasn’t a sexual assault?’
‘No – it didn’t look like it. No clothes torn, no recent scarring. He’d been left alone for a number of months – Cathy guessed a year. The abuse had stopped. Was there anything you particularly wanted?’ she asked, nodding towards her office door.
‘Yes.’ He grinned. ‘The soldier boys – the pair who found the body. They’re here waiting to make a statement.’
She looked at him. ‘Anythi
ng I should pick up on?’
He shook his head. ‘Not really.’ Then he added, ‘I suppose you noticed the one with the red hair had tattoos? Love and Hate.’
‘They’re common enough.’
His eyes met hers. ‘They really do look the same. But you’ve seen the boy’s tattoos closer than I have. See for yourself.’
She nodded, then hesitated. ‘I think I’ll see the other one first. His name?’
‘Thomas Jones. Taffy was a Welshman ...’
Tom boy shuffled in awkwardly, still in bulky camouflage and heavy boots.
Joanna sat down behind her desk, switched on the tape recorder, recorded the date, time, two officers present.
‘Private Jones,’ she said, ‘take your time and tell me what happened.’
He swallowed. ‘We was doin’ exercises on the moors ...’
‘Roughly what time was it?’
‘About five.’ He looked wary. ‘We thought it was some meat cooking, you see.’
‘Why don’t you start at the beginning,’ she suggested helpfully.
‘We was doing exercises up on the Roaches,’ he said again, rubbing his chin and smearing the camouflage messily across his face. ‘They was just comin’ up over the back of the hill.’ His enthusiasm was growing. ‘It made it easier for us.’
She gave him a questioning look.
‘We was divided up into two teams,’ he explained. ‘A and B team. They was shown up against the light, you see, quite clearly.’
She did see. An image of stealthy, moving camouflage, that strange illusion of seething ground. She had noticed it herself once when up on the moors, had watched the ground itself seem to boil before she had realized it was the soldiers, on their bellies, stealing through heather and scrub, splashing along puddles and streams, invisible to the eye, creeping up towards the Winking Man. ‘Go on,’ she said.
‘I didn’t notice nothing at first,’ he said, ‘but I could smell something – like meat cooking. I said to Gary, “Fancy having a barbecue now.” ’ He blinked, rubbed his eyes, looked at the black smears on the back of his hands. He giggled. ‘I bet I look a sight,’ he said. Then he stared at her hard for a moment, his eyes a light contrast against the blackened face. ‘The next minute, Gary was chargin’ down the hill like the bloody Light Brigade, screamin’ and holdin’ his gun out like the enemy was at the bottom.’
‘And what did you do?’
The soldier’s shoulders dropped. ‘I ran after ’im. And then when I got to the bottom I saw the little heap of rags.’ He looked at Joanna then swivelled around to stare at Detective Sergeant Korpanski. ‘I’ll never forget the sight of that kid burnin’,’ he said, ‘for as long as I live – or that smell either. It was enough to make me sick.’
‘But you weren’t sick?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t.’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘We pulled our jackets off, put the fire out, covered him up.’ He blinked tightly against the suspicion of a tear. ‘By then the sergeant was wonderin’ what the hell we were up to. It was him what rung the police.’ He slumped forward in his chair his face still tight with shock. ‘That’s about it,’ he said, and Joanna nodded.
‘I thought it was probably like that,’ she said. ‘Did you notice any cars when you first arrived at the lay-by?’
Private Thomas Jones shook his head. ‘Not a bloody livin’ thing.’
Joanna licked her lips. ‘Tell me, Private Jones,’ she spoke softly, ‘this is very important. Did you touch anything?’
He looked worried. ‘No,’ he said, ‘on my honour I did not. Apart from puttin’ our jackets over him to put the fire out we didn’t touch anything.
Taking the tiny bunch of grasses out of her top drawer, Joanna asked, ‘Did you notice these?’
He looked genuinely puzzled and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see them.’
When the soldier had shuffled out Joanna turned to Mike. ‘As simple as he seems, Mike?’
He nodded. ‘I think that held the ring of truth.’
She jerked her head towards the door. ‘And the other one?’
‘I’m not so sure about him, Jo,’ he said.
She stood up and opened the door. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’
Private Gary Swinton walked in, his short ginger hair looking pale against the blackened face. It made it difficult to judge his expression but they both knew it would be truculent, aggressive. Years in the police force had taught them both to sniff out various attitudes – however hard the wearer might try to conceal them. To coin a phrase, Joanna thought she would not like to meet him alone on a dark night.
The usual formalities over she met the pale eyes. ‘We understand it was a little after five a.m. that you began to ascend the crag known as the Winking Man?’
Gary Swinton nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said carelessly, sitting on the edge of his seat.
‘You were about halfway up the hill when Tom caught the scent of charred flesh.’ She knew she was questioning him with a particular care. The tattoos had already alerted her to one tiny link. But it was something else that was making her skin tingle. She felt sure that the dead boy, when alive, had worn this same air – keep away, stay out. Repel all boarders – no one too close, especially not the police. She met it increasingly now. In the last two years it had touched epidemic proportions.
‘Then what happened, Private Swinton?’
Gary stared at the floor. ‘I smelt it first,’ he said gruffly. ‘Tom thought it was a bloody barbecue.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘Different smell.’
Joanna and Mike exchanged quick glances. ‘Not the smell of beefburgers, soldier?’
He looked pityingly at her, then the steel curtain of wariness dropped down heavily. ‘Dunno,’ he said.
She let it pass. ‘Then what, Gary?’
‘I saw the clothes,’ he said. ‘Knew there was something wrong.’
‘But you were a long way off.’
‘Good eyesight,’ he grunted.
She left that one too for another day.
‘Witnesses say you were screaming as you ran,’ she said.
‘Instinct. They teach us to do that in the army.’ She leaned across the desk. ‘I thought,’ she said softly, ‘that in the army they taught you to be quiet.’
He looked concerned. ‘Not when you’re charging.’
‘Charging?’
He seemed even more uncomfortable. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Then what?’ The brevity of the question sounded brutal but she had a feeling Private Gary Swinton would respond better to that tone than to any other.
To her surprise his voice, when he replied, was husky with emotion.
‘I saw the kid,’ he said, and smothered his face with his hands.
She waited.
‘I saw his legs first.’
She knew. They had been worst attacked by the fire. Thin legs, the jeans scorched and blackened, flesh charred, bone visible.
‘Then his body ...’ The soldier was shaking. He glared at the floor. ‘I saw his face last.’
‘And?’ she said.
‘We put the fire out. The way we were taught – with our jackets.’
‘Had you ever seen the boy before?’ He shook his head. ‘Course not.’
She glanced at the L-O-V-E H-A-T-E on his hands but didn’t speak.
When the soldier left the room Mike looked at her. ‘You didn’t ask him about the tattoos,’ he said accusingly.
‘No,’ she replied, ‘I decided to leave that – for the time being.’ She met his eyes. ‘I want their jackets to go to forensics.’
‘Both of them?’
She nodded. ‘Both of them.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Petrol,’ she said, ‘splashed.’
Mike shook his head but she defended her action. ‘There’s no harm in checking a statement.’ She paused, then asked, ‘What do you think?’
‘No harm in checking them both out,’ she repeated.
Joanna had been allocated a team of four POs and two DCs with a promise of more when she needed them. On top of this the whole of the Leek force would carry out the necessary checking of statements and house-to-house questioning. First priority was to find out who the boy was. So a police artist had visited the mortuary and spent an hour sketching the child as he would have looked – alive, eyes open, lips parted, hair tousled and wearing the unburnt clothes. And they had held the front page of the late edition of the evening newspaper with a blank panel.
At the briefing, some of the force copied down details faithfully, word for word. Others sat and watched with rapt attention. Each person present had his or her own way of dealing with the case of a young boy found murdered, his body then mutilated. But in the end they would all have to dovetail and produce a finished case – if it was possible. And this was their uniting hope – that they would bring the killer to the courts.
‘First of all,’ Joanna said, turning to face them, ‘let me tell you the way I mean to work – with you. Butt in if you have a comment or question. Try all your ideas out here — in this room. Please do not hesitate – however far-fetched you think it might be. I do not intend to aim for haste but for a watertight conviction of the guilty party. In other words, we want the person who did this found guilty and locked away so other children are safe. But I also want it handled so properly they could film it and use it as a police training video. I want no assumptions made – no corners cut. Now ... We have a white Caucasian male. Age uncertain but roughly ten.’ She indicated the police picture of the dead boy’s waxen face. ‘The boy had blond hair, blue eyes, was one hundred and forty centimetres tall.’ She paused. ‘Distinguishing marks – left ear pierced and tattoos.’
She held up the pictures of the dead child’s hands. ‘Love, Hate ... Amateurishly done.’ She looked around the room. ‘We’ve all seen this sort of thing. Kids get together – usually do it themselves or a mate does it. But you and I know the sort of background this child probably came from. Only children who feel they would not get a beating from their mother or father would have dared come home with tattoos like these on their knuckles. I am not being classist but I am being a realist.’ She paused, expecting at the least muttering, at the most an objection. None came so she continued. ‘There is also a drugs connection – some nasty, scarred needle marks on both arms, the kind of scarring that comes from mixing drugs with talc, Harpic, flour.’ She looked around the room. ‘You know the sort of thing. Drugs mixed with something. He was a slim child — bordering on being undernourished. However, I am bound to say the pathologist’s opinion was that the child was not a frequent or habitual drugs user – just that he did have access to drugs and did use them on a number of occasions.’
Catch the Fallen Sparrow Page 3