Sleeping in the Ground

by Peter Robinson

  Diana Lofthouse, age 30, bridesmaid. Residence: Ripon. Spinal cord injury.

  Kathleen Louise Shea, age 30, bridesmaid. Residence: Leeds. Deceased.

  Charles Morgan Kemp, age 59, father of groom. Residence: Northallerton. Deceased.

  ‘So Benjamin Kemp is still alive?’ Banks said.

  ‘For now. His liver’s done for. If I were a gambling man, I wouldn’t give much for his chances.’

  Dr Glendenning seemed tired, Banks thought. It was hardly any wonder; he was getting on in years, and he had been bending over dead bodies almost non-stop since Sunday afternoon. He had help, of course. His chief anatomical pathology technologist Karen Galway and two trainee pathologists were working with him, all of them still busy at the stainless-steel tables in the autopsy suite next door. Even so, the long hours showed in his watery eyes behind the black-framed glasses and in his drawn, pale flesh. His white coat had been smeared with blood and worse when Banks had arrived, and he had removed it and dropped it in a bin before sitting behind his desk. He wore a white shirt and maroon tie under his herringbone jacket.

  ‘Finished?’ Banks asked.

  Glendenning raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘With the dead? Aye. For now.’ He took a packet of Benson & Hedges out of his waistcoat pocket and lit one. Smoking was strictly prohibited in the building, but no one dared tell him that. He was more careful these days, though, Banks had noticed, and he didn’t actually smoke while he was working on a body. Watching Glendenning light up brought on one of Banks’s own rare cravings, which surprised him with its urgency and power. He fought it back.

  ‘It’s not strictly my business,’ Glendenning went on, ‘but you’ve got a lot of psychologically wounded people out there. What are you going to do with them?’

  ‘Most of them have friends and relatives already with them. There’s also counselling sessions going on.’

  ‘Poor sods. You come to a wedding and it ends up a funeral.’

  ‘I know,’ said Banks. ‘There’s something not quite right about that.’

  Glendenning scrutinised him. ‘I may not be the picture of health myself, but you certainly seem the worse for wear. Been sleeping properly?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Eating?’

  Banks was beginning to regret the stop he had made for the full English at the greasy spoon on his way to work that morning. Bacon, eggs, mushrooms, baked beans, fried bread and a slice of black pudding probably wasn’t the sort of breakfast Dr Glendenning would approve of. ‘Plenty,’ he said.

  ‘Well, cut out fatty foods. Drinking?’

  ‘Now and then.’

  ‘Thought so.’ Glendenning rummaged in his drawer and tossed Banks a foil strip of tablets. ‘Take one of these with two fingers of good whisky every night,’ he said. ‘Only two fingers, mind. And good whisky. That means Highlands. None of that Islay rubbish. I don’t want to come in to work one morning and find you laid on a table out there.’

  Banks pocketed the tablets. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Am I likely to become addicted?’

  ‘If they make you feel better, you’ll probably become addicted,’ said Glendenning. ‘Why wouldn’t you? But don’t worry about it. It won’t last. And you won’t be getting any more from me.’ He sighed and slouched back in his chair. ‘Days like this,’ he said, ‘I sometimes think junkies are the only ones with the right idea. You know they say that sometimes heroin feels so good you don’t even want to hang on to your life any more. It’s better than breathing.’

  ‘If I hadn’t seen so many dead junkies – most of them kids – I’d probably agree,’ said Banks.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just grouching.’

  ‘So what have you found?’

  ‘Four corpses, so far,’ said Glendenning. ‘And from what I hear from my colleagues at James Cook, there’s one poor wee lassie in a wheelchair.’

  ‘Diana Lofthouse,’ said Banks. ‘Anything unexpected show up in your post-mortems?’

  ‘No. They all died from gunshot wounds. Hollow-point .223 ammo, as a matter of fact. Nasty way to go. The bullet expands when it enters the victim, as I’m sure you’re aware. Causes massive tissue damage. Young Winsome’s lucky the bullet didn’t enter her flesh, but only grazed her shoulder.’

  ‘Who would have access to such ammunition?’

  ‘That’s one for you to answer,’ said Glendenning. ‘But everything’s available if you want it badly enough. You should know that. Some people use them for greater accuracy in target shooting, and apparently, they reduce smoke and exposure to lead vapour. And I have a friend who tells me deer hunters use hollow-point ammo, so you can obviously get a special dispensation of some sort. Of course, lots of shooters prefer to make their own bullets. I don’t think the source would be much of a problem.’

  ‘Still,’ said Banks, ‘it’s a bit unusual. It might help us narrow down the field.’

  ‘They make for a very ugly wound. I can tell you that much. That’s another reason the doctors don’t hold out much hope for Benjamin Kemp. The damn bullet expanded and turned his liver and half a kidney to mush, to use a technical term.’

  Banks swallowed. ‘And Katie Shea?’

  ‘Aye. A regular bullet and she might have survived even the blood loss. But her insides resembled a plate of spaghetti Bolognese.’ He pointed towards the post-mortem suite. ‘She’s still on the table. The students are sluicing her down and sewing her up.’

  Banks knew he would always remember the pretty blond girl in a coral-coloured dress slumped against the gravestone, the one who reminded him of Emily Hargreaves. Even AC Gervaise had intuited some sort of connection the previous evening when she told him about Katie’s death. And not just her own death, he realised. Not just Katie Shea holding her bloody guts in, keening and wailing and begging for help. But pregnant Katie Shea. Perhaps, in her mind, it was her baby she was cradling on her lap.

  ‘I don’t know whether anyone’s told you this already,’ Glendenning went on, ‘but one thing they did find out at the hospital was that she was pregnant.’

  ‘AC Gervaise told me last night.’

  ‘I have to say, though, it was a hell of a job making sure. The bullet missed the foetus, but there was plenty of damage in the general area. But the tests came out positive.’

  ‘OK,’ said Banks. ‘OK. I get the picture.’ And he did, all too clearly. In full colour, with sound. He felt his breakfast repeat on him, tasted bile and felt the anger surge inside him again. Just like last night, he wanted to lash out at something, anything.

  ‘Calm down, laddie,’ said Glendenning. ‘You’ll have apoplexy.’

  Banks gritted his teeth. ‘How long?’

  ‘Not long at all. Six weeks, maybe eight. Do you know how tiny a foetus is at that stage?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘The size of a blueberry.’

  ‘Would she have known?’

  ‘I should think so, though I’m not a mind-reader, especially when it comes to corpses. For a start, she would have missed her period. She would also probably have experienced mood changes. Aches and pains. Even morning sickness. Loss of appetite. Increased urination. She may even have noticed her breasts and waist increasing in size. Does it make a difference?’

  ‘It could provide a motive,’ said Banks. ‘First we’ll have to find out who the father was. I’ll put DC Masterson on it.’

  Glendenning managed a thin smile. ‘Well, I doubt it was an immaculate conception, though I’m afraid even my advanced pathological skills don’t stretch to that kind of judgement.’ He paused. ‘Alan, you know I’m no great fan of this psychological gobbledygook, but don’t you think you might benefit from a bit of this counselling yourself?’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ said Banks. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘It’s just that I noticed her specifically, that’s all. You know how they say it’s hard to relate to the deaths of thousands in a flood or on a battlefield, but if there’s just one, it tends to stay with you. Katie Shea was th
e one. Out of the whole massacre, it was seeing her that stuck in my mind the most. She reminded me of someone I once knew. And now . . .’

  ‘Aye,’ said Glendenning. ‘Well, she would have been a bonny lass when she was alive, that’s for certain.’

  ‘I never knew her.’ Wearily, Banks got to his feet. ‘Thanks, doc,’ he said. ‘If you come up with anything else, you know my number.’

  ‘I do. And think about that counselling gobbledygook.’

  Banks turned at the door, nodded briefly and left.

  ‘And don’t forget the pills and whisky, either,’ Glendenning called after him.

  ‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,’ said Gerry Masterson at the opening of the briefing later that Monday morning, ‘but I just heard that Benjamin Kemp died during the night. Along with Katie Shea, that makes murder victims four and five.’ As she spoke, Gerry was uncomfortably aware of some of the male detectives undressing her with their eyes. She had dressed conservatively for work in maroon cords and a pale green jacket buttoned up over her white polo-neck top. She had even tied her long hair in a ponytail as she usually did at work. Still they undressed her. No matter what she did, there was no escaping the fact that she was an attractive young woman, and some men were going to ogle her rather than listen to what she had to say.

  Gerry loathed standing in front of an audience like this, but she could hardly say no when Detective Superintendent Banks had asked her to, not if she valued her career prospects. It would be good experience, he had said. An experience in terror, more like, she thought, aware of her hands trembling and her neck stiffening as she tried to stop her head from shaking, too.

  Banks was sitting in the front row, but she didn’t feel that he was undressing her. She was aware of her face flushing, but she carried on, casting her gaze to the people at the back of the room, doing her best to concentrate on what she was saying. What made everything worse was the news Banks had given her about Katie Shea. Gerry would never forget witnessing her agony, her courage. All for nothing. And now the baby, too.

  Banks had tried to persuade Gerry to go for counselling, but she didn’t feel that she needed it. Besides, however much things had improved over the years, there was still a stigma attached to cops seeing shrinks. Many male officers thought it was a sign of weakness, and it meant you weren’t up to the job. As a woman, she didn’t want or need to invite that kind of attention. She could handle this herself. Yes, she was upset and unnerved by what had happened – who wouldn’t be? – but she could function. She hadn’t slept last night, but she’d had a lot on her mind.

  Gerry shuffled her papers. ‘First, a few nuggets we’ve dug up so far, mostly from some of the survivors of the shootings who were able and willing to talk yesterday. Laura Tindall and Benjamin Kemp had known each other for two years and had been engaged for the last six months. They had recently bought a house near Lyndgarth, and Laura was planning to live there with Benjamin after the wedding. Laura’s father Robert is a retired banker, so there’s always a possibility we’re after someone who had a thing against bankers. But, I mean, who doesn’t?’

  Gerry was surprised but pleased by the murmur of polite laughter.

  ‘Maureen Tindall, the mother of the bride, grew up in Leeds, but the family moved down south to Aylesbury when she was in her mid-teens. She trained and worked as a nurse until she met Robert in 1982 when he came in for a routine X-ray after a minor car crash. She married him in 1984, gave up nursing and devoted herself to keeping the house and later to taking care of Laura, their only child, born in 1985. The only interesting fact I’ve been able to dig up about her so far is that her best friend Wendy Vincent was murdered in Leeds when they were both only fifteen years old. That was over fifty years ago, however, and the killer recently died in jail, so I doubt it’s very relevant, but it might account to some extent for her poor psychological state. We won’t be able to talk to her for a while yet.

  ‘Laura briefly attended the University of Manchester from 2003 to 2005, but gave up her history degree for a modelling career at the end of her second year. Eventually, she decided to retire from that life, and for the last three years she’s been involved in recruiting and training for a West End modelling agency. She planned to keep on working after her marriage, mostly from home. She met Benjamin Kemp at a party in St John’s Wood thrown while he was in town on business for his father’s company. Ben and Laura hit it off, and the rest, as they say, is history, or would have been had it not been for Saturday’s shootings. Benjamin Kemp worked for his father’s software development company just outside Northallerton, where the Kemp family has lived for over twenty years. He also planned on continuing with this work after the wedding.’

  Gerry noticed someone near the back raise her hand in the air. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you saying there may be a rational motive somewhere in all this? Revenge, for example?’

  ‘I’m saying it has to be considered, however outlandish it may seem. In the same vein, it’s important to remember that we’re dealing with some very young victims, and there are ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends out there. None of them has exhibited any odd or violent behaviour as far as we know, but they need to be checked out. Laura Tindall did have a cyber-stalker a few years back, but he’s in New Zealand and there’s no way he could have been in Fortford last Saturday. We’ll be looking into him, anyway. I’ve already asked the Auckland police for their help. Other than that, she didn’t seem to have any obsessively jealous lovers that we know of, but that’s an avenue we will also have to pursue further as the inquiry continues. She was in the public eye, so it’s quite possible that there could have been someone who had active fantasies about her of which she knew nothing. She could even have been stalked without her knowledge. We’ll have to carry out a thorough examination of her computer and see where that leads us. But let’s also remember, this wasn’t a sex crime.’

  ‘So are you saying there’s no specific line of inquiry yet?’ the speaker asked.

  Gerry began to feel flustered. She wished she could pass the briefing over to Superintendent Banks or DI Cabbot, but she struggled on, determined not to show weakness. ‘I’m saying that we need to keep an open mind. I’m sure our profiler Dr Fuller will have more to say about all this when she produces her report. We’re certainly not ruling out the military connection, even though it was three years since Benjamin Kemp’s last tour of duty in Afghanistan. Kemp also had a steady girlfriend until two and a half years ago, when they split up. It sounds as if he might have taken up with Laura quickly afterwards. The girlfriend will need to be interviewed, along with any other exes of Ben, Laura and the rest of the victims.’

  Gerry held up some stapled sheets. ‘I have details on all this here, by the way, and DI Cabbot and I will be handing these out with the TIEs and actions when we’ve finished here. You will need to talk to more of the uninjured wedding guests as they become willing and able, and track down family and friends of the deceased. I don’t need to tell you to tread softly here. These people have just lost loved ones. Two bridesmaids went uninjured, Lucy Fisher and Danielle Meynell, along with the best man Wayne Powell. They’re still in shock but will also need to be interviewed as soon as the doctors declare them fit. I wish I could be more specific in telling you what to look for, but the previous questioner was right. There is no certain line of inquiry yet. Right now we’re still working more or less in the dark. Some of you have already been checking on firearms certificates and local shooting clubs. There’s plenty more of those to get through. Some of you have been assigned to track down all local black- or dark-coloured RAV4s and similar vehicles. We’re still trolling the records for anyone with a history of violence, especially involving firearms, of making threats, or anything of that kind. Keep your eyes and ears open. We have messages out in all the media for members of the public to get in touch if they know or suspect anything, so be warned. There’ll be plenty of attention-seekers and just plain weirdoes calling in. Psychics and people w
ho want to confess, too. Of course, the trouble is that once in a while one of these actually has something of value to tell us. There’s also a massive manhunt going on, though it’s being severely hampered by the weather. According to the most recent forecasts, we can’t expect much change there. In fact, the rain is only expected to get worse, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you who grew up in Yorkshire. CSM Nowak will be bringing you up to date on all that soon, along with any forensic evidence discovered so far.

  ‘I can tell you one final thing, though. I’ve checked most of the local media reports on the wedding coverage, and the only people mentioned in the articles, or shown in photographs, were the bride and groom and their parents. That means if our killer is local, and if he found out about the wedding from the local media, then he would probably have no idea who else was going to be there. Therefore, it’s not a bad idea to concentrate on Laura and Benjamin and their parents first. As only Laura Tindall and Charles and Benjamin Kemp of this group were killed, that might cut down the possibilities even more. But don’t forget, this is just a rough guide. The main thing not to forget is that we’ve still got a killer out there, and he might strike again at any time.’ She glanced at Banks, who tapped his watch and gestured to her. Time to wrap up and get back to the search for the father of Katie Shea’s baby. ‘Thank you.’

  Gerry sank gratefully into her front row chair, exhaling a deep sigh of relief. Stefan Nowak got up to speak next. Banks leaned over to Gerry and whispered, ‘Well done, DC Masterson. I told you it was a piece of cake.’

  Gerry could only stare at Banks. She was still trembling inside. When she found her voice, she felt as if it was trembling, too. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘A piece of cake.’

  ‘We’re very sorry for your loss, Boyd,’ said Banks as he sat down beside Annie at the low round table in his office that Monday evening. Farrow wasn’t a suspect yet, so they had no reason to have their chat in an official interview room. As it turned out, Farrow wasn’t so much a boy as a fortyish man in a light grey Hugo Boss suit carrying a leather designer briefcase. A good fifteen years or so older than Katie Shea, he was handsome in a chiselled kind of way, with short dark hair, a strong square jaw, a slightly overlarge nose and a fleshy mouth. Nobody Gerry had talked to had known that Katie was pregnant, but Gerry had identified and tracked down Boyd Farrow through several emails discovered on her mobile.