Paul might still end up in jail as an accessory, a serious charge, Mara now realized. She wondered if Banks was going to charge her, too. He wasn’t stupid; he must know she had warned Paul about Crocker’s finding the knife. Everything felt fragile. There was a chance she might lose it all, all the peace of mind and stability she had sought for so long. And the children, too. That didn’t bear thinking about.
“Cheer up.” Rick crawled over and tilted her chin up. “We’ll have a party to celebrate Paul’s release. Invite everyone we can think of and fill the place with music and laughter, eh?”
Mara smiled. “I hope you’re right.”
“Where is Paul, anyway?” Zoe asked.
“He went walking on the moors,” said Mara. “I suppose he’s just enjoying his freedom.” She almost added “while it lasts,” but decided that Rick was right; she at least ought to try to enjoy herself while things were going well.
“Seth didn’t want much to do with us this afternoon, either,” Rick complained.
“Don’t be like that, Rick,” Mara said. “He’s been getting behind in his work.
This business with the police has been bothering him, too. Haven’t you noticed how upset he’s been? And you know what a perfectionist he is, what he’s like about deadlines. Besides, I think he’s just relieved Paul’s back. He’s as fed up with the aftermath of this bloody demonstration as I am.”
“We have to try and bring some good out of it,” Rick argued, placing the coal on top of the layered newspaper and wood chips. “Don’t you see that?”
“Yes, I do. I just think we all need a rest from it, that’s all.”
“The struggle goes on. There is no rest.” Rick lit the fire in several places and stood the piece of plywood in front of the 242
fireplace to make it draw. Behind the board the flames began to roar like a hurricane, and Mara could see red around the edges.
“Be careful,” she said. “You know how wildly it burns with the wind up here.”
“Seriously,” Rick said, keeping an eye on the plywood shield, “we can’t stop now. I can understand your lack of enthusiasm, but you’ll just have to shake yourself. Seth and Paul, too. You don’t get anywhere against the oppressors by packing it in because you’re fed up.”
“I sometimes wonder if you ever get anywhere,” Mara muttered.
She was aware that now she had found her home, Maggie’s Farm, she was less concerned about the woes of the world. Not that she didn’t care-she would be quite happy to write letters for Amnesty International and sign petitions-but she didn’t want to make it her whole life, attending rallies, meetings and demonstrations. Compared to the farm, the children and her pottery, it all seemed so distant and pointless. People were going to go on being as cruel to one another as they always had been. But here was a place where she could make room for love. Why should it be contaminated by the sordid world of politics and violence?
“Penny for them?”
“What? Oh, sorry, Zoe. Just dreaming.”
“It’s okay to dream.”
“As long as you don’t expect them to come true without hard work,” Rick added.
“Oh, shut up!” Mara said. “Just give it a rest, can’t you, Rick? Let’s pretend everything’s all right for a few hours at least.”
Rick’s jaw dropped. “Isn’t that what I said at first?” Then he shook his head and muttered something about women. Mara couldn’t be bothered to take him to task for it.
Just then, the kitchen door flew open and Paul stood there, white and trembling.
Mara jumped to her feet. “Paul! What is it? What’s wrong?”
At first he couldn’t speak. He just leaned against the door 243
jamb and tried to force the words out. Rick was beside him by then, and Zoe had reached for his hand.
“What is it, Paul?” she asked him softly. “Take a deep breath. You must try to tell us.”
Paul followed her advice and went to slump down on the cushions. “It’s Seth,” he said finally, pointing towards the back garden. “I think he’s dead.”
244
I
Banks and Burgess rushed through the dark garden to Seth’s workshop, where a bare bulb shone inside the half-open door. Normally, they would have been more careful on their approach to the scene, but the weather was dry and a stone path led between the vegetable beds to the shed, so there was no likelihood of footprints.
Burgess pushed the door open slowly and they walked in. Mixed with the scents of shaved wood and varnish was the sickly metallic smell of blood. Both men had come across it often enough before to recognize it immediately.
At first, they stood in the doorway to take in the whole scene. Seth was just in front of them, wearing his sand-coloured smock, slumped over his work-bench. His head lay on the surface in a small pool of blood, and his arms dangled at his side. From where Banks was standing, it looked as if he had hit his head on the vice clamped to the bench slightly to his left. On the concrete floor over in the right-hand corner stood a small bureau in the Queen Anne style, its finish still wet, a rich, glistening nut-brown. At the far end of the workshop, another bare light bulb shone over the area Seth used for office work.
It was only when Banks moved forward a pace that he noticed he had stepped in something sticky and slippery. The light wasn’t very strong and most of the floor space around
245
Seth was in semi-darkness. Kneeling, Banks saw that what he had first taken for shadow was, in fact, more blood. Seth’s feet stood at the centre of a large puddle of blood. It hadn’t come from the head wound, though, Banks realized, examining the bench again. There hadn’t been much bleeding and none of the blood seemed to have dribbled off the edge. Bending again, he caught sight of a thin tubular object, a pen or a pencil, perhaps, half-submerged in the pool. He decided to leave it for the forensic team to deal with. They were on their way from Wetherby and should arrive shortly after Dr Glendenning and Peter Darby, the young photographer, neither of whom had as far to travel.
Leaving the body, Banks walked cautiously to the back of the workshop where the old Remington stood on its desk beside the filing cabinet. There was a sheet of paper in the typewriter. Leaning forward, Banks was able to read the message: “I did it. I killed the policeman Gill. It was wrong of me. I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused. This is the best way. Seth.”
He called Burgess over and pointed out the note to him.
Burgess raised his eyebrows and whistled softly between his teeth. “Suicide, then?”
“Looks like it. Glendenning should be able to give us a better idea.”
“Where the hell is this bloody doctor, anyway?” Burgess complained, looking at his watch. “It can’t take him that long to get here. Everywhere’s within pissing distance in this part of the country.”
Burgess and Glendenning hadn’t met yet, and Banks was looking forward to seeing Dirty Dick try out his aggressive arrogance on the doctor. “Come on,” he said, “there’s nothing more to do in here till the others arrive. We’ll only mess up the scene. Let’s go outside for a smoke.”
The two of them left the workshop and stood in the cool evening air.
Glendenning, Banks knew, would smoke wherever he wanted and nobody had ever dared say a word to him, but then he was one of the top pathologists in the country, not a lowly chief inspector or superintendent.
246
From the doorway of the shed, they could see the kitchen light in the house.
Someone-Zoe, it looked like-was filling a kettle. Mara had taken the news very badly, and Rick had called the local doctor for her. He had also phoned the Eastvale station, which surprised Banks, given Rick’s usual hostility. Still, Seth Cotton was dead, there was no doubting that, and Rick probably knew there would be no way of avoiding an investigation. It made more sense to start out on the right foot rather than have to explain omissions or evasions later. Banks wondered whether to go inside and have a c
hat with them, but decided to give them a bit longer. They would have probably got over the immediate shock by the time Glendenning and the scene-of-crime team had finished.
At last, the back door opened and the tall, white-haired doctor crossed the garden, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He was closely followed by a fresh-faced lad with a camera bag slung over his shoulder.
“About bloody time,” Burgess said.
Glendenning gave him a dismissive glance and stood in the doorway while Darby did his work. Banks and Burgess went back into the workshop to make sure he photographed everything, including the blood on the floor, the pen or pencil, the Queen Anne bureau and the typewriter. When Darby had finished, Glendenning went in. He was so tall he had to duck to get through the door.
“Watch out for the blood,” Banks warned him.
“And there’s no smoking at the scene,” Burgess added. He got no answer.
Banks smiled to himself. “Ease up,” he said. “The doc’s a law unto himself.”
Burgess grunted but kept quiet while Glendenning felt for a pulse and busied himself with his stethoscope and thermometer.
About fifteen minutes later, while Glendenning was still making calculations in his little red notebook, the forensic team arrived, headed by Vic Manson, the fingerprints man. Manson was a slight, academic-looking man in his early forties. Almost bald, he plastered the few remaining hairs 247
over the dome of his skull, creating an effect of bars shadowed on an egg. He greeted the two detectives and went inside with the team. As soon as he saw the workshop, he turned to Banks. “Bloody awful place to look for prints,” he said.
“Too many rough surfaces. And tools. Have you any idea how hard it is to get prints from well-used tools?”
“I know you’ll do your best, Vic,” Banks said. He guessed that Manson was annoyed at being disturbed on a Sunday evening.
Manson snarled and got to work alongside the others, there to take blood samples and anything else they could find.
Banks and Burgess went back outside and lit up again. A few minutes later, Glendenning joined them.
“What’s the news, doc?” Burgess asked.
Glendenning ignored him and spoke directly to Banks. “He’s dead, and that’s about the only fact I can give you so far.”
“Come on, doc!” said Burgess. “Surely you can tell us more than that.”
“Can you ask your pushy friend here to shut up, just for a wee while?”
Glendenning said to Banks in a quiet, nicotine-ravaged voice redolent of Edinburgh. “And tell him not to call me doc.”
“For Christ’s sake.” Burgess flicked the stub of his cigar into the vegetable patch and stuck his hands deep in his pockets. He was wearing his leather jacket over an open-necked shirt, as usual. The only concession he had made to the cold was a V-necked sweater. Now that darkness had come, their breath plumed in the air, lit by the eerie glow of the bare bulb inside the workshop.
Glendenning lit another cigarette and turned back to Banks, who knew better than to rush him. “It doesn’t look to me,” the doctor said slowly, “as if that head wound was serious enough to cause death. Don’t quote me on it, but I don’t think it fractured the skull.”
Banks nodded. “What do you think was the cause?” he asked.
“Loss of blood. And he lost it from his ankles.”
248
“His ankles?”
“Aye,” Glendenning went on. “The veins on the insides of each ankle were cut. I found a blade-most likely from a plane-lying in the blood, and it looks like it might have been used for the job. I’ll have to make sure, of course.”
“So was it suicide?” Burgess asked.
Glendenning ignored him and went on speaking to Banks. “Most suicides with a penchant for gory death,” he said, “slit their wrists. The ankles are just as effective, though, if not more so. But whether he inflicted the wounds himself or not, I canna say.”
“He’s tried that way before,” Banks said. “And there was a note.”
“Aye, well, that’s your department, isn’t it?”
“Which came first,” Banks asked, “the head wound or the cut ankles?”
“That I can’t say, either. He could have hit his head as he lost consciousness, or someone could have hit it for him and slit his ankles. If the two things happened closely in succession, it won’t be possible to tell which came first, either. It looks like the head wound was caused by the vice. There’s blood on it. But of course it’ll have to be matched and the vice compared with the shape of the wound.”
“How long has he been dead?” Banks asked. “At a guess.”
Glendenning smiled. “Aye, you’re learning, laddie,” he said. “It’s always a guess.” He consulted his notebook. “Well, rigor’s not much farther than the neck, and the body temperature’s down 2.5 degrees. I’d say he’s not been dead more than two or three hours.”
Banks looked at his watch. It was six o’clock. So Cotton had probably died between three and four in the afternoon.
“The ambulance should be here soon,” Glendenning said. “I called them before I set off. I’d better just bag the head and feet before they get here. We don’t want some gormless young ambulance driver spoiling the evidence, do we?”
“Can you do the postmortem tonight?” Banks asked.
“Sorry, laddie. We’ve the daughter and son-in-law down for the weekend. First thing in the morning?”
249
Banks nodded. He knew they’d been spoiled in the past by Glendenning’s eagerness to get down to the autopsy immediately. It was more usual to be asked to wait until the next day. And to Glendenning, first thing in the morning was probably very early indeed.
The doctor went back inside, where Manson and his team were finishing up. A short while later, the ambulance arrived, and two white-coated men bearing a stretcher crossed to the workshop. Seth looked oddly comical now, with his head in a plastic bag. Like some creature out of a fifties horror film, Banks thought. The ambulance men tagged him, zipped him into a body bag and laid him on the stretcher.
“Can you leave by the side exit?” Banks asked, pointing to the large gate in the garden wall. “They’re shook up enough in the house without having to see this.”
The ambulance men nodded and left.
Manson came out five minutes later. “Lots of prints,” he grumbled, “but most of them a mess, just as I thought. At first glance, though, I’d say they belong to only two or three people, not dozens.”
“You’ll get Seth’s, of course,” Banks said, “and probably Boyd’s and some of the others. Could you get anything from the blade?”
Manson shook his head. “Sorry. It was completely covered in blood. And the blood had mixed to a paste with the sawdust on the floor. Very sticky. You’d have to wipe it all off to get anywhere, and if you do that…” He shrugged. “Anyway, the doc’s taken it with him to match to the wounds.”
“What about the typewriter?”
“Pretty smudged, but we might get something. The paper, too. We can treat it with graphite.”
“Look, there’s a handwriting expert down at the lab, isn’t there?”
“Sure. Geoff Tingley. He’s good.”
“And he knows about typewriting, too?”
“Of course.”
Banks led Manson back into the workshop and over to the 250
old Remington. The suicide note was now lying beside it. Also on the desk was a business letter Seth had recently written and not posted. “Dear Mr Spelling,” it read, “I am most grateful for your compliments on the quality of my work, and would certainly have no objection to your spreading the word in the Wharfedale area. Whilst I always endeavour to meet both deadlines and quality standards, I am sure you realize that, this being a one-man operation, I must therefore limit the amount of work I take on.” It went on to imply that Mr Spelling should seek out only the best jobs for Seth and not bother him with stacks of minor repairs a
nd commissions for matchbox-holders or lamp stands.
“Can you get Mr Tingley to compare these two and let us know if they were typed by the same person?”
“Sure.” Manson looked at the letters side by side. “At a pinch I’d say they weren’t. Those old manual typewriters have all kinds of eccentricities, it’s true, but so do typists. Look at those ‘e’s, for a start.”
Banks looked. The ‘e’s in Seth’s business letter had imprinted more heavily than those in his suicide note.
“Still,” Manson went on, “better get an expert opinion. I don’t suppose his state of mind could be called normal, if he killed himself.” He placed each sheet of paper in an envelope. “I’ll see Geoff gets these first thing in the morning.”
“Thanks, Vic.” Banks led the way outside again.
Burgess stood with his hands still in his pockets in the doorway beside Peter Darby, who was showing him the polaroids he’d taken before getting down to the real work. He raised his eyebrows as Banks and Manson joined him. “Finished?”
“Just about,” Banks said.
“Time for a chat with the inmates, then.” Burgess nodded towards the house.
“Let’s take it easy with them,” Banks said. “They’ve had a hell of a shock.”
“One of them might not have had, if Cotton was murdered. But don’t worry, I won’t eat them.”
In the front room, Zoe, Rick, Paul and the children sat drinking tea with the doctor, a young female GP from
251
Relton. A fire blazed in the hearth and candles threw shadows on the whitewashed walls. Music played quietly in the background. Banks thought he recognized Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto.
“Mara’s under sedation,” Rick said. “You can’t talk to her.”
“That’s right,” the doctor agreed, picking up her bag and reaching for her coat.
“I just thought I’d wait and let you know. She took it very badly, so I’ve given her a sedative and put her to bed. I’ll be back in the morning to check.”
Banks nodded, and the doctor left.
A Necessary End ib-3 Page 26