How the Dead Speak

by Val McDermid

  ‘And you saw something?’

  She nodded. ‘Usually, I paid no attention to the view, because there was no view to speak of. It was too dark to see anything. But on one night in particular, there was a clear sky and a full moon and the garden was lit up like a Paul Delvaux painting. And then movement caught my eye. At first, I couldn’t really make out what was going on so I turned out my reading light. When my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see it was Jerome and another man carrying a bundle across the garden to one of the raised beds. They were made out of old railway sleepers, so they were quite sturdy.’

  Paula realised she was holding her breath and forced herself to breathe naturally. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘They lifted the bundle over the lip of the raised bed. It looked quite heavy. There was a spade on the ground and Jerome climbed up on to the edge of the bed with it. He shovelled soil for a short time. I presumed he was covering whatever they’d put in there. Then they walked back towards Jerome’s cottage.’ Sister Mary Patrick started working the fingers of one hand over the amber beads of her rosary. She seemed to think she’d reached the conclusion of what she had to say.

  ‘Did you get a good view of the other man?’ Paula asked.

  ‘I did. Even though it was some distance away, the moonlight was bright enough to see clearly. I knew Jerome as soon as I saw him.’

  Now for the crucial question. ‘And did you recognise the other man?’

  Sister Mary Patrick fixed her with a level gaze. She knows how to work the room. She must have run the convent like her personal empire. No wonder none of the sisters was giving her up. ‘I would not say this if I were not certain,’ she said at length. ‘To bear false witness is, as you doubtless know, against the Eighth Commandment. In our church, we regard those as moral imperatives. The man with Jerome that night was his cousin. Mark Conway.’

  Paula did not let her face betray her excitement. ‘And you’re absolutely certain of this?’

  ‘Oh yes. It wasn’t simply that I recognised his face, although that is the case. But that was confirmed by what he was wearing.’ She paused again. She clearly revelled in the power that tantalising them gave her.

  ‘And what was he wearing?’ For now, Paula would play the game.

  ‘The only thing I ever saw him wearing. He would visit Jerome regularly, which is how I came to meet him. Conway would come round to watch football on TV with his cousin. And he invariably wore a Bradfield Victoria top. They are very distinctive, Inspector. Bright canary yellow.’

  ‘So, let me get this straight. In the middle of the night—’

  ‘Not the middle of the night, Inspector. It would have been around one in the morning,’ the nun corrected her as if she were a particularly slow student.

  Paula acknowledged the correction with a wry smile. ‘In the early hours of the morning, Jerome Martinu and his cousin Mark Conway buried something in a raised bed in the vegetable garden?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What was this bundle wrapped in?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell. Something light-coloured is all I could make out. There was some sort of tape or rope holding it together.’

  ‘And the shape?’

  ‘It wasn’t any particular shape. Quite long, quite bulky.’

  ‘Like a dead person?’

  ‘I don’t know what a dead person taped up in a bundle looks like,’ she said disdainfully.

  Paula gave herself a moment to get a grip on her temper. ‘Can you remember which of the raised beds this was?’

  She frowned. ‘It’s a long time ago. It must have been six, maybe seven years. I don’t know if the beds are still configured in the same arrangement. As far as I can recall, it was the second . . . or possibly the third from the left as I was looking at them from the window.’

  ‘Did you ask Martinu about it?’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Why would I? The garden was his concern.’

  ‘It didn’t strike you as suspicious?’

  The tip of her tongue ran swiftly along the underside of her top lip. ‘I really didn’t give the matter much thought. It was a curious incident, but why would I leap to suspecting a man who had worked for us for years, who was trustworthy and reliable and discreet, of any wrongdoing?’

  ‘You didn’t think they might be burying a body?’ Paula asked. She was struggling to keep her composure through these ridiculous responses.

  ‘I am not a police officer,’ the nun said with an air of contempt. ‘I do not view the world through the lens of suspicion. I assumed it was some sort of fertiliser.’

  ‘Fertiliser? Wrapped in black bin bags? What kind of fertiliser would that be?’

  ‘Animal carcases make good fertiliser, don’t they? Inasmuch as I gave it any thought, I imagined it might be a dead dog.’

  ‘A dead dog.’ Paula let the words hang in the air.

  ‘A passing thought, Inspector.’

  ‘You’re telling me you thought it was normal behaviour for your groundsman and his cousin to be burying a wrapped-up dead dog in a vegetable bed under cover of darkness?’

  Sister Mary Patrick lifted her chin slightly. ‘I had more important considerations than that.’

  ‘Really. Here’s the thing, Sister. I do have a suspicious mind. And what I’m wondering is whether you kept quiet about what you saw that night because you knew that if you reported Jerome Martinu and his cousin to the police, he’d shop you in a heartbeat. And you had too much to hide to risk that, didn’t you?’

  58

  Over the years, I’ve met people who are seduced by what they see as the glamour of serial murder. I’m pretty good at walking in other people’s shoes, but I’ve never managed to wrap my head round that. There’s nothing glamorous about serial homicide . . .

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  Campion Boulevard carved a line through the centre of Bradfield that demarcated communities as effectively as the Berlin Wall. On one side, the thriving city centre with its various money-making machines, from shops and bars to insurance headquarters and art galleries. On the other, the former Victorian mill landscape. Some of the old industrial brick buildings had been renovated and transformed into so-called luxury flats that everybody knew were really a different kind of machine for making money. Others stood semi-derelict like rotten teeth in a Victorian smile. In the gap sites between were squat buildings that had been thrown up between the wars to house workers displaced by slum clearance. The flat Lyle Tate had lived in was in one of those jerry-built blocks. A scabby concrete stairwell whose ground-level reek of urine morphed into the funk of stale cooking and rotting rubbish led to an open third-floor gallery that ran the length of the building.

  Carol picked her way along the dimly lit landing, accompanied by the sounds that leaked from badly fitting doors and windows. EastEnders theme tune; a man and woman having a shouting match about a pizza; a raucous burst of Amy Winehouse; a throbbing bass line from something Carol was delighted she didn’t recognise.

  Lyle Tate’s former home was the last door she came to. Someone had painted it purple, drips and smears making it almost a statement rather than a demonstration of incompetence. A dirty plastic doorbell had a smudge of purple paint down one side. It produced a long deep buzz when she pressed it.

  She didn’t have to wait long before the door was opened by a skinny boy in a mohair sweater and fashionably ripped jeans. He had a pair of flip-flops on his feet, revealing toenails painted the colour of black cherries. Sculpted black hair and a goatee emphasised a face like a satyr on a Greek vase, an impression only slightly marred by a scatter of pimple scars around his sharp nose. He looked her up and down with an air of faint amusement. ‘I think you’re in the wrong place, love,’ he said.

  ‘Are you Gary Bryant?’ Carol asked.

  Eyebrows elegantly raised. ‘Oh no, you’ve missed him by about six months. He got sent down for dealing, love. What did you want him for? I don’t mean to be a bitch but you’re very m
uch not his type.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to him about Lyle Tate.’

  Now the affectations fell away. ‘Poor Lyle, that was terrible,’ he said.

  ‘Did you know Lyle, then?’

  ‘Know him?’ He perked up. ‘I think I was the last person to talk to him the night he died.’

  This was far more than Carol could have hoped for. ‘That’s interesting. Sorry, I don’t know your name?’

  He frowned. ‘Are you police? Only, you haven’t identified yourself.’

  ‘My name’s Carol Jordan. I used to be a police officer. A detective. But I’m . . . retired.’ It was a hard moment. The first time she’d admitted that as her status.

  ‘So why are you looking to talk to Gary about Sugar Lyle?’

  ‘There’s some question over the validity of Saul Neilson’s guilt.’

  He gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘You’re kidding me. You telling me you fucked it up? And now you’re, what? Trying to get out from under?’

  ‘Not me, no. It wasn’t my team who investigated Lyle’s murder. I wasn’t even a BMP officer at the time. And I’m freelance now.’

  ‘So who you working for? Who cares what happens to the bastard who offed Lyle?’

  ‘An organisation called After Proved Guilty. Look, can I come in and talk to you? It’s freezing out here.’ She gave him her best smile. These days, she didn’t think there was much wattage, but it was better than nothing.

  He stuck his head out of the door and looked past Carol, checking nobody was watching. ‘I suppose,’ he said, leading her down a narrow hall. Someone had painted a mural along one wall. Carol recognised a stylised version of a corner of Temple Fields, the rainbow flag flying above the frontages of bars, fast food joints and a tattoo parlour. There was even a corner of the Indian restaurant where she and Tony had often sneaked off for a curry in mid-investigation.

  ‘Nice work,’ she said.

  ‘Cheers. I did it when I moved in last year to stop the place looking like a complete shithole.’

  She followed him into the living room. Another mural, this time of the park in Temple Fields with its riotously decorated bandstand. ‘Is this what you do, then? Murals?’

  He shrugged. ‘These ones are for me. Mostly I do shit for rich bastards who want a Caravaggio on their dining room wall.’

  Apart from the mural, it was a typical young man’s flat. Bean bags, futon sofa with a grubby cover, ratty carpet with more stains than original colour. Dirty mugs on a cardboard side table made to resemble a stack of pizza boxes. The room smelled of stale takeaways overlaid with coffee. ‘You live here alone?’ Carol asked.

  ‘Yeah, for as long as I can afford to.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me your name.’

  ‘Not just a pretty face, then?’ The archness was back.

  ‘It’ll take me about seven minutes to find out, so do yourself a favour and save me the bother.’ She smiled to take the sting out of it.

  He snorted. ‘Sit down, Carol Jordan. I’m Captain Scarlett. No, really,’ he added, seeing her frown. ‘I changed it by deed poll as soon as I was eighteen. I’ll show you my passport if you don’t believe me. People call me Cap.’

  She eyed the futon. She’d sat on a lot worse. She grinned at him and perched on the edge. ‘So, Cap, how come you didn’t come forward to say you’d seen Lyle that night?’

  ‘Simple, love. I didn’t know anything about it. The next morning I was off at the crack of sparrowfart to Australia.’

  ‘Australia?’

  ‘Yeah. Big island in the Pacific. Where Kylie comes from.’

  Carol rolled her eyes. ‘What were you doing in Australia?’

  ‘Following my boyfriend. He was a DJ. He’d scored a long-term gig in a club in Sydney so off I went like a good little camp follower.’ He gave a flounce and fell back into one of the bean bags. ‘We weren’t exactly keeping up with events in the Old Country. So the first I knew about Sugar Lyle was when I came back last year. Gary knew he was going down and he wanted somebody to sublet the flat to. I asked what had happened to Sugar Lyle and he told me the poor boy had been murdered. And nobody had seen him since the night before I’d left.’ He caught her eye. ‘And don’t go looking at me like that, I could no more murder a sweet boy like Sugar Lyle than fly back to Australia without a plane. Where I would not be welcome since the DJ and I did not part on the best of terms.’

  ‘So when exactly did you see Lyle?’

  ‘I’d been for a farewell burger with a couple of pals. Graphic artists, they’ve got a studio in Manchester, in the Northern Quarter. They’d gone off to get a train around ten so it must have been about half past.’

  After Saul Neilson claimed Lyle had departed. ‘Where did you see him?’

  ‘There’s an alley just off the main drag in Temple Fields. It opens out about halfway down into a courtyard. There’s an old reading room or something there with a little porch, three steps up. It’s a bit of a hang-out for boys looking for custom. Lyle was the only one there, he was all huddled up on one of the steps. I stopped to say hello but he wasn’t up for a chat. He said he was on his way home, but he’d come over all faint. He’d had a nosebleed, he said. He was really fucked off. Said it had totally wrecked his evening. I left him to it and carried on my merry way.’ He lolled back and pulled a shiny scarlet vape from his pocket. He pressed the button and took a couple of quick primer puffs before delivering a cloud of coffee-scented vapour into the room.

  Carol kept a straight face, not revealing what this information meant to her. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘It was my understanding that Lyle didn’t show up on the CCTV around Temple Fields that night.’

  A shout of laughter. ‘Oh, such beautiful innocence. Dear Carol Jordan, all of us lost boys know exactly where all the CCTV cameras are. We know every twisty route through the labyrinth so you can’t see where we’ve been and where we’re going and what we’re doing and who we’re doing it with. If Lyle didn’t want to show up on screen, he’d have worked his way across Temple Fields and out the other side and your lot would have been none the wiser.’

  This was news to Carol. But it didn’t surprise her. ‘And if there’s an inconvenient camera, you just black out the lens,’ she said wearily.

  His tricorn smile was wicked. ‘That’s for amateurs.’

  ‘And you didn’t see anyone with Lyle?’

  A puff of vapour enveloped his head. ‘No. Lyle was on his own, feeling sorry for himself. And I was on my way home to finish packing. And I didn’t notice anyone else hanging around apart from the usual wastrels. And none of them could make Lyle disappear.’

  ‘I’m going to need you to give us a sworn affidavit about your encounter with Lyle.’

  ‘What? You want me to help get his killer off the hook? You’ve got to be joking.’

  ‘No, I want you to help me nail the real killer. Saul Neilson didn’t kill Lyle Tate. There’s new evidence that proves that.’ Well, almost. ‘And I think we can replace Saul Neilson behind bars with the bastard who actually did kill Lyle. Are you up for that?’

  He cocked his head to one side, considering. ‘It goes against the grain to help the police, Carol Jordan. But I suppose you’re not really police.’ He leapt up and crossed to the mural. ‘You see that one there?’ He pointed to a capering figure in a canary yellow shirt. ‘That’s Sugar Lyle in his Bradfield Vics top. He never wore it when he was working. He kept it for Lyle time. I so don’t get football. Too much mud and violence. But Lyle loved the Vics. And I did like Sugar Lyle. So, OK. I’ll help you.’ That tricorn smile again. ‘And if it gets my name in the papers, it’s bound to drum up some work. Which, frankly, I could use right now.’

  59

  When we enter somebody’s home, we immediately make judgements about them based on their level of cleanliness, their taste, the contents of their kitchen cupboards (if we get that far). So when we gain access to the home of someone suspected of serial offences, we tend to look at that environment as if
it’s a kind of primer that will elucidate them to us. But sometimes, we are dealing with a highly sophisticated mind; a mind that creates a stage set that its creator believes will hide rather than reveal. It’s up to us to look behind that veil to what lies out of sight.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  Everyone in the ReMIT squad room had stopped what they were doing. Even Stacey had come out from behind her screen to join the huddle round Alvin’s desk. Rutherford had already ejected him from his chair so he could be front and centre in front of Alvin’s computer. The sound quality from its speakers was tinny but the audio file that Sergeant McInerny had pinged across the Irish Sea to Alvin was as crisp as a radio broadcast.

  When they reached the revelations about Mark Conway, Sophie gasped and Steve muttered, ‘Fuck me. Nailed by a nun.’ Rutherford shushed them and leaned in closer to make sure he missed nothing.

  At the end, Karim muttered, ‘That Paula, she is pure class,’ to Alvin, who grunted in agreement.

  Rutherford pushed back in the chair, almost running over Karim’s foot. He stood up, chest out and shoulders back. ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for. Sophie, assign some bodies from Fielding’s crew to make up the numbers. Alvin, Steve, Karim – get over to Mark Conway’s house and bring him in. Arrest him if need be. Chen – get a warrant in place for a search of his house and vehicles.’

  ‘What about his office?’

  ‘Yes, that too, if you can manage it.’

  The look Stacey gave him could have sliced granite. ‘I’ll see what I can do, sir.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Paula? She cracked this, it should be her collar,’ Alvin rumbled.