Читать книгу Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue - Stephen Booth - Страница 17

Wye Close was in the centre of the little council estate at the northern end of Moorhay. The houses were built of the same grey-white stone as the rest of the village, with slate roofs and unfenced grassed areas that were more roadside verge than garden. At one side stood a row of old people’s bungalows, separated from the family houses by a low fence that didn’t deter the children from playing on the grass under the windows of the old people.

There were no more than thirty houses on the estate, and in many other places, even in Edendale, it wouldn’t have been considered a street, let alone an estate. It had been built on the top field of one of Moorhay’s dairy farms. When the area had been allocated for housing on the council’s local plan, the increased value of the land had proved too much of a temptation for the farmer at a time when agriculture was in increasing financial difficulties. The result was that every house backed on to pastureland or had a view across rolling slopes to the farm itself. Some of the residents of the estate worked in the small factory units on the outskirts of Edendale, or in the dairy ten miles away. Many didn’t work at all. Rural housing might have been provided, but not rural employment.

Outside number 12, Wye Close stood an unmarked police Vauxhall. The car, or one like it, had been there since Monday evening, waiting for the return home of Lee Sherratt. The local children, at a loose end during the day because the schools were still on holiday, had invented a new game this morning. They were acting out the part of burglars, robbers and murderers, lurking suspiciously in the street, then pretending to see the police car suddenly and running away round the corner, screaming. The detective constable on surveillance duty was getting rapidly fed up of it. The baking heat inside the car was already enough to make him tired and irritable. The cheeky kids could be the last straw.

A green Ford entered the estate and pulled up at number twelve. When DCI Tailby got out and glowered across the road, the children seemed genuinely frightened for once, perhaps intimidated by his size and the grey suit he wore. They retreated behind the fence of the old people’s homes and watched to see what he would do. First he crossed to speak to the detective in the Vauxhall, who sat up straight and shook his head. Then he strode to the door of number twelve and banged on the knocker.

‘Oh, it’s you lot again,’ said the big woman who came to the door. She was wearing sandals and frayed blue jeans and a billowing pink garment that could only have come from a maternity-wear shop. Her hair had been pinned up but was falling back down across a chubby neck, and she smelled of cigarette smoke. Tailby put her age in the late thirties, forty at most.

‘Just a few questions, Mrs Sherratt,’ he said.

‘He’s not back.’

‘I know. Has he been in touch?’

‘No.’

‘There are some things I need to ask you.’

Molly Sherratt looked down the road at the children gawping and nudging each other.

‘For God’s sake, come in then,’ she said.

Tailby ducked to go through the door and picked his way through a hallway cluttered with bicycles and shoes and piles of clothes. Mrs Sherratt led him into a tiny kitchen with fitted teak-effect units and a brand-new automatic washer. The remains of somebody’s breakfast still stood on the counter – an open packet of cornflakes, half a carton of milk, a knife sticky with butter, and a toaster sitting amid a sea of blackened breadcrumbs.

‘I was just washing up,’ said Mrs Sherratt defensively, watching the detective’s instinctive survey of the room.

‘Carry on. Don’t let me interrupt.’

‘I don’t see that you could be doing anything else.’

‘I’ll try not to be long,’ said Tailby politely.

She turned on a tap and began to squirt washing-up liquid into a blue plastic bowl until the suds concealed anything that might have been in there. Tailby saw that the door of the washing machine stood slightly open, and the interior was packed tight with dirty clothes. Presumably Mrs Sherratt had been just about to do the weekly wash as well.

‘I’ve told your lot all I’ve got to say already,’ she said.

‘We need to know as much as we can about Lee so that we can find him. That’s the reason for all the questions, I’m afraid. It is important that we find him.’

‘To eliminate him from enquiries. That’s what the other ones said.’

‘That’s right, Mrs Sherratt.’

She clutched the washing-up liquid bottle to her bosom without closing the cap, so that a small squirt of sticky green liquid spurted on to her pink smock. She seemed not to notice.

‘Lee hasn’t done anything,’ she said.

‘He worked at the Mount,’ said Tailby, ‘so he knew Laura Vernon. And since his whereabouts are unknown …’

‘I know, I know, that’s what the others kept saying. But it means nothing. He often goes off for a day or two. He’s a devil for wandering off for a bit, is Lee. But that doesn’t mean he’s done anything wrong, does it?’

‘If you could help us find him, Mrs Sherratt, we’ll soon be able to establish that, won’t we?’

‘Anyway, he didn’t work there any more. At that place. They gave him the push last Thursday. Them Vernons. Unfair, it was.’

‘Did he resent the fact he had been sacked?’

‘’Course he did. He was unfairly dismissed. He’d done nothing wrong.’

In Tailby’s experience, nobody’s son or daughter had ever done anything wrong. They were all angels, pure as the driven snow, every one of them. It was a wonder there was any crime at all.

‘Mr Vernon claims that Lee was pestering his daughter.’

‘Rubbish. Lee has a steady girlfriend. They might be getting married.’

‘Might they?’

‘That’s why he was set on getting a bit of a job, earning some money. There’s nothing round here for the young ones, you know. God knows, them Vernons didn’t pay him much, but at least he was trying.’

‘I’m sure you’re right. But it doesn’t prevent him from having taken a fancy to Laura Vernon, does it?’

Mrs Sherratt sniffed. ‘Well, if you want the truth, she wasn’t his type. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead and all that, but he could never bear them stuck-up types, all posh accents and jodhpurs. It was more likely the other way round. I reckon she took a fancy to him. He’s a good-looking lad, my Lee. I bet that’s what it was, and Mr Hoity-Toity Vernon wouldn’t like that, his girl fancying the hired labour.’

‘And, if that was the case, you don’t think Lee might have responded?’

‘No. Like I say, she wasn’t his type.’

‘Did he mention Laura Vernon much?’

‘Hardly at all. He hardly mentioned any of them much. ’Course, he didn’t see much of him, or the girl either, except in the school holidays. It was mostly her he saw, when he went up there.’

‘You mean Mrs Vernon?’

‘That’s right. Not that she would do anything but give him his orders, I suppose. None of them Vernons has ever mixed with anybody in the village, you know. They think they’re better than the rest of us, just because they’ve got a bit of money to spend on big houses and flashy cars. Well, it isn’t so. Having money doesn’t make you a good person, does it? It doesn’t give you any better morals than the rest of us. Some of us know what’s right and what isn’t. If you ask me, them Vernons have forgotten all about that, with their money.’

Tailby’s attention was wandering. His gaze drifted out of the kitchen window, across a small garden with a few vegetables struggling to force themselves through the weeds. There was a rickety garden shed and a small flock of house sparrows fluttering their wings in a depression in the dust in front of its door. A low wooden fence separated the garden from the field at the back of the property. It would present no barrier for anyone to climb over if they wanted to approach from the field instead of from the road.

‘So, as far as you are aware, there was no relationship between Lee and Laura Vernon, apart from the fact that she was the daughter of his employer?’

‘I told you, he didn’t like her.’

‘He actually said so?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure he did. Stuck-up little madam, he called her, something like that.’

‘Why did he call her that? Did he give any particular reason?’

Mrs Sherratt screwed up her face, which Tailby took to be a sign that she was thinking. ‘It was not long after he had started working up there that he said it the first time. He’d had a bit of a run-in with her one day, I think.’

‘You are referring to Laura now, aren’t you?’

‘I said so, didn’t I? She was at home from school one day. It must have been their holidays or something. I don’t know. But he said she was out in the garden, weighing him up, asking him questions. Lee said he made a joke, and she took exception. Told him to keep his remarks to himself, sort of thing. He was a bit put out when he told me about it, and he never liked her after that.’

‘Was that anything to do with why he was sacked, do you think?’

‘I couldn’t say. Because she took against him, you mean, and told her dad? I don’t know. But he hadn’t done anything wrong, I know that.’

‘You don’t think Lee might have arranged to meet Laura after he had been sacked by Mr Vernon?’

‘No, I don’t. He’d be glad to get away from her, if anything. He wouldn’t have touched her, not in any way.’

‘Mrs Sherratt, where does Lee usually go when he’s off wandering for a day or two?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t tell me.’

‘Not to his girlfriend?’

‘I doubt it. But you can ask her, can’t you? I gave the other lot her name and address, to be helpful.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Tailby sighed. They had already interviewed the girlfriend in question, along with several others whose names had been suggested by Lee Sherratt’s drinking pals. If he really was intending to get married, it hadn’t stopped him spreading himself around half the female population of the valley. But none of them admitted to knowing where Lee headed for when he went wandering. Here at Wye Close, officers had also already searched the house, turned over Lee’s room, and checked out that garden shed.

‘Besides,’ said Mrs Sherratt, as if suddenly remembering something. ‘That girl at the Mount. She was only fifteen, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes, Mrs Sherratt, she was.’

‘Well then.’

Leaving the house, Tailby crossed the street to the Vauxhall again.

‘Give it a few minutes, then check that garden shed round the back again,’ he said. ‘But don’t make a fuss about it. You never know, the saintly Lee might just have appeared by some miracle.’

Helen Milner found her grandfather sitting on a boulder on the path leading up towards Raven’s Side. A small cloud of pipe smoke marked his position. His knees were spread, and his back was as straight as if he had been sitting on one of the old upright chairs at the cottage. At his feet was Jess, chewing at a stick. The dog had stripped the bark to shreds and was splintering the soft inner flesh of the wood with her teeth, dropping the fragments on the ground like a scattering of confetti. Jess looked up cautiously as Helen approached, gave her a soulful look and went back to her stick. Her teeth gleamed white and sharp as they ripped into the wood.

This was not Harry’s usual route for his morning walk. But below the ridge the reason for the change in routine was obvious. A white caravan sat in the corner of a field, where it had been dragged by a Land Rover. It was the furthest spot the caravan could reach before the woods began and the ground grew steep and rocky as it plunged towards the valley bottom. Three more four-wheel-drive vehicles were parked behind it. Further down the slope, figures in white boiler suits and hoods were moving slowly around in the undergrowth, which had been cut down and removed in a wide circle. Other men and women could be glimpsed in the trees on either side. Some were on all fours, as if they were praying to some strange god for guidance in their bizarre task. Blue plastic tape had been wound round the trees, and it danced and flickered in the sun, signalling the spot where Laura Vernon’s body had lain.

‘If the ground wasn’t so dry, they’d never have got that caravan to that spot,’ said Harry, as his granddaughter crouched down beside him.

‘What do they use it for?’

‘Making a brew and having their snap in, as far as I can tell.’

Helen could see a constable in shirt sleeves standing by the field gate between the caravan and the woods. His face was turned up to the hill, and now and then he put a hand up to shade his eyes as he squinted into the sun. He was watching Harry.

‘They know you’re here,’ said Helen.

‘And they don’t like it either, but there’s bugger-all they can do about it. It’s a public footpath, and I’m not anywhere near their precious tape.’

‘Have they said anything?’

‘Oh aye, they sent some bugger up to talk to me half an hour ago. He wanted to know who I was and what I was doing here. Then he took my name and wrote it down in a little book. He knew who I was then, all right. I thought he was going to ask for my autograph. I’ve never been so famous. You’d think I was somebody off telly.’

‘Did the policeman ask you to move?’

‘He did.’

‘And what did you say?’

A gleam of amusement came to Harry’s eye. Helen sighed.

‘Oh, Granddad. You shouldn’t. It doesn’t do to upset them.’

‘Bugger that. Somebody has to keep them on their toes.’

Looking at her grandfather, Helen wondered whether she had been right to come. She had been into school for a pre-term staff meeting, but had been given permission by her head to leave early. She had made use of the time to make a mad rush across the countryside to check on her grandparents. She had found Gwen subdued but calm, and Harry missing. Now she had tracked him down, he did not seem like the Harry she knew. Even more than on the previous day, he gave the impression that in some way he was enjoying himself. But she knew her grandfather was not a cruel or callous man. He would not revel in the death of a young girl. But somehow he saw the event as a challenge of his own he had to face. Perhaps it would have been better if she hadn’t come at all. She did not want to end up in an argument with him.

‘Have you seen the newspapers?’ asked Harry.

‘Some of them.’

‘A lot of rubbish, they print,’ he complained. ‘Two of them have spelled my name wrong.’

‘I suppose there’ll be more in the local papers.’

‘They’re not out until later in the week. It might be over by then.’

‘Do you think so, Granddad?’

Harry had his pipe in his mouth, his jaw clamped into a habitual grimace. Helen couldn’t read his expression at all. She wondered what had happened to the rapport she had always had with him, the sense of knowing what he was thinking without him having to say it out loud. Her understanding of him seemed to have died. It was dead since yesterday.

‘Maybe it will,’ he said. He puffed at his pipe as if giving the question some thought. ‘If the coppers pull their fingers out. Or even if they don’t. Maybe it will be over all the same.’

‘It says in the paper they’re trying to trace the Sherratt boy.’

He snorted. ‘Much good that youth will do them.’

‘He’s disappeared. I suppose it looks suspicious.’

‘He was never going to last long at the Mount,’ said Harry. ‘Not him. I can’t think what made them take him on.’

‘According to Dad, Graham Vernon said he wanted to give him a chance.’

‘Oh aye, him,’ said Harry. ‘He’d give anything a chance. He’d give the devil a chance to sing in the chapel choir.’

‘It looks as though he might have been wrong this time.’

Harry took his pipe from his mouth and tapped it against the boulder.

‘I tell you what, lass. He was wrong, all right. He’s been wrong all his life.’

‘I know you don’t like him …’

‘Like him! If it were left to me –’

‘I know, I know. Don’t let’s go over it all again, please.’

‘Well. You’re right. It doesn’t need saying over again.’

The silence stretched into minutes. Helen had never felt uncomfortable with silence between them before. Now, though, it was different. She had no idea what Harry was thinking. She moved her shoulders, easing her bra straps where her skin was tender from spending too long in the sun the day before.

‘I think I’ll walk Jess on a bit further,’ said Harry. ‘It’ll give that lad’s eyes a rest.’

‘Granddad. Don’t get into trouble, will you?’

He pulled himself upright, regarding her with dignity. ‘Me? Don’t you know me, lass? I’m a match for any of that lot.’

She watched him tug at Jess’s lead, flexing his stiff legs and straightening his jacket. The toecaps of his boots gleamed so brightly they were dazzling. For a moment, Helen caught a glimpse of herself, distorted and blackened, turned upside down on the toes of her grandfather’s boots. She had never known anyone else with such innate dignity and self-control. If occasionally he said things that shocked people, it was only because he believed it was right that you should say what you thought, and because he didn’t really care what people thought of him. His pride in himself made her feel proud of him too, and she felt her eyes fill as he moved slowly away.

‘I’ll see you later then,’ she said.

‘No doubt.’

After a last glance at the police activity down the hill, Helen walked back to Dial Cottage to see her grandmother. She was surprised to find her father standing in the hall, hovering between the doorways to the front and back rooms as if he had forgotten where he wanted to be. He was dressed for the office, in a dark suit with a grey pinstripe, a white shirt and a tie in red and grey diagonal stripes.

‘Dad?’

‘Hello, love. I was in the area and just called in to see how Gwen and Harry were managing after yesterday. We’ve got to look after them when they’ve had such a shock, haven’t we?’

‘That’s right. It was a shock,’ said Gwen. She was in her chair in the back room, toying with a piece of knitting. It was shaping up into a long-sleeved cardigan made from bright-pink wool, and Helen had a horrible feeling she knew who it was intended for. But at the moment, her grandmother’s fingers were moving the needles without making any impression on the wool, as if she had to be doing something with her hands.

‘Granddad’s out there with Jess, watching the police.’

‘He’s better off out there,’ Gwen said. ‘At least he’s not under my feet.’

‘What are the police doing? Have they been here again? Have they been … digging or anything?’

‘Digging?’ Helen looked at her father in astonishment, wondering why he didn’t come further into the room. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and she smiled at his old-fashioned reluctance to go without his suit jacket even in such heat. ‘Why should they be digging, Dad?’

‘I don’t know. That’s the sort of thing they do, isn’t it? Digging people’s gardens up, and all that.’

‘Looking for what?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Gwen’s mouth had fallen open. ‘They’d better not try to dig my garden up. It’s taken years to get it like it is.’

‘Don’t worry, Grandma, they won’t do that.’

‘Of course not,’ said Andrew. ‘I don’t know why I said that. I just wondered what they were doing out there, that’s all.’

Helen realized he was hovering in the doorway so that he could keep an eye on the view of the street through the front window, as if there was something going on out there that he didn’t want to miss. He was fidgety and nervous, and she remembered that Laura Vernon’s death would be having an impact at the office too.

‘I don’t suppose Graham Vernon has been into work today, Dad?’

‘No, no. He phoned to say he would be at home for a few days to look after Charlotte. And to help the police, of course. He said we could contact him there if we need him. But in the meantime I’ve to carry on as normal. I’ve got to take over all his appointments and meetings.’

Andrew looked at his watch as he said this, shooting back a white cuff containing one of a pair of gold cufflinks that Helen had bought him. ‘I can’t stop long,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to be back in Sheffield by twelve for a lunch.’

‘I’ll have to be going soon too, Grandma.’

Gwen dropped her knitting and reached out for Helen’s arm. ‘I daren’t go out, Helen. Will you fetch me some bread and tea from the shop before you go?’

‘Why daren’t you go out, Grandma?’

‘Why? Can’t you imagine what people are saying about us? They’re looking at me if I even go near the windows. That’s why I closed the curtains.’

‘Take no notice, Grandma. People will soon forget.’

Helen had noticed the extra activity in Moorhay. There were more walkers than usually passed through, even in summer. Many of them were not dressed for walking, but stopped and peered into the windows of the cottages they passed. The car park at the Drover was full, and there were cars parked along the roadside, their roofs shimmering with heat. There were even two cars in the layby where the Hulley’s bus stopped twice a day. The bus driver would be annoyed when he came.

Andrew began to mop his brow with a white handkerchief as he cast another glance towards the front window. ‘So the police haven’t been back then, eh, Gwen? That’s good, isn’t it?’

The old woman didn’t look convinced as she fumbled for some money in an old purse. ‘I suppose so. And an extra pint of milk, Helen.’

‘I’ll get off then, if you’re all right, Gwen. Take care of yourselves, you and Harry, won’t you? Bye, Helen.’

Helen said goodbye and watched her father let himself out of the front door. She wondered, for a moment, where he had been passing from if he was on his way back to Sheffield.

Helen paused in the street after leaving Dial Cottage. She had recognized a figure further up the road, emerging from one of the houses near the village hall. Ben Cooper was with the woman police officer who had come to the house with the more senior detectives to talk to Harry. She was carrying a clipboard and she looked serious and businesslike.

Helen hesitated, unsure whether she should speak to them, not knowing whether Ben would want to acknowledge her in front of his colleague.

‘I cannot believe,’ Fry was saying, ‘the way some of the people in this village speak to you, Ben. What do they think you are? Jesus Christ?’

Cooper shrugged. He thought of his first taste of Moorhay hospitality the day before, when the man mowing the graveyard had glowered at him with suspicion, and the woman watering her flower beds had refused to speak to him. They hadn’t known who he was then, hadn’t even known he was a police officer. He had just been some casual stranger in sweaty clothes, running madly through the heat, his behaviour unconventional, his intentions dubious. But that was not the picture of the place he would want to present to a genuine stranger, a real outsider, like Diane Fry. It was not how villages like Moorhay really were, at heart.

‘They just know me, some of them. Or they’ve heard of me, at least. It makes a difference. There are some folk who don’t like talking to outsiders much.’

‘I suppose you think if I was going round on my own they wouldn’t even give me the time of day.’

‘Oh, they’d probably do that,’ said Cooper. ‘But it’d be the time in Papua New Guinea.’

‘Ha, ha.’

‘I’m only joking.’

‘Yes, I know. I could practically see you reading the script. But what gets me is that they all trot out your father’s name, like some mantra. Sergeant Cooper this, and Sergeant Cooper that. If you’re Jesus Christ, who must he be?’

‘Just an old-fashioned copper.’

‘You’d think he was a member of the family. They all look at you like a long-lost relative.’

Fry saw Helen Milner first. Their eyes met, and Helen turned away, as if she had decided not to speak to them after all.

‘And here’s another one,’ said Fry quietly.

Cooper noticed Helen then. Fry glowered at him as he smiled towards her.

‘Did you want to speak to us, Helen?’

‘No, no, it’s all right. Well, only … to say hello. How are you getting on? Are you any nearer catching the man you want?’

‘We’re just the troops on the ground, you know. We don’t get to know the bigger picture in an enquiry until the big chiefs decide to tell us about it.’

‘Oh.’ Helen looked a bit disappointed.

‘Of course, at this rate, it will be the other way round,’ said Fry. ‘We’ll all be waiting like a lot of Dr Watsons for Ben here to condescend to tell us the answers.’

Helen frowned, puzzled by the tone of the comment. ‘Perhaps I’d better let you get on. I can see you’re busy.’

‘No, wait,’ said Cooper. ‘How’s Mr Dickinson?’

She thought Ben looked different today. Less formal, a bit more relaxed, now that they had renewed their acquaintance. Yesterday he had seemed to see her as a stranger, to be treated like any other member of the public. But perhaps relaxed wasn’t the right word. He looked less tightly focused, more readily distracted. His hair was tousled in a way that reminded Helen powerfully of the younger Ben she had known so well. And Gwen was right – his eyes were deep brown. She had almost forgotten.

‘Granddad’s fine. A bit, well …’

‘Yes? Is he upset? It’s understandable.’

‘A bit quiet, that’s all I was going to say.’

‘And your grandmother?’

‘It’s all a bit much for her to take in.’

‘She’s taken it worse than your grandfather, I suppose. People of that generation –’

‘Don’t let Granddad hear you say that.’

‘Miss Milner, did you know Laura Vernon?’ interrupted Fry.

‘Oh, well, I did meet her once.’

‘When was that?’

‘A couple of months ago. It was at a party that the Vernons gave. A Midsummer Party, they called it. Yes, it was in June.’

‘What do you know about Laura?’

‘Oh, absolutely nothing. I don’t really know her parents either.’

‘But you were invited to their party. How was that?’

‘My father works for Graham Vernon. I suppose they invited me out of politeness.’

‘Oh, of course. But you met Laura at this party.’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you make of her?’

‘Laura? She was a very pretty girl. Big, dark eyes. Very mature for her age.’

Fry waited. ‘And?’

‘I don’t know what else to say really.’

‘Her looks don’t tell us much about her personality, Miss Milner.’

‘As I say, I didn’t really know her.’

‘But I’m sure you’re a good observer. What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m a teacher.’

‘Of course. So you’re used to assessing children. What did you think of Laura Vernon?’

Helen lowered her eyes to avoid the policewoman’s direct stare. ‘I suppose I thought she was rather too precocious. She was a bit brash, a bit pushy. Arrogant, even.’

‘Arrogant?’

‘Well, she struck me as the sort of girl who had been told so often how clever and attractive she was that she had come to believe it and expected everyone to behave accordingly. We see the type in school sometimes. They can be very disruptive.’

‘Thank you. That’s very helpful.’

Cooper had his head cocked on one side, watching Helen as she answered Fry’s questions. Helen thought he must see how disconcerted she was by the abrupt approach.

‘Finished?’ he asked Fry.

‘Ready when you are.’

‘I might call in and see how your grandparents are for myself sometime,’ he told Helen.

‘Grandma would be pleased,’ she said. ‘I think she took a liking to you. It would cheer her up. She remembers you, you know.’

Fry was becoming impatient. ‘We’ve got some properties to call on yet, Ben. We’d better go.’

‘Sure.’

‘And your family, Ben,’ said Helen, as he turned away. ‘How are they?’

But it seemed to Helen that Ben Cooper must not have heard her question as he walked away towards his car. He didn’t reply, didn’t even look round, but gave a small gesture, a half-apologetic wave. It was Diane Fry, following him, who took the trouble to turn and look back.

Juliana Van Doon gazed down at the naked body and shook her head at the question.

‘No rape. No genital abrasions, no semen traces or any other bodily fluids. Sorry, Chief Inspector.’

‘No sexual intercourse, forced or otherwise?’ said Tailby. He knew it sounded as though he was disappointed, but he didn’t worry about what the pathologist might think of him. She was experienced enough to know it was only because such traces would have made his job a lot easier.

After the clothes had been removed, the body had been photographed and all external signs had been recorded. The clothes themselves had been set aside for forensic examination. Now Mrs Van Doon was ready for the autopsy itself, the careful dismantling of the victim’s body in search of minute scraps of information.

Stewart Tailby had attended too many postmortems over the years. The first ten or twelve had been a cause of humiliation, as his stomach had revolted at the smell of exposed intestines and the wet, sucking sound as organs were removed. His tendency to turn faint and leave the room to vomit had been a source of hilarity in his first CID posting. Though he had learned, like everyone else, to mask his feelings and control his stomach, he had never learned to accept in his heart the absolute necessity of the final horrors and indignities that were inflicted on a victim of violent crime. The fact that these gruesome acts were perpetrated in the name of forensic science – and ultimately, he supposed, in the name of justice – made no difference at all.

In the autopsy room, some police officers chose the pretence of graveside humour. That was not Tailby’s style. He retreated instead behind a facade of silence and detachment, coated in a thin veneer of formal jargon and easily repeatable, meaningless phrases. In a way, he could be physically present, yet keep his feelings aloof from the things that had to be done. Tailby knew that he was already considered a cold and austere man by his colleagues and junior officers; some even said he was pompous and self-important. But it was a small price to pay to maintain your distance from realities that struck too close to home.

‘That’s not to say the victim was unfamiliar with sexual intercourse,’ said Mrs Van Doon. ‘Not at all, not at all.’

‘No?’

‘I would say the young lady was far from being a virgin, Chief Inspector. Fifteen years old? Very promiscuous, some of these young people now.’

‘You’d think that the risk of AIDS would make them think twice, wouldn’t you?’

‘This one won’t be worrying about AIDS, in any case.’

The pathologist was dressed in a green T-shirt and baggy green trousers, with her mask hanging round her neck ready for work. With her hair tied back and her face devoid of make-up and harshly lit by the mortuary lights, the pathologist still looked striking. It was all down to the bone structure, thought Tailby. That, and the thoughtful grey eyes. He had once, as a young detective, harboured secret dreams about Juliana Van Doon. But time had passed and the feelings had faded. He had married and been divorced since then. And his feelings had died completely.

Tailby would have liked to have been able to leave the postmortem room before the pathologist reached the stage of opening the body and removing the organs. Before she used the stainless-steel saw to cut through the sternum, and before the electric trepanner sliced off the top of the girl’s damaged skull. He told himself that there would be little to learn from the gory process in this case, except that Laura Vernon had died in perfect health.

‘The bruise on her leg?’ he said.

‘Ah. Interesting, yes. Not unknown, I understand, in sexually motivated killings. You would be asking yourself why there is only this one sign of a possible sexual assault. Was the attacker interrupted? Yes, interesting.’

‘Not a bruise made by a blow, then. A hand gripping the leg? But I would expect two separate marks, at least.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Mrs Van Doon. ‘You misunderstand. If you look more closely, you will see small punctures where the flesh is swollen. This is not an injury caused by the bruising of fingers. I suspect these are teeth marks, Chief Inspector.’

Tailby perked up with sudden interest. ‘Someone bit her,’ he said. ‘Someone smashed her skull, then bit her on the thigh.’

‘Possibly,’ said the pathologist. ‘Interesting?’

The detective peered more closely at the mark. It looked no more than a bruise to him.

‘Can you be sure?’

‘Well, no. I need to obtain the opinion of a forensic odontologist, of course. I have already contacted the University Dental School in Sheffield. We can get photographs and impressions, and excise the area around the bite to preserve it. And then we can compare the impression with a suspect’s dentition. It’s up to you to produce the suspect, of course.’

‘It’s an odd place for a bite.’

‘Yes. They are usually on the breasts in these cases, rather than on the thigh. In fact, I saw a report recently about a research project conducted by a forensic odontologist. It was entirely concerned with how bite marks differ according to the shape of the victim’s breast, the cup size, the age of the victim and even the amount of droop in the breast.’

Tailby was intrigued. ‘How on earth did he manage all that?’

‘Designed a mechanical set of teeth and recruited twenty female volunteers – goodness knows where from.’

‘Students, I suppose,’ said Tailby, reluctantly impressed.

‘But I’m sure bites on the thigh are not unknown in sexual assaults either. In the absence of any samples for DNA analysis, Chief Inspector, this is probably the best you could have hoped for.’

Tailby stared at the pathologist. ‘So, let’s see. The attacker strikes her over the head two or three times. When she is on the floor he pulls down her jeans and her pants, then bites her once on the thigh.’ It didn’t quite ring true somehow, though he knew there had been far more bizarre and ghoulish cases, far more perverted killers who committed much worse acts on the bodies of their victims.

‘Ah, you would like to indulge in a little mutual speculation, Chief Inspector?’ said the pathologist. ‘On that basis then, why not consider another scenario? A voluntary sexual act. The bite on the thigh is someone’s idea of erotic foreplay.’

‘Possible. Then something goes wrong.’

‘The girl objects to the bite, perhaps.’

‘Yes, she pulls away, changes her mind. They argue; he gets angry.’

‘Sexually fuelled frustration. A powerful force.’

‘I can buy that,’ said Tailby. ‘There’s no way of telling which of those it was from the nature of the bite, I suppose?’

‘Mmm. A good odontologist may be able to reproduce the angle of the bite and the depth. He might suggest the position of the attacker’s head at the moment the bite was inflicted.’

Tailby looked again at the naked limbs of the fifteen-year-old girl. Her body was shockingly white except for the areas on her flank and the left side of her chest, where lividity had set in, the blood settling to the lowest point of gravity during the time she had lain dead in the bracken on the Baulk.

The bite mark was situated high on the inside of her right thigh, where the living flesh had been at its softest and most vulnerable. The picture suggested by Juliana Van Doon of the position of the attacker’s head made Tailby feel more uneasy than anything else he had heard so far.

But the pathologist was fiddling with a table full of gleaming, sharp instruments, eager to get on with the next stage of the process of reducing Laura Vernon to her component parts. Tailby and his team had to do the same thing, in a way. That was the essence of victimology, the process of getting to know the intimate details of the victim as a means of establishing the connection to her killer.

‘If your scenario is correct,’ he said. ‘Laura’s attacker will be much easier for us to find – he must have been known to her.’

‘Presumably, Chief Inspector. Yes, it’s preferable to a random attack by someone from outside the area, isn’t it?’

‘From our point of view, certainly.’

‘I hope that I am able to help you then.’

In the clinical atmosphere of the mortuary, Tailby felt able to voice the fear that he would never talk about much, even to his own staff. ‘That’s what I’m always afraid of, you know – a case that drags on for months, unsolved, because we can’t even get a lead on a suspect. It’s a detective’s nightmare.’

‘You have in mind, of course, a recent case.’

‘The girl in Buxton, yes. There are similarities, aren’t there? B Division’s enquiry has been unsuccessful so far, after more than a month. The view is that the victim was chosen at random by her attacker. In those circumstances, it was only ever a matter of time before we had a second victim.’

‘It would be a tragic thing,’ said Mrs Van Doon, flourishing a scalpel over the chest of the corpse, ‘if the poor girl here were simply to be known as Victim Number Two.’

‘It would be even more tragic,’ said Tailby, ‘if we ended up with a Victim Number Three.’