Dead of Winter

Chapter 20

‘Doctor Harding?’ Ebony found Harding working at her PC. ‘Thanks for making time to go through the autopsy results with me.’

Harding swivelled round on her chair, took off her glasses.

‘How was it with Carmichael?’

Ebony nodded. ‘Yeah. It was interesting.’

‘What’s his life like now?’

‘I don’t think he’s ever moved on from what happened.’

‘How did he react to the fresh evidence?’

‘I don’t know. I feel a bit like I’ve opened Pandora’s box. Maybe that’s exactly what I was meant to do?’

‘Did you ask him about the affair?’

Ebony nodded.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he was feeling self-destructive at the time.’

Harding frowned and then turned back to her desk.

‘Pull up Mathew’s chair — he’s gone to chase up some results. What do you want to ask me? You have my attention for twenty minutes.’

‘I wanted to go through some of the facts with you and make sure I understand them.’ Ebony opened up her folder and spread out the crime scene diagrams on the floor.

‘These are the original crime scene drawings from the time,’ said Harding. ‘They place Chrissie Newton here in the lounge as we saw when we went there and as I found her when I certified her death.’

Ebony laid a photo of the body on top of the room plan. ‘Her injuries were vast. We know her killer used anaesthetic. The bleed would have been massive.’ She looked at the photos of Chrissie Newton’s body. ‘It doesn’t look as if there was enough blood considering their injuries. I mean. . wouldn’t you expect the blood to be everywhere? What did you think at the time?’

‘I thought that if she had been laid on something as she was killed that it would be about right. A towel or absorbent sheet. Not too difficult: minimal bleed. When the heart stops so does the bleeding.’

‘But that would have taken some organizing: coming fully equipped. Not a last-minute thing. This is the photo of how you found Louise.’ Ebony pointed to the group of photos from the crime scene.

‘Correct.’

‘Does it look like she was placed there to you?’

‘Carmichael moved the bodies.’

‘He moved Sophie, not Louise.’

‘He definitely touched her. They died face up and they were found that way but there was movement in between. The blood had shifted a little and then rolled back to settle down the back, buttocks and calves.’

‘But Carmichael arrived long after they were dead. Lividity settles after six to eight hours, doesn’t it?’

‘We only have Carmichael’s word that he wasn’t there before.’

‘What about the cross-contamination between the women? It says in the report that the women had each other’s DNA on their bodies: skin cells, blood, hair on their backs? How can you explain that?’

‘Natural if they’d been sharing the house. They could have lain on the same blanket. Look. . procedures let us down that day. We cannot be sure it wasn’t a basic mistake made at the crime scene or when the samples were taken from the bodies.’

‘You took the samples, didn’t you, Doctor?’

‘I did but I wasn’t responsible for ensuring that the bodies arrived to me in the condition they should have been. It’s possible they were contaminated at the scene. And Carmichael cannot be trusted to recall what he did accurately.’

‘And Carmichael’s DNA?’

‘That was there in abundance. His handprints, his sweat, his saliva on his wife’s hands, his kid’s face.’

‘But semen. If he raped her? How long can semen last?’

‘In a dead body? Two weeks.’

‘And in a live body?’

‘They are swimming about alive, motile, for four to six hours, then they begin to lose bits of themselves: first the tails drop off, then the heads. You can still find heads and tails in the vagina for up to seven days, in the rectum two or three days and in the mouth less than twenty-four hours.’

‘Did you find motile sperm from Carmichael?’

‘No. His were fragmented sperm.’

‘So Carmichael had sex with his wife a few days before she was murdered.’

‘Probably within the week but not within that forty-eight-hour period. Nothing can be exact. Except he could have used a condom when he raped her. We found tissue tearing around her mouth which indicates that she was forced to perform fellatio, but all traces of spermatozoa in her mouth had been destroyed.’

‘Was his DNA on Chrissie Newton?’

‘Yes, it was. Under the palm of her hand there was his sweat.’

‘But she wasn’t raped?’

‘No.’

‘I can’t see him as a rapist, Doctor.’

‘Rape is a common tool of warfare, remember. He might have done it before, might have been ordered to. What if he wasn’t even in a state to recognize his wife and child? PTSD could have done that to him. You say he told you he was feeling self-destructive, that’s why he had the affair. How much more self-destructive can you get than killing the people you love and that love you?’

‘So if we say it was Carmichael. . just say. . he raped his own wife and killed his child. But he didn’t rape the woman he cared least about? Do you think he could have cared for her?

‘It’s possible.’

‘If Chrissie was targeted then it could have something to do with her father. Do you know James Martingale personally?’

‘I have met him a few times.’ Harding studied Ebony’s face. Ebony felt her bristling. ‘I’ve done the odd bit of private work but it’s not me. . sucking fat out of one end to inject in the other. My ex, Simon, works for him. Have you been to see Mr Martingale?’

‘Yes. Carter and I went to the hospital to see him.’

‘What did you think of him?’

‘Nothing like a mad professor type, is he? He’s suave, sophisticated, sort of aloof.’

‘He’s a megalomaniac, but then you have to be to achieve what he has. He is God in his field and he’s managed to make millions out of it. You have to admire that. He gives a lot away to charity, as I’m sure you know. I wouldn’t have a lot of this expensive equipment if it wasn’t for his generosity. But as a father he failed spectacularly.’

‘I re-read Martingale’s statement. . He wasn’t in the country at the time of the murders: he was working in his hospital in Poland.’

‘James Martingale was never here for Chrissie, dead or alive. As I say, I think he failed her spectacularly; he just didn’t exist for her. He left her in the hands of a woman with extreme mental illness. . who needed to take vast quantities of medication to get through a day without killing herself or someone else; he left her to fend for herself. Thank God he also left her with enough money that she could board for the whole of her school life; then go far away to a university in Scotland. But as you know, you can’t keep on about it; it was a shit childhood. . get over it. . move on. . Christ knows you did, didn’t you?’

As Ebony walked back to Fletcher House she mulled it over. Ebony shouldn’t mind Harding being blunt. She was blunt herself. Harding seemed to be offering a friendly hand, albeit in her usual awkward way. Ebony had to accept that her life was out there for the world to Google, but she didn’t have to like it. Everyone knew about the case of the serving officer whose mad mother had killed her partner; stabbed him how many times exactly? Everyone knew that her own daughter had arrested her.