Innocent Graves

I

Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle was already pacing the lino when Banks arrived at his office early the next morning. Bald head shining like a new cricket ball freshly rubbed on the bowler’s crotch, black eyes glowing like a Whitby jet, clean-shaven chin jutting out like the prow of a boat, uniform sharply creased, not a speck of fluff or cotton anywhere to be seen, and a poppy placed ostentatiously in his lapel, he looked alert, wide-awake and ready for anything.

Which was more than Banks looked, or felt for that matter. All told, he had got no more than about three hours’ uneasy sleep, especially as an early telephone call from Ken Blackstone had woken him up. Though the fog was quickly turning to drizzle this morning, he had walked the mile to work simply to get the cobwebs out of his brain. He wasn’t sure whether he had succeeded. It didn’t help that his cold was getting worse, either, filling his head with damp cotton wool.

“Ah, Banks, about bloody time,” said Riddle.

Banks removed his headphones and switched off the Jimi Hendrix tape he had been listening to. The breakneck arpeggios of “Pali Gap” were still ringing in his stuffed-up ears.

“And do you have to go around with those bloody things stuck in your ears?” Riddle went on. “Don’t you know how silly you look?”

Banks knew a rhetorical question when he heard one.

“I suppose you’re aware who the victim’s father is?”

“Sir Geoffrey Harrison, sir. I talked to him last night.”

“In that case you’ll realize how important this is. This…this…terrible tragedy.” Never at a loss for a cliché wasn’t Jimmy Riddle, Banks reflected. Riddle slid his hand over his head and went on. “I want a hundred per cent on this one, Banks. No. Two hundred per cent. Do you understand? No shirking. No dragging of feet.”

Banks nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Now what about this Bosnian fellow? Jurassic, is it?”

“Jelačić, sir. And he’s Croatian.”

“Whatever. Think he’s our man?”

“We’ll certainly be talking to him. Ken Blackstone has just reported that Jelačić’s known to the Leeds police. Drunk and disorderly, one charge of assault in a pub. And he didn’t get home until after two this morning. They’ve got his prints, so we should be able to compare them if Vic gets anything from the vodka bottle.”

“Good.” Riddle grinned. “That’s the kind of thing I like to hear. I want a quick arrest on this one, Banks. Sir Geoffrey’s a personal friend of mine. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. And take it easy on the family. I don’t want you pestering them in their time of grief. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Riddle straightened his uniform, which didn’t need it, and brushed imaginary dandruff from his shoulders. Wishful thinking, Banks guessed. “Now I’m off to give a press conference,” he said. “Anything I ought to know to stop me looking a prize berk?”

Nothing could stop you from looking like a prize berk, Banks thought. “No, sir,” he said. “But you might like to drop by the murder room and see if there’s anything fresh come in.”

“I’ve already done that. What do you think I am, a bloody moron?”

Banks let the silence stretch.

Riddle kept pacing, though he seemed to have run out of things to say for the present. At last he headed for the door. “Right, then. Remember what I said, Banks,” he said, pointing a finger. “Results. Fast.”

Banks felt himself relax and breathe easier when Riddle had gone, like a Victorian lady when she takes her corsets off. He had read about “Type A” personalities in a magazine article-all push and shove, ambition and self-importance, and bloody exhausting to be in the same room with.

Banks lit a cigarette, read the reports on his desk and looked at the Dalesman calendar on his wall. November showed the village of Muker, in Swaledale, a cluster of gray limestone buildings cupped in a valley of muted autumn colors. He walked over to the window where the early morning light was leaking through the cloud cover like dirty dishwater.

The market square, with its Norman church to his left, bank, shops and cafés opposite and Queen’s Arms to the right, was a study in slate-gray, except for one bright red Honda parked by the weathered market cross. Banks watched a bent old lady hobble across the cobbles under a black umbrella. He checked his watch with the church tower clock: five to eight, time to gather his papers and head for the morning meeting.

DI Stott was already waiting and raring to go in the “Boardroom,” so called because of its well-polished oval table, ten matching stiff-backed chairs and dark-burgundy wallpaper above the wainscoting.

Detective Constable Susan Gay arrived two minutes later. Her make-up almost hid the bags under her eyes, the gel made her short curly hair look as if it were still wet from the shower, and her subtle perfume brought a whiff of spring to the room.

Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley, big and heavy, like a rugby prop-forward gone to seed, came in last. He hadn’t freshened up. His face looked like a lump of dough with tufts of stubble sticking out of it, his eyes were bloodshot and his strawy hair uncombed. His navy-blue suit was creased and shiny.

“Okay,” said Banks, shuffling the papers in front of him, “we’ve got two new pieces of information to deal with. I’d hesitate to call them leads, but you never know. First off, for what it’s worth, one of our diuretically challenged constables found the missing underwear while nipping behind a handy yew to drain the dragon. They’re with the rest of her clothing at the mortuary. The second item might be even more significant,” he went on. “Some of you may already know that a Croatian refugee called Ive Jelačić was recently fired by Daniel Charters, vicar of St. Mary’s, and subsequently brought charges of sexual harassment against him. By the sound of it, this Jelačić’s an unsavory character. According to West Yorkshire CID, Mr. Jelačić didn’t get home until after two o’clock last night, plenty of time to get back from committing a murder in Eastvale, even in the fog. He said he’d been playing cards with some fellow countrymen at a friend’s house.”

Hatchley grunted. “These foreigners would lie as soon as look at you,” he said. “Especially to cover up for one another.”

“West Yorkshire CID are already checking it out,” Banks went on, “but I’m afraid Detective Sergeant Hatchley has, in his inimitable fashion, probably put his finger on the truth of the matter. So we’ll take this alibi with a large pinch of salt. DI Blackstone said they’ll sit on Jelačić until we get there. I think we’ll let him sweat for a couple more hours.

“Now we don’t have anything in from the lab yet, but from my observations of the scene, what we’ve got here looks like a sex murder. There was an arranged quality to it all. But I want to stress looks like. Right now, we just don’t know enough. There are several other avenues we simply can’t afford to overlook.” He counted them off on his fingers. “School, family, Jelačić, boyfriends and the couple at the vicarage, for starters. Rebecca Charters lied to me last night when I asked where her husband had been at the time of the crime. She gave him a false alibi and I’d like to know why he needed it, especially given the recent scandal involving him. We also need to know a lot more about Deborah Harrison’s life. Not just her movements yesterday, but her interests, her activities, her sex life, if she had one, and her past. We need to know what made her tick, what kind of person she was. Any questions?”

They all shook their heads.

“Good. Barry, I’d like you and Sergeant Hatchley to spend the morning going through the records of all known sex offenders in the county. You know the procedure. If anyone sounds likely, make inquiries. After that, ask around at some of the restaurants and cafés in the St. Mary’s area, places that might have been closed after eight or nine last night, when the uniforms did their house-to-house. You never know, our man might have stopped off for a cup of tea on his way to the graveyard.”

Stott nodded.

“And, I’d also like you to try and find out anything you can about Jelačić from records, immigration, wherever. Does he have form back home? Has he ever committed a sex offense of any kind there?”

Stott scribbled notes on his pad.

“Susan, I’d like you to team up with me and check out a few things closer to home. For a start we’ve got to find out exactly what Deborah’s movements were yesterday, who saw her last. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So if there’s nothing else,” Banks said, “let’s get on with it. Everyone check in with the murder room at regular intervals.”

Given their tasks, they drifted away. Except DC Susan Gay, who topped up her milky coffee and sat down again.

“Why me, sir?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Why am I teamed up with you on this? I’m only a DC. By rights it should-”

“Susan, whatever your rank, you’re a good detective. You’ve proved that often enough. Think about it. Taking Jim Hatchley around to a girls’ school, a vicarage and Sir Geoffrey Harrison’s…It would be like letting a bull loose in a china shop.”

Susan’s lips twitched in a smile. “What exactly will we be doing?”

“Talking to the family, friends, teachers. Trying to find out if this isn’t just the sex murder it seems, and if someone had a reason to want Deborah Harrison dead.”

“Are you going to check her parents’ alibis?”

Banks paused for a moment, then said, “Yes. Probably.”

“The chief constable won’t like it, will he?”

“Won’t like what?”

“Any of it. Us going around poking our noses into the Harrison family background.”

“Maybe not.”

“I mean, it’s pretty common knowledge around the station that they’re in the same funny-handshake brigade, sir. The chief constable and Sir Geoffrey, that is.”

“Oh, is it?”

“So rumor has it, sir.”

“And you’re worried about your career.”

“Well, I’ve passed my sergeant’s exam, as you know. I’m just waiting for an opening. I mean, I’m with you all the way, sir, but I wouldn’t want to make enemies in the wrong places, not just at the moment.”

Banks smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s my balls on the chopping-block, not yours. I’ll cover you. My word on it.”

Susan smiled back. “Well, that’s the first time not having any balls has ever done me any good.”

II

When she woke up shortly after eight o’clock on Tuesday morning, Rebecca Charters felt the hammering pain behind her eyes that signaled another hangover.

It hadn’t always been like this, she reminded herself. When she had married Daniel twelve years ago, he had been a dynamic young cleric. She had loved his passionate faith and his dedication just as she had loved his sense of humor and his joy in the sensual world. Lovemaking had always been a pleasure for both of them. Until recently.

She got up, put on her dressing-gown against the chill and walked over to the window. When they had first moved to St. Mary’s six years ago, her friends had all said how depressing and unhealthy it would be living in a graveyard. Just like the Brontës, darling, they said, and look what happened to them.

But Rebecca didn’t find it at all depressing. She found it strangely comforting and peaceful to consider the worms seething at their work just below the overgrown surface. It put things in perspective. It also reminded her of that Marvell poem Patrick had quoted for her just on the brink of their affair, when things could have gone either way:

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long preserv’d virginity:

And your quaint honor turn to dust;

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none I think do there embrace.

What an easy seduction it had been, after all. The poem worked. Marvell would have been proud of himself.

Rebecca pulled back the curtain. Some fog still drifted around the yew trunks and the heavy gray headstones, but the drizzle seemed to have settled in now. From her window, she could see uniformed policemen methodically searching the ground around the church in a grid pattern.

Deborah Harrison. She had often seen Deborah taking a short cut through the churchyard; she had also seen her in church and at choir practice, too, before the trouble began.

Deborah’s father, Sir Geoffrey, had deserted St. Mary’s at the first hint of a scandal. The school had stuck with Daniel, but Sir Geoffrey, to whom appearances were far more important than truth, had made a point of turning his back, taking his family and a number of other wealthy and influential members of the congregation with him. And St. Mary’s was the wealthiest parish in Eastvale. Had been. Now the coffers were emptying fast.

Rebecca rested her forehead against the cool glass and watched her breath mist up the window. She found herself doodling Patrick’s name with her fingernail and felt the need for him burn in her loins. She hated herself for feeling this way. Patrick was ten years younger than she was, a mere twenty-six, but he was so ardent, so passionate, always talking so excitedly about life and poetry and love. Though she needed him, she hated her need; though she determined every day to call it off, she desired nothing more than to lose herself completely in him.

Like the drinking, Patrick was an escape; she had enough self-knowledge to work that out, at any rate. An escape from the poisoned atmosphere at St. Mary’s, from what she and Daniel had become, and, as she admitted in her darkest moments, an escape from her own fears and suspicions.

Now this. It didn’t make sense, she tried to convince herself. Daniel couldn’t possibly be a murderer. Why would he want to murder someone as innocent as Deborah Harrison? Just because you feared a person might be guilty of one thing, did that mean he had to be guilty of something else, too?

As she watched the policemen in their capes and Wellingtons poke through the long grass, she had to face the facts: Daniel had come home only after she had gone to see the angel; he had gone out before she thought she heard the scream; she hadn’t known where he was, and when he came back his shoes were muddy, with leaves and gravel stuck to their soles.

III

The mortuary was in the basement of Eastvale General Infirmary, an austere Victorian brick building with high drafty corridors and wards that Susan had always thought were guaranteed to make you ill if you weren’t already.

The white-tiled post-mortem room, though, had recently been modernized, as if, she thought, the dead somehow deserved a healthier environment than the living.

Chilled by the cooling unit rather than by the wind from outside, it had two shiny metal tables with guttered edges and a long lab bench along one wall, with glass-fronted cabinets for specimen jars. Susan had never dared ask about the two jars that looked as if they contained human brains.

Dr. Glendenning’s assistants had already removed Deborah Harrison’s body from its plastic bag, and she lay, clothed as she had been in the graveyard, on one of the tables.

It was nine o’clock, and the radio was tuned to “Wake up to Wogan.” “Do we have to listen to that rubbish?” Banks asked.

“It’s normal, Banks,” said Glendenning. “That’s why we have it on. Millions of people in houses all around the country will be listening to Wogan now. People who aren’t just about to cut open the body of a sixteen-year-old girl. I suppose you’d like some fancy classical concert on Radio 3, wouldn’t you? I can’t say that the thought of performing a post-mortem to Elgar’s Enigma Variations would do a hell of a lot for me.” Glendenning stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and pulled on his surgical gloves.

Susan smiled. Banks looked at her and shrugged.

The girl on the slab wasn’t a human being, Susan kept telling herself. She was just a piece of dead meat, like at the butcher’s. She remembered June Walker, the butcher’s daughter, from school in Sheffield, and recalled the peculiar smell that always seemed to emanate from her. Odd, she hadn’t thought of June Walker in years.

The smell-stale and sharp, but sweet, too-was here, all right, but it was buried under layers of formaldehyde and cigarette smoke, for both Glendenning and Banks were smoking furiously. She didn’t blame them. She had once seen a film on television in which an American woman cop rubbed some Vick’s or something under her nose to mask the smell of a decomposing body. Susan didn’t dare do such a thing herself for fear the others would laugh at her. After all, this was Yorkshire, not America.

Still, as she watched Glendenning cut and probe at the girl’s clothing, then remove it for air-drying and storage, she almost wished she were a smoker. At least that smell was easier to wash away than the smell of death; that seemed to linger in her clothes and hair for days after.

Deborah’s panties lay in a plastic bag on the lab bench. They weren’t at all like the navy-blue knickers, the “passion-killers,” that Susan had worn at school, but expensive, silky and rather sexy black panties. Maybe such things were de rigueur for St. Mary’s girls, Susan thought. Or had Deborah been hoping to impress someone? They still didn’t know if she’d had a boyfriend.

Her school blazer lay next to the panties in a separate bag, and beside that lay her satchel. Vic Manson, the fingerprints expert, had sent it back early that morning, saying he had found clear prints on one of the vodka bottles but only blurred partials on the smooth leather surface of the satchel. DI Stott had been through Deborah’s blazer pockets and found only a purse with six pounds thirty-three pence in it, an old chewing-gum wrapper, her house keys, a cinema ticket stub and a half-eaten roll of Polo mints.

After one of his assistants had taken photographs, Glendenning examined the face, noting the pinpoint hemorrhages in the whites of the eyes, eyelids and skin of the cheeks. Then he examined the weal on the neck.

“As I said last night,” he began, “it looks like a clear case of asphyxia by ligature strangulation. Look here.”

Banks and Susan bent over the body. Susan tried not to look into the eyes. Glendenning’s probe indicated the discolored weal around the front of the throat. “Whoever did this was pretty strong,” he said. “You can see how deeply the strap bit into the flesh. And I’d say our chappie was a good few inches taller than his victim. And she was tall for her age. Five foot six.” He turned to Susan. “That’s almost 168 centimeters, to the younger generation. See how the wound is deeper at the bottom, the way it would be if you were pulling a leather strap upwards?” He moved away and demonstrated on one of the assistants. “See?” Banks and Susan nodded.

“Are you sure the satchel strap was the weapon?” Banks asked.

Glendenning nodded. He picked it up and held it out. “You can see traces of blood on the edge here, where it broke the skin. We’re having it typed, of course, but I’d put money on this being your weapon.”

Next, he set about removing the plastic bags that covered the hands. Gently-almost, Susan thought, like a manicurist-he held up each hand and peered at the fingernails. Deborah’s nails had been quite long, Susan noticed, not the bitten-to-the-quick mess hers had been when she was at school.

When Glendenning got to the middle finger of her right hand, he murmured to himself, then took a shiny instrument from the tray and ran it under the top of the nail, calling to one of his assistants for a glassine envelope.

“What is it?” Banks asked. “Did she put up a fight?”

“Looks like she got at least one good scratch in. With a bit of luck we’ll be able to get DNA from this.”

Passing quickly over the chest and stomach, Glendenning next picked up a probe and turned his attention to the pubic region. Susan looked away; she didn’t want to witness this indignity, and she didn’t care what anyone said or thought of her.

But she couldn’t shut out the sound of Glendenning’s voice.

“Hmm. Interesting,” he said. “No obvious signs of sexual interference. No bruising. No lacerations. Let’s have a look behind.”

He flipped the body over; it slapped against the table like meat on a butcher’s block. Susan heard her heart beating fast and loud during the silence that followed.

“No. Nothing,” Glendenning announced at last. “At least nothing obvious. I’m waiting for the test results on the swabs but I’d bet you a pound to a penny they’ll turn up nothing.”

Susan turned back to face the two of them. “So she wasn’t raped?” she asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Glendenning answered. “Of course, we won’t know for sure until we’ve had a good look around inside. And in order to do that…” He picked up a large scalpel.

Glendenning bent over the body and started to make the Y incision from shoulders to pubes. He detoured around the tough tissue of the navel with a practiced flick of the wrist.

“Right,” said Banks, turning to Susan, “We’d better go.”

Glendenning looked up from the gaping incision and raised his eyebrows. “Not staying for the rest of the show?”

“No time. We don’t want to be late for school.”

Glendenning looked at the corpse and shook his head. “Can’t say I blame you. Some days I wish I’d stayed in bed.”

As they left Glendenning to sort through the inner organs of Deborah Harrison, Susan had never felt quite so grateful to Banks in her life. Next time they were in the Queen’s Arms, she vowed she would buy him a pint. But she wouldn’t tell him why.