This Body of Death

by Elizabeth George

  “What do you think?”

  “I can never get ten words out of him, Tommy. To be honest, he makes me a bit nervous.”

  Lynley found a picture of Sidney, then: tall, lithe, striking a pose with champagne in hand and her head thrown back. It was supposed to be candid—indeed, she was in conversation with a swarthy bloke tossing his drink down his throat—but it was not for nothing that Sidney was a professional model. Despite the crowd round them, she knew when a camera was on her.

  There were other pictures, posed and candid. They needed a closer scrutiny. Indeed, the magazine itself would likely have a score of photos on file that hadn’t even been printed in these pages and Lynley realised they might be valuable and that they might want tracking down. He asked Deborah if he could keep the magazine. She said of course, but did he think that Jemima’s killer had been there?

  He said anything was possible. So everything had to be explored.

  St. James arrived then. The front door opened, and they heard his uneven footsteps in the entry. Deborah went to the door of his study, saying, “Tommy’s here, Simon. He’s wanting you.”

  St. James joined them. There was an awkward moment in which Lynley’s old friend assessed his state—with Lynley wondering when the time would arrive that awkward moments with friends would be a thing of the past—and then St. James said, “Tommy. I’m in need of a whisky. You?”

  Lynley wasn’t, but he obliged with, “I wouldn’t say no.”

  “Lagavulin, then?”

  “Am I that special an occasion?”

  St. James smiled. He went to the drinks trolley beneath the window and poured two glasses as well as a sherry for Deborah. He handed them round and then said to Lynley, “Have you brought me something?”

  “You know me too well.” Lynley handed over the copy of the picture he’d brought from the incident room. As he did so, he told St. James something of what had happened that day: Yukio Matsumoto, the chase through the streets, the accident in Shaftesbury Avenue. Then he told of the implement they’d found in the violinist’s room, ending with Ardery’s conclusion that they had their man.

  “Hardly unreasonable, all things considered,” St. James said. “But you’re reluctant to agree?”

  “I find motive a difficulty.”

  “Obsessive love? God knows that happens enough.”

  “If obsession’s involved, it seems more likely he’s obsessed with angels. He’s got them all over the walls in his room.”

  “Has he indeed? That’s curious.” St. James gave his attention to the picture.

  Deborah joined him. She said, “What is this, Tommy?”

  “It was found in Jemima’s pocket. SO7’s saying it’s carnelian, but that’s as far as we’ve got. I was hoping you might have some thoughts on it. Or failing that—”

  “That I might know someone who’d be able to suss it out? Let me have a closer look.” St. James carried the picture to his desk, where he used a magnifying glass on it. He said, “It’s well worn, isn’t it? The size suggests a stone from a man’s ring or perhaps a woman’s pendant. Or a brooch, I suppose.”

  “Jewellery, in any case,” Lynley agreed. “What d’you make of the carving?”

  St. James bent over the photo. He said, after a moment, “Well, it’s pagan. That much is obvious, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what I thought. It doesn’t appear Celtic.”

  “No, no. Definitely not Celtic.”

  “How d’you know?” Deborah asked.

  St. James handed over the magnifying glass to her. “Cupid,” he said. “One of the carved figures. He’s kneeling in front of the other. And she’s …Minerva, Tommy?”

  “Or Venus.”

  “But the armour?”

  “Something belonging to Mars?”

  Deborah looked up. “That makes this…how old, then, Simon? A thousand years?”

  “Bit more, I daresay. Third or fourth century, likely.”

  “But how did she get it?” Deborah asked Lynley.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “Could this be why she was killed?” Deborah asked. “For a carved bit of stone? It must be valuable.”

  “It does have value,” Lynley said. “But if her killer wanted it, he’d hardly have left it on her body.”

  “Unless he didn’t know she was carrying it,” Deborah said.

  “Or was interrupted before he could make the search,” St. James added.

  “As to that…” Lynley told them more about the murder weapon, or at least what they were assuming was the murder weapon. It was, he said, saturated in blood.

  “What is it?” St. James asked.

  “We’re not entirely sure,” Lynley told him. “All we have to go on at the moment is the shape.”

  “Which is … ?”

  “Deadly sharp at one end, perhaps nine inches long, a curved handle. Very like an oddly shaped spike.”

  “Used for what?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  With the presence of police vehicles, forensic vehicles, an ambulance, and dozens of officers of the law in the vicinity of the Dawkins building site, it was only a matter of minutes before the press arrived and the community as a whole became aware that a body had been found. While local police efforts to control the flow of information were admirable, the nature of the crime was difficult to conceal. Thus the superficial condition of John Dresser’s body and exactly where the body had been found were details both widely reported and widely known within four hours. Also widely known and reported was the arrest of three boys (their names withheld for obvious reasons) who were “helping the police with their enquiries,” which of course had long been a euphemism for “suspects in the case.”

  Michael Spargo’s mustard anorak had made him identifiable not only to those individuals in the Barriers who, having seen him that day, recognised both the anorak and him on the CCTV film, and not only to the witnesses who came forward with descriptions of him, but also to his neighbourhood. In short order, community outrage led a threatening mob to the front door of the Spargo home. Within thirty-six hours, this resulted in the entire family’s being removed from the Gallows altogether and established in another part of town (and after the trial to another part of the country) under an assumed name. When the police came for Reggie Arnold and Ian Barker, it was with much the same consequences, and their families were moved to other locations as well. Of them all, only Tricia Barker has ever spoken to the press in the intervening years, having resolutely refused to change her name. There is some speculation that her cooperation has to do with garnering publicity for a hoped-for appearance on reality television.

  It could well be said that the hours of interviews with the three boys in the subsequent days reveal much about their psychopathology and the dysfunction of their families. Of the three, it would appear on the surface that Reggie Arnold came from the strongest home situation because in his every interview both Rudy and Laura Arnold were present, along with the interviewing detective and a social worker. But of the three boys, Reggie—it must be remembered—displayed the most overt symptoms of inner turmoil according to his teachers, and the tantrums, hysteria, and self-destructive activities that characterised his classroom experience became more pronounced as the days of interviews wore on and as it became more evident to him that whatever manipulations he’d used in the past to get himself out of trouble were not going to work in the situation in which he found himself.

  On the tape his voice wheedles at first. Then it whines. His father instructs him to sit up straight and “be a man not a mouse” and his mother weeps about what Reggie is “doing to us all.” Their focus remains consistently upon themselves: how the exigency of Reggie’s situation is affecting them. They seem oblivious not only to the nature of the crime about which he’s being questioned and what the nature of this crime indicates about the state of his mind, but also to the jeopardy he faces. At one point Laura tells him that she “can’t sit here all day while you
whinge, Reg,” because she has Reggie’s “brother and sister to think of, don’t you understand that? Who d’you think’s taking care them while I’m here with you? While your dad’s here with you?” Even more troubling, neither of the parents seems to notice when the questions directed at Reggie begin to home in on the Dawkins building site, on the body of John Dresser, and on what the evidence found at the site suggests happened to John Dresser there. Reggie’s behaviour escalates—even repeated breaks and interventions by the social worker do not settle him—and although it’s clear that he was very likely involved in something horrendous, his parents don’t take note of that, as they continue to attempt to mould his behaviour to something that they themselves will approve of. In this we see the very essence of the narcissistic parent, and in Reggie we see the extreme to which a child’s reaction to such parenting can take him.

  Ian Barker faces a situation not unlike Reggie’s, although he remains stoic throughout. It is only through his later drawings during sessions with a child psychiatrist that the extent of his participation in the crime will be revealed. While interviewed, he maintains his story that he knows “nothing about no baby” even when shown the CCTV film and read the statements of the witnesses who saw him in the company of the other boys and John Dresser. During all of this, his grandmother weeps. One can hear her on the tape, as her ululations rise periodically and the social worker’s murmurs of “Please, Mrs. Barker” fail to calm her. Her only remarks are, “I’ve a duty here,” but there is no indication that she sees communication with her grandson as part of that duty. While she understandably must have felt a tremendous sense of guilt for having abandoned Ian to his mother’s inadequate and often abusive care, she does not appear to connect this abandonment and the emotional and psychological abuse that followed to what happened to John Dresser. For his part, Ian never asks for his mother. It’s as if he knows in advance that he will stand alone throughout the investigation, supported mainly by a social worker who was unknown to him before the crime.

  As for Michael Spargo, we have already seen that Sue Spargo’s abandonment of him occurred almost at once, during his first encounter with the police. This was also consistent with the rest of his life: His father’s departure from the home would have had a profound effect on all of the Spargo boys; his mother’s drinking and her other inadequacies would only have exacerbated Michael’s sense of desertion. Sue Spargo had already been incapable of putting a stop to the hand-me-down abuse that was going on among her nine sons. Michael likely had no expectation that his mother would be able to stop anything else that was going to happen to him.

  Once they were arrested, Michael, Reggie, and Ian were interviewed repeatedly, up to seven times in a single day. As can be imagined, considering the enormity and the horror of the crime committed, each of them pointed a finger at the others. There were certain events that none of the boys would discuss at all—particularly those having to do with the hairbrush they had stolen from Items-for-a-Pound—but suffice it to say that both Michael Spargo and Reggie Arnold were aware of the iniquitous nature of what they had done. Their initial protestations of innocence notwithstanding, the multitudinous references to “stuff what was done to that baby” along with their growing distress when certain topics were brought up (and, in the case of Reggie Arnold, the repeated hysterical begging of his parents not to hate him) tell us that they were fully cognizant of every line of propriety and humanity that was crossed during their time with John Dresser. To the end, on the other hand, Ian Barker remained unmoved, stoic, as if his life circumstances had bled from him not only conscience but also every feeling of empathy he might otherwise have had towards another human being.

  “Do you understand what forensic evidence is, lad?” were the words that cracked open the door to confession, for a confession was what the police wanted from the boys, just as a confession is what police want from all criminals. Upon their arrests, the boys’ school uniforms, their shoes, and their outer-wear had all been gathered for examination, and the trace evidence from these articles would later not only place them at the Dawkins building site but also put them in the company of John Dresser in the final terrible moments of his life. Shoes belonging to all three boys were spattered with the toddler’s blood; fibres from their clothing were caught up not only in John’s snowsuit but also in his hair and on his body; their fingerprints were on the back of the hairbrush, on copper tubing from the building site, on the door of the Port-a-Loo, on the seat of the commode inside, and on John Dresser’s little white trainers. The case against them was open and shut, but in the earliest interviews the police, of course, would not have known that as the evidence had not yet been analysed.

  As the police ultimately saw it and as the social workers agreed, a confession from the boys would serve a number of purposes: It would trigger the recently passed Contempt of Court Act, putting an end not only to the growing, hysterical press speculation about the case but also to any possibility of details prejudicial to the trial being leaked to the public; it would allow the police to focus their attention on building whatever sort of case against the boys that they intended to present to the Crown Prosecutors; it would give psychologists the necessary material for an evaluation of the boys. The police did not as a whole consider the value of a confession as it pertained to the boys’ own healing. That there was “something deeply wrong in all of the families” (the words of Detective Superintendent Mark Bernstein in an interview two years after the trial) was obvious to everyone, but the police did not see it as their duty to mitigate the psychological and emotional damage done to Michael Spargo, Ian Barker, and Reggie Arnold within their own homes. One can certainly not fault them for this, despite the fact that the frenzied nature of the ultimate crime speaks of deep psychopathology in all of them. For the brief of the police was to bring someone to justice for the murder of John Dresser and to give, through this, some small measure of relief to his suffering parents.

  As might be suspected, the boys begin by accusing each other, once they are informed that John Dresser’s body has been located and that, in the vicinity of the Port-a-Loo, everything from footprints to faecal matter has been found and is going to be analysed by criminologists and, doubtless, connected to his abductors. “Was Ian’s idea to nick the kid,” comes from Reggie Arnold, who addresses this cry not to the police interviewer but rather to his mother, to whom he says, “Mum, I never. I never took that kid.” Michael Spargo accuses Reggie, and Ian Barker says nothing until he’s told of Reggie’s accusation, at which point he says, “I wanted that kitten, is all.” All of them begin with protestations that they did not “hurt no baby” and Michael is the first to admit that they “might’ve took him outside the Barriers for a walk or something but that was cause we didn’t know where he belonged.”

  All of the boys are urged throughout to tell the truth. “The truth is better than lying, son,” Michael Spargo is told repeatedly by his interviewer. “You’ve got to say. Please, luv, you’ve got to say,” is what Ian Barker hears from the grandmother. Reggie is counseled by his parents to “spit it out, now, like something bad from your tummy that you’ve got to get rid of.” But the full truth is clearly a form of abomination that the boys are afraid to touch upon, and their reactions to the aforementioned injunctions illustrate the various degrees to which they raise their defences against having to speak it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  HE DROVE ONTO THE PROPERTY ONCE AGAIN WHILE GORDON was watering the ponies. Ten minutes more and Gordon would have been off for the day, working on the roof of the Royal Oak pub. As it was, he was trapped. He stood inside the paddock with a hosepipe in his hand and Gina watching him from the fence. She’d not wanted to enter the paddock this time. The ponies seemed skittish this morning, she’d said. She’d lost her nerve for the moment.

  Over the sound of the water burbling into the trough, Gordon didn’t notice the car’s engine as the vehicle rumbled onto the driveway. Gina, however, was near the edge of it, and she
tentatively called his name at the same moment as the car door slamming caught his attention.

  He saw the sunglasses. They caught the morning light like the wings of misplaced bats. Then he was coming towards the fence, and the movement of his lips told Gordon that whatever was to happen next, the other man was determined to enjoy it.

  The man said to Gina in a tone perfectly gauged to convey an utter lack of fellow feeling, “Gorgeous day, my dear, wouldn’t you say? Bit hot again, but who’s about to complain. We get little enough good weather in this country, eh?”

  Gina glanced at Gordon, a quick look shot through with questions that she wouldn’t ask. She said, “I could do with a few more cool breezes, to be honest.”

  “Could you, now? Can’t get our Gordon to wave the fan over you in the afters when you’re both hot and sweaty?” He smiled, a baring of teeth that was as disingenuous as everything else about him.

  “What d’you want?” Gordon flung the hosepipe to one side. The water continued to burble from it. The ponies, surprised by his sudden movement, trotted away across the paddock. Gordon thought that Gina might enter the enclosure at that point—with the ponies safely away—but she did not do so. She remained by the fence, her hands fixed atop one of the newer posts. Not for the first time, he cursed that upright piece of wood and all of its brothers. He should have let the whole damn thing rot to hell, he thought.

  “That’s not very friendly,” was the reply to his question. “What I want is a bit of conversation. We can have it here or we can go for a drive.”

  “I’ve work to do.”

  “Won’t take long, this.” He made a minute adjustment to his trousers: a hitch, a shift, and the bollocks put into a more comfortable position. It was the sort of movement that had a hundred different interpretations, depending upon circumstances and the bloke making it. Gordon looked away. The other said, “What’s it to be, my love?”