Black dog bcadf-1

by Stephen Booth

  ‘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

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  recognized a figure further up the road, emerging from one of iiie houses near the village hall. Ben Cooper was wilh 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 siic 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

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  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.’

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  Fry saw Helen Milner first. Their eyes met, and Helen turned away, as il she had decided not to speak to them alter 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 saw hello. How are you

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  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

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  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

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  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.’

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  ‘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 —’

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

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

  ‘Oh, well, I did meet her once.’

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  ‘When was that?’

  A couple of months ago. It was at a party that the Vernons wave. 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.’

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  shee waited. ‘And?’

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

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

  ‘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?’

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  ‘I’m a teacher.’

  ‘Of course. So you’re used to assessing children. What did

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  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.’

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

  ‘Grandma would he 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 sonic pi upei ties 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

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  turn and look back.

  Juliana Van Door 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 e
xternal signs had been recorded. The clothes themselves had been set aside for forensic examination. Now Mrs Van Door 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

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  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 repcatable, 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 Door. ‘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,

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  thought Tailby. That, and the thoughtful grey eyes. He had once, as a young detective, harboured secret dreams about Juliana Van Door. 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

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  the stainless-steel saw to cut through the sternum, and before

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  the electric trepanner sliced off the top of the girl’s damaged skull. He tokl 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, 1 understand, in sexually motivated killings. You would be asking yourself why there is

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  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 Door. ‘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

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  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.’

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  ‘Students, I suppose,’ said Tailbv, reluctantly impressed. But I’m sure bites on the thigh are not unknown in sexual

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  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 sec. 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

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  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.’

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  ‘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

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  thigh, where the living flesh had been at its softest and most

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  vulnerable. The picture suggested by Juliana Van Door 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

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  process of reducing Laura Vernon to her component parts. 1 ailbv and his team had to do the same thing, in a way. That

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  was the essence of victimologv. 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, ”aura’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, certainl
y.’

  ‘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 Door, 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.’

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  UK, what have-vc got, any thing,”

  ‘Cars, lots of cars. Most of them unknown. You have to expect it in an area like this.’

  ‘Tourists,’ said Dl Hitchens. ‘They always complicate the issue.’

  They were in the tiny beer garden at the back of the Drover, squashed round a table under a parasol that kept the sun off their plates of ham and cheese sandwiches and their slimline tonics. The only other customers outdoors were two workmen eating

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  scampi and chips and drinking beer at a far table. Everyone else had chosen to sit inside the pub, in the cool rooms, or at the front, where there was a view of the road.

  Cooper and Fry had met up with four sweating PCs who had been working their way down the village, and they were all now

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  clinking ice cubes desperately as they exchanged the pitifully thin information from their clipboards. DI Hitchens had arrived late, brazenly downing a whisky and stealing their sandwiches. He

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