Echoes of the Dead

by Sally Spencer

  ‘The whole business seemed to make her a bit uncomfortable,’ Bowyer replied. ‘To tell you the truth, she didn’t really get on with people of her own age. She was more drawn to—’

  He stopped, abruptly.

  ‘Go on,’ Woodend encouraged.

  ‘I’m not one to talk ill of the dead,’ Bowyer said awkwardly. ‘I mean, strictly speakin’, what she did was all very innocent, but put it into cold, hard words an’ you might end up getting’ the wrong impression.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Woodend promised.

  ‘Well, you know, it’s easy enough for you to say that now, but once I’ve told you . . .’ Bowyer fretted.

  ‘Do you want her killer caught, or not?’ Woodend asked bluntly.

  ‘She . . . she used to get very friendly with some of the stallholders,’ Bowyer said uncertainly, then added in a rush, ‘and I’m not referrin’ to the young ones now – I’m talkin’ about them that are close to my age.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by “get very friendly”?’

  ‘Well, she’d go all giggly when they were around, an’ sometimes she’d brush up against them. But there wasn’t nothin’ sexual in it. I mean to say, if one of them had tried to touch her where he shouldn’t, I’m sure she’d have—’

  ‘All she wanted was a bit of affection,’ Woodend interrupted.

  ‘That’s right,’ Bowyer agreed, with some relief. ‘All she wanted was a bit of affection.’

  The rabbits, the guinea pigs, the hamsters and the older men – they were all a desperate attempt, on Lilly’s part, to fill the gaping hole which her dad’s death had left in her life.

  It was more than likely her killer had understood that, Woodend thought, and had used it to lure her to the potting shed on the abandoned allotment – which meant, in turn, that he had been no stranger, but had spent some time studying her before making his move.

  And where would have been better to study her than in the market, where her loneliness had been so apparent that even a casual observer like Len Bowyer had noticed it?

  Woodend pictured the girl walking towards the shed where she would meet her end. He saw the smile on her face, and the sparkle in her eyes. Perhaps she even held her killer’s hand, and pretended it was her father’s.

  As they reached the shed, the image in Woodend’s mind’s eye changed, and though the girl still had the body of a gawky thirteen-year-old called Lilly, it was his own daughter’s head on top of the thin shoulders.

  ‘Are you all right, Charlie?’ Len Bowyer asked worriedly.

  ‘I’ll have that bastard,’ Woodend growled. ‘If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll have him.’

  The police surgeon, Dr Stuart Heap, was in his mid-forties, and had an air of self-importance and self-congratulation which clung to him like an ostentatiously heavy fur coat.

  ‘I can spare you five minutes – but no more,’ he told Woodend.

  ‘That should be more than enough, sir,’ Woodend said. ‘Five minutes of your time must be worth – oh, I don’t know – at least seven and half minutes of almost anybody else’s.’

  ‘Much more than that,’ the doctor said, slightly huffily. ‘Well, I expect you’d like to see the stiff.’

  ‘Aye, I thought I might as well, now that I’m here,’ Woodend replied, with the deceptive mildness which would serve as a warning signal to later police surgeons, but went right over the head of this one.

  The doctor took hold of the handle of the refrigerated drawer, and slid it smoothly open.

  ‘There you go,’ he said, with all the flourish of a music hall magician.

  Woodend gazed down at the girl’s body, and felt a sudden stabbing pain in his chest.

  She was so young, he thought.

  So very young – and so very vulnerable.

  ‘Thank you, you can close it up again now,’ he told the doctor.

  Heap slid the drawer closed. ‘Well, if that’s all . . .’

  ‘It isn’t actually,’ Woodend said firmly. ‘I’d like you to tell me about the post-mortem, if you don’t mind.’

  Heap glanced pointedly at his watch. ‘There’s no need to – it’s all in my report,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, but you see, I don’t like wearin’ out my eyes readin’ reports,’ Woodend replied. ‘I’d rather hear directly from the fellers who wrote them.’

  ‘As I think I’ve already explained, my time is very valuable . . .’ the doctor began.

  Woodend put his massive hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘Just tell me in your own words, Doc,’ he said. ‘An’ do try to steer clear of all the jargon, because I’m really not very bright.’

  ‘Well . . . err . . . she was raped and then she was strangled,’ the doctor said.

  ‘There’s no chance that she was a willing participant, is there?’ Woodend asked.

  The doctor grinned. ‘In the strangulation?’ he asked.

  ‘That’d be a joke, would it?’ Woodend said stonily.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you might call it a little “mortuary humour”,’ Heap admitted.

  ‘The thing is, I’ve got a little lass of my own,’ Woodend said softly, as he increased – ever so slightly – the pressure on the doctor’s shoulder. ‘An’ when I see this little lass lyin’ there, I think of my Annie, an’ I start getting’ angry.’

  ‘You really shouldn’t . . .’

  ‘Which means, in turn, that while your little stand-up comedy act might go down a storm with your fellow quacks after they’ve had a few pints, it doesn’t actually do a lot for me. Do you see what I’m gettin’ at?’

  ‘Err . . . yes, I suppose I do,’ Heap said reluctantly.

  ‘So let’s start again, shall we?’ Woodend suggested, removing his hand from the doctor’s shoulder. ‘Is there any chance at all that Lilly Dawson was a willin’ participant?’

  ‘None,’ the doctor said, doing his very best to sound both serious and unintimidated. ‘The bruising on her thighs indicates that she was being held down, and the further bruising around the vaginal area shows that entry was forced. And then, of course, there’s the skin under her nails.’

  ‘What skin under her nails?’ Woodend demanded. ‘There was no mention of that in your report.’

  ‘I thought you told me you didn’t read reports,’ Heap said accusingly.

  ‘I lied,’ Woodend countered. ‘It’s one of my worst habits.’ He paused for a moment. ‘So there was skin under her nails?’

  Heap frowned. ‘Yes, and, do you know, I could have sworn that, when I was writing the report, I—’

  ‘Was it her attacker’s skin?’

  ‘Almost definitely.’

  ‘So what have you learned from the skin? Can you give me any idea of the rapist’s age or what he did for a livin’?’

  The doctor laughed. ‘Good heavens, no – not with the kind of sample we had. I’m a forensic scientist, not a miracle worker.’

  ‘What about the girl’s personal effects?’ Woodend asked, finally giving up on the man. ‘Are they still at the police lab?’

  ‘No, they sent them back here, so that they could be released to the mother at the same time as the body.’

  ‘I’d like to see them.’

  ‘Certainly. No problem at all. I’ll get one of my girls to show them to you.’

  ‘What’s it like, bein’ one of the doctor’s “girls”?’ Woodend asked the smartly dressed young clerical officer, Mrs Walton, as she laid out Lilly’s clothes on the table.

  ‘It’s like a dream come true,’ the woman replied.

  And they both knew what she meant by that.

  Lilly had been wearing a navy blue skirt, a white blouse, blue serge bloomers, a scarlet cardigan and grey knee socks. There was no brassiere – the poor little kid hadn’t needed one.

  ‘That’d be her school uniform,’ Mrs Walton said.

  ‘Yes, it would,’ the chief inspector thought.

  And the fact she’d been wearing her uniform on a Saturday came as no surprise to him, because uniforms
were expensive and swallowed up most of the money that working-class mums had budgeted for clothing.

  ‘Where are the envelopes?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘What envelopes?’

  ‘The evidence envelopes.’

  ‘There aren’t any.’

  There weren’t any?

  ‘Yokels!’ Woodend’s colleagues at Scotland Yard jeered at him from inside his head.

  And he had nothing to come back at them with.

  Had the Whitebridge police lab done anything with the clothes, other than give them a cursory examination and straighten them out?

  On the face of things, it didn’t seem likely.

  ‘I’d like some surgical gloves, please,’ Woodend said.

  Though that was probably a waste of time, he added mentally. Because it wouldn’t come as a total surprise to him if – having given the clothes the once-over – the lab team hadn’t sent them out to be bloody dry-cleaned!

  The collar and cuffs of the blouse had been skilfully darned to disguise the fact that they were fraying. The socks had been darned too, in a lovingly careful way that almost reduced Woodend to tears.

  And it was while he was examining the socks that he came across something that the technicians appeared to have overlooked – and he himself had never expected to find.

  EIGHT

  The moment Woodend walked in though the main entrance of Whitebridge police headquarters, he could sense a feeling of anticipation in the air. No, it was more than just anticipation, he decided, as he walked up towards the desk sergeant’s counter – the air was positively crackling with excitement.

  The desk sergeant himself was leaning back in his chair and chatting into the phone.

  ‘Well, it’s what I’ve always said,’ he was telling the person at the other end of the line. ‘These bobbies from London might think they’re the bee’s knees, but when you’re talkin’ about doin’ a bit of real police work, you’re far better off leavin’ it up to the—’ He looked up, and saw Woodend standing there. ‘I’ll have to call you back,’ he said into the phone, before hanging up.

  Woodend held out his warrant card. ‘I’d like to speak to DCI Paine, if he’s available,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he’s available now, sir,’ the sergeant said, cockily.

  ‘Meanin’ what, exactly?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘Meanin’ that seein’ as he’s just wrapped up the job he was assigned, I imagine he’ll have bags of time on his hands for talkin’ to Scotland Yard.’

  ‘I take it you’ve caught your murderer,’ Woodend said.

  ‘That’s right, we have,’ the sergeant agreed. ‘You’ll find the DCI’s office through them double doors an’ down the end of the corridor. Is there anythin’ else I can do for you, sir?’

  ‘Aye,’ Woodend said. ‘You can stop bein’ so bloody insufferable.’

  The first thing Woodend saw when he pushed open the double doors and stepped into the corridor was the four men approaching him from the other end of it. Three of the men were uniformed officers, and the fourth, dressed in a shabby blue suit, was in handcuffs.

  The prisoner was as big as he was, Woodend guessed – and maybe even harder. His nose had been badly broken at some point in the past, and there were numerous scars on his chin, cheeks and forehead. He didn’t exactly seem enthusiastic about taking this walk along the corridor, and it was only by considerable effort on their part that the three officers were managing to make any progress at all.

  Just looking at the scene made Woodend’s hands start to twitch, but before he could take it any further, a warning voice in his head said, Don’t get involved, Charlie. It isn’t any of your business, an’ they probably wouldn’t thank you for stickin’ your oar in.

  Good advice, he told himself, stepping into an open doorway, in order to give the local bobbies more room to manoeuvre.

  Mind you, he added, as he watched the officers continue to struggle against their prisoner, they do look as if they could use a little help.

  The party had almost drawn level with him when the prisoner finally noticed him.

  ‘You’re that bobby up here from London, aren’t you?’ the man demanded.

  ‘Come on now, Walter, don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be,’ urged PC Sid Smart, Woodend’s old bird-nesting mate.

  But Walter had come to halt, and refused to be budged.

  ‘Aren’t you?’ he insisted. ‘Aren’t you that bobby from London?’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Sid Smart agreed wearily. ‘But he’s here on another case entirely, an’ the last thing he wants is to talk to you.’

  ‘They say I killed Bazza Mottershead,’ the prisoner told Woodend. ‘But I didn’t. I swear to you, I never touched him.’

  ‘Like I said, what you did or didn’t do is nothing to do with Scotland Yard,’ Sid Smart countered, giving his prisoner a shove in the right direction.

  A warning that something was about to go seriously wrong flashed across Walter’s eyes. Woodend saw it, but knew – even as he was registering the fact – that it was already too late to prevent it.

  Walter moved with the speed of a veteran street fighter.

  He raised one leg no more than eighteen inches off the ground, then brought it down again, scraping the heel of his shoe along the calf of the man on his right. The officer screamed, tried to keep his balance for no more than a split second, and then crumpled to the floor.

  Walter turned quickly to his left and headbutted the man on the other side of him. A loud cracking sound – suggesting breaking bone – echoed down the corridor, and the officer joined his colleague on the ground.

  The only constable left standing was Sid Smart, and he was still reaching for his truncheon when the prisoner swung his arms in a wide arc and struck him under the chin with the edge of the handcuffs.

  If they’d handcuffed his wrists behind his back, like they did in America, that could never have happened, Woodend thought, as he tensed himself for the attack he was sure was coming.

  But Walter seemed to have no interest at all in attacking him. Instead, he held his hands out in front of him in a pleading way, and said, ‘You’ve got to help me. I’m innocent.’

  Woodend glanced quickly down at the three fallen policemen. The first one down was rubbing his leg, the second holding his nose, and the third – Sid Smart – gingerly fingering his jaw. None of them would be feeling too happy for a while, he thought, but it could have been much worse.

  He switched his attention back to the man responsible for all the mayhem. ‘What you’ve just done isn’t goin’ to help your case at all, you know, Walter?’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘If I was in your shoes, I’d try to calm down an’ wait until my lawyer arrived.’

  The look of supplication which had filled the prisoner’s face was replaced by one of blind fury.

  ‘You’re a bloody bastard!’ he screamed. ‘You’re just as bad as the rest of them.’

  ‘Take it easy now, Walter,’ Woodend said soothingly. ‘I really don’t want to hit a feller in handcuffs – so please don’t make me.’

  But Walter was now in such a rage that it was doubtful he even heard the warning. He leapt at Woodend, then went flying backwards – almost doubled over – as his stomach came into contact with the chief inspector’s fist.

  The three uniformed officers were, slowly and painfully, climbing to their feet.

  ‘Thanks, Charlie,’ Sid Smart gasped.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Woodend told him.

  The three bobbies surrounded Walter, and half-carried, half-dragged him along the corridor, while Woodend watched them and massaged the knuckles of his right hand with the fingers of his left.

  ‘My men could easily have handled the situation, you know,’ said an angry voice behind him.

  Woodend turned around, and saw the chief constable glowering at him from one of the office doorways.

  ‘I said, my men could have easily have handled the situation,’ Eliot Sanderson repeated.
<
br />   ‘Aye, they seemed to be makin’ a right good job of it,’ Woodend replied. ‘I don’t know why I even bothered to put my two penn’orth in.’

  ‘If you hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t have been distracted,’ Sanderson said.

  ‘Yes, I knew it must be my fault,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘And at least we’ve caught our murderer,’ Sanderson told him.

  Woodend grinned. ‘Not if you listen to what Walter has to say on the subject, you haven’t.’

  ‘It was just as I thought from the very start – a case of thieves falling out,’ the chief constable said, ignoring both the comment and the grin. ‘Walter Brown is a well-known burglar, and – before their fateful disagreement – Bazza Mottershead was his fence.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ Woodend said easily. ‘A nice simple murder – all neatly tied up an’ filed away.’

  ‘I’m beginning to regret the fact that I ever called in Scotland Yard,’ the chief constable said.

  Me an’ all, Woodend thought, as another heartbreaking image of Lilly Dawson flashed across his brain.

  DCI Paine had a shiny bald head, and his rounded cheeks were almost entirely occupied by a wide smirk of self-congratulation.

  ‘We’ve caught our murderer, you know,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, I ran into him earlier,’ Woodend said, rubbing his knuckles again.

  ‘We could probably have caught Lilly Dawson’s killer by now, too, if the chief constable hadn’t panicked and called in you so-called “experts”,’ Paine continued.

  ‘Is that a fact?’ Woodend asked. ‘So tell me, Chief Inspector, how far did you actually get with that investigation?’

  ‘It’s all in my report,’ Paine said.

  First the police doctor and then the chief inspector – they were buggers for writin’ reports, this lot, Woodend thought. It was just a pity that they all seemed to confuse neat typing with useful information.

  ‘Have you actually gone to the trouble of reading my report?’ Paine asked.

  ‘Yes, I thought I might as well – since it was obviously goin’ to be such a quick read,’ Woodend said. ‘As far as I could see, you didn’t make much use of your boffins, did you?’