Constance grasped her granddaughter’s concern without Melissa needing to say anything; the priest was about twenty feet away, but the acoustics were such that when the church was as empty as it was then, a whisper could be heard from anywhere. If that wasn’t bad enough, Father Wozniak was a man who loved to gossip, and one who considered anything said outside of the confessional to be fair game for passing on to anyone who might have an interest in it. He dispensed good advice, but no-one went to him unless they were okay with everyone in the village knowing what they gone to him about within a few hours of them seeking advice.
“Why don’t you come back to my place for a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake; you don’t have to go to work, do you?”
Melissa shook her head. “No, I don’t have to be at the station until later. I’m down for the afternoon shift, though I suppose that could change, with everything that’s happened. Still, nobody’s called to say they need me in this morning.” She got to her feet and took her grandmother’s hand to help her up.
*****
It didn’t take long to get from the church to Constance’s house, and once there Melissa sat at the kitchen table while her grandmother bustled about, making tea and setting out a plate of biscuits and cake. Melissa would have helped, even made the tea herself, but she knew better than to offer; her grandmother was a proud and vigorous woman, who insisted on doing everything possible for herself, claiming that it was good for her to keep busy.
Nothing was said by either woman until the pot had been filled and set in the middle of the table.
“So, what is it that has you so troubled that you’re lost in thought in the church first thing on a Monday morning?” Constance asked of her granddaughter. “Something to do with recent events, I take it.”
“Yeah.” Melissa nodded. “The murders, and the shooting next door last night, and – and everything; at first I didn’t think Mr Wild was the killer, he seems too nice, but now I’m not sure, and I think Sergeant Mitchell had something to do with the attack on Mr Wild last night. Oh, I don’t mean he was the one doing the shooting or anything like that,” she said quickly. “It’s just that I think he knows who did it, and he knew it was going to happen before it did, and I think he knew Oliver was going to attack Mr Wild on Saturday.” The words tumbled from her lips with little coherency. “It’s all so complicated, I don’t know what to think or do.”
Constance allowed Melissa to ramble on until she was finished. “I can see why you’re so confused,” she said as she took the cosy off the pot and poured them both a cup. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, maybe if you talk it out one step at a time things will start to make some sense, and you won’t feel so overwhelmed.”
“I don’t know where to begin: with Mr Wild, or with Sergeant Mitchell, or with the murders, or something else. It’s all such a jumble up here.” Melissa banged herself on the side of the head, as though doing so would knock her thoughts into some semblance of order and allow her to see things more clearly. When that didn’t work, she wrapped her hands around the mug her grandmother had filled with tea and sipped at it miserably.
Constance patted her granddaughter’s arm sympathetically for a moment. “You’re thinking too much. Close your eyes. Don’t think, just speak – what’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
Melissa obeyed her grandmother, though she felt more than a little stupid sitting at the table with her eyes closed. “Zack, Mr Wild,” she said.
“What is it about Mr Wild you have a problem with?”
“I don’t know really,” Melissa admitted. “When I first met him, god, was it only a couple of days ago?” She couldn’t quite believe that only two days had passed since Georgina Ryder’s body was found. “He seemed so charming, nice and funny, and normal; not at all the sort of guy who’d hurt anyone, let alone kill them. The more I find out about him, though, the more I wonder what to believe. I’ve read his personal file from when he was a detective, and I’ve spoken to him about things, but it’s just left me more confused.
“He’s been involved in violent incidents, and he’s been accused of attacking girls – he explained them, and the file I read explains them as well, and they’re either false or understandable, but last night he admitted that he kissed Emily. She’s only sixteen and he kissed her!” she exploded. “How the hell could he do that? It’s sick and it’s wrong, and if he’s willing to do that, how much more is he willing to do. What if he is the one who killed Georgina and Lucy, and now Emily as well? I know you’ve heard what’s supposed to have been done to the girls before they were killed. What if he kissed them, or tried to, and wouldn’t stop once he got started.”
Constance had a few things to say on that subject – she was surprised and disappointed by Melissa’s closed-minded attitude – but chose not to voice them just then, instead she said, “Put all of that from your mind for the moment, don’t let it bother you. What’s the next thing that comes to mind?”
“Sergeant Mitchell,” Melissa said. “He seems obsessed with Mr Wild, he’s absolutely certain he’s the one responsible for the murders, even though we don’t have a scrap of proof against him. We’ve got a pretty good idea of when yesterday evening Emily was kidnapped, and Mr Wild was on the phone with his daughter when it happened, he couldn’t possibly have taken her. If he didn’t kidnap Emily, chances are he didn’t kill Georgina or Lucy. Mitchell isn’t willing to accept that, though; he thinks we must be wrong about when Emily was kidnapped. I don’t see how we can be, though.” She shook her head. “From the moment he heard that Mr Wild was most likely the last person to see Lucy before she was killed, Mitchell’s been convinced that he’s the killer, and he’s not willing to consider that he might be wrong.
“I was told – even when talking with her grandmother she knew to be discreet – that Kieran Wright could be the killer, he’s apparently attacked Lucy in the past. Mitchell didn’t want to know when I told him, though. He won’t even consider the possibility that someone else could be responsible for the murders. From the start he’s only been interested in proving that it’s Mr Wild. And he’s gotten really angry both times he’s had to release him; the first time, he immediately let Oliver out and told him that as far as he was concerned, Mr Wild was the killer, not Kieran. We both know what happened after that.”
It took Melissa some time to finish unburdening herself, and by the time she was done the pot was empty, the cake was gone, and there were only a few biscuits left on the plate.
“Do you feel any better after getting all of that off your chest?” Constance asked.
Melissa nodded. She couldn’t speak just then because she was nibbling her way through another of her gran’s home-made cinnamon biscuits. “ A little better,” she said once she could speak without spraying crumbs all over the table. “But it hasn’t really changed anything, all of my problems are still there.”
“I realise that,” Constance said, “but sometimes just telling someone a problem makes it easier to deal with. Now that you’ve told me what’s wrong, I want you to get a pad and pen and write it all down. I want you to write down everything that’s happened since the start of all this, even if you don’t think it’s relevant, in the order it happened. By the time you’re done, you might just realise that you’ve got what you need to make a decision about what to do.
“Before you do that, though, I want you to answer one question.”
Melissa looked at her grandmother curiously. “What’s that?”
“Has your opinion of Mr Wild’s innocence changed because he admitted kissing Emily, and you genuinely believe it’s wrong for someone his age to kiss a sixteen-year-old girl, or because you wish it was you he kissed?”
Melissa’s cheeks coloured. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I do think it’s wrong for someone his age to kiss a teen, it’s not right at all – he must be twenty years older than her. Emily’s sixteen, that’s the age of consent, so it isn’t wrong, legally, for him to kiss her, but I still think
it’s wrong. If you’re asking whether I’m jealous that he kissed someone else – she nodded – yes I am; he’s attractive, and charming, and I wanted him to kiss me. And now I’m even more confused about everything.
“I don’t know if I thought he was innocent because there’s no evidence against him, or because I think he’s attractive and I fancy him. And I don’t know if I now think he’s guilty because Emily is the same age as Georgina and Lucy, and if he was prepared to kiss Emily, what might he have done, or tried to do, with the other two, or because I’m jealous it wasn’t me he kissed.” Her head in her hands, she stared miserably at the table.
Constance permitted herself a small smile for the dilemma Melissa had gotten herself into, though it didn’t stay on her lips for long. “It’s good that you can admit you’re confused, and why,” she said. “It’s also good that you’re willing to accept that just because you believe Mr Wild was wrong to kiss Emily, doesn’t mean he actually did something wrong; some people can’t do that. Take Lewis for example, in all the time I’ve known him, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him admit to being wrong about anything. That’s a bad trait in anyone, but especially in a police officer.
“I remember your grandfather used to say ‘it’s better to say you’re wrong, even if you’re right, than it is to say you’re right, even when you’re wrong’.”
Melissa had to smile at that; she hadn’t known her grandfather all that well, he had died when she was young, but she did remember him coming out with sayings like that.
“I’m not an expert on this kind of thing, and I don’t pretend to be,” Constance said. “But it seems to me that if you really want to figure out if the killer is Mr Wild or young Kieran, you need to acknowledge that you’re attracted to Mr Wild, and then forget all about that attraction and concentrate on the facts you have.”
Melissa doubted that was going to be as easy as her grandmother made it sound. “What do I do about the attempts on Mr Wild’s life, though? If I report what I suspect, and I’m wrong, I could lose my job, or at least end up with a black mark in my file; that would mean I can’t go for sergeant next year. But if I don’t report it, and I’m right, then I could be letting a would-be murderer go free, and letting the sergeant get away with abuse of power, or whatever he could be charged with.”
“On that subject, I don’t really know what to tell you, except that you should do what you think is right.”
*****
Melissa arrived at the station well ahead of the start of her shift, and immediately put the kettle on.
Once she was seated with a coffee, she found a pad and a pen and got to work. Putting together a chronological account of everything that had happened since Georgina Ryder went missing proved more difficult than Melissa anticipated. The task was complicated by the need to make sure that none of what she put down was coloured by her personal opinions or feelings.
The arrival of Sergeant Mitchell forced her to stop before she could finish; she didn’t want him to see what she was doing, in case he disapproved of it, which he almost certainly would.
“What are you doing this afternoon?” Mitchell asked when he found Melissa; he didn’t notice the several sheets of paper she whipped out of sight upon seeing him in the doorway.
“Whatever you need me to,” Melissa said. She had been expecting to be on the counter for her shift, with a couple of runs around the village during the afternoon and evening to keep an eye out for potential trouble, but the question made her think Mitchell had something in mind for her.
“Good, because I’ve had a message to say the post-mortems have been completed, so we need to go into town and speak to the pathologist. We also need to speak to Mr Wild,” he said, though he seemed far from pleased by the thought, “to find out what, if anything, he knows about the attempt on his life.”
Going to see a pathologist about the results of a post-mortem was one of the last things she would have chosen to do, had she an option, but it beat spending an afternoon at the counter. As horrible and horrific as the events of the last few days had been, she couldn’t help thinking that they had shown her how boring her work was usually; it wasn’t that she wanted to have to deal with murders and other serious crimes on a daily, or even a regular, basis, it was just that she didn’t want to go back to a life where she had little to do beyond breaking up the occasional drunken argument in the pub.
37
Melissa liked her third visit to the morgue no better than she had the previous two – she didn’t think she would have liked it any better if all three visits hadn’t occurred on consecutive days – but that was no surprise given that two of the visits had been to identify bodies, and this one was to get the results of a post-mortem, something she had never thought to have to do.
The two police officers introduced themselves to the young man at the counter, and were directed to the office of the pathologist.
“Come in.”
“Hello, Sergeant Mitchell, from Oakhurst,” he introduced himself as he entered the office. “You called to say the reports on the post-mortems of the two murder victims we discovered over the weekend are ready.”
The pathologist looked blankly at Mitchell for a moment and then nodded. “Ah, yes, I remember now; it wasn’t me that called, though, it was my assistant - she must have garbled the message, because I’ve only completed one of the post-mortems. I’m good, but two posts in a morning is more than I can manage. I won’t be doing the second ‘til this afternoon. Do you want the report on this morning’s PM, or would you rather wait until I’ve done this afternoon’s?”
“I’ll take the report.” Mitchell accepted the file and leaned back in the chair he had been directed to. He flipped open the file and began to read with an expression that could only be called perplexed; he didn’t want to say as much, but he could barely understand a word of what the report had to say - for all the sense he could make of it, it might as well have been written in a foreign language.
Harry Doherty didn’t laugh when he saw the sergeant was having trouble, he was used to detectives with far greater experience not understanding post-mortem reports, so it didn’t surprise him that a village sergeant was struggling. “Would you like me to explain it to you?” he asked in his most non-offensive tone.
As much as he wanted to be insulted by the suggestion that he didn’t understand the report, Mitchell knew it was true, he also knew his inability to understand it was obvious. Reluctantly, he swallowed his pride and nodded. “Thanks, I’ve never had to read one of these before, and, I’ve got to be honest, it’s like it’s in Latin or something.”
Doherty permitted himself a smile. “You’re not the first person to say that,” he remarked. “This is the report on Georgina Ryder, who I understand was the first of the two bodies to be found. I won’t trouble you with her gross physical characteristics, I’m sure you know them well enough, I’ll just skip to the bits you need to know.”
Mitchell was glad about that, he was sure there was a lot of details in the report that were only of interest to a pathologist, or a coroner, or someone with a morbid interest in knowing every last detail of someone’s life and death. He did not fit into any of those categories, he was simply after evidence that would prove that Zack Wild was the murderer he knew him to be.
“First, and most importantly, the cause of death – she was strangled, with sufficient force to leave more bruising than would be considered usual. There are photos of each of the injuries I catalogued in the back of the report, but I’ll spare you them just now. The extent of the bruising to Miss Ryder’s throat, coupled with the other injuries, indicate that the killer is naturally strong, but was also angry at the time of the attack; strength alone would not account for the severity of the injuries I catalogued.
“The chances are good that she would have died even if she wasn’t strangled. The injuries she suffered: punctured lung, lacerated kidney and liver, bruising to the heart, fractured jaw, multiple broken and fractured ribs, internal b
leeding, all would have made it unlikely that she would have survived to reach hospital, even if she had been found straight away, which I understand was not the case. And none of that takes into account the cuts and bruises she suffered.”
A feeling of horror crept over Mitchell as he listened to the range of injuries Georgina had suffered before being strangled. He had seen the cuts and bruises, and the other outward marks of injury, especially the words cruelly carved into her stomach, when he examined her naked body at the scene; none of that had prepared him to hear the level of internal injury she had suffered, though.
Despite his certainty that he knew who was responsible for the murder, he couldn’t imagine the type of person it took to inflict such damage on another human being, it didn’t seem possible that anyone could. Even harder to believe, was that someone sick enough to brutalise a person in the way described could walk around without anyone being aware of what they were capable of.
It took a short while for Mitchell to recover enough to speak; fortunately, the pathologist understood his silence and waited patiently for him to recover from his shock.
“What about what was – what was cut into her stomach?” Mitchell asked. “Can you tell me anything about that that might help me prove who killed her?”
“Not much,” Doherty admitted. “The words were made with a series of precise cuts from a narrow-bladed knife.”
“Precise cuts? You mean they were made by someone professional, like a surgeon or something?” Melissa felt compelled to ask.
Doherty shook his head. “No, sorry, that’s not what I meant. When I say precise cuts, I mean there was no hesitation in any of them, each one was made with one exact stroke; that suggests that whoever made them knew exactly what they were going to do, and wasn’t bothered by the fact that they were cutting into human flesh.”
Written In Blood Page 21
