It was well after dark and the bats were flitting all over the back garden. Mark Knopfler had finished a while ago. Wearily, Banks put his empty wine glass in the sink and went up to bed. It was no insult to the beauty of the music that he fell asleep with his earbuds in listening to John Tavener’s Lament for Jerusalem.
4
‘Have you ever been to one of these before?’ Annie asked Gerry as they clicked along the corridor to the post-mortem suite, footsteps echoing from the high ceiling and green-tiled walls. The antiseptic smell made Annie feel vaguely nauseated.
‘No,’ said Gerry.
‘A lot of firsts these days. Nervous?’
‘A bit. I don’t want to make a fool of myself.’
Annie flashed on the time, not so long ago, when she got out of a helicopter feeling airsick and went straight to the scene where half a body had burst out of a bin liner. The left half. As if the victim had been neatly sliced in half from top to bottom with a chainsaw. She had been sick. ‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘Besides, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Even Alan gets a bit green around the gills when he has to attend one of these. It’s like a murder scene. You never get used to it, but you learn to cope. I suppose the advantage with this sort of thing is it’s all scientific. Sterile. Clinical. Not like finding a girl’s naked body dumped by the roadside.’ Or the left half of a body spilling from the plastic bag on the windswept valley bottom. She turned to Gerry, taking something from her briefcase. ‘Here, put a dab of this under your nose. It’s Vicks. It really does help a bit. The smell in there’s the worst.’
‘Thanks.’ Gerry dabbed the mentholated goo on her upper lip. ‘It reminds of me of when I was a child and my mother would rub it on my chest just before bed when I had a cold.’
‘Exactly,’ said Annie, applying a dab to herself. ‘Dr Glendenning will tease you about it if he smells it. He can be a bit of a jerk – he’s old school – so just ignore him. OK? Ready?’
Gerry nodded and they opened the swing doors and entered the room where Dr Glendenning and his chief anatomical pathology technologist Karen Galsworthy already had the body waiting on the slab. Dr Glendenning glanced over at them. ‘Nice of you to join us, ladies. Why don’t you get yourselves kitted up.’ Then he sniffed theatrically. ‘Someone got a chest cold, have they?’
Annie gave him a dirty look.
They were two minutes early, but Annie was well aware that Dr Glendenning treated everyone who entered his domain as a latecomer. Of course, as he occasionally joked when challenged, most visitors were late. They put on their disposable overalls and hairnets, adding plastic goggles and mouth masks. There was always a chance that the body was infected with some communicable disease, or that bits of bone and flesh would spray up when Dr Glendenning or Karen Galsworthy used the electric saw. You didn’t want a bone fragment in your eye. She hadn’t told Gerry that, of course.
The walls were covered with dazzling white tiles, which made the dirty body on the stainless-steel table seem all the more out of place. Rigor mortis had passed completely now, and the girl lay on her back, arms at her sides. Now that she could see the girl’s face Annie noticed that she had been very pretty even with the bruising, as well as young.
A bulky microphone dangled above the table, and cameras fixed on the walls filmed the procedure from a variety of angles. The surface of the body had already been examined microscopically for any trace evidence, samples taken, and Karen Galsworthy was busy washing it down when they went in. She seemed to be working gently, Annie thought, sadly and respectfully, as a funeral home worker might prepare a body for burial.
The odontologist had been and taken dental impressions, which might help them identify the girl. All he had said, according to Dr Glendenning, was that there was nothing unusual about the dental work. It looked very much, the doctor went on, as if the fist blows came first, knocking her to the ground and stunning her, then a flurry of hard kicks to the head, back, buttocks and chest while she was lying curled in the foetal position. And he was adamant that it had not been a hit and run.
The water sluiced off the mud and filthy water that had dried on the victim’s skin and sent it running into the gutters on either side of the table, then away down the drain. It couldn’t go into the general sewage pipes, Annie knew, in case of blood contaminants and other nasty things, so the resultant mess went into tanks where it had to be specially treated later before it was carefully disposed of.
When Karen had finished, Annie could see that the victim was slim with small, high breasts and long, shapely legs. She was of average height, and everything was in proportion. Her blond hair was parted on the left and fell over her ears and as far as the nape of her neck, showing dark brown roots and two pink streaks.
As always, Dr Glendenning’s first task after the body had been undressed – not necessary today – and examined for trace evidence was to carry out a careful examination of the surface. The removal of the dried mud and scum might have revealed identifying marks or injuries that hadn’t been noticed before. This case was no exception. Dr Burns had estimated time of death at the scene between one and three in the morning. Dr Glendenning didn’t disagree or put forward a shorter time period. He pointed out the dark bruise-like stripe down her left side, interrupted where her hip and shoulder had touched the ground, and the bruising around the broken right hip. ‘Post-mortem lividity indicates she died in the position she was found – on her left side, curled up – and that the body wasn’t moved,’ he said. ‘There are signs of a bit of scavenger activity – it was a warm night – but not too much. I’ve seen the crime-scene photos, and she was still in the foetal position when she was brought in here last night, so in my opinion Dr Burns is right, and she was protecting herself from a rain of blows. Or trying to.’ He pointed to cuts on her hips and upper thighs. ‘And I’ve matched these with the samples of barbed wire and broken glass recovered from the scene.’
Despite the extensive recording equipment, Gerry busied herself taking notes. Annie suspected she was doing it partly to take her mind off what was happening, distancing herself, becoming a fly on the wall. It seemed to be working, as she showed no obvious reaction to anything Karen or Dr Glendenning said or did.
‘And I’d like to add,’ Dr Glendenning went on, ‘that I also agree about cause of death. We’ve sent blood samples to toxicology, of course, and we’ll be sending stomach contents and anything else we can find once we’ve got her opened up. I imagine we’ll find a nasty mess inside, but it’s my opinion that the blows – kicks, judging by the patterns – were the direct cause of death. The girl was severely beaten. Severely. I’ve not seen such a vicious attack in a long time. The damage to the head alone could have caused death, but it also appears that several of her ribs were broken, and one of them could easily have pierced her heart or lung.’
‘Footwear patterns?’ Annie asked. ‘From the shoes or boots.’
‘A definite possibility,’ Dr Glendenning granted. ‘But don’t hold your breath. Such impressions would be vague and hardly likely to ensure a conviction. Unless there are unique elements, of course.’
‘Hate crime?’ suggested Annie.
‘Someone certainly hated her.’
‘Or hated women,’ said Karen.
‘Whether that was the actual motive,’ Dr Glendenning went on, ‘I can’t honestly say.’
Annie knew that Dr Glendenning wouldn’t be drawn on motive. In her experience, the presence of such a high degree of violence was linked to hate crimes or crimes involving partners. ‘You always hurt the one you love’ was a lot truer than the songwriters could have guessed. Such overkill could also be linked to crimes in which someone had been taught a lesson. Excessive violence served as an example and a warning to others and was common in gang-related crimes. It was unlikely, in Annie’s experience, that the girl had been killed by a passing stranger, unless they were dealing with a violent psychopath, and such creatures were thankfully rare. An artist’s impression of the girl without
facial injuries would be appearing in the newspapers and on TV soon. Once they knew who she was, they could start questioning her family, friends and acquaintances, and Annie was willing to bet it wouldn’t take long to find out who had done this. But they had to identify her first.
Dr Glendenning finished examining the girl’s fingernails. ‘She bit them to the quicks,’ he said. ‘Not a trace of anything.’
‘How old would you say she was?’ Annie asked.
‘Fifteen or sixteen,’ Karen answered. ‘We can perform some more scientific checks later – testing the carbon levels in her eyes, for example – but going by height, shape, skin, bone structure and general appearance, I’d be surprised if she were older than sixteen.’
‘And Karen is very good with ages,’ said Dr Glendenning. ‘If I believed in it, I’d say she has a sixth sense for such things.’ Dr Glendenning went on to examine the surface of the skin, where the girl, it was now clear to see, had several tattoos, including a butterfly on the top of her left breast and a heart above her shaved pubic area. She also had a birthmark on the inside of her right thigh. Gerry made sketches and noted the locations, as they would help in identification. He lifted up her left hand to show them the white criss-cross marks on her wrist.
‘Scars,’ he said. ‘Self-harm, by the looks of it. Perhaps a suicide attempt. More likely a cry for help. She’d never succeed doing it that way. You need to cut along the vein, not across it.’
‘Thanks for that advice,’ said Annie. ‘I’ll remember it. Any idea how old?’
‘The slash marks?’ Dr Glendenning studied them more closely. ‘Hard to say. Not recent, though.’
When Dr Glendenning turned the body over to examine the back, they discovered that she also had a tattoo shaped like a whale’s tail, the kind one often saw on girls wearing low-rise jeans and midriff-baring tops. Her back was covered in dark bruises and Annie imagined she could even see where ribs had been broken. Without the dirt and dried mud, the parts that weren’t bruised looked so pale.
‘No needle marks as far I can see,’ said Dr Glendenning. ‘And I think we would be able to see them now if she had them.’
Gerry wobbled a bit when Dr Glendenning and Karen began their examination of the girl’s private parts, but she managed to hold on. Finally Dr Glendenning put down his speculum and moved away. ‘There’s evidence of serious sexual abuse,’ he said. ‘Both vaginal and anal. Also of recent sexual activity. It appears the abuser didn’t wear a condom. Karen’s taking swabs, and we’ll get them analysed for traces of DNA as soon as possible. The poor girl wasn’t in the water for very long, it seems, which is fortunate for us.’
‘We think she was still conscious then,’ Annie said. ‘She managed to drag herself out as soon as she landed and stagger some distance.’
When they had finished with their examinations of the exterior and private parts, Karen placed the body block, a rubber brick, the kind Annie remembered diving for at the bottom of the pool for her life-saving bronze medal, under the girl’s back, to raise the front of her body for internal examination, and Dr Glendenning picked up his scalpel to begin the Y incision.
Annie glanced at Gerry, who had turned a bit pale, but was still holding her own. When the front of the body was open, exposing the glistening inner organs, the smell got worse, despite the Vicks, and Dr Glendenning and Karen exchanged serious expressions before going on. Even at a cursory glance, Annie could tell that things were not right inside. Not right at all.
When Banks and Winsome arrived at the gates of Xanadu, Danny Caxton’s palatial spread on a promontory between Whitby and Redcar, it was the early afternoon of another beautiful summer’s day. Banks had spent most of the morning setting up the mechanics of the investigation, trying to make sure he overlooked nothing. He had also arranged for checks into Caxton’s connection with any hospitals, care homes, schools and charities – anywhere he might have been likely to find vulnerable victims and people with a vested interest in keeping things quiet. The TV companies he had worked with also had to be fully investigated, including everyone who had worked with him on Do Your Own Thing! and as many of the young performers and invited audience members as possible. It wasn’t exactly Top of the Pops but Banks imagined it would have provided plenty of opportunities for indulgence on Caxton’s part. Preliminary checks had shown that he had always stayed at the same hotel in London when he was down there for recording. It was an out-of-the-way place, not especially convenient for the TV studios, and not exactly up to the level of luxury one might have expected for a man as wealthy as Caxton. These were all keys to finding more complainants: places, networks, groups, routes, access.
When witnesses or accusers were found, their testimony had to be validated. Dates, times, places and so on all had to be checked, photographic records uncovered if they existed. At the time, Caxton had been ‘untouchable’ and that feeling could have made him careless, led him to make mistakes. Priorities for Banks after Caxton and his ex-wife were finding the ‘witness’ and trying to discover what had happened to the original investigation, or lack of one. When he got going on all that, he knew, leads would start popping up all over the place, many of them red herrings, all needing to be thoroughly checked out. He could only interview the major players with Winsome; he would have to leave the rest to the team he had been allotted.
Burgess had phoned to share the news that some of the other cases against Caxton were strong enough, though no one else recollected a witness, or a second participant, the way Linda Palmer had. The earliest complainant to come forward so far was a seventy-year-old woman from 1962, and the most recent in her early forties, from 1988. According to Burgess, their accounts matched that of Linda Palmer in terms of the suddenness and brutality of his attacks, though both were roughly fondled, not actually raped. Like Hobbes’s view of life itself, Caxton’s attacks on women were nasty, brutish and short. He struck swiftly as a rattlesnake, and swift as a snake’s bite, it was over. Though Banks was willing to bet it didn’t seem that way to the victims; it certainly hadn’t to Linda Palmer.
The drive over the top end of the North York Moors had been spectacular, the roads far busier than usual because of the glorious weather. He had kept the music quiet – playing some acoustic Richard Thompson and a Keith Jarrett & Charlie Haden CD – and Winsome hadn’t complained. After a hurried lunch at a country inn outside Goathland, going over their preparatory notes one last time, they were ready for the interview.
Winsome had been reading up on Caxton’s biography during much of the journey, and as they crested the final rise before the imposing wrought-iron gates with a sculpted stone lion on top of each gatepost, she repeated to Banks, ‘I still don’t see what the point of this is, guv. It’s his word against hers. He’ll deny everything, if he’s got any sense. Stalemate.’
‘Maybe he’ll slip up,’ said Banks. ‘Perhaps we’ll rattle him. Who knows? Besides, don’t you want to get a look at how he lives, the lion in its lair? At least we’ll go away with some sense of the measure of the man, maybe even knowledge of a few of his weaknesses.’
‘I hope so,’ said Winsome. ‘But why not take him into custody for questioning? He’s got home advantage here. We could put him in an airless interview room, make him wait . . .’
‘We don’t want to make that move yet,’ said Banks. ‘Don’t forget, there are others. Linda Palmer wasn’t the only one. As Burgess said, there’ll be county forces queuing up to have a chat with him before long. We’re first in line. And when push comes to shove, we’ll be the ones to bring him in.’
Banks announced their arrival at the intercom by the gate, and without a word from the other end, the huge heavy gates in the high walls started to rumble open. As Banks drove along the narrow drive, he could see Caxton’s mansion ahead. Xanadu. Hardly a gesture towards originality in its name. Built in the style of a Palladian villa, with symmetrical wings on either side of the central portico, itself modelled on the Greek temple, it came complete with Doric columns
and pilasters, all of white marble. In the rolling grounds to their right stood a Victorian folly, and a short distance from the north wing was a row of garages, most of them open. Banks could see expensive cars of all colours, makes and periods: an E-type Jag, a red Triumph MG6, an old Bentley and even a huge pink fifties Cadillac convertible with wings big enough for take-off. It was the sort of car that might have belonged to Elvis Presley. Maybe it had. Banks wondered if the Rolls that had picked up Linda Palmer nearly fifty years ago was really a Bentley. Even if it was, there wasn’t any chance of trace evidence after all that time. Still, there may have been other girls in the car, more recently, and the collection was worth the thorough search that the team would be carrying out after Banks and Winsome had left. Right now they were waiting just down the road, beyond the rise.
Banks pulled up in front of the portico steps, about as imposing as the ones in Rocky, and he and Winsome began to climb, more than half expecting a butler in full livery to answer the door at their ring.
The slight, dapper man with a silk handkerchief protruding from the top pocket of his jacket could have been a butler, but Banks doubted it. For a start, his suit cost more than Banks’s annual clothes allowance, more than his annual salary, in fact, if you included the gold cufflinks and matching tiepin that held down an old-school tie of some important sort. He had a few strands of wispy grey hair on his head and a thin grey moustache. He didn’t smile or reach out his hand to shake, just said, ‘Good afternoon. My name is Bernard Feldman. I’m Mr Caxton’s solicitor.’
‘That was quick,’ said Banks.
‘Word gets around.’
‘So I gather. Can we come in?’
When the Music's Over: The 23rd DCI Banks Mystery Page 9
