Dreams of Fear

by Hilary Bonner

  Vogel was thoughtful as he and Saslow left All Seasons.

  ‘Well, that was blunt, Saslow, wasn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘He obviously prides himself on being a plain-speaking sort of man, boss,’ commented Saslow ambiguously.

  ‘Maybe. A tough one, that’s for sure. Of course, it is still possible that we won’t ultimately have anything to investigate. And the fact that both her in-laws clearly hated Jane Ferguson’s guts will prove to be none of our business.’

  ‘You don’t believe that, though, do you, boss?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure yet, Saslow,’ responded Vogel. ‘Maybe Felix’s words will prove to be prophetic. Maybe Jane was driven mad by the nightmares that plagued her. Mad enough to take her own life. And maybe the post-mortem examination won’t reveal anything to disprove that.’

  ‘But what about the stuff that has already led us to suspect third party involvement?’ asked Saslow. ‘The door that had surely not been locked, the immediately visible injuries to Jane Ferguson’s body, some old and some new, and the unlikelihood of any mother allowing even the chance of her little children finding her dead hanged body.’

  ‘There could still prove to be logical explanations for all of that,’ said Vogel. ‘This could be a simple straightforward case into which you and me, Saslow, Nobby Clarke, and all, have been reading far too much.

  ‘Perhaps Jane Ferguson ultimately became unable to cope any longer with the madness raging inside her. Perhaps she really did become crazy enough to hang herself regardless of any considerations about her children or anything else. Perhaps her death is just another domestic tragedy. Suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed.’

  ‘I think you’re playing devil’s advocate, boss,’ commented Saslow.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Vogel.

  ‘And I don’t reckon you really think for one minute that Jane Ferguson took her own life.’

  Vogel grunted in a non-committal sort of way.

  ‘Let’s just hope the PM examination gives us a definitive answer to that question,’ he said.

  ‘What d’you make of Felix Ferguson, Saslow?’ asked Vogel, as they settled into Saslow’s car.

  It occurred to him that the arrival of Felix’s father had diverted both their attentions from their earlier interview with his son, still their most significant ‘person of interest’.

  ‘I don’t know quite what to make of him,’ responded Saslow. ‘On the one hand he seems plausible enough …’

  Saslow let the sentence trail off. Vogel finished it for her.

  ‘And on the other, you get the feeling he’s hiding something, not being entirely honest. Which he denied, of course. But then, he would, wouldn’t he? Something more about those dreams, maybe.’

  ‘Exactly—’

  Saslow didn’t get to finish that sentence either. She was interrupted by the strident ring of Vogel’s mobile.

  He glanced at the screen and half smiled. Saslow was pretty sure she had a fair idea who was calling.

  ‘Morning, boss,’ said Vogel.

  He could have been speaking to Detective Superintendent Hemmings. He wasn’t though. Saslow was quite sure of that. She knew the difference.

  ‘All right, all right,’ muttered Vogel half apologetically into the phone. ‘Nobby. Morning, Nobby.’

  Saslow congratulated herself on her astuteness, and how well she knew her senior officer. He reacted to any contact with Detective Superintendent Nobby Clarke in unique fashion. She listened as Vogel continued to speak.

  ‘Well, no, I don’t know quite what to make of it yet, Nobby,’ Vogel began. ‘Jane Ferguson was clearly a disturbed young woman, and yet there was more than enough potential evidence at the scene to at the very least call suicide into question. And I’ve got the feeling there’s a lot more going on that we don’t know about … What? Now? We’re on our way to the post-mortem. Oh. Lunch! OK. Sorry. I suppose we could make it to Exeter. Yes. All right. See you there.’

  The DCI was frowning as he ended the call.

  Saslow glanced at him enquiringly.

  ‘She wants to talk about it over lunch,’ Vogel remarked, his voice incredulous.

  Saslow barely suppressed a chuckle. Her senior officer was not the sort of police officer who would build a lunch break into the first day of a murder enquiry. Or, come to that, probably any day of a murder enquiry.

  ‘So we’re going to Exeter?’ she queried, somewhat surprised he’d agreed to that. Even if it was Nobby Clarke who’d made the suggestion.

  ‘Yes, that’s where the Devon and Cornwall’s MCT is based, of course,’ Vogel replied. ‘Some restaurant Nobby likes, near the cathedral, apparently. We need a word with Jane Ferguson’s trick cyclist anyway, and she’s based in Exeter. So it kind of fits in.’

  Vogel didn’t sound totally convinced.

  ‘But first, it’s Barnstaple, and the post-mortem,’ Vogel continued.

  Saslow pulled the car out of the Fergusons’ driveway and turned left along Bay View Road in the direction of Northam and the Torridge Bridge.

  The entire Torridge and Taw estuary lay to the left of the bridge. The sun was still shining and reflecting on the water. The wind might have got up, but perhaps because of it, the sky was spectacular, lines of yellow and white were splashed across a pale blue backdrop.

  Saslow was one of those who had an inborn love of the sea. She thought this part of North Devon was one of the most beautiful places she had ever been to.

  She glanced at Vogel. He was sitting quite still, hands clasped in his lap, his eyes cast downward. As was often the case, he did not seem aware of anything much going on around him except the case he was working on.

  NINE

  Karen Crow had fast tracked the post-mortem for eleven a.m. at the North Devon District Hospital. She was just about to start work when Vogel and Saslow arrived at the mortuary.

  The body, lain on its back with arms and legs outstretched, was no longer clothed, its nakedness adding to the vulnerability of this small slight woman. That was something else Vogel always found difficult to deal with.

  Jane Ferguson had certainly sustained a number of bruises and other injuries of varying degrees of severity, and of varying longevity. There were old bruises on one of her upper legs, and also on one thigh, as well as the scars on her lower arms and wrists which the pathologist had earlier suggested could be signs of self-harming. There was also, of course, the faded bruising and the half-healed cut to Jane’s face which had been apparent when her body was first discovered. Most of these could not have been sustained as she fell from the landing of her home, because they couldn’t be post-mortem. And then there was the injured arm, dislocated at the shoulder according to Karen Crow’s initial examination at the scene.

  Vogel leaned closer to examine the body.

  The dead woman’s head lay very slightly at an angle. Vogel already knew that her neck had been broken, as he would suspect in the case of someone who had hanged to death. He stared for a moment or two at her distorted features, the swollen discoloured flesh where the rope had tightened around her neck, the protruding tongue. Then he looked away. He had already seen Jane Ferguson’s body once, at first hanging from a rope and then lying on the floor of her home. This was far from the first death by strangulation that he had encountered in his police career, and would almost certainly not be the last. He still found it one of the most disturbing causes of death, and probably always would, whether self-administered or by a third party. Vogel fought to keep his facial expression neutral. He just had to accept that if he continued in police work until the end of his days he still would not get used to it. Nor to what he regarded as the equally horrific mechanics of a forensic post-mortem examination, come to that.

  He glanced at Karen Crow. He could see that she was preparing the instruments she would use to saw open the dead woman’s torso and remove the top of her head. He steeled himself. He suspected Karen could already answer most of the questions he needed to ask, but she
was notoriously tetchy concerning what she considered to be interruptions whilst she was at work.

  Eventually she turned to Vogel.

  ‘I can see no initial signs of any internal injuries that may have contributed to death,’ she said. ‘There seems little doubt that my initial prognosis was correct and that the victim died of strangulation. The protrusion of the tongue, the bulging eyes, the skin discolouration, all point to that, in addition to the obvious circumstantial evidence of a rope which was tightened around her neck by her own weight when she fell from the bannisters on the landing of her home. Which she quite clearly did. And this is consistent with the fracture of the axis vertebra which she sustained.’

  Karen Crow paused again.

  ‘Hangman’s fracture,’ said Vogel.

  Karen nodded.

  ‘What, boss?’ queried Saslow, who had never encountered a death by this kind of strangulation before.

  ‘The name given to the fracture commonly sustained by those sentenced to death in a court of law in the days of judicial execution by hanging,’ explained Vogel. ‘Isn’t that right, Karen?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said the pathologist. ‘Although more recent studies have shown that the axis, which is the second spinal vertebra and the one that carries the pivot upon which the head rests, was not actually fractured in judicial hangings as often as used to be supposed. If it is fractured, particularly in circumstances like this, then it certainly serves to confirm that death was by hanging. But …’

  ‘But … Karen?’ interjected Vogel eagerly.

  ‘But,’ Dr Crow went on, ‘there may also be indications of manual strangulation. The deceased’s hyoid bone, that’s the U-shaped bone which supports the tongue, is also fractured. Now, according to what is generally regarded as probably the most authoritative study, in the States in 1990 something, thirty-four per cent of victims of manual strangulation suffer a fractured hyoid bone, but only eight per cent of victims of hanging. So, we have something of a conundrum here.’

  ‘I see,’ mused Vogel. ‘But couldn’t both these kinds of fracture occur in a suicidal hanging? Is that not possible?’

  ‘I suppose it must be,’ responded the pathologist. ‘Although I personally have never encountered it. There is another explanation, of course, which at the very least would be equally likely.’

  ‘That an unknown assailant manually strangled Mrs Ferguson and then staged a hanging so that her death would look like suicide, and she would sustain injuries consistent with suicidal hanging?’ queried Vogel quickly.

  ‘You’re keeping up, Vogel. Well done. And yes, that has to be a possibility.’

  ‘But can we prove it?’ asked Vogel, who was too intrigued by what was being suggested to indulge in any banter.

  ‘Well, I do think there is enough forensic evidence to strongly indicate that Mrs Ferguson has been murdered. And there’s something else, Vogel. If you look closely …’

  She glanced up at the DCI in invitation. Trying not to wince, Vogel obediently leaned forward in order to give himself a better view.

  ‘If you look closely you can see certain indentations in the flesh around the victim’s neck and throat which may not be directly related to the effects of the rope when she fell,’ Karen Crow continued.

  ‘So, are you saying that you think these indentations might be caused by fingers pressing into the flesh?’ asked Saslow.

  The pathologist nodded absently.

  ‘You’re keeping up too, Saslow,’ she remarked. ‘Yes. I do think these marks could have been made by fingers. And the victim suffered a quite severe blow to the head, probably around the time of her death. Difficult to be sure which. Do you see? There’s a small but distinct dent in the cranium. Now, assuming for a moment that this is suicide, that injury could obviously have been caused by the deceased knocking her head against the bannisters, or perhaps a wall, when she fell. But it does also arouse suspicions that it was caused by a third party, perhaps using some sort of blunt instrument, and that it actually contributed to her death.’

  ‘Well, in that case, and this time assuming Jane Ferguson was murdered, if the killer knocked her unconscious why did he need to manually strangle her?’ asked Vogel. ‘I can understand the difficulty in staging a hanging with a fit conscious young woman to deal with. But not too difficult if she’s unconscious, surely.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ replied Dr Crow. ‘But I am unsure if this particular blow to the head would have been sufficient to render the victim unconscious, or not for a long enough period of time, anyway. The assailant would almost certainly have known, or at least suspected, that there were children sleeping in the house too. He would have wanted to be able to move with maximum speed and minimum noise—’

  ‘OK,’ interrupted Vogel, who could not quite control his eagerness to grasp every possible option. ‘But neither can you rule out the possibility of the blow to the head having been sustained when the victim fell from the upper landing with a rope around her neck – either of her own volition or at the hand of her killer, can you?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ agreed Karen Crow.

  ‘What about the old bruising?’ continued Vogel.

  ‘Well, it’s quite extensive. You know what I am going to say, don’t you?’

  ‘I think you are going to say that the pattern of the bruising is in keeping with domestic violence, as we have all suspected from the beginning. Not least because the bruising is primarily in areas which would probably normally be covered by clothing and therefore not seen.’

  ‘I am indeed.’

  ‘And so, the finger points even more at the husband. As usual.’

  ‘That’s your territory, Vogel.’

  ‘Yes. And my enquiries so far have revealed that whatever personal suspicions I may have, the husband, our principle person of interest, appears to have a cast-iron alibi. In addition, your evidence is not conclusive, is it?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Therefore, whilst there may well be reasons to suspect otherwise, Mrs Ferguson could still have taken her own life, as was initially suspected. Is that not so?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ agreed the pathologist. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes,’ echoed Vogel. ‘Nonetheless, I think we have enough here for me to get the brass to agree to stepping up this operation to a murder investigation. Nobby Clarke is halfway there anyway. But I’m going to have to do a lot more digging before I take any action against Felix Ferguson, that’s for sure.’

  Vogel turned to Saslow.

  ‘Come on, Dawn. Let’s leave Karen to get on with her work and head for Exeter.’

  He glanced at his watch. It was just noon. He had agreed to meet Nobby Clarke at one p.m., and he had no idea whether they would get to the restaurant on time. If not Nobby would have to wait. Knowing her, she wouldn’t mind as long as she had a drink in her hand.

  ‘First, lunch with the boss, then we’ll see what Dr Miriam Thorpe has to say for herself,’ he told Saslow as they headed for the hospital car park.

  Nobby Clarke was already sitting at a window table at the restaurant, overlooking the city’s lovely old Cathedral Yard, when Saslow and Vogel arrived. As usual Vogel barely noticed his surroundings.

  ‘So,’ Nobby said by way of greeting, ‘I’ve just more or less got booted out of the Met because I took a moral stand on a contentious issue, or I thought that’s what I was doing, anyway, and within days of arriving here I’m stuck with the son of a local bigwig as number one suspect in the murder of his wife …’

  ‘I’ve just been telling Mr Ferguson junior that he isn’t the number one suspect,’ muttered Vogel, as he sat down.

  ‘Of course, you have, Vogel, and we both know what a load of bollocks that is.’

  ‘Whatever you say, boss, I mean Nobby. And it’s not a murder enquiry yet, is it? Not officially anyway. But I think it should be.’

  ‘Ummm. From one pile of horseshit to another. Apparently, Mr Ferguson senior, the mayor of Bideford, is a bloody tin god around here.
More than likely I’m about to wreck yet another career move. Particularly with you on board, Vogel.’

  ‘You asked for me, Nobby.’

  ‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I? I must be barking mad. What any intelligent copper in my position would try to do is brush this shit into a very dark corner, not heap it into a bloody great pile and sift through it.’

  ‘Very lyrical,’ said Vogel. ‘When did you start worrying about career moves, anyway?’

  ‘About the time I began to wonder what I’d do when they ran out,’ growled Nobby.

  ‘Ah.’

  Vogel thought for a moment.

  ‘So you didn’t exactly choose to move to this very beautiful part of the world then?’

  ‘Like you hadn’t bloody guessed that, Vogel,’ muttered Clarke.

  ‘The thought did cross my mind.’

  ‘I bet it did. The alternative seemed to be a demotion and back to uniform. I only hung on to my rank by the skin of my teeth as it was. The top brass at the Met were so desperate to get shot of me that when the MCT job down here became vacant they pushed like hell for me to be drafted in. God knows what lies got told. But, I didn’t bring you here to talk about my career prospects, or lack of them.’

  There was a glass of white wine on the table in front of Nobby Clarke. She raised it and took a deep drink.

  Vogel watched in silence.

  ‘It’s my first,’ offered the detective superintendent.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ responded Vogel.

  ‘You didn’t have to,’ growled Nobby. ‘You sanctimonious born-again, vegan, ginger-ale drinker.’

  ‘I’m not vegan, just vegetarian,’ muttered Vogel, turning towards Dawn Saslow.

  ‘What would you like to drink, Saslow?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Think I’ll stick to coffee, thanks,’ said Saslow. ‘I haven’t had my caffeine quota yet today.’

  ‘It’s on the way,’ said Clarke, without enthusiasm. ‘And a ginger ale. In case you need a fix, Vogel.’

  Saslow failed to react visibly in any way to the banter between her two superior officers. She’d heard it all before. If the exchange had been between anyone except Vogel and Clarke, it would have surprised and even embarrassed her. Neither, Vogel was quite sure, would she be fazed by Clarke’s frank revelations concerning her career in front of a junior officer she didn’t know that well. Nobby was that sort of person. She always treated everyone on her team as her equal. Albeit superficially. There was never any doubt about who was in charge.