How the Dead Speak

by Val McDermid

  ‘My guess would be that they know she’s crossed a line and they don’t want her contaminating the other sisters. They don’t like exposing the postulants and novices to bad influences.’ He snorted. ‘Mind you, most of the old nuns are such a right bunch of old sadists, one more wouldn’t make any difference.’ He yanked the wheel sharply to the side as they shot past a lorry full of sheep with inches to spare. Paula was convinced the sheep looked as terrified as she felt.

  ‘So she’d be in disgrace?’

  ‘Right enough, but she’s still living in a church property. I think it used to be one of the priests’ houses. It’s about a mile away from the convent proper. They’re not taking their eye off of her.’

  ‘Why don’t they . . . I don’t know, sack her?’

  He laughed. ‘You can’t sack nuns. It’s the very last job for life. You could be excommunicated, I suppose, but I never heard of that happening to anybody in these parts. I think they only do it for full-on heresy. Battering kids? Well, apparently that’s not heretical.’

  Before she could respond, Paula’s phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and, seeing it was Carol, she killed the call. ‘I need to return that call,’ she said. ‘Is there somewhere you can pull off? I’m sorry, it’s confidential.’

  ‘Sure, no worries. There’s an exit slip a couple of miles up the road, I’ll take that.’

  Paula barely noticed the next few miles as she tried to work out what to say to Carol. She could hardly go, ‘Do you want the good news first or the really really bad news?’ Before she’d formulated her strategy, McInerny had parked up on the grass verge and was climbing out.

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ he said. ‘Rain doesn’t bother me, I’ve lived in it all my life. Besides, I can have a wee smoke.’

  Left alone without excuses, Paula rang Carol’s number. ‘What’s so urgent?’ Carol said as soon as the line opened.

  ‘You’re not driving or anything, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m alone. What is it?’ A sharp intake of breath. ‘It’s Tony, isn’t it? Something’s happened to Tony?’

  It was, Paula thought, exactly how she would instantly imagine any catastrophe call being about Elinor. ‘He’s in Bradfield Cross,’ she said. ‘But the prognosis is good.’

  ‘What happened? Has he been attacked? I told them, he’ll be vulnerable to attack, he’s helped put a lot of people away.’

  ‘I don’t know the details of what happened. All I know at this point is that he was involved in some sort of a ruck. He either hit his head on something or somebody hit him, I don’t know which. Elinor called me to tell me and she’s got no access to information beyond the medical. She told me he’s got a skull fracture and a brain bleed.’

  ‘Oh God, no,’ Carol moaned. ‘So how bad is it? What did she say?’

  ‘They’re doing that procedure where they drill into the skull to drain the haematoma and reduce the swelling. Elinor says it looks pretty straightforward. Obviously she’s not a neurosurgeon, but she can read a chart.’

  ‘Is he conscious?’

  ‘He’s under sedation. I think they do it to keep the patient from moving around and doing more damage.’

  ‘You think I should go?’

  ‘Yes. I do. He’s under guard, because . . . well, because that’s how it works. But once he’s conscious, I’m sure Elinor can wangle you in.’

  ‘I don’t know if he’ll want to . . . ’

  They both knew what she couldn’t say. ‘This kind of thing resets the zeros, Carol. Recalibrates what’s important.’

  ‘I don’t know . . . ’ Uncomfortable, she alighted on something to shift the conversation sideways. ‘So when did this happen?’

  ‘I’m not clear. He was moved to Bradfield Cross last night because that’s where the regional neurosurgical unit is based. Elinor found out this morning when she went into work.’

  ‘This morning? That can’t be right?’ Carol’s voice was sharp. ‘You left me two voicemails asking me to call you. The other one was yesterday evening. I didn’t notice it till this morning, I was . . . I was busy, sorting something out. And then my phone died. But you left it yesterday.’

  As if she’d needed a reminder that Carol was the sharpest detective she’d ever worked with. ‘Yeah, that wasn’t about Tony,’ Paula said. ‘I was going to leave that for another time, Tony’s much more important than anything else.’

  ‘I can’t argue with that. But you might as well tell me now I’m here. Something to distract me.’ She caught her breath. ‘I need something else to think about till I can get back to Bradfield.’

  ‘Where are you? You’re not at home?’

  ‘No. I’m— Never mind, it’s not relevant. What’s this other thing you have to tell me?’

  ‘It’s about the Saul Neilson case. You said it was purely circumstantial, yes?’

  ‘That’s right. And no body.’

  ‘Well, now we’ve got a body,’ Paula said.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Carol scoffed.

  ‘It’s true. We got the DNA confirmation that it’s Lyle Tate yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘So where’s he been all this time? How did he turn up?’

  ‘Remember I told you about the second group of bodies in the convent grounds?’

  ‘Yes. He’s not one of those, is he?’ Carol sounded as if there was a bubble of incredulous laughter just below the surface.

  ‘He is. He’s one of eight young men buried in a different area from the child skeletons.’

  ‘A serial offender,’ Carol breathed. ‘Oh, my God.’

  ‘One we didn’t know existed. His victims all seem to have been young men, either homeless or living on the outside edge. But here’s the thing, Carol. Some of those bodies are more recent than Lyle Tate. Saul Neilson couldn’t have killed at least two of them because he was inside. Once we get all the forensics nailed down, you’ve got your boy off the hook.’

  Now Carol laughed. ‘Bronwen Scott’s going to think I’m some kind of a witch.’

  ‘That may not come as a surprise to her. Look, I’ve got to go, there’s a poor Garda standing in the rain waiting for me to finish this call. I hear anything about Tony, I’ll keep you posted. And if you want the DNA details, have a quiet word with Stacey.’

  ‘Will do. Wish me luck,’ Carol said. ‘No, scrap that. Wish Tony luck. He needs it more than me.’

  ‘You both deserve it,’ Paula said, ending the call and tapping on the window to beckon McInerny back behind the wheel. And if there was any luck left over, she’d happily claim it. If Sister Mary Patrick still had God on her side, Paula would take all the help she could get.

  53

  One of the benefits a profiler can bring to the investigation is to suggest possible directions for inquiries. It’s our job to help the investigators to keep an open mind.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  It was hard enough keeping up with the forensics when he was face to face with Dr Chrissie O’Farrelly in the lab. But talking through results on the phone was almost impossible for Alvin. ‘Hold on a moment, Doc, you’re going to have to take me through that again.’

  Thankfully, she chuckled rather than sighed. ‘I’m going to email you the results, Sergeant, but I hoped it would be helpful to run through the headline points.’

  It would be if I wasn’t so far out of my comfort zone. ‘I get that. I’m just not very familiar with this stuff.’

  ‘Let me try again. On first pass, there are no indications of cause of death because we’ve got no soft tissue and no obvious damage to the bones. When I say “no obvious damage”, I’m talking the kind of cuts and nicks we get from knife wounds, or fresh blunt trauma. No bullet holes in the skulls.’ Her voice grew more serious. ‘But there are a significant number of healed fractures. Arms, ribs mostly, but a few leg breaks and even a couple of old skull fractures. None of these is sinister in itself. Children have accidents. They fall out of trees, off swings, off walls. What is striking here
is the proportion of injuries we’re seeing. Forty skulls, indicating at least forty sets of remains. And so far we’ve recorded over seventy broken bones. That’s a lot, Sergeant. I’ve got three pretty lively sons and between them they’ve racked up one broken collarbone.’

  ‘That doesn’t look good,’ Alvin said. ‘Would you say we’re looking at evidence of abuse?’

  ‘I don’t make those judgements. That’s for the likes of Tony Hill to work out.’ A pause. ‘You must miss him.’

  ‘We do. But surely—’

  ‘My job is to report the facts, to give factual conclusions, not tell you guys what to think. So I will say that there is a much higher level of skeletal damage among these remains than I would expect to find in a general population.’

  ‘OK. I take your point.’

  ‘The other news I have for you is that we have made some progress on the labels. The nuns may have taken a vow of poverty but that didn’t extend to pants. Almost all of the underwear labels we’ve been able to identify came from Marks and Spencer. And of course there is a man in a cupboard somewhere who knows everything there is to know about M&S labels since the dawn of time. I’ll send you his report, but the key points are these. Nothing more recent than six years ago. We’ve got fourteen underpants labels that originated between six and fifteen years ago. In the ten years before that, seven. Four from the early 1990s. Six from the 1980s. And that’s where we’re up to right now. The chemists are persisting for more results, but we’re not hopeful.’ She sighed. ‘Poor wee buggers.’

  ‘We see a lot of bad things in this job, but this is one of the worst. What kind of lives did these kids have? All these broken bones.’ He shook his head. ‘Because we’re not looking for personal data, we’ve been able to get some information from Bradfield Cross hospital. One single case of a girl from St Margaret Clitherow’s with a compound fracture of the arm in the last ten years. And yet you tell me there were dozens.’ He could feel the rage bubbling up inside like heartburn.

  ‘They would probably have had nuns who were trained nurses,’ Chrissie pointed out. ‘You should check that out. I’m not expressing a professional opinion here, because I’m as outraged as you are about all this. But it may not have been quite as grim as you fear.’

  It was small reassurance. After the call, he turned to the reports Chrissie had sent over. The stark facts on the screen hit even harder than her words had. He thought about the way his own kids drove him to distraction sometimes. But he’d have cut his hand off before he’d have struck one of them. The idea of breaking a child’s bones filled him with rage. He wished he hadn’t given up his boxing training. There was nothing he’d have liked more right then than half an hour with the heavy bag.

  54

  A lot of people have a low opinion of the police. And over the years, I’ve met my fair share of officers you wouldn’t want to break bread with, for all sorts of reasons. But most of the cops I’ve ever worked with aren’t just dedicated to doing the job. They’re committed to going the extra mile to get the right answers.

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  Stacey Chen had already decided that she didn’t like DCI Rutherford’s way of doing business. So while she understood that the way to a quiet life was to provide him with the information he required, she had no intention of letting that interfere with her personal work habits. There were two kinds of detectives, she’d realised over her years of quiet observation. The ones who listened to instructions and fulfilled them, often very efficiently. Full stop. Then there were the ones who paid attention to what they were told to do and then went about it in their own sweet ways. Stacey liked to think of herself in that second group. It gave her scope to do what the hell she wanted, as long as she ticked the boxes of what the investigation needed.

  Carol Jordan had had a knack for picking detectives with a well-developed maverick streak whose effective result rate ran well above the average. So Stacey had always felt validated and vindicated by what she saw around her. The remnants of her old squad all had that same tendency of coming at things from an unexpected angle. She knew where she was with Paula and Alvin and, to a lesser degree, Karim. But Sophie Valente and Steve Nisbet were a different matter.

  She’d checked them out online, of course. Her trawl had been disappointing; there was nothing there to suggest either of them was anything other than a rather dull straight line.

  So, it was up to her and the old crew to prove ReMIT was worth its budget. Stacey had been trawling the databases for days, some of them via legitimate access, some via a variety of back doors she’d developed or invested in over the years, a couple thanks to favours exchanged with friends with more than a toe in the Stygian waters of the Dark Net.

  She’d drip-fed details of the locations and official names of the Bradesden nuns to Sophie’s incident room, and she’d filleted all she could lay hands on about missing young men in the right age range. The numbers filled her with dismay at the waste of potential they represented, even after she’d whittled the total down by cross-referencing them with criminal records, registered deaths and those who had resurfaced in their old lives years later.

  And now the DNA results were coming in from the labs, she’d set her systems crawling through the databases again, trying for formal identifications of eight young men whose families and friends would finally find answers to the questions they’d been asking for years. Or, as Stacey suspected in some cases, not been asking. Because they didn’t notice, didn’t care or preferred an absence to the problems a presence brought.

  The forensics teams had swept Martinu’s vehicle for anything evidential but so far they’d drawn a blank. There appeared to be no DNA from any of the identified victims, and it wasn’t because Martinu was a clean freak. His car contained the usual detritus of food wrappers, soft drink cans and parking receipts. Just nothing to indicate any of the victims had ever been there.

  That made sense if he’d just been the gravedigger. But they only had his word for that. Stacey hadn’t interviewed him, so her overview wasn’t contaminated by having directly heard his version of events. It was easier for her to come at the case laterally. What if there wasn’t anybody else? What if Martinu was himself the killer, putting on a performance that would protect him from the worst consequences of his actions? What would he need to have put in place to cover his back? He wouldn’t be the first serial offender who had led investigators up the garden path. Literally, in his case.

  Stacey had let the idea tick over in the back of her mind while she worked on what she’d been officially tasked with. And now she had cleared some space for herself to put her conclusions to the test.

  If Martinu was the killer, how did he get his victims to their graves? Those young men didn’t walk from the centre of Bradfield to the convent. They probably didn’t come by bus, because the nearest bus stop to the village was a mile away on the main road and, frankly, Bradesden was the kind of place where lads like these walking through would provoke a call to the local community bobby. They didn’t drive there, because none of them owned a car. She’d checked with DVLA. That was a matter of record.

  The obvious answer – the only answer – was that Martinu had access to another vehicle. If it belonged to a friend or a family member, she’d be out of luck. But using a borrowed car to ferry round strange young men or their corpses was taking a lot of chances. He’d want to be in control of that environment.

  Maybe he’d bought another car, a car he kept well away from where he lived. A garage somewhere else. A quiet side street where nobody would pay attention to a car parked for days at a time. It wasn’t hard to hide a car in plain sight. You just had to choose an area where the local residents didn’t have a parking problem that made every unfamiliar set of wheels a hate object.

  It would have to be reliable. The last thing you wanted was a breakdown with a body in the boot. So that ruled out the truly dodgy end of the motor trade. Most people had no idea how to buy a legitimate car without thei
r name and address ending up on the registration document. There was no indication that Martinu hung out with criminals, so there was a slim chance he’d done things the straight way.

  Humming softly under her breath, Stacey made her way inside the labyrinth of DVLA. She’d been there before; it held no terrors for her. Their search engine was surprisingly competent for a government agency. And within seconds, she was presented with what she’d hoped for.

  Jerome Martinu of Garden Cottage, Fellside Road, Bradesden, was the registered keeper of the Toyota SUV that the forensic scientists had been crawling over like human hoovers. And also a three-year-old black Skoda Octavia estate.

  The corners of her mouth twitched in an almost-smile. Step one had produced what she’d hoped for. Now for the second step. Thanks to the ever-vigilant civil liberties organisations who made her job harder, the records for the number plate recognition system that covered almost every major road – and many minor ones – were only held for two years. But that might be enough to prove Martinu was in the habit of driving round the parts of town where victims had last been seen.

  Stacey entered the details into the ANPR system. Showtime, Jezza, she thought.

  55

  The practical ways we deal with love and with anger are formed at a very early age. As Richard Dawkins says, ‘The Jesuit boast, “Give me the child for his first seven years, and I’ll give you the man,” is no less accurate (or sinister) for being hackneyed.’

  From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

  ‘Used to belong to one of those Anglo-Irish families that lost all their money in the Great Depression,’ McInerny said, gesturing with his thumb towards an ugly but imposing grey mansion on the outskirts of Galway. ‘So the Blessed Pearl snapped it up and installed a bunch of nuns.’

  ‘Nice view of the sea,’ Paula pointed out, turning her head to look out of the other window.

  ‘Doesn’t really make up for the draughts and the damp.’ McInerny suddenly wrenched the wheel and threw the car into a narrow side road. ‘Whoa! Nearly missed the turning there.’