Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv’d virginity:
And your quaint honor turn to dust;
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
What an easy seduction it had been, after all. The poem worked. Marvell would have been proud of himself.
Rebecca pulled back the curtain. Some fog still drifted around the yew trunks and the heavy gray headstones, but the drizzle seemed to have settled in now. From her window, she could see uniformed policemen methodically searching the ground around the church in a grid pattern.
Deborah Harrison. She had often seen Deborah taking a short cut through the churchyard; she had also seen her in church and at choir practice, too, before the trouble began.
Deborah’s father, Sir Geoffrey, had deserted St. Mary’s at the first hint of a scandal. The school had stuck with Daniel, but Sir Geoffrey, to whom appearances were far more important than truth, had made a point of turning his back, taking his family and a number of other wealthy and influential members of the congregation with him. And St. Mary’s was the wealthiest parish in Eastvale. Had been. Now the coffers were emptying fast.
Rebecca rested her forehead against the cool glass and watched her breath mist up the window. She found herself doodling Patrick’s name with her fingernail and felt the need for him burn in her loins. She hated herself for feeling this way. Patrick was ten years younger than she was, a mere twenty-six, but he was so ardent, so passionate, always talking so excitedly about life and poetry and love. Though she needed him, she hated her need; though she determined every day to call it off, she desired nothing more than to lose herself completely in him.
Like the drinking, Patrick was an escape; she had enough self-knowledge to work that out, at any rate. An escape from the poisoned atmosphere at St. Mary’s, from what she and Daniel had become, and, as she admitted in her darkest moments, an escape from her own fears and suspicions.
Now this. It didn’t make sense, she tried to convince herself. Daniel couldn’t possibly be a murderer. Why would he want to murder someone as innocent as Deborah Harrison? Just because you feared a person might be guilty of one thing, did that mean he had to be guilty of something else, too?
As she watched the policemen in their capes and Wellingtons poke through the long grass, she had to face the facts: Daniel had come home only after she had gone to see the angel; he had gone out before she thought she heard the scream; she hadn’t known where he was, and when he came back his shoes were muddy, with leaves and gravel stuck to their soles.
III
The mortuary was in the basement of Eastvale General Infirmary, an austere Victorian brick building with high drafty corridors and wards that Susan had always thought were guaranteed to make you ill if you weren’t already.
The white-tiled post-mortem room, though, had recently been modernized, as if, she thought, the dead somehow deserved a healthier environment than the living.
Chilled by the cooling unit rather than by the wind from outside, it had two shiny metal tables with guttered edges and a long lab bench along one wall, with glass-fronted cabinets for specimen jars. Susan had never dared ask about the two jars that looked as if they contained human brains.
Dr. Glendenning’s assistants had already removed Deborah Harrison’s body from its plastic bag, and she lay, clothed as she had been in the graveyard, on one of the tables.
It was nine o’clock, and the radio was tuned to “Wake up to Wogan.” “Do we have to listen to that rubbish?” Banks asked.
“It’s normal, Banks,” said Glendenning. “That’s why we have it on. Millions of people in houses all around the country will be listening to Wogan now. People who aren’t just about to cut open the body of a sixteen-year-old girl. I suppose you’d like some fancy classical concert on Radio 3, wouldn’t you? I can’t say that the thought of performing a post-mortem to Elgar’s Enigma Variations would do a hell of a lot for me.” Glendenning stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and pulled on his surgical gloves.
Susan smiled. Banks looked at her and shrugged.
The girl on the slab wasn’t a human being, Susan kept telling herself. She was just a piece of dead meat, like at the butcher’s. She remembered June Walker, the butcher’s daughter, from school in Sheffield, and recalled the peculiar smell that always seemed to emanate from her. Odd, she hadn’t thought of June Walker in years.
The smell-stale and sharp, but sweet, too-was here, all right, but it was buried under layers of formaldehyde and cigarette smoke, for both Glendenning and Banks were smoking furiously. She didn’t blame them. She had once seen a film on television in which an American woman cop rubbed some Vick’s or something under her nose to mask the smell of a decomposing body. Susan didn’t dare do such a thing herself for fear the others would laugh at her. After all, this was Yorkshire, not America.
Still, as she watched Glendenning cut and probe at the girl’s clothing, then remove it for air-drying and storage, she almost wished she were a smoker. At least that smell was easier to wash away than the smell of death; that seemed to linger in her clothes and hair for days after.
Deborah’s panties lay in a plastic bag on the lab bench. They weren’t at all like the navy-blue knickers, the “passion-killers,” that Susan had worn at school, but expensive, silky and rather sexy black panties. Maybe such things were de rigueur for St. Mary’s girls, Susan thought. Or had Deborah been hoping to impress someone? They still didn’t know if she’d had a boyfriend.
Her school blazer lay next to the panties in a separate bag, and beside that lay her satchel. Vic Manson, the fingerprints expert, had sent it back early that morning, saying he had found clear prints on one of the vodka bottles but only blurred partials on the smooth leather surface of the satchel. DI Stott had been through Deborah’s blazer pockets and found only a purse with six pounds thirty-three pence in it, an old chewing-gum wrapper, her house keys, a cinema ticket stub and a half-eaten roll of Polo mints.
After one of his assistants had taken photographs, Glendenning examined the face, noting the pinpoint hemorrhages in the whites of the eyes, eyelids and skin of the cheeks. Then he examined the weal on the neck.
“As I said last night,” he began, “it looks like a clear case of asphyxia by ligature strangulation. Look here.”
Banks and Susan bent over the body. Susan tried not to look into the eyes. Glendenning’s probe indicated the discolored weal around the front of the throat. “Whoever did this was pretty strong,” he said. “You can see how deeply the strap bit into the flesh. And I’d say our chappie was a good few inches taller than his victim. And she was tall for her age. Five foot six.” He turned to Susan. “That’s almost 168 centimeters, to the younger generation. See how the wound is deeper at the bottom, the way it would be if you were pulling a leather strap upwards?” He moved away and demonstrated on one of the assistants. “See?” Banks and Susan nodded.
“Are you sure the satchel strap was the weapon?” Banks asked.
Glendenning nodded. He picked it up and held it out. “You can see traces of blood on the edge here, where it broke the skin. We’re having it typed, of course, but I’d put money on this being your weapon.”
Next, he set about removing the plastic bags that covered the hands. Gently-almost, Susan thought, like a manicurist-he held up each hand and peered at the fingernails. Deborah’s nails had been quite long, Susan noticed, not the bitten-to-the-quick mess hers had been when she was at school.
When Glendenning got to the middle finger of her right hand, he murmured to himself, then took a shiny instrument from the tray and ran it under the top of the nail, calling to one of his assistants for a glassine envelope.
“What is it?” Banks asked. “Did she put up a fight?”
“Looks like she got at least one good scratch in. With a bit of luck we’ll be able to get DNA from this.”
Passing quickly over the chest and stomach, Glendenning next picked up a probe and turned his attention to the
