“Again, you’ll have to wait. All I can say now is it looks like a typical upthrust knife wound. Have you made arrangements for the removal?”
Banks nodded.
“Good. I’ll get to it as soon as I can.” Glendenning stood up and headed down the track to his car. Banks looked at his watch: almost three o’clock and he hadn’t had lunch yet. Maybe an hour or so more up here and he’d be able to leave the scene for a local constable to guard. He called Vic Manson over.
“Any sign of the murder weapon?”
“Not so far. I don’t think it’s around here. The lads
have almost finished the third grid search, and they’d have found it by now.”
Banks walked back over to the smelting mill and leaned against the wall watching the men examine the scree outside the flue entrance. “A particularly vicious crime,” Dr Glendenning had said. Indeed it was. It was hard to believe, thought Banks, that in such beautiful countryside on such a fine autumn evening, one human being had got so close to another that he could watch, and perhaps even savour, the look in his victim’s eyes as he thrust a sharp knife in his groin and slowly dragged it up through the stomach to the chest.
Brenda Scupham lay alone in bed that night. Les was out
at the pub. Not that she really cared. These days he was
practically worse than useless. He mostly kept out of her
way, and that suited her fine. The only thing was, she
didn’t really want to be alone tonight. A nice warm body
to love her and hold her would help take her mind off the
bad things she couldn’t seem to stop herself from feeling.
She hadn’t wanted Gemma, it was true. But things like that happened. She had done her best. At first, there always seemed to be so much to do: changing nappies, feeding, scraping and saving for new clothes. And the sleepless nights she had listened to Gemma cry from her cot, leaving her till she cried herself to sleep because her own mother had said you shouldn’t make a habit of being at a baby’s beck and call. Well, she should know all about that, Brenda thought.
Even as she got older, Gemma had got in the way, too. Every time Brenda had a man over, she had to explain the child. Nobody stayed with her when they found out
she had a kid. One night was the best she could expect from most, then a hasty exit, usually well before dawn, and Gemma there wailing away.
Brenda understood women who had beaten or killed their children. It happened all the time. They could drive you to that. One night, she remembered with shame, she had wrapped three-month-old Gemma in blankets and left her on the steps of the Catholic church. She hadn’t been home five minutes before guilt sent her racing back to reclaim the bundle. Luckily, nobody else had got there first.
But no matter what those policemen tried to say, she had never abused Gemma. Some mothers sat their children on the elements of electric cookers, poured boiling water on them, locked them in the cellar without food or drink until they died of dehydration. Brerida would never have done anything like that. She put up with Gemma and took her pleasure when she could. True, she had left the child alone for visits to the pub. But nothing had ever happened to her. Also true, she never had much time to spend with her, what with the odd bit of waitressing she did on the sly to eke out her social. Meals had occasionally been forgotten, old clothes left unwashed too long. Gemma herself, like most kids, was not overfond of bath-time, and she had never complained about going without a bath for a couple of weeks.
What upset Brenda most as she lay there alone in the dark was accepting that she had never really liked her child. Oh, she had got used to her, all right, but there was something secretive and isolated about Gemma, something alien that Brenda felt she could never reach. And there was something creepy about the way she skulked around the place. Many a time Brenda had felt Gemma’s accusing, woebegone eyes on her. Even now, alone in the dark, she could feel Gemma’s eyes looking at her in that
way. Still, you didn’t choose your child, no more than she chose to be born. She wasn’t made to order.
But now Gemma was gone, Brenda felt guilty for feeling relieved when Miss Peterson and Mr Brown took her away. Why did it have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t they have been real social workers like they said they were? Then she wouldn’t have to feel so guilty for being relieved. Now she couldn’t even bear to think about what they might have done to Gemma. She shivered. Gemma must be dead. Brenda only hoped it had happened quickly and painlessly and that soon the police would find out everything and leave her alone to get her grieving done.
Again she replayed what she could remember of the social workers’ visit. Maybe she had been a fool for believing them, but they had looked so real, and they had been so convincing. She knew she had neglected Gemma and that she was wrong to do so, however much she couldn’t help herself. She knew she was guilty, especially after what happened the week before. But they surely couldn’t have known about that? No, they were right. She had to let them take the child. She found herself hoping, after the door closed, that they would decide to keep her or find her a good home. It would be best for everyone that way.
And then there was Les. She remembered defending him to the police that morning, saying he wasn’t much but he was better than nothing. She wasn’t even sure that was true any longer. Mostly, she’d been thinking of sex. He used to do it three, four times a night, if he hadn’t had a skinful of ale, and she couldn’t get enough of him. He had made her laugh, too. But lately all the passion had gone. It happened, she knew, and you became nothing more than a maid, your home no more than a hotel room.
She turned on her side and put her hand between her
legs, then began gently stroking herself with her fingers. It would help her forget, she thought, rubbing harder. Forget her foolishness, forget her guilt, forget Gemma. Gemma, precious stone, name stolen from an old schoolfriend whose serene beauty she had always envied.
Just before the climax flooded her, an image of Gemma going out of the door with Mr Brown and Miss Peterson appeared in her mind’s eye. As she came, it receded, like someone waving goodbye from a train window.
I
At ten past eleven on Saturday morning, Banks stood at
his office window, coffee in hand, and looked down on
the market square. It was another beautiful day—the fifth
in a row—with a pale blue sky and high wispy clouds. It
was also four days since Gemma Scupham’s abduction.
Down in the cobbled square,
