‘Where was this shanty town?’ said Cooper.
‘Where was it? What are you asking me that for? You said you’ve just come from there.’
Cooper stared at Norton. ‘From where?’
‘Withens, of course.’
‘Withens started as the navvies’ shanty town?’
‘Fifteen hundred men used to live up there when they were working on the tunnels. All they had were huts made out of mud and piles of stones, with heather chucked on top for a roof. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Not in the winters they get up here.’
Cooper looked at the dark mouths of the old railway tunnels again, expecting to see rats scuttling across the dirt floor. Apart from steel fences and gates, the newer tunnel had been left unobstructed. With a new trackbed, it was almost ready for those Euro expresses to go through.
Somewhere along the three-mile length must be the lower opening of the air shaft that emerged on Withens Moor, two hundred feet above. He wondered if the rats could run up the inside of the air shaft, too. He could picture them spiralling their way upwards between the courses of stone, jerking and stopping, sniffing the air, then running ahead again. He imagined they would climb almost in silence, dragging their tails on the stone as their pale feet and long claws found a purchase in the crumbling mortar and they gradually emerged from the darkness on to the moor. On to the moor where Neil Granger had lain dying.
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17
‘Smashed like a clay flower pot/ said Juliana Van Door, running water on to her dissection table to rinse away the blood and body fluids.
‘Forgive me/ said Diane Fry. ‘But that doesn’t sound very scientific.’
She looked at the pathologist curiously. There weren’t many cases that moved Mrs Van Door to metaphor. The killing of children, yes, or something else particularly tragic. But a young man who had met a violent death? She must see plenty of those.
‘The skull/ said the pathologist. ‘It’s a wonderful thing, the skull, and it does a terrific job of protecting our brain. But hit it hard enough, and you soon find out how brittle it is. The seat of our intelligence becomes no more than a few dying roots, and dirt trickling from a smashed flower pot.’
Fry shivered at the tone of the other woman’s voice. Her own fragility was something she didn’t care to think about just now. She was already seeing the bones. She didn’t want to see what else lay beneath.
Mrs Van Door looked at her, and smiled sadly. ‘I’m sorry. Memories, you know. Even pathologists aren’t entirely immune from personal feelings. We can’t all keep up a constant stream of jokes as we fillet a fresh cadaver.’
‘That’s OK/ said Fry, though the apology and the reference to memories had made her feel even worse. If Mrs Van Door was going to burst into tears, Fry would have to leave the room, or she’d be liable to join her.
DCI Kessen was standing with the Scientific Support Manager.
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He gazed at Fry over his mask, with that air of infinite patience that seemed so unnatural.
‘We have an open skull fracture/ said the pathologist, returning to her usual brisk tone. ‘The scalp laceration is consistent with an impact on the stones found at the scene, which are rather rough and sharp. I think we’ll get an exact match. The dura mater membrane is broken, which resulted in considerable leakage of cerebrospinal fluid. And there’s a compression of the brain in the area adjacent to the site of the injury.’
‘It looks like his head hit the stone when he fell.’
‘Yes.’
‘The pattern of the blood spatters seems to tell the same story.’
‘And that was the injury that killed him/ said the pathologist.
‘You’re sure? Could he have survived?’
‘Without rapid surgical closure of the membranes, infection would have set in very quickly.’
‘There was a lot of blood at the scene, too/
‘Scalp injuries bleed a lot/ said Mrs Van Boon, with a shrug.
‘What about the other head injury?’
‘There’s a contusion to the back of the head, caused by a hard, smooth object. This blow caused a diffuse brain injury, probably ” resulting in concussion from the impact of the brain against the inside of the skull.’
‘How serious?’
‘A short period of coma. And he would almost certainly have had a bad headache when he woke up, maybe nausea and dizziness/
‘//he had woken up/
‘Of course. The blow to the back of the head would probably have rendered him unconscious and caused him to fall. But it wasn’t fatal. The impact with the stone was/
DCI Kessen spoke then, and everyone turned towards him to listen.
‘You realize this is crucial? It might be the evidence that makes the difference between a charge of murder and manslaughter. The blow to the back of the head may have been intended only to stun, and the victim’s death wasn’t intentional/
‘You’ll have the full opinion in my report, Chief Inspector/ said Mrs Van Boon.
‘Thank you/
The pathologist looked at him for a moment, expecting another question, which didn’t come.
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‘Then we have the face …’ she said.
