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
