Blind to the bones bcadf-4 Read online

  ‘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.

  Cleaned up and with his eyelids closed, Neil Granger’s face looked almost normal. But it hadn’t been like that when the firefighters had found him.

  ‘The face was painted with some kind of water-based theatrical make-up. Black.’ The pathologist looked up at the police officers. ‘Do you know of any reason for that?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Just curious.’

  ‘And the eyes?’ said Fry. ‘The eyes were full of blood. Were they injured separately?’

  ‘Injured?’ said Mrs Van Door. ‘They were removed.’

  ‘You’re kidding. Now you are cracking jokes.’

  ‘No. But don’t worry.’

  ‘Don’t worry? You say the victim had his eyes removed, and you’re telling us not to worry?’

  ‘It was done postmortem.’

  ‘Great. A killer who steals his victim’s eyes.’

  ‘And it wasn’t done by the killer, I’d say.’ The pathologist indicated a couple of evidence bags being sorted by the scenes of crime officers. They contained Neil Granger’s clothes and various traces scraped and swabbed from them. ‘You have a feather, black. And some bird droppings, white. The eyes have been torn out roughly, not cut. I’d say one or more members of the crow family did the damage.’

  ‘Well, that’s something.’

  ‘Yes. Also, the victim had blood on his hand. And not only blood, but cerebrospinal fluid.’

  Fry screwed up her face in distaste. ‘From the skull fracture. He touched the injury. But didn’t you say … ?’

  ‘The victim was already unconscious before his head hit the stones, yes. So it’s very unlikely that he touched the head wound himself. Impossible, I’d say.’

  ‘Just spell that out for us again,’ said Fry.

  ‘Well, I would suggest the blood and cerebrospinal fluid were transferred to his hand by means of some third party.’

  ‘Someone else. Someone touched his head wound, and then his hand. His killer? Or one of the firefighters who found the body?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Maybe even a police officer. Some of them can’t keep their hands to themselves at a crime scene.’

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  ‘But there’s one other injury to consider,’ said Mrs Van Door.

  ‘Really?’

  Fry looked at the head, but could see only the lurid colour of the bruised and broken skin near Neil Granger’s right temple.

  ‘Somewhere else on the body, then?’

  ‘You can’t help sounding hopeful,’ said Mrs Van Door, with a small smile. ‘You’d like evidence for a murder charge, after all. That’s usually what investigators want. A manslaughter conviction just isn’t satisfactory, is it?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Fry impatiently. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’

  ‘There’s an ulna fracture.’

  ‘Wait a minute - ulna? In the arm?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘He had a broken arm?’

  The pathologist lifted a side of the plastic sheet. ‘See?’ she said.

  Neil Granger’s left forearm was badly swollen and bruised. But something else looked wrong with it. Fry bent to look more closely, then pulled away suddenly. The skin below the forearm was broken or torn. Burst was the word that came to her mind. Granger’s skin hadn’t been broken by a blow from the outside, but ripped open from the inside. The end of a bone was poking through the hole, like an obscene creature emerging from its cocoon, a white grub seeking the light.

  The idea of things emerging from the body made Fry feel sick and cold. It was the most horrible thing she could imagine. During her teens she had consistently refused to watch a video of the film Alien with her schoolmates, because she had heard about the scene in which a creature burst from the body of actor John Hurt, where it had been growing in his chest. She knew she would probably have fainted, and that would have ruined the tough-girl image she was cultivating at the time. Even now, she never wanted to see the film. Nor did she ever want to see internal organs spilling from a belly wound. She never wanted to see the bones under the skin. Neither real, nor imaginary.

  Fry swallowed. ‘Was his arm broken in the fall?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Van Door. ‘By another blow. Possibly from the same weapon that caused the head wound. We can make the comparisons for you here.’

  ‘Two blows. I don’t suppose there’s any way to tell which came first? That would be too much to expect, I’m sure.’

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  ‘Actually, it isn’t.’

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘Well, I’ll leave the deductions to you, as usual. But what I can say is that the blow to the head was probably struck while th
e victim was standing. If you find the weapon, we’ll have a good chance of establishing that more definitely.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But the injury to the arm was inflicted when the victim was already lying down. There’s bruising on the other side of the arm, where it was impacted on the ground. Again, if we had a weapon, we could do some angle tests. A heavy wooden stick of some kind. That’s what you should be looking for. Unfortunately, the weapon doesn’t seem to have splintered, as it hasn’t left any splinters in the wound that I can see. So unless the lab can find some traces, there’s no way of telling what kind of wood.’

  ‘Someone knocked him unconscious, then hit him again, breaking his arm?’

  ‘Perhaps. But remember that he struck his head when he fell.’

  Fry looked up, dragging her eyes away from the protruding bone. ‘You mean he was already dead when his arm was broken?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened quite so quickly,’ said Mrs Van Boon. ‘But he was certainly dying.’

  ‘Neil had lived in Tintwistle for about nine months,’ said Philip Granger. ‘His house is right on the main road.’

  ‘Yes, we know. You went there with DC Cooper and some other officers yesterday,’ said DI Paul Kitchens patiently.

  Granger nodded, but didn’t look at Ben Cooper, who was sitting next to the DI. Cooper gathered the impression that Philip Granger didn’t remember him. He’d already made a formal statement this afternoon about his brother, which had been pretty comprehensive. There were details in it that would be gone over again later, but not just now.

  In the interview room at West Street, Granger looked as ill as he had the day before. Either he hadn’t shaved before he came out, or he had a bad case of five o’clock shadow. Cooper wanted to ask him if he was experiencing the survivor’s guilt that members of a victim’s family often suffered from - the irrational feeling that the wrong person had died. It should have been me, not him. And all those ‘if onlys’. Maybe it was even worse for an older brother.

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  ‘Neil was forever complaining about the traffic jams in Tintwistle/ said Granger. They’ve been talking about a Longdendale bypass for years and years. He even went to some of the meetings of the campaign committee, but he didn’t like the other folk who were on it. He said they were pretentious gits with too much time on their hands.’

  ‘We’re continuing to examine your brother’s house, Mr Granger/ said Kitchens. ‘As next of kin, you have the right to be present, if you wish.’

  ‘Next of kin/ repeated Granger.

  ‘Do you understand what I’m saying, sir?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve got Neil’s car, too, haven’t you? The Beetle.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Have you found anything yet?’

  Kitchens perked up with sudden interest. ‘In the car? Why do you ask?’

  ‘I thought there might be some clues in it. I mean, Neil might have given someone a lift that night, mightn’t he? He had a habit of doing that. I wouldn’t pick anybody up myself, because you never know who they might be these days. But Neil didn’t always see sense like that.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Granger looked at Cooper for the first time.

  ‘It was the vicar that phoned me, you know/ he said. ‘Mr Alton.’

  ‘Yes, you mentioned it in your statement/ said Cooper. ‘Mr Alton was expecting Neil to help him in the churchyard on Saturday morning.’

  ‘I went round to Neil’s house, but there was no sign of him/

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But I didn’t really think there was anything wrong. I didn’t think …’

  Granger stopped. He seemed to feel the need to go over again some of the things he’d said in his statement. But only some of the things - those that affected himself. Perhaps they were the only facts he was sure of, and the rest of it he couldn’t believe.

  ‘The next-door neighbours couldn’t give a toss/ he said.

  ‘Did your brother not get on with them?’

  ‘I don’t think they liked the look of him any more than me. But they hated me coming to his house on my bike.’

  ‘You don’t live too far away yourself, do you?’

  182

  ‘I share a place with some mates in Old Glossop.’

  Hitchens glanced at Cooper.

  ‘Five or six miles, something like that? So you’re only a lew minutes away.’

  ‘It depends on the traffic.’

  ‘It must have been quite different for both of you, when you moved away from Withens/ said Cooper. ‘You had plenty of family living nearby when you were there.’

  ‘We lived at Waterloo Terrace, near our uncle and aunt. Number 7.’

  ‘Number 11’ said Cooper, surprised.

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘For some reason, I thought it must have been number 8. It’s the empty one.’

  ‘That house has been empty a while,’ said Granger. ‘But we lived at number 7. My uncle fixed all that up with the landlords.’

  ‘So Mrs Wallwin has only been there a few months.’

  Granger looked puzzled. ‘Who?’

  ‘The lady who lives in number 7 now.’

  ‘Oh.’

  DI Hitchens coughed impatiently.

  ‘I’m sure you have a lot you need to do, Mr Granger. But one more thing I must ask you about before you go is this.’

  Hitchens produced the bronze bust in its evidence bag. Granger reached out a hand to straighten the clear plastic, but made no attempt to touch the bust itself.

  ‘Do you recognize it at all, sir?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry,’ said Granger.

  ‘Do you recall your brother possessing something like this?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘But you’re familiar with the interior of his house? Have you been inside recently? Before his death, I mean.’

  ‘A few days ago, yes.’

  ‘Did you see anything resembling this?’

  ‘No, I’d have noticed it. It would be out of place.’

  ‘Might your brother have bought it as a gift for someone, do you think? A girlfriend? Is there someone in his life who likes antiques?’

  ‘I’m sure there isn’t. It certainly doesn’t belong to Neil. It isn’t the sort of thing he would have in the house. I don’t remember seeing it when I was there yesterday ‘

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  ‘No, sir.’ Kitchens put the bag aside with a satisfied air. ‘It was in your brother’s car.’

  Granger shook his head. ‘Could Neil have found it? Or I suppose somebody could have given it to him.’

  ‘Unlikely, sir, don’t you think? We understand it could be rather valuable.’

  ‘I can’t help you, then.’

  Kitchens stood up and shook Philip Granger’s hand. ‘On the contrary, sir,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful indeed.’

  Diane Fry looked at the photographs of the crime scene. In particular, she studied the pictures showing the body lying at the base of the air shaft.

  Neil Granger’s skull had been split open like a clay plant pot, according to Mrs Van Boon. Or maybe like one of those chocolate Easter eggs all the children had been eating a couple of weeks ago. Part of his scalp had peeled away, and the bone underneath had been shattered, ripping the membrane that covered the brain. His cerebrospinal fluid had leaked from the tear on to the stones stones that were already covered in blood that was spreading from his scalp wound.

  In the photos, Fry could see that the blood had matted his hair and trickled in rivulets down his face and neck until it touched the stones and ran into the ground, his life seeping away into the peat.

  In a way, Neil had been lucky. He had never recovered consciousness after the first blow to his head. He would not have known what happened later. He would never have seen the crows landing and hopping closer to his face, or felt the stab of their beaks in his eyes. He would not have experienced the slow deterioration of his body as his tissues dec
omposed and gases forced out the contents of his stomach and bowels on to the peat.

  Fry wondered whether he would have been able to see the steam in the dark. The photographs taken at the scene showed the stearn clearly. It looked almost as if the old trains were still running in the tunnels two hundred feet below Withens Moor. But the trains hadn’t run for more than twenty years.

  184

  18

  Carl was in his twenties. He lived at home with his elderly mother, worked in the family business, and led a prosperous life. One morning he answered a phone call, told his mother he had to go to Newcastle - and failed to return. He took neither his car, money or credit cards. Fifteen months later, when police were notified, he was still missing.

  After enquiries drew a blank, the case was referred to the National Missing Persons Helpline, who distributed posters and checked their usual sources, but found no official records of Carl. So they appealed for news of him on their weekly page in the Big Issue magazine. Nearly twenty people called after seeing Carl’s photo, to say. ‘That’s the chap I buy the magazine from!’

  The NMPH faxed a letter for him to the Big Issue, and Carl called. He knew the photo was of himself, but didn’t recognize the name: he had invented one for himself. All he could remember, he said, was being chased through the streets of Newcastle and then getting a lift from a truck driver. When they stopped for coffee, the driver said: ‘You’d better wash your face.’ In the mirror, Carl saw blood from a head injury he hadn ‘t been aware of.

  The driver dropped him off in Manchester, where Carl wandered the streets for three weeks, still not knowing who he was. His sole possessions were a St Christopher medal and a keyring holding a snap of himself with a woman. Eventually he sought help from the Citizens Advice Bureau, who told him of a hostel in Stockport and gave him the bus fare. He lived there for a year, started selling the Big Issue under his alias, found a flat, began to build a life for himself-but was haunted by the fear that something terrible had happened in Newcastle. What had he done?