Peter Robinson - Innocent Graves

“Now we don’t have anything in from the lab yet, but from my observations of the scene, what we’ve got here looks like a sex murder. There was an arranged quality to it all. But I want to stress looks like. Right now, we just don’t know enough. There are several other avenues we simply can’t afford to overlook.” He counted them off on his fingers. “School, family, Jelačić, boyfriends and the couple at the vicarage, for starters. Rebecca Charters lied to me last night when I asked where her husband had been at the time of the crime. She gave him a false alibi and I’d like to know why he needed it, especially given the recent scandal involving him. We also need to know a lot more about Deborah Harrison’s life. Not just her movements yesterday, but her interests, her activities, her sex life, if she had one, and her past. We need to know what made her tick, what kind of person she was. Any questions?”

They all shook their heads.

“Good. Barry, I’d like you and Sergeant Hatchley to spend the morning going through the records of all known sex offenders in the county. You know the procedure. If anyone sounds likely, make inquiries. After that, ask around at some of the restaurants and cafés in the St. Mary’s area, places that might have been closed after eight or nine last night, when the uniforms did their house-to-house. You never know, our man might have stopped off for a cup of tea on his way to the graveyard.”

Stott nodded.

“And, I’d also like you to try and find out anything you can about Jelačić from records, immigration, wherever. Does he have form back home? Has he ever committed a sex offense of any kind there?”

Stott scribbled notes on his pad.

“Susan, I’d like you to team up with me and check out a few things closer to home. For a start we’ve got to find out exactly what Deborah’s movements were yesterday, who saw her last. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So if there’s nothing else,” Banks said, “let’s get on with it. Everyone check in with the murder room at regular intervals.”

Given their tasks, they drifted away. Except DC Susan Gay, who topped up her milky coffee and sat down again.

“Why me, sir?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Why am I teamed up with you on this? I’m only a DC. By rights it should-”

“Susan, whatever your rank, you’re a good detective. You’ve proved that often enough. Think about it. Taking Jim Hatchley around to a girls’ school, a vicarage and Sir Geoffrey Harrison’s…It would be like letting a bull loose in a china shop.”

Susan’s lips twitched in a smile. “What exactly will we be doing?”

“Talking to the family, friends, teachers. Trying to find out if this isn’t just the sex murder it seems, and if someone had a reason to want Deborah Harrison dead.”

“Are you going to check her parents’ alibis?”

Banks paused for a moment, then said, “Yes. Probably.”

“The chief constable won’t like it, will he?”

“Won’t like what?”

“Any of it. Us going around poking our noses into the Harrison family background.”

“Maybe not.”

“I mean, it’s pretty common knowledge around the station that they’re in the same funny-handshake brigade, sir. The chief constable and Sir Geoffrey, that is.”

“Oh, is it?”

“So rumor has it, sir.”

“And you’re worried about your career.”

“Well, I’ve passed my sergeant’s exam, as you know. I’m just waiting for an opening. I mean, I’m with you all the way, sir, but I wouldn’t want to make enemies in the wrong places, not just at the moment.”

Banks smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s my balls on the chopping-block, not yours. I’ll cover you. My word on it.”

Susan smiled back. “Well, that’s the first time not having any balls has ever done me any good.”

When she woke up shortly after eight o’clock on Tuesday morning, Rebecca Charters felt the hammering pain behind her eyes that signaled another hangover.

It hadn’t always been like this, she reminded herself. When she had married Daniel twelve years ago, he had been a dynamic young cleric. She had loved his passionate faith and his dedication just as she had loved his sense of humor and his joy in the sensual world. Lovemaking had always been a pleasure for both of them. Until recently.

She got up, put on her dressing-gown against the chill and walked over to the window. When they had first moved to St. Mary’s six years ago, her friends had all said how depressing and unhealthy it would be living in a graveyard. Just like the Brontës, darling, they said, and look what happened to them.

But Rebecca didn’t find it at all depressing. She found it strangely comforting and peaceful to consider the worms seething at their work just below the overgrown surface. It put things in perspective. It also reminded her of that Marvell poem Patrick had quoted for her just on the brink of their affair, when things could have gone either way:

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

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.