Peter Robinson - Innocent Graves

He pressed his fingers deep into her throat. One of her wild kicks found his groin. He flinched in pain but held on, shoving her hard up against the wall. She was sitting on the top of the cabinet among the broken crystal and spilled liquor, her legs wrapped around him in a parody of the sex act. He could smell gin and whisky. The robe under her thighs was sodden with blood and booze, as if she had wet herself.

Michelle continued to flail around, knocking over more bottles, making rasping sounds. Once she pushed forward far enough that her nails raked his cheek, just missing his eyes.

But just as suddenly as it had started, it was over. Owen loosened his grip on her throat and she slid off the cabinet onto the floor, leaning back against it, not moving.

Someone hammered on the door and yelled, “Michelle! Are you all right?”

Owen stood for a moment trying to catch his breath and grasp the enormity of what he had done, then he opened the door and rushed past the puzzled neighbor back down to the street.

“I think Deborah Harrison lied to her mother about losing her diary,” Banks said to Gristhorpe as they waited for Ken Blackstone’s call. It was well after closing-time. No hope of a pint now. “I think she kept it hidden.”

“So it would seem,” Gristhorpe agreed. “The question is, how did it get into Jelačić’s hands? We already know he couldn’t have been in Eastvale the evening she was killed. Even if the diary had been in her satchel, Jelačić couldn’t have taken it.”

“I think I know the answer to that,” Banks said. “Rebecca Charters surprised someone in the graveyard yesterday, in the wooded area behind the Inchcliffe Mausoleum. I thought nothing of it at the time-she didn’t get a good look at whoever it was-but now it seems too much of a coincidence. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny it was Jelačić.”

“It was hidden there?”

Banks nodded. “And he knew where. He’d seen her hide it. When Pierce was released, and I went to question Jelačić again last week, he must have remembered it and thought there might be some profit in getting hold of it. It’s ironic, really. That open satchel always bothered me. When I first saw it, I thought the killer might have taken something incriminating and most likely got rid of it. But Lady Harrison told me Deborah had lost her diary. I saw no reason why either of them would lie about that.”

“Unless there were secrets in it that Deborah didn’t want anyone to stumble across?”

“Or Lady Harrison. If you think about it, either of them could have lied. Sir Geoffrey had already told me that Deborah did have a diary, so his wife could hardly deny its existence.”

“But she could say Deborah had told her she lost it, and we’d have no way of checking.”

“Yes. And we probably wouldn’t even bother looking for it. Which we didn’t.”

“Didn’t the SOCOs search the graveyard the day after Deborah’s murder?”

“They did a ground search. We weren’t looking for a murder weapon, just Deborah’s knickers and anything the killer might have dropped in the graveyard. All we found were a few empty fag packets and some butts. Most of those were down to Jelačić, who we knew had worked in the graveyard anyway. We put the rest down to St. Mary’s girls sneaking out for a smoke. Besides, it’s only in books that murderers stand around smoking in the fog while they wait for their victims. Especially since now everyone knows we’ve a good chance of getting DNA from saliva.”

“What about the Inchcliffe Mausoleum? Deborah could have gained access to that, couldn’t she?”

“Yes. But we searched that, too, after we found the empty bottles. At least-”

The phone rang. Banks grabbed the receiver.

“Alan, it’s Ken Blackstone. Sorry it took so long.”

“Any luck?”

“We’ve got him.”

“Great. Did he give you any trouble?”

“He picked up a bruise or two in the struggle. Turns out he’d just left Pavelič’s house when our lads arrived. They followed him across the waste ground. He saw them coming and made a bolt for it, right across York Road and down into Richmond Hill. When they finally caught up with him he didn’t have the diary.”

Banks’s spirits dropped. “Didn’t have it? But, Ken-”

“Hold your horses, mate. Seems he dumped it when he realized he was being chased. Didn’t want to be caught with any incriminating evidence on him. Anyway, our lads went back over the route he’d taken and we found it in a rubbish bin on York Road.”

Banks breathed a sigh of relief.

“What do you want us to do with him?” Blackstone asked. “It’s midnight now. It’ll be going on for two in the morning by the time we get him to Eastvale.”

“You can sit on him overnight,” Banks said. “Nobody in this case is going anywhere in a hurry. Have him brought up in the morning. But, Ken-”

“Yes, it is Deborah Harrison’s diary.”

“Have you read it?”

“Enough.”

“And?”

“If it means what I think it does, Alan, it’s dynamite.”

“Tell me about it.”

And Blackstone told him.

At ten o’clock the next morning, with Jelačić cooling his heels in a cell downstairs, Banks sat at his desk, coffee in hand, lit a cigarette and opened Deborah Harrison’s diary. Ken Blackstone had given him the gist of it over the phone the previous evening-and he had not slept well in consequence-but he wanted to read it for himself before making his next move.

Like the inside of the satchel flap, it was inscribed with her name and address in gradually broadening circles, from “Deborah Catherine Harrison” to “The Universe.”

First he checked the section for names, addresses and telephone numbers, but found nothing out of the ordinary, only family and school friends. Then he started to flip the pages.

He soon found that many of her entries were factual, with little attempt at analysis or poetic description. Some days she had left completely blank. And it wasn’t until summer, when she had supposedly “lost” it, that the diary got really interesting:

August 5

Yawn. This must be the most boring summer there has ever been in my entire existence. Went shopping today in the Swainsdale Center, just for something to do. What a grim place. Absolutely no decent shoes there at all and full of local yokels and horrible scruffy women dragging around even more horrible dirty children. I must work hard on mummy and persuade her to take me shopping to Paris again soon or I swear I shall just die from the boredom of this terrible provincial town. In the shopping center, I met that common little tart Tiffy Huxtable from dressage. She was with some friends and asked if I’d like to hang around with them. They didn’t look very interesting. They were all just sitting around the fountain looking scruffy and stupid, but there was one fit lad there so I said I might drop by one day. Life is so (yawn) boring that I really might do. Oh, how I do so need an adventure.

There were no entries for the next few days, then came this:

August 9

Tiffy’s crowd are a bunch of silly, common bores, just as I thought. All they can talk about is television and football and sex and pop music. I mean, really, darling, who gives a damn? I’m sure not one of them has read a book in years. Quite frankly, I’d rather stay at home and watch videos. Tracy Banks seems quite intelligent, but it turns out that she’s a policeman’s daughter, of all things. One boy looks a bit like that really cool actor from “Neighbors” and wears a great leather jacket. He really does have very nice eyes, too, with long lashes.

After that, things started to move quickly: