Peter Robinson - Aftermath

Payne’s head had already been shaved before his surgery, which made the injuries easier to identify. After a close examination, Mackenzie turned to Annie and said, “I’m not going to be able to tell you the exact sequence of blows, but there are some interesting clusters.”

“Clusters?”

“Yes. Come here. Look.”

Dr. Mackenzie pointed toward Payne’s left temple, which looked to Annie, with its shaved hair and bloody rawness, rather like a dead rat in a trap. “There are at least three distinct wounds overlapping here,” Dr. Mackenzie went on, tracing the outlines as he went, “from the first one – this indentation here – followed by a later wound superimposed and a third, here, which overlaps parts of both.”

“Could they have been delivered in quick succession?” Annie asked, remembering what Janet Taylor had told her about the flurry of blows, and the way she had imagined it all herself when she visited the scene.

“It’s possible,” Dr. Mackenzie admitted, “but I’d say any one of these blows would have incapacitated him for a while, and perhaps changed his position in relation to his attacker.”

“Can you explain?”

Dr. Mackenzie brought his hand around gently to the side of Annie’s head and pushed. She went with the light pressure and stepped back, head turned. When he reached out again, his hand was closer to the back of her head. “Had that been a real blow,” he said, “you would have been turned even farther away from me, and the blow would have stunned you. It might have taken you a little time to get back to the same position.”

“I see what you mean,” Annie said. “So that would lead you to believe that perhaps other blows came between?”

“Mmm. There’s the angles to consider, too. If you look very closely at the indentations, you’ll see that the first blow came when the victim was standing.” He glanced toward the baton. “See. The wound is relatively smooth and even, allowing for the differences in height between PC Taylor and the victim. I’ve measured the baton, by the way, and matched it closely to each wound, and that, along with the X rays, gives me a better idea of the victim’s position at the time of each blow.” He pointed again. “At least one of those blows to the temple was delivered when the victim was on his knees. You can see the way the impression deepens. It’s even clearer on the X ray.”

Dr. Mackenzie led Annie over to the X ray viewer on the wall, slipped in a sheet of film and turned on the light. He was right. When he pointed to it, Annie could see how the wound was deeper toward the back, indicating that the baton had come down at an angle. They went back to the table.

“Could he have got up again after a blow like that?” Annie asked.

“It’s possible. There’s no telling with head wounds. People have been known to walk around for days with a bullet in their brains. The main problem would be the rate of blood loss. Head wounds bleed an awful lot. That’s why we usually leave the brain until last in a postmortem. Most of the blood has drained off by then. Less messy.”

“What are you going to do with Payne’s brain?” Annie asked. “Keep it for scientific study?”

Dr. Mackenzie snorted. “I’d as soon read his character by the bumps on his head,” he said. “And speaking of which…” He asked his assistants to turn the body over. Annie saw another raw, pulpy area at the back of Payne’s head. She thought she could see splinters of bone sticking out, but realized she must be imagining things. Payne had been treated in hospital and they wouldn’t leave bone splinters sticking out of the back of his head. There was also some evidence of surgical stitching, which probably gave the impression of splinters. She only shivered because it was cold in the room, she told herself.

“These wounds were almost certainly inflicted when the victim was at an inferior level, say on his hands and knees, and they were delivered from behind.”

“As if he were moving away from his attacker on all fours, looking for something?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Mackenzie. “But it’s possible.”

“It’s just that at one point she says she hit him on the wrist and he dropped his machete, which she kicked into a corner. Apparently he went scrabbling after it on his hands and knees and she hit him again.”

“That would concur with this kind of injury,” Dr. Mackenzie conceded, “though I count three blows to the same general area: the brain stem, by the way, by far the most dangerous and vulnerable to attack.”

“She hit him there three times?”

“Yes.”

“Would he have been able to get up after that?”

“Again, I can’t say. A weaker man might well have been dead by then. Mr. Payne survived for three days. Perhaps he found his machete and got up again.”

“So that is a possible scenario?”

“I can’t rule it out. But look at these.” Dr. Mackenzie directed Annie’s attention toward the deep depressions at the top of the skull. “These two wounds, I can say with some certainty, were administered when the victim was in an inferior position to the attacker, perhaps sitting or squatting, given the angle, and they were administered with tremendous power.”

“What sort of power?”

Mackenzie stood back, raised both his arms high in the air, behind his head, and clasped his hands, then he brought them down as if wielding an imaginary hammer with all his might on to the head of an imaginary victim. “Like that,” he said. “And there was no resistance.”

Annie swallowed. Damn . This was turning into a real bugger of a case.

Elizabeth Bell, the social worker in charge of the Alderthorpe Seven investigation, hadn’t retired, but she had changed jobs and relocated to York, which made it easy for Jenny to drop in on her after a quick stop by her office at the university. She found a narrow parking spot several doors away from the terrace house off Fulford Road, not far from the river, and managed to squeeze her car in without doing any damage.

Elizabeth answered the door as quickly as if she had been standing right behind it, though Jenny had been vague on the phone about her time of arrival. It hadn’t mattered, Elizabeth said, as Friday was her day off this week, the kids were at school and she had ironing to catch up with.

“You must be Dr. Fuller,” Elizabeth said.

“That’s me. But call me Jenny.”

Elizabeth led Jenny inside. “I still don’t know what you want to see me about, but do come on in.” She led Jenny into a small living room, made even smaller by the ironing board and basket of laundry balanced on a chair. Jenny could smell the lemon detergent and fabric softener, along with that warm and comforting smell of freshly ironed clothes. The television was on, showing an old black-and-white thriller starring Jack Warner. Elizabeth cleared a pile of folded clothes from the armchair and bade Jenny sit.

“Excuse the mess,” she said. “It’s such a tiny house, but they’re so expensive around here and we do so love the location.”

“Why did you move from Hull?”

“We’d been looking to move for a while, then Roger – that’s my husband – got a promotion. He’s a civil servant. Well, hardly all that civil, if you catch my drift.”

“What about you. Job, I mean?”

“Still the social. Only now I work down the benefits office. Do you mind if I carry on ironing while we talk? Only I’ve got to get it all done.”

“No. Not at all.” Jenny looked at Elizabeth. She was a tall, big-boned woman wearing jeans and a plaid button-down shirt. The knees of her jeans were stained, Jenny noticed, as if she had been gardening. Under her short, no-nonsense haircut, her face was hard and prematurely lined, but not without kindness, which showed in her eyes and in the expressions that suddenly softened the hardness as she spoke. “How many children do you have?” Jenny asked.