Peter Turnbull: Aftermath

‘Indeed. .’ Hennessey replied and at that moment his attention was drawn to a red and white Riley circa 1947, which was driven slowly and was carefully parked beside a police patrol car. As he watched the car Hennessey felt a rush of warmth within him and his chest seemed to expand.

‘Lovely old car,’ Seers commented. ‘It looks quite at home here.’

‘Yes, it belongs to our pathologist. I’ll have to go and talk to her. . but thank you, Mr Seers, it’s been very useful. One of my colleagues will have to call on you and take a written statement in the next few days.’

‘Of course,’ Seers smiled. ‘I quite expect that.’

‘But thank you again.’

Strange things had happened to the man during his life, strange other-worldly supernatural experiences, such as the elderly relative who appeared to him at what transpired to be the precise moment of her death and who looked at him with warning and admonition and disapproval in her eyes. He had also once walked into an alley in a northern city and sensed that ‘something happened’ in the alley, and later found out that a violent murder had once occurred there. The ghosts he had seen, three all told, in his life, when other people in his company saw nothing of them. He also knew that things had happened before any news was broken or any report made. He was sitting in the front room of his home reading the Yorkshire Post when he put the paper down and stood and walked into the kitchen, where his slender wife was preparing their lunch, and said, ‘They’ve been found.’

His wife turned and nodded solemnly, and replied, ‘I know,’ she sliced potatoes and dropped them into the steamer, ‘this morning.’

‘You said nothing?’

‘I was waiting to see if you felt it. If you hadn’t said anything I would have told you after lunch.’

‘I see. When did it come to you?’

‘About fifteen minutes ago.’

‘They will be finding them just now in that case.’

‘Yes,’ his wife replied calmly. ‘So now we have to wait; now we will find out if we were as careful as we thought we were.’

‘We took all the top clothes to charity shops in different towns and nothing less than one hour’s drive from York.’

‘Burnt all the underclothing, soaked them with petrol. . and a long way from the old house.’

‘I’m glad we did it,’ the man said, ‘very glad. I enjoyed doing it.’

‘I know you did. . I could tell.’

‘They had it easy,’ the man sat at the varnished dining table, ‘they would have died in the night. . freezing to death.’

‘Yes, we said so at the time. . we told them so. . don’t worry, the pain of the cold will pass, then it will be like going to sleep. . I still have a hunger for it.’

‘So do I,’ the man took a piece of bread and broke it and ate it, ‘so do I.’

Hennessey followed Dr D’Acre as she knelt first by one skeleton, then moved reverentially and knelt by the next and the next and the next, as the scene of crime officers and the grim-faced constables stepped respectfully out of her way. Dr D’Acre remained silent as she inspected the chain round the ankle of one of the victims, examining the manner by which it was attached to the heavier chain that ran the length of the kitchen garden. She then examined the rope which had been used to gag each victim. ‘Nylon,’ she commented as she stood.

‘The rope?’ Hennessey replied. ‘Yes.’

‘Five?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he paused and then added, ‘so far.’

‘So far?’ Louise D’Acre raised her eyebrows. She was, Hennessey once again observed, a woman who wore no make-up at all save for a trace of pale, very pale, lipstick and who wore her hair very short, and yet who, in Hennessey’s eye, was very feminine in appearance and mannerism. He also once again noticed how supple and strong she was as she knelt and rose and knelt and rose, which he knew from conversations they shared over time and from photographs on her office wall had been developed because of her passion for horse riding.

‘Yes, ma’am, so far. All are confined to this area, this walled garden.’

‘Kitchen garden.’ Dr D’Acre allowed herself rare and brief eye contact with Hennessey. ‘This type of walled garden close to the main house is called the kitchen garden. It’s where the vegetables would have been grown in the heyday of this estate.’

‘I see. . well, we still have to clear the garden then use dogs to cover the remainder of the grounds, but we have indication that if any more bodies are here they will be in this area. . the kitchen garden.’

‘What indications, may I ask?’

‘The doorway to the kitchen garden was found to be freed up with residual traces of lubricant, pretty well all other locks in the house and the outbuildings were found to be in a seized or at least semi-seized condition.’

‘Fair enough. So regular access needed without making undue noise?’

‘That’s our thinking, but very early days yet.’

‘For all of us Chief Inspector. Well, my early days can tell you that all five bodies are female. . adult human female, and that they were brought here at intervals, and by that I mean intervals of many months separating each victim. They are at different stages of decay, from the fully skeletonized to the corpse over there which still has traces of scalp hair and major organs. It seems that the state of decomposition decreases the further from the door-way. See, nearest the door is the skeleton, three in fact; furthest are the corpses with residual organ remains. The overgrowth will have reduced the rate of decomposition,’ she indicated towards the end of the garden, ‘once you have cleared that lot you may find very well-preserved remains.’

‘Yes, but we are going very slowly. .’

‘Of course. . a crime scene. . it has to be treated with great delicacy. I fully understand.’ Dr D’Acre glanced at the skeletons. ‘No obvious cause of death and they were alive when they were brought here, no point in restraining or gagging a corpse.’

‘None at all.’

‘Northern side of the garden, the sun would have baked them if they were here in the summer, in the sun all day, no shade, no remnants of clothing to indicate that they were clothed. If they were not kept alive they would have succumbed quite rapidly to dehydration.’

‘Thirst?’

‘Yes. Horrible death. What people have been known to drink because of the ravages of thirst. . petrol. . stagnant water alive with insects. .’

‘So I have heard.’

‘If they were abandoned in the winter it would have been an easier death, very painful at first, but quick and pain free in the end,’ she paused, ‘but all that is pure conjecture, not scientific observation.’

‘Whatever, but it does not bear thinking about, particularly the summer death, that would have taken days.’

‘Yes, and all but the first would have been chained to a corpse or corpses. .’

Hennessey asked Dr D’Acre how long she thought the corpses had been there.

‘Years. . the skeletons could be twenty years here, the fourth and fifth victims less time. They did not all disappear in a small time frame, so their disappearances might not have been linked. Is the occupant of the house implicated, can I ask?’

‘No. Late occupant in fact.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Ninety-seven years old. . he had a good run. . but he was housebound and led a hermit-like existence in the last twenty years of his life.’

‘Twenty?’

‘So we believe. This business. .’ Hennessey pointed to the skeletons, ‘this business seems to have gone on right under his nose but in his complete ignorance.’

‘So someone knew the garden existed, yet it’s so far from the road and in a remote part of the Vale on top of that.’