Ken McClure: Tangled Web

‘Did they say how he did it?’

‘They don’t know yet. I think if he took her in his arms and gently smothered her while crying his eyes out I might be able to accept it but even then... As for anything else? Not John Palmer, no way.’

Julie looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, ‘I’ve got the number here.’ She opened a desk drawer and took out a well-thumbed indexed notebook before writing the number down on a Post-It note and handing it to Gordon. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ she asked.

‘You get on with your paper chase and I’ll call this number, see if I can view the body and then I’ll go over and check on Lucy Palmer. She could probably do with some help in the way of sedation and maybe even a shoulder to cry on.’

‘Something tells me there will be a lot of talking and crying in Feli tonight when word gets around,’ said Julie.

‘No more sleepy backwater,’ said Gordon with a resigned shrug. ‘No more the place where nothing ever happens.’

‘Do you think the press will have heard by now?’

‘Gordon nodded. ‘If not, they soon will have. It’ll be on everyone’s breakfast table come Monday morning.’

Julie looked sad. She said, ‘This is the kind of story that causes emotions to run riot. Everyone’s going to have an opinion.’

‘A lot’ll depend on how they treat it. If they take a sympathetic line towards the parents we should be okay. If they go for sensation we could be in for a rough ride.’

‘Close-knit community stunned by baby murder,’ intoned Julie. ‘Baby’s death rocks sleepy village. Father slays crippled child.’

‘Well, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it,’ muttered Gordon. They parted company and he walked through to his room to call the police forensic service. After saying who he was, he inquired about the whereabouts of Anne-Marie Palmer’s body.

‘She’s lying in Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor, Doctor. Dr French is carrying out the post mortem this evening.’

‘D’you know when exactly?’

‘About now I should think.’

Gordon set the phone to re-route calls to his mobile number and left the surgery to drive the five miles or so to the Ysbyty Gwynedd hospital in Bangor. The hospital sat high on a hill overlooking the main east-west carriageway across North Wales. There were two police vehicles sitting in the car park so he wasn’t surprised when he found several police officers in conversation outside the Pathology department.

‘Has Dr French started?’ he asked.

‘About five minutes ago.’

Gordon went on through to the post mortem suite, knocked and entered without waiting. French looked up from the table, knife in hand. The two plain-clothes officers standing nearby did likewise. ‘I’m Tom Gordon, the Palmer’s GP in Felinbach. I hoped you wouldn’t mind?’

‘I suppose not,’ said French, although he didn’t sound too enthusiastic.

‘I think we’ve met a couple of times before at regional seminars?’ said Gordon.

‘Really,’ replied French, sounding indifferent.

Gordon nodded to the other two men in the room. One was Chief Inspector Davies; the other was introduced to him as DI Lawrence.’

Gordon nodded and said, ‘A sad business.’

The policemen grunted without committing themselves. French remained intent on what he was doing. Gordon moved closer to the table and couldn’t prevent himself from uttering a slight sound of disgust. He immediately felt embarrassed at being so unprofessional.

‘She is a bit of a mess,’ said French coldly.

‘What a bastard,’ murmured Davies. ‘What the hell did he have to do that to her for?’

‘I must be missing something,’ said Gordon. ‘She couldn’t have decomposed this much in three days.’

‘He doused her in acid,’ said French, hydrochloric acid if I’m not mistaken. You can still smell it.’

Gordon moved closer to the blackened little body on the table and could smell the acid. ‘Right,’ he said wrinkling his nose at the burning sensation in his nostrils. Is this going to make it difficult to establish exact cause of death?’

‘Well nigh impossible in the circumstances,’ said French. ‘Just as well he confessed. Look at her. What a bloody mess.’

‘He must have tried to dispose of her using acid and then changed his mind and decided to bury her after all,’ said Davies, his voice suffused with distaste. ‘His own kid for Christ’s sake.’

‘John Palmer didn’t do this,’ said Gordon, still staring at the body. ‘I know the man. He just couldn’t do anything like this.’

‘If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that, I’d be a very rich man,’ said Davies.

‘But hydrochloric acid...’

‘He’s a science teacher. It wouldn’t exactly be difficult for him to get hold of it,’ said Davies. ‘The old marble chips experiment if I remember rightly.’

French stood back from the table and said, ‘Frankly, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do too much more with this one, Alan. She’s been too badly damaged by the acid.’

‘Jesus,’ said Davies in a low whisper. ‘Not to worry. Maybe the bastard’ll be kind enough to tell us how he topped her in the first place.’

‘If he did...’ added French.

Gordon thought for a fleeting moment that French might have had some reason for doubting Palmer’s guilt but then he realised with horror that he meant something else entirely.

‘Davies picked up on it. ‘You’re not suggesting that the acid was the cause of death, are you, Doctor?’

French held up his palms. ‘I was just being pedantic as befits my profession,’ he said. ‘But as we don’t actually know the cause of death then, as it stands...’

‘For Christ’s sake, there is no way on Earth that John Palmer would immerse his own child in acid under any circumstances and certainly not while she was alive!’ said Gordon angrily. Davies and Lawrence didn’t respond but their silence was distressingly eloquent.

Gordon left the PM room, drawing in deep breaths of fresh air to rid himself of the smell of death and formalin fixative: he felt totally confused. Although there was still no way he could bring himself to believe that John Palmer had murdered Anne-Marie — despite his confession — he did face the enormous stumbling block of trying to imagine just who had. If he ruled out Lucy Palmer — and he did — he was left with a scenario where the baby had been kidnapped by a stranger, murdered by that stranger and then returned to the Palmers’ own back garden for burial, and this was after an abortive attempt to dissolve her remains in acid. It just didn’t make any sense but he could at least understand why the police had difficulty in considering it as a realistic possibility. He got into the Land Rover and drove over to see Lucy.

Lucy Palmer’s sister lived in a small terraced house in Sackville Street, a narrow street, tucked away behind the University of North Wales’s main science library in Bangor. Parking was difficult round there so he decided to take a chance and use the university car park, despite dire warnings to non-permit-holders displayed at the entrance. It was after all, Saturday evening and he couldn’t imagine there being too many academics around.

His firm knock on the bottle green door was answered by an attractive woman in her mid thirties with a tea towel thrown casually over one shoulder.

‘If it’s double glazing, we’re not interested,’ she said.

‘I’m Tom Gordon, Lucy’s GP. I thought I might be able to help,’ said Gordon.

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said the woman, apologising with a smile, ‘it’s good of you to come. I’m Gina Melford, Lucy’s sister.’