“As I said, he knelt on her arms, and at one point on the center of her chest, probably to hold her down while he used his hands to strangle her. She didn’t have a chance.”
“You’re sure it’s a man?”
Dr. Wallace gave him a scornful glance. “Take it from me, this is a man’s work. Unless someone’s girlfriend did the strangling after the boyfriend raped and sodomized her.”
It had been done, Banks knew. Couples had acted in tandem as sexual predators or killers. Fred and Rosemary West. Myra Hindley and Ian Brady. Terry and Lucy Payne. But he thought Dr. Wallace was probably right to dismiss it in this case. “Were all the injuries inflicted while she was alive?”
“There’s no evidence of postmortem maltreatment, if that’s what you mean. The bruising and tearing in the vagina and anus both indicate she was alive while he raped her. You can see the marks on her wrists where he held her. And you can see her upper arms, neck and chest for yourself, as well as the bruising on her thighs. This was a rough and violent rape followed by strangulation.”
“How did he restrain her while he was raping her?” Banks mused out loud. “He couldn’t have done it with his knees on her arms.”
“He could have had a weapon. A knife, say.”
“So why not stab her? Why strangle her?”
“I couldn’t tell you. He may simply have used threats to control her. Isn’t it often the case that rapists will threaten to kill their victims if they don’t cooperate, or even to hunt them down later, harm their families?”
“Yes,” said Banks. He knew his questions might sound crude and insensitive, but these were things he had to know. That was why it had always been so easy with Dr. Glendenning. Working with a woman pathologist was different. “Why kill her at all?” he asked.
Dr. Wallace looked at Banks as she might a specimen on her table. “I don’t know,” she said. “To shut her up, perhaps. Maybe she recognized him or could identify him. That’s your job, isn’t it, to figure out things like that?”
“I’m sorry. I was just thinking out loud. Bad habit of mine. I was also just wondering if there was any evidence that the strangulation was part of the thrill, rough sex gone wrong?”
Dr. Wallace shook her head. “I don’t think so. Though he was certainly rough with her. As I said, it very much looks as if he had one knee pushing against her chest as he strangled her, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, in that position to perform a sexual assault on her. I’d say in this case that he strangled her when he’d done with her.”
“Dr. Burns estimated time of death at between midnight and two A.M. on Sunday morning. Do you agree?”
“I can’t find anything that would argue against that estimate,” Dr. Wallace said. “But it is just an estimate. Time of death is—”
“I know, I know,” said Banks. “Notoriously difficult to establish. The one thing that can sometimes help us most. Just one more of life’s little ironies.”
Dr. Wallace didn’t respond.
“Anything odd or unusual?”
“All perfectly normal so far, for this sort of thing.” Dr. Wallace sounded weary and too old for her years, as if she’d seen it all too many times before. Banks stood back and kept quiet to let her get on with her work. She gripped the scalpel and started to make the Y incision quickly and precisely and Banks felt a shiver run up his spine.
Annie took Ginger with her to Nottingham to talk to Gail Torrance, Karen Drew’s social worker, while Tommy Naylor held the fort back in Whitby. Annie liked Ginger’s company, felt at ease with her. She was irreverent and funny, chewing gum constantly, talking a mile a minute, complaining about the other drivers, and she always seemed cheerful. Perhaps because of her rather butch appearance, many of the blokes at the station had first thought she was a lesbian, but it turned out that she had a stay-at-home husband and two young kids. For a moment, as Annie drove and listened to the hilarious tirade about the kids’ weekend with a bouncy castle, she thought that Ginger might be someone she could talk to about Eric — there, he had a name now — but she realized it wouldn’t be appropriate, that she didn’t really know her well enough, and that she didn’t want anyone to know, at least not right now. What did she expect? Advice? She didn’t need any. She knew what to do. And if she talked to anyone about it, it would be Winsome, though they hardly saw each other these days.
Annie was driving because she didn’t feel safe with Ginger behind the wheel. And Ginger knew that. Though she had somehow got her license, driving was simply one of the skills she hadn’t truly mastered yet, she apologized, and she was due for yet another training course in a month’s time. But by the time they got lost in an area of desolate industrial estates, Annie was wishing she had handed the wheel over to Ginger, who was proving to be an even worse navigator than she was a driver.
They finally found the social services offices in West Bridgford. It was almost lunchtime when they arrived, and Gail Torrance was more than happy to join them in the nearest pub. The place was already busy with office workers, but they found a table cluttered with the previous occupants’ leftover chips, salad and remains of Scotch eggs, along with empty lipstick-stained half-pint glasses with pools of pale warm lager in the bottom. The ashtray, too, was overflowing with crushed pink-ringed cigarette ends, one of them still smoldering slightly.
Ginger took the orders and went up to the bar. By the time she got back with the drinks, a sullen teenage waitress had cleared away the debris, then brought knives and forks folded in paper serviettes. Annie and Ginger drank Slimline Bitter Lemon and Gail sipped a Campari and soda. She lit a cigarette. “Ah, that’s better,” she said, blowing out the smoke.
Annie managed to smile through the smoke. “As you know,” she said, “we’ve come to talk about Karen Drew.” She noticed Ginger take out her pen and notebook. Despite her size and her flaming red hair, she had the knack of disappearing into the background when she wanted to.
“You’re probably wasting your time,” said Gail. “I mean, I can’t really tell you very much about her.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know anything.”
“But you were her liaison between the hospital and Mapston Hall.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. I mean, I handle all sorts of similar residential care cases all over the county.”
“So tell us what you do know.”
Gail pushed back her hair. “About four months ago,” she began, “the administration at Grey Oaks, the hospital where Karen had been for almost three years, got in touch with me — I’ve worked with them before — and told me about a woman they had been treating who needed special care. That’s my area. I went out there and met Karen — for the first and only time, I might add — and talked to her doctors. They had assessed her needs, and from what I could see, I agreed with them — not that my opinion on the matter was required, of course.” She flicked the ash off her cigarette. “There was nothing suitable available locally, and I’d dealt with the Mapston Hall people before, so I knew their area of specialization matched Karen’s needs. It was just a matter of waiting for a bed, getting the paperwork done, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. I really had nothing more to do with it than that.”
“What were your personal impressions of Karen?” Annie asked.
“That’s a funny question.”
“Why?”
“Well, what impression can you have of someone who just sits there and says nothing?”
“She must have had a life before the accident.”
“I suppose so, but that wasn’t any of my business.”
“Didn’t you have to contact her family at all?”