Her mind drifted back to the group sitting outside that strange white house which seemed so out of place in the Northumberland countryside. She’d gone to visit them because she’d had nothing better to do while the scene of crime team was working. They’d found the body, they’d all be together for the night and after that they’d disperse. The PC first at the scene had established that much. She thought she’d catch them while they were still in the area, check if they’d seen anything odd. She’d been hoping, she supposed, for the description of a car similar to the one Julie had seen in her road the night Luke was killed. But they’d caught her interest. It wasn’t just that there was a connection to the dead young woman. Or that the men reminded her of her father, sitting in the kitchen at home with a bunch of cronies after an illicit raid on the raptors’ nests in the hills. Something about the conversation had made her feel they’d need closer looking into. A smugness which irritated her and had something of a challenge in it. She tried to work out which of the individuals had so got under her skin, but couldn’t pin down the source of her unease. In the end she got into her car and followed Wainwright down the track to the road.
John Keating, the pathologist, was an Ulsterman in his fifties, with a bluff, no-nonsense attitude which scared some of her younger officers. The only time she’d seen him show any emotion during a postmortem was when he was investigating the death of a three-year-old child. And talking about a rugby match to a Welsh sergeant. He’d played when he was younger, still had a squashed nose. He made her coffee in his office before he changed for the autopsy.
‘What were your first impressions?’
‘She was strangled,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have gathered that.’
‘Similarities with the Armstrong lad?’
‘I didn’t have time to do a great examination in the field. Imagine your worst nightmare for a crime scene and this was it. A few hours later and the body would have been washed out to sea.’
‘Then we’d never have seen the flowers, might not even have linked it to the Seaton case.’ She came back to the point which had troubled her at the lighthouse. ‘Is that what the murderer wanted? Was it a private ritual? Or did he gamble on the body being found earlier?’
‘Hey! Don’t ask me. I deal with dead bodies not live minds.’
She watched the post-mortem through the glass screen, not because she was squeamish but because she was conscious of her size and was always worried that she was in the way. There were so many people gathered around the stainless-steel table – the technicians, the photographer, Billy Wainwright.
They unwrapped the corpse from the polythene sheeting and to the flash of continual photography they began to undress Lily Marsh. They removed the blue cotton skirt and the embroidered white shirt. Vera saw she was wearing matching white bra and pants. But hardly virginal. The bra was deep cut, lacy, revealing. The pants had little red-silk bows at each side, a red-silk crotch. While Billy Wainwright bagged each garment, Keating gave a commentary, glancing at her occasionally to check that she’d noted the significance of what he was saying. ‘There was little disturbance to the clothing. No apparent sign of sexual assault.’
Unless he dressed her afterwards, Vera thought. Let’s wait for the results from the vaginal swabs before we come to a decision. But there’d been no evidence of sexual assault on Luke and she was already certain that the cases were linked.
Keating continued. ‘No bruising. No lacerations. Can we have photographs of the eyes and lids, please. Note the petechiae.’
Vera had already noted them, had seen them at the crime scene – the pinpoint haemorrhages caused by obstruction of the veins in the neck. The classic sign of strangulation.
‘Not manual strangulation,’ Keating was saying. ‘No finger marks. See the line around the neck. It hasn’t broken the skin, so not wire, unless it was plastic-coated. Fine rope, perhaps.’
And that too was the same as in the Armstrong case.
She watched as he continued his external examination, saw Billy take all the samples – a trace of lipstick left even after her submersion in seawater, fingernail scrapings, a clip of pubic hair – but her mind was buzzing with theories and ideas. What could connect these two very different young people? Keating began his dissection and still her thoughts were racing.
When it was over, she sat with him again in his office. Outside, it was just getting light. Soon the hospital staff on early shift would be arriving. There was more coffee. Chocolate biscuits. She realized she was starving. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.
‘I don’t think there’s much else I can give you,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to suggest she was assaulted before she was strangled. She’d been sexually active, but not recently. No pregnancy and she’d never had children.’ He paused. ‘She had all that ahead of her. Such a shame.’
‘She didn’t struggle,’ Vera said. ‘Did she know the murderer?’
‘Not necessarily. He could have surprised her.’
‘It could have been a woman.’
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Physically a woman could have done it.’
But Vera could tell he didn’t really believe in a woman as a killer. He was a chivalrous and old-fashioned man. Women who missed the opportunity of childbirth were to be pitied. I suppose, she thought, that he pities me.
Chapter Thirteen
The press hadn’t yet tracked down Lily Marsh’s parents, or if they had they were showing more than their usual restraint. The young police officer waiting with them said there’d been no phone calls, no visitors apart from the rector from the village church and Mrs Marsh’s sister.
‘I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,’ he said. ‘The way the mother talks, it’s as if the girl’s just gone away for a while and will turn up any time.’
The couple were more elderly than Vera had expected. Phyllis had been forty-four when Lily was born and her husband five years older. ‘We’d given up, Inspector. It was like a miracle.’
Almost hope for me, then. But Vera knew she’d never have children. And the aching for them had almost passed anyway.
Lily’s parents lived in a neat semi. They’d lived there since they were married. Phyllis explained this as she made them tea. ‘It’s all paid off. We thought it would be something to leave to our daughter. We’ve no other savings.’ For the second time in a week Vera was listening to a bereaved mother talking too much, fending off thoughts and memories with words. When Vera and Joe arrived, the husband, Dennis, was in the small greenhouse in the back garden and they let him escape back there once they’d introduced themselves. Phyllis greeted Joe Ashworth like a friend, but Dennis was finding it harder than his wife to hold himself together. He had a blank, wild look on his face. ‘I’ll come out and chat to you in a bit,’ Vera said, ‘when I’ve had my tea.’
Through the window of the small living room they saw him perched on an upturned box, staring into space.
‘He’s always had trouble with his nerves,’ Phyllis said. Vera thought she caught the hint of accusation in her words. Now, when she most needed support, her husband was falling apart, still making demands on her.
The three of them sat clutching cups and saucers. Phyllis apologized for forgetting the sugar, though none of them took it, and jumped up to fetch it from the kitchen. She was a small, energetic woman, in her late sixties. She wore her hair in a tight white perm. ‘I was always worried that one of us would die before Lily was old enough to be independent,’ she said. ‘It never crossed my mind that she would go first.’ She had to talk about Lily being dead, otherwise she wouldn’t believe it.