Aftermath (32 page)

She turned her attention to events at hand: Dr Mackenzie’s close examination of the exterior of Terence Payne’s skull. Identity and time of death had not been a problem in this case: Payne had been pronounced dead by Dr Mogabe at Leeds General Infirmary at 8.13 p.m. the previous evening. Naturally, Dr Mackenzie would do a thorough job – his assistant had already carried out the weighing and measuring, and photographs and X-rays had been taken – indeed, Annie guessed Mackenzie to be the kind of doctor who would do a thorough post mortem on a man shot dead right in front of his very eyes. It didn’t do to make assumptions.

The body was clean and ready for cutting, as there’s no man cleaner than one who has just been through surgery. Luckily, the police surgeon had been dispatched to take fingernail scrapings, bloodstained clothing and blood samples when Payne had first arrived at the Infirmary, so no evidence had been lost owing to the scruples of hospital hygiene.

At the moment, Annie was interested only in the blows to Payne’s head, and Dr Mackenzie was paying particular attention to the cranium before performing the full post mortem. They had already examined the fractured wrist and determined that it was broken by a blow from PC Janet Taylor’s baton – which lay on the lab bench by the white-tiled wall – and there were also several defence bruises on Payne’s arms, where he had tried to ward off PC Taylor’s blows.

Unless Payne had been murdered by a nurse or doctor while he was in hospital, PC Janet Taylor’s actions were most likely directly responsible for his death. What had yet to be determined was just
how
culpable she was. An emergency operation to relieve a subdural hematoma had complicated matters, Dr Mackenzie had told Annie, but it should be easy enough to separate the surgical procedure from the unskilled bludgeoning.

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 towards 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 had 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 further 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 in 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 towards 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 towards 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 post mortem. 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 brainstem, 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 towards 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 onto 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.

‘Only two. William and Pauline.’ She nodded towards a photograph of two children that stood on the mantelpiece: smiling in a playground. ‘Anyway, I’m intrigued. Why
are
you here? You didn’t tell me very much over the telephone.’

‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning to be mysterious, honestly. I’m here about the “Alderthorpe Seven”. I understand you were involved?’

‘How could I forget. Why do you want to know? It was all over ten years ago.’

‘Nothing’s ever all over in my line of work,’ said Jenny. She had debated how much to tell Elizabeth and had even spoken with Banks on the phone about this. Useful as ever, he had said, ‘As much as you have to, and as little as you need to.’ Jenny had already asked Mr and Mrs Liversedge not to reveal Lucy’s true origins or name to reporters, but it wouldn’t be long before some bright spark came across a slip of paper or recognized a photo from the newspaper’s obituary. She knew that she and Banks had a very narrow window of opportunity in which to operate before train-loads of media people got off at York and Hull, and even found their way to sleepy little Alderthorpe. She took a risk that Elizabeth Bell wasn’t likely to tip them off, either.

‘Can you keep a secret?’ she asked.

Elizabeth looked up from the shirt she was ironing. ‘If I have to. I have done before.’

‘The person I’m interested in is Lucy Payne.’

‘Lucy Payne?’

‘Yes.’

‘That name is familiar, but I’m afraid you’ll have to jog my memory.’

‘It’s been in the news a lot recently. She was married to Terence Payne, the schoolteacher the police believe was responsible for the murder of six young girls.’

‘Of course. Yes, I
did
see a mention in the paper, but I must admit that I don’t follow such things.’

‘Understandable. Anyway, Lucy’s parents, Clive and Hilary Liversedge turn out to be
foster
parents. Lucy was one of the Alderthorpe Seven. You’d probably remember her as Linda Godwin.’

‘Good heavens.’ Elizabeth paused, holding the iron in mid-air, as if travelling back in her memory. ‘Little Linda Godwin. The poor wee thing.’

‘Perhaps now you can see why I asked you about keeping secrets?’

‘The press would have a field day.’

‘Indeed they would. Probably will, eventually.’

‘They won’t find out anything from me.’

A worthwhile risk, then. ‘Good,’ said Jenny.

‘I think I’d better sit down.’ Elizabeth propped the iron on its end and sat opposite Jenny. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Whatever you can tell me. How did it all begin, for a start?’

‘It was a local schoolteacher who tipped us off,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Maureen Nesbitt. She’d been suspicious about the state of some of the children for some time, and some of the things they said when they thought no one could overhear them. Then young Kathleen didn’t show up for school for a week and nobody had a reasonable explanation.’

‘That would be Kathleen Murray?’

‘You know about her?’

‘I just did a bit of background research among old newspapers at the library. I know that Kathleen Murray was the one who died.’

‘Was murdered. Should have been the “Alderthorpe
Six
” as one of them was already dead by the time the whole thing blew up.’

‘Where did Kathleen fit in?’

‘There were two families involved: Oliver and Geraldine Murray, and Michael and Pamela Godwin. The Murrays had four children, ranging from Keith, aged eleven, to Susan, aged eight. The two in the middle were Dianne and Kathleen, aged ten and nine respectively. The Godwins had three children: Linda, at twelve, was the eldest, then came Tom, who was ten, and Laura, nine.’

‘Good Lord, it sounds complicated.’

Elizabeth grinned. ‘It gets worse. Oliver Murray and Pamela Godwin were brother and sister, and nobody was quite sure exactly who fathered whom. Extended family abuse. It’s not as uncommon as it should be, especially in small, isolated communities. The families lived next door to one another in two semis in Alderthorpe, just far enough away from the other houses in the village to be guaranteed their privacy. It’s a remote enough part of the world to begin with. Have you ever been there?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You should. Just to get the feel of the place. It’s creepy.’

‘I intend to. Were they true, then? The allegations.’

‘The police would be able to tell you more about that. I was mostly responsible for separating the children and making sure they were cared for, getting them examined, and for fostering them, too, of course.’

‘All of them?’

‘I didn’t do it all on my own, but I was in overall charge, yes.’