Devils way, p.25
Devil's Way, page 25
‘Jesus Christ, what does Libby look like? I thought that wicker sombrero she had last year was bad enough,’ he said.
Their mum, Libby, was a bit of a hippy when it came to what she wore. The green baseball cap looked odd with her tie-dye A-line skirt and the oversized baggy cardigan. She’d also tucked all her long greying hair underneath it, making the cap bulge and her head look swollen.
‘There you both are,’ said Libby as she reached them. She glanced up at the departure board. ‘We’re boarding in fifteen minutes. I got you these hats to wear against the sunshine. It’s going to be hot there.’ She rummaged in the plastic bag and handed Daisy a pink New Yorker hat. ‘Go on, put it on.’
Daisy looked at the hat and then slipped it on her head. She caught sight of herself in the reflection of a stainless steel payphone above where they sat. The front of the cap was such a rigid dome, and it was too big for her head.
‘There we are. That’s good, Daisy. And it’s got a nice peak to protect you from the sun,’ said Libby, adjusting the brim. ‘David, can you stop fiddling online?’
‘Just two more minutes,’ he said, concentrating on the screen.
‘No. Get. Off. Your. Phone,’ she hissed. David looked up at her.
‘Libby. What’s your problem? We’ve got fifteen minutes. You suddenly want me to try on a baseball hat just when we’re going to get on the plane?’
Libby bit her lip, took a black baseball cap from the bag, and jammed it on his head. She then took another blue one out.
David kept calm, which Daisy knew would make their mother even madder. He took the cap off his head.
‘Libby. We’re gonna look like a bunch of dorks all wearing the same branded hats. Is that one for Steve?’ he said, indicating the blue one. Their father came walking over to them, zipping up the backpack on one shoulder. He looked very pale and was sweating. Daisy had heard someone throwing up in the toilet early that morning, and she wondered if he’d eaten something bad.
‘All right, love,’ he said to Daisy, putting his hand on her shoulder.
‘I got you this hat, Steve,’ said Libby. He took it and slipped it on. He furtively looked around at the departures lounge and then at the electronic board.
‘Oh, that’s us. The gate is open. Gate fourteen,’ he said.
‘We should wait until the last minute to board the plane,’ said Libby. Daisy looked at David again. He had the cap on his head but swivelled around backwards, and he was looking up at their parents with his arms folded.
‘If we’re waiting until the last minute, have I got time to buy a burger?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Libby.
‘Burger King is just over there,’ he said, getting up and indicating the fast food place fifty feet away. ‘I’m starving, and we’re not going to get lunch for ages. It’s a three-hour flight.’
Daisy watched as her mother’s eyes darted around, scanning the other travellers suspiciously. She wondered if she’d stopped taking her pills. This had happened a couple of times before, when she just stopped and decided she could do without them. It had been particularly bad two Christmases ago.
‘Go on, go and get a burger,’ said Steve. ‘Daisy, are you hungry?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. She wasn’t. But she wanted to be with David. She felt safer with him, even if he was mean to her sometimes.
‘OK, but listen. You’ve got five minutes,’ said their mother, her eyes wild. ‘Five. And come right back here. We are not going to miss this flight!’
‘Okay, Libs,’ said David sotto voce.
‘And stop calling me that!’ shouted their mother.
‘It’s your name, Libby.’
‘David. Give it a rest. Just go,’ said their father. He looked so pained and grey that David didn’t protest further.
‘Come on, Dais,’ said David.
‘Have you got money?’ asked their father. David took out his faded Star Wars wallet and held it up.
‘I’m loaded from the strawberry picking I’ve been doing.’ He moved off across the concourse, and Daisy followed.
‘She’s fucking crazy. Bat-shit crazy,’ said David when they were out of earshot. He took the cap off when they got to the screens above the Burger King counter.
‘Do you think she’s stopped taking her medicine?’ said Daisy, voicing what she was scared of out loud. David put his arm around her shoulders.
‘No. I think she’s just been logging into lastminute.com like a hyperactive chipmunk, she found a cheap deal, and got all wound up about going away on holiday. And you know the old Libster doesn’t cope with things being last-minute. She needs time to plan…’
Daisy looked up at him. She knew he was lying, but she appreciated the effort he was making to help her feel better. He smiled. ‘Now, what do you want? I’ll treat you to a kids’ meal.’
‘With nuggets?’
‘One portion of saturated fat with golden nuggets coming up for the lady,’ said David. He went to the counter and ordered. Daisy saw an older girl with long blonde hair and skinny jeans admiring her brother, and she felt a warm feeling of being with him, of him looking after and protecting her.
In the end, they had to run for the gate as soon as they had their food. Their parents suddenly changed their minds and wanted to get on the plane, so Daisy had to leave the fries uneaten and nuggets in the meal box whilst they ran for it.
Libby got very annoyed with all the people standing on the moving walkway, saying in a loud voice that it was reserved for people who wanted to walk faster, and they made it to the gate as people were boarding.
They had just joined the end of the line of people waiting to have their boarding passes scanned when a young policewoman with a kind face approached her and David.
Daisy instinctively looked to her parents standing in front of them in the queue, but she saw two big burly police officers had approached them from the other side.
‘Are you Steven Hartley?’ asked one of them. He noticed their dad holding his passport in his hand, and reached over to take it.
‘And are you, Libby, Elizabeth Hartley?’ asked the second burly police officer. Daisy saw their mother instinctively move her hand away, where she had her passport and the passports belonging to Daisy and David. He grabbed them.
Both their parents were silent and pale, and it was the weirdest thing. They suddenly seemed limp and compliant as the police officers checked through their passports, like the game was up. That was the best way Daisy could describe it. And that moment would always stick in her mind.
The female police officer with the kind face took David and Daisy’s passports from her colleague and checked them.
‘So, you are Daisy Elizabeth Hartley? And you are David Hartley?’ she said, checking their passport photos.
‘Yes,’ said Daisy.
‘What’s going on?’ asked David, watching as their parents were taken out of the line and to one side whilst the police officers talked to them in low voices.
‘Everything is going to be fine,’ said the woman. ‘My name is Tupele. I’m a police officer,’ she said, taking out an ID card and showing it to them. ‘And I just want you to know you and your sister have done nothing wrong—’
Suddenly, a scream erupted from their mother, and Daisy watched in horror as Libby made a run for it, hitching up her long tie-dye skirt and attempting to escape back down towards the departure hall. It all seemed to happen in slow motion as another couple of police officers appeared ahead and tackled Libby to the ground, as David, Daisy and her dad looked on.
52
‘They’ve picked up Libby and Steve Hartley with the two children at Birmingham Airport,’ said Detective Chief Inspector Harris, coming off the phone in the incident room. He checked his watch. ‘They’ve just set off.’
‘It takes about three hours from Birmingham to Exeter when the roads are clear,’ said Kate.
‘And they’ll be blue lighting them all the way,’ said Harris. Kate looked around at the incident room with the resources, the manpower, and the ability to get things done. Was she hankering after being a police officer again? She looked to Tristan, who was sitting on an empty desk. Harris went off to speak to his colleague.
‘What should we do? I feel like we’re intruding,’ said Tristan in a low voice. Kate had the same feeling. They had been invited to observe the interview with Maureen Cook, but what now? They were only still there because Harris was too busy to ask them to leave.
He came over to them with his mobile phone.
‘You know Alan Hexham, the forensic pathologist?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he was a guest lecturer for me, back when I was a criminology professor at Ashdean University,’ said Kate. Harris raised an eyebrow. This seemed to impress him even more.
‘I was Kate’s research assistant,’ said Tristan.
‘Alan has just got back to me with the results of the post-mortem he’s done on the body we found at Danvers Farm. I’d appreciate your thoughts, if you’d like to attend with me,’ he said.
* * *
Kate and Tristan arrived at Exeter morgue with Harris just before eleven. Kate could see that Tristan was pleased to be visiting mid-morning. All of their other visits to Alan’s morgue had been after breakfast – and Tristan had never been able to keep his food down.
They signed in at the small office and were shown into the examining room. Jemma, one of Alan Hexham’s assistants, was cleaning one of the stainless-steel mortuary tables. She took her work seriously. On the last few visits, she had always been upbeat. This morning her eyes looked swollen and red.
‘Morning,’ said Jemma. Kate could see she had been crying, and she turned her face away when she saw them all enter. She was newly qualified, a few years older than Tristan, and a tall and well-built young woman – strength was essential in a mortician – and she had rapidly risen through the ranks to become Alan’s right hand.
‘We’re here about the, er… the young boy’s body found on Danvers Farm,’ said Harris. Kate noted how difficult it was to say it, and she could only count on one hand the times she’d attended a post-mortem for a child.
‘Alan’s in his office, at the back,’ she said to Harris, her voice cracking with emotion. They moved past a long line of refrigerator doors to Alan’s tiny office at the end. The door was ajar, and he was sitting at his desk, surrounded by piles of paperwork and studying a file under the light of an angle-poise lamp. He was a massive bear of a man with a kind face and long greying hair tied back in a ponytail.
‘Ah. Ken, hello,’ he said to Harris, taking off his glasses. He got up and registered surprise at seeing Kate and Tristan with him. Harris explained their presence.
‘It was you who found the boy?’ said Alan. Kate was surprised and pleased that information hadn’t yet hit the news.
‘We’ve been working on a case, trying to find a missing boy,’ said Kate. ‘Charlie Julings. He vanished ten years ago—’
‘Devil’s Way. Yes. I’ve just been reviewing the police files… The police believed that he fell into the gorge and drowned. I can also see that the family petitioned the court for a death certificate in absentia,’ said Alan. He hesitated and seemed to contemplate that. He slid his glasses up on the top of his head and peered closer as he flicked through the file. His office was windowless, and the angle-poise lamp cast long shadows on the walls.
‘We’ve been hired by the grandmother of Charlie. She was the one who petitioned the court and now regrets it.’
This hung in the air for a moment.
‘Would you like to view the body?’ said Alan. Harris looked between Kate and Tristan, took a deep breath and nodded. Alan led the way out of his office.
Kate hadn’t been to the Exeter morgue for eighteen months, and the mortuary looked the same. The room had a high ceiling and floor-to-ceiling white tiles contrasted with the row of six stainless steel benches. Since her last visit, a sizeable electrified flycatcher had been installed on the wall above a row of stainless-steel fridges, and its glow reflected over the tiles and steel, giving them a purple hue.
Jemma was waiting for them, next to a tiny shape under a sheet. She gently lifted it back, and Kate was shocked to see the little boy’s body lying on an adult-sized mortuary table. As they drew closer, he looked smaller than when they’d seen him pulled out of the hole. The body had been washed. He was so pale and looked like a strange gargoyle taken from the side of a church.
Tristan put his hand to his mouth, and even Harris blanched. There was something almost eerie about the way the little boy looked like he was resting, like those Victorian photos of dead children posed to look like they’d fallen asleep.
‘How can this be a body that’s been in the ground for eleven years?’ asked Kate, shocked at the slow rate of decay.
‘I know, I was doubtful about how long the body had been in the ground if Charlie Julings went missing eleven years ago. However, we did a lot of work looking at the blanket and the type of soil, and we’ve had forensic information back about the land where you found him. The soil has a very high peat content which stops the oxygen and bacteria from being able to grow and attack the flesh. There was also a layer of sphagnum moss all over the area surrounding the boulders. Water or dirt caught beneath sheets of this moss won’t get a normal supply of oxygen from the atmosphere. Also, sphagnum soaks up calcium and magnesium, which makes the underlying soil and water mildly acidic. Add this to the peaty soil, and this little boy was slowly mummifying in the earth,’ said Alan.
‘So you think he could have been down there for eleven years?’ asked Kate.
‘With the delayed rate of decay, I can’t pinpoint the exact time and date of death.’
‘You can cover him up now, poor little thing,’ said Harris. Jemma lifted the sheet and pulled it over the tiny body. Kate could tell the sight of him was affecting the police officer.
‘We were able to conduct a post-mortem. There was no water in the lungs. And there was little evidence of trauma to the body apart from the right leg. The bone was broken. A clean break across the tibia. I’m unable to say how he died.’
Harris nodded.
‘Have you been able to extract any DNA that we can use to check his ID against the family of Charlie Julings?’ he asked.
‘Yes. We were able to extract bone marrow and get a good clean DNA sample. It was sent to the lab late last night, and we should be able to get a result later today,’ said Alan.
53
Libby and Steve Hartley were driven from Birmingham Airport in a police squad car.
Steve was silent as the motorway swam past them. Libby had been put in handcuffs, but after protesting as to why they were being arrested, the police allowed her to ride in the car without cuffs. There was still a steel cage around them in the back seat. The grille and perspex glass separated them from the two police officers in front, and they couldn’t hear what they were saying.
‘They’re going to interview us separately,’ said Steve, breaking the silence. ‘What are you going to say?’
Libby turned to him. Her face had that haunted look, with a pale face and wide eyes like a cornered animal. He could see she was chewing the side of her cheek.
‘Nothing. We’re going to say nothing… And we’re in a police car. We can’t hear them, but they can probably hear us,’ she said. He had heard her talk like this before when her mental health had been at its worst. When she thought that there were listening devices in the walls, and that they were being monitored by the police.
Steve closed his eyes and tipped his head back. He thought he might be sick. He breathed in and out. It was horribly claustrophobic in the back of the police car and smelt of sweat and fear.
He jumped when he felt Libby’s nails digging into his arm. He opened his eyes. Her face was inches from his.
‘I mean it. Don’t say anything. You have the right to remain silent,’ she said.
‘What if they—’ he started to say. Libby put her fingers on his lips.
‘They can’t do anything if you don’t say anything, if we don’t say anything. Okay?’
The policewoman in the passenger seat turned around, and she knocked on the glass. Libby moved away from him and stared out of the window.
How much longer can we keep this up? thought Steve. He turned around and looked out through the grille covering the back window. The car with David and Daisy was still behind them. Steve was pleased to see that they were travelling in an unmarked car, and as far as he could tell, they didn’t have wire mesh on the windows.
What must they think of us, of all this? thought Steve. How will we ever come back from this? He wished he could be with them and hoped they weren’t scared.
When the two-car convoy with Libby, Steve, Daisy and David arrived at Exeter police station just over three hours later, the cars drove past the front of the building and around to the back entrance.
The police officer, Tupele and the driver left Daisy and David’s car and went to talk to a tall man with greying hair waiting at an open door in the loading bay. Daisy watched as two more police officers went to the squad car in front and opened the back door. Their parents were led away into the back entrance of the police station. Libby looked in control of her emotions, but as Daisy watched, her mother didn’t look back at them in the car, and that scared Daisy. Why didn’t she look? Does she know we’re here? Didn’t they tell her? Why?
Their father, in comparison, looked broken. The police officer took his arm and led him away. He did look back, and when he caught Daisy’s eye, he tried to smile, but his face crumpled in tears. He turned away, and then they were both gone.
Daisy looked back at David. He was slumped in the seat and very quiet.
‘What’s happening to us?’ asked Daisy. She tried the door handle and was surprised when the door opened. ‘It isn’t locked.’
‘Why would it be locked?’ said David. He wound down his window, and the breeze came in. Daisy looked down at the concrete in the yard, and she was suddenly scared of the outside world. She wanted to remain in the safe cocoon of this car. She closed the door and sat back with her hands pressed between her knees.
