Dead And Buried

‘It’s not a joke,’ said Villiers. ‘No matter how good your memory is, you can’t recall every detail. So your mind fills in the gaps by using bits of other memories. You ask your inner eye to create a picture for you, but it can’t show you blanks where faces should be, so it uses whatever material it can find. If we could analyse the images in your brain, we’d find that the man at the bar looked a bit like the person you arrested yesterday, his clothes were those of someone you just passed in the street, and his face was reminiscent of Brad Pitt.’

‘Robert Redford,’ said Cooper.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You get my point, though. One person’s memory is too unreliable as evidence. Recollections become polluted by imagination.’

‘So instead of imagination, what we need is a bit of illumination, some light to shine into those dark corners where we can’t see.’

‘Absolutely,’ she said.

But as they crested the rise on Bradwell Moor, Cooper saw the smoke on the skyline. He remembered the devastating moorland fires, their flames rising twenty feet into the air as they swept across the landscape, scorching the earth bare to reveal what lay underneath. Those flames were illuminating places where perhaps there should have been no light.

When Cooper had left with Villiers, Fry decided to let Nancy Wharton cool for a while. She was given a cup of tea, allowed to go to the bathroom, asked again if she wanted a solicitor to be present with her in the interview room.

Nancy hadn’t been arrested, but she must realise there was a possibility she could be charged with perverting the course of justice, perhaps assisting an offender. It might even come to conspiracy to murder, which carried a potential life sentence. But that was all in the future.

‘What actual forensic evidence do we have?’ DCI Mackenzie asked when Fry briefed him.

‘The blood on David Pearson’s anorak isn’t his.’

‘Yes, I know that. But we don’t have a match.’

‘Could we get a DNA sample from Maurice Wharton?’ asked Fry.

‘A dying man? We’d need very good justification for a thing like that.’

‘It’s insensitive, I suppose.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘But if there was compelling evidence against him, it might be a different matter?’

‘It would never come to trial anyway. Not in his condition. Even if he survived long enough, the CPS wouldn’t put a dying man in the dock.’

‘No, I’m sure you’re right.’

It pained Fry to say it, especially when she couldn’t help feeling that she was telling Ben Cooper the same thing.

‘What’s next then, Diane?’ asked Mackenzie.

She looked at her watch. ‘I have to pay a visit to the mortuary.’

Forensic pathologist Juliana van Doon had a long relationship with Diane Fry. For some reason, they had never got on. Fry had found herself at a disadvantage many times, put down by the pathologist without being able to take any retaliatory action.

But today seemed to be different. Mrs van Doon was either too busy to bother patronising her, or she’d heard that Fry had transferred from E Division and was hoping it would be the last time they met. It wasn’t exactly a friendly greetings card with Sorry you’re leaving. But some of the tension had gone from their relationship.

‘The bodies aren’t decomposed enough,’ said the pathologist, brushing a stray hair back from her forehead.

‘The peat slowed decomposition?’ asked Fry.

‘Peat? No, these bodies weren’t actually buried in peat. From the photographs of the scene, it’s clear they were lying in a disused mine shaft. With a bog body, it’s the absence of air and damp, acidic conditions that slow decomposition.’

‘Okay.’

‘In this case, the heavy plastic wrapping would have slowed the rate of decay on some areas of the bodies, but not others. Those parts were exposed to the air and moisture, as well as to insects and so forth. But they still don’t show anything like the rate of decomposition we’d normally expect. Not a rate that corresponds with a time of death more than two years ago.’

‘Only one possibility, then.’

‘Yes, I think someone must have done what we do in the mortuary — lowered the temperature sufficiently to stop the process of decomposition altogether. The bodies were frozen.’

Fry wasn’t surprised by the news. ‘Would that have been at an early stage after they were killed?’

‘If you were going to get a human body into a chest freezer, it would have to be flexible,’ said Mrs van Doon. ‘Rigor mortis starts between three and six hours after death. That would catch most people out. Once rigor has set in, it becomes much more difficult to transport and dispose of a body. So I’d say they were frozen when they were still at the fresh stage, before the onset of rigor mortis. When they were unfrozen, decomposition would have restarted. Some of the exposed areas are just entering the advanced decay stage.’

‘Cause of death?’ said Fry hopefully.

‘Oh, the number one on the pathologist’s hit parade. Blunt force trauma.’

‘For both victims?’