An Unkindness of Ravens (9 page)

As far as Fitzgerald could see, now he had got the dog clear, the foot was still attached to a limb and the limb probably to a trunk. It was inside a sodden, blackened, slimy shoe caked with mud, and about the ankle clung a bundling of muddy wet cloth, once the hem of a trouser leg. Shep had dug it out from one of the corners of this curious little plot of ground. All around, on this edge of the meadow, grew tall grass ready to be cut for hay, high enough to hide the dog when he plunged in among it, but the rectangle—seven feet by three?—which Shep had found in there and had dug into was covered closely and in a neat rather horticultural way with fresh green plants. Weeds they were, but weeds attractive enough to be called plants, red campion, clover, speedwell, and they covered the oblong patch as precisely as if they had been sown there in a seed bed.

The grass which surrounded it, gone to seed, bearing light feathery seed heads of brown and greyish-cream and silvery-gold, hid it from the sight of anyone who kept to the footpath. It took a dog to plunge in there and find the grave. A day or two of sunshine, Fitzgerald thought, and the farmer would have cut the hay, cut those weeds too without a thought. Shep was a good dog after all, even if he didn’t understand every word Fitzgerald said.

He retraced his steps to the branch of the lane that led to Myfleet and hurried down the hill to his bungalow where he phoned the police.

7

 From the Pomfret road a narrow lane winds its way up into the hills and to the verge of the forest. All down the hedges here grows the wayfarer’s tree with its flat creamy bracts of blossom, and beneath, edging the meadows like a fringe of lace, the whiter, finer, more delicate cow parsley. There are houses, Edwin Fitzgerald’s among them, approached by paths, cart tracks or even smaller narrower lanes, but the lane gives the impression of leading directly to the obelisk on the hill.

It is like downland up here, the trees ceasing until the forest of conifers begins over there to the east, chalk showing in outcroppings and heather on the chalk. And all the way the obelisk looming larger, a needle of granite with its point a tetragon. The road never reaches it. A quarter of a mile this side it swerves, turns east and divides, one fork making for Myfleet, the other for Pomfret, and soon there are meadows again and the heath is past. It was in one of these meadows, close to the overhang of the forest, traversed by a footpath leading from the road to Myfleet, that the discovery had been made. Over to the west the obelisk stabbed the blue sky, catching a shred of cloud on its point.

The grave was in a triangle formed by the wood, the lane and the footpath, in a slightly more than right-angled corner of the field. It was near enough to the forest for the air to smell resinous. The soil was light and sandy with an admixture of pine needles.

‘Easy enough to dig,’ said Wexford to Burden. ‘Almost anyone not decrepit could dig a grave like that in half an hour. Digging it deep enough would have taken a little longer.’

They were viewing the terrain, the distance of the grave from the road and the footpath, while Sir Hilary Tremlett, the pathologist, stood by with the scene-of-crimes officer to supervise the careful unearthing. Sir Hilary had happened to be at Stowerton when Fitzgerald’s call came in. By a piece of luck he had just arrived at the infirmary to perform a postmortem. It was not yet ten o’clock, a morning of pearly sunshine, the blue sky dotted with innumerable puffs of tiny white cloud. But every man there, the short portly august pathologist included, had a raincoat on. It had rained daily for so many weeks that no one was going to take the risk of going without; no one anyway could yet believe his own eyes.

‘The rain made the weeds grow like that,’ said Wexford. ‘You can see what happened. It’s rather interesting. All the ground here had grass growing on it, then a patch was dug to receive that. It was covered up again with overturned earth, the weed seeds came and rain, seemingly endless rain, and what grew up on that fertile patch and that patch only were broad-leaved plants. If it had been a dry spring there would have been more grass and it would all have been much less green.’

‘And the ground harder. If the ground hadn’t been soft and moist the dog might not have persisted with its digging.’

‘The mistake was in not digging the grave deep enough. It makes you wonder why he or she or they didn’t. Laziness? Lack of time? Lack of light? The six-foot rule is a good one because things of this kind do tend to work to the surface.’

‘If that’s so,’ said Dr Crocker, coming up to them, ‘why is it they always have to dig so far down to find ancient cities and temples and so forth?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Wexford. ‘Ask the dog. He’s the archaeologist. Mind you, we don’t have any lava in Sussex.’

They approached a little nearer to where Detectives Archbold and Bennett were carrying out their delicate spadework. It was apparent now that the corpse of the man that lay in the earth had been neither wrapped nor covered before it was buried. The earth didn’t besmear it as a heavier clayey soil might have done. It was emerging relatively clean, soaking wet, darkly stained, giving off the awful reek that was familiar to every man there, the sweetish, fishy, breath-catching, gaseous stench of decomposing flesh. That was what the dog had smelt and liked and wanted more of.

‘I often think,’ said Wexford to the doctor, ‘that we haven’t much in common with dogs.’

‘No, it’s at times like this you know what you’ve always suspected, that they’re not almost human at all.’

The face was pale, stained, bloated, the pale parts the colour of a dead fish’s belly. Wexford, not squeamish at all, hardened by the years, decided not to look at the face again until he had to. The big domed forehead, bigger and more domed because the hair had fallen from it, looked like a great mottled stone or lump of fungus. It was that forehead which made him pretty sure this must be Rodney Williams. Of course, he wasn’t going to commit himself at this stage but he’d have been surprised if it wasn’t Williams.

Sir Hilary, squatting down now, bent closer. Murdoch, the scene-of-crimes officer, was beginning to take measurements, make calculations. He called the photographer over but Sir Hilary held up a delaying hand.

Wexford wondered how he could stand that stink right up against his face. He seemed rather to enjoy it, the whole thing, the corpse, the atmosphere, the horror, the squalor. Pathologists did, and just as well really. It wouldn’t do if they shied away from it.

The body was subjected to a long and careful scrutiny. Sir Hilary looked at it closely from all angles. He came very close to touching but he did not quite touch. His fingers were plump, clean, the colour of a slice of roast pork. He stood up, nodded to Murdoch and the photographer, smiled at Wexford.

‘I could have a poke-about at that after lunch,’ he said. He always spoke of his autopsies as ‘having a poke-about’. ‘Not much doing today. Any idea who it might be?’

‘I think I have, Sir Hilary.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Saves a lot of hassle. We’ll smarten him up a bit before his nearest and dearest come for a private view.’

Joy Williams, Wexford thought. No, she shouldn’t be subjected to that. He felt the warmth of the mounting sun kind and soft on his face. He turned his back and looked across the sweep of meadows to the Pomfret road, green hay gold-brushed, dark green hedgerows stitched in like tapestry, sheep on a hillside. All he could see was that face and a wife looking at it. This horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs .. . It occurred to him that the nearest point on the main road to this place was the bus stop where Colin Budd had been attacked. Did that mean anything? The lane that passed within yards of the burial place met the road almost opposite the bus stop. But Budd had been stabbed weeks after this man’s death. The brother-in-law might do the identification instead. John Something, the chemist. John Harmer.

 He seemed a sensible man. Younger than Williams by five or six years, he was one of those tailored people, a neat, well-made, smallish man with regular features and short, crisply wavy hair. He had closed up his dispensary and left the shop in the care of his wife.

Having taken a deep breath, he looked at the body. He looked at the face, his symmetrical features controlled in blankness. He wasn’t going to show anything, not he, no shock, disgust, pity. You could almost hear his mother’s over her mouth. She sat that way for a moment or two. The whistling kettle on the stove began to screech. Sara turned round, turned the gas off, looked at her mother with her mouth twisted up as if she had toothache.

‘D’you want a coffee?’ Joy said to Wexford.

He shook his head. Sara made the coffee, instant in two mugs, one with a big ‘S’ on it and the other with the head of the Princess of Wales. Joy put sugar into hers, one spoonful, then after reflection, another.

‘Shall I have to see him?’

‘Your brother-in-law has already made the identification.’

‘John?’

‘Have you any other brothers-in-law, Mrs Williams?’

‘Rod’s got a brother in Bath. “Had”, I should say. I mean he’s still alive as far as I know and Rod’s not, is he?’

‘Oh, Mum,’ said Sara. ‘For God’s sake.’

‘You shut your mouth, you little cow!’

Joy Williams screamed it at her. She didn’t utter any more words but she went on screaming, drumming her fists on the table so that the mug bounced off and broke and coffee went all over the strip of coconut matting on the floor. Joy screamed until Sara slapped her face—the doctor already, the cool head in an emergency. Wexford knew better than to do it himself. Once he’d slapped a hysterical woman’s face and later been threatened with an action for assault.

‘Who can we get hold of to be with her?’ he asked. Mrs Milvey? He thought of Dora and dismissed the thought.

‘She hasn’t any friends. I expect my Auntie Hope will come.’

Mrs Harmer that would be. Hope and Joy. My God, he thought. Although the girl was sitting beside her mother now, holding her hand, while Joy leaned back spent, her head hanging over the back of the kitchen chair, the tears silently rolling out of her eyes, he could see that it was all Sara could do to control her repugnance. She was almost shaking with it. The need to be parted, the one from the other, was mutual. Sara, no doubt, couldn’t wait for those exam results, the confirmation of St Biddulph’s acceptance of her, for October and the start of term. It couldn’t come fast enough for her.

‘I’ll stay with Mum,’ she said, and there was stoicism in the way she said it. Til give her a pill. She’s got Valium. I’ll give her a couple of Valium and find something nice for her on the TV.’

The ever ready panacea.

It was too late for lunch now. He and Burden might have something in the office, get a sandwich sent down from the canteen. He had said he’d see the press at 2.30. Well, young Varney of the local paper who was a stringer for the nationals .. .

There was a van on the police station forecourt marked TV South and a camera crew getting out of it.

‘They’ve been up at the forest getting shots of the grave and Fitzgerald and the dog,’ Burden said, ‘and they want you next.’

‘Good. I’ll be able to put out an appeal for anyone who may have seen that car parked.’ A less encouraging thought struck Wexford. ‘They won’t want to make me up, will they?’ He had never been on television before.

Burden looked at him morosely, lifting his shoulders in a shrug of total indifference to any eventuality.

‘It’s not the end of the world if they do, is it?’

There was no time like the present, even a present that would end in ten minutes with his first ever TV appearance.

‘What’s happened to end your world, Mike?’

Burden immediately looked away. He mumbled something which Wexford couldn’t hear and had to ask him to repeat.

‘I said that I supposed I should tell you what the trouble is.’

‘Yes. I want to know.’ Looking at Burden, Wexford noticed for the first time grey hairs among the fair ones. ‘There’s something wrong with the baby, isn’t there?’

‘That’s right.’ Burden’s voice sounded very dry. ‘In Jenny’s opinion, mind you. Not in mine.’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘It’s a girl.’

‘What?’

Wexford’s phone went. He picked up the receiver. TV South, the Kingsmarkham Courier and two other reporters were downstairs waiting for him. Burden had already gone, closing the door quietly behind him.

8

 She was laying the table with their wedding present glass and silver. The lace cloth had been bought in Venice where they went for the first holiday after their honeymoon. Domesticity had delighted her when, as soon as she knew she was pregnant, she gave up teaching. It was the novelty, of course, being at home all day, playing house. Since then she had grown indifferent, she had grown indifferent to everything. Except to the child, and that she hated.

Sometimes, walking about the house after Mike had gone to work, pushing the vacuum cleaner or tidying up, the tears fell out of her eyes and streamed down her face. She cried because she couldn’t believe that she who had longed and longed for a baby could hate the one inside her. All this she had told to the psychiatrist at their second session. She had listened to her in almost total silence. Once she said, ‘Why do you say that?’ and once ‘Go on’, but otherwise she simply listened with a kind interested look on her face.

Mike had suggested the psychiatrist. She had been so surprised because Mike usually scoffed at psychiatry that she said yes without even protesting. It was somewhere to go anyway, something different to do from sitting at home brooding about the future and her marriage and the unwanted child. And inevitably crying, of course, when she remembered as she always did what life used to be when the days seemed too short, when she was teaching history to sixth formers at Haldon Finch, playing the violin in an orchestra, taking an advanced art appreciation course.

Jenny despised herself but that changed nothing. Her self-pity sickened her.

The sound of his key in the door—time-honoured heart stopper, test of love sustained—did nothing for her beyond bringing a little dread of the evening in front of them. He came into the room and kissed her. He still did that.