Val McDermid 3-Book Crime Collection: A Place of Execution, The Distant Echo, The Grave Tattoo

Home-loving

Left behind at home are the thick-lensed spectacles – with one lens broken – without which he has difficulty in seeing.

Keith’s mother, Mrs Winifred Johnson, aged 30, who has five other children and is expecting her seventh in two weeks, wept today as she talked of her missing son.

She said: ‘He has never done anything like this before. He’s a home-loving lad. He can hardly see without his spectacles.’

Said his grandmother, Mrs Gertrude Bennett, aged 63, of Morton Street, Longsight, Manchester: ‘We can not eat, sleep or do anything for worrying about him.’

The police search party is made up of a sergeant, five constables and two dog handlers. They are searching an area within a mile of Keith’s home.

George stared at the paper. The thought of another mother going through what Ruth Carter had experienced was agonizing for him. But in a corner of his mind, he couldn’t help thinking that if it had to happen, it could not have come at a more opportune moment. For any member of the jury reading the paper, Winifred Johnson’s anguished plight could only reinforce Ruth Carter’s agony and diminish any inclination to believe Hawkin.

A sudden wave of shame washed over him. How could he be so callous? How could he even think about exploiting the disappearance of another child? Disgusted with himself, George crumpled the paper and tossed it into the bin.

That afternoon, as he made his way up the stairs towards the courtroom, he saw a familiar figure waiting by the door. Spotless in his dress uniform, Superintendent Martin stood fiddling with his soft black leather gloves. As George approached, he looked up. ‘Inspector,’ he greeted him, his face inscrutable. ‘A word, please.’

George followed him down a side corridor to a small room that smelled of perspiration and cigarettes. He closed the door behind them and waited.

Martin lit one of his untipped cigarettes and said abruptly, ‘I want you back in the office next week.’

‘But, sir –’ George protested.

Martin held up a hand. ‘I know, I know. The prosecution should finish today and then it’ll be the defence case next week. And that’s precisely why I want you back in Buxton.’

George’s head came up and he glared at his station commander. ‘This is my case, sir.’

‘I know. But you know as well as I do what defence Highsmith’s going to run. He’s got no choice. And I will not have one of my officers sit in a courtroom and hear his character traduced by some slick lawyer who doesn’t care what damage he does to a decent man.’ The telltale scarlet tide was rising up Martin’s neck. He began to pace to and fro.

‘With respect, sir, I can take anything Highsmith throws at me.’

Martin stopped pacing and eyed George. ‘You think so, do you? Well, even if you can, I’m not having you at the mercy of the press. If you’re not willing to take cover for your own sake, you ought to do it for that wife of yours. It’ll be bad enough if she has to read reports that accuse you of all sorts of mischief without her being treated to photographs of you skulking in and out of cars as if you were the one on trial.’

George ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m due some leave.’

‘And I’m refusing you permission to take it,’ Martin snapped. ‘You will stay away from Derby until this trial is over. And that is an order.’

George turned away and lit a cigarette. It was hard not to see his banishment as the gods’ retribution for his response to Keith Bennett’s disappearance. ‘At least let me be here for the verdict,’ he said indistinctly.

Professor John Patrick Hammond recited the qualifications that made him one of the leading forensic experts in the north of England. His was a name that ranked alongside that of Bernard Spilsbury, Sydney Smith and Keith Simpson in the public imagination as one of that handful of men who could apply their scientific knowledge to a scatter of traces and draw from them incontrovertible evidence of guilt. It had been Pritchard from the DPP who had insisted on bringing a high-profile expert into the case. ‘When we’ve got so little to go on, we should defend it with the big guns,’ he’d said, and Superintendent Martin had agreed.

Hammond was a small, precise man whose head was too big for his body. He compensated for his faintly ridiculous appearance with a solemn and portentous manner. Juries loved him because he could translate scientific jargon into layman’s language without ever making them feel talked down to. Stanley had the good sense to keep his questions to a minimum, allowing Hammond to explain for himself.

Hammond made sure the jurors fully appreciated the key points. The blood on the tree in the copse, on the torn underwear in the cave, and on the stained shirt was all from a female with blood group O, which was also Alison’s blood group. The amount of blood on the shirt was consistent with a serious wound. The semen on the shirt had been deposited by a secretor with blood group A. The accused was a secretor with blood group A.

He also explained that forensic examination had revealed scorch marks on the shirt that were entirely consistent with a gun having been fired close to the material. Hammond demonstrated by holding the shirt against himself. George noticed Ruth Carter’s head fall into her hands. Kathy Lomas put an arm around her and pulled her close.

‘As you will see, Your Lordship,’ Hammond explained, ‘the gunshot residue is present on the right cuff and also on the right front of the shirt. If someone wearing this shirt were to have held a gun at fairly close quarters, this is exactly what we’d expect to find. There is no other explanation consistent with this particular arrangement of scorching and staining.’

Highsmith rose for the cross-examination feeling faintly frustrated. This case had not been one of the most successful performances of his life so far. There was so little to get a grip of, and what there was seemed so flimsy. Here at last was something concrete to attack. ‘Professor Hammond, can you tell us what proportion of the population have blood group A?’

‘Approximately forty-two per cent.’

‘And what percentage of the population are secretors whose blood group is present in their other bodily fluids?’

‘Approximately eighty per cent.’

‘Forgive me, mathematics has never been my strong point. What percentage of the population are group A secretors?’

Hammond’s eyebrows flicked up and down. ‘About thirty-three per cent.’

‘So all we can say is that these semen stains could have been left by a third of the male population of this country?’

‘That is correct, yes.’

‘So rather than pointing specifically to my client, the best you can say is that these tests do not rule him out.’ It was not a question and Hammond did not respond. ‘Moving on to this stained shirt. Is there anything that would indicate that the accused was the person wearing this shirt when a shot was fired next to it?’

‘In forensic terms, no.’ Hammond sounded reluctant, as he always did when forced to admit his science could not answer every question.

‘So, anyone could have been wearing the shirt?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the person wearing the shirt need not have been the person who deposited the semen on the other pieces of clothing?’

Hammond paused for a moment. ‘I consider it rather unlikely, but I suppose it is possible.’

‘The amount of blood on the other clothing was significantly less. Would that be consistent with the sort of bleeding that can occur when the hymen is breached?’

‘It’s impossible to say. Some women lose a considerable amount of blood when they lose their virginity. Others none at all. But if the bloodstains on the shirt came from that source, then this woman was haemorrhaging on a potentially fatal scale.’

‘And yet there was no blood at the supposed scene of the crime. Surely if someone had been fatally shot in that cavern, there would have been blood everywhere? Pooled on the floor, splashed on the walls, spattered on the roof? How is it possible that there was no blood except what stained the various garments?’

‘Are you asking me to speculate?’ Hammond asked crisply.

‘I’m asking if, in your experience, it would be possible for someone to be fatally shot in that cavern without the scene exhibiting bloodstains,’ Highsmith said, his words enunciated slowly and clearly.

Hammond frowned and thought for a moment, casting his eyes upwards in the act of memory. At last, he said, ‘Yes. It would be possible.’

Highsmith frowned. But before he could speak, Hammond continued. ‘If, say, the girl was held close and the gun was jammed under her ribs. A bullet travelling with an upward trajectory would destroy the heart, but it might well lodge behind the shoulder blade. If there was no exit wound, there would be no forward spatter of blood. And if she was held close, the back spatter would be absorbed in the larger bloodstain on the shirt.’