Walking into the Ocean (29 page)

For all Ron's anger, Peter discerned some hedging. “There's something else, right?” Peter said.

“Yeah. I haven't raised it with Maris or anyone on the Task Force. But the drug, whatever it was, was enough to knock the girl out for twelve to fourteen hours. She didn't wake up until daylight. She could have frozen to death.”

“What was the temperature that night?”

“I checked. It was two degrees above freezing. But enough for hypothermia.”

“There's something else?”

“Here's my thought. I went up to see where she was found.”

“Found?” Peter interrupted. “She didn't wake up on her own?”

“No. Her uncle discovered her. Brenda's father, brother, uncle and a cousin, who lives with the family, went searching when she failed to come home. The uncle woke her up, he told us, though the girl may have been in the process of reviving when he discovered her. That was at sunrise. He said she was laid out, positioned, fully clothed, like a scene from King Arthur, arms by her side, hair brushed, feet positioned together. A scene worthy of the
Morte d'Arthur
. But it was the stone that struck me, so to speak.”

“What about the stone?”

“It was a massive slab of grey slate. The surface was smooth, almost polished, and it lay there perfectly flat and horizontal. It was unique to the field it lay in; none of the surrounding rocks were like it. Not that anyone could have carried it there.”

“But it bothered you?” Peter said. “It was the natural place to position a body but it still bothered you?”

“It was almost
irresistible
to place the body there, Peter. It reminded us all of Arthurian legends, we all said so. But then, as I was staring at the spot, with the sea in the distance and the wind coming up over the cliff edge, I thought again of Stonehenge. There was no circle of boulders, and there are no standing stones in this area, but it reminded me of one of the pieces of Stonehenge laid on its side. He's a cold son of a bitch.”

“And Stonehenge is thought to be a calendar. And, more important, a place for religious ceremonies.”

“Exactly. Mocking us or not, the Rover likes his rituals.”

Peter exhaled and finally filled the pause. “Ron, I'm likely to be in Whittlesun soon, maybe in four or five days. But I have to avoid your boss.”

“That's for sure. Think you can stay on the Task Force?”

“Doubtful. I have to contact McElroy next.”

“You haven't heard, then?”

“Heard what?”

“McElroy is out. He freaked, right in his own office. It appears he had been reading the autopsy results on all the girls. Finter told me this. Couldn't take it.”

Peter had no response. It occurred to him that Ron, who seemed a little obsessed himself with the autopsies, might never have seen Molly's body; but was it possible that he hadn't viewed the cadaver of Anna Lasker? He had forgotten to probe Ron about his injuries and now he asked.

“Oh, I'm fine,” Hamm said, but his voice was hollow and anxious. “Ultimately just bruises. But the girl in the water . . . Must have been awful for you, grasping her like that. Just awful.”

They hung up, although Peter felt that he was setting Ron adrift in Maris's shark pool. He liked the young detective, and he reminded himself to send along a copy of his notes. The shed was cool but still tolerable; he would move a heater in from the house if it got any colder. The pile of Lasker notes upbraided him from the long trestle table. He owed Bartleben an interim report by the weekend.

He arranged his notes in front of him at the trestle table but had trouble concentrating. Hamm had used “awful” twice in the course of one sentence. The discussion had been about the victims, the three that Jack McElroy had obsessed over, and then Molly Jonas, naked, whitened by the sea, and forever linked to Hamm and Peter. And Hamm had mentioned going to the lab. He had no reason to go to the regional facility, unless it was to examine the Lasker vehicle or discuss the long-delayed final autopsy on Anna Lasker. Was he going there to view the corpses of Anna and Molly?

Every one of the girls — including Daniella Garvena and Brenda Van Loss, who were lucky to be alive — was a student and a local girl. Five of the six were very familiar with the cliffs. Forgetting pure opportunism for a moment, Peter considered the reverse angle.
What if the Rover asked the girls where the best caves and lover's lanes were to be found? Could they show him?
Peter tried to work out why so many women would answer without suspicion.
Because he had an innocent premise for asking the question.

Detective Ron Hamm had more or less invited himself to the Regional Laboratory, and that turned out to be not quite acceptable to the pathology staff.

There were protocols for visitors, including investigating detectives. But he was the coordinating officer on Lasker, as well as an official member of the Task Force on the Rover, and he insisted on speaking with the chief pathologist assigned to each case.

Instead, he got the pathologist on duty for that day, who was not happy. “Both bodies, Jonas and Lasker? Detective Hamm,” he said, “this is not a meat market. We prefer not to put bodies out for display without notice.”

Ron was ready with his justification. “I was at the cliffs the day Molly Jonas was found. I was one of the detectives who found her in the sea.”

They were standing in the Reception room. The pathologist's scepticism showed clearly. If he were to eject the nervous young detective, now would be the time. But it happened that the doctor had in fact attended the autopsy of Molly Jonas and was aware that the two police officers who had retrieved the corpse were being hailed as heroes. The detective's skittishness was bothersome, and he wondered if Hamm had ever viewed a cadaver close up. If not, Molly wasn't a good place to start.

“I can show you the medical report,” he tried.

“I've read the preliminary autopsy,” Ron retorted. “I'm interested in seeing the bruising pattern on her body, particularly the neck.”

His plan had been to appeal to the professional ego of the pathologists by expressing interest in their technical analysis and methods. It worked — at least, the doctor grunted and began to lead him out of Reception and down the big open hallway of the morgue.

He led Ron into a cold room off the corridor and asked him to wait while he checked on the state of Molly's body. After a moment, from the far end of the room, he gestured for Ron to come over to the drawer.

At first, Ron thought that Molly appeared at peace. A sheet was demurely draped over the torso and she lay face up, eyes closed, mouth in a neutral expression. Closer now, he remarked on her paleness. The pathologist pulled back the cover to show the bruises on her throat, still deep blue where they circled the entire neck. The doctor began to describe the injury.

“You are probably wondering. The bruising around the neck remains dark because the scarf that the killer used was pulled very hard, and for a long period until she suffocated. Definitely the cause of death.”

Ron Hamm nodded. He managed to lie to the pathologist and to himself. “Thank you. I just wanted to determine how violent this bastard is.” Hamm's tone implied that this was some form of closure for him.

The doctor appeared to understand, although Hamm could see there was doubt in his eyes. It was unusual for an investigator to dodge viewing the rest of the victim. The pathologist showed his annoyance. “This bastard is plenty violent, Detective. By the way, the body will be handed over to the family tomorrow for preparation and burial. Unlike Mrs. Lasker, who has been here forever.”

This wasn't a lie, since the doctor was unaware that Anna's body had finally been scheduled for release. There had long been confusion about who was authorized — and willing — to receive it.

The pathologist looked at Ron Hamm. “Detective, do you really want to view Anna's body?”

Until then, Ron had managed to conceal his reaction to Molly, but now he felt ready to vomit.
Who has done this? What kind of a man?
There would be no closure until . . . He nodded in response to the doctor. Anna had always been his case. It was overdue that he pay his respects.

Two minutes later, Ron Hamm found himself looking down at Anna Lasker, with her battered face, which would be in repose only if the mortician applied all his skills. Her scarred arms stuck out from each side of the covering sheet. This had been a suicide, he reminded himself, but she had been abused by André Lasker, he still had no doubt. What bothered him was the impossibility of distinguishing between the self-inflicted scars and the impact of the fall onto Upper Whittlesun Beach. Her left cheekbone had been pressed inward; her hair had been torn from her scalp in two spots. He noted the long slash she had made to her left forearm. His constant thought was that there was nothing left of this woman. He had been in the hollow house and it had been meaningless without her human presence, but now she had flown away, her humanity hopelessly gone. In his state, he let out a curse against Peter Cammon for stalling the release of Anna's body to the mortuary.

Over the rest of the afternoon, Peter made a good start on his interim report on Lasker. It would have an open-ended tone, but the time had come for Peter to write what he knew. He put the Rover out of his mind as he began his iteration of the evidence. About 5:00 p.m., the courier arrived with Stan Bracher's forensics summary, and Peter read it through once before slotting it behind his text as the first appendix. He treated Anna's suicide at length, providing a timeline for her hell-bent journey to the cliff edge. He had no doubt that the evidence eventually would convict André of various counts of fraud, and so he gave those crimes their own chapter; material from Sam's nephew at the
DVLA
formed the second appendix and was flagged for follow-up action. Given the draft nature of the document, he began to compile a list of next steps. He proposed old Mrs. Lasker and F.R. Symington for fresh interviews, hoping they might identify some chimerical icon — a South Seas island? — that had beguiled the husband away from his stolid British life. In an additional chapter he advised the Yard to send a special alert to the police agencies of the
EU
countries to which he had exported his sixteen refurbished vehicles over the previous three years.

A quick email to Sir Stephen and another to the director of the Economic and Specialist Crime Branch,
SCD
6, promised a refined, albeit interim, text within two days, which he would deliver in person. He avoided a direct call to Bartleben; he marvelled that the chief, after the inevitable denunciatory calls from Maris and perhaps McElroy, hadn't already called. Within five minutes, Sir Stephen sent back his reply: “OK
.
See U then.”

At seven o'clock, he quit for the day and went inside. Joan had dinner ready. She had refrained from interrupting him in the shed, knowing the crucial stage he was at in the Lasker investigation, and what he was up against. Still, the meal was tense. Joan had been left unsure of her role — which she hoped would be a sounding board, now that she had inside knowledge of the case. She wanted to insist that they drive down to Whittlesun and take care of Father Salvez. Peter was entitled to his instincts, but hers told her that Salvez was somehow pivotal to the case. Perhaps it was the geography of St. Walthram's, positioned in the centre of the Jurassic Coast, next to the point where Anna had died and the husband had vanished. St. Walthram's, though she had never seen it, represented for her a gathering place of souls. It wasn't that she had taken on religion; rather, she admired the priest for his preservation of the great Abbey as a repository of spirits; he presided over the Abbey, spending lonely days there shepherding these ambient spirits into the crumbling church in order to preserve them. Peter had told her that Father Salvez planned to go up there at least one more time. She had seen the endgame of prostate cancer, and a trip to the Abbey would tax his every remaining muscle; it would probably kill him in the process.

They discussed other subjects, Sarah's wanderings and the latest non-news from Michael. “Nothing new re the wedding,” she stated. She had made the quick trip to Leeds and lunched with his fiancée. After dinner, Peter picked up the local newspaper and read it at the dining-room table. He didn't wish to show disrespect by retreating back to the shed, but when Wendie Merwyn called, he took the phone out to the front veranda.

“Chief Inspector, it's Wendie Merwyn here in Whittlesun. Do you have a minute?” Not a moment but a minute.

“Miss Merwyn,” Peter said, formally. He wished she hadn't called; the timing seemed all wrong, and he had no comment to offer on the Van Loss assault. “What are you calling about?”

“Two things, Chief Inspector, but you know I wouldn't call if it wasn't important. First, I rang to give you the coordinates for our streaming video. It's new for
TV
-20. Have you seen our changed format?”

“I don't get your station up here.”

“Hence the streaming video link.” She gave him the
URL
. “We stream our six o'clock news and podcasts of several other specialty news programs.”

“What else?”

“They've launched a new team concept, with myself and Parny on the news desk. Our reporters in the field are mandated to come up with an investigative feature every week. Parny and I anchor it, though he still does the weather too. The public likes us. We're being called the Blondie Twins.”

Peter had the image of two sets of bright teeth and perfect yellow hair. It seemed to him that her enthusiasm was muted.
Is Parny Moss becoming real competition?
Peter would try out the Internet site, but all this seemed secondary news. He wondered if the real reason for her call was the Rover or Lasker. But then he remembered Wendie's surprising question at the press event. Now, on the phone, he understood that she had called about Lasker.