Blood on the Bones (20 page)

After all, Teresa had already proved to be sufficiently naïve to let herself be duped into addiction and prostitution. And as his experience as a policeman had sadly taught him, there were no depths of gullibility into which young girls, who thought themselves still ‘in love’ weren't capable of falling.

Clearly, they would have to speak to Teresa again and try to discover if she had indeed, fallen by the wayside in her vocation and her life. But that would have to wait for a bit. For Rafferty currently had the bit between his teeth and had already set his next course. He wasn't about to be distracted from it now.

The
expert they used for facial reconstruction was based at the university. Professor Amos was, first and foremost, a forensic anthropologist, but he was also a talented artist, one with flair, imagination and a remarkable propensity for accurate facial reconstruction. It was a rare combination of talents.

The professor had done some astonishing reconstructions for them in the past. And Rafferty, as he shook the professor's hand and he and Llewellyn followed him into his office, was hopeful he would be able to perform his magic again.

After he had once more explained precisely who they were and what they wanted – Alexander Amos carried the stereotype of the absentminded professor to its ultimate – Rafferty was never sure whether Amos was truly that absentminded or whether it amused him to pretend be so – the professor, who was still only thirty-eight, nodded his head with its premature shock of grey hair.

‘Of course, Inspector Rafferty. I remember now. You said on the phone that you wanted a reconstruction done on the skull of a man found in the convent at Elmhurst.’

Rafferty nodded. ‘That's right, Professor. We've had no luck in identifying him using other means, so I'm in your hands and hoping you work your usual magic.’

Professor Amos smiled. ‘I suppose, to the lay person, it is magic.’ He stood up, and, with all the eagerness of the born enthusiast, asked, ‘Would you like to see a reconstruction I was working on earlier?’

Rafferty amused by the deliberate use of the ‘Blue Peter’ expression familiar from both their childhoods said, ‘I'd love to. Should I bring the sticky back plastic?’

Professor Amos grinned and shook his head. ‘No sticky back plastic required. Come with me.’ He led the way into his workroom and pointed over to what looked like an almost finished reconstruction. The face appeared incredibly lifelike.

‘This one's a rush job for one of your colleagues in Braintree. The skull wasn't complete, but as your colleagues didn't manage to find the torso, it was all we had, incomplete or not. It was a difficult reconstruction because of that. The skull underpins the basic form and structure of the face and this one came to us in over eighteen separate pieces. It was like piecing together a jigsaw, a three-dimensional jigsaw. We were fortunate in that we had sufficient pieces so that we were able to build them into a skull, cast it and then use it as the foundations for the facial reconstruction.’

‘How do you decide on the form of the face?’ To Rafferty all skulls looked remarkably similar; he found it difficult to understand how anyone could build up a recognisable face from so little.

'As I said, it's the skull that provides the form and structure for the overlaying flesh. The layman, of course, finds it all but impossible to see beyond the dreadful, rictus grin and gaping eye sockets so popular in horror films. And when the skin and muscles decay, the character goes with them. It's our job to put it back. We work from a knowledge of around twenty to thirty five anatomical landmarks – key tissue depths that are scattered all around the face, but their greatest concentration is around the mouth and between the eyes.

'The reconstruction starts with small pegs used as depth indicators for each landmark which are fixed to the skull or a cast of it to indicate the flesh depth and then we apply the clay between the pegs. With these basic flesh depth markers in place, it's possible then to fill the gaps and start on the features, The width of a nose, for example, is roughly the same as the distance between the inner corners of the eyes. The corners of the mouth lie directly below the inner borders of the iris, and lay over the back edges of the canine teeth. Ears are roughly the same length as the nose, apart from in the elderly where the size of the former are proportionately longer.

‘It's not an exact science, of course. Fortunately, an exact likeness is not always necessary. As I'm sure you and Sergeant Llewellyn know from your own experiences. Often it's enough simply to provide a sufficient likeness to jog someone's memory.’

‘Makes you wonder how we managed without it,’ Rafferty commented. ‘We'd certainly be stumped in our current case if facial reconstruction wasn't available. Who was the bright spark who came up with the idea, Professor?’

‘Systematic facial reconstruction really began with the work of a Russian anthropologist back in the 1920s and thirties. He used to measure the tissue depth on the faces of cadavers awaiting dissection at Moscow's medical college.’

Llewellyn nodded. ‘I remember reading about that. Wasn't his most famous reconstruction the face of Tamerlane, the Mongol king?’

The professor beamed at this show of interest. ‘Quite right, sergeant. You're well-informed.’

Rafferty, always hyper sensitive to feelings of inferiority that he wasn't likewise well-informed, forced back the ready frown and made himself concentrate on what the professor was saying.

Professor Amos looked down at the skull his hands were caressing. 'Anyway, to continue the lecture, the human skull, gentlemen, is a veritable mine of information to the anthropologist.

‘This chap, for instance, is a Caucasian. You can tell that by the skull's high and wide appearance and by the fact that neither the cheek bones nor the jaw project. The jaw falls behind a vertical line from the forehead.

‘The Negroid skull, by contrast, can be easily recognised by several features: the wide nose opening, the tendency to larger teeth than other races and that the skull tends to be long and narrow with moderately projecting cheek bones.’

‘OK,’ said Rafferty. ‘I understand that – I think. But how do you know he's male if you haven't even got the pelvis to work on?’

Llewellyn answered before the professor could reply. ‘Because the skull itself, just like the pelvis, is also a prime indicator of gender, not just an indicator of racial characteristics. Isn't that so, Professor?’

Much to Rafferty's irritation, Llewellyn received another approving beam. ‘Right again, sergeant. For the gender, we look at three particular points on the skull: the ridges above the eyes; this bone here, below the ear and this one – the occiput – at the lower back of the skull. The last two are what are known as muscle attachment sites and are more prominent in males than in females.’

‘With you so far,’ Rafferty said in an attempt to regain some of the intellectual ground that he had managed to lose to Llewellyn. ‘So how old would he have been, this chap, if he'd lived to see his next birthday?’

The professor laughed. ‘You've got me there, inspector. It's impossible to be precise on age. But this chap is likely to be somewhere around the late teens or early twenties as two of his four wisdom teeth have appeared.’

‘Very impressive. What's his name? Arnold?’

‘I don't know this one's name. Not yet. But that one,’ he nodded towards another reconstruction. ‘He's called Anthony. We had a confirmed ID just before your arrival.’

The face certainly looked incredibly lifelike. Rafferty wasn't surprised that it had gained a confirmed ID. He just hoped they were as lucky with their cadaver.

‘So when will you be able to fit in our chap?’ Rafferty asked.

‘I've almost finished this one. It's the only customer I have at the moment. So if you send your man's skull over this afternoon, I'll make a start.’

‘Not having his identification has delayed things terribly,’ Rafferty began.

‘Don't tell me, inspector: you want a rush job. Right?’

‘You're a mind reader, too?’

‘No. Let's just say the human nature of the average policeman when it comes to wanting things done is much the same as that of every other policeman. I'll be as quick as I can.’

Rafferty thanked Professor Amos for his time, his explanations and his agreement to get the reconstruction done as speedily as possible, then he left, his mobile clutched to his ear as he went, in order to arrange the transport of their Joe Doe's skull from the mortuary to the professor's work room. Now that he had set the reconstruction in motion, he was keen to waste no more time.

Llewellyn, undoubtedly aware that, in showing off his knowledge about the professor's work, he had trodden on one of Rafferty's most sensitive corns, trailed some way behind. But he trailed with the sprightly step that told Rafferty his sergeant had gained some little amusement, in his dry way, for his nicely judged irritation of his superior officer.

While they waited
for Professor Amos to perform his ‘magic’ Rafferty, with Llewellyn in tow, returned to the convent to again question the postulant, Teresa Tattersall, about her past.

Unsurprisingly, as on the earlier occasion that Rafferty had questioned her about it, she showed a marked reluctance to talk about her previous life at all. It was only when Rafferty appealed to Mother Catherine to speak to the young woman in her care that Teresa agreed to open up further.

Rafferty, believing she would speak more easily out in the open and away from the rest of the community, found them a bench well away from the vegetable garden where Sisters Rita and Benedicta were working. Rafferty sat beside her, with Llewellyn propped a few feet away against a tree, so the young woman didn't feel they were crowding her.

‘You know Mother thinks it would help you to talk about your past experiences more fully?’ Rafferty began.

Teresa smoothed her calf-length brown skirt and raised a distressed gaze to Rafferty. ‘I'm not sure Mother is right in this instance. It's a life I want to put behind me.’

‘Understandably.’ Rafferty was surprised that he hadn't previously noted the remains of the ravages left by drug use. He could only suppose he had unconsciously put the hollow-cheeked pallor and the dark-smudged eyes down to a life too devoted to proving her vocation. ‘And you're succeeding in doing that?’

Teresa bit her lip and began to blink rapidly. It was an indication to Rafferty that the young postulant wasn't at all sure that she was succeeding. Certainly, she didn't attempt a reply.

‘It must be hard for you.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. But the sisters are very supportive. And Mother is patient with me. She tells me to take one day at a time and to pray to God for strength. She has been very kind and has even tried to convince me that my sin wasn't so great that it is beyond God's forgiveness.’ A ragged smile appeared and was as quickly gone. ‘Though I'm not sure I agree with her.’

‘You haven't had any contact with your ex-boyfriend since the sisters agreed to take you in?’

‘Contact? With him? No. I haven't had any dealings with him.’

Unfortunate choice of word, was Rafferty's thought. He couldn't help but wonder what sort of ‘dealing’ she might actually be referring to. However, he didn't push it. If they could find her ex-dealer, it would remove him from the list of possible cadaver candidates. Besides, if they managed to trace the scumbag, Rafferty was sure he would find it far more satisfying to direct any questions to him.

‘I'd like you to let us have the name of your ex-dealer, Miss Tattersall,’ he said.

She looked alarmed at this. ‘Why? I'm not looking to have him punished for what he did to me. I was weak and foolish, I admit that, but that is no one's fault but my own.’

‘Maybe so. But you were encouraged in your weak foolishness by this man.’ Only half ironically, he added, ‘Maybe I can succeed in bringing him to the path of enlightenment? Not to mention prevent him leading other young women astray.’

Even the naïve Teresa seemed to find this possibility unlikely for she looked askance at him before she shrugged. ‘Anything is possible, under God's guidance, inspector. I wish you joy in your quest.’ She paused, then reluctantly added: ‘his name was Ray Payne. He always used to spend a lot of time at the Green Man in the High Street. He used it virtually as his office. I think he gave the landlord a percentage to encourage him to turn a blind eye to his drug dealing.’

Rafferty nodded and noted the information for further investigation. He was curious to note that, like Cecile, Teresa had used the past tense in describing her ex-boyfriend. But maybe that was simply because he was part of the past tense of her life rather than his own. The same reasoning could, of course, apply to Cecile also.

Previously,
Rafferty had wondered if someone had been making threats against the convent – a property developer perhaps, as the convent was on a prime site, just crying out to be purchased and redeveloped. But he had put aside this possibility when it occurred to him that it would, presumably, be the Bishop of the diocese who would make any decision to sell the property rather than the sisters.

But later that day, they learned that someone had indeed been making threats. Though not against the nuns, which was one of the possible reasons Rafferty had thought the body could have ended up in the convent's grounds.

No, the threats had been made against Dr Peterson. Their reluctant, but voluntary informant had been Dr Peterson's wife.

She had rung the station and asked to speak to Rafferty. Intrigued, he had made an appointment for himself and Llewellyn to go and see her.

Dr
and Mrs Peterson lived in a large, detached house in the exclusive residential district on the eastern extremities of Elmhurst. Among the wide and leafy avenues lived some of the more successful of the town's residents. The Oakhill Estate housed doctors like Dr Peterson, barristers like Toby Rufford-Lyle – he of the Made in Heaven investigation and other comfortably off professionals.

Mrs Peterson herself opened the door. She was tall and slim. A nervy slenderness Rafferty thought as he observed the tightly-clenched hands and the anxious way she kept smiling at them once they were all seated in the too-fussy drawing room.