Homeland (45 page)

‘Right-ho.’

Bennett stood back while Elkin and PC Longman removed the groundsheet and attempted to turn the dead man over. The job was harder than it looked. Elkin pulled on one shoulder while PC Longman
stood at the dead man’s chest trying to get a grip on his clothing. At one point Elkin slipped and sat down abruptly, while the constable had to gouge his boot into the mud to get a firmer
foothold, but finally, with a last heave, the body rolled over with heavy reluctance, the outstretched arm describing a wide arc in the air, the hand swiping across Elkin’s face. Elkin jerked
back and hastily wiped the mud from his cheek with rapid flicking movements.

Bennett knelt down and directed PC Longman to shine his torch from above and slightly to one side of the head.

Except for a strip of bare skin down the side of one cheek, the dead man’s face was daubed in glutinous layers of mud which filled one eye socket, obscured the other, and imposed a dark
abstruse landscape over the contours of the nose and mouth. Even so, there was a familiarity to the features that caused Bennett to utter a deep sigh.

PC Longman moved the torch a little. ‘All right, Doctor?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Bennett went through the necessary procedures, feeling for a pulse on the wrist, holding a stethoscope to several points on the chest, before closing his bag and standing up. ‘What about
washing some of the mud away, Constable?’

‘I was going to suggest the very same thing, sir.’

One of the fishermen produced a bucket. Another waded into the river and, scooping up some water, poured it gently over the head of the dead man. The layers of mud bled slowly away to reveal a
sculpted face with a long nose and deep-set eyes.

The constable slanted the torch at a different angle. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I know this lad.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s someone called Lyndon Hanley.’

‘Indeed it is. Yes, that’s precisely who it is. Arthur Hanley’s son.’ He sucked in his breath with an audible rasp. ‘Dear me.’

There was a solemn pause during which the fishermen looked down at the white face with new respect. This was no drunk from Taunton, no suicide from Bridgwater; this was someone from the ridge,
virtually one of their own.

‘All right to move him now, Doctor?’

But Bennett was crouching down to look more closely at a wound on Lyndon’s left temple. ‘If you could shine the torch this way, Constable?’ he asked politely.

On the curve of the frontal bone there was an area of laceration perhaps three inches by two, but it was the underlying indentation to the skull that held Bennett’s attention. The skull
was hard to crack, and even harder to stave in. This injury could only have been caused by a massive blow.

‘Have you notified your superiors yet, Constable?’

‘I’ll be reporting to them directly I reach a telephone, Doctor. I don’t go reporting to no one until I’ve seen the body in case it’s a false alarm, if you
understand me. I’ve been called out to a dead pig before now.’

‘And your superiors will contact the pathologist straight away, will they?’ He knew they would, but he wanted to impart a sense of urgency to the constable.

‘They will indeed,’ said the constable on a gruff note of rebuke, as if Bennett had impugned his own professionalism as well as that of his colleagues. ‘And the coroner too.
That goes without saying. Oh yes indeed, without delay.’

As if to bear this out, PC Longman briskly commanded the fishermen to help lift the body onto the top of the bank. ‘Steady as you go!’ he ordered, though it was he himself, stationed
at the dead man’s left shoulder, who let one arm fall and drag over the lip of the path. Once the body was on the path, they drew the groundsheet over it and weighted the corners down against
the wind.

Unusually, Bennett offered to wait while PC Longman cycled home to make his calls. It wasn’t that he doubted the fishermen’s ability to keep watch, or that after so long in the
profession he felt a sudden urge to keep company with the dead, who were as ever beyond loneliness; it was for Stella’s sake that he felt he must wait, and for the parents’, in the
unlikely but not impossible event that they should ask.

Leaving Bennett to his vigil, the fishermen took their lamps and moved along the river to start fishing at a respectful distance. As Bennett stood alone on the path, the moon vanished behind a
bank of denser clouds, sending a flurry of darkness racing over Curry Moor towards him, covering the silver-flecked sea with deep shadow. Ahead of the cloud came a blast of wind so strong it almost
knocked him off his feet. Retreating, he went and sat on the grass close under the lip of the path where there was a little shelter, and, resting his arms on his knees, hunching his shoulders
against the wind, settled down to wait. For a while he gazed at the fishermen moving about in the lamplight, hauling in shivering netfuls of elvers. But soon the rush and bluster of the night
filled his ears and weighed on his eyelids, and he fell into a troubled doze. A confusion of images mingled with the buffeting of the wind and the ache in his lungs. He was returned to the darkness
and rain of France, trying to organise the hurried evacuation of the dressing station. There was great urgency; the enemy had advanced and a bombardment was about to begin. But the transport failed
to arrive, no one could tell him why. He felt the desperation of foreknowledge. He kept warning the orderlies to prepare for an attack, but they looked at him pityingly and took no notice. And then
the foul air was upon them. He felt it catch in his lungs, and began the long painful struggle for breath.

Waking with his forehead slumped on his folded arms, he jerked his head upright. The asthma attack might yet be averted if he breathed slowly and systematically. He was always telling his lung
patients to resist the urge to snatch at their breath, to try to ignore the sense of suffocation and panic and concentrate on a single calming image, but he knew as well as any of them how easy
this was to say and how difficult to achieve.

Around him the darkness was lifting, the fishermen and their lights were gone, and the river was in turmoil, coursing away on the fast-falling tide, the wind kicking against the flow in angry
ruffles and peaks. He fixed his eyes on the far bank and counted his breaths in and out to the image of the men who had built and maintained the bank over the centuries and the lives they had
led.

The attack passed, but from habit and prudence he kept counting. At some point he must have drifted into another light doze, because the next thing he knew he was waking to the sound of
approaching voices and the sight of PC Longman looming up to offer him a hand up. Behind the constable were two other uniformed policemen and two detectives in plain clothes. The senior officer was
a trim, wiry, businesslike man of forty-odd who introduced himself as Detective Inspector Shearer.

When PC Longman had removed the groundsheet, Inspector Shearer crouched down to scrutinise the body. After a while, he said, ‘Any thoughts, Doctor?’

‘I’m no pathologist, Inspector.’

‘But the injury here – it’s serious?’

Bennett got down on one knee to take another look at the strong young face. The indentation in the skull was both deeper and longer than it had appeared in the torchlight: probably
three-quarters of an inch deep and some three inches long, extending at an angle from the eyebrow to the hairline. The skin was lacerated along the length of the injury, and was completely split at
the deepest point, exposing some brain tissue. ‘Yes, it’s serious.’

‘A possible cause of death?’

‘I really couldn’t say.’

‘Don’t worry, Doctor, I won’t quote you. Strictly off the record. For my ears only.’

‘Very well. In my opinion it would almost certainly have been fatal. Not necessarily instantaneously, but within a few hours, a few days at the most. After such an impact the brain swells,
a great deal of pressure builds up inside the skull, and the brain tissue not immediately destroyed by the blow becomes irretrievably damaged.’

In the cold flat light Bennett saw some marks he hadn’t noticed earlier: a cut on the right cheekbone surrounded by an area of bruising. This bruising was well-established. It served to
emphasise what he had already seen but not fully absorbed – that there was almost no bruising around the indentation in the skull. The implication of this was unmistakable – that the
blow to the temple was virtually simultaneous with death.

He said, ‘He could have drowned first, of course.’

The inspector gave him a long pensive stare. ‘Yes indeed. Any thoughts on how long he’d been in the water?’

‘I couldn’t begin to speculate, I’m afraid. I can only tell you that when I first examined the body it was quite cold.’

‘That’s the trouble with water,’ said the inspector cryptically.

‘You’ve arranged a pathologist?’

The inspector nodded. ‘The forensic expert from Bristol.’ With a last squint at the head injury, he straightened up and began to look up and down the river with his quick, eager
eyes.

Bennett stood up more slowly. He volunteered, ‘The river was high when the body was found.’

Shearer gave a preoccupied nod. ‘Indeed?’

‘And the tide still coming in. Though quite slowly, I believe.’

Shearer glanced down at the racing torrent before resuming his survey of the further reaches of the river. ‘Yes . . . thank you, Doctor.’ His eyes still on the horizon, he called
sharply to one of his men. ‘Willis?’

The second plain-clothes man stepped forward. ‘Sir.’

‘We’ll be needing a map marked with the places that offer access to the river, both above and below this point. Access and
near
access. Bridges, paths, roads that finish at or
near the river. Got me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And, Willis?’

‘Sir.’

‘Nothing that’s currently under water, if you don’t mind.’

‘Sir.’

Sighting PC Longman, the inspector beckoned him over. Before the two men had a chance to speak, Bennett said, ‘If you’ve no more need of me, Inspector?’

‘Of course, Doctor. Thank you for your assistance.’

‘The family – you’ll be notifying them soon?’

‘Within half an hour.’

Bennett hesitated. He knew there was something he should mention, something that followed on from a recent train of thought, but the idea hovered on the periphery of his consciousness, refusing
to form. Defeated, he said weakly, ‘Well, goodbye then.’

The inspector offered him a fleeting professional smile before fixing his eager eyes once more on the task ahead.

Bennett slept for an hour and woke feeling hot and weak and troubled. The fever was still on him, there was a sharp catch in his lungs, he had the Hanley family to visit, and
the unformed thought still pressed on him, just out of reach on the edges of his mind. Marjorie brought him tea, which he followed with a cup of coffee made with the best part of a week’s
ration. But neither the tea nor the strong coffee did much for his fatigue, still less his head. It was a struggle to get through his morning visits, and when he set out for the Hanleys he broke
into a damp sweat, his stomach constricted with the threat of nausea, and the daylight seemed unbearably bright.

There were two cars outside the Hanleys’ house and two more in the yard. It was a job to decide where to park. Manoeuvring at last into a corner of the yard, he pulled on the handbrake and
looked up to find himself gazing at the tractor shed. It might have been the sight of the empty space where Arthur Hanley’s car normally stood, or the memory of Lyndon opening the front door
to him, or a blend of other half-realised images, but the elusive thought finally slid into his mind. It was so obvious that he sighed aloud. It was, of course, the matter of the motorbike. He
should have told the police about Lyndon Hanley’s motorbike so that they could start to search for it. After more thought, he gave a softer sigh, this time of relief, as it came to him that
they would certainly know about it by now, indeed would probably have found it, and that his responsibility, such as it was, was over.

The front door was answered by Stella’s father George, a large man with a florid complexion who in the long summer afternoons batted at number eight. George gave an awkward smile.
‘Good of you to come.’

On the far side of the hall Stella’s mother appeared briefly in the living-room doorway to see who had arrived, while another woman looked out of the kitchen before shyly retreating
again.

‘How are they bearing up?’ Bennett asked.

The language of grief did not come easily to George. After some searching, he muttered, ‘Janet’s taking it pretty bad.’

‘And Arthur?’

‘I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. He’s been too busy. Didn’t get back from the police till eleven, and now he’s gone off to see them again.’

‘Any news on how Lyndon got into the river?’

George shook his head. ‘Nothing yet.’

‘Have they found the motorbike?’

‘Not that I’ve heard.’

From the living room Bennett could hear the soft murmur of female voices and, rising over them now and again, a low moan. ‘Janet’s in there, is she?’

George nodded and, gesturing briefly for Bennett to go ahead, took a small apologetic step towards the kitchen to show that he would not be going with him.

As Bennett started across the hall he heard light feet on the stairs and looked up to see Stella coming rapidly down. Her eyes were fixed urgently on him as though she’d heard his voice
and was coming specially to see him, an impression reinforced by the staying gesture she made as she covered the last few feet between them, a lift of one hand, a single shake of the head, to
forestall him from speaking.

George had paused to see what was happening, but as Stella drew Bennett further into the hall he ducked his head and vanished into the kitchen.

Stella’s face was very white, her eyes swollen from crying, the area around her nostrils inflamed from the chafing of a wet handkerchief. She said rapidly in a voice that shook a little,
‘Doctor, please – they’re going to get completely the wrong idea unless you go and tell them. It’s that fool Frank Carr. He came here with some story about a fight –
wanting to know if he should go and tell the police. And of course Uncle Arthur couldn’t
wait
to go and tell them. Longing for a reason, you see. Longing for someone to blame. And now
they’ve gone to the police in Taunton. Please, Doctor,’ she pleaded breathlessly. ‘Please go and tell them – before it gets out of hand. Tell them you know Wladyslaw. Tell
them he’d never harm a soul.’