The Corpse's Tale (Trevor Joseph Detective series) (2 page)

He headed for the shed where he kept his tools, then remembered he hadn’t put his axe away the day before. He’d left it in the chopping block behind the shed. He hoped a child hadn’t found it and hurt themselves.

Something glittered on the path and he picked it up. It was an earring, a gold one. There was dirt on it and he tried to rub it clean but the mark wouldn’t come off. Sammy bounded ahead. He dropped the earring into his pocket and ordered Sammy back sharply. He was cross with Sammy for running off the night before. His Mam had told him to have more patience because the dog was young. But his last dog, Toby, had never run off, not even when he’d been a puppy.

Sammy slunk back with his tail between his legs. Dai crouched to pat him and saw a girl’s legs behind the shed. He leaned forward. She was lying on the grass next to a tomb. An axe – his axe, he recognised the marks on the handle – in her head. He was so frightened he couldn’t breathe.

He knew he should try to help her. The axe must be hurting her, so he lifted it. It came out easily. Too easily. He fell back on the path and cried out. His hands and shirt were covered with blood. And the girl still hadn’t moved.

He looked up and saw Mr Tony staring at him.

‘Someone put my axe in her head, Mr Tony. I took it out.’

The vicar’s eyes rounded in horror.

‘It wasn’t me that put my axe in her head, Mr Tony. She’ll tell you.’ Dai looked back at the girl. Her head was covered in blood. She was naked. His mam had told him it wasn’t right to look at naked girls. He turned away. But he could still see her foot. A fly landed on her toe. She still didn’t move and she was stiff. As stiff as the animals the people in the village sometimes asked him to bury.

‘It wasn’t me that did it, Mr Tony,’ he whispered. ‘It wasn’t me.’

C H A P T E R T W O

T
EN YEARS IN PRISON
had changed Dai Helpful. He had learned not to get noticed. He never spoke unless someone spoke to him first. He stepped out of everyone’s way. He never hit anyone back, no matter how hard they hit him. He also learned to look as though he was listening when he wasn’t. He did that because of the bad language. His mam hated bad language. She told him so when she visited him. And reminded him in her weekly letters.

The judge finished speaking and the courtroom fell silent. Dai shuffled nervously in the dock. He didn’t like courtrooms. There were no windows. The air was hot and stale. And people in courtrooms used big words he didn’t understand.

Mr Smith was smiling at him, but Mr Smith had smiled at him the last time he’d been in a courtroom. Then he’d been made to sit for weeks and weeks, listening to people tell lies about him and Anna Harris. He hadn’t been allowed to say what had really happened that morning in the churchyard. Afterwards, he had been sent to prison. And there he had stayed until now.

The judge leaned forward on the bench. ‘Mr Morgan?’

Dai jumped at being spoken to directly, but he knew what to say. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you understand what I’ve just said?’

Dai was afraid the judge would be angry with him for not paying attention, but he shook his head.

The judge turned to Mr Smith. ‘Please explain the proceedings to your client.’

Alan Smith touched Dai’s arm. He was still smiling. But Dai was too upset to smile back. Alan Smith was his “counsel”. Dai didn’t know what “counsel” meant but he knew Mr Smith was his friend. He had visited him in prison, especially at Christmas when it had been difficult for his mam to travel because the trains didn’t run.

Mr Smith had brought him comics, Air Fix kits and sweets. More important he had listened to him. And Dai felt that Mr Smith believed him when he said he hadn’t murdered Anna Harris. Anna had been kind to him. She had been his friend 

‘David.’ Alan Smith’s smile grew wider. ‘You’ve won.’

Dai slipped his arms further up the sleeves of the jacket of the suit Alan had given him for court. It was the same one he had worn ten years before and he had lost weight in prison. ‘Won what, Mr Smith?’ 

The judge said, ‘You’re free to go, Mr Morgan.’

Dai heard the judge but he didn’t believe him.

‘You’re free, Mr Morgan,’ the judge repeated.

Alan helped him from the dock. ‘We ’ l l telephone your mam to tell her you’re coming home, David, and then I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and a cake.’

Dai looked from Alan back to the judge. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You’re free, David,’ Alan repeated. ‘You don’t have to go back to prison.’

‘My kits – my drawings – ’

‘We’ll send someone to get your things, David.’

Dai couldn’t believe it. ‘I don’t have to go back to prison?’

‘No. The judge has looked at the evidence and declared your conviction unsafe.’ Alan said slowly.

‘I won’t ever say I killed Anna Harris because I didn’t.’ Dai clamped his lips shut.

Alan remembered the parole board meetings. David had been offered early release from his life sentence on condition he admitted his crime and showed remorse. But David had the mind of a ten-year-old boy trapped in the body of a six-and-a-half-foot, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound body builder. There were a lot of things that he didn’t understand. But he knew right from wrong because his mam had taught him. David knew it was right to tell the truth and it was wrong to tell lies. He wouldn’t say sorry for killing Anna Harris because he hadn’t killed her.

‘You don’t have to say that you killed Anna Harris, David,’ Alan said. ‘The judge has set you free because your conviction is unsafe.’

Dai didn’t understand “conviction is unsafe”. ‘He knows I didn’t kill Anna Harris, Mr Smith?’

‘The judge says there’s a possibility that you didn’t.’

Dai’s voice rose angrily. ‘But I didn’t kill her, Mr Smith, you know that.’

‘I know, David. I have always believed you. Come on, it’s time for you to go home.’

‘Home to Mam?’

‘ Yes, David, home to your mam,’ Alan echoed.

‘Will everyone in the village know that I didn’t kill Anna Harris now, Mr Smith? My mam knows, but there’s Sergeant George, the Reverend and Mrs Tony, and Mr and Mrs James from the Angel, and Anna’s mam…’

‘I don’t know about the people in the village, David,’ Alan replied honestly. ‘But the case will be reopened. The police will look at the evidence again.’

‘Sergeant George…’

‘Retired years ago, David, but the police from Llan won’t be looking at the case. They’ll bring in new police officers from another force.’

‘And they’ll know I didn’t kill Anna, Mr Smith?’

‘They’ll study the evidence, David.’ Alan nodded to the court officers clearing the courtroom. ‘Let’s telephone your Mam and get you home.’

Home. Dai pictured the village. His Mam’s cottage in Church Row. He crossed off the days on his calendar every morning so he knew it was July. He had seen blue sky and green leaves on the trees through the small window in the van that had brought him to court. The roses and lavender would be blooming in his m a m ’s garden. His mam would open the kitchen door and hug him. There’d be a fire in the range and the smell of roasting chicken, and apple and sage stuffing, roast potatoes and gravy.

‘Home, David.’ Alan pressed the searc h button on his mobile phone, and found David’s mother’s telephone number.

The call came through to Superintendent Bill Mulcahy’s office at six o’clock. He had received a tip-off days ago that the “Churc h y a r d Murder” would be referred to his division if David Morgan won his appeal. He spoke to HQ for twenty minutes, put down the receiver and walked into the office next door.

Newly promoted Inspector Trevor Joseph was sitting behind his desk shovelling files from his in-tray into his out-tray.

‘Finished wrapping up the Jubilee Street murder, Joseph?’

‘Last of the paperwork, sir.’ Trevor eyed the Superintendent warily. His boss had already congratulated him on the job and he wasn’t given to repeating praise.

Mulcahy sat in the visitor’s chair. ‘You been following the David Morgan case?’

‘The Welsh churchyard murder?’

‘That’s the one. Do you have any thoughts on it?’

‘I don’t know anything other than what I’ve read in the papers.’ Trevor’s sense of unease grew. His honeymoon had been short and he’d been planning to take his wife on a break.

‘What’s that?’ Mulcahy asked.

‘Like every other story in the press it depends on the rag you’re reading. You can take your pick as to whether David Morgan is a dangerous sub-human monster or a sad, brain-damaged man with the mind of a child.’

‘How would you like to find out the truth?’

Trevor dropped the last file into his out-tray. ‘I have put in for a week’s leave, sir.’

‘Postpone it until after you’ve re-opened and investigated the Morgan case and I’ll make it two.’

‘And if something else comes up in the meantime?’ Trevor knew how worthless Mulcahy’s promises were.

‘I’ll dump whatever it is on someone else.’

‘Really, sir?’

Mulcahy chose to ignore Trevor’s sarcasm. ‘I’ll ask them to send you the paperwork, then.’

Trevor knew from experience there was no point in fighting the inevitable.  ‘I’ll need a team.’

‘Who do you want?’

‘Peter Collins.’

‘He’s a sergeant in the Drug Squad, not Serious Crimes.’

‘He’s a good copper.’

Collins had the reputation of being the most difficult officer in the force to work with. For some reason that Mulcahy had never worked out, Trevor Joseph got on with the man. ‘Have him.’

‘Sarah Merchant.’

‘No chance, she’s the best research assistant and computer expert we have.’

‘Which is why I want her. You know what it’s like to go through cold files.’

Mulcahy thought for a moment. ‘Wrap the case up as quickly as you can. I want her back here in two weeks.’

‘That might be pushing it, sir.’

‘ You’re going to Mid Wales, you’ll have nothing to do but work. Patrick O’Kelly has the post-mortem files on the victim. Pass my apologies on to your wife.’ Bill went to the door.

‘Do you have any thoughts on the Morgan case, sir?’ Trevor asked.

‘Thoughts,’ Mulcahy repeated. ‘I have plenty, Joseph. As for the truth – it’s anyone’s guess and for you to find out. Good luck.’

Patrick O’Kelly was drinking coffee from a specimen jar in his office in the mortuary when Trevor called the next morning. Aware of P a t r i c k ’s workload, Trevor had made an appointment. Patrick had the file open and the photographs ready.

‘Professor Norman Robbins did the original post-mortem, retired now. Thorough guy, he did a brilliant job but you lot slipped up.’

‘We did?’ Knowing better than to expect a “good morning” from Patrick, Trevor sat in the visitor’s chair.

‘Your lot sent less than half the samples Robbins took for analysis. But they’ve survived. We found them in the freezer.’ Patrick laid a photograph of Anna Harris lying on a mortuary slab, on the desk. Her face was grey in death but still beautiful – and unmarked. Her skull, split across the crown of her head, gaped open, revealing grey-green brains. ‘Death was caused by a single massive blow to the head.’

‘Instantaneous?’

‘No, but within minutes, in Robbins’ estimation based on blood loss, less than five. He took dozens of swabs. There was evidence she’d had sex shortly before death but there was no bruising or injury to suggest she was f orced. Robbins made a list of significant findings.’ O’Kelly referred to his notes. ‘A stray pubic hair, black – not blonde like Anna’s – was stuck on her upper thigh with semen. He bagged it and the semen, but it was never sent to the lab.’

‘So we have DNA.’

‘Of someone she almost certainly had sex with, but not necessarily her killer. There were scrapings of skin and blood beneath her fingernails…’

‘You said there was no sign of force.’

‘Not as in a typical rape. You expect bruising to the thighs, ribcage or the arms if the victim was held down. All you have here are skin scrapings.’

‘Perhaps she saw her killer coming at her and lashed out?’

‘It’s for you to paint the picture, Joseph. All I can give you are the facts.’

It wasn’t the first time Patrick’s cold scientific approach had irritated Trevor. ‘Was the skin tested for DNA and blood group?’

‘Not tested at all. Did David Morgan have scratches on him when he was picked up?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If he did, it might explain why the police didn’t bother.’ O’Kelly set a photograph of Anna that had been taken in the churchyard next to the one that had been taken in the mortuary. ‘Spot the difference.’

‘She was wearing a watch when she was found. It was removed for the post mortem. That’s standard procedure.’