Murder Club - Mark Pearson [47]
‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors.’
His eyes opened and seemed to shine as he gazed out on his snow-covered lawn.
‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’
33.
DEREK ‘BOWLALONG’ BOWMAN contemplated the skeletal form laid on his forensic-examination desk.
‘So what have we learned?’ he asked his young assistant.
‘Definitely male.’
‘Yes.’
‘A tall man, somewhere in the six-foot range.’
‘Correct.’
‘Been in the ground for some twenty-odd years.’
‘Probably.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Ah, now that’s the thirty-two-thousand-dollar question.’
Lorraine smiled. ‘I thought it was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Derek?’
‘Was, Lorraine. Don’t you know there’s a recession on?’ He stepped up to the skeleton. ‘Come and give me a hand.’
Lorraine slipped on a pair of latex gloves and joined him at the examination table.
‘These skull fragments, if you can give me a hand holding them together.’ The doctor held the section of skull that had been broken into four pieces. ‘You take those two pieces and hold them together with mine.’
They each picked up two pieces of broken bone and held them together, forming the gap that was missing from the left-hand side of the skull.
Bowman smiled grimly. ‘Can you see that?’
‘That wasn’t made by a workman’s spade.’
‘No, you can see here where the spade shattered the skull – the edges are different, whiter. But the edges here are as brown as the rest of the bone.’
‘Which means that it was made at the same time, or thereabouts, as the body was put into the ground.’
‘Exactly so, Lorraine.’
‘He was shot?’
Derek Bowman looked down at the ragged hole formed in the centre of the bone pieces they were holding together. ‘Looks that way: left temple, small-calibre pistol, close-range.’
‘No exit wound for the bullet.’
‘No.’ The forensic pathologist put down the two fragments he was holding and picked up the larger section of skull, turning it over. The openings to the skull were packed with earth. As he held it up, a worm wriggled loose and Lorraine grimaced.
‘Once we’ve cleaned this up, I should imagine we will find it still in situ.’
‘The workman was right, then.’
‘Indeed. It looks like Jack Delaney has got a murder on his hands!’
34.
DI TONY HAMILTON was a tall well-built man in his thirties. He had dark hair, blue eyes and was dressed in an immaculate suit. He could have been Jack Delaney’s younger brother, if it wasn’t for his accent, his Protestantism and his all-round clean-cut image. Whereas Jack Delaney charmed people, unaware that he was doing so – his rough moodiness attracting women against their better sensibilities – Tony Hamilton used his charm as he used his intelligence. Like a tool. But the woman standing on the doorstep of her house and giving him a cool, level gaze was going to be impervious to any charm he could muster. He was pretty certain about that.
‘Didn’t take you long,’ said Stephanie Hewson.
‘Do you mind if I come in?’ asked the detective.
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘I need to speak to you formally. It might be more comfortable here than down at the police station.’
‘Is that a threat?’
DI Hamilton smiled at her reassuringly. ‘Not at all, Ms Hewson.’
‘Why is it, then, that I feel like it’s going to be me on trial now?’
‘You have made some very serious allegations.’
‘I have simply told the truth.’
‘And yet a man has spent a year in prison when, if you had told the truth earlier, he might have been released sooner.’
The woman looked at him for a moment, containing her anger. Then she seemed to calm herself, shivering almost, and her eyes dropped from his gaze to look at the detective’s highly polished shoes.
‘Why don’t you come in for a nice cup of tea then?’ she said in a flat voice, unable to hide the sarcasm inherent in her invitation.
A few minutes later, she handed Tony Hamilton a mug of tea. The mug was