The Altered Case (7 page)

‘Yes, ma'am?' Carmen Pharoah replied curiously.

‘But, just now, in running my eye along the line of skulls, three of the females have the sort of familial similarity that you would expect in people who are related, but the fourth, the taller female, is different. Two females grew up to look like their mother, but the third female, she is taller because she is not a relative. Her height is not the result of a dormant gene, it is because she is, or was, wholly unrelated. The DNA results will confirm whether I am correct or not, but now I think that this is not a family of five, but a family of four plus a fifth unrelated person who was murdered and buried with them. Of that I am sure, as sure as I can be without the DNA results.'

‘Oh,' Carmen Pharoah gasped as she looked at the skeletons, ‘but the fifth skeleton, the tall girl, she is or was of the same age as the daughters I think you said, ma'am.'

‘Yes . . . prior to tests confirming age . . . but yes,' Dr D'Acre replied, ‘the younger three females were of the same age group, late teens to early twenties.'

‘So a family plus a friend of the daughters?'

Dr D'Acre nodded. ‘Yes, possibly, possibly. The tall girl was just in the wrong place at the wrong time or she was murdered for another, unconnected motive, and since a grave was being dug anyway . . . As I said, a very unpleasant tale is unfolding and it's just got a little bit more unpleasant.'

If anyone, if any single soul on this planet, thought Hennessey – even before he and Somerled Yellich saw the farmhouse of Blue Jay Farm – harbours the illusion that farming is a pleasant and a romantic occupation, then let him or her come here to Blue Jay Farm with its delightful but wholly misleading name. Blue Jay Farm might sound, he felt, as if it belonged in a children's book but the first thing that met Hennessey and Yellich's gaze was a wooden building, just one storey high, which was of such misshapen appearance because of age and rottenness that Hennessey felt it would collapse in the next strong wind or at the push of a man of but average strength. For his part, Yellich was astounded that the structure was still more or less upright. Two rusting motor cars stood in the long grass beside the building and clearly had not moved in many, many years, and which equally clearly would never move again. Beside the cars stood rusting bed frames, an old-fashioned wood burning stove and an equally ancient mangle. Strewn about amid the weeds and the long grass were rusted metal buckets, the bottoms of which had long vanished with decay, old prams and old bicycle frames. A hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed youth stared at Hennessey and Yellich with what seemed to the officers to be an attitude of detached curiosity, as if wondering who the officers were and what their business at the farm was, but not questioning them or seeming threatened or concerned by their presence. It was, thought Hennessey, as if the youth was looking at a rare bird which had lighted there, the arrival of which might merit a passing comment over that day's evening meal.

George Hennessey and Somerled Yellich walked silently onwards, nodding to the youth as they passed. The youth, for his part, remained motionless to the point that he reminded Hennessey of one who was held in a passive catatonic state. Only the sunken eyes of the youth moved as Hennessey and Yellich made their cautious and unsteady way across the farmyard. The youth made no response to Hennessey's cheery, ‘Hello there,' and Yellich's equally cheery, ‘Good morning to you; lovely day.' Not a sound passed the lips of the youth, not a fraction did his head even nod in response to either officer, but yet his eyes remained fixed upon the visitors. Hennessey and Yellich walked onwards, past the rotten wooden shed, beyond which, to the right-hand side, was the farmhouse. When seen, the house revealed itself to be a low, squat-looking building which, by its state of disrepair, blended neatly with the wooden shed and general detritus of the yard that had greeted Hennessey and Yellich upon their arrival. The wood of the door and the window frames were clearly rotten, badly so, with peeling paintwork. many of the black tiles on the roof, which sagged in the middle, were loose, dislodged and, in some cases, missing altogether.

The officers walked slowly up to the door of the house and Hennessey knocked on it with a certain respect and a certain, quite unusual, gentleness. It did not seem to him to be at all appropriate that he should knock loudly, despite being a police officer conducting a murder inquiry. Hennessey intuitively felt that neither the house was structurally strong enough, nor the family emotionally strong enough for either to withstand a sudden and an aggressive declaration of the presence of two police officers. Further, they had, after all, been seen by, he assumed, one member of the household and he further sensed that the farm had an atmosphere of wariness, of being hostile to strangers, and said atmosphere reached him, strongly so.

The woman who opened the door, and did so slowly and cautiously in response to Hennessey's soft tap, tap, was middle-aged, short and stocky, with large hands, so observed Hennessey. The woman's hair was an unkempt mop of grey and black and her eyes a matching steel-grey colour. Her woollen cardigan was grey, her blouse was grey, her tweed skirt was grey and her legs ended in a pair of faded red carpet slippers. The lady of the house held eye contact with Hennessey and then with Yellich, and did so with evident coldness and aggression.

Just as Hennessey was about to introduce himself and Yellich the woman turned and yelled into the gloom of the house, ‘Father! Father!' She then turned and walked into said gloom, leaving Hennessey on the doorstep being stared at from behind by the sunken-eyed youth, who had followed the officers as they had walked towards the house but who had always retained a wary distance. Moments later a man appeared at the door, emerging slowly from its interior and he, like the woman, Hennessey and Yellich noted, was also short and squat. He wore baggy brown trousers, an unclean white shirt and a black waistcoat. He wore heavy industrial footwear. The man was, evidently, thought Hennessey, ‘Father', and speaking in a thick Yorkshire accent he said gruffly, ‘Mother said you wanted something?' He then reached into his trouser pocket and retrieved a small pipe which he placed in his mouth and commenced to suck it loudly.

‘Yes, we do.' Hennessey produced his ID and showed it to the man. ‘I am DCI Hennessey and this gentleman is DS Yellich, of Micklegate Bar police station, of the Vale of York.'

‘Aye.' The man scrutinized Hennessey's warrant card and gave but a cursory glance at Yellich's warrant card. ‘Micklegate Bar, that be in York itself.'

‘Yes, quite right, sir, it is just without the walls at the top of Queen Street, at the junction with Blossom Street.'

‘Them road names mean nothing to me, but I do know the bars . . . the gateways in the walls. Mind, I have not been in York since . . . well, since I don't know when. You'll be here in connection with the goings on in the five acre?'

‘The five acre?'

‘The field by the wood near Catton Hill village, the police vehicles, the equipment, the mechanical digger, the blow-up tent and the screen, and the men with cameras. So what is happening?'

‘We have unearthed human remains,' Hennessey replied, relieved that the man, unlike the youth, was obviously willing to talk.

‘I thought as much and I told mother as much. Either dead bodies or digging up the loot from a bank robbery. Not much else would cause the bobbies to dig a big hole in the ground, especially in a wet field like the five acre, hard work that would be. So, human remains . . . a grave? Well, dare say you wouldn't be knocking on my door if you had dug up a dead dog.'

‘Hardly, sir.' Hennessey forced a smile.

‘I did wonder,' the man replied. ‘Thought it had to be something important.'

‘You saw us, I assume?' Yellich asked.

‘Aye . . . the country is like that. You might not see anybody but it would be wrong to think that you were not being watched, or heard. You know the old saying, “The fields have eyes and the woods have ears”? It's very true is that old saying. So yes, I saw you, so did a few others. So why come here? Why knock on my old door?'

‘Mr Farrent told us you rent that field . . . so we came here to pick your brains.'

‘Farrent . . .' The man made a low, growling sound.

‘You are Mr Bowler, Mr Francis Bowler?'

‘Aye, that I am.'

‘And you do rent that field, the five acre?'

‘Aye, that I do . . . and another two hundred and fifty more on top of that.'

‘A large farm?'

‘Only a townie would think that it was large. You need to farm the best part of a thousand acres to make a decent living. I rent the land and the house but will Farrent put up any money towards the upkeep?' He tapped the door frame. ‘See . . . rotten . . . it'll fall down on top of us any day now.'

‘Yes . . .' Hennessey replied.

‘Farrent owns a lot of land round here, we rent it, me and tenant farmers like me. We rent it and we work it. Prices for produce are going down and Farrent still puts up the rent. You'll have been to his house?'

‘Yes, we have, yesterday.'

‘Aye well, I haven't ever been there but they say it's a nice bit of brickwork . . . so that's what you live in if you own the land and sit back while others work it.' Francis Bowler raised a finger and indicated the interior of his house. ‘I'd invite you in but you're safer out here. You can see better out here as well; it's a bit dark in there.'

‘So I see,' Hennessey replied as he noted the dim and gloomy interior of the house, and as he and Yellich both detected the strong smell of questionable hygiene mixed with the unmistakable odour of damp. ‘Thank you anyway.' Hennessey paused. ‘We have information which suggests that the body or bodies were buried about thirty years ago. In fact we can be more precise and say that they were buried thirty years ago this month. Were you the tenant of Blue Jay Farm then, thirty years ago?'

‘Aye . . . we took over the tenancy ten years before he were born.' Francis Bowler made a slovenly indication to the youth who still stood some distance behind Hennessey and Yellich. ‘Don't mind him, gentlemen, he's harmless. The doctor said something about oxygen starvation when he was born, but if you give him a job he'll do it; can't drive the tractor though, or any vehicle but he carries his weight. He's my son, he's part of the farm . . . he's twenty-two years old now . . . so yes . . . we came here thirty-two years ago.'

‘I see,' Hennessey nodded.

‘He's our last born, mother and I had two before him. Both left home now but he's all the help I need. I contract out the harvesting, that really eats into any profit I make, but it's all we can do . . . we being me and the other tenant farmers round here. We don't have a lot of money coming in and we have to pay for the harvest.'

‘Still cheaper than buying a combine harvester and having it stand idle for fifty weeks of the year,' Yellich commented.

‘Aye . . . possibly,' Bowler growled.

‘So . . .' Hennessey asked, ‘were you aware of any activity in the five acre field thirty years ago this month? It is a long time ago, but a large hole was dug. It would seem to me to be an obvious thing and would not have gone unnoticed.'

‘Aye . . . you'd think so, I'll grant you that and it could only have been done at one of two times of the year, that is just after the winter wheat has been harvested and before the summer wheat is sowed, and just after the summer wheat has been harvested before the winter wheat goes in. We have two wheat crops a year, you see, so any hole like that would be dug after harvest and before the next ploughing and sowing. September, after the summer wheat is harvested, is when I used to take my family on holiday; low season you see, cheaper rates, much cheaper. We went to a holiday camp in Skegness.'

‘I see.' Hennessey felt the damp from within the house grip his chest, making it difficult to breath even outside the building. ‘So you would not have been here then?'

‘Unlikely, chief, not very likely at all in fact, and I wouldn't have noticed anything when I returned from Skeggie because the five acre is a wet field, like I just said, and any disturbance would not be seen after a day or two. I mean by that that it wouldn't seem to be seen . . . might be a gap in the stubble but that would be all and then it would be ploughed over and you know, quite honestly, when a farmer ploughs his old field, you don't look forwards all the time like when you're driving a car, you look backwards at the plough. That's the only way to make sure that you're ploughing a straight furrow, just glance forwards once every few seconds or so but mostly you look backwards, keeping the plough level with the edge of the field or level with the previous furrow. Every old farmer likes his straight furrow, take it from me.'

‘So,' Hennessey said, ‘you'd likely drive over the disturbed soil and not see it because you'd be looking backwards?'

‘Yes.' Francis Bowler sucked on his empty pipe. ‘That's exactly what I am saying, chief, exactly what I am saying.'

‘And once the plough has gone over the disturbed soil,' Hennessey continued, ‘it is then indistinct from the rest of the field?'

‘Indistinct?' Bowler raised his eyebrows. ‘You have a good way with words, sir, I like that word . . . indistinct . . . but yes, it would be indistinct from the rest of the field. You put it very well, sir.'

‘Thank you.' Hennessey inclined his head at Francis Bowler's compliment, ‘Your information is very useful. The grave was about four feet down . . . deeper in fact . . . the topmost bodies were four feet below the surface. There were others beneath them.'

‘Deep,' Bowler growled, ‘a proper grave . . . proper depth.'

‘Yes, it seems so,' Hennessey replied. ‘We thought the same. Not a shallow grave . . .'

‘Proper grave,' Bowler repeated, ‘a final resting place. We all get one.'