The Hanging Tree (6 page)

Sam Dally was
waiting for them, freshly scrubbed and gowned and wearing a cherubic smile.

'Lunched well, I trust?' he asked Rafferty. 'Don't want you fainting away
from hunger, do we?'

'Get on with it, you old sadist,' Rafferty muttered.

After another even more cherubic smile, Sam did so. He confirmed that
Smith had been strung-up after death. He also confirmed that the cause of death
was the stab wound to the heart and that he had, in all likelihood, died immediately,
thus confirming Rafferty's suspicions that he had not only died in his own
flat, but in his own armchair.

Although Smith's armchair had fresh stains, they had been few enough. Sam
explained why. 'Unlike incised knife wounds where the edge of the blade makes
cutting gashes, stab wounds, where the point of the knife enters the body
followed by the rest of the blade, generally cause internal bleeding. The wound
has one acute angle cut and one blunt, indicating that the knife used had only
one sharp edge.'

Rafferty nodded. This weapon had yet to be found. It hadn't been left at
the scene. He was still musing on this some time later as the attendant with
the power saw cut through the top of Smith's skull.

Swallowing hard, Rafferty hastily dragged his gaze from Smith's face to
his torso. As this had already suffered the usual indignities his gaze didn't
linger long. But it was long enough for him to comment, 'He seems to have a lot
of bruises.'

'Nothing gets past you, does it, Rafferty?' Sam taunted. 'It's only
taken your rapier-like gaze the best part of two hours to notice the blindingly
obvious. How does he do it?' he demanded of the room at large.

 'It's your fault, Sam.' Rafferty, a firm believer in the notion of
attack being the best form of defence, immediately went on the offensive, and
under the noise of the saw, murmured, 'You shouldn't have such stunners as
assistants. Can't take my eyes off them.'

As each of Sam's female assistants bore a striking resemblance to
Eeyore, the only strategy Sam judged necessary was a loud snort. Ignoring this
as well as Llewellyn's pained sigh at such blatant political incorrectness,
Rafferty asked, 'Reckon someone beat him up before knifing him?'

'If you paid more attention to my pearls of wisdom, Rafferty, and less
to controlling your lusts and the rumbling of your empty stomach, you'd know
contusions can occur post-mortem as well as ante-mortem. And, as you've already
said he was moved, not once, but thrice after death; once when he was taken to
the woods, once when he was removed from thence and once when he was strung up
again, bruising is to be expected. But, rest assured, my rapier-gaze is well
ahead of you. I noted each contusion before you even got here.'

Sam gave a happy sigh as he paused to admire his gleaming array of
silverware. 'He was probably concealed in the boot of a car each time, so his
body would have been thrown around a fair bit, rupturing blood vessels,
particularly those areas engorged with post-mortem hypostasis, causing them to
ooze blood into the tissues. As you can see,' Sam pointed his blade at the
cadaver, 'such contusions look just like bruising to living flesh.'

Sam broke off again to make more comments into the microphone, then
continued. 'But, I'll of course test the injury sites for leucocytes — white
cells to you — the things that rush to the site of an injury to begin the
healing process. An abnormally high number of white cells would indicate some
of the damage happened before death. It'll take a bit of time, though, the contusions
are quite extensive.'

Rafferty nodded and managed to keep his end up pretty well through the
rest of the post-mortem by musing on Sam's conclusions about the bruises. Although,
as Sam had remarked, Smith had been transported about sufficiently after death
to suffer extensive bruising, he couldn't help but wonder, if some of the
bruises had been inflicted before death, who was the most likely person to
administer a beating. It didn't take long for Jes Bullock's face to float into
his consciousness.

It was already getting dark by the time they came out of the mortuary.
Rafferty turned the car round and drove towards Habberstone, the busy market
town about four miles west of Elmhurst, where ex-Inspector Stubbs had settled
on retirement.

 Before he did anything else, like interviewing Smith's victims, their
families, and Mrs Nye of the Rape Support Group, Rafferty wanted to speak to
the inspector who had been in charge of the Smith case. He wanted his opinion
of Smith's victims' families, to gain his impression of them as people - and as
possible would-be murderers.

His flimsy recollection of the case had been well-bolstered by Smith's
newspaper collection. One man interested him greatly - Frank Massey, the father
of one of Smith's victims who had beaten Smith up and served a term in jail for
it. Of course, that had been before Smith and his family had moved to a secret
address, but even after such an event, there were ways and means of finding out
someone's whereabouts if you were determined enough or rich enough. Was he the
only one amongst the four families capable of vengeful violence? Rafferty
wanted to know. Or were others equally as capable, given the opportunity? One
of his victims, the young Walker girl, had killed herself when Smith was freed.
Her family had even stronger reasons than Massey to still wish Smith dead.

Innocent or guilty, Rafferty was determined to handle them all with kid
gloves, and as the law had already failed them once, he was all the more
anxious to prove to them and any other doubters, that the law could be
efficient, caring, just. It would be bad enough for them having all that
emotion stirred up again, but to know that, for the second time in their lives,
Maurice Smith was the cause, would, for some of them, be almost too much to
bear.

Rafferty took a deep breath. First things first, he reminded himself. Let's
get this interview over with before you start worrying about the next ones. God
knew, from what he'd learned on the phone when speaking to some of Inspector
Stubbs' old colleagues, this one was likely to be difficult enough.

Archie Stubbs was reckoned to be a lonely and bitter man. It was odds on
that he'd resent their questions, their prying into his conduct of the Smith
case, the implication that if it hadn't been botched the victims and their
families would have suffered much less. Certainly, Massey would probably never
have tried to extract his own justice; never have gone to jail, lost his job,
had his marriage torn apart. The Walker girl would likely still be alive. Uneasily,
Rafferty realized he had yet to discover what other tragedies might have sprung
from Smith's release. Who amongst them had additional reasons to hate Smith?

Stubbs; Rafferty repeated the name of his next interviewee uneasily to
himself. In a way, he had become another of Smith's victims. He had lost his
career, been pushed into early retirement from the force, he'd even lost his
wife shortly after. Yet, if Stubbs had wanted revenge, he could have extracted
it long before this, as easily as the Bullocks; with his contacts he could have
found out Smith's whereabouts with little difficulty.

Maybe he had done so, but had, until now, been satisfied to simply keep
tabs on the man. Until now, Rafferty repeated to himself and wished he could
ignore the fact that an ex-copper like Stubbs would have the knowledge and
experience to commit murder and get away with it. That he hadn't done so ten
years ago was no reason to discount him as a suspect now.

Rafferty pulled up in front of the grim, grey-painted bungalow that was
Stubbs' home. He had only to compare the difference between Stubbs's property
and those of his neighbours', to know that the years had done little to
diminish Stubbs's bitterness.

Although it was December, the front gardens of the other bungalows in the
row were still gay and colourful, the plants obviously chosen specially to
withstand winter's blasts. Rafferty, who had recently taken over the care of
his mother's garden, which task was beginning to get beyond her, immediately
recognised the cheery yellow of the winter jasmine, the equally bright and
sunshine flowered witch hazel, the pink and white flowered Viburnums bright
against the glossy evergreen leaves of the Mexican Orange Blossom; all defied
the chill and proclaimed not only their owners' contentment with their lot, but
a certain quiet happiness. Archie Stubbs's garden displayed no such emotion; in
his, every season was the same, from fence to wall and back to fence, the rich
soil supported only a tough, black tarmac.

Stubbs appeared as uncompromising and as unwelcoming as his home. He was
fairly short, certainly at the lower levels of the old height requirements. Short
and grey, of face and manner, being monosyllabic to the point of rudeness, and
so obviously reluctant to talk to them that Rafferty thought they were going to
have to conduct their conversation on the doorstep. But Stubbs as suddenly
relented when one of his neighbours, a gnome-like little man of cheery red face
and genial air, shouted across to him that it was nice to see he had visitors.

Archie Stubbs scowled and told them, 'You'd best come in, before Happy
Harry comes across to join us.'

Although spotlessly clean, the inside of Stubbs's home was a repetition
of the outside; drab, grey and depressing. Rafferty and Llewellyn exchanged a
glance as, through the partly-open door of the dining room, they both glimpsed
the yellowing piles of newspapers stacked on the table. Before Stubbs noticed
their interest and shut the door, Rafferty had read the headline on the
uppermost, and guessed the rest, too, were about the Smith case.

As they followed Stubbs to the living room and sat down, Rafferty
wondered how Stubbs would react if he told him that he and Smith had shared an
obsession. His earlier anxieties returned as he realized that, if anything,
Stubbs's old colleagues had minimized the extent to which the professional
failure had affected him. He knew that Stubbs's wife had died soon after the
move from Burleigh; from what he'd learned, she'd never been strong, and the
strain of coping with her husband's bitterness had taken its toll. They'd had
no children, and even though his colleagues had made an effort to keep in
touch, gradually Stubbs had cut off contact with all but one of them.

Rafferty found it easy to understand how, alone in this lonely little
grey box, the man's bitterness could fester till it became consuming. Once
again, he reminded himself, that, as an ex-copper, Stubbs had the contacts to
discover Smith's current whereabouts. Had he done so and brought about what he
must consider a belated justice?

In the force, Stubbs had been a thirty-year man, and Rafferty, over
twenty years on the force himself, desperately wanted to be able to scratch his
name off the suspect list. But this ambition, he now realized, might not be as
quickly accomplished as he had hoped. He was wondering how best to continue the
interview when Stubbs ended his self-imposed monosyllables with the gruff
comment:

'You said on the phone you wanted to speak to me about the Smith case. I
wish you'd get on with it and go.'

'Very well.' Rafferty paused, then asked, 'How do you feel about his
death?'

'How do I feel?' Stubbs's forehead wrinkled, then he admitted, 'I'd be a
liar if I said I wasn't glad. For his victims more than for me. Perhaps, now
the bastard's dead, they can finally put the past behind them and make
something of their lives.' The words, It's too late for me, were implied by
Stubbs's whole demeanour.

Rafferty nodded. 'You mentioned Smith's victims — I wanted to talk to
you about them and their families. You must have come to know them all well.' Rafferty
had explained over the phone the manner of Smith's death and what had followed,
and now he went on, 'Although the stab through the heart caused his death, his
stringing-up afterwards had all the hallmarks of a ritual execution, a
punishment. Would you say any one of them in particular would be capable of
such an act?'

Rafferty's prophecy that few people would be willing to help them catch
Smith's killer seemed to be borne out by Stubbs's reaction. He seemed
determined to assist them as little as possible, as his answer made clear.

'How should I know? Apart from Frank Massey, I haven't seen any of them
for ten years.'

'Ah, yes, Massey.' Rafferty paused. 'I understand you stood as a
character witness at his trial?'

Stubbs bristled. 'What of it? Least I could do for him. He wasn't a
violent man. I was surprised he had it in him to attack Smith; he was an
academic, a man who worked with his mind rather than his body.' Stubbs's face,
inclined to broadness, now took on an aspect like a pugnacious bulldog. 'Of
course it wasn't surprising that the court ruling at Smith's trial changed all
that. It ruined his previous rather naive belief in British justice. He seemed
bewildered at first, then that bewilderment turned to rage. For the first time
in his life he used his fists instead of his head and look where it got him. If
you think he's likely to have had another go at Smith I should forget it. He
had a terrible time in prison. He's not likely to want to repeat the
experience.'

'Not likely, I grant you,' Rafferty agreed. 'But he may still have
decided to risk it. After all, he had two wrongs to right not just one. And, as
you say, no one could claim he got justice from the courts.'

'"
Revenge is a kind of wild justice
,"' Llewellyn quoted
softly, adding, 'at least, according to Francis Bacon. Perhaps Mr Massey still
feels wild justice is the only kind available to him.'

Stubbs stared at him for a moment and then retorted, 'That's as maybe,
but he'd had his try for revenge once. You're barking up the wrong tree if you
think he could gird himself up a second time. He's not the same man at all. He
wouldn't have it in him.'

'You thought that once before,' Rafferty reminded him, but he didn't
pursue the point. For the moment, he was prepared to accept what Stubbs told
them. 'Tell me — did you believe Smith was guilty?'

'Damn right I did. He was guilty as hell. Although I was beginning to
have doubts we'd get a conviction as proof rested on the evidence of the
victims and Smith's confession, I had no doubt at all that he raped those young
girls. He even admitted to Thommo and me when we went to see him after the
judge acquitted him, that he'd raped another young girl; an attack we knew
nothing about and which had never even been reported.

'Oh, I know we shouldn't have gone,' he burst out, as he caught
Rafferty's surprised glance. 'Been warned off, hadn't we? But we went just the
same. Smith said he'd picked this other young girl up in broad daylight. Wanted
us to find her so he could apologise for smashing her violin!'

He shrugged. 'I suppose the parents must have thought she would get over
it more quickly without the trauma of a court case. Turns out they were right,
doesn't it? Can't blame 'em, I suppose. Smith's other victims were all very
young, none older than ten, and Alice Massey was only eight. Smith said this
other girl was no older. That was the way he liked them, young and gullible.'

Stubbs rubbed the flat of his hands on the rough material of his
trousers as if he felt he could rub away the stain of his own guilt over the
case. Rafferty got the impression Stubbs found it as hard to forgive himself
for his failure as he found it to forgive Smith for his perversion.

'Even though, in his chambers, the judge accepted Smith's confession as
true, he rejected it as evidence because he thought the prosecution would have
a hard time proving it hadn't been obtained by oppression. Said something about
me and Thommo not saying 'please' and 'thank you' often enough, a la the
decrees of PACE. So, that was that.'

 Rafferty understood Stubbs' bitterness only too well. How often had he
himself experienced that hollow feeling of despair nowadays all too familiar to
crime-wearied policemen? It wasn't that he didn't agree with aspects of the
Police and Criminal Evidence Act - he did, many of them were needed, certainly
for first-time offenders. But it was a different matter altogether for
practised criminals. In their case, it made the pursuit of justice more of a
lottery than it should ever be. Naturally, the practised criminals and their
lawyers took such advantage of a legal system so weighed in their favour that,
to the law-abiding public, it seemed the very service set up to prosecute
offenders more often acted as their accomplices.

The trouble, as Rafferty had frequently pointed out when an excess of
Jameson's had made him unwisely vocal on the subject, was that so much of the
legal process and its administration was in the hands of icy-veined
intellectuals, who seemed to think the law was more about arguing legal points
that securing justice.

They were so far removed from the mass of the population in their
thoughts on the subject that they might as well have been visiting Martians for
all the confidence they inspired. And when they were paired with the bleeding
heart social workers who thought Johnny could do no wrong, who would never
accept that Johnny might just naturally be a nasty, evil little bastard, who
liked hurting those weaker than himself, such despair was unsurprising. It's
his lack of education, it's his background, he's from a one-parent family, it's
because he can't get a job, they cried.

Rafferty, with a pretty basic secondary-modern education, and from a
one-parent family himself, knew damn well that often Johnny didn't want a job. Why
should he, he reasoned? He got far more rewards from mugging old ladies or
selling drugs than he'd ever get filling shelves in the local Sainsbury or
working in a Homebase storeroom, which was all his limited education had
equipped him for.

It was no wonder ordinary people, coppers included, raged, then
despaired. No wonder, either, if some of them took to dispensing their own
justice.

Rafferty, suddenly aware that his heart was hammering wildly, took a
deep breath and forced himself to calm down. Llewellyn was right, he realised;
thinking along those lines just led to frustration, indigestion and coronaries.
Worse, it clouded his brain with negative emotions and ruined his judgement.

He forced his mind back to the current problem. 'As you said, the Smith
case was thrown out because the judge ruled that his confession was
inadmissible. But why did it ever get as far as the Crown Court?'

Stubbs sighed heavily. 'I suppose good old human error was at the root
of it. But, in mitigation, you must remember the Smith case was brought at a
very difficult time. It was 1986; at the beginning of the year PACE was
implemented throughout England and Wales, and by October of the same year the
bloody Crown Prosecution Service or as I call it, the Criminals' Pals Society,
took over the prosecution of offenders from the police.

 'It was change, disruption, difficulties at every turn. As I said, the
whole legal process was in a state of flux; endless new rules to remember and
bumptious young prosecution briefs getting up everyone's noses. There was no
DNA evidence to help us then; it was another year till the courts started to
accept such evidence. Not that we had a blood sample. We didn't even have a
semen sample. Crafty sod had used rubbers; all we had was Smith's confession
and the testimony of the girls.'

Stubbs scowled again as, probably for the thousandth time, he relived
his bitter memories. 'I'd worked long and hard on the Smith case — we all had. Most
of the team had daughters round that age or younger. And by the time we caught
him, we were all exhausted. I,' he paused, then went on, 'I just about cracked
up.'

From his rigid posture, Rafferty could see how much it cost him to admit
this. He already knew of course. Stubbs's old colleagues had said as much and
more.

'But we got the confession out of him before my GP had me hospitalised. As
I said, the whole team were exhausted by the time we finally nailed him, and
although I had my doubts as to whether his confession might contravene the new
PACE rules, the Prosecutor appointed was so young and eager to get her teeth
into a rape case that she just charged ahead with it. Got through the Committal
Proceedings with no trouble, but then we both know magistrates are often glad
to pass the buck upwards to the Crown Courts when it comes to ruling on a point
of law, such as admissibility.

'Anyway, I'll tell you plain, we were both humiliated when it got to the
Crown Court. Especially Ms Osbourne, the prosecuting counsel. Not too keen on
women, old Judge Jordan; hated having them in his court and always gave them a
hard time. He called Ms Osbourne into his chambers and told her she wasn't fit
to iron his robes.' Stubbs gave a sour grin. 'I only learned about it later. Like
most coppers, I'd never been keen on the introduction of the CPS and Ms
Osbourne had me convinced I was right. As I said, she was arrogant and flaunted
her college education as if she thought we were a bunch of dinosaurs and that
experience counted for nothing. It was the only bit of satisfaction I got when
I heard that old Jordan had wiped the floor with her.'

The light faded from his eye. 'Still, it was a difficult time to be a
policeman.' Rafferty nodded. 'I tell you, if I could have ended my career any
other way, I'd have been glad to retire then.'

'But surely, sir,' Llewellyn spoke up, 'the Chief Prosecutor would have
overseen—'