Bored and irritable, convinced the woman in the woods and her death would remain forever a mystery, Jack spent Wednesday morning dealing with the paperwork accumulated since Saturday. Frowning over duty rosters for the coming month, he listened to Dewi Prys, at his most efficient, say over the telephone to Trefor Prosser, ‘If you wish to be less than co-operative to an important investigation, sir, we can always obtain a court order to retain the ledgers. We have that power, sir, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Of course, it also gives us the power to obtain any other documents which might be relevant…. What other documents, sir? Well, we wouldn’t know that ’til we had them, would we, sir?’
Returning from the canteen after lunch, Jack met a man walking along the corridor towards McKenna’s office, a man of medium build and nondescript appearance, a grey sort of man, almost a ghost of a man.
‘Can I help you?’
Grey eyes flicked over Jack’s face, and away. ‘No, thank you.’ He continued on his way, reached McKenna’s room, opened the door and walked in without knocking. The door closed quietly behind him.
Jack hesitated, then followed.
McKenna stood by the window, his face striped with shadows from the Venetian blind. The grey man sat on an upright chair in front of the desk. ‘Who are you?’ he asked Jack.
‘This is Inspector Turtle,’ McKenna said. Turning to Jack, he added, ‘This gentleman is from Special Branch, Jack. It appears our enquiries in Ireland have caused a little anxiety. Special Branch feel we might be treading on their toes.’
The grey man smiled. A most unwholesome smile, Jack thought. Like the wicked old woman in Hansel and Gretel. ‘I said nothing about treading on toes, Mr McKenna. Do you have connections in Ireland, by the way? In the Republic?’
McKenna sat down. ‘Why?’
‘Why did you send details of this dead woman to the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Garda in Dublin?’
‘Because,’ McKenna said, with a warning glance at Jack, ‘she doesn’t appear to be reported missing in Britain. Quite feasible she’s Irish.’
‘Oh, come now, Mr McKenna!’ the grey man sneered. ‘You can do better than that! You know as well as I do this killing has all the hallmarks of an execution. Death by hanging, in a remote spot, and the hands strapped up behind her back? Don’t tell me you hadn’t made the connection.’
‘Then why didn’t your mates say as much to Inspector Tuttle yesterday?’ McKenna asked. ‘He went all the way to Caernarfon to talk to you.’
‘Don’t play games, McKenna. You know the score, and you damn well know the procedure! You get told what you need to know, and nothing more.’
‘Quite,’ McKenna agreed. ‘I therefore presumed there was nothing to know.’
‘You,’ the grey man insisted, ‘have absolutely no right to contact police in Ireland. Thought you were being clever, did you? Thought you’d stir up the shit for us, did you?’
‘I didn’t think anything at all, as a matter of fact.’ McKenna was smiling slightly. ‘All we have done,’ he continued, ‘is to treat this as we would any other suspicious death. And of course, unlike you, we have not indulged in any paranoid over-reaction. As a matter of interest,’ he added, lighting a cigarette, ‘how did you know we made enquiries in Ireland?’
‘Mind your own business!’
‘Oh.’ McKenna looked bored. ‘I suppose one of your stooges over there rang up in a panic. Pity they’ve nothing better to do.’
The grey man stood, leaning his fists on the desk. ‘You obviously haven’t yet learned your place, McKenna. Rogue bloody coppers we can all do without. Particularly Irish ones!’
McKenna opened the door, and stood aside for the man to pass through. ‘You know where the chief constable spends most of his time,’ he said. ‘I’m sure your boss will be getting together with him soon enough. They’ll be able to have a nice little chat about it, won’t they?’
‘I don’t know how you keep your temper!’ Jack exploded as soon as the man was out of earshot. ‘I thought the Gestapo’d been outlawed years ago.’
‘He’s just a playground bully.’
‘What’s he called?’
‘I believe he’s called Jones.’ McKenna smiled, although Jack noticed a tremble in the hand holding McKenna’s cigarette. ‘They’re all called Jones. They all look the same as well, so nobody can identify them.’
‘His sort gives the security services a bad name,’ Jack said. ‘God knows where they dig ’em up.’
‘D’you know, Jack,’ McKenna sighed, ‘I wish that bloody John Beti’d minded his own business! But for him, the woman could’ve stayed happily swinging from that tree until she turned to dust, and nobody any the wiser.’
Walking down to the canteen for coffee, Jack thought about the man from Special Branch, and about the dividing line, at times almost non-existent, between those who made evil, and those whose job it was to fight the wickedness. He was in the canteen queue, standing behind a pretty policewoman with the scent of fresh air on her uniform and in her hair, before he realized McKenna had quite deliberately provoked Special Branch with the Irish enquiries.
Wil Jones the builder, one of those Joneses whom God must have loved because He made so many of them, McKenna thought, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln on the ordinary people of this world, turned up at the police station at precisely 16.57, according to the report made out by the duty officer. Covered in dust, his shoes gritty with sand, Wil sat on the edge of a chair in McKenna’s office.
‘You’re not going to be too happy about this, Mr McKenna,’ Wil offered. ‘I reckon we’ve found you another body. In the ground where we was digging the trench to the septic tank that isn’t there yet. You’ve no idea the trouble we’re having digging, which is why I reckon nobody bothered before. We started off in one direction yesterday, got so far, and the bloody sides of the trench kept caving in. All sand, you see, once you get a bit away from the cottage. Anyway, this morning, I said to Dave, we’ll go another way, p’raps find better ground. So we did. Been at it all day,’ he went on, glancing at the wall clock. ‘Then Dave, he jumps out of where he was digging, like he’d been bitten by a snake, and starts yelling fit to wake the dead! I looks, and there it was. A leg, as far as I can make out. And a foot on the end of it.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea, Will?’ McKenna asked.
‘I’ll have a quick one. Don’t want to be too long away. I left Dave on his own, and it’s not fair on him.’ Wil shivered. ‘Not in that place, fair play.’
Dr Roberts looked with some pleasure at the foot and lower leg extruding from the right side of the drainage trench. ‘Well preserved, Michael,’ he said. ‘Most interesting. No doubt because of the acid nature of the soil.’
‘Well, you might be able to reconstitute some organs for donor use, then, mightn’t you?’ McKenna snapped. ‘Save a bit of grave robbing, won’t it? Especially if nobody owns up to this body either!’
The doctor regarded McKenna, a little smile lingering around his mouth. ‘D’you know, Michael, people say Jack has a sharp tongue at times,’ he observed. ‘Could strip paint with yours, you could.’
McKenna stalked off. ‘Oh, get on with it! Dig it up, or whatever you intend to do, and tell me when you’ve finished.’ He stopped, then walked back. ‘And its hands had better not be bound. I’ve had enough of executions to last me a long time.’
He disappeared into the cottage, while Jack stood by the trench, watching as the pathologist instructed Dewi, another officer, and two of the forensic team, on ways and means of disinterring the body without causing further damage.
The work was made easier for them by the same factor which frustrated Wil. Peaty, crumbly soil trickled away from the trench side, exposing the other foot, then more of each leg. Patiently and carefully, the soil was brushed away, pushed into heaps well away from the body. Bits of fabric came with it, shreds of some thick cotton, bereft of any colour. Jack stood with Dr Roberts, watching and waiting.
‘What’s wrong with your boss these days?’ Roberts asked. ‘He’s always been one to speak his mind, but he’s really on a short fuse at the moment. Give himself a heart attack if he’s not careful. Trouble with that flighty wife of his, is it?’
‘Denise? Flighty?’ Jack asked. ‘Plain bored, more likely.’
‘Well, happen you don’t know her so well.’ Dr Roberts chewed his lower lip. ‘Flighty and frivolous, our Denise. Takes after her mother in that way. Not right for McKenna at all. Too shallow. He needs a woman with a bit of bite to her.’ He paused. ‘A woman with fire in her belly, like him. There’s the heat of a lot of passions in that man, Jack.’
‘Well, it doesn’t give off much warmth for others most of the time,’ Jack commented.
Eifion Roberts stared. ‘It won’t, will it, with only Denise for company,’ he said. ‘It’ll just burn up McKenna to a cinder. I reckon it’s the end of the road for those two.’ The pathologist peered over the side of the trench. ‘Best thing, too, if you want my opinion. That marriage was doomed from the start. Denise only married him because he was a good catch, so she could climb up the social ladder on his back.’
‘McKenna’s not exactly socially prominent,’ Jack said.
‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it? Denise thought she’d be getting something she wanted, and now things aren’t going her way, she wants out. You mark my words, Jack,’ the doctor went on, walking forward to look properly over the lip of the trench, ‘within six months or so, our Denise’ll have found herself somebody more to her liking. Golf-club type, with a fancy house and big posh car. I’ll put money on it.’
McKenna sent Wil and Dave home, taking the keys to Gallows Cottage. Night cloud gathered in the east, drawing a blanket over the day, as he made his way back to the trench, and stood with Jack and Eifion Roberts as more and more of the body was exhumed from its resting place. A drift of woodsmoke scented the dusky air, gulls screamed, a flock of birds streamed out over the sea to their night’s roost on Puffin Island. Save for the slither of soil against shovel, the heavy breathing of the four men in the trench, the gardens of Gallows Cottage lay swaddled in silence. McKenna heard a noise behind him, a crepitation of leaves, and turned. A figure slid from view into the woods, the figure of a man, garbed in a white flowing shirt, long dark hair framing a thin, sallow face. McKenna made as if to call out, but when he looked properly, there was no one there.
‘SHIT!’
Dr Roberts plunged forward. ‘What is it? What’ve you done?’
The four men in the trench stood pressed against its far side, watching as earth cascaded, bringing the body with it. She fell out of her grave at their feet, a small pathetic thing, and rolled on to her side, coming to rest with her head against Dewi’s boots. Her neck was stretched and thin, the head pulled hard to one side by the remnants of noose and rope. Her hands were behind her back, their fingers clenched and clawed. A thick strap bound her wrists, and began to crack and crumble to powder as they watched.
‘1793. I’m answering your question, McKenna. She’s been here since 1793, or thereabouts.’ Dr Roberts knelt by the body, looking up.
‘How can you possibly know that?’ McKenna demanded. ‘If you can’t tell us how many months the other one’s been hanging around, how can you possibly say how many years this one’s been here?’
Dr Roberts stood up, brushing soil from the knees of his trousers. He climbed out of the trench, assisted by Jack. ‘It’s Rebekah, listed on official documents as “Wife of Simeon the Jew”. Close your mouth, Michael!’ he said. ‘You’ll swallow a fly if you’re not careful, then you’ll be like that old lady who had to swallow a spider to catch the fly.’ He surveyed McKenna speculatively. ‘Be interesting doing an autopsy on you after you’d swallowed the horse, wouldn’t it?’
Jack giggled. McKenna glared at him and the doctor. ‘Are you having a bit of fun at my expense?’ he demanded.
‘No, I’m not. Straight up, this is, in your criminal parlance.’ Dr Roberts removed his surgical gloves. ‘After you’d told me that yarn the other day, I went to look in the archives in Caernarfon. It’s all there, word for word as you heard it. This is your Rebekah, final resting place finally found. It actually says “Resting place unknown” in the records. What a thing, eh? They’ll be able to fill in the gaps and draw a line under that story now. She’ll have to have a proper funeral, of course. Wonder who’ll arrange that?’ he asked. ‘Wouldn’t be quite right just to throw her into an unmarked grave and toss quicklime on her, would it? She’s a bit of history.’
‘Will you be cutting her up?’ Jack asked.
‘Oh, most certainly.’ Dr Roberts surveyed the body. ‘Very interesting it’ll be, as well. I’ve never had occasion to autopsy an executed criminal before. They’d abolished the death penalty before I started practising, you know. Be able to see how efficient they were in those days, won’t I?’ he added, sneaking a look at McKenna.
‘I think you’ve got something wrong with you, I really do,’ McKenna told him. ‘You treat these poor devils like specimens or something!’
‘Well, this one at least is a bit academic, so to speak, isn’t she?’
‘Are you really sure it’s Rebekah, Dr Roberts?’ Jack asked.
‘Look for yourselves,’ he invited. ‘Come on, McKenna, there’s no need to be squeamish. She won’t bite.’
‘Not all of us share your ghoulish interest in corpses,’ McKenna snapped. ‘How can you be so sure it’s this Rebekah?’
‘She’s virtually mummified,’ the pathologist said. ‘Comes from being in ground like this. If she’d been put anywhere else, she’d be nothing but dust by now.’ He turned to the four men waiting silently in the trench. ‘Let’s move her, shall we? And make sure you put all those bits of fabric in with her. I want those.’
Jack and the pathologist walked together to the parked cars and the mortuary van, McKenna in front, but close enough to hear the pathologist’s conversation. ‘D’you know, Jack, after the riots at Strangeways Prison, they had to dig up the burial ground for the new extensions,’ he was saying. ‘Took nearly forty bodies out of there, and gave them a proper Christian burial.’
‘Who were they?’ Jack wanted to know.
‘About fifty years’ worth of executions, if not more. I’ve got some details on it at home, if you’d care to have a read. Who they were, why they were topped, when….’
McKenna left them gossiping by the vehicles, and walked a little way into the woods. Darkness closed about him and, within a few paces, he was out of sight and earshot of the others, surrounded by whispering silence. Hopeless, of course, to expect to find the man he had seen, or follow the way he had gone. The familiar smell of rotting leaves and damp filled his mouth and nose. He stood for a while, trying to look through the trees, then turned to go back to the others, and knew a moment’s panic when he thought he might be lost. Only headlights glimmering at the edge of the wood as one of the cars set off up the track showed him the way out.
Rebekah’s pitiful remains lay on the autopsy table in the hospital mortuary, denuded now of the scraps of cloth which had hung from her shrivelled flesh. Looking at her, Dr Roberts felt it would be almost sacrilege to cut into her, as if destroying a little of his own history with a few strokes of the scalpel.
Emrys stood beside him. ‘D’you really think we ought to, Doctor?’ he asked. ‘Two hundred years you said she’d been there. Why are we doing this?’
‘We’re doing it for several reasons, Emrys, one of which is scientific research,’ Dr Roberts said. ‘Another one is simple curiosity, and the fact, of course, if she’d been left on the gibbet like they usually were instead of being carted off by her hubby, the powers-that-be would’ve cut her up at the time, so they could certify how she died.’
‘Pretty obvious, I’d’ve thought.’
‘Procedure, Emrys…. You can’t say for sure how a body died unless you cut it up, even if you were the one who killed it.’ He picked up a scalpel, and fingered its blade thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, despite what I told McKenna, we really do need to make sure this body is as old as I think, and therefore who I think.’
‘Even if it’s as old as that, you can’t be sure it’s Rebekah.’
‘Well, no. But who else is she likely to be? Eh?’ He placed the scalpel at the throat, whilst Emrys held the twisted limbs and trunk as straight as possible. The doctor laughed. ‘Let’s hope it is Rebekah, Emrys. McKenna’ll have a blue fit if any more corpses turn up round there, especially one’s that’ve been hung!’
Jack and Emma lay side by side, gazing up at the bedroom ceiling, watching patterns flow across sculpted plaster as moonlight beyond the uncurtained window fled back and forth behind scudding cloud.
‘What d’you think Michael and Denise are doing now, Jack?’ Emma asked, her voice soft.
‘Not what we’ve just been doing, that’s for sure!’ His teeth gleamed wolfishly in the silvery light.
‘Don’t be so crude!’ Emma exclaimed. ‘I was being serious.’
‘Sorry, love.’ Jack was still smiling to himself. ‘Why are you bothered, anyway?’
‘They’re our friends, in a way,’ Emma said. ‘At least, Denise is my friend.’
Jack sighed. ‘McKenna’s been in a hellish mood all day. People are beginning to talk.’
‘Did you ask him what was wrong?’
‘Not my business, really, is it?’ Jack said. ‘We don’t have the sort of relationship where I can go barging in asking personal questions.’
Emma put her arm across his chest, twisting the wiry dark hairs in her fingers. ‘People need to have friends to talk to. Denise has got me and her sisters.’
‘She’s all right then, isn’t she?’ Jack snapped, and turned over, his back to Emma.