Aftermath (2 page)

John Seers emerged from the cellar and left the house by the large front door and began his exploration of the garden and the grounds beyond. Outside he felt uncomfortably warm in his coveralls and kept his eyes downcast to shield them from the glare of the sun, which by mid forenoon was already high in the sky. He found he felt safer in the garden and so reasoned that the fear he had experienced in the house must have been generated by the gloom and the restricted vision of seeing nothing beyond whichever room or corridor he was in at any one time, and yet knowing he was within a very large and unoccupied house. Yet, once in the garden he could survey a greater area illuminated by sunlight and so would have earlier warning of the approach of any threat. Despite this, he still felt comforted and re-assured by the axe helve he continued to hold.

He probed his way through the grass which had grown to waist height in places and heard the scurrying of rodents within the grass as they timidly ran at his approach. The grounds were massively overgrown with grasses dominating the vegetation. Although Seers was able to make out parts of the garden, the border of a lawn, the row of oak trees, the apple orchard with the boughs sagging under the great weight of fruit, he could not exactly say where the garden had ended and the wilderness of the grounds began.

Remaining near the house, he found that the outbuildings were of a solid wooden construction and it seemed, like the house, that they appeared to be still in a structurally sound condition. They had clearly been very well maintained and it looked as if the last person to have had responsibility for them had applied a generous seal of weatherproofing to the buildings in anticipation of them being abandoned. Within the buildings were garden tools of an earlier era, solid and heavy and still functional, although an ancient lawnmower had become badly corroded and Seers guessed it was worth only scrap value. The garage amid the buildings contained a Talbot of 1930s' vintage which had been left resting on wooden blocks so as to preserve the suspension as much as possible, and when Seers opened the driver's door he found that the interior of the car smelled richly of leather and he experienced a they-don't-make-'em-like-this-anymore moment. Seers knew little about cars but he sensed that the Talbot could be restored and that it was an item of high value. Leaving the garage, he waded through waist-high grass to a gazebo, the paint of which had peeled over many summers. He ventured towards the structure and found that it seemed solid and immovable. Clearly it had settled and set upon the mechanism on which it had once been rotated in accordance with the movement of the sun across the sky. Unlike the other outbuildings, the gazebo would, so Seers thought, be earmarked for demolition. Brushing a persistent fly from his face Seers turned to the kitchen garden. It was the only part of the property mentioned in the schedule that he had not yet visited. He thought a glance at the kitchen garden and then the overview of Bromyards would be complete and thus a good morning's work be achieved. He would lunch in the village and then return to commence work proper that afternoon.

The kitchen garden was, he discovered, an area of approximately one hundred yards by fifty yards, and was bordered, or enclosed, by a brick wall of some ten feet in height and which had been painted white, as he was to find, on both the interior and the exterior surfaces, with the topmost line of bricks painted black. As had only to be expected, the paint had faded and peeled on the south-facing walls and on the topmost bricks. Access to the kitchen garden was by a single green painted wooden door set, curiously Seers thought, in the section of the wall which was furthest from the house, needlessly extending the walk between the kitchen garden to the kitchen itself. He followed the overgrown path, which led from the house to the kitchen garden with the northern facing wall of the garden to his right. He turned at the end of the wall and stood in front of the door. To his dismay he saw that the door was lockable and he envisaged having to break down the door, leaving the new owners, whoever they may be, to build a replacement.

The door, in the event, had not been locked and the key then placed on one side, unlabelled. To Seer's surprise it not only opened but it swung open easily, moving silently on its hinges, and at that instant John Seers was stabbed with a sense of real fear, not the fear of the unknown that he had felt in the house, not the fearing of fear itself, not the fear which had largely evaporated upon his leaving the house and stepping out of doors into the sun-drenched garden, but this was fear created by observation, and by logical deduction caused by common sense, or what his cloth-cap wearing coal-mining grandfather would have called ‘gumption'. Unlike all the other doors in Bromyards, except for the bedroom of the last occupant, which protested when opened because their hinges had seized from under use, the door of the kitchen garden opened noiselessly on lubricated hinges. ‘Gumption' told him that the door had been frequently and recently used. As the old man had been lying dying in a small room in his huge house, someone, or some persons had been accessing the kitchen garden for purpose or purposes unknown, although the lubricated hinges were testament to the fact that he or she, or they, wished their activity to remain undetected. A house full of valuables, and so easily removed, yet someone was interested only in the kitchen garden? John Seers knew fear and, cautiously, he pushed the door open.

He did not notice the bodies at first. The first thing he saw was the ivy clad surfaces of the walls. Also ivy covered was a large greenhouse still with, so far as he could tell, all panes of glass still intact. All the hinged panes were closed and Seers knew that that would make the interior of the greenhouse insufferably hot within, he would have to open the windows to allow the structure to ‘breathe' and then return some time later. The remainder of the kitchen garden was extensively overgrown and once again grasses had come to dominate the vegetable patches. It was when he once again noticed how aggressive grass becomes when an area of land is left unattended that the skull grinned at him. He stood, startled for an instant, and then he felt that the skull, human, bleached by the sun and inclined in his direction was not grinning but was somehow saying, ‘Help me, help me', and beyond the first skull was a second, also human, and beyond that a third. John Seers did not look any further but turned, slowly, and walked back to what he felt to be the safety of his car, and there he took his mobile from his pocket and pressed three nines and told the officer what he had found. ‘Directions?' he replied to the next query. ‘Oh, you'll never find it,' he glanced at the road map he had followed earlier that morning, ‘drive on the road between Leavening and Thixendale . . . don't know its number, it's not given on this map. I'll wait on the road and make myself known to the attending officer. Tell him to look for a bloke in white coveralls standing by a red Vauxhall.'

George Hennessey slowed as he approached the police patrol car, and as he did so the officer standing beside the vehicle drew himself up and stiffened into a near ‘at attention' position and pointed to the driveway that was the approach to Bromyards. Hennessey turned into the drive-way and nodded in response to the officer's salute. The driveway, Hennessey found, was long, probably a mile he guessed from the road to the house, and was being severely encroached upon by the vegetation at either side, so much so that he felt he was driving his car down a narrow tunnel of endless shrubbery. At the top, or the end of the driveway, the foliage gave way to an open gravel-covered courtyard within which police vehicles, a red Vauxhall, and two black, windowless mortuary department vans were parked. Also in the courtyard was a second unmarked car and a van belonging to the Scene of Crime Unit. Hennessey parked his car beside the mortuary vans and scowled at the drivers and drivers' assistants of the vans who stood irreverently smoking cigarettes, and were chatting idly, commenting it seemed on articles printed in the day's tabloid press. One of the men responded to Hennessey's scowl by flicking his cigarette defiantly on to the ground and crushing it beneath his foot, all the while holding eye contact with Hennessey. Hennessey, not having any authority over the mortuary van crewmen, could only look away from them as he got out of his car, putting his jacket and panama hat on as he did so. He enquired of a white-shirted constable the whereabouts of DC Webster and, following the constable's directions, walked slowly but with quiet confidence to the kitchen garden wherein he found Webster talking to a scene of crime officer, and as he approached he thought that both men appeared distinctly shaken. Webster smiled briefly at Hennessey as Hennessey approached him.

‘Thank you for coming so quickly, sir.' Webster spoke quietly, calmly. ‘This is bad. It's big and bad and one for you, sir.'

‘What do we have?'

‘So far . . . so far we have five skeletons. Seem to my untrained eye to be exhibiting different rates of decomposition. One is completely skeletal; one still has tissue in evidence.'

‘Five?' Hennessey raised an eyebrow. ‘So far?'

‘Yes, sir, so far.' Webster glanced at the garden where three white-shirted constables were carefully probing the vegetation. ‘As you see, sir, the garden is badly overgrown . . . a few more skeletons, or corpses may still be concealed but we're moving carefully . . . don't want to damage the evidence.'

‘Yes . . . a large area search. You don't need more men?'

‘I think not, sir.' Webster brushed a fly from his face. ‘Many hands might well make light work but in this case I think it is more true that too many cooks will spoil the broth.'

‘I see.'

‘It's also the apparent case that all the bodies are localized within this area . . . within these walls, eventually we'll locate them and do so quite rapidly.'

‘So in this . . . remnant of the kitchen garden? Not within the house or the grounds?'

‘They'll be searched, of course, sir, but the gentleman who found them mentioned that the hinges of the garden door have been lubricated, uniquely in the house and grounds.'

‘I see,' Hennessey watched a constable part the branches of a laurel bush, ‘that is a fair point.' He turned again to Webster. ‘You look shaken, Webster. It's not like you.'

‘I am, sir. It's not just the skeletons; it's the way that they were restrained.'

‘They were restrained?'

‘Yes, sir . . . wrists chained together behind their backs and one of their ankles was attached to a long, heavy chain which ran the length of the garden, anchored certainly at this end in a block of concrete. They also seem to have remnants of some type of gag in their mouths.'

‘A gag,' Hennessey gasped, ‘so suggesting they were alive when left here . . . attached to a chain . . .?'

‘Yes, sir . . . in full view of the previous skeletons . . . and left to succumb to thirst or cold. If left in the summer thirst would have taken them, if in winter hypothermia.'

‘Better show me.' Hennessey followed Webster who led him to the skeleton which was closest to the door of the garden. ‘I've asked the pathologist to attend, sir,' Webster explained, ‘no need for the police surgeon to confirm life extinct in the matter of corpses, as per regulations.'

‘Yes . . . good.'

‘This is what I mean, sir.' Webster stood over the skeleton of the human being. ‘The SOCO have taken all photographs.'

Hennessey looked at the corpse and as he did so, he noticed a silence about the scene, even the birds were silent. Hennessey saw instantly that the scene was exactly as Webster had described. The skeleton lay on its side with what appeared to be a length of rope fastened in its mouth tied behind the neck. The rope had largely rotted to the point of disintegration but it was a clear illustration of a simple but efficient gag. It was all that was needed to prevent the victim screaming or shouting for assistance. The wrists, as Webster had further indicated, were fastened closely together by a small length of lightweight chain and fastened with two small brass padlocks, and the left ankle had been fastened with a similar length of lightweight chain to a long length of heavy chain. The heavy chain would, by itself, be difficult to pull or drag along the ground but it was, as Webster had indicated, buried at one end and doubtless at the other end also, into large blocks of concrete. ‘Premeditated,' he said.

‘Sir?'

‘The way the chain is embedded into the concrete . . . it seems that the chain was covered with concrete powder when it was in a large plastic bucket and the concrete moistened and allowed to harden, but that amount of concrete would take weeks to harden . . . or “cure” as I believe is the correct term.'

‘I see what you mean, sir, and it would seem like that was done here . . .'

‘Yes, that's what I was thinking. It would be much easier to transport two plastic buckets, some bags of cement, a length of chain and an amount of water and assemble the thing here . . . bring a little at a time and take a few days over the operation. That is premeditation.'

‘It is, isn't it, sir?' Webster looked at the length of chain to where it disappeared into undergrowth, by then being probed by the three constables. ‘So the chain and the blocks of concrete were in place before the first victim was brought here?'

‘It seems likely . . . and the skeletons are of different ages, you say?' Hennessey considered the crime scene.

‘It appears so, sir. As you see it's badly run down. The owner . . . the last owner . . . died recently.'

‘I see. Well, dead or not he is going to be our number one suspect.'

‘It would seem likely, sir, but frankly I doubt that will be the case, not after what Mr Seers told me.'

‘Mr Seers? Who is he?'

‘The member of the public who found the skeletons . . . he saw three . . . and raised the alarm. We subsequently discovered two further skeletons and at which point you arrived, sir.'