The Final Curtain (28 page)

The mortuary in Newcastle-under-Lyme was an unprepossessing building, small and square with little to announce its function apart from an unobtrusive board. It was as though it wanted no one to notice it. Which was reasonable, Joanna decided, given its purpose. She slid her Honda into the parking space next to Matthew's BMW.

He was already gowned up in his scrubs and looked anxious to begin. In the mortuary he always wore an air of slight impatience, as though he wanted to get on with things quickly. He was frowning as he stood back and waited for her to fasten a gown on over her own clothes. Though Joanna had attended scores of post-mortems she still had the usual feeling of apprehension. The truth was she hated them. Although she was acutely aware that they were necessary they seemed to her to be the final insult to the victim – even their inner organs and most private secrets would be exposed, under the arc light. All the way through, from the jud-dud of the Stryker saw and the clumsy stitching of the attendants whose job it was to stuff the organs back into their cavities, they still made her feel slightly sick, though she had never repeated her first performance in this very mortuary. They all watched in silence as the attendant did the initial weigh-ins of measurements and observations. Matthew stood back, eagle-eyed, his hands clasped. He moved once and that was to check the video camera was set up properly. He made a brief introduction, name, persons present and then slowly ran the camera over the body. Timony Weeks, or Dorothy Hook, was finally fully exposed.

She looked even thinner naked. As tiny as a child and bony too. Joanna was struck by her physical vulnerability. Even she was unprepared for the feeling of pity she felt for this woman in death, who had appeared so irritatingly strange in life.

Matthew's attention was now on the X-rays he had taken to help him locate the final positions of the bullets. When he moved back over to the body he began, with a probe, to follow the trajectory of the two bullet holes, taking careful measurements to ascertain the calibre of the firearm. Then he began excising the tissue around them, moving in with the probe until he found the bullets. These were removed with a pair of long, angled forceps ready for the ballistics department. Hopefully, at some point, they would have a weapon to compare them with. The rest of the post-mortem was routine. Apart from the attentions of a cosmetic surgeon Timony, it appeared, had been in good health.

Half an hour later Matthew was giving her his findings. ‘The head wound was inflicted first,' he said. ‘There is slightly more contusion and bleeding there. Immediately after that, I would guess, she was shot in the heart. The head wound entered the frontal lobe of the brain, ricocheted against the cranium and lodged in the top of the spine. The heart assault was similarly deadly. It entered the left ventricle and lodged in the thoracic spine. Death would have been virtually instantaneous.' He was looking down at Timony as he related his findings. ‘Nothing else of note really. She was in very good shape, some of it thanks to surgery.' He looked across at her. ‘Some clumsy, most very skilled, particularly the very enthusiastic face lift. Oh,' he added as an afterthought, ‘and she had had a child at some point.'

‘What?' News indeed, when Timony had categorically denied it.

‘Yes,' he said defensively. ‘You can't mistake it, Jo. The cervix changes shape.'

‘You're sure?'

Matthew looked affronted. ‘Yes, I am sure.'

He could not know how many things this altered.

‘When?'

‘I don't know that,' he said, still a bit peeved. ‘Probably in her teens.'

‘But there's been no mention of a child.' She thought for a minute. ‘There
is
no child.'

He grinned at her and gave the smallest twitch of his shoulders. ‘Can't help that,' he said, ‘but she had had a pregnancy and a vaginal delivery. I've seen the episiotomy scar. That means,' he said, eyeing her, ‘that she went into labour. I can't know if the child lived or died but she did definitely give birth.'

Joanna digested this little snicket of information, then, ‘Anything else?'

‘We-ell, looking at the X-rays …' He crossed the room to the computer screen to study the image, which even she could see was displaying an easily recognizable forearm. Radius and ulnar. There is this …' He traced a faint mark on one of the bones. Joanna peered but could not interpret the point he was making. It looked like a thickening. ‘What is it?'

‘Ossification,' he said, ‘of an old – a very old – fracture of the right radius. Probably done when she was around ten. Possibly a greenstick. Not set very well, I'm afraid.'

‘Why would that be?'

‘It wasn't set properly. I would assume that she didn't receive medical attention.'

‘Why might
that
be?'

Matthew shrugged. ‘Who knows? Perhaps she didn't think it was that bad. A greenstick isn't a complete break but a partial snap. Or …'

‘Yes?'

‘It was probably done years ago. She might have been just a kid.'

But at the age of ten Timony had been a ‘studio kid'. Pampered and observed all the time.

‘What would it mean?'

Matthew was busy scrubbing his hands. ‘You mean as far as a deformity is concerned?'

She nodded.

‘Very slight. She might have had trouble writing – unless she was left handed.'

Joanna tried to remember and failed. People use both hands on a computer keyboard. ‘Is this likely to have any bearing on her …?'

Matthew's eyes gleamed mischievously as he slipped out of his rubber apron. ‘I'm just the simple pathologist, Jo,' he said. ‘You're the clever police woman. I just report the facts. It's you who must draw the conclusions.'

She could have thrown a pillow at him – if one had been to hand. As it was she made do with scolding him. ‘Matthew Levin,' she said severely, tempted to wag a finger at him. ‘You can be the most irritating.' His smile was far too warm for her to continue. She substituted the scolding with a giggle, then asked, ‘Anything else?'

‘No. As I said: she was in great shape for someone starting her sixties. No atheroma. No nasty holes in the brain. She had the body of a healthy fifty-year-old.' His expression changed. ‘She would probably have lived for years.'

‘Instead …' There was no need to finish the sentence. She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, Matt.'

‘My pleasure, my lady,' he said, sweeping a mock bow. She watched him, feeling his good humour leak into her psyche. His boyish enthusiasm for his work endeared him to her. He could never know how much.

‘You've taken some toxicology samples?'

He grinned again. ‘You don't have to remind me of my job, Joanna,' he said gently.

‘No. What about the cosmetic surgery? Before I go just run me through it.'

‘Hmm,' was his response. ‘We-ell, as you probably guessed, a whole heap of stuff, some done years ago. They don't use these breast implants any more. Far too synthetic-looking and they've capsulated anyway, and the work on her abdomen is quite crude. It's almost butchery. Cheap stuff. Not done in the States or Harley Street, at a guess, but one of the provincial centres. Teeth.' He inserted a gloved finger into the mouth. ‘All veneered. Done more recently. An expensive job this time. At a guess none of this has any bearing on her murder.'

‘OK.' She took a last glance at the still figure. ‘I'll get back to Butterfield then. See you later, Matt.' He merely grinned at her and raised his hand.

As she drove out through the city of Stoke on the A53, passing through Endon and Stockton Brook, she reflected. In the old days she would have called in the station and informed Chief Superintendent Arthur Colclough of events, filled him in on the lines of enquiry they were pursuing and anything else that might have a bearing on this major investigation. But these were not the old days. Rumour had it that Chief Superintendent Gabriel Rush was to start on April 1. Not only a Sunday but April Fools' Day, she thought, as she took the congested road through the town passing the roundabout, which was currently the subject of furious debate to the citizens of Leek who were resisting change. They wanted their dear and unique town to stay exactly the same. There had been a few noisy demonstrations and one or two of the more impassioned demonstrators had camped on the roundabout, but so far the police had not been involved and certainly not DI Joanna Piercy. She drove past the station, continuing through the town and out the other side to take the Ashbourne road towards the Peak District and eventually Butterfield Farm.

The minute she passed the millstone and entered the Moorlands she was aware of her environment. It was as though the purity of the atmosphere seeped into her car. It was a crisp, clear day, as clean and fresh as any winter's day can be, cleansed by a sharp overnight frost and the blessing of a cool winter's sun all day. Sheep wandered around baaing aimlessly, the winter wool heavy on their backs. They looked perfect against the snowy hills, like a painting by Hunt or Morland. But when she reached the ridge which overlooked the farm and looked down she decided that no one could be deceived into thinking that
this
was a tranquil place. As the light of the dying winter sky, slate grey with a tinge of pewter, began to fade, lamps were being switched on all over the house. And outside stood a car park full of vehicles: forensic vans, police cars, private cars. Arc lights illuminated the front of the house like an urban factory besieged by burglars. It was unmistakably the centre of great drama. A rogue thought entered her mind.
Timony would so have loved this
.

Joanna parked in the yard and walked into the barn, brightly lit, the warmth from the heaters at last making the temperature bearable. In fact, she felt as cosy as a cow. She sniffed. The barns had obviously not held animals for a long time and the place was swept as clean as a kitchen. But now she did catch an underlying scent of long-ago cattle, of a dairy, of milk and cow feed and cow dung too that made it both authentic and comfortable. Probably the scent lingered from the cottage long ago, soaked into the stones and the fabric of the site. She couldn't imagine Timony doing any milking herself. She sat down at a makeshift desk, slid the USB stick into the computer and opened the file,
My Story
. She began to read and was absorbed. An hour later she was nibbling her thumbnail and staring into nothing.

She heard the door opening – and closing, looked up to see Korpanski watching her. ‘Jo?' he asked uncertainly.

She looked up and gave a half smile. ‘This is the oddest autobiography I've ever read,' she said. ‘Timony Weeks must have been a schizophrenic. It's almost as though it was written by two people.'

‘How so?' He hunkered down beside her, focused too on the computer screen.

‘Well, look at this. “
I was born in a Midlands town of working-class parents. This is what they told me, that my mother and father were ambitious for their pretty daughter and enrolled me in a stage school.”'

‘So?' Korpanski looked puzzled.

‘For a start, it's not strictly the truth. She was spotted in an ordinary school play. And then it tells you nothing. No specific place, no names, no details. Not even her date of birth.'

Mike still looked puzzled so she explained. ‘I mean, as an autobiography it's terrible. It doesn't tell you
anything.
'

‘Had she already been paid for it? A what do you call it, had an “advance”?'

‘I don't think so. I'll check with Diana Tong. But more worryingly, Mike …'

Korpanski's spine stiffened as he regarded her,

‘… it's the bits later on in the book. Look at this. Nineteen sixty-five. She would have been about thirteen years old. “
Filming all day. It was tiring as I was supposed to be looking after a baby lamb, covering it with my coat. But it kept running away. I was running after it but I couldn't catch it up. I ended up falling over in the muddy field and dirtying my pinafore. The wardrobe mistress …
”' Joanna met Mike's eyes. Underneath, in italics, was written,

‘“Right in front of everybody Sandra pulled my knickers down and smacked me really hard, told me I was nothing but a spoilt brat and a nuisance. That she hated me. I ran to Gerald and he told me not to worry, that he'd look after me. I LOVE GERALD.”'

Korpanski frowned. ‘Thirteen years old?'

Joanna nodded. ‘This, presumably, is Sandra McMullen, with whom she lived and who had the daily care of her.'

Korpanski was silent so Joanna continued. ‘There's worse,' she said.

Korpanski's shoulders twitched. ‘Not sure I want to hear it, Jo. Does it have any bearing on her murder?'

‘Don't know,' she answered simply. ‘I only know that some of these actions taken against a child would be considered abusive nowadays.'

‘Her parents?'

‘Father in prison. There's no mention of her mother; apparently access visits were discouraged or indeed any contact at all. It appears that both Sandra McMullen and James Freeman acted
in loco parentis.'

‘And then Gerald marries her when she's seventeen? Seems a bit incestuous to me.'

‘And to me.'

‘Does she mention any threats or coercion?'

‘It's odd, Mike, but it's almost as though she operates on two levels – the sweet, public image of Butterfield and this darker, unsavoury undercurrent.'

‘Is that possible?'

‘I've read something,' Joanna screwed up her face. ‘Some article I read some time ago. I think they called it Replacement Memory Syndrome.'

Korpanski waited.

‘It describes a certain psyche which replaces unpleasant memories with a sort of fairy-tale story. As an actress Timony Weeks would have been an ideal subject for that. Writing her memoirs was a potentially dangerous experience for her. It was unleashing a beast. It's possible that even she doubted these events could possibly be true. She must have tried desperately to bury the bad bits but each time she went back to the book they bubbled up again. No wonder she was confused about the difference between fantasy and reality.'