any sexual assault.
Karen’s right ankle had been violently wrenched, possibly broken, some minutes before her death. The wrench had in all probability happened in the course of her headlong flight from her attacker over the uneven ground. She could have caught her foot and been sent flying, pitching heavily down, unable to rise, with her assailant crashing along behind her.
As she lay prostrate, shaken and winded, in considerable pain from the injured ankle, her attacker had knelt on her back, producing severe and deep contusions, pressing her head down with force into the mud and leafmould. Her face had been massively bruised, abraded and lacerated, her left cheekbone fractured by counter-pressure from a tree root. She had been held down for some time; she had died from asphyxia.
But to make assurance doubly sure her assailant had then viciously bludgeoned her, striking several savage blows on the back of her head, shattering the skull. A few feet from the body lay a heavy billet of wood, a piece of broken bough, clearly the weapon used in the clubbing. Caught up in the bark were strands of yellow wool, long gold-brown hairs, fragments of tissue, tiny embedded splinters of bone.
If Karen had at any stage been able to strike out at her killer her hands could give no evidence of it. She had worn woollen gloves, soaked and filthy now, ripped and snagged. The skin of her killer’s hands, Kelsey pondered, must surely–unless similarly protected by gloves – be scratched and marked, possibly deeply, from a swift passage through the wood.
The nylon material of Karen’s quilted jacket, the dark stuff of her slacks, showed rents and tears from thorns and spines, projecting boughs. Her ankle boots were caked in thick yellow mud. The clothes and footwear of her killer must also bear this kind of witness. And the thorns and spines, the projecting boughs, carried threads and fibres, ripped from the clothing of pursued and pursuer.
The two men reached the car and Sergeant Lambert opened the door. ‘Jubilee Cottage,’ Kelsey directed as he got in. They approached the dwelling a few minutes later. The gates were standing open and Lambert turned the car into the neatly gravelled driveway.
A car was drawn up at one side of the house. A ladder with a bucket suspended from a rung had been set up against the guttering at the front of the house. At the foot of the ladder stood a wheelbarrow half full of garden refuse. On the ground close by lay a pair of stout work gloves, a hand brush and trowel, a pair of secateurs.
At the sound of the car the front door on the left jerked open and Christine Wilmot came flying out, her face puckered in alarm. At the sight of the two men she halted abruptly, knowing them instantly for policemen. ‘Karen!’ she cried. ‘What’s happened to her?’
‘Mrs Boland?’ Kelsey asked. Though she looked scarcely old enough to be the girl’s mother.
She gave her head an impatient shake. ‘I’m Mrs Wilmot,’ she said rapidly. ‘Christine Wilmot, Karen’s cousin. She lives here. What’s happened to her? Has there been an accident?’
Ian Wilmot came running out through the same open door, looking from one to the other, his face full of concern. ‘Is it Karen?’ he blurted out. ‘Has something happened to her?’
‘Mr Wilmot?’ Kelsey asked.
He gave a nod. ‘Ian Wilmot.’ He gestured at Christine. ‘My wife.’ He thrust his hands together. ‘What’s happened to Karen?’
Kelsey disclosed his identity. ‘I think we’d better go inside.’ At his words the other two fell silent, then Christine began to utter little trembling sobs, her head drooping. Ian put an arm round her shoulders and steered her into the house.
He led the way into a sitting room on the right of the hall. They all sat down, Ian on the arm of his wife’s chair, his hand resting on her shoulder. She had by now fallen silent. She sat on the edge of her seat, clasping her hands tightly together.
‘I’m afraid I bring bad news,’ Kelsey said gently. ‘Very bad news.’ Christine set up a tiny whimpering sound. Ian stared at the Chief.
‘I’m very sorry to have to tell you,’ Kelsey said, ‘that Karen is dead.’
Christine gave a loud cry and put both hands up to her face.
‘Was it an accident?’ Ian asked. ‘A road accident?’
The Chief shook his head. ‘Her body has been found in Overmead Wood. I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it: she’s been murdered.’
Christine broke into unrestrained sobs.
‘Murdered?’ Ian echoed with incredulous horror. ‘Was it a sex attack?’
‘Not on the face of it,’ Kelsey told him. ‘We’ll know more about it after the post-mortem.’
‘When did it happen?’
But the Chief wasn’t prepared at this juncture to give an answer, however approximate, to that question. ‘We’ll know more after the post-mortem,’ he repeated. He glanced at Christine, rocking and sobbing. ‘I think some tea—’
‘Yes, of course.’ Ian got to his feet but the Chief waved him down again. ‘Sergeant Lambert will see to it.’
Lambert went across the hall and through an open door into the kitchen. A woman’s outdoor jacket had been thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, with a shoulder-bag, a headscarf, a pair of woollen gloves, lying close by on the table. He filled the kettle and put it on to boil.
In the sitting room Christine had regained some degree of composure. She sat up and took a handkerchief from her pocket, she dabbed at her eyes.
‘I was trying to ring Karen’s foster parents, over in Wychford, just now, when you arrived,’ Ian told the Chief, ‘but I couldn’t get any reply. Karen lived with them until fairly recently. When she didn’t turn up this morning, or phone, I suddenly thought she might have taken it into her head for some reason to go over there to see them.’
The Chief asked him how long Karen had been living at Jubilee Cottage.
‘It was getting on for the end of July when she came here,’ Ian told him. ‘She came to us from a children’s home in Wychford, but she’d only been back there a short time. Before that she’d been living with the foster parents in Wychford, the people I was trying to phone just now.’ He supplied their name and address.
‘Why did she leave the foster parents?’ Kelsey asked.
‘There was some trouble with a neighbour and the Social Services thought it best if she was moved from there.’
‘How did she come to be living here with you?’
‘It was Karen’s own idea,’ Christine put in. She seemed a good deal steadier now. ‘I hadn’t seen her since she was a child, our families were never close. But I was the only living relative she knew of, so she wrote to me–entirely off her own bat–and asked if we’d be willing to have her live here. She’d already made inquiries and discovered there was a course at the Cannonbridge college that she could take. She seemed very anxious to be part of a family again, to live with someone she was related to.
‘So we met her, we had her over here for a weekend once or twice.’ She drew a shivering breath. ‘We liked her, we felt sorry for her. We talked it over and agreed to take her. It was settled that she would finish
