was gradually forgotten, sliding from the consciousness of councillors, solicitors, estate agents; no one concerned himself about it any more.
And all the while the wind and weather had been about their work. What had once been a pleasant enough foursquare, dwelling was now a crumbling rain, roofless and eyeless, invaded by weeds and saplings.
‘Nothing up here,’ one of the soldiers called to the corporal as he came gingerly down what remained of the rotting staircase.
The party moved out into the sparkling sunshine. The corporal glanced round the field. In one corner, under overhanging bushes, he could see the end of what looked like a shed or hen-house. He jerked his head at it. ‘Better take a look over there.’ Two men crossed the field and parted the bushes. The corporal stood surveying the terrain, deciding on his next move.
The structure appeared to be some kind of ancient privy. A couple of boards – considerably newer than the rest of the timber – had been placed in position at the top and bottom of the door, had been firmly secured by brass screws. The two men exchanged a glance. One of them stooped and pushed his way under the bushes, round to the back of the shed. Here there was a tiny window set high up, with a single deeply-grimed pane. He glanced about for something to break the glass and came upon a mossy half-brick. His mate joined him as he smashed in the pane. Together they peered in.
The first man wrinkled his nose at the smell that greeted him: age and decay, with some more disagreeable overlay. Inside the privy were three long bags of heavy translucent plastic, bundled close together in the confined space. Two bags were propped against the end walls, the third was squashed down on the floor; all three were tied at the mouth with stout cord. The bag on the floor was crammed with a miscellany of articles; he could see cushions, paperback books, the stiff sleeves of gramophone records.
‘God Almighty!’ he said suddenly. Through the plastic of the bag on the right he could make out the shape of a body, sideways on, in a green jacket and black trousers. Spilling out of the jacket hood was a tress of long dark hair.
His mate uttered an exclamation; he shifted his gaze to the bag on the left. Inside it, pressed up against the plastic, he could see locks of black hair, and, half visible through the strands, something that might once have been a face.
Half an hour later, in a hamlet no more than two miles from the Parkfield council estate, an elderly cottager living alone made his way stiffly to the far end of his garden, reluctantly driven by the bright spring sunshine to open his shed after the winter, look out his tools, make a start on the vegetable plot.
He creaked open the shed door and stood arrested, staring down, a hand up to his mouth.
Inside the shed, bedded cosily in a nest of old sacks and newspapers, fast asleep and none the worse for his adventure, lay Jason Cooney, one hand tightly clutching a bag of sweets.
Detective Chief Inspector Kelsey stood inside the screened-off area of the field at Stoneleigh, talking to Sergeant Lambert. The Chief was a big, solidly built man with craggy features and a large, squashy nose; he had shrewd green eyes and a crop of freckles, a head of thickly springing carroty-red hair. He glanced at his watch and then at the privy, both ends of which had now been removed. Nothing more they could do at the moment, not until the entomologist, an enthusiastic little man plucked at intervals from retirement to assist the police, had finished his examination.
Little doubt about the identity of the bodies. ‘Joanne Mowbray,’ Sergeant Lambert had told the Chief a few minutes after he arrived on the scene. ‘It’s more than likely that the other one will be her sister Helen.’
The entomologist was finished at last. He came out of the privy and crossed over to where the two men stood. The Chief listened to what he had to say with his head bent, looking down at the bright spring grass, displaying no sign of unease. Sergeant Lambert felt nausea rise inside him; there were still these pockets of squeamishness which in spite of experience lingered on to inconvenience and embarrass him. He managed well enough while the entomologist spoke of soil structure and condition, moisture and desiccation, heat and cold, the effects of stability or fluctuation in all these factors, the less than airtight securing of the bags, but his brain attempted to switch itself off as soon as the little man began a lively account of the relentless, unwavering progression of insect life, blow flies, cheese flies, flesh flies, coffin flies, refusing to steady itself again until the expert’s tone took on a conclusive note.
‘As far as the older girl is concerned,’ he said judicially, ‘I would say her body has been in the shed between two and two and a half years. And the younger girl, four to five weeks.’
An hour or so later the sound of holiday traffic had increased, there was a constant whir and thunder from the motorway. Kelsey stood drinking a mug of scalding coffee. He had refused a sandwich, he could never fancy eating anything in circumstances such as these, however empty his stomach grew, however loud its rumblings.
The photographers had finished their work and left; the two bodies had gone off to the mortuary. The contents of each plastic bag, still kept separate, had been set out on the ground and given a preliminary examination before being taken off to the Forensic Science laboratory.
The identity of both girls had been amply confirmed from this brief scrutiny of their belongings. Joanne’s National Savings bank-book was among the orderly contents of her duffel-bag, which had been stuffed in alongside her body. The book gave her home address in Martleigh: 34 Thirlstane Street. The account showed a balance of almost a hundred and ninety pounds, the last entry being a withdrawal of thirty pounds from a Cannonbridge sub post office on Tuesday, March 1st. There was over ten pounds in notes and coins in a zipped pocket of the anorak she was wearing. There was no diary, no personal letter, among the possessions of either girl.
Helen Mowbray’s belongings were far more numerous than Joanne’s. Inside the privy, behind the two propped-up plastic bags, they had found two suitcases of quite good quality, together with a soft, zipped handgrip. These contained clothing and various business papers; all three cases clearly belonged to Helen. Their contents had been neatly packed and were apparently undisturbed. In marked contrast to this orderliness, the rest of Helen’s possessions had been tumbled pell-mell into the plastic bag that had lain on the privy floor. They undoubtedly belonged to her; her name appeared on the flyleaf of several paperbacks and on the sleeves of some of the gramophone records. Among these belongings was a shoulder-bag containing over a hundred pounds. Several articles had suffered minor damage, breakage, chipping, or tearing.
‘It looks as if Helen packed the two suitcases and the handgrip herself,’ Chief Inspector Kelsey said to Sergeant Lambert as they drank their coffee. ‘Ready to leave for some destination. Able to take her time about it, do the job properly. Then she also had all the other stuff to take with her, all her awkwardly-shaped possessions, difficult to pack neatly into cases. It looks as if she could have been expecting someone to call for her in a vehicle and she intended stacking these loose oddments in the boot or the back of the vehicle. Then whoever it was brought along a plastic bag and just shoved the things into it anyhow, in a tearing hurry.’ He chewed the inside of his cheek. ‘Her cases were so neatly packed, I can’t see her flinging the stuff into the bag in that careless fashion herself – or standing idly by and allowing someone else to treat her belongings in that way.’
He finished his coffee. ‘No doubt about it, both murders were committed by the same man. Clearly the second girl was killed because she came along asking questions about the first. She had either stumbled on or was about to stumble on the man who had killed her sister.’
‘The man?’ Lambert echoed.
Kelsey
