Innocent Graves by Peter Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

hurrying near;
    And yonder all before us lie
    Deserts of vast eternity.
    Thy beauty shall no more be found;
    Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
    My echoing song; then worms shall try
    That long preserv’d virginity:
    And your quaint honour turn to dust;
    And into ashes all my lust.
    The grave’s a fine and private place,
    But none I think do there embrace.
    What an easy seduction it had been, after all. The poem worked. Marvell would have been proud of himself.
    Rebecca pulled back the curtain. Some fog still drifted around the yew trunks and the heavy grey headstones, but the drizzle seemed to have settled in now. From her window, she could see uniformed policemen methodically searching the ground around the church in a grid pattern.
    Deborah Harrison . She had often seen Deborah taking a short cut through the churchyard; she had also seen her in church and at choir practice, too, before the trouble began.
    Deborah’s father, Sir Geoffrey, had deserted St Mary’s at the first hint of a scandal. The school had stuck with Daniel, but Sir Geoffrey, to whom appearances were far more important than truth, had made a point of turning his back, taking his family and a number of other wealthy and influential members of the congregation with him. And St Mary’s was the wealthiest parish in Eastvale. Had been. Now the coffers were emptying fast.
    Rebecca rested her forehead against the cool glass and watched her breath mist up the window. She found herself doodling Patrick’s name with her fingernail and felt the need for him burn in her loins. She hated herself for feeling this way. Patrick was ten years younger than she was, a mere twenty-six, but he was so ardent, so passionate, always talking so excitedly about life and poetry and love. Though she needed him, she hated her need; though she determined every day to call it off, she desired nothing more than to lose herself completely in him.
    Like the drinking, Patrick was an escape; she had enough self-knowledge to work that out, at any rate. An escape from thepoisoned atmosphere at St Mary’s, from what she and Daniel had become, and, as she admitted in her darkest moments, an escape from her own fears and suspicions.
    Now this. It didn’t make sense, she tried to convince herself. Daniel couldn’t possibly be a murderer. Why would he want to murder someone as innocent as Deborah Harrison? Just because you feared a person might be guilty of one thing, did that mean he had to be guilty of something else, too?
    As she watched the policemen in their capes and wellingtons poke through the long grass, she had to face the facts: Daniel had come home only after she had gone to see the angel; he had gone out before she thought she heard the scream; she hadn’t known where he was, and when he came back his shoes were muddy, with leaves and gravel stuck to their soles.
    III
    The mortuary was in the basement of Eastvale General Infirmary, an austere Victorian brick building with high draughty corridors and wards that Susan had always thought were guaranteed to make you ill if you weren’t already.
    The white-tiled post-mortem room, though, had recently been modernized, as if, she thought, the dead somehow deserved a healthier environment than the living.
    Chilled by the cooling unit rather than by the wind from outside, it had two shiny metal tables with guttered edges and a long lab bench along one wall, with glass-fronted cabinets for specimen jars. Susan had never dared ask about the two jars that looked as if they contained human brains.
    Dr Glendenning’s assistants had already removed Deborah Harrison’s body from its plastic bag, and she lay, clothed as she had been in the graveyard, on one of the tables.
    It was nine o’clock, and the radio was tuned to “Wake up to Wogan.” “Do we have to listen to that rubbish?” Banks asked.
    “It’s normal, Banks,” said Glendenning. “That’s why we have it on. Millions of people in houses all around the country will