“Well, he doesn’t want the graveyard moved,” says Donna. “Is that enough?”
“Not enough to arrest him. Unless we find out why he doesn’t want it moved.”
“Is impersonating a priest a crime?” asks Donna. “Someone I met on Tinder once pretended he was a pilot, and tried to grope me outside an All Bar One.”
“I bet he regretted that.”
“I punched him in the balls, then called in his reg number and got him breathalyzed on the way home.”
They both smile. But the smiles are fleeting. Both know they are in danger of letting Matthew Mackie slip between their fingers. No evidence whatsoever.
“Have you heard anything from your pals in the Thursday Murder Club?” asks Chris.
“Not a peep,” says Donna. “Which makes me nervous.”
“Me too. And I really don’t want to be the one to tell them about Jason Ritchie.”
He pauses for a moment on the landing. Pretending to think, but really just to catch his breath.
“Perhaps Mackie’s got something buried in the graveyard,” he says. “Doesn’t want it dug up?”
“Good place to bury something,” agrees Donna.
74.
Joyce
Have you ever used Skype?
Well, I hadn’t until this morning, and now I have. Ibrahim set it up, and so we had gone round to his. He keeps his flat so clean, and I don’t think he has anyone in to do it.
There are files everywhere, but all locked away, so you can see them but not read them. Imagine the stories you must hear if you’re a therapist. Who did what to who? Or is it whom did what to who? Either way, I bet he’s heard all sorts.
Austin rang at ten on the dot, as you would expect from a Sir, and told us what he knew. We could see him on-screen, and we took it in turns to go in the little box in the corner. It was hard, because the box is very small, but I expect you get used to it if you do it a few times.
The body was a man, which he’d already told us. He had a gunshot wound to the femur. Austin held it up to show us. We all tried to get into the box for that bit. Had that been the wound that killed him? Austin wouldn’t like to say for certain, but probably not. A preexisting injury.
At one point his wife walked past in the background. What must she think? Her husband holding up bones to a computer screen? Perhaps she is used to it.
Now, how much do you know about how to tell how old bones are? I knew nothing, and Austin went through the whole thing in detail. It was fascinating. There was a machine, and there was a special dye, andsomething to do with carbon. I tried to remember this all on the way home so I could write it down, but I’m afraid it’s gone. But it was very interesting. He would be very good onThe One Showif they ever needed it.
He’d taken some soil with him too, and done tests on that, but the soil stuff was less interesting. Back to the bones, please, I had been thinking.
The long and short of it, though, is that Austin had done some math, and you can’t be certain, and there were variables, and no one has all the answers, and all he could really do was make his best guess. At this point Elizabeth told him to stop prattling on and get to it. Elizabeth can get away with that sort of thing, even to a Sir.
So he came out with it. The body was buried sometime in the 1970s, probably earlier rather than later. So fifty-odd years ago, give or take.
We thanked Austin, but then no one knew how to hang up. Ibrahim tried for a while, and you could see he was losing face. Finally Austin’s wife came to the rescue in the end. She seems lovely.
So there we had it. Two potential murders fifty years apart. Plenty to chew on for everyone there. And probably time to tell Chris and Donna what we have done. I hope they don’t take it too personally.
Elizabeth then asked if I would like to go to a crematorium in Brighton with her today on a hunch, but I had already said that I would cook lunch for Bernard, so nothing doing,
I know you can’t smell it, but I’m making him steak and kidney. He is getting thin, so I’m just seeing what I can do.
75.
Donna and Chris are waiting for their free coffee at the Wild Bean Café inside the BP garage on the A21. Anything to get out of the police station for half an hour. To stop looking at the endless files from the Irish passport office. Chris picks up a chocolate bar.
