Free The Dark Room by Minette Walters Page A

X-ray photographs in Superintendent Cheever’s
direction with the flick of a finger. ‘We took these before we put them in the bags. You see how both skulls have been fractured in several places. This one, in particular, shows a clear
rounded depression in the woman’s parietal bone. A long-handled club or sledgehammer would be my bet, certainly something very substantial. Notice the break in the man’s right clavicle
which would imply a missed shot’ – he made a downward swing with his hand – ‘possibly glanced off the side of his head and landed with the force of a two-ton truck on the
poor wretch’s shoulder.’ He shook his head. ‘What we’re looking at is two people on their knees with hands tied behind their backs and a maniac using them for target
practice with something very heavy indeed. I think we can assume the first blows were delivered from behind because those are downward sweeps, and the blows that shattered the jaws and cheekbones
were done after the bodies had toppled on to their sides. Imagine our maniac holding his hammer like a golf club and driving at both faces when they were on the ground. That should give you a good
idea of what probably occurred.’
    Cheever dabbed at his lips again as he examined the photographs. ‘Where do you think it happened? In the ditch itself or at the top of the bank?’
    ‘My guess would be on the bank. The sort of blows I envisage would have been harder to achieve in a confined space. No, I see him killing them at the top of the slope, then
pushing the bodies over. It’s not very pleasant to dwell on’ – he dunked another biscuit in his coffee – ‘but the golf-swing blows may have been his method of driving
the corpses into a roll. Not that it would have worked very well,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He’d have had to lay them out straight and give them a heave around their middles to
really get them going.’
    ‘What about those slide marks we found five yards down?’
    Bob Clarke sorted out another photograph. ‘Very interesting,’ he said. ‘Clearly made with a thin, hard heel. See here, quite deeply scored as if the wearer was
sliding on one side with the heel digging in as a brake. But it’s no more than an inch wide so I’d suggest it was a woman’s shoe.’
    ‘The female corpse was wearing trainers,’ said Cheever.
    ‘Yes. She couldn’t have made marks like this, and neither could our male corpse. His heels are a good four inches wide. They weren’t done all that recently either
– you can see where the grass has started to sprout again in places – so the chances are there was either a woman present while the murder took place or someone else, who didn’t
report it, found the bodies before your old lady did.’
    ‘If that’s true,’ said Cheever pensively, ‘then it’s conceivable they may be our wallet thief. The logical assumption is that the murderer removed
anything that could identify them, but it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone else did the business.’ He glanced towards his colleagues. ‘What do you
think?’
    Gareth Maddocks gave a non-committal shrug, his narrowed eyes, sunk in folds of thick flesh, watching the pathologist’s biscuit-dunking routine with disgust. ‘You said it
meant a woman might have been present during the murder,’ he reminded him. ‘Does that mean a woman could have delivered blows like this, or that she was there only as a witness to a man
delivering them?’
    Apparently oblivious to the other man’s distaste, Clarke rubbed biscuit crumbs from his fingers and started in on his coffee. ‘Assuming she had two people, incapacitated,
on their knees in front of her and assuming a sledge-or club-hammer with a reasonable length handle, then any woman with the strength to swing the thing several times could inflict this sort of
damage. But it’s an unlikely modus operandi for a woman acting alone.’
    ‘Not impossible, though?’
    ‘Nothing’s