Aftermath Read Free

hinges were testament to the fact that he or she, or they, wished their activity to remain undetected. A house full of valuables, and so easily removed, yet someone was interested only in the kitchen garden? John Seers knew fear and, cautiously, he pushed the door open.
    He did not notice the bodies at first. The first thing he saw was the ivy clad surfaces of the walls. Also ivy covered was a large greenhouse still with, so far as he could tell, all panes of glass still intact. All the hinged panes were closed and Seers knew that that would make the interior of the greenhouse insufferably hot within, he would have to open the windows to allow the structure to ‘breathe’ and then return some time later. The remainder of the kitchen garden was extensively overgrown and once again grasses had come to dominate the vegetable patches. It was when he once again noticed how aggressive grass becomes when an area of land is left unattended that the skull grinned at him. He stood, startled for an instant, and then he felt that the skull, human, bleached by the sun and inclined in his direction was not grinning but was somehow saying, ‘Help me, help me’, and beyond the first skull was a second, also human, and beyond that a third. John Seers did not look any further but turned, slowly, and walked back to what he felt to be the safety of his car, and there he took his mobile from his pocket and pressed three nines and told the officer what he had found. ‘Directions?’ he replied to the next query. ‘Oh, you’ll never find it,’ he glanced at the road map he had followed earlier that morning, ‘drive on the road between Leavening and Thixendale . . . don’t know its number, it’s not given on this map. I’ll wait on the road and make myself known to the attending officer. Tell him to look for a bloke in white coveralls standing by a red Vauxhall.’
    George Hennessey slowed as he approached the police patrol car, and as he did so the officer standing beside the vehicle drew himself up and stiffened into a near ‘at attention’ position and pointed to the driveway that was the approach to Bromyards. Hennessey turned into the drive-way and nodded in response to the officer’s salute. The driveway, Hennessey found, was long, probably a mile he guessed from the road to the house, and was being severely encroached upon by the vegetation at either side, so much so that he felt he was driving his car down a narrow tunnel of endless shrubbery. At the top, or the end of the driveway, the foliage gave way to an open gravel-covered courtyard within which police vehicles, a red Vauxhall, and two black, windowless mortuary department vans were parked. Also in the courtyard was a second unmarked car and a van belonging to the Scene of Crime Unit. Hennessey parked his car beside the mortuary vans and scowled at the drivers and drivers’ assistants of the vans who stood irreverently smoking cigarettes, and were chatting idly, commenting it seemed on articles printed in the day’s tabloid press. One of the men responded to Hennessey’s scowl by flicking his cigarette defiantly on to the ground and crushing it beneath his foot, all the while holding eye contact with Hennessey. Hennessey, not having any authority over the mortuary van crewmen, could only look away from them as he got out of his car, putting his jacket and panama hat on as he did so. He enquired of a white-shirted constable the whereabouts of DC Webster and, following the constable’s directions, walked slowly but with quiet confidence to the kitchen garden wherein he found Webster talking to a scene of crime officer, and as he approached he thought that both men appeared distinctly shaken. Webster smiled briefly at Hennessey as Hennessey approached him.
    â€˜Thank you for coming so quickly, sir.’ Webster spoke quietly, calmly. ‘This is bad. It’s big and bad and one for you,