The Altered Case by Peter Turnbull Page A

see a grave being dug during the hours of daylight unless some form of subterfuge was employed.’
    ‘Nor can I, ma’am.’
    ‘Mind you,’ Dr D’Acre continued, ‘here I encroach on your territory.’
    ‘Mr Hennessey won’t mind, ma’am,’ Carmen Pharoah replied, ‘he won’t mind at all, not the Mr Hennessey I know.’
    ‘Nor the one I know; he is a very open-minded police officer,’ Dr D’Acre said, ‘not at all jealous of his remit. Mr Hennessey’s response would be “encroach all you like, all help gratefully received”.’ She paused and then added, ‘Hardly remote.’
    ‘Ma’am?’ Carmen Pharoah queried. ‘Remote, ma’am?’
    ‘The field, the scene of the burial. You haven’t been there but I can tell you that it is hardly remote. It is a rural location, that I grant you, but the rooftops of the nearest village are easily visible from the field to one side of a wooded area. The hole must have been dug and the victims brought to the graveside already deceased, and already naked, and conveyed in the sort of vehicle which is capable of driving over a field without getting bogged down.’
    ‘A tractor and a trailer,’ Carmen Pharoah suggested.
    ‘That sort of thing. My heavens!’ Dr D’Acre gasped then fell silent as she put one hand up to her mouth.
    ‘Ma’am?’ Carmen Pharoah stepped forward as did Eric Filey. ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’
    ‘Yes . . . yes, I am all right . . . I am all right.’ Dr D’Acre raised her right hand and pointed to the larger of the female skeletons. ‘In myself I am all right but I am wrong, very wrong.’
    ‘Wrong, ma’am?’ Carmen Pharoah asked.
    ‘Yes, wrong, how wrong I am. You know,’ Dr D’Acre said quietly, ‘after twenty years of cutting corpses and examining skeletons you develop an eye for detail. You see, all human skulls look the same at first glance and often remain to look the same to the untrained eye, but in fact they have minute differences that are accentuated by the overlaying of layers of flesh and muscle, which explains why human faces look so different from each other.’
    ‘Yes, ma’am?’ Carmen Pharoah replied curiously.
    ‘But, just now, in running my eye along the line of skulls, three of the females have the sort of familial similarity that you would expect in people who are related, but the fourth, the taller female, is different. Two females grew up to look like their mother, but the third female, she is taller because she is not a relative. Her height is not the result of a dormant gene, it is because she is, or was, wholly unrelated. The DNA results will confirm whether I am correct or not, but now I think that this is not a family of five, but a family of four plus a fifth unrelated person who was murdered and buried with them. Of that I am sure, as sure as I can be without the DNA results.’
    ‘Oh,’ Carmen Pharoah gasped as she looked at the skeletons, ‘but the fifth skeleton, the tall girl, she is or was of the same age as the daughters I think you said, ma’am.’
    ‘Yes . . . prior to tests confirming age . . . but yes,’ Dr D’Acre replied, ‘the younger three females were of the same age group, late teens to early twenties.’
    ‘So a family plus a friend of the daughters?’
    Dr D’Acre nodded. ‘Yes, possibly, possibly. The tall girl was just in the wrong place at the wrong time or she was murdered for another, unconnected motive, and since a grave was being dug anyway . . . As I said, a very unpleasant tale is unfolding and it’s just got a little bit more unpleasant.’
    If anyone, if any single soul on this planet, thought Hennessey – even before he and Somerled Yellich saw the farmhouse of Blue Jay Farm – harbours the illusion that farming is a pleasant and a romantic occupation, then let him or her come here to Blue Jay Farm with its delightful but wholly misleading name. Blue Jay Farm might sound, he felt, as if it belonged in a children’s book but the first thing that met