Aftermath Read Online Free PDF

someone knew the garden existed, yet it’s so far from the road and in a remote part of the Vale on top of that.’
    â€˜Yes,’ Hennessey smiled, ‘so we’ll be tracing all the former staff . . .’
    â€˜Well, I wish you luck. Have you got all the photographs you need?’
    Hennessey turned to the scene of crime officer who nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he added.
    â€˜So we can transport the bodies to the York District. I’ll go and await them.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ll commence the post-mortems tomorrow first thing, nine thirty am. Will you be observing for the police, Chief Inspector?’
    â€˜Yes, ma’am, most probably.’
    It was 16.35 hours.

TWO
    Thursday 11th June – 10.05 hours – 22.22 hours
in which a home visit is made and Carmen Pharoah and George Hennessey are severally at home to the gracious reader.
    T he room was brilliantly illuminated by a series of filament bulbs concealed behind opaque Perspex sheets in the ceiling. The Perspex sheets successfully avoided the potentially dangerous epileptic fit inducing ‘shimmer’ and bathed the room in a bright but constant glow, which was not harmful to the eyes of those in the room. In the room, four corpses lay on four stainless steel tables arranged side by side in a row. The fifth body of the five, one of the complete skeletons, found in the kitchen garden at Bromyards remained in a steel drawer in a chilled adjacent room. ‘Four is quite sufficient to start with,’ Dr D’Acre had explained. A sombre mood, very sombre in fact, thought Hennessey, as he stood against the wall observing the procedure for the police. He had not known a mood more sombre to have previously descended on the room. He watched as Dr D’Acre moved the arms and legs of each body, sometimes having to use all her strength, until all four lay face up, arms by the side, legs straight out and close together, and thus affording each corpse, even in death, a degree of dignity. Each victim seemed to have expired in a foetal position, either because they had sat up against the wall as they had drawn their last breath, or more likely, thought Hennessey, having seen the five bodies shortly after they had been found, that they had, with resignation, turned on their sides and awaited their own death. Hennessey watched Dr D’Acre as she worked, moving in a slow but determined, and yet gentle, manner, using as little force as necessary and handling each corpse as if it was a living being, and so she managed to create a distinct sense of reverence for the deceased. Her eyes, too, when he was able to see them, he noted, displayed a look of respect for the dead. Her mouth was kept closed as she worked, her soft jawline set firm. A single act of clumsiness, Hennessey realized, a needless look of distaste for the work she performed, or a smile, no matter how brief, or a split-second gleam in her eyes, or of eye contact with him or Eric Filey, would ruin everything, because her attitude, her professionalism, was example setting. She was leading from the front, and Hennessey and Eric Filey were willing followers and responded by exhibiting the same decorum.
    Having laid out the skeletons, with the occasional help of Eric Filey, Dr D’Acre turned her attention to the least decomposed of the four, and as such, clearly the most recent of the five bodies to have been brought to Bromyards.
    â€˜The body . . . oh, please give this a number and today’s date, Kate.’ Dr D’Acre spoke for the benefit of the microphone, which was attached to an angle poise that was bolted into the ceiling. ‘Kate’ was, Hennessey assumed, clearly a skilled audio-typist who knew what to write in the report and what not to write. It seemed clear that D’Acre and ‘Kate’ knew each other very well and that they worked well together. ‘The body,’ Dr D’Acre continued, ‘is