The Altered Case Read Online Free PDF Page B

the body. She blocked the whole incident from her conscious mind, but some twenty years later the memory surfaced and she clearly felt that she owed more to her friend and her friend’s family than she did to her father, and she was able to take the police to the precise location where the little girl had been buried.’
    â€˜As our two witnesses did.’
    â€˜Indeed,’ Louise D’Acre continued, ‘and he spent his retirement as a permanent guest of the state. Well, I’ll collect my tool kit and start to earn my crust.’
    â€˜Yes, ma’am.’
    â€˜And there’s more beneath those two, you say?’ Dr D’Acre snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
    â€˜So we believe, ma’am,’ Hennessey replied. ‘The G.P.R. “looks” into the ground at a forty-five degree angle and thus provides a three-dimensional image, and there does indeed seem to be something else beneath the upper two skeletons.’
    â€˜Well . . .’ Dr D’Acre prepared to gently lower herself into the grave. ‘Let’s see what we find.’
    â€˜I’ll leave Webster and Ventnor here with you, plus the constables. I’ll ask them to avail themselves to you, ma’am.’ Hennessey made to leave the tent.
    â€˜That would be appreciated. Thank you, Chief Inspector.’ Dr D’Acre lowered herself into the hole, taking care not to put any weight on to any part of either skeleton.
    â€˜I have a notion to pay a visit,’ Hennessey added.
    â€˜Oh?’ Louise D’Acre looked up at him from the grave.
    â€˜Yes . . . I have.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘Just a notion that I and Sergeant Yellich should pay a courtesy call to the landowner. I mean, I wouldn’t want the police to dig up my back lawn without paying a call on me.’
    â€˜Well a field is hardly a back lawn.’ Dr D’Acre knelt and began to scrape away soil from the head of one of the skeletons. ‘But I know what you mean.’
    â€˜It’s just a courtesy call really,’ George Hennessey explained in a soft, calm and what he hoped was a reassuring tone of voice to the man who answered the door to himself and Yellich. ‘I am Detective Chief Inspector Hennessey and this gentleman –’ Hennessey indicated to Yellich – ‘is Detective Sergeant Yellich. We are from Micklegate Bar police station in York.’
    The man remained silent.
    â€˜We understand from the land registry that you own the field near here?’
    â€˜Which field near here? There’s plenty of fields round here, so which one in particular? No shortage of fields round here.’ The man was in his middle years, Hennessey assessed, probably mid to late fifties. He was tall, and perhaps could be said to be of aristocratic bearing, his near-perfect physique being marred only by a large pink birthmark on the back of his left hand. He wore casual but expensive-looking clothes and an equally expensive-looking watch. His attitude was, Hennessey found, far from aristocratic. He was, in fact, openly hostile to the police. His attitude was more akin to that of a career criminal, Hennessey found, than it was akin to the attitude of the establishment.
    â€˜You are Thomas Farrent?’ Hennessey asked, coping very easily with the man’s hostility, though he was grateful for Yellich’s supportive presence.
    â€˜Yes, I am,’ Farrent sneered. ‘That is I.’
    â€˜Good, good.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘We just have to be certain that we are talking to the right man. The field in question is the one by the wood close to the village of Catton Hill.’
    â€˜Yes, that will be mine. I own all the land round here.’ Farrent’s voice was cold, suspicious, guarded.
    â€˜All of it?’
    â€˜Yes, all the land round Catton Hill. You can walk from York to Selby without stepping off land I own. Sometimes it’s a narrow path, and the route is not direct, but