The Hanging Tree (4 page)

The December morning was raw and overcast, and by the time Rafferty
arrived, the uniformed branch had stationed officers with torches at strategic
points along the lonely, little used lane. Rafferty turned the last corner and
before he doused his headlights they picked out Lilley's fair hair and pale
face. The young officer, recognising the car, hurried forward. 'It's Smith,
sir, I'm sure of it,' he told Rafferty as Rafferty climbed out of the car.

Rafferty nodded and got into his protective gear as Lilley repeated what
Smales had already told him. 'Let's have the mug-shot,' he said. Lilley gave it
to him, and, after Rafferty had given his name to the officer recording each
arrival, he guided him eagerly along the taped off route.

Like before, when Lilley had accompanied him to the scene and shown
where Mrs ffinch-Robinson had found the body, Rafferty saw that no attempt had
been made to conceal it deeper in the wood. It hung from one of the lower
branches of a sturdy oak tree, swinging to and fro on the end of the noose, the
tracksuit rucked up, exposing the skinny, mottled torso.

Rafferty gazed at the body impassively for several moments before he
raised the photograph that Lilley had supplied. He switched on his torch and
compared the two. As Mrs ffinch-Robinson had claimed, the teeth were certainly
the same: prominent, yellow and protruding over the bottom lip, one with a
little chip missing. The ears, too, as though designer-constructed to match the
teeth, also had a tendency to stick out.

Not a face to inspire love, Rafferty concluded. Nor one likely to
incline its owner towards a confident, outgoing nature. With a pang of
unexpected sympathy, Rafferty felt that in a society obsessed with good looks
such a face was more likely to belong to an introverted misfit; one of
society's rejects. Smith had certainly been that, he felt and, as he switched
off the torch, he immediately asked himself if he wasn't being too simplistic. There
were, after all, few enough beauties in the world of either sex, yet most people,
the bat-eared and the goofy included, managed to pair up.

 What was it they said? he asked himself. That emotional involvement was
the murderer of good police work. They were right, he knew that. Even so, he
still couldn't help feeling sorry for the poor little bastard. Of all the
corpses he had seen — and he'd seen a few — he felt this one was in many ways the
most pitiful. He could sense, just by looking at him, that Maurice Smith's life
had contained little, if any joy; restriction and misery and frustration had
undoubtedly been his usual companions; no caring family, no girlfriends, not
even money to pay prostitutes; an existence, nothing more. Maybe if someone had
done something years earlier, straightened his teeth out, had his ears pinned
back,
loved
him, he might never have done what he did.

Rafferty realised he was doing it again — letting his emotions get too
strong a grip. He reminded himself that Smith had raped little girls. What
excuse could there be for that?

It was eerie in the wood. The trees seemed to loom threateningly and
Rafferty told himself not to be ridiculous. The torches gave only a sparse
half-light, faintly assisting the grey day, and, above the murmured voices of
his colleagues, he could still hear the creaking of the branch under its
unaccustomed weight. Although in the gloom, with his own torch switched off, he
was unable to make out more than a pale blur where Smith's face was, he could
still see it clearly in his mind's eye: the rabbit teeth, the weak chin, the
bat ears, the pathetic skinniness of the flesh where the tracksuit top and
bottom had parted. He shivered and turned away to let the photographer get on
with his work.

Even the usually black-humoured Sam Dally was affected by the scene when he
arrived five minutes later. His first comment as he took in the dangling corpse
only served to increase the sense of doom and gloom. '”
Though every prospect
pleases, and only man is vile.”'

'I suppose that's one of Llewellyn's borrowed homilies,' Rafferty said.

Sam nodded. 'Some eighteenth-century bishop, if I remember correctly.
Must be a Sixties’ child,' he commented briefly as he studied the corpse,
explaining for the benefit of those too young or too slow to appreciate the
allusion, 'still swinging.' Nobody laughed.

After Lance, the photographer, had finished filming the body in situ, a
shivering Sam Dally quickly confirmed both stab wound and the extinction of
life, and the body was cut down.

He went through his usual checks with even more speed. As Rafferty had
remarked, it was a freezing day, the sky heavy and threatening snow, and none
were keen to linger longer than necessary; the pathetic cadaver, its flesh
having already been exposed to the elements for some time, had such a chilling
effect, physically, mentally, emotionally, that Rafferty felt he would never
get warm again, never get that sad, plain face out of his mind, and as soon as
Sam had finished ministering to the corpse, he relieved him of his flask and
took a reviving nip. Strictly against regulations, of course, but now was not
the time to worry about such things.

 He stared hard at the body and thought about the 'outing' threat. Although
the first finding of the body with its macabre hood might be explained by the
threat being carried to its ultimate conclusion, it didn't explain its removal
and second appearance. He and Lilley had examined the surrounding area the
night before, and checked missing persons in case the identification had been
wrong. And although the branch had shown signs of damage, with a rope tuft
still clinging determinedly to it, the body had certainly gone. Now here it was
again; as large as life. Or death.

Rafferty shivered again and turned to Lilley. 'I gather the warden found
him?'

Lilley nodded. 'That's him, guv.' He pointed to a middle-aged man sitting
in one of the police cars. The warden had a sour face, the disapproval on the
countenance set in concrete, as though he felt the whole scene, corpse,
bustling coppers and all had been organised solely to discommode him.

Rafferty sighed and tried to make allowances. The man had had a shock
after all, he was bound to look a bit grim. Even so, he thought, he still looks
a miserable bugg—.

Sam Dally interrupted him before his charitable impulse was totally
eroded. 'I'd say he's been dead something like twelve hours, which would fit in
with what you told me.'

'Reckon whoever strung him up the second time was hoping to pass it off
as a suicide?' Rafferty asked.

‘ Need more than hope to bring it off, seeing as he had a bloody great
stab wound in his back.' Sam pulled back the wrist cuffs on the tracksuit
exposing weals on both wrists. 'A suicide who ties his own wrists?' he went on.
'You'd have to be one of life's eternal optimists to think you could convince
anyone it was a DIY job.

'Almost certainly died from the stab wound,' Sam added, 'as there are no
petechiae in the conjunctiva as I'd expect from death by hanging, though
confirmation of that will have to wait till I've done the post-mortem. We're a
bit slack at the moment. The usual winter rush of customers hasn't materialised;
must be waiting to see what Father Christmas brings them, so I'll fit him in
straight after lunch.'

Rafferty grimaced. That meant no lunch for him. Post-mortems made his
stomach churn enough when it was empty. It had been touch and go at the last
autopsy he had attended and he didn't want to risk it again. Sometimes, he
suspected Sam deliberately timed the post-mortems on his cases for just after
meals. He wouldn't put it past him.

'You said on the phone that this is the second time he's been strung
up,' Sam commented.

Rafferty nodded. 'Same body, different tree. The first time, according
to the witness, a Mrs ffinch-Robinson, who's a magistrate from Burleigh, no
less, and a very reliable witness, it was hanging from that tree, over there.' Rafferty
pointed to a venerable oak; huge and gnarled, it looked like it had been around
since the beginning of time. 'Only by the time Lilley got here to investigate,
the body had gone.'

Rafferty told Sam the corpse's identity and about the 'outing' letter they
had found. 'It looks very much as if someone's been playing Judge Jeffreys and Lord
High Executioner combined. I don't like it.'

An odd expression danced its way across Sam Dally's face as Rafferty
finished his explanation. 'The original crossroads used to run by here,' Sam
told him, ominously adding, 'legend has it that this,' he pointed to the
gigantic oak, 'was the old Hanging Tree. One of them, anyway — in medieval
times they generally put a beam across the branches of two trees and kicked
away the ladder when the condemned was aloft.'

Rafferty gazed at the tree with quickened interest. Oak trees always
reminded him of elephants; he supposed it was the coarse, scored look of them. This
one, even in the gloomy half-light under the branches, looked like the oldest
elephant who had ever lived, a real Methuselah of an elephant, all
criss-crossed skin, the individual diamond shapes standing out an inch and more
from the flesh. It was an easy step to convince himself that it had a matching
elephantine memory and, hidden deep in its trunk, it would have stored the
name, face and emotions of every one of the hundreds of poor wretches it had
helped despatch to the next world.

'Used to string up witches, heretics and other individualists,' Sam continued.
'Though, as I said— ‘

 'Witches?' Rafferty interrupted. 'I thought they were always burned?'

'Read your history books, laddie,' Sam advised. 'That was always more of
a Scottish custom. It only became popular down here when Scottish Jimmy
inherited the English throne in the early seventeenth century. A man with a
mighty big fear of witches was old Jimmy One. Last century, by comparison, they
were much less obsessed with punishing supposed witches and more into doing the
dreaded deed to anyone who struck a Privy Councillor, damaged Westminster
Bridge, or impersonated a Chelsea Pensioner. The list of punishments for which
you could be hanged in the earlier part of the nineteenth century was long and
merciless, I can tell you.'

The latter description was much like Sam Dally, Rafferty reflected, as
Sam, who always seemed to get great pleasure out of encouraging others' worst
fears, added, 'For once, it looks as if your theory is bang on target. When it
comes to your murderer, Lord High Executioner seems about the size of it. For
your sake, I hope your killer isn't as determined to rid the country of rapists
as James I was to rid it of witches and later monarchs of Chelsea Pensioner
impersonators.'

Such a possibility had already occurred to Rafferty, but he hadn't been
willing to dwell on it. Now though, hearing it put into words by the far from
fanciful Dally, he felt as though an icy hand had gripped his stomach and
twisted it. His own unspoken concerns, taken together with Sam's robust
observation, forced him to consider the worst case scenario in earnest: what if
this killing wasn't simply a one-off act of revenge, but the beginning of a
determined campaign? An "outing" campaign with a vengeance. One that
didn't stop at threats of exposure and their follow-through.

As Rafferty's guts practised reef knots, the tubby little doctor
tortured him further. 'I know this looks like an unimportant little lane, now,
but at one time, this was an ideal place to dangle corpses, educationally
speaking. Before they built the modern highway across the fields, this was the
main thoroughfare; one arm led, ultimately, to London, the opposite one to the
port of Harwich, one to Elmhurst and its ancient Priory, the other to
Colchester. It was a pretty busy road, too, by the standards of the time, with
Walsingham pilgrims; merchants' carts with wool or woven cloth bound for
continental markets, even royalty often travelled this way; Henry VIII's blonde
bombshell younger sister, Mary, had a home at Woodbridge.'

'What a mine of information you are today, Sam,' Rafferty commented
morosely. 'What did you do, swallow an encyclopaedia for breakfast?'

`'Not me; the wife's the one who swears by roughage. She's also the
history buff. She's recently joined the Local History Society and she dragged
me along to their last outing — said it should interest me as it was my line of
country. Their treasurer, who has a rather suspect fascination with the more
ghoulish side of history, brought us out this way. Anyway, he told us all the
pretty little tales I've just told you; presumably on the principle of give 'em
plenty of fascinatingly grisly stuff from the off and they'll stay and pay more
subs. Play your cards right, Rafferty, and I might be able to wangle you an
invite to their annual Iceni versus the Romans war games.'

'Sounds just my kind of thing,' Rafferty murmured, wishing Sam had taken
longer to recover his equilibrium. To his relief, the Coroner's Officer finally
gave permission for the body to be moved and the Scenes of Crime team began to
wrap it in its protective covering. He stamped his frozen feet in an attempt to
encourage some life into them and wished the SOCOs would get a move on.

Never one to waste a captive audience, Dally went on. 'Interesting chap,
this treasurer wallah. Did you know that hanging, as an instrument of judicial
execution, came to England by way of the Anglo-Saxons?'

By now, numbed in mind and body, Rafferty merely shook his head.

'Who, in turn, got it from their German ancestors. According to this
lecturer, hanging became the established punishment for many crimes in the 12th
Century when Henry II instituted trial by jury and assize courts. You and I,
Rafferty, have both cut down enough suicides to know it's not the swift,
painless death most people imagine it to be. Hanging is a very difficult thing
to carry out efficiently. It takes precision, expertise and plenty of practise
to get all the variables correct; the length of rope, the weight and drop
ratio, etc. Get 'em wrong and instead of breaking the bones of the cervical
vertebrae, crushing the spinal cord and paralysing the body, the poor wretch
slowly strangles to death.'