Eric seemed to suddenly understand that he’d been fruitlessly searching for an unknown gravedigger when, in fact, he should have been looking more closely at his nephew.
“You,” he said. “It was you all along.”
Rob didn’t bother answering his uncle. Scrambling through the undergrowth, he searched frantically for the knife. He had to get his hands on it and finish what he’d started. He had no choice now.
He felt a heavy impact between his shoulder blades. It knocked the air out of his lungs and sent him crashing to the ground. Winded, he managed to roll onto his back and look up as Eric stood over him, spade lifted above his head, looking like he was about to play one of the old ring the bell games at a fair. But Eric wasn’t trying to ring a bell; he was aiming for Rob’s skull.
“Eric, don’t!” Rob cried out, raising his hands in a futile attempt to ward off the spade.
His uncle hesitated for a split second, and that was enough time for Rob to jerk his knee up with all the force he could muster and catch his attacker between the legs. Eric went down like a sack of stones, clutching himself and gasping.
Rob got to his knees and brushed aside twigs and leaves, desperately searching for the knife. He didn’t have much time before Eric recovered. But the weapon was elusive. He couldn’t find it.
Eric was scrambling to his feet, looking decidedly in pain, but fighting through it, probably thanks to his survival instinct and an overload of adrenaline flooding his system.
Rob couldn’t waste his time looking for the knife; he had to act.
Launching himself towards the spade, which Eric hadn’t picked up in his groggy state, he gripped the handle and stood up. Using both hands for extra force, he swung the spade at the back of Eric’s neck.
The edge of the metal blade connected with the base of his uncle’s skull, and Eric went down again. He landed on his face in the undergrowth, and this time, he looked like he wasn’t going to get back up.
Tossing the spade aside, Rob searched through the piles of dead leaves on the ground. This little jaunt into the woods had turned into a disaster; he couldn’t let things get worse by losing his dad’s knife.
He found it lying in full view ten feet away. Picking it up, he made his way back to where his uncle lay on the ground.
There was a lot of blood. Some of it was coming from the rip in the back of the older man’s jacket, staining the fabric dark red, but most of it was welling from a cut in the back of Eric’s neck, where the edge of the spade had cut through skin.
But despite the blood soaking into the ground around Eric’s prone body, the old man wasn’t dead. He was still breathing, and it looked to Rob like he might even get up again.
Dropping to his knees, he raised the knife above his head with both hands and brought it down on the back of Eric’s neck. The blade sliced through flesh buried itself all the way to the hilt. Rob’s hands became slick with warm blood that was already pouring from the wound.
He lifted the knife and brought it down forcefully on Eric’s back, determined to cut through the thick, winter coat the man wore. It worked, but not as well as he’d wanted, so he used the knife to cut the back of the coat away, revealing a dark green jumper beneath.
He stabbed the blade into the jumper repeatedly.
He wasn’t sure if Eric was already dead, but it didn’t matter. The act of bringing the knife up and down was a release. This was what he should have done to that girl years ago. This was what his father had been trying to show him, the joy of killing.
A sense of elation flooded though each time the steel cut through flesh. He kept the knife moving until, eventually, he was exhausted. Pushing himself away from what was left of his uncle, he sat on the ground and gasped icy air as he recovered.
He had some work ahead of him now. For a moment, he considered putting Eric’s body into the grave from which he’d unearthed the girl earlier, but something about that didn’t feel right. As far as he knew, his father had only buried girls and young women in the cellar. Putting Eric down there would taint the work his father had done. Rob couldn’t put Eric’s body into the collection; it didn’t belong there and would ruin everything.
“I’m just going to have to bury you out here,” he said to his dead uncle. After a quick visual appraisal of the area in which he sat, he decided this was as good a place as any. It was hidden by the trees and undergrowth, and far enough from the path that a hiker or dog walker wouldn’t come across it by accident. He’d cover the grave with sticks and dead leaves, and no one would be any the wiser.
“That’s settled, then,” he said, deciding on his course of action. He would bury Eric out here in the woods, and that would be the end of it.
But first, there was something else he wanted to do.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said to his uncle’s body, before striding back to the house.
Once inside, he went down to the cellar and grabbed Sam the Action Man. He took the toy back to the woods and placed it next to Eric while he used the spade to dig a grave. The pain between his shoulder blades—where he’d taken a blow from the spade—didn’t help, and the cold, compacted earth wasn’t as easy to dig up as the cellar floor, but after an hour, he had a hole deep enough to put Eric into.
Before he threw his uncle’s body into it, though, he tossed Sam in without a second thought. The faceless toy represented the scared boy Rob had once been. No one could say that was who he was anymore. The faceless Action Man from his childhood needed to remain buried.
After throwing the toy into the makeshift grave, he hooked his arms under Eric’s and dragged the body to the edge of the hole. His uncle’s corpse felt almost impossibly heavy; nothing like the lightweight girls Rob was used to carrying.
After taking Eric’s car key from his pocket so he could deal with the silver Lexus parked by the house, he rolled the body into the grave, hearing it hit the earth at the bottom with a wet, heavy thud.
Rob set about filling in the hole, no easy task with painful shoulder blades and muscles that were stiff from digging earlier and fighting with his uncle.
Despite the coldness of the day, he soon began to sweat from the exertion, and by the time he was done, he’d discarded his winter jacket and shirt.
After covering over the freshly dug ground with sticks and leaves, he stepped back and surveyed his handiwork, grinning with the satisfaction of a job well done. From the trail, no one would ever guess that a hole had been dug here.
Retrieving his jacket and shirt and making sure he had the knife in his pocket, he strolled back to the house with the spade over his shoulder.
When he reached the Lexus, he opened the boot and threw the spade in. Then he went around the side of the house to the garage.
The wooden structure was in a state of disrepair, but it would serve as an adequate hiding place for the car. Rob opened the doors, making a mental note that he was going to have to get a padlock for them, and looked inside.
His father’s lathe was in here, along with an array of chisels and saws hanging from pegs on the wall. Planks of wood were stacked in one corner, and a row of pine shelves held yet more tools of the woodworking trade.
This had been the place from which his father had run his business as a carpenter and woodturner. The tools and machines were arranged around the edge of the garage, leaving a considerable space in the middle where cabinets, panels, and other items had been fashioned in the past.
That space was empty now and would be repurposed as a parking space for the Lexus.
Returning to the car, Rob slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The radio came on, the digital display reading BBC Radio 4. A man and a woman were discussing politics.
Rob turned it down and reversed the car into the garage. After killing the engine, he left the keys inside. No need to take them into the house.
He closed the garage doors and checked the general area in front of the house. There was nothing to indicate that Eric had ever been here.<
br />
Satisfied, he went inside. He needed to have a shower; he was covered in blood and dirt. He also needed to wash his clothes. His trousers and shirt were still in the washer, so they’d just have to be washed again, with the clothes he was currently wearing.
He stripped off in the laundry room and added a scoop of washing powder to the machine before turning it on. Naked, he went upstairs and showered, then selected more clothes from his father’s wardrobe—jeans, T-shirt, and a blue shirt—before going back downstairs to the kitchen.
As he passed the closed cellar door, he was sure he heard a voice down there, drifting up the steps to the other side of the door. A man’s voice. His father’s voice.
He was mistaken, of course. That was impossible.
But, despite that, he pressed his ear to the painted wood and listened.
“Rob.”
He opened the door, expecting to discover the pipes down there making noises which he’d mistaken for his name.
But when he opened the door and a shaft of light from the kitchen illuminated the cellar floor below the steps, he saw his father standing there. The old man had a knife in his hand—the knife. The same one that Rob had washed under the kitchen tap and placed on the counter earlier—and was grinning.
Rob glanced over his shoulder at the knife that was still lying on the counter, where he’d put it earlier.
“Come and look what we’ve got down here,” his dad said.
Rob knew he was hallucinating, that it was a memory come to life, and the voice was actually inside his own head, but it seemed so real.
“Dad?”
“Come on, son, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“More work?”
His father nodded, still grinning. “You didn’t think all this was going to end when you killed Eric, did you? No, no, my boy. That was just the beginning.”
Chapter 19
“What do you mean you’ve been investigating the Mary Harwood case?” Battle said. Tony and Dani had managed to track him down to the police station in Buxton, where an incident room had been set up and was currently being staffed by members of Murder Force.
“I specifically told you not to do that,” the DCI added.
Tony wanted to say that no such specific order had been given but felt it would be wiser to keep his mouth shut.
“The thing is, guv, we’ve made some headway,” Dani said. “We’ve uncovered a part of Mary’s life that she kept secret from her family. The man who abducted her, the man she said she knew, was part of that secret. If we can track down P. Gibson, we might find that man.”
“And what does this have to do with Daisy? Or Joanna?”
“It’s probably the same perpetrator,” Tony said, unable to keep quiet any longer.
Battle narrowed his eyes. “Really? Worked that out by some psychological deduction, have you? Or have you got some evidence to show me that links Mary’s case to our investigation?”
“Well, nothing concrete,” Tony admitted “but you’d have to be a fool to not see the connection.”
“Are you calling me a fool, Dr Sheridan?”
“No. All I’m saying is that we have a lead here that could tell us who the man on the bridge was when Mary Harwood was taken. I believe that same man is responsible for the deaths of Daisy Riddle and Joanna Kirk.”
Battle said nothing, but stared at the report Dani and Tony had put together in the car park. It recorded their meeting with Mrs MacDonald at Peak Dresses and put forward sound reasoning—as far as Tony was concerned—as to why the camera and photograph should be examined, and why the woman in the photograph—P. Gibson—should be tracked down.
“It shouldn’t take much in the way of resources to find her,” Tony said to the DCI. She’s most likely still living in this area.”
Battle read the hastily put together report and handed it back to Dani. “To be honest with you, this is the biggest lead we’ve got. The analysis of the remains has thrown up bits and pieces, but nothing compelling. We’ve got DNA from the sheet, but it doesn’t match anything in the database. There are fibres, that seem to have come from a vehicle, and Forensics are trying to match them to a specific make and model, but that’s going to take time, not to mention tracking down all the vehicles in the country that fit the result.”
He sighed. “So, what you’ve got here is the only thing we have that points to a specific person. However, it may not have anything at all to do with our case. Perhaps we should hand it over to the Derbyshire Police. The Mary Harwood case is theirs, and I’m not seeing anything here that tells me we should add it to our investigation.”
Tony took the report from Dani and held it aloft. “That’s because the evidence isn’t in these words.” He pointed at his own head. “It’s in here. We know from experience that serial killers don’t suddenly appear fully-fledged. There are usually one or two kills, or even a spate of lesser crimes leading up to the signature that eventually identifies them. Those first kills are where we’re more likely to catch them out, mainly because the killer is likely to know the victim.”
He gestured to the photos of Daisy and Joanna on the board. “Those girls probably didn’t know the man who abducted Mary Harwood. But Mary knew him. Before she got into the Land Rover, she told her sister that she knew the man driving it. And now, we have a possible link to him. The woman in those photos, Mrs Gibson, was part of Mary’s secret social circle. So was the man in the Land Rover. They most likely knew each other. If we find her, we can find him.”
Battle hesitated. He turned and looked at the pictures of the two dead girls.
Tony could sense the DCI was wavering. He decided to speak to the guilt that was obviously eating Battle up inside. He leaned forward and gently said, “Don’t we owe it to Daisy and Joanna to investigate every lead we can?”
“All right,” Battle said, turning to face him. “I’m going to approve a search for this Mrs Gibson woman. Not because of your attempt to manipulate me with that low psychological blow, Tony, but because it’s the right thing to do. I’ll give it to the support team to check into while you and DI Summers pay a visit to the forensic anthropologist. She left me a message earlier saying she wants to speak to someone from the team. Since you two have been hard at work this morning, following your own little leads, you can take have a relaxing afternoon in the Chesterfield morgue. At least I’ll know where you are.”
“Right, boss,” Tony said. If the visit to the morgue was supposed to be some form of punishment, then he’d got off lightly; he was going to see Alina Dalca again, and that made him strangely happy.
“And take that camera and photo downstairs to Forensics, so they can have a look at it.”
“Will do, Guv,” Dani said.
As they left the incident room, and were walking along the corridor, she said to Tony, “Well, we got our own way in the end. At least you didn’t tell him your theory about the dead husband and the wife digging up the bodies.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell him that. Should I go back?”
“No,” she said firmly.
“I was kidding.”
“I know you were. Besides, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to spend more time with Battle when you could be spending it with the forensic anthropologist.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He felt uncomfortable. Was he that obvious?
She laughed. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. In fact, you get a head start. I’ll drop these things into Forensics, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.” They found the stairs at the end of the corridor and went down together. When they reached the floor below, where the Forensics team was situated, Dani pushed through the door and smiled at Tony. “Have fun.”
Tony continued his descent to the ground floor and went out to the car park. The wind had picked up, blowing cold air into his face as he searched for his Mini among the other cars. When he found it and got in, he started the engine and turned the
heater up.
He had no idea how to get to Chesterfield hospital from here, so typed his destination into the SatNav, and waited for the device to calculate the route. When it finally decided which way to take him, it told him he was only forty-three minutes away.
So, in less than an hour, he could be chatting to Alina. As he drove out of the car park, he felt a sudden, sinking feeling in his gut. Chatting to her about what, exactly? The indicators of psychological deviance? Societal catalysts for sociopathy? Jungian archetypes?
It was all he knew. The job had consumed his life. He couldn’t make small talk.
“You’re boring, Tony,” he told himself as he joined the traffic on the road. “That’s all there is to it.”
When he got to the hospital, he checked his hair in the rearview mirror before going downstairs to the mortuary. At the door that led into the morgue itself, he straightened himself up and knocked.
“Come in,” said a female voice from the other side. Tony knew it was Alina’s from the Eastern European accent.
He opened the door and entered the office. She was sitting at a desk, in front of a computer, dressed in a long white coat over a green jumper and tan skirt. Unlike the last time he’d seen her, she wore glasses, and her hair was loose, rather than in a ponytail. It reached down to her shoulders in gentle curls.
She smiled when she saw him. “Hello, Tony.”
“Hi,” he said, raising his hand in an awkward wave. “DCI Battle sent me over because you wanted to see me. I mean, because you wanted to see someone from the team. I’m not here by myself; DI Summers is here as well. Well, she’s not here yet, but she’s on the way. She had to drop something off at Forensics, but she’ll be here soon.”
“Excellent,” she said, seemingly unaware of his nervous torrent of words. “I have something to show you. Shall we wait for DI Summers?”
“Umm, yes, I suppose we should.”
“Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”
“No, thanks, I’m fine.”
“Okay. Will you excuse me while I finish this report?”
Silence of the Bones: A Murder Force Crime Thriller Page 16
