Sellars was bound for the Sinodun Hills of Oxfordshire, and in particular the Wittenham Clumps, twin copses of beech trees that marked the site of an Iron Age fort at Dorchester-on-Thames. The girl wouldn’t be the first sacrifice accepted by that ground, so her bones would have company.
Sellars heard her cry out softly from behind him.
He thought she might have been calling a child’s name.
* * *
GARY HOLMBY WAS FRETTING.
He’d contacted Sellars as soon as Karl called him to say that the police were asking questions about Romana Moon. Sellars had told Gary to invite Karl up to Newcastle, and keep him there for a couple of days. For now, Sellars said, it was important to calm Karl down, and make sure he said nothing to the police about any possible connection between his brother and Romana. Sellars assured Gary that the matter was in hand, and the police would very shortly be presented with a new set of distractions.
But then the police had called Gary—his mum had surrendered his number to them, under protest—wanting to know if his brother had been in touch, because Karl had dropped off the radar. Gary denied it, of course. What was he going to say: that Karl was on his way up to Newcastle because he was afraid Gary might have stabbed a woman to death on the moors, and he needed to look him in the eye when he asked about it in order to be certain of the truth? Yeah, and perhaps the police would like to come around and arrest Gary now, save him the trouble of making his own supper. He could have tea and toast at the station while he signed the confession. Hynes, the detective who called, had requested that Gary get in touch if Karl made an appearance, and Gary assured him that he would. He and Karl would have to talk to the police eventually, of course, but not before they got their stories straight. Karl would also have to phone his mum to let her know he was okay. She didn’t worry much when he stayed out overnight, especially not since he’d entered university, but the police would have contacted her as well. Karl already had five missed calls from her, as well as three more from a number he didn’t recognize. Gary guessed that was probably a police number, possibly even the same copper who had spoken with him. Karl had a bunch of voice messages as well, but Gary told him not to listen to them, and to turn his phone off until the morning.
Karl hadn’t needed much encouragement to stay in Newcastle for a couple of days. It was a weekend, and he only had one more exam the following week. Gary gave him a free run at the pay-per-view movies, and whatever else he might want to watch. Tomorrow he’d take Karl somewhere flash for dinner, and they’d head to a nightclub after. Karl being under twenty-one wouldn’t be a problem, not with the goodwill Gary had earned over the years. Gary would find them a couple of girls, and they’d bring them back to the apartment. Karl wasn’t a virgin, but he’d never been with a proper woman. Gary would fix that.
But the immediate challenge was convincing his brother that Gary wasn’t responsible for Romana Moon’s death, and hadn’t even seen her since Karl asked him to stay away from her. Gary knew he should have found another girl on whom to lose his killing cherry, but Romana was convenient, and good-looking, and she’d made his brother feel like shit on a shoe. Gary had been careful to ensure that she didn’t know his real name, or too many details of what he did for a living. He hadn’t even allowed her to take any pictures with her phone—either of the two of them, or him alone. He told her he was tired of all this social media nonsense, thought it put too much pressure on a relationship from the start, and remarked how nobody seemed to believe anything was real anymore until they’d captured it on their phone. He also worked in cybersecurity, he said—a glancing moment of contact with the truth, but not enough to pose a danger to him—and understood how vulnerable these new technologies rendered us.
He knew she’d google him, though, and would be suspicious if nothing came up with his name attached, regardless of how much he professed to want to distance himself from the demands of an electronic existence. It hadn’t taken him long to establish an online identity, one that chimed with the information he’d shared with her: a website for a nebulous business consultancy, backed up by references to the company in articles and reports either manufactured by him from standard templates, or presented in the form of summaries, and inserted into locked or subscription-only sites.
After his second date with Romana, he offered to give her some advice on her own use of the Internet, and she’d brought along her laptop and phone, as requested. This enabled him to discover her passwords and access codes, and establish that she didn’t use the Cloud to back up her information, which would make it simpler to erase any digital footprints once he’d killed her. Unfortunately, he’d held on to both her phone and her computer after her death, which meant that he still had them when Karl called to say the police were asking questions.
It had been stupid of Gary to keep Romana’s stuff. Mostly he’d just been waiting until his ankle didn’t hurt quite so much before getting rid of it, but there was a part of him that also liked the idea of having a few souvenirs of the event. He particularly liked the laptop. She’d kept a lot of photos on it, some fairly intimate—she had body issues, it seemed—and a great deal of music, most of it rubbish, but important to her, and therefore a facet of her personality. He’d started deleting the music, tune by tune, as though progressively removing all remaining traces of her from the world, just as he’d excised her physical presence. He was doing the same with the pictures, with the exception of the naked and semi-naked shots. It reminded him of the power he’d felt as he took her life on the moor.
His first task, therefore, once his brother was safely situated on the sofa with a beer, was to dispose at last of the phone and laptop. The phone would be easy—drop a bit here as he walked around, and another there—but the laptop would be more difficult. After considering the problem, he’d returned it to its hiding place in his bedroom closet. If he was going to dump it, he needed to erase everything on it first, and he didn’t have time to do that, not with Karl in the apartment, and not before he’d had a chance to store elsewhere the photos he wanted to keep.
But he also wanted to call Sellars, and let him know that he had Karl. So he’d left his brother in front of the TV, unburdened himself of Moon’s phone, and made contact with Sellars, all while trying to ignore the pain in his ankle. Along the way he bought some tequila, fresh limes, a bag of tortilla chips, and a tub of salsa. He’d make a jug of margaritas and try to put Karl’s mind at rest. Karl wanted to be convinced, which helped. They’d already briefly discussed the murder, so Gary knew how his brother’s mind was working.
“You didn’t hurt her, did you?”
“Cross my heart, I didn’t hurt her. I never even spoke to her, because you told me not to.”
“You’re sure?”
“Course I’m sure.”
“What about the scar?”
“What scar?”
“The one on her belly, the one you told me about.”
“She was wearing a cropped top. I saw it when she stood up to go to the bar. You could see it in the photo I sent you. That doesn’t mean you can go mentioning it to the police, though.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I know you’re not. I’m just saying. They’d twist it, and make us both look bad. They might even try to pin it on us.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Why’d you have to say you slept with her anyway? That’s where all this trouble started. That’s why the police are asking questions.”
“I don’t know. Just because.”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”
“Swear you didn’t hurt her, Gary. Swear it.”
“Jesus, Karl. I didn’t hurt her—I swear. Happy?”
But Karl wasn’t, not yet. Gary would work on him.
It would all be sorted by morning.
* * *
SELLARS GAVE THE HOLMBYS only the barest of thoughts as he drove. He didn’t know Gary Holmby well enough to care if anything happened to him, and h
e didn’t know his brother, Karl, at all. Sellars had offered to take care of the whole mess. He felt partly responsible, since he was the one who’d found Gary to begin with, but Mors was adamant that there should be no further association between Sellars and Gary Holmby. The girl was the priority—the girl, and the Wittenham Clumps—not the Holmbys.
Sellars wondered what Mors planned to do with them.
Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be pleasant.
CHAPTER LXXIII
Hynes spoke with Priestman one last time before bed. Karl Holmby had vanished, which was worrying. They’d tried his friends and family, but he hadn’t reached out to any of them, or so they all claimed. Priestman remained convinced that Holmby was lying to them, but she wasn’t sure about what, exactly. She also believed—through instinct, female intuition, call it what you will—that he hadn’t slept with Romana Moon, and they knew he couldn’t have killed her, because his alibi was solid. He’d surface soon, though; he was just a kid, not an international criminal. He didn’t even own a passport. They’d pick him up over the next day or two, but in the meantime Hynes informed Priestman of his intention to speak in person with Holmby’s brother, Gary, probably early the following morning. According to the Holmbys’ mother, who was reluctant even to confirm her own name to the forces of law and order, the two brothers had grown tighter in recent years, which seemed to contradict what Karl had told Priestman about their relationship. Even if Karl wasn’t with Gary, the older Holmby boy might be able to shed some light on the younger’s personality and behavior.
“You think we’re making any progress?” Hynes asked Priestman. “Because it doesn’t feel that way to me.”
“We’re closer than we were,” she replied. “Small steps.”
Hynes said good night.
Small steps? Baby steps. Barely steps at all.
He went to bed, but couldn’t sleep.
It was wrong, all wrong.
CHAPTER LXXIV
Karl Holmby wasn’t enjoying this last beer. It might have been because it was one of those fancy American IPAs his brother preferred drinking, but that tasted of soap to him. Then again, he hadn’t been able to enjoy much of anything since the police came to question him.
If he were being honest with himself, he might have admitted to living in a state of disassociation since the moment he’d learned of Miss Moon’s death. Her murder had drained the color from Karl’s world, rendering all experience into shades of gray. It would show in his final exam results, he was sure. He’d done well in his earlier assessments, but his overall performance would now take a hit.
He put down the beer and curled up on the couch. He wanted his mum. He should go home to her and confess everything. She might be angry with him for a while, but she’d understand. He hadn’t done anything wrong, apart from shooting his mouth off to Ryan Clifton about fucking Miss Moon—well, lying about fucking Miss Moon, which made it two things he’d done wrong.
Three, if you included telling Gary about her.
Four, if you added enabling Gary to kill her.
The beer fug vanished. He knew Gary had killed her. He’d known ever since her body had turned up on the moors. He’d just blinded himself to the fact, still hoping to be proved wrong, because the reality was too horrible to face. But that was just foolishness. It was what little kids did: turn a back on reality. No, Gary had killed her, clear as the nose on Karl’s face. Gary might have been the super-intelligent one in the family, but Karl had always been able to see through him, right down to the rot within. Gary’s flaw was arrogance, like a lot of the serial killers Karl had read about over the years. In the end, ego was their downfall. Gary was certain he could lie to his younger brother and be believed, because he was smarter than Karl—smarter than anyone else he knew. His wealth and success proved this.
Serial killer.
Karl sat up. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that Miss Moon might not have been Gary’s first victim—or if she was the first, that he might have enjoyed killing her enough to continue with others.
The time for confessing all to his mum had passed; whatever he had to say, he’d tell it to the police, even if he had no proof, only suspicions. Yes, Gary had given him a sense of his own potential. Without him, Karl would never have made it to university. He also admired Gary, although his admiration was tinged with envy at the life Gary had made for himself. But he didn’t love Gary. He never had. By turning his brother over to the police, Karl’s conscience wouldn’t be so troubled that he’d endure a lifetime of guilt as a consequence. He didn’t think his mum would blame him for it, either, not if Gary had killed a woman. Even if she did, Karl would live with the burden. And if he was wrong—if, if, if—and Gary hadn’t killed Miss Moon, then he would live with that guilt, too.
Here was the truth: Gary might have killed Miss Moon, but if he had, then Karl was also responsible for what had befallen her, because he’d given Gary the idea of humiliating and hurting her. Until Karl had gone whining to Gary, Miss Moon had been only an abstract concept to his brother: some do-gooder who was offering extra tuition to a working-class kid in order to assuage whatever liberal, middle-class guilt she had carried into her professional life, and perhaps indulge her savior complex along the way. If Karl benefited from her largesse, that was all to the good, but Gary had no real interest in her, just as he had little or no interest in anyone who couldn’t pay, benefit, entertain, or pleasure him. Miss Moon was an abstraction, a kind of Platonic ideal of the teacher, but by turning to Gary in his hour of need, Karl had given concrete form to Romana Moon, and planted the idea that his brother might like to play with her.
And Gary had played with her, leaving her ruined and bloodied on the moors.
The intercom chimed. Karl ignored it, but it rang again, more insistently this time, the caller keeping a finger on the bell. He checked the screen, and saw a woman wearing a cap. He pressed the answer button.
“Hello?”
“Pizza delivery for Holmby.”
“I didn’t order pizza,” said Karl.
“A Mr. Gary Holmby did, for two. Delivery to be accepted by a Mr. Karl Holmby if he wasn’t present, according to the instructions.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“It’s on his account, tip included.”
Gary had suggested that he might bring back some late-night food, but Karl couldn’t figure out why his brother hadn’t simply collected it himself. Then again, maybe Gary was now too grand to queue for takeaway pizza, which it wouldn’t have surprised Karl to learn.
He buzzed the woman up, and heard the doorbell ring shortly after. Karl glanced through the peephole. The woman was now standing outside, two pizza boxes in her arms—although not in one of those insulated bags, which was odd—but the hallway was otherwise empty.
Karl opened the door, and the woman thrust the boxes at him. Her face was very pale, almost translucent, like the flesh of some deep-sea fish, the kind that hunted with luminous lures. Her irises were a milky gray. The pizza boxes were light, and radiated no heat. Old grease stains speckled the cardboard, which smelled bad, really bad, and—
Suddenly, Karl realized it was the woman who stank, and he wanted to get as far away from her as possible, even before he spotted the gun that the boxes had concealed. He tried to close the door, but she was strong and fast, and was inside before the boxes falling from his hands had even made it to the floor. The butt of the gun broke his nose, and he fell hard, his eyes squeezing shut in pain. He heard the door close, and smelled the woman drawing nearer. He opened his eyes again. Her left hand was poised to strike, and a second later he felt the stab of a needle entering his neck. He lashed out, catching her shoulder, and she struck his nose once more.
Which was when Karl Holmby blacked out.
8
Dire portents appeared over Northumbria and sorely frightened the people.
—Anonymous, Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
CHAPTER LXXV
In his cottage on
the Hexhamshire Moors, Douglas Hood was trying to calm his dog.
“Hush now, Jess, there’s a good girl.”
But the dog would not be quieted. She turned circles by the front door before racing to the back, where she stood with her hackles raised, listening intently and growling low in her throat. Hood went to the window and looked out, but could see nothing beyond his own yard by the light cast from the kitchen.
He had lived too long on this land to underestimate the oddness of it. Once, on an autumn evening with only the barest of mists upon the ground, he and Jess had stood on a rise listening to the sound of men marching in military step, the tramp of their boots muffled and irregular, fading in and out like a radio signal, as though separated as much by time as distance; and the dog had inclined her head as orders were shouted in a foreign tongue, and they heard the rattle of buckles, armor, and weaponry. Finally, a man cried aloud—a single, piercing expression of agony—before all was silent.
And when Hood and Jess went out early the next morning to check on the sheep, the dog began digging at a declivity in the soft ground, and upon joining her Hood saw the rusted metal of a helmet half buried in the earth, and the pitted blade of a sword, and fragments of old brown bones. The researchers from the university came to claim it all, and later declared them to be the remains of a Roman legionnaire, with grievous wounds to his right femur, and his right arm missing below the elbow. A mark to the left part of his rib cage suggested the insertion of a thin blade beneath the armpit; a mercy killing, to put him out of his pain. An analysis of isotopes in his teeth revealed that he’d come from northern Spain, which meant he was some poor bastard Vardullian, probably garrisoned at the Roman fort of Vindolanda to the south. They’d buried him, but hadn’t marked his grave, and he’d been stripped of anything of value before being put in the ground: a strange business for a strange place.
A Book of Bones Page 38
