The Calling Of The Grave dh-4

by Simon Beckett

  'Not even Jerome Monk?' Behind his mask Wainwright grinned at my discomfort. 'Come on, David, admit it. This does look like one of his.'

  'I'll have a better idea once the body's been cleaned and I can see the skeleton.'

  'You're a cautious man: I like that. But she's the right sort of age, you can see that just from the clothes. No one over twenty-one would dare wear a skirt that short.'

  'I don't think-'

  He gave a bass chuckle. 'I know, I know, that isn't very politically correct. But unless this is a case of mutton – or even ram – dressed as lamb, then we've got a teenage girl, young woman or whatever, who's been savagely beaten and buried in Jerome Monk's back yard. You know what they say, if it looks like a fish and smells like a fish…'

  His manner grated, but he was only saying what I'd thought myself. 'It's possible.'

  'Ah, a palpable hit! I'd say probable myself, but still. Which leaves the question of which one of Monk's unfortunate paramours this might be. One of the Bennett twins or the Williams girl?'

  'The clothes might tell us that.'

  'True, but this is more your province than mine. And I suspect you already have an inkling.' He chuckled. 'Don't worry, you're not on the witness stand. Humour me.'

  He was a hard man to refuse. 'I'd only be guessing at this stage, but…'

  'Yes?'

  'Well, the Bennett sisters were both quite tall.' I'd learned that from my hurried research after Simms had called: Zoe and Lindsey had the willowy grace of catwalk models. 'Whoever this is, she's more petite. It's hard to get an accurate impression of height with the body curled like this, but you can get enough of an idea of the femur's length to make a pretty good guess. I don't think whoever this was could have been more than five foot three or four at the most.'

  Even when it was fully cleaned of soft tissue, which wasn't the case here, the thigh bone was only a rough indicator of stature. But I'd developed a reasonable eye for such things, and even with the remains contorted and caked in mud I was reasonably sure they wouldn't have been tall enough to be one of the Bennett sisters.

  Wainwright's forehead creased as he stared down at the uppermost leg. 'Blast. Should have seen that myself.'

  'It's just a guess. And as you say, it's more my area than yours.'

  He shot me a look that held none of the joviality of a moment ago. Then his eyes crinkled. He gave a booming laugh.

  'Yes, you're quite right. So, the odds are that this is Tina Williams. Good.' He clapped his hands together before I could say anything. 'Anyway, first things first. Let's finish digging her out, shall we?'

  Picking up his trowel he set back to work, leaving me with the obscure feeling that the conversation had somehow been my idea.

  We didn't speak much after that, but we made good progress. The only interruptions came when a SOCO arrived to sift through the peat from the grave. Except for a few more rabbit bones, though, it held little of interest.

  It was dark outside the tent by the time the body was ready to be removed. It lay at the bottom of the muddy pit, filthy and pathetic. Simms had returned as we were finishing, accompanied by the pathologist, who he introduced as Dr Pirie.

  Pirie cut an odd figure. He couldn't have been much more than five feet tall, so that his pristine overalls looked too big for his small frame. The face looking at me from beneath the hood was so fineboned it could have belonged to a child, except that the skin was lined and wrinkled, and the eyes behind the gold half-moon spectacles were old and knowing.

  'Good evening, gentlemen. Making progress?' His voice was precise and waspish as he came to the graveside. Next to Wainwright's towering bulk the pathologist looked smaller than ever, a chihuahua to the archaeologist's Great Dane. But there was no mistaking the authority he brought with him.

  Wainwright stood back to give him room. Reluctantly, I thought. 'Nearly done. I was about to hand over to the SOCOs to finish off.'

  'Good.' The small mouth pursed as he crouched beside the shallow hole. 'Oh yes, very nice…'

  I wasn't sure if he was referring to the excavation or the remains themselves. Pathologists were renowned for being an eccentric breed: Pirie was apparently no exception.

  'The victim's female, probably in her late teens or early twenties, judging by her clothes. 'Wainwright had lowered his face mask now he'd moved away from the grave. His mouth quirked in amusement. 'Dr Hunter thought she might be a transsexual but I think we can discount that.'

  I looked at him in surprise. Simms gave a dismissive sniff.

  'Quite.'

  'You can see her injuries for yourself,' Wainwright boomed, all business now. 'Probably caused by either a clubbing weapon or someone with prodigious strength.'

  'A little early to say, I think?' Pirie commented from beside the grave.

  'Yes, of course. That's for the post-mortem to decide, 'Wainwright corrected himself smoothly. 'As for how long it's been here, if I was pushed I'd say less than two years.'

  'You're sure?' Simms asked sharply

  Wainwright spread his hands. 'It's only a guess at this stage, but given the peat conditions and the level of decomp I'm fairly confident.'

  I stared at him, unable to believe I'd heard right. Simms nodded in satisfaction. 'So this could be one of Monk's victims, then?'

  'Oh, I'd say that was a distinct possibility. In fact if I had to hazard another guess I'd say this filly could well be the Williams girl. The femur's far too short to belong to anyone as tall as the Bennett twins, but if memory serves she was, oh, five three, five four? That'd be about right. And the injuries certainly point to Monk after what he did to Angela Carter.'

  Carson. Angela Carson, not Carter. But I was too angry to speak: Wainwright was shamelessly stealing credit for what I'd told him. Yet I couldn't object without seeming petty. Pirie looked up from his position by the grave.

  'Hardly enough to provide an ID, surely.'

  Wainwright gave a self-deprecating shrug. 'Call it an educated guess. At the very least I think it's worth seeing if this is the Williams girl first.'

  He raised his eyebrows at Simms. The policeman looked energized as he slapped his hand against his thigh. 'I agree. Dr Pirie, how soon will you be able to confirm if it's Tina Williams?'

  'That all depends on the condition of the remains once they're cleaned.' The diminutive pathologist looked up at me. 'It'll be faster if Dr Hunter works with me? I expect skeletal trauma is more his field than mine?'

  He had an odd, sing-song cadence. I managed a nod, furious and stunned by what Wainwright had done.

  'Whatever you need.' Simms no longer seemed to be listening. 'The sooner we can announce who this is the better. And if Monk buried one of his victims here it's reasonable to assume the others aren't far away. Excellent work, Leonard, thank you. Give my regards to Jean. If you're both free this weekend perhaps you'd like to come over for Sunday lunch?'

  'We'll look forward to it,' Wainwright said.

  Simms turned to me as an afterthought. 'Anything you'd care to add, Dr Hunter?'

  I looked at Wainwright. His expression was politely enquiring, but his eyes held a predatory satisfaction. OK, if that's the way you want it…

  'No.'

  'Then I'll leave you to it,' Simms said. 'We'll be making an early start in the morning.'

  Chapter 3

  I was still fuming later that evening when I arrived at the pub I'd been booked into. It was a few miles from Black Tor, a place called Oldwich I'd been told was less than a twenty-minute drive away. Either the directions were overly optimistic or I'd made a wrong turning somewhere, because it was three-quarters of an hour before I saw the smattering of lights in the darkness ahead.

  About time. It had been a long day and driving on the moor in the pitch blackness wasn't my idea of fun. The memory of how I'd let Wainwright outmanoeuvre me still burned. Given his reputation I should have known better. A misty drizzle flecked the windscreen, refracting the glare from my headlights as I pulled into the pub car park.
A flaking sign hung outside, the words The Trencherman's Arms faded almost to nothing.

  The pub wasn't much to look at from the outside, a long, low building with peeling whitewash and a sagging thatched roof. First impressions were borne out when I pushed through the scuffed and creaking doors. An odour of stale beer complemented the threadbare carpets and cheap horse brasses hanging on the walls. The bar was empty, the fireplace unlit and cold. But I'd stayed in worse places.

  Just.

  The landlord was a sour-faced man in his fifties, painfully thin except for a startling pot belly that looked as hard as a bowling ball. 'If you want food we stop serving in twenty minutes,' he told me with poor grace, sliding a broken key fob across the worn bar.

  The room was about what I'd expected, none too clean but not bad enough to complain about. The mattress squeaked when I set my bag on it, sagging under the weight. I would have liked a shower, but I was hungry and the shared bathroom had only a rust-stained bath.

  But food and freshening up could wait. My mobile phone had a signal, which was a bonus. I pulled the hard-backed chair next to the room's small radiator as I called home.

  I always tried to call at the same time, so that Alice could keep to something like a routine. Kara worked three days a week at the hospital, but her hours meant that she was able to pick our daughter up from school when I was away. She was a radiologist, a fact that had been the source of many long discussions between us when she'd become pregnant. We'd not planned on having children for another few years, by which time I hoped to be getting enough police work to supplement my university wage so Kara could stay at home and look after the baby.

  Naturally, things hadn't turned out quite as we'd planned. But neither of us regretted it. Even though Kara didn't really need to work any more, I hadn't argued with her decision to go back part- time when Alice started school. She enjoyed her job, and the extra money didn't hurt. Besides, I could hardly object, given the demands of my own career.

  'Perfect timing,' Kara said when she picked up. 'There's a young lady here hoping you'd call before she goes to bed.'

  I smiled as she passed the phone over.

  'Daddy, I did you a picture!'

  'That's great! Is it another horse?'

  'No, it's our house, except with yellow curtains because I liked them better. Mummy says she does too.'

  I felt some of my anger and frustration slough away as I listened to my daughter's excited account. Eventually Kara sent her off to brush her teeth and came back on the phone herself. I heard her settling down into the chair.

  'So how did it go?' she asked.

  Being outmanoeuvred by Wainwright no longer seemed so important. 'Oh… could have been worse. Terry Connors is deputy SIO, so at least there's a familiar face.'

  'Terry? Well, tell him to give my love to Deborah.' She didn't sound too pleased. 'Do you know yet how long you'll be there?'

  'At least another couple of days. I'll be at the mortuary tomorrow, but they're going to start looking for more graves, so it depends on how that goes.'

  We spoke for a while longer until it was time for Kara to put Alice to bed. Wishing I was there to read her a story, I washed and changed before going down to the bar. I'd forgotten the landlord's warning that they would be stopping serving food, and the twenty-minute curfew was almost up. He looked pointedly at his watch as I ordered, mouth set in a disapproving line.

  'Another two minutes and you'd be too late,' he snapped.

  'Lucky I was in time, then.'

  Tight-lipped, he went off to get my order. There were other people in the bar now, more than a few of them police officers or connected with the investigation in some way, I guessed. There was only one free table, so I took my drink over to it. A solitary young woman sat at the next table, absently forking up food as she read from an open folder next to her plate. She didn't look up when I sat down.

  The landlord came over with cutlery. 'You can't sit here, this table's reserved.'

  'It doesn't say it's reserved.'

  'It doesn't have to,' he said with petty triumph. 'You'll have to move.'

  I couldn't be bothered to argue. I looked around for somewhere else to sit, but the only space nearby was at the young woman's table.

  'Do you mind-' I began, but the landlord pre-empted me by slapping the cutlery down.

  'You'll have to share,' he declared before stalking off. The young woman looked from him to me in surprise.

  I gave an embarrassed smile. 'Service and charm. This place has it all.'

  'Wait till you try the food.' She closed the folder, looking irritated.

  'I can find somewhere else if it's a problem,' I offered.

  For a second I could see she was tempted, but then she thought better of it. She waved a hand at the chair.

  'No, it's fine. I've finished anyway.' She set down her fork and pushed away her plate.

  She was attractive in an unobtrusive way. She wore old jeans and a loose sweater, her thick auburn hair pulled casually back with a plain band. She struck me as someone who didn't worry too much about how she looked, but didn't have to. Kara was the same. She could throw on anything and still look good.

  I glanced at the folder she'd been reading. Even upside down I'd recognized what looked like a police report. 'Are you here on the investigation?' I asked.

  She pointedly picked up the folder and tucked it into her bag. 'Are you a reporter?'

  There was frost in her voice. 'Me? God, no,' I said, surprised. 'Sorry, my name's David Hunter, I'm a forensic anthropologist. Part of Simms' team.'

  She relaxed, giving me a self-conscious smile. 'You'll have to excuse me. I get a little paranoid when anyone starts quizzing me about work. And yes, I am on the investigation.' She held out her hand. 'Sophie Keller.'

  Her grip was firm, her hand strong and dry. She was clearly used to negotiating her way through the traditionally male police environment.

  'So what do you do, Sophie? Or is that being nosy again?'

  She smiled. She had a good smile. 'I'm a BIA. That's Behavioural Investigative Advisor.' 'Right.'

  There was a pause. She laughed. 'It's all right, I'm not sure what a forensic anthropologist does either.'

  'Is a BIA like a profiler?' I asked, reminding myself to be diplomatic. That wasn't a field I had much faith in.

  'There's a psychological aspect, yes, but it's a little broader than that. I advise on offenders' characteristics and motivations, but I also look at strategies for interviewing suspects, assess crime scenes, things like that.'

  'How come I didn't see you at the grave today?'

  'Sore point. I didn't hear about it until this afternoon, so I'll have to make do with photographs. Not ideal, but that wasn't really why I was brought in.' 'Oh?'

  She hesitated. 'Well, I don't suppose it's a secret. They asked me here because if this is one of Monk's victims the others might be buried nearby. They want me to advise on the most likely places the graves could be. That's sort of a speciality of mine, finding where things are hidden. Especially bodies.'

  'How do you do that?' I was intrigued. There had been a number of technological advances to help locate buried bodies in recent years: everything from aerial photography to geophysics and thermal imaging. But grave location was still a hit and miss affair, especially on a place like Dartmoor. And I wasn't sure how a behavioural specialist could help anyway.

  'Oh, there are ways,' she said, vaguely. 'Anyway, now you know what a BIA does. Your turn.'

  I gave her a potted outline of what my work involved, breaking off when the landlord arrived with the food. He set the plate down in front of me hard enough to slop the gravy on to the table. At least I hoped it was gravy: the greasy brown liquid could have been anything.

  Sophie and I considered the mess of over-boiled vegetables and grey meat. 'So you decided against the smoked salmon and fois gras,' she said after a moment.

  'It's the perks that make the work worthwhile,' I said, trying to spear a disintegrat
ing carrot on my fork. 'So where are you from?'

  'Bristol, but I live in London these days. I used to come on holidays around here when I was a girl, though, so I know Dartmoor quite well. I love the openness. I'd like to move out here some day, but with work… Well, you know how it is. Perhaps if I ever get tired of being a BIA.'

  'I'm reserving judgement on Dartmoor, but I know Bristol a little. It's nice country round there. My wife's from Bath.'

  'Oh, right.'

  We smiled at each other, knowing that parameters had been drawn. Now we'd established I was married we could relax without worrying about putting out any wrong signals.

  Sophie was good company, sharp and funny. She talked about her home and her plans for the future; I told her about Kara and Alice. We both spoke about our work, although the subject of the current investigation was avoided. It was an ongoing case, and neither of us was about to give away too much to a virtual stranger.

  But when I looked across the room and saw Terry and Roper heading towards me I knew that was about to change. Terry looked startled when he saw the two of us at the table. His expression became guarded as they approached.

  'Didn't realize you two knew each other,' he said. Roper hung back just behind him.

  Sophie gave Terry a smile that seemed to have an edge to it. 'We do now. David's been telling me what he does. It's really fascinating.'

  'Is it,' Terry said, flatly.

  'Do you want to join us?' I asked, made uncomfortable by the sudden atmosphere.

  'No, we won't interrupt. Just came over to give you the news.' He spoke over his shoulder to Roper. 'Get the beers in, Bob.'

  Roper blinked but hid any displeasure he felt at being ordered around. A trace of aftershave lingered behind him as he went to the bar.

  'News?' I said.

  Terry addressed me as though Sophie wasn't there. 'You know this morning when I told you I'd got to go somewhere? Well, I went to Dartmoor prison to see Jerome Monk.'

  That explained Terry's secrecy earlier: no wonder he'd seemed keyed up. But Sophie jumped in before I could ask anything.