The Calling of the Grave

by Simon Beckett

  '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 disintegrating 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.

  'You've been to interview him? Why wasn't I told?'

  'Take it up with Simms,' he shot back.

  Sophie was furious. 'I still can't believe you questioned him without consulting me first! Why bring a BIA in and then not use them? That's just stupid

  I tried not to wince. Tact obviously wasn't her strong point. Terry's face darkened.

  'I'm sure the SIO'll love to hear how stupid he's been.'

  'You said you'd got news?' I said, trying to head off the row.

  Terry gave Sophie a final glare before turning to me. 'Monk claims he can't remember who he buried where, but he's agreed to cooperate.'

  'Cooperate how?'

  Terry hesitated, as though he didn't entirely believe it himself. 'He's going to take us to the other graves.'

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  The prison van bumped along the narrow road. Police cars and motorbikes flanked it front and back, blue lights flashing. The procession made its way past the grassed-over ruins of an old waterwheel, one of the remnants of the tin mines Wainwright had told me about, and pulled up near where a helicopter stood on a patch of clear moor, its rotors turning idly. The doors of the police cars opened and armed officers climbed out, the snub shapes of their guns gleaming dully in the early morning drizzle. Now the front doors of the prison van opened as well. Two guards climbed out and
went to the rear. The clusters of uniforms there obscured what they were doing, but a moment later the doors swung open.

  A man stepped out of the back. The police and prison guards quickly formed a tight cordon around him, screening him from clear view. But the big, shaved head was clearly visible, standing out like a white football in the centre of the encircling figures. He was bustled across the moorland to the waiting helicopter, hunched over as the two guards hurried him beneath the whirling rotor blades. He climbed into the cabin clumsily, as though unused to the exercise. As he pulled himself up he slipped, going down on one knee. Hands reached out from inside the helicopter, grabbing his arm to steady him. For a second he could be fully seen, shapeless and doughy inside the prison-issue jacket.

  Then he was inside. One of the guards followed him aboard and the door slammed shut. The rotors picked up speed as the other guard retreated back towards the prison van, clutching his hat to his head as the downdraught from the blades rippled the grass. The helicopter lifted from the ground, tilting slightly as it turned, and then it was angling away across the moor, shrinking until it was little more than a black speck against the grey sky.

  Terry lowered the binoculars as the sound of its rotors diminished. 'Well, what did you think?'

  I shrugged, hands stuck deep into the pockets of my coat. My breath steamed in the fine drizzle. 'Fine, apart from when he slipped. Where did you find him?'

  'The double? He's some slaphead PC from HQ. Nothing like Monk when you see him up close, but he's the best we could do.' Terry gnawed at his lip. 'The guns were my idea.'

  'I wondered about that.'

  He gave me a look. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'It seems a lot of trouble to go to, that's all.'

  'That's the price of a free press. This way they get something to photograph and we can get on with the job without the bastards getting in the way.'

  I couldn't blame him for sounding disgruntled. Even though it was supposedly a secret, word had inevitably leaked out about Monk's involvement in the search. Keeping the press off open moorland would have been impossible, so the decoy would distract their attention while the real business was under way. Finding a grave out here would be hard enough without journalists trampling all over the moor.

  'Looks like something's happening,' Terry said, staring through the binoculars.

  About a mile away a line of cars and vans was racing across another road in the direction the helicopter had taken. Terry gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  'Good riddance.' He glanced at his watch. 'Come on. The real thing should be here soon.'

  It had taken two days to finalize all the necessary paperwork and arrangements for Monk's temporary release. I'd spent most of that time in the mortuary. Cleaned of the thick coating of peat, the full extent of the young woman's injuries was shockingly apparent. There seemed hardly any part of her skeleton that wasn't damaged: in places only the decaying tendons and soft tissue held the bones together. It was the sort of trauma you'd expect from a car crash, not something inflicted by a human being.

  'The post-mortem wasn't able to establish a definitive cause of death,' Pirie told me, apparently unperturbed. 'There are any number of injuries that could have been responsible. Many of the internal organs and soft tissues are ruptured, the hyoid bone is broken and there are fractures to several cervical vertebrae. The damage to the thoracic cavity would almost certainly have proved fatal, as the splintered ribs penetrated the heart and lungs. In fact, the injuries suffered by this young lady are so severe that shock alone would probably have killed her.'

  Young lady sounded curiously old-fashioned. Prim, almost. For some reason it made me warm to the odd pathologist. 'But. . . ?' I prompted.

  I was rewarded with a thin smile. 'As I said yesterday, skeletal trauma is more your field than mine, Dr Hunter. I can't rule out strangulation, but the blows to her head were so forceful that her vertebrae and hyoid would probably have broken anyway. The attack must have been quite frenzied.'

  'How do the injuries compare with Angela Carson's?'

  I'd only been given a copy of the earlier post-mortem report that morning. I hadn't had a chance to read it fully, but the similarity of their injuries seemed undeniable.

  'The soft tissue was too degraded to distinguish any signs of sexual assault, unfortunately. I'd hoped the peat might have preserved it adequately, but the physical trauma and shallowness of the grave worked against us. A pity.' He sniffed regretfully. 'The Carson girl also suffered mainly facial and cranial trauma, although nowhere near so severe as this. But as I understand it in that instance Monk was interrupted by the police, which perhaps explains why these injuries are so much more . . . pronounced.'

  They were that, all right. Against the dull silver backdrop of the examination table, the features barely looked human. The front of her skull had been crushed in like a dropped egg, while the remaining skin and soft tissue of the face were pulped into the fragmented bones of the cheeks and nasal cavity.

  'I believe psychologists claim this sort of facial disfigurement is an expression of the killer's sense of guilt. Eradicating their victim's accusing gaze. Isn't that the accepted explanation?'

  'Something like that,' I agreed. 'But I can't see Jerome Monk as the remorseful type.'

  'Quite. In which case he either has a truly terrifying temper, or he disfigures his victims for pleasure.' He looked at me over the tops of his half-moon glasses. 'Frankly, I'm not sure which is the most disturbing.'

  Neither was I. A fraction of the force used would still have been fatal. Whoever this was, she hadn't just been beaten to death: she'd been pulverized. It was overkill in a very literal sense.

  I'd expected the pathologist to leave me to work with an assistant, but he stayed to help with the grisly task of cleaning the remains: first cutting away the soft tissue then helping me disarticulate the skeleton so it could be soaked in detergent. It was a necessary part of my work but not one I enjoyed. Especially not when the victim was little more than a girl, and I'd a daughter myself.

  But Pirie showed no such qualms. 'I'm always keen to learn new skills,' he said, delicately teasing a tendon away from its connected bone. 'Although I accept that these days that probably puts me in a minority.'

  It took me a second to realize he'd been making a joke.

  In the end, confirming that the dead woman was Tina Williams was relatively straightforward. The clothes and jewellery the body was buried in matched those the nineteen-year-old was last seen wearing when she'd disappeared from Okehampton, a market town on the northern edge of Dartmoor, and dental records confirmed her identity beyond doubt. Although the jaw and mandible were shattered and the front teeth broken, enough remained to provide a positive ID. The attack had been extensive but not methodical. Either Monk didn't realize his victim could be identified from her dental records, or he didn't care.

  But then he probably never expected her body to be found.

  I'd been able to add little to what we already knew. Tina Williams had suffered horrific blunt trauma injuries. Most of her ribs and the clavicle had simple fractures caused by a swift downward force, as did the metacarpals and phalanges of both hands. Although her face had LeFort fractures, formed when force from an impact dissipates along certain buttressing areas of the cranium, the rear of her skull was intact. That suggested she'd been lying face up on soft ground when the injuries had been inflicted.

  Yet she seemed to have made no attempt to defend herself. Typically, when the forearm is raised to block a blow, it's the ulna that takes the brunt of the force, causing a wedge-shaped break called a 'parry fracture'. Here the ulnae and radii in both forearms had a combination of simple and more complex, comminuted fractures. That pointed to one of two scenarios. Either Tina Williams was already dead or unconscious during the attack, or she'd been trussed and helpless while Monk broke most of the bones in her body.

  I hoped for her sake it was the former.

  It was hard to say what had caus
ed the injuries, but I thought I could guess. While Monk was powerful enough to have inflicted many of them with his bare hands, the frontal bone of Tina Williams' skull — her forehead — bore a distinctive curved fracture. It was too big to have been caused by a hammer, which would in any case more than likely have punched straight through. It looked to me like something that might have been caused by a shoe or boot heel.

  She'd been stamped on.

  I'd worked on any number of violent deaths, but the image conjured up by that was especially disturbing. And now I was about to come face to face with the man who was responsible.

  The sound of the helicopter rotors had all but disappeared as Terry and I went back to the small township of police trailers, cars and vans that had now sprung into life around the moorland track. The constant traffic was churning the moor into a quagmire. Duckboards had been set down as temporary walkways, but black mud oozed up through their slats, making them treacherously slippery.