Scaredy cat (32 page)

A grave a good deal shallower.

He sat there shaking. Across the table from him, Caroline was crying, and in truth he wasn't far away from it himself... She had cooked pasta. They'd been sitting and talking about their respective days, neither of which had been particularly easy, and suddenly, she'd brought up the subject of kids again. It surfaced every few months, and for him, it was usually just a question of making the right noises. He'd nod and smile, and point out how far she could still go career-wise. He'd question whether now might be exactly the right time and squeeze her hand, and assure her that yes, of course he wanted children too, but that they needed to be sure. They needed to decide together... Tonight he'd been unable to conjure up even that piss-easy piece of flannel.

His mind was racing, as it was every second of the day. There was so much to consider, so many avenues to explore. He was still searching for the idea that would excite him, that would fire his imagination. He knew what he had to do, but he had yet to succeed in visualising it. The big idea. The concept that would replace the short-lived adventure with Palmer.

Caroline was talking about croches and maternity leave... It would involve creating a new scenario. A new backdrop to the act itself, which after all was the easy bit, the unsophisticated part. He had toyed with juicing up the killing. He'd visualised new and interesting ways of doing it, but it ended up like the script to an old Hammer movie, with Vincent Price knocking off people who'd upset him in the manner of Egyptian plagues or Shakespearean tragedies. No, he needed to mould the context, to shape his environment in a way that would stimulate and spark, that would challenge and charge him.

Above all, he needed to keep moving forward. Never still and never back.

This was what should be occupying him, but there was anger in the way. He couldn't think creatively while that was clouding his thoughts, preventing any real focus.

He was furious that they were looking for Karen. Caroline leaned across the table and took his hand. Would there be a better time than this? Their jobs were secure, there was enough money coming in. It wouldn't be plain sailing, of course not, there was bound to be a period of adjustment, but they could make it work... He'd watched Thorne and Palmer down by the railway line. Thorne cajoling, suggesting, Palmer looking forlorn in his handcuffs. He'd watched them strolling along the embankment like a pair of old poofs with a taste for S & M. What the fuck did Thorne think he was going to gain, even if he did find her?

Her family would help. Giving them stuff,, babysitting. They would still be able to go out, have their own lives...

It was his past and he wouldn't have it messed with. He didn't want it altered. When, if, he wanted things discovered, he was the one who would lead them to discovery. He was the one that controlled things. It was about working together, supporting each other...

He needed to put the anger aside, in one part of his brain. Yes, that might do it. Let the other side concentrate on the future - on finding a new motor.

Caroline didn't want to leave it too late. She wanted to enjoy being a mother while she was still young . . .

He would find it, course he would, if he just had some space to work it out, but Thorne and the rest of them were really starting to needle him.

.4 child would bring them close, bring them closer...

He could see it in his mind's eye, almost - unformed and not quite reachable.

Didn't he want a child? He'd said he did.

Like something on the tip of his tongue, nearly there, nearly.., but what the fuck did Thorne think he was up to?

Didn't he love her any more... ?

He leaned forward and slapped her.

It wasn't his fault. She wouldn't shut up, wouldn't be quiet for just a few seconds so that he could compartmentalise. Probably not her fault either, course not, she didn't know, did she? She couldn't see past the smile, the face that gave nothing away, but even so, I mean bloody hell... He just needed a bit of space to deal with things. To separate the anger from the creativity.

He looked at her. The handprint was clear, a livid scarlet across her jaw and the top of her neck.

Silly bitch. Waffling on about babies. When he needed a bit of peace and quiet so that he could think about death. For Thorne, the mug of tea before bed had become something of a ritual. The stroll down to the late-night grocers, after discovering he'd run out of milk, was not uncommon either.

He was in this shop half a dozen times a week, minimum. The three brothers that ran it were Turkish, he thought, maybe Cypriot. He didn't know any of their names. They smiled, sometimes, when he bought his bread, paper and beer, but they didn't seem that interested in getting to know him.

As Thorne reached into his pocket to pay for the milk, he imagined finding that he'd left his wallet at home. He wondered if they'd let him owe them the money until next time. Seeing as he'd been in their shop six times a week for the past eighteen months. Would they? Probably not. Maybe if he produced his warrant card, showed them he was a policeman.

Outside the shop, Thorne stood waiting for the lights at the pelican crossing to change, studying the adverts in the window. The one that caught his eye was scribbled in red felt-tip on the back of a postcard. It was misspelled, but the services offered were plain enough. It had been a long time.

Thorne took out a pen and scribbled down the number on the side of the milk carton.

TWENTY-ONE

They'd found Karen McMahon within twelve hours. From the top of the embankment it was obvious where the team was working. The white tented-off area around the grave stood out starkly against the browns and dark greens of the long grasses and tangles of fern. A white square billowing above the bones. Holland began to move down the hill towards the site, McEvoy ten feet or so away. The two of them had driven there together, along with another DC and a trainee detective. The conversation in the car had been sparse and far from sparkling. Now they moved slowly down the slope, their white plastic bodysuits rustling. Aliens descending, unsure of their footing.

The grave had been found in one of the drainage ditches that ran alongside the embankment at the foot of each slope. Once the overgrown and overhanging greenery had been cu[ back, it had not been hard to see or to reach. The ditch was about four feet wide but movement was restricted. The sides were muddy and in danger of collapse, and hours of hard work which had revealed the remains of Karen McMahon could be undone by one clumsy step.

Holland and McEvoy pulled up their masks and ducked down inside the tent. It was cramped and crowded. There were already half a dozen people in there, crouched or stooping, the tent not high enough to stand up straight in. The sun had not been up long and the morning wasn't warm, but the heat beneath the canvas was stifling. Though the lamps had been turned off outside the tent, there were still two powerful ones inside and the temperature was climbing all the time. Inside the bodysuit, Holland could already feel the sweat trickling down his back as he stepped carefully past Phil Hendricks who was on his haunches at the graveside, and moved towards where Thorne was deep in conversation with Doctor James Pettet. Thorne glanced towards Holland and McEvoy as they entered the tent. Instantly, and for a second or two, he wondered if something might be going on between them. There was an atmosphere... He dismissed the thought, and returned to a conversation about death and decay.

As forensic archaeologists went, James Pettet was probably as good as they came, but he was no great shakes as a human being. If Thorne never saw him again, he wouldn't lose a great deal of sleep.

'... moisture is the enemy of composition. Moisture and heat together is just about as bad as it gets. Or good of course, depending on which way you look at it.'

Behind his mask, Thorne let out a long slow breath and very quickly took another one in. Which way you look at it?

'Buried in a drainage ditch, as you say, at the height of summer, it's remarkable we have anything at all.' Pettet's voice was deep and he spoke as if he was constantly on the verge of nodding off, worn out by the effort of explaining things to idiots. 'There is a complete absence of fleshy matter and you can see that the bones themselves are mushy.'

Thorne had never met Pettet before and could only guess at what lay beneath the plastic hood wrapped tightly around the face and the mask that covered the nose and mouth.

'The non-organic material has been better preserved of course.' As Pettet catalogued it, an assistant moved carefully around the grave, occasionally dropping to his knees or onto his chest to gather up a fragment with long forceps and drop it into a plastic evidence bag.

'The material of the dress, the refuse bags, what's left of the carpet she was wrapped up in. The rope, or cord, around the neck remains remarkably intact...'

Thorne imagined Pettet to be balding, perhaps with a Bobby Charlton comb-over and very bad skin.

Thorne turned away and looked down into the grave, the buzzing arc lights casting a harsh and unforgiving light across its grisly contents. Mushy was about right. Pea-coloured bones sunk down into mud and slime. Tattered remnants of a blue dress, not white, thank heavens, and matted clumps of carpet, all floating in a brown soup. Tufts of hair, plastered to the bobbing skull like worms. The white bleached bones of the human skeleton existed nowhere but under the skin, where they belonged, and in the imaginations of television scriptwriters. Dem bones dent bones, hanging, grinning and unreal in doctor's surgery sketches.

Not like this. This human stew.

At the foot of the grave, Hendricks stood back to let one of the team come in close, to stoop down and pluck something long and greasy from the mud. Thorne caught his eye. Hendricks winked at him. He turned back to Pettet.

'What about DNA?'

The archaeologist puffed out his cheeks. 'Don't hold your breath.'

Thorne grunted - as close as it was possible to get to a laugh. The smell inside the tent was overpowering, and, masks or not, holding their breath was exactly what everybody around the grave was trying to do. Everybody but Petter, anyway. The archaeologist failed to see any irony in what he'd said. 'The victim's DNA, yes, perhaps. Get me some comparable material - hairs, fingernail clippings. Sometimes the parents hang on to those things for sentimental reasons.'

Of course they'd go through the motions, run the tests, but Thorne knew he was looking at what was left of Karen McMahon. 'Any chance of anything from the killer?'

Pettet almost managed a smile. 'Always a chance. There's a chance you'll win the lottery isn't there? Only possibility is the rope. Bits of skin caught in there, perhaps, but any cellular material will have been destroyed by the creosote.'

Thorne turned, raised his eyebrows.

Pettet explained, slowly. 'Creosote is used to weatherproof the railway ties. Same stuff you put on your garden fence. Over the years it's leached into the water running along these ditches. Ironically, if she'd been buried on higher ground, somewhere drier, the creosote in the soil might have acted as a preservative and we might have had a lot more of her left.'

To Thorne, the disappointment in Pettet's voice sounded strictly professional. Not sentimental like those silly parents with their jewelry boxes full of hair and fingernails...

Thorne glanced over to the other side of the tent where a small pile of dirty rocks stood in the corner. Petter caught Thorne's look. 'At least all the bones are there. The killer took the trouble to make sure the foxes didn't get at them.'

A layer of rocks laid carefully on top of the grave. Rocks too heavy to be shifted by the snout of something hungry. Rocks, then a layer of mud two feet or so thick and underneath it all, the body of a 14year old girl shrouded in bin-liners, rotting beneath an old carpet. Safe from foxes.

Safe from everything.

A few minutes later outside the tent, Thorne dropped a hand on to Phil Hendricks's shoulder. 'Don't get big-headed, but it's a treat to talk about death with someone who doesn't behave like he's suffering from it...'

'Wish he was,' Holland muttered. 'Miserable sod.'

Hendricks grinned. 'He was hard work, wasn't he?'

'Like I don't know what fucking creosote is!' Thorne shook his head, the wounded expression just what was needed to set them off. They all laughed then, as they desperately needed to. They laughed and shook their heads as they stepped clumsily out of their bodysuits. McEvoy lost her footing and her hand reached out to Holland for support. The laughter stopped quickly after that, and they all stood in silence for a few moments, taking in lungfuls of wonderful dirty London air.

'I don't understand,' Hendricks said, looking around. 'He obviously didn't want her disturbed, you know, by animals...'

Holland nodded. 'Must have taken him ages to find all those rocks. There's not many of them anywhere round here.'

'... but he didn't seem to much care where he buried her. She wasn't very well hidden.'

'She wasn't hidden at all,' Holland said. 'She wasn't hard to find. Nobody'd ever bothered to look for her, that's all.'

McEvoy lit a cigarette, spoke as she exhaled. 'Obviously he didn't think anyone would look for her.'

'Oh, he knew they wouldn't,' Thorne said. 'He made sure of it.' She got into a blue car, sir. A Cavalier I think they're called...

'He did this when he was fourteen,' McEvoy said. 'Then he disappears, and pops up again over fifteen years later. Fifteen years.'

Thorne nodded. He knew what was coming. He asked the question out loud, the one he'd asked himself as he'd stared down at Karen McMahon's remains. 'How many more bodies are there out there?'

It was warming up. There was no wind at all where they stood at the foot of the embankment and the smoke from McEvoy's cigarette rose straight up, blue against the concrete-coloured sky.