The Calling of the Grave (2 page)

    Both
of us were used to my going away. I was one of the few forensic anthropologists
in the country, and it was the nature of my job to go wherever bodies happened
to be found. In the past few years I'd been called out to investigations abroad
as well as across the UK. My work was often grim but always necessary, and I
took pride in both my skill and my growing reputation.

    That
didn't mean I enjoyed this part of it. Leaving my wife and daughter was always
a wrench, even if it was only for a few days.

    I
climbed out of the car, treading carefully on the muddy grass. The air smelt of
damp, heather and exhaust fumes. I went to the boot and pulled on a pair of
disposable overalls from the box of protective gear I kept in there. Police
forces usually provided them, but I liked to carry my own. Zipping up the
overalls, I took out the aluminium flight case that contained my equipment.
Until recently I'd made do with a battered suitcase, but Kara had persuaded me
that I needed to look more like a professional consultant and less like a travelling
salesman.

    As
usual, she was right.

    A car
pulled up as I began to make my way through the parked police vehicles. The
bright yellow paintwork should have been a tip- off, but I was too preoccupied
to pay it any attention until someone shouted.

    'Found
your way, then?'

    I
looked round to see two men climbing from the car. One of them was small and
sharp-featured. I didn't know him, but I recognized the younger man he was
with. Tall and good-looking, he carried himself with the easy confidence of an
athlete, broad shoulders swinging with his characteristic swagger. I hadn't
expected to see Terry Connors here but I should have realized when I saw the
car. The garish Mitsubishi was his pride and joy, a far cry from CID's usual
bland pool cars.

    I
smiled, although I felt the usual mixed feelings at seeing him. While it was
good to find a familiar face among the impersonal police machinery, for some
reason there was always an edge between Terry and me that never quite went
away.

    'I
didn't know you were on the investigation,' I said as they came over.

    He
grinned, cheek muscles bunching on the inevitable piece of gum. He'd lost a
little weight since the last time I'd seen him, so that the square-jawed
features looked more pronounced. 'I'm deputy SIO. Who do you think put in a
word for you?'

    I
kept my smile in place. Back when I first knew Terry Connors he'd been a DI in
the Metropolitan Police, but we hadn't met through work. His wife, Deborah, had
gone to the same prenatal clinic as Kara, and the two of them had become
friends. Terry and I had been wary of each other at first. Except for the
overlap of our professions we had little in common. He was ambitious and
fiercely competitive, a keen sportsman whose career was another arena in which
to excel. His self-assurance and ego could grate at times, but the success of
the few cases he'd steered my way hadn't hurt either of us.

    Then,
just over a year ago, he'd surprised everyone by transferring out of the Met. I
never did find out why. There had been talk of Deborah's wanting to be closer
to her family in Exeter, but exchanging the high-octane policing of London for
Devon had seemed an inexplicable career move for someone like Terry.

    The
last time we'd seen them had been shortly before their move. The four of us had
gone out for dinner, but it had been an awkward affair. There was a barely
suppressed tension crackling between Terry and his wife all evening, and it was
a relief when it was over. Although Kara and Deborah made a token effort to
keep in touch afterwards it was a lost cause, and I'd not seen or spoken to
Terry since.

    But
he was obviously doing well if he was deputy SIO on an investigation as big as this:
I'd have expected that sort of responsibility to go to someone more senior than
a DI. Given the pressure he must be under, I wasn't surprised he'd lost weight.

    'I
wondered how Simms got my name,' I said. Although I was an accredited police
consultant, most of my work came through recommendations. I just wished this
one hadn't come from Terry Connors.

    'I
gave you a big build-up, so don't let me down.'

    I
suppressed the flare of irritation .'I'll do my best.'

    He
cocked a thumb at the smaller man with him. 'This is DC Roper. Bob, this is
David Hunter, the forensic anthropologist I told you about. He can tell more
things from rotting bodies than you want to know.'

    The
detective constable gave me a grin. He had a snaggle of tobacco-stained teeth
and eyes that wouldn't overlook much. A potent wave of cheap aftershave came
from him as he gave me a nod.

    'This
should be right up your street.' His voice was nasal, with the distinctive
accent of a local. 'Specially if it's what we think it is.'

    'We
don't know what it is yet,' Terry told him tersely. 'You go on ahead, Bob. I
want to have a word with David.'

    The
dismissal was borderline rude. The other man's eyes hardened at the slight but
his grin stayed in place.

    'Right
you are, chief.'

    Terry
watched him go with a sour expression. 'Watch yourself with Roper. He's the
SIO's lapdog. He's so deep in Simms' pocket he could scratch his balls.'

    It
sounded as though there were some personality clashes, but Terry was always
butting heads with people. And I wasn't about to get involved in internal
politics. 'Is there some dispute about the body?'

    'No
dispute. Everyone's just falling over themselves hoping it's one of Monk's.'

    'What
do you think?'

    'I've
no idea. That's what you're here to find out. And we need to get this one
right.' He took a deep breath, looking strained. 'Anyway, on, it's this way.
Simms is out there now, so you'd better not keep him waiting.'

    'What's
he like?' I asked, as we set off down the road towards a cluster of trailers
and Portakabins.

    'He's
a humourless bastard. You don't want to cross him. But he's no fool, I'll give
him that. You know he was SIO of the original murder investigation?'

    I
nodded. Simms had come to prominence the previous year, making his reputation
as the man who had put Jerome Monk behind bars. 'That can't have done his
career any harm.'

    I
thought there was a touch of bitterness in Terry's grin. 'You could say that.
Word is he's got his sights set on the Assistant Chief Constable's desk in a
few more years. This could clinch it for him, so he'll be expecting results.'

    
He
isn't the only one,
I thought, looking at Terry. There was an almost
palpable nervous energy coming off him. But that was hardly surprising if he
was deputy SIO of something as potentially high profile as this.

    We'd
reached the Portakabins. They'd been set up next to a track that ran from the
road. Thick black cables snaked between them, and the misty air was tainted by
diesel fumes from the chugging generators. Terry stopped by the trailer housing
the Major Incident Room.

    'You'll
find Simms out at the grave. If I get back in time I'll let you buy me a drink.
We're staying at the same place.'

    'Aren't
you coming?' I asked, surprised.

    'Seen
one grave, you've seen them all.' He tried to sound blasé but it didn't quite
come off. 'I'm only here to collect some papers. Got a long drive ahead of me.'

    'Where?'

    He
tapped the side of his nose. 'Tell you later. Wish me luck, though.'

    He
clattered up the steps into the MIR. I wondered why he needed luck, but I'd
more to think about than Terry's games just then.

    Turning
away, I looked out across the moor.

    Wreathed
in mist, the barren landscape spread out in front of me. There were no trees,
only patches of dark, spiky gorse. The year was still young, and patches of
winter-brown fern and bracken sprouted amongst the heather and rocks and thick,
coarse grass. Looking out from the road, the ground fell gently downhill before
rising again in a long slope. Cresting it perhaps quarter of a mile away was a
low, ungainly formation of rock that Simms had mentioned.

    Black
Tor.

    Dartmoor
had more impressive tors - outcrops of weathered rock that rose from the moorland
like carbuncles - but Black Tor's wind- sculpted profile was unmistakable
against the skyline. It sat on top of a low escarpment, a broad, squat tower,
as though a giant child had stacked flattened boulders one on top of the other.
It didn't look any blacker than any of the other tors I'd seen, so perhaps the
name was down to some dark event in its past. But it sounded suitably
portentous, the sort of detail the newspapers would gleefully seize on.

    Especially
if it was Jerome Monk's graveyard.

    After
Simms' telephone call I'd searched the internet for background to the case.
Monk had been a journalist's dream. A misfit and loner who supplemented his
precarious living as a casual labourer with poaching and theft, he was an
orphan whose mother had died during his birth, leading some of the more lurid
tabloids to claim that she'd been his first victim. He was often described as a
gypsy, but that wasn't true. While he'd lived most of his life around Dartmoor
in a caravan, he'd been shunned by the local traveller population as well as
the rest of society. Unpredictable and prone to outbursts of terrifying
violence, his personality matched his exterior.

    If
anyone looked the part of a murderer, it was Monk.

    Freakishly
strong, he was a physical grotesque, a sport of nature.

    The
photographs and footage from his trial showed a hulk of a man, whose bald
cannonball of a skull housed deep-set, sullen features. His black, button eyes
glinted with all the expression of a doll's above a mouth that seemed curved in
a permanent sneer. Even more unsettling was the indentation on one side of his
forehead, as though a giant thumb had been pressed into a ball of clay. It was
disturbing to see, the sort of disfigurement that looked as if it should have
been fatal.

    To
most people's minds it was a pity it wasn't.

    It
wasn't so much the nature of his crimes that had been so shocking, though that
was bad enough. It was the sadistic pleasure he seemed to take in selecting
vulnerable victims from the Dartmoor area. The first, Zoe Bennett, was a
dark-haired and pretty seventeen- year-old, an aspiring model who never
returned home after leaving a nightclub one evening. Three nights after that a
second girl disappeared.

    Lindsey
Bennett, Zoe's identical twin.

    What
had been a routine missing persons investigation suddenly became front-page
news. No one doubted that the same individual was responsible, and when
Lindsey's handbag was discovered in a rubbish bin, effectively ending any hope
that the sisters were still alive, there was public outrage. Bad enough for a
family to suffer that sort of loss once, but twice? And twins?

    When
Tina Williams, an attractive, dark-haired nineteen-year-old, went missing as
well, it sparked the inevitable false alarms and hysteria. For a time it seemed
there was a definite lead: a white saloon car was picked up on street CCTV
cameras and reported by witnesses in the areas where both Lindsey Bennett and
Tina Williams had last been seen.

    Then
Monk claimed his fourth victim, and for ever sealed his reputation as a
monster. At twenty-five, Angela Carson was older than the others. Unlike them
she was neither dark-haired nor pretty. There was also a more significant
difference.

    She
was profoundly deaf and couldn't speak.

    Afterwards,
neighbours described hearing Monk's laughter as he'd raped her and battered her
to death in her own flat. When the two policemen who responded to the 999 calls
broke down her door they found him with her body in the wrecked bedroom, bloodied
and crazed. They were big men, yet he'd beaten them both unconscious before
disappearing into the night.

    And
then, apparently, off the face of the earth.

    Despite
one of the largest manhunts in UK history, no sign of Monk was found. Or of
either the Bennett twins or Tina Williams. A search found a hairbrush and a
lipstick belonging to Zoe Bennett hidden under his caravan, but not the girls
themselves. It was three months before Monk was seen again, spotted by the side
of a road in the middle of Dartmoor. Filthy and reeking, he made no attempt to
resist arrest, or to deny his crimes. At his trial he pleaded guilty to four
counts of murder, but refused to reveal either where he'd been hiding or what
he'd done with the missing girls' bodies. The popular theory was that he'd
buried them out on the moor before going to ground there himself. But Monk just
smiled his contemptuous smile and said nothing.