The Calling of the Grave (38 page)

    Monk's
dark eyes glittered. He looked down at where Sophie's head lay on my lap.

    'What
this?' I asked quickly, nudging the soil-filled bag with my foot. It was the
first thing that came to mind.

    He
seemed to debate whether to answer, but at least it shifted his attention from
Sophie. 'Fox piss.'

    'Fox
. . . ?'

    He
raised a booted foot. 'For the dogs.'

    That
explained some of his stink, at least. Foxes used their pungent urine to mark
their territory: Monk must have been smearing himself with soil from a den,
hoping to mask his own scent. Once again I felt there was something I should
remember, but I was too distracted to worry about it.

    'Does
it fool them?' I knew it wouldn't, but I wasn't about to tell him that.

    'Not
the dogs. The handler.'

    I'd
underestimated him. Police dogs would be able to track him regardless of what
he used. But if an inexperienced handler caught the distinctive smell of a fox
they might think the dog was on the wrong trail.

    'What
is this place?' I asked. 'I didn't think there were any caves round here.'

    'Nobody
does.'

    
Including
the police.
'Is this where you hid last time?'

    His
head snapped up. 'I don't fucking hide! I've always come down here.'

    'Why?'

    'To
get away from people like you. Now shut the fuck up.'

    He
rummaged in the rubbish on the floor and produced a bar of chocolate. Ripping
it open, he tore into it as though he were famished. When it was gone he
twisted the top from a bottle of water and tilted his head back to drink. I was
aware of my own parched throat as I watched his Adam's apple bob up and down.

    Monk
tossed the empty bottle aside. He nodded down at Sophie. 'Wake her up.'

    'She
needs to sleep.'

    'You
want me to do it?'

    He reached
his bloodied hand towards Sophie. I acted instinctively, knocking it away. Monk
became very still, his eyes burning into me.

    'She's
hurt,' I said. 'If you want her to help you she needs to rest. She's just been
in a car crash, for God's sake.'

    'I
didn't know it'd roll like that.' He sounded sullen. He looked down at Sophie
again, this time taking in the fading bruise on her cheek. 'What happened to
her face?'

    'Don't
you know? Someone broke into her house and attacked her.'

    Something
seemed to flicker in those dark eyes. The broad forehead creased into deep
lines. 'It was all smashed up. She wasn't there. I didn't ... I can't. . .'

    He
folded his hands over his shaved head, his voice dropping to an inaudible
mumble.

    'Can't
what?' I pushed, forgetting myself.

    'I
can't fucking
remember!’
His shout reverberated inside the small
chamber. He banged the heels of his hands against the sides of his head, as
though trying to drive them through. 'I try and try, but there's
nothing
!
You're supposed to be a doctor, what's wrong with me?'

    I
couldn't begin to answer that. 'I was only a GP, but there are specialists—'

    'Fuck
'em!' Spittle sprayed from his mouth. 'Pricks in white coats, what do they
know?'

    This
time I had enough sense to stay quiet. Some of the heat seemed to go from him.
The big hands opened and closed as he looked at Sophie. She hadn't woken, even
now.

    'You
and her . . . She's your girlfriend.'

    I was
about to say no, but something stopped me. Monk didn't seem to expect an answer
anyway.

    'I
had a girlfriend.' He clasped both hands round the back of his head. His mouth
worked. 'I killed her.'

    By
the time he was fifteen, Monk's life was set in stone. Orphaned since birth,
he'd grown up doubly excluded, shunned for his physical defects and feared for
his abnormal strength. The few families that fostered the surly, freakish boy
soon sent him back, shaken by the experience. By the time he reached puberty he
was stronger than most grown men, and violence and intimidation had become
second nature.

    Then
the blackouts started.

    To
begin with he didn't realize. Most came at night, so his only awareness of them
was a feeling of haziness and lethargy next day, of inexplicable bruises or
bloodied hands. The problem only came to light in a young offenders'
institution, when his nocturnal behaviour terrified the other inmates. Monk
would throw tantrums, laughing like a lunatic and reacting to any attempts to
subdue him with devastating, frenzied violence. Next morning he wouldn't recall
any of it.

    At
first he believed the accusations and subsequent punishments were just new
forms of victimization. He reacted by becoming more insular and aggressive than
ever. It never occurred to him to ask for help, and he would have rejected any
had it been offered. Not that it was. Prison psychologists spoke of anti-social
behaviour, of impulse- control disorders and sociopathic tendencies. One look
was enough to confirm anyone's worst suspicions. He was a freak, a monster.

    He
was Monk.

    As he
grew older he took to wandering on the moor. The ancient landscape, with its
rocky tors and thorny gorse, had a calming effect. More importantly, it allowed
him to be on his own. One day he came across an overgrown hole in a hillside.
It was an old mine adit, although he didn't know that at the time. It opened,
quite literally, a new world for him. He began seeking out the old mines and
caves that lay below the surface of Dartmoor, exploring and even sleeping in
them whenever he could. He spent as much time down in the cold, dark tunnels as
he did in the run-down caravan he called home. They were a reassuring constant,
indifferent to day or night and untouched by weather or seasons. They made him
feel secure. Stilled.

    Even
the blackouts seemed less frequent.

    He
was on his way to the moor one night when he saw the gang. He'd been away from
it for almost a week, labouring on a building site for cash in hand. Now, with
money in his pocket, the need to get back made his skin prickle and itch. He
felt as if nails were being scratched on blackboards inside him, and there was
a muzziness in his head that often presaged an impending blackout.

    At
first he ignored the hooded youths huddled under a broken streetlight. They had
something down on the floor, trapping it like a pack of animals. Monk wasn't
interested, and would have gone on by if it hadn't been for their laughter.
Vicious and cruel, it throbbed behind his eyes like an echo of childhood. The
gang had scattered after he'd knocked two or three of them away, leaving a lone
figure on the floor. The tendons in Monk's hands had ached with the need to hit
something else, but the girl on the ground had looked up without fear. She gave
him a shy smile.

    Her
name was Angela Carson.

    'You
knew
her?'

    The
question spilled out before I could stop it. According to the reports I'd read,
witnesses had seen Monk in his fourth victim's neighbourhood before the murder,
but it was assumed he'd simply been stalking her. There was never any
suggestion that he'd
known
Angela Carson, let alone that they'd had any
sort of relationship.

    The
look in Monk's eyes was answer enough.

    After
that first, accidental meeting the pair had been drawn together. Both were
lonely. Both, in different ways, excluded from society. Angela Carson was
almost completely deaf, and it was easier for her to sign than speak. Monk
didn't know how, but the two of them still managed to communicate. In the plain
young woman he finally found someone who was neither terrified nor repulsed by
him. For her part, it wasn't difficult to imagine that she found his strength
comforting. He took to visiting her after dark, when there was less chance of
being seen by neighbours.

    It
wasn't long before she asked him to stay the night.

    The
blackouts had been less frequent since they'd met. He'd been calmer, less
agitated. He'd allowed himself to believe they were over. Even so, he hadn't
meant to fall asleep.

    But
he had.

    He
claimed to have no recollection of what happened, only that he found himself
standing by the bed. There was a pounding on the door as the police tried to
break in. All was noise and confusion. His hands were covered in blood, but none
of it was his.

    He
looked down and saw Angela Carson.

    That
was when Monk lost what little control he had left. When the police burst into
the room he attacked them in a frenzy. Then he ran until his legs gave way,
futilely trying to escape the images of that bloodied room.

    Without
even thinking about it, he'd gone out on to the moor.

    And
gone to ground.

    That
the police would be looking for him didn't really enter into his thinking: he
was trying to escape from himself, not them. Cold and hunger drove him up after
a few days. He'd lost all sense of time, and it was night when he emerged. He
stole clothes and food, and what equipment he needed, and was back in his
sanctuary before dawn.

    Over
the next three months he spent more time underground, beneath the gorse and
heather of Dartmoor, than he did in the outside world. He only emerged into
fresh air and daylight to move to another system of tunnels, or to steal or
forage fresh supplies and check the traps he'd laid for rabbits. The surface
reminded him of who he was and what he'd done. Underneath the dark rock he was
able to bury himself away.

    And
forget.

    Indifferent
to his own safety, he was able to find places and worm into tunnels that no one
else would dare to enter. Twice he had to dig himself out when the roof
collapsed; another time he was almost drowned when the system he was in flooded
after heavy rains. Once he sat unseen, hunched in the shadows as a group of
cavers clattered by only yards away. He let them go, but afterwards sought out
a less public refuge.

    The
blackouts continued, but down there he was only vaguely aware of them.
Sometimes he would wake in a different cavern or tunnel from the one he
remembered, with no memory of how he had got there. He took to sleeping with a
torch in his pocket for when that happened.

    Then
one day he found himself walking on the roadside in broad sunlight. He felt
confused, his thoughts as muddy as his clothes, with no idea of where he was or
what he was doing. That was how the police found him.

    The
first time he heard of Tina Williams or Zoe and Lindsey Bennett was when he was
charged with their murders.

    'Then
why did you plead guilty?' I asked.

    Monk
absently rubbed at a spot between two of his knuckles, the button eyes staring
at nothing. I'd always thought they were empty: now I wondered how I could have
missed the pain in them.

    'Everyone
said I'd done it. They found their stuff at my caravan.'

    'But
if you couldn't remember—'

    'You
think I fucking cared?'

    He
glared at me, but even that seemed too much effort. He convulsed as another
coughing spasm took him. It was even more violent than before, and when it
passed it left him gasping.

    Without
thinking, I reached out for his wrist. 'Here, let me check your pulse—'

    'Touch
me and I'll break your arm.'

    I
lowered my hand. Monk sat back against the rock, regarding me with suspicion.
'If you're a doctor, how come you dig up bodies? Think you can bring them back
to life?'

    'No,
but I can help find who killed them.'

    I
wished the words back as soon as they were out, but it was too late. When Monk
started wheezing I thought it was another coughing fit until I realized he was
laughing.

    'Still
a fucking smartarse,' he rumbled.

    But he
soon broke off. Each breath was a ragged whistle, and there was a sheen of
sweat on his face. The black eyes seemed sunken into his skull as it pressed
through the yellow skin.