The Calling of the Grave (46 page)

    'Where
do you think Connors got the badger from?' Naysmith asked as a CSI carefully
removed it from the hole.

    'Roadkill,'
I said.

    Wainwright
had told me as much when I'd visited him, but I'd dismissed it as rambling. I
was wrong. The discovery of the badger had appeared to explain both the cadaver
dog's reaction and the disturbance to the soil. It had seemed a literal dead
end, its presence enough to deter us from digging any deeper.

    But
no one thought to question why an animal that preferred dry, sandy conditions
should have dug its sett in waterlogged ground. Monk's abortive escape had
distracted us, but there were other clues we'd overlooked. Animal bones had
also been found at Tina Williams' shallow grave, and the coincidence alone
should have alerted me. As should the smell of decomposition: faint or not, it
was stronger than it should have been in peat conditions.

    Most
obvious of all, though, was the broken bone that Wainwright had exposed. It was
a comminuted fracture, a fragmented break typically caused by deliberate or
accidental violence. A fall, say, or being hit by a car. An animal that had
died in its burrow had no business with an injury like that.

    There
was no way of knowing when Wainwright had realized. It was possible he'd known
for years, and elected to keep quiet to protect his reputation. But dementia
sufferers often live more in the past than the present. Perhaps the knowledge
was waiting in his subconscious, trapped there until it was brought to the
surface by some random misfire of failing synapses.

    I
should have realized myself. And on some level I had. Even back then, when the
search reached its violent denouement, I'd felt the familiar itch that told me
I was overlooking something. But I'd let it go. I'd been so sure of myself, so
confident in my abilities, that I hadn't thought to second-guess my findings.
I'd seen only the obvious, blithely putting the Monk case from my mind as I got
on with my life.

    And
for years I hadn't thought about it at all.

    We
found Zoe and Lindsey Bennett only a little deeper than the badger carcass.
Whether from sentiment or convenience, he'd buried the sisters in the same grave.
The pressure of earth had contorted their limbs, so it looked as though they
were embracing each other, but the peat had still worked its arcane magic. Both
bodies were remarkably preserved, the skin and muscles uncorrupted, the hair
still plastered thickly to their heads.

    Unlike
Tina Williams, they had no visible injuries.

    'Wonder
why he didn't inflict the same sort of damage on them?' Lucas asked, looking at
the undamaged, peat-stained flesh. 'A mark of respect, you think?'

    I
doubted respect had anything to do with it. Terry hadn't beaten Tina Williams
out of contempt for her, but for himself. It had just taken that long for him
to see what he'd become.

    The
police found Zoe Bennett's diary in his car, wrapped in a clay-coated plastic
bag. He'd sold the bright yellow Mitsubishi years ago, but even the minor
mystery of the white car seen when both Lindsey Bennett and Tina Williams had
disappeared was now explained: at night, especially on monochrome CCTV footage,
it was almost impossible to distinguish yellow from white. From what Naysmith
told me, the diary contained nothing very incriminating, beyond the simple fact
of Terry's name. It showed the seventeen- year-old wasn't as worldly as she'd
tried to pretend, thrilled at having a police detective as a lover. Terry would
have been flattered by some of what she said.

    Perhaps
that was why he'd kept it.

    'It
isn't right, what Simms is doing,' Lucas said, as we left the CSIs to complete
their work and headed back to the cars. 'Makes me glad I'm retiring. You should
be given credit, not treated like you've done something wrong.'

    'It
doesn't matter,' I said.

    The
search advisor gave me a sideways look, but said nothing. With no one left
alive to corroborate my story, Simms was doing his best to discredit my account
of what had happened. Not only had he built his reputation on wrongly
convicting Monk, but now it emerged that he'd entrusted the real killer with
responsibility for searching for the missing victims. The press were clamouring
for blood, and for probably the first time in his life Simms was reluctant to
appear in front of TV cameras. With his career at stake he'd even suggested
that I might be suffering from post-traumatic stress after my recent
experiences, and was therefore an unreliable witness. So far none of the mud
he'd thrown had stuck, but it was clear I'd outstayed my welcome. He'd seen to
it that I'd been shut out of the investigation, and it was only as a courtesy
from Naysmith that I'd been allowed to accompany them on the moor that morning.

    But I
was long past caring about Simms. I'd just arrived back at the hotel when my
phone rang. The woman's voice at the other end was instantly recognizable.

    'It's
Marie Eliot, Sophie's sister.' She sounded tired.

    I
tensed, my hand gripping the phone. 'Yes?'

    'She's
awake. She's asking to see you.'

    Even
though I'd known what to expect, Sophie's condition was a shock. The thick mane
of hair had been shaved off, replaced by a white dressing. She looked thin and
pale, and her arms where the tubes fed in and out were emaciated and wasted.

    'Bet
I look a mess. . .'

    Her
voice was a whisper. I shook my head. 'You're OK, that's the main thing.'

    'David,
I . . .' She took hold of my hand. 'I'd have died if not for you.'

    'You
didn't.'

    Her
eyes filled with tears. 'I know about Terry. Naysmith told me. I - I'm sorry I
didn't tell you everything. About the diary. I need to explain . . .'

    'Not
now. We can talk later.'

    She gave
a faint smile. 'At least we got Zoe and Lindsey back . . . I was right after
all.'

    Her
eyes were already closing. I waited till her breathing showed she was asleep,
then gently disengaged my hand. Sophie looked peaceful, the stress of the past
week smoothed from her features. I sat beside the bed for a while, watching
her.

    Thinking.

    It
was still unclear whether she'd face charges for withholding Zoe Bennett's
diary. Although she'd kept its existence from the police, even by Terry's
admission it hadn't come into her possession until after Monk was convicted of
- and had confessed to - the murders. There was nothing in the diary to
undermine that, so technically it could be argued it wasn't even evidence at
that point. She would have to answer some awkward questions, but from what
Naysmith had told me it was unlikely she'd be prosecuted.

    It
wasn't as if she'd actually committed a crime.

    She
regained her strength quickly. The doctors expected her to make a full
recovery, with no long-term impairment. After what she'd been through, they
said she'd been incredibly lucky.

    I
agreed. Even so, I waited until I felt she was well enough to have the
conversation I'd been putting off. My footsteps rang on the hospital floor as I
followed the corridor to Sophie's room. It seemed a long walk. A nurse was in
there with her, one of the regulars I'd seen before. They were both laughing as
I went in. The nurse gave Sophie a dimpled grin, making me wonder what they'd
been talking about.

    'I'll
leave you two to it,' she said, going out.

    Sophie
sat up, smiling. The dressings were off her skull and her hair was already
growing out to an auburn stubble, blunting the sutured, horseshoe-shaped scar.
She was starting to look more like her old self. Like the person I remembered
from eight years ago. It was as though a weight had been lifted from her.

    'Marie's
spoken to the insurers,' Sophie said. 'They've agreed to pay out for all the
stock and equipment I lost when the kiln collapsed. We're still haggling about
the building itself but I'll get more than enough to set up again. That's
great, isn't it?'

    'Yes,'
I said. I'd only been back out to the house once, to collect my car. The sight
of the ruined kiln, the bricks now pulled from it and scattered over the garden
by the rescue teams, had been depressing. I'd been glad to leave.

    Sophie's
smile faded. 'What's wrong?'

    'There's
something I need to ask you.'

    'Oh,
yes?' She tilted her head quizzically. 'Go on.'

    'You
knew Terry killed them, didn't you?'

    I
watched the swift play of emotions on her face. 'What? I don't understand . .
.'

    'You
knew he'd murdered Zoe and Lindsey Bennett, and probably Tina Williams. I just
can't make up my mind if you stayed quiet to protect him, or because you were
scared what he'd do to you.'

    She
drew back slightly as she stared at me. 'That's an awful thing to say!'

    'I'm
not saying you had any proof. But you knew, all the same.'

    'Of
course I didn't!' Patches of colour had flushed her cheeks. 'You really think
I'd have kept quiet if I'd known Terry was a
murderer?
How can you even
think
something like that?'

    'Because
you're too intelligent for it not to have occurred to you.'

    That
took the heat from her. She looked away. 'I'm obviously not as clever as you
think. Why would I have bothered writing to Monk, asking where the twins'
graves were, if I knew he hadn't killed them?'

    'I
wondered about that. I thought it was just lucky you'd kept copies of the
letters, but I don't think luck had anything to do with it. You wanted them to
prove you really thought Monk was guilty, in case something like this happened.
You just never expected him to call your bluff.'

    'I
don't believe this! Look, if this is because of the diary I've already told the
police everything. They know all about it!'

    'Then
why don't you explain it to me?'

    She
looked down at where her hands were clasped together on the bed, then back up at
me. 'All right, I lied about me and Terry. It was more than just a fling. We'd
been seeing each other on and off for a couple of years while he was in London.
There was even talk of him divorcing his wife at one point.'

    Another
minor piece of the puzzle slipped into place. 'Were you still seeing him during
the search?'

    'No,
we'd split up before then. He was . . . well, it was always pretty heated
between us. We'd row a lot. About him seeing other women.' She didn't seem to
notice the irony of what she was saying. 'It wasn't until months after the
search that we finally got back together again. He promised he'd changed. Like
an idiot I believed him.'

    'Was
that when you found Zoe Bennett's diary?'

    'His wife
had thrown him out by then. He got called out on a job and left me alone in
this squalid little flat he was renting. I was bored, so I started tidying
things away. Half of his things were still in boxes. The diary was buried under
a pile of papers in one of them. God, when I realized what it was . . .You
can't imagine how that felt.'

    No, I
didn't expect I could. 'Why didn't you tell anyone? You'd got proof that Terry
had been having a relationship with a murdered girl. Why would you keep quiet
about something like that?'

    'Because
I thought Monk was guilty! Everyone did!' She was looking at me earnestly.
'What was the point of stirring up a lot of needless trouble? Not so much for
him but for his family. I'd done enough to them already without that. And I'd
found things left by his girlfriends before. Cheap jewellery and make-up in his
car. Underwear. I thought the diary was just more of the same.'

    'Sophie,
you were a behavioural specialist! You're telling me you never once thought it
was more than that?'

    'No!
I wanted to hurt him, that's why I took the diary. I knew he'd been sleeping
with her, but I never suspected anything else!'

    'Then
why were you frightened of him?'

    She
blinked. 'I ... I wasn't.'

    'Yes,
you were. When I took you home from hospital you were terrified. Yet you still
pretended you couldn't remember who'd attacked you.'

    'I -
I suppose I didn't want to get him into trouble. You can't switch off your
feelings for someone, even if they don't deserve it.'