The Plague Maiden (11 page)

‘What can I do for you?’ she asked with a scintilla of suggestion in the innocent enquiry.

‘We’re going over to Belsham. Matt says that a body’s been found.’

Rachel opened her mouth to speak.

‘And before you say anything, this one’s got modern dental work.’

Rachel viewed the heaped files on her desk with a sinking heart. Then she stood up and took her jacket from the back of her
chair. ‘We’d better get it over with, then,’ she said with forced cheerfulness. Someone had to be positive about the situation.

When they reached Belsham, Matt was waiting for them by the roadside, looking out for their car and pacing up and down nervously
like an expectant father. Colin Bowman hadn’t arrived yet, he told them as he led them across the field. Rachel trod carefully;
the rain had stopped but the field was still muddy. Wesley forged ahead with Matt to where the archaeological team had erected
a makeshift shelter out of a few spades and a large sheet of tarpaulin. A number of young diggers, probably students, stood
near the main trench, staring silently like curious cattle. Old bones were one thing but murder and police involvement were
another.

Jane was waiting for them; tall, blonde, dishevelled and anxious. Matt touched her hand reassuringly before he rolled the
tarpaulin back to reveal a partially excavated skeleton. He stood aside to let Wesley have a better view.

‘I thought I’d wait until you arrived before I went any further. We opened a new trench to find out how far the burial pit
extended. We found this single skeleton … obviously nothing to do with the others.’

Wesley crouched down. He picked up a trowel and brush lying beside the trench and began to tease away the soil caked around
the jawbone. He worked carefully until the teeth were fully revealed. Whoever this had been in life, they had probably had
a liking for sweet food and an aversion
to toothpaste. Wesley counted nine fillings in all. A hank of long brownish hair clung to the skull, somehow giving it a more
human look.

‘Well, you’d better carry on and uncover the rest,’ he said to Matt as he stood up and brushed himself down. The damp soil
had soaked through the knees of his trousers – another dry-cleaning bill. ‘I’d be grateful if just you and Jane could work
on it and not …’ He glanced over at the students. An experienced archaeologist knows how to deal with delicate evidence and
he had known Matt long enough to trust his abilities.

Rachel watched, expressionless, as they got down to work. Wesley stood beside her in silence, watching as the rest of the
skeleton emerged, pale against the darkness of the soil. Scraps of cloth clung to some of the bones and what looked like the
rotted remains of a leather belt lay loosely around the pelvis.

Wesley stared down at the emerging remains. Ideas and theories began to flit through his mind but his thoughts were interrupted
by an inappropriately cheerful voice. Dr Colin Bowman had arrived, and not for the first time Wesley wondered how a man who
spent his working life cutting up corpses could be the life and soul of any party going.

‘I believe you’ve found something interesting for me,’ the pathologist began, striding towards the trench like a terrier who’d
just spotted a rabbit. ‘How’s Neil, by the way? Anybody know?’

Wesley conveyed the latest bulletin. Last he had heard Neil was comfortable and starting to complain about the quality of
the hospital food. On the mend. But they were still no nearer finding out exactly what had happened to him, he said with a
frown. Rachel watched his face and guessed that this failure was bothering him.

The doctor, having conducted a brief examination of the bones, straightened himself up. ‘Well, she’s not medieval, that’s
for sure. She appears to have undergone a certain
amount of modern dental work but I’ll know more when I’ve got her back to the mortuary.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘If I were
you I’d get your forensic people out here right away, Wesley. I think you’ve got a murder victim on your hands.’

Wesley had had the same thought himself but he had been putting off making the call. Once the process was begun it would blossom
into a full murder inquiry. And they had enough on their plates already.

But he took the mobile from his inside pocket and slowly punched in the number.

Steve Carstairs looked up at the house. It was hardly what he had expected. He glanced at Paul Johnson, who was standing beside
him, before consulting his notebook again.

‘Well, this is the address she gave. Number eight.’ Paul sounded uncertain as he looked at the large number scrawled drunkenly
in white gloss paint on the rotting front door.

‘It’s a dump,’ was Steve’s verdict. ‘She worked for Huntings last year, didn’t she? They’ll have given us her old address.
She’s probably moved on.’ His last words were drowned out by a seagull shrieking raucously overhead.

The house had certainly seen better days. It had been built when Morbay was a newly fashionable seaside resort for the Victorian
middle classes, and now it was about to be swept aside to make way for some brave new redevelopment scheme … a shopping complex,
Paul had heard. The windows of the neighbouring houses were boarded up but there was still filthy glass in the rotting frames
of number eight.

‘We’d better knock.’ Paul marched up the crumbling stone steps, rapped on the door and waited.

When there was no answer he knocked again, and after a few seconds there was a thunderous noise from above. The two policemen
stepped back in time to see a small sash
window at the top of the house opening stiffly. A young woman with bleached blonde hair rising Medusa-like in tiny plaits
poked her head out and asked what they wanted.

‘Police. We’re looking for Patience Reid,’ Paul shouted up. Steve stood by his side, staring at the apparition above.

‘What’s it about?’

‘Routine. Are you Ms Reid?’

There was no answer. The head disappeared from the window and they waited.

As Paul was about to knock again, the door swung open. They had expected to see the young woman with the Medusa plaits standing
there but instead they were facing a young Asian woman wearing a businesslike black suit. She was about to shut the front
door behind her when Steve put out a hand to hold it open.

The young woman said a haughty ‘Excuse me’ and sidled past them before hurrying down the street, almost breaking into a run.
Paul watched as she climbed into a newish Renault Clio and drove off, noting the car registration number in his notebook.

‘She looked a bit posh for this place,’ Steve commented as he stepped into a hallway that was every bit as uninviting as the
house’s exterior.

‘Maybe she’s a social worker … or works for the landlord. I took her car number just in case.’

‘Trying to arse-lick your way to sergeant, are you?’

Paul didn’t reply. He knew Steve of old and his barbed comments had long ceased to bother him. He made for the stairs. A threadbare
carpet of indeterminate pattern still clung to them here and there but it didn’t do much to muffle their footsteps. Music
seeped from one of the closed doors on the first floor … heavy metal, hardly Steve’s taste. When they reached the top of the
stairs, the old servants’ quarters in the attic, the blonde Medusa was waiting for them, leaning against an open door, arms
folded. There was a number on the door. Presumably the place was divided into flats, although there had been no row of bells
by the
front door. But then this place was at the rock bottom of the letting market.

‘Patience Reid?’ Paul spoke first, fearing Steve would say something tactless. ‘Can we have a quick word? Won’t take long.’

The girl appeared to think about this for a few moments, then she turned and walked into the flat without checking to see
whether they were following.

She led them into a smallish room. There had been some effort to make the place cheerful: brightly coloured throws disguised
a sagging sofa and lurid posters protesting against environmental pollution decorated the walls. An ornately embroidered Indian
wedding arch was nailed to the wall above a double mattress in the corner, adding an exotic touch to the stained woodchip
wallpaper. It was a bed-sit. They were called studio flats these days, but this one scarcely merited the euphemism.

The girl was standing by the window facing them. She took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and lit one. ‘Well?’ she
said, exhaling a plume of white smoke. ‘And I prefer Pat to Patience, by the way … for obvious reasons. My parents had a weird
sense of humour.’

‘We were given your name by Mr Sturgeon, manager of Huntings supermarket in Morbay.’

‘And?’

‘You used to work there, I believe.’

‘You believe right.’

She gave a smirk that made Steve’s hackles rise. He wanted to wipe the smile off her smug face. But Paul was there, so he
had to mind his p’s and q’s. ‘You got the sack,’ he said. ‘Why was that? Did they catch you with your hands in the till?’

She gave a snort, as though the idea were amusing. ‘According to Sturgeon I had an “attitude problem”.’

‘What made him think that?’ asked Paul.

‘I threw a can of beans at a customer, didn’t I?’ She smirked again. ‘Well, the stupid cow kept going on about
all the prices being wrong on her till receipt. She kept on and on and she was holding up my queue so I just lost my temper.’

Patience by name but not by nature, Paul thought to himself. ‘Was the customer hurt?’ he asked, just out of curiosity.

‘I missed,’ she replied with what sounded like regret.

‘Have you been back to Huntings since you left?’ Paul tried to make the question sound innocent.

‘No way. I’d never set foot in that place again. What’s this all about anyway?’

‘Huntings have received some threats and we’re doing routine checks on any employees who’ve been dismissed recently.’

‘Well, you’ve come to the wrong place. I’ve found myself a better job … I work at the arts project on the Winterham estate.
Why should I have it in for those brain-dead no-hopers at Huntings? I feel sorry for them.’

‘But you wouldn’t mind teaching Huntings a lesson, giving them a bit of a fright?’ Paul watched her face.

‘They’re not worth the effort, believe me. I’ve moved on.’ She hesitated. ‘Did Sturgeon really think it could be me?’ She
sounded slightly worried.

‘As I said, Ms Reid, it’s just routine.’

‘Who else are you questioning, then?’

‘Is there anyone you can think of? Anyone we should have a word with?’

Again she hesitated, as though making a decision. But in the end she just shook her head.

Paul moved towards the door. He sensed that Patience – or Pat – Reid wasn’t going to give them any more. It was time to go.

‘How much do you pay for this place?’ Steve asked her as he reached the door. Paul detected a sneer in his voice.

But she didn’t appear to have taken offence. ‘Nothing. It’s a squat. They’re supposed to be knocking these places down some
time but we’ve been living here two years now.’

‘We?’

‘There’s five flats. Why?’

Steve said nothing. He had a low opinion of squatters. He had a low opinion of a lot of people, come to that.

‘Thank you, Ms Reid,’ said Paul with scrupulous politeness as he made his exit.

Colin Bowman had made a preliminary examination of the bones as soon as they had been delivered to the mortuary and he was
able to tell Wesley that they were almost certainly those of a young woman aged between twenty and twenty-five. As well as
the fillings, the fact that when her left arm was eventually uncovered she was found to be wearing a wristwatch confirmed
that she was no medieval peasant struck down by the plague.

Colin had been uncertain of the cause of death at first. But when he examined the neck area in detail he found that the hyoid
bone was fractured, indicating that death may have been caused by strangulation. There were fractures to the pelvis and the
leg bones that might have been caused after death, perhaps when the killer was disposing of the body, but he had seen similar
injuries in road traffic accidents. When Colin had given this tentative verdict, Wesley had shuddered inwardly at the thought
of the poor girl’s departure from this life.

The forensic team were already at work, with Matt and Jane donning white overalls to help them lift the evidence from the
ground. The dig had been held up, of course, but that couldn’t be helped, and Huntings could hardly go ahead with their building
work until the ground was cleared of all human remains, ancient and modern.

Rachel went straight back to the station but Wesley had elected to return to the hospital with Colin. After he’d been there
an hour he looked at his watch and felt a pang of guilt: it was time he got back to the CID office to do his bit.

He knew there was one task that he couldn’t put off for
much longer: he would have to break the news to Gerry Heffernan that it was definitely a case of murder, just when they were
about to face the awkward questions the Hobson case was bound to throw up … not forgetting the fact that some madman might
be going around poisoning the stock of a large supermarket.

As he walked back through the quiet, damp streets of Tradmouth, he thought of Pam and the imminent baby … and wondered, as
he did on such occasions, why he had chosen a career in the police force. If he’d stuck with archaeology at least his interest
in the bones would have been purely academic and nobody would have expected him to come up with a culprit. But as he walked
on past the boat float and the memorial gardens, he realised that was exactly what he needed to do … he needed to find out
who had ended the life of the young woman buried in Pest Field and bring the culprit to justice.

The trouble was, Pam probably wouldn’t see things as he did.

When he reached the office he found the chief inspector holding court. Steve and Paul had returned from their quest for disgruntled
Huntings employees and as Wesley entered Paul was giving their report. No luck. Nothing suspicious about Edward Baring or
Patience Reid … at least nothing definite. Paul suggested that they examine the security videos from Huntings to see whether
either of them appeared, as both had denied visiting the store. But that was the only thing they could suggest. When Heffernan
gave them the go-ahead, they rushed off, apparently eager to begin a couple of hours of boring video viewing.