The Calling Of The Grave dh-4 Read online

  The Calling Of The Grave

  ( David Hunter - 4 )

  Simon Beckett

  The Calling Of The Grave

  Simon Beckett

  Prologue

  One. Two. Eight.

  The numbers of decay. That's the ratio by which all organisms, large and small, decompose. In air, in water, in soil. Provided it's the same climate, a submerged body will take twice, as long to break down as one left on the surface. Underground it will take eight times as long. One, two, eight. It's a simple formula, and an inescapable truth.

  The deeper something is buried, the longer it survives.

  Bury a body, and you deprive it of the carrion-feeding insects that thrive on dead flesh. The microorganisms that would normally digest the soft tissues can't function without air, and the cooling insulation of dark earth further restricts the onset of decay. Biochemical reactions that would normally break down the cells themselves are slowed by the lower temperature. A process that would, under other circumstances, take days or weeks can last for months. Years, even.

  Sometimes longer.

  Starved of light, air and warmth, it's possible for a dead body to be preserved almost indefinitely. Cocooned in its cold burrow, it exists in near stasis, indifferent to the passing of seasons above.

  But cause and effect applies here, as anywhere else. Just as, in nature, nothing is ever truly destroyed, so nothing is ever completely concealed. No matter how deeply buried, the dead can still make their presence known. One. Two. Eight.

  Nothing stays hidden for ever.

  Eight Years Ago

  Chapter 1

  'What name is it?'

  The policewoman's face was cold, in every sense. Her cheeks were chapped and ruddy, and her bulky yellow jacket was beaded with moisture from the mist that had descended like an earth-bound cloud. She regarded me with what seemed barely restrained dislike, as though holding me responsible for the foul weather, and the fact that she was standing out on the moor in it.

  'Dr David Hunter. Detective Chief Superintendent Simms is expecting me.'

  With a show of reluctance she considered her clipboard, then raised her radio. 'Got someone here to see the SIO. A Mr David Hunter.'

  'It's Doctor,' I corrected her.

  The look she gave me made it clear she didn't care. There was a squawk of static from the radio and a voice said something unintelligible. Whatever it was didn't improve her mood. With a last sour look she stepped aside and motioned me past.

  'Straight ahead to where the other vehicles are parked,' she said, gracelessly.

  'And thank you,' I muttered, driving on.

  Beyond the windscreen the world was draped with curtains of mist. It was patchy and unpredictable, lifting one moment to reveal the drab, wet moorland before wrapping white gauze around the car again the next. A little further along a makeshift police car park had been set up on a relatively flat patch of moor. A policeman waved me on to it, and the Citroen bumped and lurched over the uneven ground as I eased it into a clear space.

  I switched off the engine and stretched. It had been a long drive, and I hadn't taken a break. Anticipation and curiosity had overcome any inclination to stop en route. Simms hadn't given me many details when he'd called, only that a grave had been found on Dartmoor and he wanted me to be there while the body was recovered. It had sounded routine, the sort of case I could be called out on several times a year. But for the past twelve months the words 'murder' and 'Dartmoor' had been synonymous with only one man.

  Jerome Monk.

  Monk was a serial killer and rapist who had confessed to murdering four young women that we knew about. Three of them were little more than girls, and their bodies had never been found. If this grave was one of theirs, then there was a good chance the others were also nearby. It would be one of the biggest recovery and identification operations of the past decade.

  And I definitely wanted to be a part of it.

  'Everyone's always thought that's where he got rid of his victims,' I'd said to my wife, Kara, in the kitchen that morning as I'd rushed to get ready. We'd been living in the detached Victorian villa in south-west London for over a year, but I still needed her to tell me where things were. 'Dartmoor's a big place but there can't be so many bodies buried out there.'

  'David,' Kara said, looking pointedly at where Alice was eating breakfast. I winced and mouthed sorry. Normally I knew better than to mention the grisly details of my work in front of our five-year- old daughter, but my enthusiasm had got the better of me.

  'What are victims?' Alice piped up, frowning in concentration as she lifted a dripping spoonful of raspberry yoghurt. That was her food fad of the moment, having recently decided she was too grown up for cereal.

  'It's just Daddy's work,' I told her, hoping she'd let it drop. There was plenty of time for her to learn about the darker aspects of life when she was older.

  'Why are they buried? Are they dead?'

  'Come on, sweetheart, finish your breakfast,' Kara told her. 'Daddy's got to go soon and we don't want to be late for school.'

  'When are you coming back?' Alice asked me.

  'Soon. I'll be home before you know it.' I bent down and lifted her up. Her small body felt warm and ridiculously light, yet it never failed to amaze me how solid she was compared to the baby she'd been it seemed only minutes before. Do they always grow up so fast? 'Are you going to be a good girl while I'm away'

  'I'm always a good girl,' she said, indignant. She still had the spoon in her hand, and a glob of yoghurt dropped off and landed on the notes I'd left on the table.

  'Whoops,' Kara said, tearing off a piece of kitchen towel and wiping it up. 'That's going to stain. Hope it's not important.'

  Alice looked stricken. 'Sorry, Daddy.'

  'No harm done.' I gave her a kiss and set her down before gathering up the notes. The top sheet had a sticky mark from the yoghurt. I tucked them into a folder and turned to Kara. 'I'd better go.'

  She followed me into the hall, where I'd left my bag. I put my arms around her. Her hair smelled of vanilla.

  'I'll call you later. I should have a better idea then how long I'll be away. Hopefully only a couple of nights.'

  'Drive carefully,' she said.

  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 tipoff, 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 th
e 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 blasй 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 windsculpted 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 be
en 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 seventeenyear-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.