The Calling Of The Grave

'Nice one, chief,' Roper said, slapping him on the back. 'How's the head?'

Terry gingerly touched the bump. 'I'll survive.' He grinned at Sophie. 'Doesn't spoil my good looks, does it?'

'Anything's an improvement,' she said coolly.

Wainwright strode up to where Monk lay trussed in the grass and heather. The convict's chest was heaving, and his face and mouth were slick with blood. He'd stopped struggling except for jerking against the restraints from time to time, testing them. The handcuffs were tempered steel, and the strap round his legs wasn't going to break any time soon, but I was still glad I didn't have to take him back to prison.

Fists planted on his hips, Wainwright glared down at him. 'My God, to think society wastes money keeping animals like this alive!'

Monk stilled. Blood stained his teeth as he twisted his head to stare up at the archaeologist. There was neither fear nor anger in his eyes, only cold appraisal.

'Oh, for God's sake leave him alone,' Sophie said. 'You're not impressing anybody.'

'Neither are you,' Wainwright shot back. 'And after your display back there you'll be lucky to find another police force willing to hire you again.'

'That's enough,' Terry said, coming over. The energy that had buoyed him moments ago seemed to have gone. 'We're finished here. We'll wait for the helicopter but the rest of you might as well go back.'

'What about the graves?' Sophie asked. She seemed subdued: Wainwright's jibe had struck home.

Terry watched as the dog-handler carried the body of the German shepherd towards us, its head dangling loosely. 'What do you think?' he said, turning away.

Sophie and I began making our way back to the track. She was quiet, but I didn't say anything until I saw her angrily brush the tears from her eyes.

'Don't take any notice of Wainwright. It wasn't your fault.'

'Yeah, right.'

'It could have been a grave. We had to check it out.'

Something flickered at the edge of my mind as I spoke, but I couldn't quite pull it into view. It didn't seem important: I let it go, concentrating on Sophie.

She gave a bleak smile. 'I'm sure Simms will see it that way. God, I made a real fool of myself, didn't I? Offering to help Monk remember, so sure I knew what was going on. And he was playing us. He only said he'd show us where the graves were so he could try to escape.'

'You weren't to know that.'

She wasn't listening. 'I just don't understand it. How far did he think he was going to get out here? Where did he think he could go?'

'I don't know.' I felt too dispirited myself for a post-mortem on why things had gone wrong. 'He probably wasn't thinking at all. Just making it up as he went along.'

'I don't believe that.' Sophie looked troubled. She pushed a strand of hair from her face. 'Nobody does anything without a reason.'

Chapter 7

Spring came and went. Summer moved into autumn, then winter. Christmas approached. Alice had another birthday, started ballet classes and caught chicken pox. Kara was promoted and given a small wage rise. To celebrate we spent the money in advance on a new car, a Volvo estate. Something nice and safe for the two of them. I flew to the Balkans to work on a mass grave and came down with flu in the freezing conditions. Life went on.

And the abortive search for Jerome Monk's missing victims receded further into the past.

I'd expected there to be more hue and cry over his failed escape attempt, but Simms managed to keep the story out of the press. The operation continued afterwards, but the heart had been taken out of it. Simms brought in technicians with geophysical equipment, hoping that the ground's electrical resistivity and magnetic field might reveal a human body. But they were desperation measures, not designed for rugged peat moorland, and everyone knew it. After a few more days the search was quietly called off.

Wherever Lindsey and Zoe Bennett were buried, they were going to stay there.

I wasn't sorry to leave. It hadn't been a good experience, and I'd missed my family. The only thing I regretted was that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to Sophie. She went before I did, still berating herself over what had happened. I hoped she'd get over it. Incidents like that had a habit of following you around, particularly if the SIO was looking for someone to blame. But Simms had another scapegoat in mind.

I only spoke to Terry once before I left. It was on my last morning, when I was just loading my bags into the car outside the Trencherman's Arms. I slammed the boot as his garish yellow Mitsubishi pulled in alongside.

'Getting off?' he said as he climbed out.

'It's a long drive. You look rough. Everything all right?'

Terry seemed tired. The grazed bump on his head had started to scab over, making it appear worse than before. He ground the heels of his hands into his already reddened eyes.

'Peachy.'

'How did it go with Simms?'

'Simms?' He looked startled, as though for a second he didn't know what I was talking about. 'He's not about to put me up for a commendation, that's for sure.'

'He's blaming you?'

'Of course he is. You don't think he's going to take any flak himself, do you?'

'But he's SIO. It was his responsibility.'

'Simms will hang me out to dry if it takes some heat off him. And you think there aren't people here who aren't dying to see the new boy from the Met taken down a peg or two?'

He was right. I wondered if I should mention how I'd overheard Roper reporting back to Simms. But it was only a suspicion, and Terry had enough to contend with already.

'Is there anything I can do?'

He gave a bleak laugh. 'Only if you can wind back the clock.'

I'd never seen Terry like this. 'It's that bad?'

He made an unconvincing effort to shrug it off. 'Nah. I didn't get much sleep, that's all. Is Sophie around?'

'She left last night.'

'Last night? Why the hell didn't I know about it?'

'I didn't see her go either. I don't think she wanted to hang around. She feels pretty bad about what happened.'

'Yeah, she's not the only one.'

'It wasn't her fault. In her position I'd have probably done the same.'

Terry looked at me: there was no friendliness in it. Suddenly it felt like I hardly knew him. 'How come you're standing up for her all of a sudden?'

'I'm only saying-'

'I know what you're saying. The whole operation's gone pearshaped and my neck's on the block, but you're more concerned with looking out for Sophie bloody Keller. But then I noticed the two of you were getting pretty friendly.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'It means-' He stopped himself. 'Forget it. Look, I've got to go. Say hello to Kara.'

He went back to his car, slamming the door and accelerating away so quickly that gravel sprayed over my legs. I stood there for a while, torn between anger and bewilderment.

But I didn't worry about it for long. There was too much else going on in my own life to dwell on Terry, and the events on Dartmoor were soon put behind me. Alice seemed to be growing up more every time I turned my back, and Kara and I began talking about giving her a brother or sister. Professionally, I was busier than ever. The search might not have been a success, but my own role in it hadn't hurt my profile. I found myself in demand with more police forces, and if I occasionally wondered at my anticipation when the phone rang with news of another mutilated or decomposing body… Well, I told myself that was understandable. This was what I did for a living. I had to stay detached, and who wouldn't be pleased that their career was going well?

Then came the mass grave in Bosnia. I went as part of an international team charged with exhuming and, where possible, identifying the victims. It was a gruelling, month-long trip, three days of which I spent feverish in bed from flu. I came back half a stone lighter and chastened by our capacity for inhumanity on such an industrial scale. I'd never been so glad to be home, and at first I put Kara's quietness down to giving me space to adjust. It was only when I'd read Alice a bedtime story on my first night back, as we sat with a bottle of wine after dinner, that I realized it was more than that.