Pirie cut an odd figure. He couldn't have been much more than five feet tall, so that his pristine overalls looked too big for his small frame. The face looking at me from beneath the hood was so fineboned it could have belonged to a child, except that the skin was lined and wrinkled, and the eyes behind the gold half-moon spectacles were old and knowing.
'Good evening, gentlemen. Making progress?' His voice was precise and waspish as he came to the graveside. Next to Wainwright's towering bulk the pathologist looked smaller than ever, a chihuahua to the archaeologist's Great Dane. But there was no mistaking the authority he brought with him.
Wainwright stood back to give him room. Reluctantly, I thought. 'Nearly done. I was about to hand over to the SOCOs to finish off.'
'Good.' The small mouth pursed as he crouched beside the shallow hole. 'Oh yes, very nice…'
I wasn't sure if he was referring to the excavation or the remains themselves. Pathologists were renowned for being an eccentric breed: Pirie was apparently no exception.
'The victim's female, probably in her late teens or early twenties, judging by her clothes. 'Wainwright had lowered his face mask now he'd moved away from the grave. His mouth quirked in amusement. 'Dr Hunter thought she might be a transsexual but I think we can discount that.'
I looked at him in surprise. Simms gave a dismissive sniff.
'Quite.'
'You can see her injuries for yourself,' Wainwright boomed, all business now. 'Probably caused by either a clubbing weapon or someone with prodigious strength.'
'A little early to say, I think?' Pirie commented from beside the grave.
'Yes, of course. That's for the post-mortem to decide, 'Wainwright corrected himself smoothly. 'As for how long it's been here, if I was pushed I'd say less than two years.'
'You're sure?' Simms asked sharply
Wainwright spread his hands. 'It's only a guess at this stage, but given the peat conditions and the level of decomp I'm fairly confident.'
I stared at him, unable to believe I'd heard right. Simms nodded in satisfaction. 'So this could be one of Monk's victims, then?'
'Oh, I'd say that was a distinct possibility. In fact if I had to hazard another guess I'd say this filly could well be the Williams girl. The femur's far too short to belong to anyone as tall as the Bennett twins, but if memory serves she was, oh, five three, five four? That'd be about right. And the injuries certainly point to Monk after what he did to Angela Carter.'
Carson. Angela Carson, not Carter. But I was too angry to speak: Wainwright was shamelessly stealing credit for what I'd told him. Yet I couldn't object without seeming petty. Pirie looked up from his position by the grave.
'Hardly enough to provide an ID, surely.'
Wainwright gave a self-deprecating shrug. 'Call it an educated guess. At the very least I think it's worth seeing if this is the Williams girl first.'
He raised his eyebrows at Simms. The policeman looked energized as he slapped his hand against his thigh. 'I agree. Dr Pirie, how soon will you be able to confirm if it's Tina Williams?'
'That all depends on the condition of the remains once they're cleaned.' The diminutive pathologist looked up at me. 'It'll be faster if Dr Hunter works with me? I expect skeletal trauma is more his field than mine?'
He had an odd, sing-song cadence. I managed a nod, furious and stunned by what Wainwright had done.
'Whatever you need.' Simms no longer seemed to be listening. 'The sooner we can announce who this is the better. And if Monk buried one of his victims here it's reasonable to assume the others aren't far away. Excellent work, Leonard, thank you. Give my regards to Jean. If you're both free this weekend perhaps you'd like to come over for Sunday lunch?'
'We'll look forward to it,' Wainwright said.
Simms turned to me as an afterthought. 'Anything you'd care to add, Dr Hunter?'
I looked at Wainwright. His expression was politely enquiring, but his eyes held a predatory satisfaction. OK, if that's the way you want it…
'No.'
'Then I'll leave you to it,' Simms said. 'We'll be making an early start in the morning.'
Chapter 3
I was still fuming later that evening when I arrived at the pub I'd been booked into. It was a few miles from Black Tor, a place called Oldwich I'd been told was less than a twenty-minute drive away. Either the directions were overly optimistic or I'd made a wrong turning somewhere, because it was three-quarters of an hour before I saw the smattering of lights in the darkness ahead.
About time. It had been a long day and driving on the moor in the pitch blackness wasn't my idea of fun. The memory of how I'd let Wainwright outmanoeuvre me still burned. Given his reputation I should have known better. A misty drizzle flecked the windscreen, refracting the glare from my headlights as I pulled into the pub car park. A flaking sign hung outside, the words The Trencherman's Arms faded almost to nothing.
The pub wasn't much to look at from the outside, a long, low building with peeling whitewash and a sagging thatched roof. First impressions were borne out when I pushed through the scuffed and creaking doors. An odour of stale beer complemented the threadbare carpets and cheap horse brasses hanging on the walls. The bar was empty, the fireplace unlit and cold. But I'd stayed in worse places.
Just.
The landlord was a sour-faced man in his fifties, painfully thin except for a startling pot belly that looked as hard as a bowling ball. 'If you want food we stop serving in twenty minutes,' he told me with poor grace, sliding a broken key fob across the worn bar.
The room was about what I'd expected, none too clean but not bad enough to complain about. The mattress squeaked when I set my bag on it, sagging under the weight. I would have liked a shower, but I was hungry and the shared bathroom had only a rust-stained bath.
But food and freshening up could wait. My mobile phone had a signal, which was a bonus. I pulled the hard-backed chair next to the room's small radiator as I called home.
I always tried to call at the same time, so that Alice could keep to something like a routine. Kara worked three days a week at the hospital, but her hours meant that she was able to pick our daughter up from school when I was away. She was a radiologist, a fact that had been the source of many long discussions between us when she'd become pregnant. We'd not planned on having children for another few years, by which time I hoped to be getting enough police work to supplement my university wage so Kara could stay at home and look after the baby.
Naturally, things hadn't turned out quite as we'd planned. But neither of us regretted it. Even though Kara didn't really need to work any more, I hadn't argued with her decision to go back part- time when Alice started school. She enjoyed her job, and the extra money didn't hurt. Besides, I could hardly object, given the demands of my own career.
'Perfect timing,' Kara said when she picked up. 'There's a young lady here hoping you'd call before she goes to bed.'
I smiled as she passed the phone over.
'Daddy, I did you a picture!'
'That's great! Is it another horse?'
'No, it's our house, except with yellow curtains because I liked them better. Mummy says she does too.'
I felt some of my anger and frustration slough away as I listened to my daughter's excited account. Eventually Kara sent her off to brush her teeth and came back on the phone herself. I heard her settling down into the chair.
'So how did it go?' she asked.
Being outmanoeuvred by Wainwright no longer seemed so important. 'Oh… could have been worse. Terry Connors is deputy SIO, so at least there's a familiar face.'